Chickamauga Cherokee
The Chickamauga Cherokee are a Native American group who separated from the Cherokee in March 1775 to the early 1800s, when elderly chiefs sold more than 22 million square acres of their hunting grounds. Most of the Cherokee people who lived on the Atlantic seaboard surrounded by settlers signed peace treaties with the Americans in 1776-1777, after the Second Cherokee War. Followers of the skiagusta Dragging Canoe who lived on the landward side of the Appalachian continental divide in proximity to Muscogees moved with him down the Tennessee River, away from their historic Overhill Cherokee towns. Relocated to a more isolated area, they established 11 new towns to distance themselves from encroaching colonists.
While frontier Americans associated Dragging Canoe and his band with their new town on Chickamauga Creek, and began to refer to the band as the Chickamaugas, Wilma Mankiller, former Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation, referred to them as Chickamaugans, rather than Chickamaugas. The Chickamauga moved further west and southwest into present-day Alabama five years later, establishing five larger settlements. They were then more commonly known as the Lower Cherokee, a term closely associated with the people of the five lower towns.
Dragging Canoe, the first Chicamauga chief, separated from the Upper Cherokee and accused the elderly chiefs of endangering the survival of their people. He never met with whites to negotiate a treaty again.
Black Jack and British loyalists
Dragging Canoe was a beacon of resistance to First Nations. Shawnees, Muscogees, and exiles from many other First Nations soon joined him. In 1772, four years before the beginning of the American Revolution, Lord Chief Justice Mansfield ruled that slaves could not be held against their will in Britain. Many slaves simply walked away from their owners and masters. Word spread in the American colonies. While plantation and slave owners panicked in the American colonies, hundreds of slaves tried to make their way to the coast for ships sailing to Britain. Slaves too far from the coast headed for First Nations instead. Black Jack, a former slave, became Dragging Canoe’s trusted interpreter and spy. Nickajack was named in honor of “Nigger Jack”.Likewise, twenty percent of the population in the American colonies did not want to exchange an absolute ruler, who was absent, for an aristocracy of rulers already living there. One fifth of the population was firmly set against the rebels or the patriots. Many British loyalists joined loyalist units in their fight against the rebels before making their way to First Nations. Mitchell Sanders/Saunders was a Revolutionary War deserter from New Hampshire and the father of Alexander Sanders/Saunders and his well-known Cherokee siblings. Both William Childers and William Perdew deserted from the same loyalist unit in July 1779. Theda Perdue, born in 1949 in McRae, Georgia and a possible descendant, is the author of numerous books related to Cherokee history: Cherokee removal: a brief history with documents; ‘Mixed blood’ Indians: racial construction in the early south; Cherokee women, gender and culture change. Hundreds of names of British loyalists appear in Emmet Starr's History of the Cherokee Indians genealogical section between pages 303 and 466.
Migration
Chickamauga towns
During the winter of 1776–77, the Cherokee followers of Dragging Canoe moved down the Tennessee River and away from their Overhill Cherokee towns. They established nearly a dozen towns in this area to distance themselves from European-American encroachment.Dragging Canoe and his followers settled where the Great Indian Warpath crossed Chickamauga Creek, near present-day Chattanooga, Tennessee. They named their town "Chickamauga", after the creek, and the adjacent region was known as the Chickamauga area. American settlers referred to its militant Cherokee as "Chickamaugas."
In 1782, militias under John Sevier and William Campbell destroyed the eleven Cherokee towns. Dragging Canoe led his people further down the Tennessee River, establishing five Lower Cherokee towns. After the Revolutionary War, westward migration increased from the new states of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia.
Five Lower Towns
In April 1779 Evan Shelby and troops from Virginia and North Carolina destroyed Chickamaugan towns. As Dragging Canoe had many Muscogee followers and supporters, he sent his brother, Little Owl, to request permission from Muscogee chief Alexander McGillivray to live on Muscogee land. McGillivray gladly gave his consent and Dragging Canoe and his followers then established five new towns in Muscogee territory. The towns centered on Running Water Creek Whiteside, Tennessee. The other towns founded at this time were Nickajack, Long Island, Crow Town, and Lookout Mountain. A sixth town was added later, founded by red-headed "half-breed" chief, Will Webber. The Chickamauga towns on the landward side of the Appalachian continental divide were known as the Lower Towns while the Cherokee majority who lived on the Atlantic seaboard were known as the Upper Cherokee.Division among the Cherokee is indicated by a May 4, 1808 letter from Thomas Jefferson to the "Chiefs of the Upper Cherokee" in which he says, "You propose My Children, that your Nation shall be divided into two and that your part the Upper Cherokees, shall be separated from the lower by a fixed boundary, shall be placed under the Government of the U.S. become citizens thereof, and be ruled by our laws; in fine, to be our brothers instead of our children."
Warfare
The Chickamauga Cherokee became known for their uncompromising enmity with United States settlers who pushed them out of their traditional territory. They signed treaties with Great Britain and Spain. From the town of Running Water, Dragging Canoe led attacks on white settlements throughout the American Southeast.The Lower Cherokee and the frontiersmen were at war until 1794. Chickamauga warriors raided as far as Indiana, Kentucky, and Virginia with members of the Northwestern Confederacy, which they helped establish). Because of a growing belief in the Chickamauga cause and US destruction of homes of other Native Americans, most of the Cherokee became allied against the United States.
After the 1792 death of Dragging Canoe, his hand-picked successor John Watts assumed control of the Lower Cherokee. Under Watts's lead, the Cherokee continued their policy of Indian unity and hostility toward European Americans. Watts moved his base of operations to Willstown to be closer to his Muscogee allies, and had concluded a treaty in Pensacola with Spanish West Florida governor Arturo O'Neill de Tyrone for arms and supplies to continue the war.
Cherokee interactions
The Chickamauga and later Lower Towns were no different from the rest of the Cherokee than other groups of settlements known as the Middle Towns, Out Towns, Lower Towns, Valley Towns, or Overhill Towns, which were established along the Appalachian Mountains by the time of European contact. The groupings were geographic rather than political, and residents of the Overhill and Valley Towns spoke a similar dialect. The people based their government in the clan and town, and townhouses were built for communal gatherings. Some of the towns were associated with smaller nearby villages, and regional councils had no binding powers.The groups of towns developed differing ideas about relations with European Americans, partially based on interaction, intermarriage, and trading and other partnerships. While Cherokees on the Atlantic seaboard were surrounded by settlers and began to adapt to farming, Chickamaugans lived among Muscogees and on Muscogee land. The only Cherokee "national" role before 1788 was that of First Beloved Man, a chief negotiator from the towns most isolated from European settlers. The Cherokee established a national council after that year, but it met irregularly and had little authority.
Dragging Canoe addressed the national council at Ustanali and acknowledged Little Turkey as his successor; he was memorialized by the council after his death in 1792. Chickamauga leaders frequently communicated with the Cherokee from other regions. They were supported in warfare against the colonists and later pioneers by warriors from the Overhill Towns. A number of Chickamauga chiefs signed treaties with the federal government, along with other Cherokee Nation leaders.
Aftermath of the wars
After the Treaty of Tellico Blockhouse in late 1794, leaders of the Lower Cherokee dominated national tribal affairs. When the national government of the Cherokee Nation was organized, the first three people to hold the office of Principal Chief were Little Turkey, Black Fox, and Pathkiller. All three had been warriors under Dragging Canoe. Doublehead and Turtle-at-Home, the first two speakers of the Cherokee National Council, had also served with Dragging Canoe. Domination of the Cherokee by former warriors from the Lower Towns continued well into the 19th century; after the revolt of the young Upper Towns chiefs, representatives of the Lower Towns remained a major voice.Resettlement
Many former warriors returned to the original settlements in the Chickamauga area, some of which had been reoccupied. They also established new towns in the area and several in north Georgia. Others moved into towns which were established after the earlier migration.Brother Steiner, a representative of the Moravian Brethren, met with Lower Cherokee former warrior Richard Fields in 1799 at Tellico Blockhouse. Steiner hired him as guide and interpreter, since he had been sent south by the Brethren to find an appropriate location for a mission and school in Cherokee territory. It was found at Spring Place on land donated by James Vann, who supported a European-American education for his people. When Steiner asked Fields, "What kind of people are the Chickamauga?" the guide laughed and replied, "They are Cherokee, and we know no difference." Neither the Chickamauga nor other Cherokee considered them distinct from the 18th-century Cherokee.
Others joined the remnant populations from the former Overhill towns on the Little Tennessee River known as the Upper Towns, centered on Ustanali in Georgia. Vann and his protégés, The Ridge and Charles R. Hicks, became leaders. They were the most progressive of the Cherokee, favoring acculturation, formal European-American education, and modern agricultural methods.
For a decade or more after the end of hostilities, the northern section of the Upper Towns had its own council and acknowledged the chief of the Overhill Towns as its leader. They moved south after ceding their land to the United States.
John McDonald returned to his home on the Chickamauga River, across from Old Chickamauga Town, and lived there until he sold it in 1816. It was purchased by the Boston-based American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions for use as the Brainerd Mission, which served as a church and a school with academic and vocational training. His daughter, Mollie McDonald, and son-in-law Daniel Ross developed a farm and trading post near the old village of Chatanuga in the early days of the wars. Settled near them were sons Lewis and Andrew Ross and a number of daughters. Their son John Ross, born in Turkey Town, became a principal chief who guiding the Cherokee through the 1830s Indian removal and relocation to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River.
Most of the Lower Cherokee remained in the towns they inhabited in 1794, with their seat at Willstown. Former Lower Towns warriors dominated Cherokee political affairs for the next twenty years. They were more conservative than the Upper Towns leaders, assimilating but keeping as many old ways as possible.
The Lower Towns were roughly south and southwest of the Hiwassee River, along the Tennessee to the north border of the Muscogee nation, and west of the Conasauga and the Ustanali in Georgia. The Upper Towns were north and east of the Hiwassee, between the Chattahoochee River and the Conasauga, about the same area as the later Amohee, Chickamauga, and Chattooga districts of the eastern Cherokee Nation.
Traditional Cherokee settlements in the highlands of western North Carolina became known as the Hill Towns, with their seat at Quallatown. The lowland Valley Towns, with their seat at Tuskquitee, were more traditional; so was the Upper Town of Etowah, inhabited primarily by full-bloods and the nation's largest town. The Overhill towns along the Little Tennessee remained more or less autonomous, and kept their seat at Chota.