Message #109543

[Bianca]

A Brief History of the Cherokee, 1674-1842



One of the earliest English accounts that unambiguously mention the Cherokee occurs in Henry Woodward’s description of his visit among the Westo (Chichimeco) in 1674 (Crane 1929:16; Swanton 1946:111). The “Chorakae” peoples Woodward referred to in his 1674 narrative were said to inhabit the headwaters region of the Savannah River and to be the enemies of the Westo who then occupied the middle Savannah drainage. The Cherokee peoples that were encountered by the English as they first began to settle and explore the Carolinas were found distributed in five geographically distinct areas, the largest geographic group being the Lower Towns settlements located along the upper drainages of the Chattahoochee and Savannah River in northwestern South Carolina and northeastern Georgia (Schroedl 2000). The inhabitants in this area spoke a distinct Cherokee dialect known as Elati (Mooney 1900), and lived in a dozen or so politically independent towns that include the archeologically investigated sites of Chattooga, Estatoe, Tugalo, Chauga, and Keowee. Contacts between the Cherokee and the earliest English colonists in coastal South Carolina were limited at first due to the intervening presence of the frequently warring Westo who had come to occupy the middle Savannah River area and counted the Cherokee among their many enemies. After the defeat of the Westo by the South Carolinians in 1681, English contacts with the Cherokee and other western tribes became a regular occurrence as the English pursued their policy of establishing trade relations with the interior tribes.

Trade formed the primary basis for Cherokee-British relations during these early years with British traders frequently taking up residence in the Cherokee towns where they provided their hosts with guns, axes, hoes, knives, blankets, and other utilitarian items in exchange for deerskins and, more importantly, Indian slaves. While they benefited materially from their trading relationships with the British, the Cherokee also suffered greatly as a result of increased intertribal warfare directly attributable to the slave trade. In the century following the establishment of Charleston, S.C. in 1670, the Cherokee were involved in numerous conflicts with the Guale, Westo, Shawnee, Catawba, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Congaree, Creek, and Tuscarora, often with the encouragement of the British as a means of providing captives for the slave market (Crane 1929:24, 40, 109-120, 138-139; Swanton 1946:111-112; Swanton 1952:221-222). The casualties of intertribal warfare paled in comparison, however, to the losses suffered from deadly epidemics caused by the introduction of European diseases for which the Cherokee had little immunity. In 1738, for example, a smallpox epidemic devastated the Cherokee, reducing their population of some 20,000 people by nearly half. As a result, many of the Lower towns, particularly those in northwest South Carolina (e.g., Chattooga) were completely abandoned (Schroedl 2000:214).

Cherokee relations with the British were not always on an entirely friendly basis either. Charges of thievery and unfair trading practices including the unlawful taking of slaves were frequently raised by the Cherokee before Carolina’s colonial officials with calls for retribution that often went ignored. As a result, some 70 Cherokee are reported (Milling 1969:270; Swanton 1946:111) to have initially participated in the Indian uprising known as the Yamassee War (1715-1716), that primarily involved the Yamassee, Creek, Congaree, Wateree, Waxaw and other Siouan speakers who had had enough of the abuses they had suffered at the hands of callous English traders, particularly the enslaving of women and children as collateral for unpaid debts (Milling 1969). During the Yamassee War, Creek emissaries tried to persuade the Cherokee to join them against the British, but the Lower Towns led by Conjuror and the Overhill Towns led by Caesar of Echota, promised to remain allies with the English and joined them in putting down the rebellious tribes (Crane 1929:179-182). Following the Yamassee War, the Cherokee maintained a fairly amicable relationship with the British until the latter end of the French and Indian War (1754-1763), when a number of British affronts (Swanton 1946: 112, 1952:222; Schroedl 2000:217-218) against the Cherokee precipitated the relatively brief Cherokee War (1760-1761), during which the Cherokee enjoyed initial successes such as the capture of Fort Loudon, but were later compelled to make peace after the English and their Indian allies laid waste to most of the Lower Towns in South Carolina and Georgia as well as the Middle and Outer Town Cherokee settlements of the upper Tennessee River (Swanton 1946:112; Schroedl 2000:218).

At the outbreak of the American Revolution, the Cherokee again remained loyal to the British and suffered the consequences of numerous American military raids into Cherokee territory. In 1776, General Griffith Rutherford and Colonel William Moore led the North Carolina militia in attacks against the Middle, Valley, and Outer Towns while South Carolina forces led by Colonel Andrew Williamson attacked the Lower Towns (Schroedl 2000:221-222). Finally, in November of 1776, a Virginia force led by Colonel William Christian burned five more Overhill Towns, while sparing Chota and several others (Schroedl 2000:222). Despite the establishment of a truce the following year, sporadic actions between the Cherokee and colonists occurred for the duration of the war, including an expedition led by Colonels John Sevier and Arthur Campbell against the Overhill Towns in 1780 in which ten towns including Chota were destroyed (Schroedl 2000:222). The ravages of the Revolutionary War eventually forced the Cherokee to flee the Lower Middle, Out and Valley Towns of North Carolina, South Carolina and eastern Georgia with many resettling within the Coosa River drainage in northwest Georgia (Smith 1979; Smith 1992:38); most of the Lower towns of east Georgia and South Carolina were never reoccupied. Even after armed conflict between the American colonists and Britain had ceased with the victory at Yorktown in 1781, the Cherokee continued hostilities with the fledgling nation. Peaceful relations were eventually restored following the Tellico conference held in 1794, but in the process the Cherokee had ceded nearly 50,000 square miles of land, lost virtually all their material possessions, and had diminished in population as a result of starvation, exposure, and disease.

In the ensuing years some Cherokee tried to maintain their traditional ways of life but many chose instead to adopt Euroamerican ways and agrarian lifestyles with the encouragement of the new U.S. government, including the adoption of a form of government modeled on that of the United States. The Cherokee also later aided American interests by serving as allies during the Creek War of 1813-1814, particularly at the decisive Battle at Horseshoe Bend in which 800 Redstick Creeks perished at the hands of Lower Creek, Cherokee, and American troops led by Andrew Jackson (de Grummond and Hamlin 2000). But continued encroachment by white settlers displaced many from their claimed lands until the signing of the treaty of New Echota in 1835, when the Cherokee sold all their remaining territory and conceded to American demands that they move west of the Mississippi River. Their forced migration to the “Indian Territories” of Oklahoma in the winter of 1838-39 was a journey of extreme hardship that resulted in the death of nearly one in four during the mass migration that has come to be known as the Trail of Tears (Milling 1969:332). At the time of their forced exodus to Oklahoma, several hundred Cherokee chose instead to flee to the mountains of western North Carolina where they survived as refugees until the Qualla Reservation was established for their use in 1842.