Anglo-Cherokee War

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The Anglo-Cherokee War (1758–1761), also known as the Cherokee War, the Cherokee Uprising, the Cherokee Rebellion, was a conflict between British forces in North America and Cherokee Indians during the French and Indian War. The British and the Cherokee were formally allies at the start of the war, but each party repeatedly suspected the other of betrayal. Tensions between English-American settlers and the Cherokee increased during the 1750s.

During the second year of the French and Indian War, the British sought Cherokee assistance against the French enemies and their Indian allies. The latter agreed, providing the British build forts within their territory to help protect them against those against whom they would be waging war. Once that was done, the forts being Fort Loudoun at the mouth of the Tellico River on the Little Tennessee River, Fort Prince George near Keowee (the most important of the Lower Towns), and Fort Dobbs in the midst of the Hill and Valley towns west of North Carolina, the Cherokee raised four hundred warriors to fight in western Virginia under Ostenaco with another large group attacking Fort Toulouse in the later Alabama under Oconostota and Attakullakulla.

Later, the Cherokee participated in the taking of Fort Duquesne in 1758. Feeling their effort unappreciated, Attakullakulla ordered his warriors home. Later a contingent of Cherokee warriors (under Moytoy of Citico) were accompanying Virginian troops on a campaign against the Shawnee of Ohio Country. During the expedition, their enemy proved too elusive, and after several weeks, the Tuscarora contigent left while that of the Cherokee dwindled. The Cherokee and Virginians fell to fighting each other, with the Virginians defeating the Cherokee, killing and scalping about 20 of them. Later, the Virginians passed the scalps off as those of Shawnees and collected bounties for them.

While some Cherokee leaders still called for peace, retaliatory raids on outlying pioneer settlements took place. The Cherokees finally declared open war against the British in 1759, fighting independently and not as allies of France, although a number of Muskogee under Big Mortar moved up to Coosawatie, the original of the Coosa chiefdom of the time of de Soto who were and had long been French allies in support of the Cherokee pro-French faction at Great Tellico.

The governor of South Carolina, William Henry Lyttleton raised an army of 1,100 men and marched to the "Lower Towns" of the Cherokee, which quickly agreed to peace. Two Cherokee warriors accused of the murder of white settlers were turned over for execution, and 29 chiefs were given as hostages, imprisoned at Fort Prince George.

Governor Lyttleton returned to Charleston, but the Cherokee were still angry and continued to attack frontier settlements into 1760. In February of 1760, the Cherokees attacked Fort Prince George in an attempt to rescue the hostages. The fort's commander was killed, and his replacement had all of the hostages executed and fended off the attack. Fort Ninety Six was also attacked, and withstood the siege. Lesser posts in the South Carolina backcountry did fall to Cherokee raids. Governor Lyttleton appealed to Jeffrey Amherst, the British commander in North America, who sent Archibald Montgomerie with an army of 1,200 troops (The Royal Scots and the 77th Regiment of Foot (Montgomerie's Highlanders)) to South Carolina.

Montgomerie's campaign razed some of the Cherokee Lower Towns, including Keowee, but ending with a defeat at Echoee ("Itseyi") Pass, when Montgomerie tried to enter the Middle Towns territory. Later in 1760, Fort Loudoun (Tennessee) fell to the Overhill Cherokee.

In 1761, Montgomerie was replaced by James Grant, who led an army of 2,600 men, the largest force to enter the southern Appalachians to date, against the Cherokee. His army moved through the Lower Towns, defeated the Cherokee at Echoee Pass, and proceeded to raze about 15 Middle Towns, burning the fields of crops along the way.

In September of 1761, the Cherokee signed a peace treaty with South Carolina, ceding most of their eastern lands. In November, they signed a peace treaty with Virginia. Lt. Henry Timberlake, Sgt. Thomas Sumter, an African slave, and an interpreter traveled into the Overhills with a copy of the treaty; Timberlake's map of his journey and diary, later published in 1765, contains an accurate description of Cherokee culture. The men later accompanied a delegation of Cherokees to London in 1762-3; the Cherokees visited the Tower of London, met Oliver Goldsmith, drew massive Crowds, and had an audience with King George III. However, on the way, their interpreter William Storey died, making communication nearly impossible. South Carolinians viewed the warm welcome the Cherokees received in London as a sign of imperial favoritism at their expense, but the Cherokees viewed London as alien, even antithetical to their values and way of life.

[edit] References

Rice Hope Plantation Inn
Mooney, James. "Myths of the Cherokee" (1900, reprint 1995).

[edit] Further reading

Anderson, Fred. Crucible of War: The Seven Years’ War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754–1766. New York: Knopf, 2000. ISBN 0-375-40642-5. See ch. 47, "The Cherokee War and Amherst's Reforms in Indian Policy", pp. 457–71.
Oliphant, John. Peace and War on the Anglo-Cherokee Frontier, 1756–63. Louisiana State University Press, 2001.
Hatley, Thomas. The Dividing Paths: Cherokees and South Carolinians through the Era of Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993, pp. 117-147.
"Journal of an Expedition to South Carolina," by Captain Christopher French. Journal of Cherokee Studies (Summer 1977), 275-302?