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previous: Chapter 2 This webpage reproduces a chapter of The Southern Indians by R. S. Cotterill University of Oklahoma Press Norman, Oklahoma, 1954 The text is in the public domain. This page has been carefully proofread and I believe it to be free of errors. If you find a mistake though, please let me know! next: Chapter 4

 p37  III
The American Revolution
1775‑1783

The outbreak of the American Revolution gave the Southern Indians their first opportunity since the French and Indian War of watching their white neighbors destroy each other. Since none of the tribes had a desire to mar by any premature participation the complete attainments of these pleasing prospects, their general inclinations were toward neutrality in the struggle. This ambition coincided with both American and British policy, since neutrality was the most favorable attitude the Americans could expect from people whom they had consistently wronged, while the British feared that Indian allies in war would be unable to discriminate between loyalists and rebels. The two contestants, then, from different motives, adopting a common policy at the beginning of the Revolution, urged Cherokees, Creeks, and Chickasaws to refrain from hostilities. The Choctaws had no rebel neighbors, since the Floridas, from lack of grievances or lack of inhabitants, failed to revolt.

Both Emistesigo, head chief of the Creeks since the death of Mortar in the Choctaw war, and Oconostota, the aged, weary, and infirm "emperor" of the Cherokees, were devoted to peace, the former from temperament and the latter from experience. They received the first American overtures in the summer and early fall of 1775 from agents of the South Carolina and Georgia provincial congresses, who demanded that the tribes should remain neutral and give proof of their neutrality by expelling Deputy  p38 Superintendent Cameron from the Cherokees and Commissioner Taitt from the Creeks. These astonishing diplomatic gambols, supplemented by the seizure of British supplies for the Creeks and by attempts to assassinate Cameron, left the Creeks unimpressed, although they seem to have inclined the timid Oconostota toward a policy of appeasement. In the midst of them the two tribes received in November from Salisbury, North Carolina, letters from commissioners appointed by the Continental Congress proposing conferences the next spring — with the Cherokees at Fort Charlotte, April 16, and with the Creeks at Augusta, May 1.⁠1 Cameron, although sorely tried by the American policy of peace through elimination, continued to urge on the Cherokees the British advice of neutrality and loyalty, warning them that the abandonment of the former would bring a loss of British support, and of the latter, a forfeit of British trade. Notwithstanding the inept wooing by the Americans, the warnings of the British, and the inclination of Oconostota, there was a faction of the Cherokees that wanted war with the Americans. The anti-Americanism of this faction was due to resentment over the encroachment on Cherokee land as represented by the Watauga settlement. The most outspoken member of the war faction was a young chieftain named Dragging Canoe.⁠2

 p39  Early in 1776, Superintendent John Stuart, in furtherance of his delicate task of keeping the Southern Indians both loyal and quiescent, started his brother Henry from Pensacola as a special envoy on a tour of the four tribes. At Mobile, Henry was met by Dragging Canoe, who told him that South Carolina had cut off trade with the Cherokees and that war was imminent. In view of these developments Henry took along with him thirty pack horses laden with supplies for the Cherokees and, deferring his Creek visit, went directly to the Cherokees to urge peace; on account of the slimness of his pack train and the necessity of conferring with Choctaws and Chickasaws, he did not reach Echota until April 24.

The attack by Northern Indians on the caravan as it was moving up the Tennessee, resulting in a loss of nine pack horses, was probably directed less against the British than against the Chickasaws, with whom the Illinois Indians were then at war.⁠3 Arriving at Echota, Stuart joined his representations to those of Cameron, with the result that the war party agreed to defer direct action while Stuart and Oconostota attempted by diplomatic means to induce the Wataugans to withdraw at least into the limits of their alleged purchase in order to avoid war. Both sent letters to the Wataugans, and Stuart suggested that they move to Florida where, he said (with apparent sincerity), they would find it easier to make a living. To these overtures the Wataugans made an evasive reply, stayed where they were, and proceeded to solidify their ethical position by circulating a forged letter from Stuart urging the loyalists to join the Cherokees in a war against the frontier rebels. Nevertheless, the peace party among the Cherokees would probably have prevailed but for the arrival of a delegation of Northern Indians — Iroquois, Shawnees, Delawares, Ottawas, and "Nantucas," — to urge a united war against the Americans. The Lower Cherokees, most heavily and most recently mistreated by  p40 the Americans, were so aroused by the oratory of the visitors that immediately after returning home from the council they began to attack the frontier, thus precipitating the war that Stuart and Oconostota had so earnestly opposed and that the peace chiefs at Fort Charlotte were then promising to prevent.⁠4 Stuart, having prolonged his stay among the Cherokees until July 15, set out in company of Dragging Canoe and Attakullaculla to the Creeks, meeting on his way a Cherokee delegation that had taken the Shawnee "talks" to the Creeks and was returning with Emistesigo's refusal to act without Cameron's approval.⁠5

The outbreak of the Cherokee war forced Superintendent Stuart to the enlistment of the Southern Indians as active and immediate allies, thereby carrying out his instructions, the spirit if not the letter of which he had disregarded in his previous recommendations of neutrality. The Americans, hopeless of assistance, devoted their efforts to thwarting the British efforts among the Creeks and Chickasaws: the remoteness of the Choctaws gave them immunity from American pressure, while their lethargy and former loyalties made them unresponsive to British importunities. Among the Creeks, Emistesigo was reluctant to become involved in the war because he was doubtful if the British could supply the trade that hitherto the Americans had monopolized, because the Creeks were still engaged in war with the Choctaws, and because a considerable element, especially of the Lower Creeks, was so well disposed toward the Georgians and South Carolinians that any pro-British tribal policy might bring civil war. On May 1, 1776, some two hundred Creeks, consisting not only of Lower Creeks, but also of delegations from Tallassie and from Okfuskee  p41 (the largest town in the nation), met the American commissioners at Augusta, where they were importuned by George Galphin to stay out of the war, to rely on the Americans for trade, and to expel the British agents from the nation.⁠6 The Americans, as a matter of fact, had no trade goods, as Taitt pointed out to the Creeks, but they were able to secure them in such large quantities from the French islands that their trade with the friendly towns continued despite British opposition throughout the Revolution.⁠7 Stuart, indeed, found the question of trade very embarrassing since it became necessary to organize new routes of supply as substitutes for the routes from Georgia and Carolina. New traders also had to be engaged because many of the old ones (like Galphin himself) were rabidly American and, consequently, subversive agents.

Galphin's exhortation to the Creeks to expel the British agents was beyond the power, as it was beyond the inclination, of the friendly towns to accomplish. Taitt, the commissary, to be sure, was unpopular, not because he was British, but because he was trying to suppress the sale of liquor. The British secured the safety and even the influence of their organization when, in 1776, they appointed Alexander McGillivray as assistant commissary. McGillivray not only was the head of the power­ful Wind clan and, as chief of Little Tallassie, an intimate of Emistesigo, but he had returned to the Creeks with a burning hatred for the Georgians because of their confiscation of his father's estate.⁠8 Even in 1776 no Creek dared to lift a hand against one with such power­ful connections as McGillivray. All this, of course, was known by the  p42 astute superintendent, who, from the beginning seems to have centered his hopes on the young chief.⁠9

The Revolution, which brought so much embarrassment to Emistesigo, also brought one beneficence — an escape from the long-continued and disastrous war with the Choctaws. The many applications of the weary Creeks to Stuart to mediate this struggle had hitherto been refused on the ostensible ground that British policy precluded any interference with tribal activities not endangering British interests. But British interests were now endangered, since the preoccupation of Creeks and Choctaws with mutual destruction would prevent them from dedicating their energies to the destruction of the Americans. Consequently, Stuart, acting on an appeal from the second man of Little Tallassie (undoubtedly representing Emistesigo himself), called the two tribes to Pensacola, where on October 26, after ten days of ceremony, peace was made.⁠10 For Emistesigo this was merely the exchanging of an old war for a new, since Stuart had set as his price of mediation the immediate dispatch of Creek assistance to the Cherokees. Accordingly, on November 19, he notified Cameron at Little Tallassie that he was preparing for war.⁠11

The Cherokees were greatly in need of help. It is doubtful whether Dragging Canoe had envisioned a general war; his objective had been limited, apparently, to the ending of Wataugan trespassing by the direct, if somewhat primitive, method of disembodying the trespassers. But the war did not long remain confined to South Carolina, where it began, but spread inevitably to the frontiers of Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia, where, as Stuart had foreseen, the Indians fell without discrimination on both loyalists and rebels, forcing them into an unnatural union for protection and revenge. When the inevitable retaliation came from the Carolinas (with incidental help from Georgia) the  p43 Cherokees were unable to resist, partly because the great majority of the Cherokees remained at peace, and perhaps chiefly because, as in their previous war, their supplies and ammunition were inadequate. Stuart made strenuous efforts to keep them supplied, but the route was so long and so exposed to American interception that he was unable to deliver adequate supplies.⁠12 At the time Emistesigo was making peace with the Choctaws, practically all of the Lower, Middle, and Valley towns of the Cherokees had been destroyed, and the homeless Cherokees were seeking refuge among the Creeks and with the British in West Florida: there were, in fact, two hundred destitute Cherokees at Pensacola when the treaty was made.⁠13 Consequently, when Emistesigo finally marched in February, 1777, with three or four hundred men to co‑operate with the Cherokees, the Cherokees had ceased to operate.⁠14

The location of the Choctaws and Chickasaws, remote from the seat of war, rendered their co‑operation with the British less vital and more difficult than that of the Cherokees and Creeks. The traditional friendship of the Chickasaws for the British would have made their choice of allies in the Revolution almost axiomatic — even without the power­ful influence of James Colbert, the British commissary.⁠15 The only evident opposition to the British came from the American traders who were well established in the tribe and could not be easily dislodged. The Choctaws did not have the Chickasaws' enthusiasm for the British, and their notorious lethargy made them slow to espouse any cause, even their own. Moreover, the Six Towns at the end of the French and  p44 Indian War had transferred not to the British but to the Spanish the loyalty they had previously given to the French.⁠16 In May, 1777, the two tribes sent delegations to Mobile to confer with Stuart. The forty Chickasaws included the Chickasaw king (Mingo Homa) and the chief warrior (Piomingo), whom the Americans and British called by his translated name, the Mountain Leader. It may be assumed that the presence of 2,800 Choctaws indicated chiefly an enthusiasm for presents. Both tribes declared their loyalty to the king and accepted their war assignment, which was to keep watch on the Mississippi against any attempt of the Americans. This meant for the time being the harassing of communication between the Americans and the Spaniards at New Orleans.⁠17

While busy in arranging for the co‑operation of Creeks, Chickasaws, and Choctaws, Stuart did what he could to salvage the Cherokees. The war party of the Cherokees had begun hostilities in defiance of British advice and in indifference to Revolutionary issues: the course of the war, in which they secured supplies only from the British and aid only from the loyalists, made them British partisans as well as enemies of the Americans. Since the rebuilding of their ruined towns in their ancient locations would have exposed them to American domination, they decided with Cameron's approval, and perhaps at his suggestion, to remove beyond the reach of the Americans. Accordingly, in March, 1777, the homeless inhabitants of Big Island, Settico, Tellico, Toquo, and Chilhowee moved westward to Chickamauga Creek, where they built new homes — of the same names — centering around the home of the British commissary, John McDonald. This group was henceforth called the Chickamaugas, and their removal has been generally considered a secession. As a matter of fact, Oconostota appears to have connived at the removal, which relieved him of the need of delivering Dragging Canoe to American  p45 punishment. Dragging Canoe's subsequent denial of Oconostota's authority relieved Oconostota of responsibility for future Chickamauga misconduct — misconduct that Dragging Canoe meant to make occur as frequently as possible.

With the Chickamaugas safely removed, Oconostota pressed his overtures for peace, which resulted in treaties with the South Carolinians and Georgians at Dewitt's Corner on May 20 and with the Virginians and North Carolinians at Long Island on July 10. Knowing from experience that with the Americans the word "treaty" was a euphemism for land cession, the Cherokees showed little hesitation in surrendering to the Carolinas at these treaties the land demanded by these two states.⁠18 It is possible, too, that Cherokee amiability in the transactions was due in part to the fact that the ceders were Overhills while the owners were the Middle Towns and Lower Towns. For her war effort, which had been limited to viewing the remains, Virginia received no territorial compensation inasmuch as the Cherokees had already been separated from practically all their lands north of 36 degrees, 30 minutes. Before leaving Long Island, the North Carolina commissioners named James Robertson as agent for North Carolina among the Cherokees; and in the following November, Virginia appointed Joseph Martin as Virginian agent and superintendent for the same tribe. Robertson was to reside at Echota, the Cherokee "capital," while Martin kept his agency at Long Island, which was erroneously thought to be in Virginia.⁠19 In view of the conspicuous failure of Congressional diplomacy to prevent the war, it is not surprising that the two states decided to rely on their own management of Indian affairs.

 p46  A considerable portion of the Lower and Middle Cherokees, now by their friends actually dispossessed of the land that their enemies had only devastated, moved their towns to new locations on headwaters of the Coosa, affiliating with the Chickamaugas and becoming British partisans.⁠20 These Cherokees, the Chickamaugas, the Creeks, and the refugees in Florida, Stuart in the summer of 1777 was attempting to weld into an army to co‑operate with a British force which General Prevost was planning to lead from St. Augustine into Georgia. A movement among the Creeks wrecked the plans and would have resulted in the expulsion of the British had it not been for the steadfastness of McGillivray. A small delegation from Cusseta and Okfuskee had, at Galphin's invitation, visited Augusta and Charleston, where they were royally entertained and, as a corollary, copiously exhorted to assist, by murdering the British agents among them, the inevitable triumph of American liberty. The Okfuskees on their return tried to carry out the inspiration thus communicated to them by attempting to kill Taitt and Cameron, who were visiting McGillivray at Little Tallassie. Both escaped assassination by a flight to Pensacola so hurried that they had only time to direct McGillivray to suppress the movement. McGillivray went at once to meet the Okfuskees, tongue-lashed the malcontents into submission, and coolly took possession of the effects of Cameron and Taitt, which the Okfuskees were attempting to plunder. Following this action, he called a meeting of the national council, in which he so berated the offenders that the Okfuskees sent him to Pensacola to apologize for them; and in January, 1778, ten town chiefs of the Upper Creeks journeyed to Pensacola to deplore the action of the Okfuskees. In the same month six hundred of the Lower Creeks came to Pensacola to disavow the action of Cusseta in chasing Commissary McIntosh out of the nation. The Creek consciousness of wrongdoing had perhaps been materially intensified by the immediate embargo that Stuart placed on British supplies. The direct result of this movement was the resumption of Creek raids on the  p47 Georgia frontier, the return of the Cherokee refugees to their Chickamauga brethren, a great decline in the influence of the American faction among the Creeks, and a marked increase in the already great prestige of Alexander McGillivray, who from this time on, notwithstanding the resumption of their posts by Taitt and Cameron, was the acknowledged leader of both Creeks and Chickamaugas.⁠21

While the Creeks were rebelling, confessing their sins, and promising to bring forth fruit meet for repentance, the Chickasaws and Choctaws were not only quiet but apparently sleeping. Only a hypothesis of deep somnolence can explain their failure to intercept, or at least to detect, the Willing expedition down the Mississippi to Natchez in February, 1778.⁠22 The alertness of the Chickasaws was directed more against the Illinois Indians, with whom they were at war, than against the Americans, who were only the enemies of their allies. Moreover, Piomingo, who as chief warrior had charge of all military operations, was reluctant to kill Americans and, it is to be supposed, for that reason none too vigilant against them. As it was, if Willing had been as intent on aiding the American cause as he was on plundering for private gain, his expedition might well have been a disaster and not merely a nuisance. The net result of the episode was that Superintendent Stuart tightened his organization among the two tribes, with Commissary Colbert apparently taking over the task of guarding the Mississippi.

To the superintendent, in his overestimate of the American threat on the Mississippi, it must have seemed providential that the peace party of the Cherokees was now inclining to unite the Dragging Canoe against the Americans. In no other way can one interpret the visit of Attakullaculla to Pensacola in February, 1778, and the promise he then made to Stuart to lead the Cherokees northwards to guard the Ohio.⁠23 Attakullaculla was an intimate  p48 of Oconostota, belonged to the ruling group of the Cherokees, and had been the heart and soul of the peace policy. But the Cherokees were finding that their most earnest appeasement had been without profit, for the Wataugans continued their encroachments after the treaty of Long Island even more avidly than they had done before, apparently considering that the Long Island boundary had been fixed primarily as a base for further advance. These encroachments carried the Watauga settlers so close to the Overhill towns that in April, 1778, the Raven of Echota, who, since the war, had been administering the Cherokee government in the name of Oconostota, protested to Governor Caswell that the Wataugans were "marking trees all over the country," even "near the place I live." The only result of this protest was an urbane assurance from the Governor that he had warned the Wataugans not to damage the trees.⁠24 When the governors of Virginia and South Carolina also protested against the encroachments which feared might bring on another war, Caswell appointed a commission to make a treaty with the Cherokees. The commissioners declined with the pointed comment that it was not a new treaty the Governor needed but the observance of the one he already had.⁠25

To the mental anguish the Cherokees over the encroachments on their land, there was added an acute physical distress caused by the lack of trade. Stuart saw to it that British supplies reached the Chickamaugas and their allies on the Coosa, but rigorously interdicted any dealings with the Overhills and other elements of the peace party. Since the Americans were entirely unable to furnish the requisite supplies, the peace party soon found themselves paying in penury for their indulgence in appeasement. So extreme became the sufferings of the Cherokees that in February, 1778, Joseph Martin, their Virginia agent, took the extraordinary step of writing to Stuart that the Cherokees were all in favor of the British and were only prevented by fear of the Americans from openly expressing themselves. He asked Stuart, therefore, to restore trade, adding that he himself had no sympathy with the American (Wataugan) actions and would come to  p49  Pensacola if Stuart desired.⁠26 It can hardly be doubted that the Cherokee towns, ostensibly friendly to the Americans and therefore caught between the upper and nether millstones of encroachment and penury, looked upon the raiding expeditions of the Chickamaugas with a large degree of benevolence.

The intensified border raids of the Creeks and Cherokees in 1778, although testifying to an increase of British influence, were for the most part un­co-ordinated with any specific British objective. But in 1779, Stuart was able at last to put into practice his long-cherished ambition of using Indian troops as auxiliaries to British armies. The Cherokees in early spring were assigned the task of raiding the upper Holston Valley in order to distract to home defense the militia that might otherwise be sent to reinforce Clark in the Illinois country. The excessive gusto with which the Cherokees carried out this assignment gave Governor Henry of Virginia the opportunity of disguising as a punitive expedition the force of three hundred militia under Evan Shelby, which he sent down the Tennessee in April against the Chickamauga towns. The martial success of Shelby in burning some Chickamauga towns and confiscating their supplies was achieved over the opposition of women and children only, since the warriors were away from home congenially employed on the frontiers of Georgia and South Carolina.⁠27

In the spring and summer of 1779, Cherokees and Creeks were given a better opportunity to help the British cause when they were called on by Cameron and Taitt to co‑operate with Prevost, who was invading Georgia from Florida. Stuart had died on March 26, but his agents acted vigorously, enlisting some of three hundred Cherokees and five hundred Creeks. The Cherokee force in August marched to the border of South Carolina, where, finding itself confronted by a force of fifteen hundred South Carolinians, it promptly dissolved into its constituent elements and  p50 went home. The Creeks, meanwhile, had held together long enough to capture an American fort on the Ogeechee (May), after the capture of which, on the strength of a convenient report of British defeat, all but about a hundred scattered to their homes. These co-ordinated fiascos, however, kept a large force of American military immobilized and thus indirectly aided Prevost.⁠28

The promotion of Cameron to a superintendency after the death of Stuart indicated that the British were satisfied with Cherokee conduct during the war; the limitation of his authority to the Choctaws and Chickasaws is evidence of the increased importance of these two tribes resulting from the entrance of Spain into the war. After Shelby's expedition the cautious Overhills and Valley towns of the Cherokees apparently resumed their neutrality, and the Raven was superseded by Old Tassel, who was one of the leading advocates of appeasement. Robertson had resigned as Cherokee agent for North Carolina, January 14, 1779, and had been succeeded by Ellis Harling, whose appointment the Raven had requested on the ground that he was a man who wouldn't lie.⁠29 To the disillusioned chief such a disinclination in an American marked him as outstanding, but the scantiness of the records makes it impossible to judge whether or not the Raven underestimated Harling's capacity. Robertson, after leaving the Cherokees, had led a party of Wataugans to French Lick on the Cumberland, where on New Year's Day, 1780, he had established a settlement for Richard Henderson on the North Carolina portion of his Cherokee purchase of five years before. Whatever this meant to Robertson, Henderson, and Caswell, to the Chickamaugas it appeared as an act of a benevolent providence intent on making their prospective victims more accessible. Dragging Canoe was not so inhospitable as to refuse an attack so openly invited. He was unable  p51 to prevent Donelson from bringing reinforcements down the Tennessee, but he kept the Cumberland settlements under constant attack, being aided and abetted by the Upper Creeks, whose road of communication with the Northern Indians the Cumberland settlement blocked.⁠30

The same stimulation that had been imparted to the Chickamaugas and Upper Creeks by the settling of French Lick in January was furnished the Chickasaws by the erection of Fort Jefferson in April. The failure of the Chickasaws to oppose the Spanish attack on the lower Mississippi posts in September or their capture of Mobile in March (1780) may be attributed more to the confusion incident to a change of superintendents than to tribal indifference. Certainly they had displayed zeal of a high order in the harassing of Spanish travel and traffic on the Mississippi.⁠31 A half-century of assiduous practice against the French enabled them to impart a high degree of polish to their operations of this nature in which they became so engrossed that they seem to have remained unconscious of their conquest by a Spanish proclamation. Neither the Virginians trading with the Spaniards of New Orleans nor those consorting with Indian enemies of the Chickasaws in the Illinois country could expect any discriminating treatment from the Chickasaws; but the tribe, from distance, indifference, or preoccupation, seems to have refrained from attacking the frontier. There is no clear evidence that they joined in the attack on French Lick, apparently considering that, since it was not on Chickasaw territory, it was not a matter for Chickasaw concern. But when Virginia decided to erect a fort on Chickasaw territory, reports of Chickasaw hostilities necessary to justify the act were readily forthcoming. Since the fort was on the Mississippi, it was the business of Colbert, as guardian of that stream, to deal with it.⁠32 During the summer and fall of 1780 he led repeated  p52 forays against it, but not until January, 1781, could he gather sufficient force and supplies for an attempt to take it by storm. Although the attack failed, it was so evident that the fort could not be maintained against Chickasaw resentment that Virginia abandoned it in June.

The liquidation of Fort Jefferson was accomplished by the Chickasaws not so much to aid the British cause as to preserve the integrity of their tribal lands. But both Dragging Canoe and Emistesigo co‑operated with the British advance through the Carolinas by their incessant raids on the frontier. Thomas Browne, who after the death of Stuart became superintendent of the Cherokees and Creeks, entrusted the business of supplying the Indians to his close friend, William Panton, with the result that Creeks and Cherokees were better armed and equipped than ever before but were still feeling the effects of a smallpox epidemic that had killed 2,500 Cherokees.⁠33 As Cornwallis advanced northward, the Creek co‑operation inevitably became less effective, but the Chickamauga raids became so frequent and deadly as to call forth another retaliation of Virginia and North Carolina against what Jefferson called the "seceders."⁠34 Their militia, however, after a diversion to King's Mountain marched in December, 1780, not against the Chickamaugas but against the villages on the Hiwassee and Little Tennessee. The pacific conduct of these Valley and Overhill towns was so offset by their accessibility that practically all of them, Echota included, were destroyed before the astonished and unresisting Indians could find an opportunity to beg for peace. Following these Christmas activities, Governor Jefferson, who had initiated the war, appointed commissioners to arrange a peace, but withdrew their commissions upon learning  p53 that General Greene, then resting in Virginia after his strategic, although hurried, retreat across the Carolinas, was preparing for treaty making under the authority of Congress. Greene appointed eight commissioners from Virginia and North Carolina to meet the Cherokees to arrange for a suspension of hostilities, a settlement of the boundary, an exchange of prisoners, and to do anything else they thought best — the last instruction being an oblique reference to a land cession. Martin in his double capacity as Virginia superintendent and United States commissioner, exchanged preliminary talks in April with Oconostota, as a result of which a large delegation from the friendly towns came to Long Island on July 31, Old Tassel acting as spokesman for the absent Oconostota. The failure of the North Carolina commissioners to attend made it impossible for the Cherokees to obtain even a promise of relief from encroachment, but at least it relieved them from making the land cession by which North Carolina hoped to compensate herself for the expenses of the late "war." The only thing possible was to exchange speeches, to blame the British for the war, and to make peace.⁠35

When the Spaniards finally launched their attack on Pensacola in March, 1781, there were present only some five hundred Indians to help in the defense. Practically all of these were Choctaws; the scarcity of Chickasaws may be attributed to distance and to their obsession with Fort Jefferson; the Creeks, whom McGillivray and McIntosh had led down, had been dismissed by an inept and parsimonious British commander. The fall of Pensacola was the end of the war for the Choctaws, since it was from Pensacola that they had drawn their supplies after the capture of Mobile. The Choctaws, accepting their fate with characteristic stolidity, arranged a modus vivendi with the Spaniards, but the Chickasaws  p54 entered on the most vigorous phase of their war. The Chickasaw recalcitrance was due to the influence of several score of British refugees who had fled to the Chickasaw country when Natchez was captured and the additional refugees who had come in after the failure of the insurrection there in June, 1781. These refugees and an even greater number from Georgia and the Carolinas enlisted under James Colbert to harry the Spaniards from the Mississippi. This they continued to do with considerable success for the remaining years of the war, their energy and hatred of Spain compensating for their lack of discipline. In May, 1781, they captured a Spanish boat on which was the wife of the Spanish commander at St. Louis.

Colbert did not cease his ministrations even when the treaty of peace was signed; in April, 1783, he led his motley force of refugees and Indians across the Mississippi and besieged (un­success­fully) the Spanish Fort Carlos on the Arkansas.⁠36 It was Colbert's hatred of the Spanish that induced him, when he saw the downfall of the British impending, to make overtures to the Americans; with Great Britain gone, the Chickasaws would have to depend on either Americans or Spaniards for trade, and Colbert preferred even Americans to Spaniards. It was not, however, until the spring of 1782 that the Chickasaws, at Colbert's suggestion, took their first step towards peace by sending a message to Joseph Martin at Long Island. This being unanswered (probably because of nondelivery), they again in July sent out a message, this time addressed to George Rogers Clark at the Falls of the Ohio. In due season the message was forwarded to Governor Harrison at Richmond, who appointed Martin and John Donelson to conduct the treaty making. But the Revolution ended before the treaty could be made, thus leaving the apprehensive Chickasaws still nominally at war.

But the martial ardor of Cherokees and Creeks was apparently undiminished by the fall of Pensacola or the surrender at Yorktown. Dragging Canoe, indeed, had no intention of making peace since he was at war not so much because of loyalty to the British as because of hatred of the Americans, The continued encroachments  p55 on Cherokee land, which evoked from Old Tassel only a series of pathetic remonstrances, were answered by Dragging Canoe with burning and slaughter until, in the fall of 1782, Governor Martin of North Carolina was provoked into sending another punitive expedition against him. In this campaign Sevier and McDowell apparently attempted to discriminate between friendly and hostile towns, with the result that a number of the latter on Chickamauga Creek and the headwaters of Coosa River were destroyed.⁠37 After this episode Superintendent Browne, foreseeing that the recalcitrant chief would soon be left unaided to face the Americans, advised him to remove his towns further out of the American reach. This Dragging Canoe did, establishing new towns lower down on the Tennessee that became known as the Five Lower Towns.⁠38

The devotion of Emistesigo to the British seemed to increase in direct proportion to the decline of their fortunes. With the Creek nation united behind him (except for Cusseta and Tallassie), he kept his war bands constantly on the frontier to harass the operations of Greene's army as it gradually drove to the recovery of Georgia. In the fall of 1782, he led a large Creek force to the relief of the British in Savannah and was himself killed in cutting a way through Wayne's besieging force.⁠39 This practically ended the fighting, for Wayne proffered the Creeks a suspension of hostilities, which McGillivray accepted.⁠40 There was perhaps a renewed flickering of the war spirit; and the first week in January, 1783, when a deputation of Northern Indians and  p56 Cherokees came to St. Augustine to propose a confederation, Browne gave his approval. In April a general meeting of the four Southern tribes was held at Tuckabatchee.⁠41

The movement was too late, for, on June 1, Browne received orders to withdraw all British officials and traders from the Indian country and at once proceeded to carry out his instructions, which action was equivalent to notifying the Indians that the war was over as far as Great Britain was concerned. When McGillivray on August 30 sent a written protest against the British abandonment, he was acting no longer as British commissary but in his new capacity as chief and head warrior of the Creek Nation, to which position he had been elected as successor of Emistesigo by the Creek National Council in May, 1783.⁠42

---

The Author's Notes:

1 The first step by Congress in the management of Indian affairs was taken in June, 1775, with the appointment of a committee on Indian affairs. In accordance with a recommendation made by this committee on July 11, Congress set up three Indian departments, of which the Southern Department comprised all the tribes south of the Ohio River. The Southern Department was placed under a board of five commissioners, two of whom — John Walker, of Virginia, and Willie Jones, of North Carolina — were appointed by Congress, and three — George Galphin, Robert Rae, and Edward Wilkerson — named by the South Carolina Council of Safety. The Southern commissioners met at Salisbury, N. C., November 13, 1775, and fixed the dates and places for meeting the Indians. George Galphin, Leroy Hammond, and David Tubly were the Georgia and South Carolina agents among the Creeks. Galphin, the Georgia agent, had been an Indian trader for thirty years, and had great influence among the Lower Creeks. W. C. Ford and Gaillard Hunt, eds., Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774‑1789, II, 1741; William L. Saunders, ed., The Colonial Records of North Carolina, X, 329‑31.

2 Dragging Canoe was the chief of Mialoquo (Big Island Town). His Indian name, variously spelled, was Chincohacina and he was the son of Ookoonekah (White Owl). He had opposed the sale of lands to Henderson as well as the lease and later sale of territory to the Wataugans. A. V. Goodpasture, "Indian Wars and Warriors of the Old Southwest, 1720‑1807," Tennessee Historical Magazine, Vol. IV, 23.

3 The chief source for this journey is Henry Stuart's report in Saunder's Colonial Records of North Carolina, X, 763‑83. Commissary James Colbert accompanied Stuart from the Chickasaw country to the Cherokee, and Dragging Canoe, who had returned from Mobile through the Creek country, met him at Bear Creek.

4 The only reliable account of these preliminaries is P. M. Hamer, "The Wataugans and the Cherokee Indians in 1776," East Tennessee Historical Society Publications, Vol. III, 108‑26, and "John Stuart's Indian Policy During the Early Months of the American Revolution," Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Vol. XVII, 351‑67 (December, 1930).

5 The Shawnee delegation on its return to Ohio was accompanied by three Cherokees. It was this party which went by Boonesborough and carried off Jemima Boone and Frances Calloway. After a four-day pursuit they were overtaken by a rescue party from Boonesborough, which recovered the captives and killed three of the Shawnee chiefs. The three Cherokees escaped. Colonial Office Records, Series 5, Vol. 78, p11 (hereafter cited as C. O. R.), Cameron to Stuart, August 31, 1776.

6 C. O. R., Series 5, Vol. 77, pp387‑90. This is the report of the American commissioners at Augusta.

7 Ibid., Series 5, Vol. 78, p231. Stuart to Knox, March 10, 1777.

8 For a sketch of this great Creek see A. P. Whitaker, "Alexander McGillivray, 1783‑89," North Carolina Historical Review, Vol. V (1928), 181‑203, 289‑309. J. W. Caughey's McGillivray of the Creeks is a source book composed chiefly of letters to and from McGillivray until his death in 1793. The exact date of McGillivray's return to the Creeks is unknown. Louis (Le Clerc) Milfort, in Mémoire ou coup d'œil rapide sur mes différens voyages et mon séjour dans la nation Crëck, says that McGillivray was living among the Creeks in May, 1776, and was then a chief of Little Tallassie (which was Emistesigo's town). It is likely that McGillivray's appointment as assistant commissary was due to the influence of Commissary David Taitt, who had married McGillivray's sister (1768).

9 C. O. R., Series 5, Vol. 79, p57, Stuart to Germain, October 6, 1777.

10 Ibid., Series 5, Vol. 78, p30, Stuart to Germain, October 16, 1776. The letter from Neaha Thloco, at Little Tallassie, to Stuart, asking for peace with the Choctaws, was written October 29, 1775. Ibid., Series 5, Vol. 77, p95. In July, 1777, Franchimastabe (described as a small-medal chief of Yazoo) led a Choctaw delegation to the Creeks to confirm the peace.

11 Ibid., Series 5, Vol. 78, p161.

12 The details of this war can be found in J. G. M. Ramsey, Annals of Tennessee to the End of the Eighteenth Century; Theodore Roosevelt, Winning of the West; Mooney, Myths of the Cherokee; J. P. Browne, Old Frontiers; and many other places. Colonel Samuel Jack with a force of 200 Georgians destroyed in July the towns on the Tugalo and Chattahoochee: Colonel Williamson with 1,000 South Carolinians destroyed the Lower towns in September and then joined with General Rutherford and his 2,000 North Carolinians (who had just finished the Middle towns) to destroy the Valley towns. Colonel Christian with 1,800 Virginians penetrated to the Overhill towns without a battle.

13 C. O. R., Series 5, Vol. 78, p143, Stuart to Germain, November 24, 1776.

14 Ibid., Series 5, Vol. 78, p65, Stuart to Germain, March 10, 1777.

15 For the Colbert family among the Chickasaws, see Harry Warren, "Some Chickasaw Chiefs and Prominent Men," Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society, Vol. VIII, 555‑70.

16 C. O. R., Series 5, Vol. 79, p271, Stuart to Germain, May 2, 1778.

17 Ibid., Series 5, Vol. 78, p285, Stuart to Germain, June 14, 1777. At this conference the Choctaws ceded to the British a strip of land lying on the Mississippi south of the mouth of the Yazoo and extending eastward along the border of their 1765 cession to the Pascagoula. The triangular section of this cession on the Mississippi was later made into Bourbon County by Georgia.

18 The proceedings of the Long Island conference and the text of the Long Island and DeWitt's Corner treaties are given in Archibald Henderson, "The Treaty of Long Island of Holston, July, 1777," North Carolina Historical Review, Vol. VIII, 55‑116. DeWitt's Corners is now called Due West. The land cession made at this place included the present counties of Greenville, Anderson, Pickens, and Oconee, South Carolina. The boundary line agreed upon at Long Island ran from Cumberland Gap to the junction of Cloud's Creek and the Holston, then to Chimney Top Mountain and on to Camp Creek on the south bank of the Nolichucky. Thence it ran southwest through the mountains to the Georgia line.

19 S. B. Weeks, "General Joseph Martin and the War of the Revolution in the West," American Historical Association, Annual Report (1893), 426ff.

20 Milling, op. cit., 319, calls attention to the fact that the Lower Cherokees rebuilt many of their towns in Oconee County, South Carolina, and by "political indulgence" continued to live in the ceded territory.

21 The best account of the Creek meeting is in C. O. R., Series 5, Vol. 79, pp65‑68, McGillivray to Stuart, September 21, 1777; ibid., p57, Stuart to Germain, October 6, 1777 and ibid., p127, Stuart to Germain, January 23, 1778.

22 J. W. Caughey "Willing's Expedition down the Mississippi," Louisiana Historical Quarterly, Vol. XV, 5‑36.

23 C. O. R., Series 5, Vol. 79, p223, Stuart to Germain, March 5, 1778.

24 Walter Clark, ed., North Carolina State Records, XIII, 90 and 117.

25 Ibid., XIII, 203.

26 C. O. R., Series 5, Vol. 79, p279, Joseph Martin to Stuart, February 20, 1778.

27 Governor Henry in a letter to Governor Caswell, January 8, 1779, said that it was necessary to keep the Tennessee open as a highway to the Illinois country. He suggested that Cherokee affairs be divided among North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia, the last named taking the Overhills (and presumably the Chickamaugas).

28 The activities of Creeks and Cherokees in the spring and summer of 1779 are summarized in Helen Louise Shaw, British Administration of the Southern Indians, 1756‑1783, 128‑35.

29 Clark, op. cit., XIII, 500. Talk by the Raven in council, December 22, 1778; ibid., XIII, 566; ibid., XIV, 246, Robertson to Caswell, January 14, 1779. Robertson left Echota, December 24, 1778 and formally resigned in his letter to Caswell, January 14, 1779. Harling was appointed January 29, 1779. The Raven, after being superseded by Old Tassel, went to Georgia, where he continued to seek British supplies for the Cherokees.

30 Donelson's Journal of this adventurous voyage is to be found in Ramsey, op. cit., 197‑203.

31 D. C. Corbitt, "James Colbert and the Spanish claims to the East Bank of the Mississippi," The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Vol. XIV, 457‑72.

32 Fort Jefferson was located in the present Ballard County, Kentucky, about five miles below the junction of the Ohio and Mississippi. It was on Mayfield Creek, but not immediately on the Mississippi and, therefore, could be surrounded by a besieging force. Its siege and assault by the Chickasaws is described in Lewis and Richard Collins, History of Kentucky, II, 39‑40, and in A. V. Goodpasture, "Indian Wars and Warriors of the Old Southwest 1720‑1807," loc. cit.

33 For Panton's introduction into the Indian trade by Browne see American State Papers, Indian Affairs, I, 458 (hereafter cited as Indian Affairs), Blount to –––––, August 13, 1793. The Chickamaugas are supposed to have contracted smallpox from their victims on the Donelson expedition of 1780, but it is evident from C. O. R., Series 5, Vol. 8, p322, that the disease had been raging among the Cherokees the preceding year.

34 Clark, op. cit., Vol. XV, 47, Jefferson to Nash, August 12, 1780.

35 Papers of the Continental Congress, No. 155, Letters of General Nathaniel Greene, Folios 255, 259, 263, and 289; Draper MS, LXXX, 49. Greene appointed as commissioners William Christian, William Preston, Arthur Campbell, Joseph Martin, Robert and John Sevier, Evan Shelby, and Joseph Williams; only Christian and Martin attended. From 1776 to 1779, Congress had a standing committee on Indian affairs, but in the latter year it gave its functions to the Board of War. In March, 1781, the Board voted that the commanding general in the field should act as Indian superintendent of his department. It was under this authority that Greene acted.

36 J. W. Caughey, Bernardo de Gálvez in Louisiana, 1776‑1783, 215‑42.

37 It was Governor Martin's plan to exact a cession of all Cherokee land in North Carolina at the end of this campaign. Then the Cherokees were to receive a payment and be assigned a reservation in the angle of the French Broad and the Tennessee. The plan failed because the state could not secure the goods for payment. Clark, op. cit., XVI, 710, Martin to Cherokee Treaty Commissioners, September 20, 1782.

38 C. O. R., Series 5, Vol. 82, p695, Browne to Townshend, January 12, 1783. The Five Lower Towns were Lookout Mountain Town, Crow Town, Long Island Town, Nickajack, and Running Water — the last being the residence of Dragging Canoe. Some of these towns are located and described in O. D. Street, "Cherokee Towns and Villages in Alabama," Publications of the Alabama Historical Society, Vol. I, 416‑21.

39 Ibid., p711, Browne to Townshend, June 1, 1783.

40 Indian Office Records, McGillivray to Houston, June 30, 1784.

41 C. O. R., Series 5, Vol. 82, p695, Browne to Townshend, January 12, 1783; ibid., p749, McGillivray to Browne, April 10, 1783.

42 Ibid., p711, Browne to Townshend, June 1, 1783; ibid., p801, Browne to North, October 24, 1783. This statement of Browne definitely disposes of the question when McGillivray became head chief. It also disposes of Milfort's statement that the Creeks in 1780 made McGillivray chief and himself principal warrior.

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