The Cherokee–American wars, also known as the Chickamauga Wars, were a series of raids, campaigns, ambushes, minor skirmishes, and several full-scale frontier battles in the Old Southwest from 1776 to 1794 between the Cherokee and American settlers on the frontier. Most of the events took place in the Upper South region. While the fighting stretched across the entire period, there were extended periods with little or no action.
The Cherokee leader Dragging Canoe, whom some earlier historians called "the Savage Napoleon", and his warriors, and other Cherokee fought alongside warriors from several other tribes, most often the Muscogee in the Old Southwest and the Shawnee in the Old Northwest. During the Revolutionary War, they also fought alongside British troops, Loyalist militia, and the King's Carolina Rangers against the rebel colonists, hoping to expel them from their territory. Open warfare broke out in the summer of 1776 in the Overmountain settlements of the Washington District, mainly those along the Watauga, Holston, Nolichucky, and Doe rivers in East Tennessee, as well as the colonies (later states) of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. It eventually spread to settlements along the Cumberland River in Middle Tennessee and in Kentucky. The wars can be divided into two phases. The first phase took place from 1776 to 1783, in which the Cherokee fought as allies of the Kingdom of Great Britain against the American colonies. The Cherokee War of 1776 encompassed the entirety of the Cherokee nation. At the end of 1776, the only militant Cherokee were those who migrated with Dragging Canoe to the Chickamauga towns and became known as the "Chickamauga Cherokee". The second phase lasted from 1783 to 1794. The Cherokee served as proxies of the Viceroyalty of New Spain against the recently formed United States of America. Because they migrated westward to new settlements initially known as the "Five Lower Towns", referring to their location in the Piedmont, these people became known as the Lower Cherokee. This term was used well into the 19th century. The Chickamauga ended their warfare in November 1794 with the Treaty of Tellico Blockhouse. In 1786, Mohawk leader Joseph Brant, a major war chief of the Iroquois, had organized the Western Confederacy of tribes to resist American settlement in Ohio Country. The Lower Cherokee were founding members and fought in the Northwest Indian War that resulted from this conflict. The Northwest Indian War ended with the Treaty of Greenville in 1795. The conclusion of the Indian wars enabled the settlement of what had been called "Indian territory" in the Royal Proclamation of 1763, and culminated in the first trans-Appalachian states, Kentucky in 1792 and Ohio in 1803.
== Prelude (1763–75) == The French and Indian War and the related European theater conflict known as the Seven Years' War laid many of the foundations for the conflict between the Cherokee and the American settlers on the frontier. These tensions on the frontier broke out into open hostilities with the advent of the American Revolution.
Aftermath of the French and Indian War
The action of the French and Indian War in North America included the Anglo-Cherokee War, lasting 1758–1761. British forces under General James Grant destroyed a number of Cherokee towns, which were never reoccupied. Kituwa was abandoned, and its former residents migrated west. They took up residence at Mialoquo, called Great Island Town, on the Little Tennessee River among the Overhill Cherokee. At the end of this conflict, the Cherokee signed the Treaty of Long-Island-on-the-Holston with the Colony of Virginia (1761) and the Treaty of Charlestown with the Province of South Carolina (1762). Conocotocko (Standing Turkey), the First Beloved Man during the conflict, was replaced by Attakullakulla, who was pro-British. Having concluded the Treaty of Paris in 1763 to settle the European conflict, the British hoped to maintain peace in the colonies and were surprised with the outbreak of Pontiac's War in the north soon thereafter. In response, King George III hastened to issue the Royal Proclamation of 1763 in an effort to impose a boundary between the native tribes and encroaching colonists. The proclamation prohibited colonial settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains, at least temporarily, but was widely resented by the colonists.
=== Treaties and land cession === Once they were able to end hostilities with Pontiac's confederation, the British refocused their attention to settling treaties that could resolve land claims with tribes across the colonies. The two Superintendents for Indian Affairs for the northern and southern colonies contemporaneously negotiated the Treaty of Hard Labour with the Cherokee and the Treaty of Fort Stanwix with the Iroquois in 1768. The Cherokee were initially to retain their lands west of the Kanawha River, from its confluence with the Ohio to its headwaters, with the boundary continuing south to Spanish Florida. However, colonists in the Cherokee region continued to ignore the treaty line, in part because Fort Stanwix promulgated a boundary in the north that simply continued west along the Ohio. To further adjust the boundary, John Stuart, as Superintendent for Southern Indian Affairs, negotiated a second treaty with the Cherokee in 1770, the Treaty of Lochaber. This surrendered their remaining claims in what is now West Virginia and Kentucky and protected colonists north of the Holston River, in the region of today's Tennessee-Virginia border.
=== Early colonial settlements === The earliest colonial settlement in the vicinity of what became Upper East Tennessee was Sapling Grove (Bristol). This initial North-of-Holston settlement was founded by Evan Shelby, who first entered the area as early as 1765, but "purchased" the land in 1768 from John Buchanan. Jacob Brown began another settlement on the Nolichucky River, and John Carter another in what became known as Carter's Valley (between Clinch River and Beech Creek), both in 1771. Following the Battle of Alamance in 1771, James Robertson led a group of some twelve or thirteen Regulator families from North Carolina to the Watauga River. On May 8, 1772, the settlers on the Watauga and on the Nolichucky signed the Watauga Compact to form the Watauga Association.
Each of the groups thought they were within the territorial limits of the colony of Virginia. After a survey proved their mistake, Alexander Cameron, Deputy Superintendent for Indian Affairs, ordered them to leave. Attakullakulla, First Beloved Man (Principal Chief) of the Cherokee, interceded on their behalf. The settlers were allowed to remain, provided no additional people joined them. In 1769, developers and land speculators planned to start a new colony called Vandalia in the territory ceded by the Cherokee. Plans for that fell through, however, and Virginia annexed it as the District of West Augusta in 1774. On June 1, 1773, the Cherokee and the Muskogee ceded their claims to 2 million acres in the northern sector of the Georgia colony, in return for the cancellation of their debts. Most of the Muskogee refused to recognize the treaty, and the British government rejected it.
Boone party massacre
In Sept. 1773, Daniel Boone led one of the first settler's expeditions through the fabled Cumberland Gap route to establish a temporary settlement inside the hunting grounds of modern-day Kentucky. There were about 50 settlers in the group. The Shawnee, Lenape (Delaware), Mingo, and some Cherokee attacked a scouting and forage party, which included Boone's son James. James Boone and Henry Russell, son of William Russell, a compatriot of Daniel Boone, were captured by the Native Americans and ritually tortured to death. The settlement attempt was abandoned. When word got back to Virginia, the colonists led by Lord Dunmore himself retaliated with Dunmore's War (1774) which was conducted mostly against Shawnee raiders from north of the Ohio. The Cherokee and the Muskogee were active also, mainly confining themselves to small raids on the backcountry settlements of the Carolinas and Georgia.
Henderson Purchase (1775)
On March 17, 1775, a group of North Carolina speculators led by Richard Henderson negotiated the extra-legal Treaty of Watauga at Sycamore Shoals with the older Overhill Cherokee leaders; Oconostota and Attakullakulla, the most prominent, ceded the claim of the Cherokee to the Kentucky lands. The Transylvania Land Company believed it was gaining ownership of the land, not realizing that other tribes, such as the Lenape, Shawnee, and Chickasaw, also claimed these lands for hunting. Dragging Canoe, headman of Great Island Town and son of Attakullakulla, refused to go along with the deal. He told the North Carolina men, "You have bought a fair land, but there is a cloud hanging over it; you will find its settlement dark and bloody". This utterance gave rise to the contentious epithet for Kentucky as the dark and bloody ground. The phrase became a metaphor for the entire struggle for the Southern frontier. The governors of Virginia and North Carolina repudiated the Watuga treaty, and Henderson fled to avoid arrest. George Washington also spoke out against it. The Cherokee appealed to John Stuart, the Indian Affairs Superintendent, for help, which he had provided on previous such occasions, but the outbreak of the American Revolution intervened. Henderson and frontiersmen thought the outbreak of the Revolution superseded the judgments of the royal governors. The Transylvania Company began recruiting settlers for the region they had "purchased". In 1776, the Virginia General Assembly prohibited further settlement, and in 1778, declared the Transylvania compact void.
== Revolutionary War phase: Cherokee War of 1776 == During the Revolutionary War, the Cherokee not only fought against the settlers in the Overmountain region, and later in the Cumberland Basin, defending against territorial settlements, they also fought as allies of Great Britain against American patriots. British strategy was focused on the North, and not so much on the backwoods settlements, especially those in the west. The Cherokee, therefore, were on their own, except for supplies from British ports on the coast and some joint operations in South Carolina.
=== Flight of the Loyalists === As tensions rose, Loyalist John Stuart, British Superintendent of Indian Affairs, was besieged by a mob at his house in Charleston and had to flee for his life. His first stop was St. Augustine in East Florida. Another noted Loyalist later associated with the Cherokee, Thomas Brown, was not nearly so fortunate. In his home of Brownsborough, Georgia, near Augusta, he was assaulted by a crowd of the Sons of Liberty, tied to a tree, roasted with fire, scalped, tarred, and feathered. After his escape, he took up residence among the Seminole commanding his East Florida Rangers, who fought with them and some of the Lower Muskogee. From St. Augustine, Stuart sent his deputy, Alexander Cameron, and his brother Henry to Mobile to obtain short-term supplies and arms for the Cherokee. Dragging Canoe took a party of 80 warriors to provide security for the pack train. He met Henry Stuart and Cameron (whom he had adopted as a brother) at Mobile on March 1, 1776. He asked how he could help the British against their rebel subjects, and for help with the illegal settlers. The two men told him to wait for regular troops to arrive before taking any action. When the two arrived at Chota, Henry Stuart sent out letters to the frontier settlers. He informed them that they were illegally on Cherokee land and gave them 40 days to leave. In an exercise of propaganda, people sympathetic to the Revolution forged a letter to indicate a large force of regular troops, plus Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Muscogee, was on the march from Pensacola and planning to pick up reinforcements from the Cherokee. The forged letters alarmed the settlers, who began gathering together in closer, fortified groups, building stations (small forts), and otherwise preparing for an attack.
=== Visit from the northern tribes === In May 1776, partly at the behest of Henry Hamilton, the British governor in Detroit, the Shawnee chief Cornstalk led a delegation from the northern tribes (Shawnee, Lenape, Iroquois, Ottawa and others) to the southern tribes. He traveled to Chota to meet with the southern tribes (Cherokee, Muscogee, Chickasaw, Choctaw) about fighting with the British against their common enemy. Cornstalk called for united action against those they called the "Long Knives", the squatters who settled and remained in Kain-tuck-ee, or, as the settlers called it, Transylvania. At the close of his speech, Cornstalk offered his war belt, and Dragging Canoe accepted it. Dragging Canoe also accepted belts from the Ottawa and the Iroquois. To prepare themselves for the coming campaign, the Overhill Cherokee began raiding into Kentucky, often with the Shawnee. Before the northern delegation had left, Dragging Canoe led a small war party into Kentucky and returned with four scalps to present to Cornstalk before they departed. In another raid, a war party led by Hanging Maw, captured three teenage settler girls, Jemima Boone and Elizabeth and Frances Callaway, on July 14 but lost them three days later to a rescue party led by Daniel Boone, father of Jemima, and Richard Callaway, father of Elizabeth and Frances.
=== First Cherokee campaigns === In late June 1776, war parties from the Lower Towns began attacking the frontier of South Carolina. On July 1, the Out, Middle, and Valley Towns sent out war parties raiding the frontiers settlements of North Carolina east of the Blue Ridge coming down the Catawba River. Meanwhile, traders warned the Overmountain settlers of the impending attacks from the Overhill Towns. They had come from Chota bearing word from Nancy Ward, the Beloved Woman (leader or Elder). The Cherokee offensive proved to be disastrous for the attackers. On July 3, a small war party of Cherokee besieged a small fort on the North Carolina frontier. The garrison managed to keep from being overrun until a large body of militia arrived in the rear of besiegers, who then retreated. A 190-strong war party of Cherokee and Loyalist partisans dressed as Cherokee attacked the large fort on the South Carolina frontier known as Lindley's Station. Its 150-man Patriot garrison had just finished building it the day before. After repulsing the attack, the Patriots gave chase, killing two Loyalists and capturing ten, but inflicting no casualties on the Cherokee. Dragging Canoe's forces advanced up the Great Indian Warpath and had a small skirmish with a body of militia numbering twenty who quickly withdrew. Pursuing them and intending to take Fort Lee at Long-Island-on-the-Holston, his force advanced toward the island. However, on July 20, it encountered a larger force of militia six miles from their target, about half the size of his own but desperate, in a stronger position than the small group before. During the "Battle of Island Flats" which followed, Dragging Canoe was wounded in his hip by a musket ball, and his brother Little Owl incredibly survived after being hit eleven times. His force then withdrew, raiding isolated cabins on the way and returned to the Overhill area with plunder and scalps, after raiding further north into southwestern Virginia. On July 21, Abraham of Chilhowee led his party in attempting to capture Fort Caswell on the Watauga, but his attack was driven off with heavy casualties. Instead of withdrawing, however, he put the garrison under siege, a tactic which had worked well the previous decade with Fort Loudon. After two weeks, though, he and his warriors gave that up. Savanukah's party raided from the outskirts of Carter's Valley far into the Clinch River Valley in Virginia, but those targets contained only small settlements and isolated farmsteads, so he did no real military damage.
=== Colonial response === The affected colonies of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia conferred and concluded that swift, massive retaliation was the only way to preserve peace on the frontier. Colonial militia then retaliated against the Cherokee. North Carolina sent Griffith Rutherford with 2,400 militia to scour the Oconaluftee and Tuckasegee river valleys, as well as the headwaters of the Little Tennessee and Hiwassee rivers. South Carolina sent 1,800 men to the Savannah, and Georgia sent 200 to attack Cherokee settlements along the Chattahoochee and Tugaloo rivers.
Not long after leaving Fort McGahey on July 23, Rutherford's militia, accompanied by a large contingent of Catawba warriors, encountered an ambush by the Cherokee at the Battle of Cowee Gap in what is now western North Carolina. After defeating the attackers, he proceeded to a designated rendezvous with the South Carolina militia. On August 1, Cameron and the Cherokee ambushed Andrew Williamson and his South Carolina militia force near the Lower Cherokee town of Isunigu known to whites as Seneca, in the Battle of Twelve Mile Creek. The South Carolina Militia retreated and later joined up with the militia force of Andrew Pickens. The next day, August 2, the joint militia force bivouacked, and Pickens led a party of 25 to forage for food and firewood. In what is known as the Ring Fight, 200 Cherokee surrounded and attacked the party, which withdrew into a ring and were able to hold their attackers at bay until reinforcements arrived. Pickens and his militia defeated the Cherokee on the Tugaloo River in the Battle of Tugaloo, which they then burned on August 10. On August 12, Williamson and Pickens defeated the Cherokee at the Battle of Tamassee. With this, they had completed their destruction of the Lower Towns, Keowee, Estatoe, Seneca, and the rest. Afterwards, they proceeded north to meet up with the North Carolina militia of Griffith Rutherford. Rutherford's militia traversed Swannanoa Gap in the Blue Ridge on September 1, and reached the outskirts of the Out, Valley, and Middle Towns on September 14, at which they started burning towns and crops. Williamson's militia were attacked at the Battle of Black Hole near Franklin, North Carolina on September 19 but were able to fend off the Cherokee and meet up with Rutherford. In all, Williamson, Pickens, and Rutherford destroyed more than 50 towns, burned the houses and food stores, destroyed the orchards, slaughtered livestock, and killed hundreds of Cherokee. They sold captives into slavery, and these were often transported to the Caribbean.
In the meantime, the Continental Army sent Col. William Christian to the lower Little Tennessee Valley with a battalion of Continentals, 500 Virginia militia, 300 North Carolina militia, and 300 rangers. Upon reaching the Little Tennessee in late October, Christian's Virginia force found those towns from whence the militant attackers had sprung—Great Island, Citico (Sitiku), Toqua (Dakwayi), Tuskegee (Taskigi), Chilhowee, and Great Tellico—not only deserted but burned to the ground by their own former inhabitants, along with all the food and stores that could not be carried away.
=== Migration to Chickamauga === Oconostota supported making peace with the colonists. Dragging Canoe called for the women, children, and old to be sent below the Hiwassee and for the warriors to burn the towns, then ambush the Virginians at the French Broad River. Oconostota, Attakullakulla, and the older chiefs decided against that plan. Oconostota sent word to the approaching colonial army, offering to exchange Dragging Canoe and Cameron if the Overhill Towns were spared. Dragging Canoe spoke to the council of the Overhill Towns, denouncing the older leaders as rogues and "Virginians" for their willingness to cede land for an ephemeral safety. He concluded, "As for me, I have my young warriors about me. We will have our lands." Afterward, he and other militant leaders, including Ostenaco, gathered like-minded Cherokee from the Overhill, Valley, and Hill towns, and migrated to what is now the Chattanooga, Tennessee area, where the Cisca and St. Augustine Trail crossed the Chickamauga River (South Chickamauga Creek). Since Dragging Canoe made that town his seat of operations, frontier Americans called his faction the "Chickamaugas". Other Cherokee refugees turned up in Pensacola and wintered there. John McDonald already had a trading post across the Chickamauga River. This provided a link to Henry Stuart, brother of John, in the West Florida capital of Pensacola. Cameron, the British deputy Indian superintendent, accompanied Dragging Canoe to Chickamauga. Nearly all the whites legally resident among the Cherokee were part of the related exodus.
In March 1777, Cameron sent the refugees to Chickamauga along with a sizable amount of goods. The colonials learned of the materiel and planned to intercept it. When Cameron informed him of the danger, Emistisigua, Paramount Chief of the Upper Muscogee, sent a force of 350 warriors to guard them as well as to assist in rebuilding and waging war.
=== Treaties of 1777 === Preliminary negotiations between the Overhill Towns and Virginia were held at Fort Patrick Henry in April 1777. Nathaniel Gist, later father of Sequoyah, led the talks for Virginia, while Attakullakulla, Oconostota, and Savanukah headed the delegation of Cherokee. The Cherokee signed the Treaty of Dewitt's Corner with Georgia and South Carolina on May 20 and the Treaty of Fort Henry, also known as the Avery Treaty, with Virginia and North Carolina on July 20. They promised to stop warring, with those colonies promising in return to protect them from attack. In the Treaty of Dewitt's Corner, the Lower Towns ceded all their land in modern South Carolina except for a small strip in what is now Oconee County. One provision of the Treaty of Fort Henry required that James Robertson and a small garrison be quartered at Chota on the Little Tennessee. He had been appointed Superintendent of Indian Affairs for North Carolina, while Joseph Martin had been appointed Superintendent of Indian Affairs for Virginia.
=== Targets of the Cherokee === From their new bases, the Cherokee conducted raids against settlers on the Holston, Doe, Watauga, and Nolichucky rivers, on the Cumberland and Red rivers, and those in the isolated frontier stations in between. The Cherokee ambushed parties traveling on the Tennessee River, and on local sections of the many ancient trails that served as "highways", such as the Great Indian Warpath (Mobile to northeast Canada), the Cisca and St. Augustine Trail (St. Augustine to the French Salt Lick at Nashville), the Cumberland Trail (from the Upper Creek Path to the Great Lakes), and the Nickajack Trail (Nickajack to Augusta). Later, the Cherokee stalked the Natchez Trace and roads improved by the uninvited settlers, such as the Kentucky, Cumberland, and Walton roads. Occasionally, the Cherokee attacked targets in Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, Kentucky, and the Ohio country. In contempt of the peace proceedings at Fort Henry in April 1777, Dragging Canoe led a war party that killed a settler named Frederick Calvitt and stole 15 horses from James Robertson, then moved to Carter's Valley, killing the grandparents of David Crockett along with several children near the modern Rogersville, and marauding across the valley. In all the raiders took twelve scalps. In summer 1777, Deputy Superintendents Cameron and Taitt led a large contingent of Cherokee and Muscogee warriors against the back country settlements of the Carolinas and Georgia. The Cherokee established a camp at the confluence of the Tennessee and Ohio Rivers (near present-day Paducah, Kentucky) to prevent infiltration into the Mississippi in the spring of 1778.
Revolutionary War phase: Southern strategy (1778–1783)
In late 1778, British strategy shifted south. As their attention went, so too did their efforts, their armies, and their supplies, including those slated for the Southern Indians. The Southern theater had the added advantage of being home to more Loyalists than the North. With all these new advantages, the Cherokee were able to greatly renew their territorial defense. Both the Cherokee and the Upper Creek signed on for active participation.
=== British victory in the North === On December 17, 1778, Henry Hamilton captured Fort Vincennes and used it as a base to plan a spring offensive against George Rogers Clark, whose forces had recently seized control of much of the Illinois Country. His plans were to assemble 500 warriors from various Indian nations, including the Cherokee, the Chickasaw, the Shawnee, and others, for a campaign to expel Clark's forces back east, then drive through Kentucky clearing American settlements. McDonald's headquarters at Chickamauga was to be the staging ground and commissary for the Cherokee and the Muscogee. Clark recaptured Fort Vincennes, and Hamilton along with it, on February 25, 1779, after the Siege of Fort Vincennes. The Chickamauga Cherokee turned their sights to the northeast.
=== Battles in the Deep South === The British captured Savannah on December 29, 1778, with help from Dragging Canoe, John McDonald, and the Cherokee, along with McGillivray's Upper Muscogee force and McIntosh's band of Hitichiti warriors. Just over a month later, January 31, 1779, they captured Augusta, Georgia, as well, though they quickly had to retreat. With these victories, the remaining neutral towns of the Lower Muscogee threw in their lot with the British side. Thomas Brown of the King's Carolina Rangers was assigned to the Atlantic District to work with the Cherokee, Muscogee, and Seminole. Charlestown was captured on May 12, 1780, after a siege that began March 29. Along with it, the British took prisoner some 3,000 Patriots, including South Carolina militia leader Andrew Williamson. Upon giving his parole that he would not again take up arms, Williamson became a double agent for the Patriots, according to testimony after the war by Patriot General Nathanael Greene.
=== Fort Nashborough === In early 1779, Robertson and John Donelson traveled overland along the Kentucky Road and founded Fort Nashborough on the Cumberland River in what later became Tennessee. It was the first of many such settlements in the Cumberland area, which subsequently became the focus of attacks by all the tribes in the surrounding region. Leaving a small group there, both returned east. In autumn 1779, Robertson and a group of fellow Wataugans left the east down the Kentucky Road headed for Fort Nashborough. They arrived on Christmas Day 1779 without incident. Donelson journeyed down the Tennessee River with a party that included his family, intending to go across to the mouth of the Cumberland, then upriver to Fort Nashborough. They departed the East Tennessee settlements on February 27, 1780. Eventually, the group did reach its destination, but only after being ambushed several times. In the first encounter near Tuskegee Island on March 7, the Cherokee warriors under Bloody Fellow attacked the boat in the rear. Its passengers had come down with smallpox. They took as captive the one survivor, who was later ransomed by American colonists. The victory proved to be a pyrrhic one for the Cherokee, a smallpox epidemic spread among its people, killing several hundred in the vicinity. Several miles downriver, beginning with the obstruction known as the Suck or the Kettle, the party was fired upon throughout their passage through the Tennessee River Gorge (Cash Canyon); one person died and several were wounded. At Muscle Shoals, the Donelson party was attacked by Muscogee and Chickasaw, up into Hardin County, Tennessee. The Donelson party reached its destination on April 24, 1780. The group included John's daughter Rachel, the future wife of future U.S. Representative, Senator, and President Andrew Jackson, who fought a duel in her honor in 1806. Shortly after his party's arrival at Fort Nashborough, Donelson along with Robertson and others formed the Cumberland Compact.
=== Overmountain theatre === Robertson heard warning from Chota that Dragging Canoe's warriors were going to attack the Holston area. In addition, he had received intelligence that McDonald's place was the staging area for the northern campaign that Hamilton had been planning to conduct, and that a stockpile of supplies equivalent to that of 100 packhorses was stored there. Small parties of Cherokee began repeated small raids on the Holston frontier shortly thereafter.
In the summer of 1780, Thomas Brown planned to have a joint conference between the Cherokee and Muscogee to plan ways to coordinate their attacks, but those plans were forestalled when Georgians under Elijah Clarke made a concerted effort to retake Augusta in September, where he had his headquarters. His King's Carolina Rangers and 50 Muscogee warriors formed the entire garrison against Clarke's 700 fighters. The arrival of a sizable war party from the Chickamauga and Overhill Towns and a force from Fort Ninety-Six in South Carolina prevented the capture of both, and the Cherokee and Brown's rangers chased Elijah Clarke's army into the arms of John Sevier, wreaking havoc on rebellious settlements along the way. This set the stage for the Battle of Kings Mountain October 7, 1780, in which Loyalist militia American Volunteers under Patrick Ferguson moved south trying to encircle Clarke; they were defeated by a force of 900 frontiersmen under Sevier and William Campbell, who were referred to as the Overmountain Men. Brown, aware that nearly 1,000 men were away from the American settlements with the militias, urged Dragging Canoe and other Cherokee leaders to strike while they had the opportunity. Under the influence of Savanukah, the Overhill Towns gave their full support to the new offensive. Both Brown and the Cherokee had been expecting a quick victory by Patrick Ferguson and were stunned that he suffered such a resounding defeat so soon. But their planned assault on the settlements was in motion. Learning of the new invasion from Nancy Ward (her second documented betrayal of Dragging Canoe), Virginia Governor Thomas Jefferson sent an expedition of 700 Virginians and North Carolinians against the Cherokee in December 1780, under the command of Sevier. The expedition routed a Cherokee war party at the Battle of Boyd's Creek on December 16. After that battle, Sevier's army was joined by forces under Arthur Campbell and Joseph Martin. The combined force marched against the Overhill towns on the Little Tennessee and the Hiwassee, burning seventeen of them, including Chota, Chilhowee, the original Citico, Tellico, Great Hiwassee, and Chestowee, finishing up on January 1, 1781. Afterwards, the Overhill leaders withdrew from further active conflict for a time, though warriors from the Middle and Valley Towns continued to harass colonists on the frontier. Not long after returning home from his destruction of the Overhill towns, Sevier had received word that the warriors from the Middle Towns were bent on revenge. At the beginning of March, Sevier raised a force for a campaign against the Middle and Out Towns east of the mountains. Beginning at Tuckasegee and ending at Cowee, they burned 15 towns, killed 29 Cherokee, and took 9 prisoners. While Dragging Canoe and his warriors turned their attentions to the Cumberland, the Shawnee began raiding settlements in Upper East Tennessee and Southwest Virginia, the latter by now having become Washington County. In particular they targeted those along the Clinch and Holston Rivers and in Powell's Valley. These Shawnee came down from their homes on the Ohio River by way of the Warriors' Path through the Cumberland Gap. Their attacks continued, along with occasional forays by McGillivray's Upper Muscogee, even after sporadic raids by the Cherokee renewed, until they began to focus all their attention on the Northwest Indian War. In midsummer 1781, a party of Cherokee came west over the mountains and began raiding the new settlements on the French Broad River. Sevier raised a force of 150 and attacked their camp on Indian Creek. On July 26, 1781, the Overhill Towns signed the second Treaty of Long-Island-on-the-Holston, this time directly with the Overmountain settlements. In response to incursions by new settlers beyond the limits of the treaties, warriors from the Chickamauga Towns began harassing the Holston frontier in the spring and summer of 1782. In September, an expedition under Sevier once again destroyed many of the towns in the Chickamauga vicinity, and those Cherokee of the former Lower Towns now in North Georgia, from Buffalo Town at the modern Ringgold, Georgia south to Ustanali (Ustanalahi) near modern Calhoun, Georgia, including what he called Vann's Town, as well as Ellijay and Coosawattee. Most of the towns were deserted because having advance warning of the impending attack, Dragging Canoe and his fellow leaders chose relocation westward. Meanwhile, Sevier's army, guided by John Watts, somehow never managed to cross paths with any parties of Cherokee.
=== Attacks at Chickamauga === At the beginning of April 1779, a group of 300 Cherokee and 50 Loyalist Rangers under Walter Scott, left the Chickamauga Towns headed for a marauding campaign against the frontier settlements in Georgia and South Carolina. Hearing of their departure, Joseph Martin, Indian agent for the Americans at Chota, sent word to Governor Patrick Henry of their absence. The state governments of Virginia and North Carolina made a joint decision to send an expedition against the Chickamauga Towns, who were thought to be responsible for the raids. Most of those warriors, however, were in South Carolina with Cameron and Dragging Canoe. A thousand Overmountain men under Evan Shelby (father of Isaac Shelby, first governor of the State of Kentucky) and a regiment of Continentals under John Montgomery disembarked on April 10, boating down the Tennessee in a fleet of dugout canoes. They arrived in the Chickamauga towns ten days later. For the next two weeks, they destroyed the eleven towns in the immediate area, and most of the food supply, along with McDonald's home, store, and commissary. Because the warriors were on a campaign in Georgia and South Carolina, there was no resistance and only four deaths among the inhabitants. Whatever was not destroyed was confiscated and sold at what became known as Sale Creek.
Upon hearing of the devastation of the towns and loss of all their stores, Dragging Canoe, McDonald, and their men, including the Rangers, returned to Chickamauga and its vicinity. The Shawnee sent envoys to Chickamauga to find out if the destruction had caused Dragging Canoe's people to lose the will to fight, along with a sizable detachment of warriors to assist them. In response to their inquiries, Dragging Canoe held up the war belts he had accepted when the delegation visited Chota in 1776, and said, "We are not yet conquered". To cement the alliance, the Cherokee responded to the Shawnee gesture by sending nearly 100 warriors north. The towns in the Chickamauga area were rebuilt. Dragging Canoe responded to the Shelby expedition with punitive raids on the frontiers of both North Carolina and Virginia. In midsummer 1779, Cameron arrived at Chickamauga with a company of Loyalist Refugees and convinced the Cherokee to join them on their march to South Carolina. Three hundred took up arms and headed out to maraud the backcountry of Georgia and South Carolina. Later in October, Andrew Williamson's South Carolina militia responded by attacking several towns on the eastern frontier of Cherokee territory and burning their foodstores.
=== Chickasaw-American war === The Chickasaw transformed from river sentries into attacking warriors in June 1780 when George Rogers Clark and a party of over 500, including some Kaskaskia of the Illinois Confederation, built Fort Jefferson and the surrounding settlement of Clarksville near the mouth of the Ohio, inside their hunting grounds. The building had begun in April and finished before the first attack on June 7. After learning of the trespass, the Chickasaw destroyed the settlement, laid siege to the fort, and began attacking settlers on the Kentucky frontier. They continued attacking the Cumberland and into Kentucky through early the following year. Their last raid was in conjunction with Dragging Canoe's Cherokee, upon Freeland's Station on the Cumberland on January 11, 1781. Three months after the first Chickasaw attack on the Cumberland, on April 2, 1781, the Cherokee launched their largest campaign of the wars against those settlements. This culminated in what became known as the Battle of the Bluff, led by Dragging Canoe. It lasted through to the next day and was the last attack of this war. Afterward, settlers began to abandon these frontier settlements until only three stations were left, a condition which lasted until 1785.
=== Lenape refugees === While the Middle Towns warriors kept the Overmountain Men busy, the Chickamauga Towns welcomed Lenape warriors who were seeking refuge from the fighting in the Illinois and Ohio Countries. They settled permanently there who brought their families.
=== Politics in the Overhill Towns === In the fall of 1781, the British engineered a coup d'état of sorts that put Savanukah as First Beloved Man in place of the more pacifist Oconostota, who succeeded Attakullakulla. For the next two years, the Overhill Cherokee openly, as they had been doing covertly, supported the efforts of Dragging Canoe and his militant Cherokee.
=== Death of Alexander Cameron === On December 27, 1781, Alexander Cameron, British Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Mississippi District, blood brother to Dragging Canoe, and friend to all Cherokee, died in Savannah. He was replaced by John Graham.
=== Diplomatic mission to Fort St. Louis === A party of Cherokee joined the Lenape, Shawnee, and Chickasaw in a diplomatic visit to the Spanish at Fort St. Louis in the Missouri country in March 1782 seeking a new avenue of obtaining arms and other assistance in the prosecution of their ongoing conflict with the Americans in the Ohio Valley. One group of Cherokee at this meeting led by Standing Turkey (Conocotocko) sought and received permission to settle in Spanish Louisiana, in the region of the White River.
=== Migration to the Lower Towns === Upon finishing their move, Dragging Canoe and his people established what whites called the Five Lower Towns downriver from the various natural obstructions in the 26-mile Tennessee River Gorge, known locally as Cash Canyon. Starting with Tuskegee (aka Brown's or Williams') Island and the sandbars on either side of it, these obstructions included the Tumbling Shoals, the Holston Rock, the Kettle (or Suck), the Suck Shoals, the Deadman's Eddy, the Pot, the Skillet, the Pan, and, finally, the Narrows, ending with Hale's Bar. The whole 26 miles was sometimes called The Suck, and the stretch of river was notorious enough to merit mention even by Thomas Jefferson. These navigational hazards were so formidable, in fact, that the French agents attempting to travel upriver to reach Cherokee country during the French and Indian War, intending to establish an outpost at the spot later occupied by British agent McDonald, gave up after several attempts. The Five Lower Towns included Running Water (Amogayunyi), at the current Whiteside in Marion County, Tennessee, where Dragging Canoe made his headquarters; Nickajack (Ani-Kusati-yi, or Koasati place), eight kilometers down the Tennessee River; Long Island (Amoyeligunahita), on the Tennessee just above the Great Creek Crossing; Crow Town (Kagunyi) on the Tennessee, at the mouth of Crow Creek; and Stecoyee (Utsutigwayi, Lookout Mountain Town), at the current site of Trenton, Georgia. Tuskegee Island Town was reoccupied as a lookout post by a small band of warriors to provide advance warning of invasions, and eventually many other settlements in the area were resettled as well. Because this was a move into the outskirts of Muscogee territory, Dragging Canoe, knowing such a move might be necessary, had previously sent a delegation under Little Owl to meet with Alex McGillivray, the major Muscogee leader in the area, to gain their permission. When the Cherokee moved their base, so too did John McDonald, now deputy to Thomas Brown, along with his own assistant Daniel Ross, making Running Water the base of operations. Graham's deputy, Alexander Campbell, set up his own base at what became Turkeytown. Cherokee continued to migrate westward to join Dragging Canoe's militant band. Many in this influx were Cherokee from North Georgia, who fled the depredations of expeditions such as those of Sevier; a large majority of these were former inhabitants of the original Lower Towns. Cherokee from the Middle, or Hill, Towns also came, a group of whom established a town named Sawtee (Itsati) at the mouth of South Sauta Creek on the Tennessee. Later major settlements included Willstown (Titsohiliyi) near the later Fort Payne; Turkeytown (Gundigaduhunyi), at the head of the Cumberland Trail where the Upper Creek Path crossed the Coosa River near Centre, Alabama; Creek Path (Kusanunnahiyi), near at the intersection of the Great Indian Warpath with the Upper Creek Path at the modern Guntersville, Alabama; Turnip Town (Ulunyi), 7 miles from the present-day Rome, Georgia; and Chatuga (Tsatugi), nearer the site of Rome. Partly because of the large influx from North Georgia added to the fact that they were no longer occupying the Chickamauga area as their main center, Dragging Canoe's followers and others in the area began to be referred to as the Lower Cherokee. The ranks of these new Lower Cherokee were further swelled by runaway slaves, white Tories, Muscogee, Yuchi, Natchez, and Shawnee, plus a few Spanish, French, Irish, and Germans. The town Coosada came into the coalition when its Koasati and Kaskinampo inhabitants joined Dragging Canoe's coalition. The band of Chickasaw living at Ditto's Landing south of Huntsville, Alabama, also joined the coalition. The rest of the Chickasaw, however, were trying to play the Americans and the Spanish against each other with no interest in the British.
=== Cherokees to the North === In November 1782, twenty representatives from four northern tribes—Wyandot, Ojibwa, Ottawa, and Potowatami—traveled south to consult with Dragging Canoe and his lieutenants at his new headquarters in Running Water Town, which was nestled far back up the hollow from the Tennessee River onto which it opened. Their mission was to gain the help of Dragging Canoe's Cherokee in attacking Pittsburgh and the American settlements in Kentucky and the Illinois country. When the party returned north, Turtle-at-Home, brother of Dragging Canoe, took 70 warriors north to fight alongside the Shawnee. At the beginning of 1783, there were at least three major communities of Cherokee in the region. One lived among the Chalahgawtha (Chillicothe) Shawnee. The second Cherokee community lived among the mixed Wyandot-Mingo towns on the upper Mad River near the later Zanesfield, Ohio. A third group of Cherokee is known to have lived among and fought with the Munsee-Lenape, the only portion of the Lenape nation at war with the Americans. Though filled by different warriors shifted back and forth, these three bands remained in the northwest until after the Treaty of Greenville in 1795.
=== Georgia Indian war of 1782 === At the end of 1781, the Cherokee invaded Georgia once again with a group of Muscogee, this time being met by South Carolina and Georgia troops under Andrew Pickens and Elijah Clarke at the Oconee River after much back country raiding. Evading the American force, the Cherokee withdrew, adopting a scorched earth strategy to deny their foes supplies. The force eventually retreated, opening the back country to further raids. By the fall of 1782, Lt. Col. Thomas Waters of the Loyalist Rangers, formerly stationed at Fort Ninety-Six in South Carolina, had retreated to the frontier of Cherokee-Muscogee territory just outside Georgia. From his base at the mouth of Long Swamp Creek on Etowah River, he and his remaining rangers, in conjunction with Cherokee and Muscogee warriors, ravaged backwoods homesteads and settlements. The states of South Carolina and Georgia sent out a joint expedition led by Andrew Pickens and Elijah Clarke to put an end to his insurgency. Leaving September 16, they invaded that section of the country, ranging at least as far as Ustanali, where they took prisoners. In all they destroyed thirteen towns and villages. By October 22, Waters and his men had escaped and the Cherokee sued for peace.