By Sarah Lindecke
During the
American Revolutionary War period between 1774-1783 a set of conflicts occurred
between colonial settlers and the Indigenous nations on the western frontier. First,
in 1774, the Shawnee people and Viriginia’s Royal Governor Lord Dunmore fought
in a series of battles as colonial settlers pushed into territories meant to be
off limits. The Shawnees, led by Hokoleskwa, or Cornstalk, were defeated. The
Shawnees agreed to land cessations in favor of Virginia.[i]
The following
year colonial settlers fought against Cherokees of the Upper South and
Appalachia. The history of wars between the Cherokees and colonists has in more
recent times become intertwined with the larger colonial conflict of the
American Revolutionary War but should be noted as separate. It was mainly
fought by colonial militias, not the Continental army, and was an offshoot of
conflicts occurring since the first colonial settlements. The Cherokee-American
Wars were also relevant for their place within the longer story of Indigenous
removal. Though Philip Schuyler did not take part in the Cherokee-American
Wars, he and all other Continental leaders would take aim at other Indigenous
nations. Throughout the rest of the
Revolutionary conflict the united Continental Congress and Army were united in
a plan which aimed at expanding territories and access to resources.
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Detail of “Map of the British and French Dominions in North America, 1755” by John Mitchell. |
The story of this conflict begins with the Cherokee Nation, whose original homeland encompassed the lands of the modern states of Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, as well as North and South Carolina.[ii] Oral traditions of the Cherokees suggest that the Nation had shared origins in the Great Lakes region with the Haudenosaunee people. Ethnographic studies and language similarities between the Cherokee and Haudenosaunee people support this theory. Most studies on the theory of shared origins attempt to determine if or when the Cherokees split from the Haudenosaunee. Cherokees in the 18th century were largely settled people who lived in villages. They cultivated crops like squash and hunted to trade for European-made resources. Cherokee society was structured matrilineally. When children were born, they were members of their mother’s clans which designated their status. Local leaders could be men or women, but large-scale governance was undertaken by a “Principal Chief” who was elected by Chiefs within the Nation.[iii]
Treaties with
the English Crown during the 17th and 18th centuries
reduced the bounds of Cherokee lands.[iv]
At the end of the French and Indian War (Seven Years’ War) the English
government instituted the Proclamation of 1763 which outlawed colonial settlement
past the Appalachian Mountains.[v]
The proclamation of 1763 protected the Crown’s access to natural resources. The
proclamation also codified Indigenous sovereignty to nations like the
Cherokees.[vi]
No one but a Crown Agent would be permitted to enact treaties with Indigenous
Nations, securing the Indigenous right to keep or sell land. Due to the
remoteness of the boundary, it was difficult to regulate and so it was
routinely ignored by would-be-settlers who continued to make illegal deals or
settle on Indigenous land.
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| Detail of a sketch of Richard Henderson by T. Gilbert White, c. 1920. |
Land speculator, Richard Henderson (1735-1785) was a retired lawyer and judge from North Carolina, who began to organize land speculation companies in 1773. The Henderson Company was one of his first speculative ventures. In May 1775, the Henderson Company was at the center of a major conflict over land boundaries, when the company attempted to purchase ~20 million acres for £10,000 worth of trade goods from Attalkullakulla and Oconostota, two prominent Cherokee elders.[vii] Known as the Henderson Purchase, this land purchase was massive and illegal. It violated several aspects of the 1763 Crown Proclamation as the lands were past the line established and the company did not possess the authority of any Indian Agent who were designated to make all colonial purchases.
Cherokees
and other Indigenous nations, primarily the Shawnee and Catawba, who also lived
on the land in question, pointed to the illegality of the deal. While Attalkullakulla
and Oconostota were high ranking members of the Cherokee nation, they did not
have total authority over land deals. Attalkullakulla’s son, Dragging Canoe, disputed
the treaty and reportedly declared that the land was “…bloody ground, and will
be difficult to settle."[viii]
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| Map created c.2000 depicting the boundaries of the Henderson Purchase. Uploaded to wikipedia as public domain. |
When news of the Henderson Purchase was brought back east it was resolutely discredited. Richard Henderson and other beneficiaries of the purchase hoped that as the Revolutionary War broke out, the colonial government’s prohibition of the sale of the land would be forgotten. In 1776, The British Crown’s Virginia General Assembly prohibited further settlement to expand within a subsection of the proposed bounds of the purchase.[ix] Virginia’s authority did not account for the Middle Tennessee portion of the purchase.[x] Two years later the Virginia General Assembly, a governing body aligned with the Continentals, nullified the compact entirely, and in 1783, North Carolina nullified Henderson’s purchase.[xi] Henderson’s authority to make deals with Indigenous people was also questioned by these bodies. The British assemblies of both Virginia and North Carolina reasoned that because Henderson was not appointed as a “Superintendent of Indian Affairs” he could not “negotiate nor receive lands from treaties with Indians.”[xii] Henderson may not have acquired the full purchase, but he was not left without bounty. In compensation for nullifying the land purchase, he received 400,000 acres of land from Virginia and North Carolina.[xiii]
While
the Henderson purchase was in limbo, war proceeded on the frontier. In July
1775, William Henry Drayton, a Continental supporter from South Carolina,
attempted to verbally attack Alexander Cameron (aka Scotchie), the British
Indian Agent, and draw Cherokee support to the Continentals.[xiv]
Drayton hoped that through attacking Alexander Cameron’s credibility, the
Cherokee would be convinced to alter their allegiances. In the fall of 1775, British
General Thomas Gage agreed to bring munitions into Cherokee territory. Gage’s
strategy was to create tension between Indigenous nations in jealousy over the
availability of supplies.[xv]
During the winter, British supply lines were protected by Dragging Canoe and a
band of young men who were set on defending their “interests” and land.[xvi]
Early spring saw several raids on colonial settlements in the east, led primarily
by Dragging Canoe.
On
May 7th, 1776, Alexander Cameron and Henry Stuart, another British
Indian agent, wrote a public letter inviting settlers of Watauga, a region of present-day
northwestern North Carolina, to leave contested land and go to West Florida to
claim land.[xvii]
They placed an ominous threat in their letter, suggesting that people should attempt
to leave within 20 days. John Carter, a prominent Watauga settler, offered,
facetiously, that settlers would cede land if there were peace talks between
the settlers and Cherokees.[xviii]
By the end of May no deals had been struck. Cameron and Stuart reaffirmed their
request to have settlers remove themselves, but very few chose to take up the
option of claiming land in West Florida.
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| Page from the June 7th, 1776 edition of Purdie’s Virginia Gazette. Henry Stuart’s supposed letter was printed on this page of the newspaper. |
By the summer of
1776, Dragging Canoe and his warriors continued to take the offensive against
settlers, but were consistently repulsed.[xix]
Adding fodder to the looming threat of larger-scale attacks was a letter purported
to have been written by Henry Stuart, the British Deputy Indian Agent, that was
published in the Purdie’s
Virginia Gazette.[xx]
This letter, and the corresponding supplementary documents, suggested a British
Army would march from the Gulf of Mexico into Cherokee lands to provide support
and supplies to the Cherokee people.[xxi]
Stuart denounced this letter as a forgery, but it fomented a great deal of fear
in frontier settlements, and was also presented to various Continental
governing bodies.[xxii]
The early months
of that summer passed with several small-scale battles between colonial militias
and the Cherokees plus their Loyalist allies. Both colonial and Cherokee
settlements were ransacked and destroyed. The Cherokees killed approximately 40
settlers and captured about 10 people.[xxiii]
During retributive militia attacks, over 300 Cherokees were killed approximately
50 towns or villages were destroyed.[xxiv]
As a result, a large group of Cherokees migrated to Chickamauga and recentered
Cherokee culture at this settlement.[xxv]
Chickamauga was located near the modern city of Chattanooga, Tennessee.
On
August 25th, 1776, Henry Stuart wrote a lengthy letter to his
brother about the summer’s campaigns, which had stalled out by the time he
reached Pensacola. The tone of his letter generally seeks to remove any
culpability for the aggressions from himself and Alexander Cameron.[xxvi]
“I put him [Dragging Canoe] in
mind that they themselves were to blame for making private Bargains for their
Lands contrary to all the Talks that they had received from you and
Mr Cameron, that they had frequently been told not to suffer any person to
settle nor even to hunt beyond the Boundary Line…”[xxvii]
He
also asserted the idea that Dragging Canoe personally took responsibility for
being the “sole cause of the war.”[xxviii]
The letter was private, but it speaks to the wide-reaching impact of the
Cherokees and colonial settlers’ violent disputes. Stuart, a member of the
colonizing group, used this letter to shift blame for violence onto the
colonized.. Shifting the narrative as Stuart did in his letter was intentional
as a means to push culpability away from colonizers who often benefited from
the conflicts between Indigenous nations and colonial people.
The
first of many peace negotiations between the Cherokees and Continentals was
conducted by Colonel Christian Willamson in October 1776 at Chota, about 30
miles south of present-day Knoxville, Tennessee.[xxix]
Most Cherokees were not yet interested in peace unless certain conditions were
met, and survival remained a primary concern. A deal was offered to
Attalkullakulla and Oconostota that peace could be made if Alexander Cameron
was surrendered or if Dragging Canoe was scalped.[xxx]
This deal was denied, and several additional Cherokee villages were burned by
Williamson and his militia in retaliation.
In
May of 1777, a delegation of 40 Cherokees, including Attalkullakulla and
Oconostota, traveled to Williamsburg, Virigina for further peace negotiations.[xxxi]
The outcome of these treaties was typical for negotiations with Indigenous
people with large land cessions being given to Virginia and North Carolina.[xxxii]
The Cherokees were generally left in a dismal state with villages to rebuild.
In addition, Cherokee communities worked to reestablish food sources and
supplies. Despite the hardships of rebuilding, Cherokee communities remained resolute
in their survival. When aggressions against the Cherokees began again in 1779, the
Continental Army destroyed an additional 17-18 villages.[xxxiii]
During
the first years of the Revolutionary many Continentals, including Philip
Schuyler, began considering total removal of Indigenous people from western
lands. Major General Charles Lee of the Southern Department wrote on July 7th,
1776, to Cornelius Harnett, a merchant and revolutionary, that:
“…a capital…part of the [British] plan…is
to lay waste the Provinces, burn the habitations and mix Men Women &
Children in one common carnage by the hands of Indians; … It appears to me absolutely
necessary to crush the evil before it arises to any dangerous height… We can now with the greatest justice strike a blow which
is necessary to intimidate the numerous tribes of Indians from falling into the
measures of the Tyrant, and as these Cherokees are not esteem'd the most
formidable Warriors, we can probably do it without much risk or loss…”[xxxiv]
These sentiments
of distrust and fear of Indigenous people were echoed by other Continental officers
who expressed desire to clear the western lands—primarily to make way for
further settlement.[xxxv]
Men like Charles Lee and Philip Schuyler frequently expressed their interest in
clearing western territories in order to protect and enrich those best fit to
profit, themselves included.[xxxvi]
 |
| Print depicting General John Sullivan. Engraved by Asher B. Durand, Henry Bran Hall, Albert Rosenthal, and Max Rosenthal. |
After
successfully subduing the Cherokees in 1776, the Continental Army set their
sights on another large confederation of Indigenous people—the Haudenosaunee,
also known as the Iroquois. Retired Major General Philip Schuyler and General George
Washington were the primary architects, and beneficiaries who gained land and
access to natural resources through the Sullivan-Clinton campaign. During the military
campaign season of 1779, General John Sullivan [SL5] and
Brigadier General James Clinton led Continental troops through Iroquoia on the
orders of General Washington who said:
“I
would recommend that some post in the center of the Indian Country should be
occupied with all expedition, with a sufficient quantity of provision, whence
parties should be detached to lay waste all the settlements around with
instructions to do it in the most effectual manner, that the country may not be
merely overrun but destroyed.”[xxxvii]
This
attack against Iroquoia, was similarly “successful” from the Continental
perspective. It was recorded by General Sullivan that “the number of towns
destroyed by this army amounted to 40 beside scattering houses.”[xxxviii]
A majority of the Haudenosaunee deaths were a result of supply shortages of
food and lack of shelter after the Continental Armies attacked villages and
burned crops.[xxxix]
According to some estimations, the Continental Army displaced About 5,000
individuals, many of them fleeing to British-held Fort Niagara to seek shelter
and provisions prior to the onset of a brutal winter.[xl]
This level of destruction was on par with that of the Cherokee American Wars
where 50+ villages were destroyed by colonial militias. Earlier campaigns
against Indigenous nations, like the American Cherokee Wars, were undertaken at
the direction of the nearby state governments.[xli]
Later campaigns against Indigenous people would be undertaken by larger
authorities, like George Washington and the Continental Congress, whose power
grew as the Continentals inched towards independence.
These wars with
Indigenous people, beginning with Lord Dunmore’s War in 1774, following through
the Cherokee American Wars in 1776, and then finishing with the Sillivan-Clinton
Expedition in 1779, were practice for later actions of Indigenous removal and
imperial expansion for the Continentals who saw their colonizing ambitions as
justified because of their perceived superiority. Many saw the success at
removing Indigenous people as an opportunity to continue this project under the
new American government. Presidents Martin van Buren and Andrew Jackson targeted
“the Five Civilized Tribes” for removal from their lands in the deep south.[xlii]
“The Five Civilized Tribes” were the Indigenous nations of the Southeast—the
Cherokees, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee, and Seminoles. By the early 1840s the
Trail of Tears displaced nearly 60,000 people from their homes and forcibly
moved them westward.[xliii]
Over the first century
of the United States’ existence the “Vanishing Indian” myth implied that
Indigenous people were destined to be extinct, which, in turn, justified repeated
attacks on Indigenous sovereignty out of a desire to stretch the United States
as far west as possible. The myth of the “inevitability” of the decline and
disappearance of Indigenous people pre-dates the Trail of Tears. One of the
first instances of this trope can be seen in the 1826 book The Last of the Mohicans
by James Fenimore Cooper.[xliv]
The title itself invokes this ideology of Indigenous people being destined for
extinction. Books, articles, art, and previous history of success in Indigenous
removal laid the groundwork for future attempts by the American government to
extirpate Indigenous populations from land the government viewed as their
manifest destiny.
[i] Dunmore's
War: The Last Conflict of America's Colonial Era (2017) by Glenn F.
Williams.
[iv] Ibid.
[v] https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/proclamation-line-of-1763
[vi] Ibid.
[vii] The
Cherokees by David Narrett pg 328-333.
[viii]
This quote is repeated countless times as something that Dragging Canoe said
against the “Treaty of Watagua.” It is unclear what primary source this quote
comes from—diary or journal. It is possible that Dragging Canoe said this or
something of the like, but it is unclear.
[x] Ibid.
[xi] Ibid.
[xii] ”A
Dark and Bloody Ground” American Indian Responses to Expansion during the
American Revolution by Natalie Inman; https://www.jstor.org/stable/42628217?seq=5
[xiv] The
Cherokees by David Narrett pg 334.
[xv] Ibid.
pg 333.
[xvi] Ibid.
pg 334.
[xvii]
Ibid. pg 337.
[xviii]
Ibid. pg 337.
[xix] Ibid.
pg 335.
[xx] https://digitalcollections.colonialwilliamsburg.org/asset-management/2RERYDTFQFQF?&WS=SearchResults&Flat=FP
[xxi]
“Correspondence of Henry Stuart and Alexander Cameron with the Wataugans” by
Philip M. Hammer; https://www.jstor.org/stable/1893080
[xxii]
Ibid.
[xxiii]
The Cherokees by David Narrett pg 341.
[xxiv]
Ibid. pg 343.
[xxv] Ibid.
pg 344.
[xxvi]
Ibid. pg 335.
[xxvii]
Henry Stuart to John Stuart, August 25th, 1776, Colonial and State
Records of North Carolina + https://www.docsouth.unc.edu/csr/index.php/document/csr10-0351
[xxviii]
Ibid.
[xxix]
The Cherokees by David Narrett pg 344.
[xxx] Ibid.
pg 345.
[xxxi]
Ibid. pg 350.
[xxxii]
Ibid. pg 351-352.
[xxxiii]
Ibid. pg 353-355.
[xxxv]
Clearing Iroquoia: New York’s Land Grab in the 1779 Campaigns of the
American Revolution by Travis M. Bowman & Matthew A. Zembo pg xvii
[xxxvi]
Ibid. pg 41-43.
[xxxvii]
George Washington to John Sullivan, May 31st, 1779, Founders Online.
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-20-02-0661
[xxxviii]
Journals of the Miliary Expedition pg 303, letter was John Sullivan to
Congress, September 30th, 1779. https://archive.org/details/cu31924095654384/page/303/mode/1up
[xxxix]
Surviving Genocide: Native Nations and the United States from the American
Revolution to Bleeding Kansas by Jeffrey Ostler https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvgc629z
[xl]
The American Revolution in Indian Counrty by Colin Calaway, ch 5, pg 129-157. https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_American_Revolution_in_Indian_Countr/1SQ0YG9ozB8C?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=The+American+Revolution+in+Indian+Country,+Colin+Calloway&printsec=frontcover
[xli] Clearing
Iroquoia by Bowman and Zembo, pg 51.
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