Catawbas fought for American independence

The American Revolution was more than just a revolution in America. As historians have recently taken the opportunity to remind their semiquincentennial audiences, the 1775–1783 military conflict was a true world war between Great Britain and its allies on the one side and the American colonists and their allies on the other.

The single-largest battle of the war, for example, didn’t even occur in North America. It was the siege of Gibraltar, a joint French-Spanish operation to take the British-controlled stronghold at the tip of the Iberian peninsula. Provisioned by the Royal Navy and garrisoned by British, Hanoverian, and Corsican troops, Gibraltar held out for an astounding three years and seven months, until the French and Spanish withdrew in early 1783.

Britain’s allies in the war included not only auxiliaries from Hanover, Hesse, and other German states but also American Loyalists and such Indian nations as the Mohawks, Cayugas, Onondagas, Senecas, Miamis, and Cherokees. As for the American colonies, assistance from the French, Spanish, and Dutch was essential but came years into the war. At the start, the revolutionaries’ only allies were indigenous. And no tribe fought longer or more doggedly alongside their American allies than the Catawbas who lived in the Carolina Piedmont.

Calling themselves Ye Iswą, meaning “people of the river,” the Catawbas had for generations resided along the river that now bears that name as well as nearby areas of North and South Carolina. They had also for generations fought over hunting rights and other disputes with the Cherokees to their west and the Lenape, Shawnee, and Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) to their north. Given the Catawbas’ close economic and, in some cases, family ties to settlers in the Carolina backcountry, their natural sympathies were with the Americans when the war broke out in 1775. A year later, when Cherokees aided the British by raiding frontier settlements, latent Catawban sympathies turned into outright Catawban intervention.

It was 250 years ago this week that warriors from the Catawba nation first played a significant military role in the Revolutionary War. After the Cherokee raids of mid-1776, thousands of militiamen from Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia marched into the mountains, bent on retaliation. South Carolinians under the command of Colonel Andrew Williamson captured a Cherokee village near what is now Seneca, in the extreme northwest corner of South Carolina, and then headed north to rendezvous with Brigadier General Griffith Rutherford’s larger force of North Carolinians.

Their guides for the expedition were approximately 20 Catawba warriors. The Indians attached white deer tails to their hair to distinguish themselves from the Cherokees. Their hereditary foes were hardly defenseless, however. By the time the South Carolinians and Catawbas reached the Little Tennessee River near present-day Franklin, North Carolina, on Sept. 17, Cherokee scouts knew exactly where they were — and how best to ambush them.

Finding no North Carolinians to meet them there, the South Carolinians decided to trek through the rugged mountains by following a tributary river called the Coweecho. On Sept. 19, 1776, the vanguard of the Patriot column reached a deep-sided gorge sometimes called the “Black Hole.” That’s where 300 Cherokees and 50 American Loyalists launched their ambush.

Forced into a confined space, the surprised Patriots struggled to defend themselves. Several were shot dead or grievously wounded. At first, the Catawbas drew no enemy fire. Then the Cherokees saw the buck tails dangling from their hair. That was just as helpful a marker for them as it was for the Patriots. Three of the 20 Catawbas were hit, one mortally.

Finally, the Carolinians and their allies organized an effective counterattack, charging at their foes and brandishing bayonets, hatchets, and knives. Running low on gunpowder, the Cherokees and Loyalists were compelled to flee. A dozen were killed or wounded and another dozen captured. Among the Patriots on hand to witness the bravery of their Catawba allies was Colonel Thomas Sumter, the “Carolina Gamecock.” No doubt Sumter, my fifth-great granduncle, found much to admire.

John Hood is a John Locke Foundation board member. His books Mountain Folk, Forest Folk, and Water Folk combine epic fantasy and American history.