When Cherokees made a fateful choice

When I write about America’s semiquincentennial and North Carolina’s underappreciated role in our country’s founding, one of my goals is to make more complicated — and, thus, more accurate — a story all too often confined to a few celebrated pamphlets, a handful of meetings in Philadelphia, and a short list of battles between red-coated British and blue-coated Patriots.

The American Revolution was actually an epic sprawling across multiple decades, regions, peoples, and political factions. For example, Loyalists in North Carolina and elsewhere considered themselves patriotic, too, but assigned their fealty and calculated the costs and benefits of revolt rather differently than the revolutionaries did.

As I have pointed out repeatedly, some of the most consequential military engagements of the Revolutionary War pitted rival militias against each other, or occurred far from the coast of North America, or in some cases involved no American troops of any kind.

Today’s subject adds another important layer to the story: interventions by American Indians. They played important roles in the northern, southern, and western theaters of the war. For our purposes, two tribes deserve special attention. The Catawbas (they called themselves the Iswa, or “people of the river”) spoke a Siouan tongue and resided in both Carolinas but at the height of their power ranged up into Virginia and south into Georgia. Their longtime enemies, the Cherokees (self-described as the Aniyvwiya, or “Principal People”), spoke Iroquian languages and lived in dozens of towns across the western Carolinas, southwestern Virginia, eastern Tennessee, and northern Georgia and Alabama

When the American colonies rebelled against King George III and Parliament, most Catawbas sided with the rebels. They’d fought alongside their American neighbors before, especially during the French and Indian War. Indeed, no Indian nation fought longer and more valiantly for the American cause than the Catawbas.

As for the more-numerous Cherokees, most began the French and Indian War as allies of the British and Americans but, due to various grievances, switched sides during its final years. This proved to be a disastrous decision. Now that war had returned to North America, this time between Britain and the rebellious colonists, which side would the Cherokees pick?

There were, in fact, more than two factions. The largest, at least at first, preferred to stay out of the conflict entirely. Its leaders included aged chiefs such as Attakullakulla and his cousin Oconostota who understood the cost of war only too well. But many younger chiefs, led by Attakullakulla’s son Dragging Canoe, yearned to take revenge on the American frontiersmen — and, if possible, take back lands acquired either as a result of the French and Indian War or via treaties Dragging Canoe considered invalid. A third faction, best exemplified by the “war woman” Nanyehi (also known as Nancy Ward), distrusted the British more than the Americans and favored at least friendly relations with the latter, if not active alliance.

British agents traveled north from their base at Pensacola, promising weapons and aid if the Cherokees attacked the rebels. Realizing the danger, two emissaries from the governor of South Carolina, brothers Edward and Preston Hampton, headed west to make their case. Pro-war chiefs seized the two Americans, confiscated their belongings, and held them captive.

Sometime in April or May 1776, the Hamptons escaped and returned home. Cherokees followed. When the brothers’ father Anthony emerged from the house to talk, he was ruthlessly murdered. So were Preston, his wife, and his infant son, the latter bashed against the wall.

Infuriated, a company of militia from Tryon County, North Carolina, elected 16-year-old Thomas Howard as their captain and took off after the Cherokees. Guided by a young Cherokee dissident named Skyuka, they caught up with the raiders on June 1, 1776, and encircled their position atop Round Mountain, west of modern-day Columbus. Using subterfuge, they took the Cherokees by surprise and exacted their revenge.

It was only the beginning. Months of fighting followed. And, as before, the choice of pro-war Cherokees proved disastrous.

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