Cherokee War of 1776.
The Cherokee War of 1776 was an early episode in the American Revolution. Also known as Dragging Canoe’s War and the Chickamauga Wars, it was a series of conflicts between Americans and the Cherokee that spanned 20 years.
British Loyalists in the American Revolution by John Singleton Copley.
In the early years of the American Revolution, while war raged across Massachusetts, New York, and New Jersey in the northern theater, the southern theater presented a different scene. From Virginia to Georgia, newly elected Revolutionary governments and Patriots looked westward toward the trans-Appalachian region, hoping to cross the boundary that the British had established. The only issue was that this land was already inhabited. The most prominent Indigenous groups, including the Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Cherokee, had lived there for centuries and were not welcoming to Anglo-American settlers.
The tensions that ultimately erupted into the Cherokee War had been building for decades. After the French and Indian War, the British government issued a Royal Proclamation in 1763, establishing a boundary line known as the “Indian Boundary.” This proclamation prohibited American settlers from crossing into the Appalachian and trans-Appalachian regions. The boundary was reinforced by blazing or stripping bark from trees. British agents repeatedly informed the Cherokee that they were within their rights to drive off squatters and seize their horses and cattle as a penalty for violating English law.
American settlers found a recent proclamation insulting, as it barred them from settling in vast territories ceded by the French crown to Britain. The laws recognized Native nations’ rights to evict white settlers, and British troops were committed to assist with evictions.
Nonetheless, American colonists continued to encroach on Cherokee territory, causing heightened tensions. Many settlers from the British Isles sought land ownership that was unattainable in their home countries. The fertile, unregulated land in America was attractive, leading to farms being established on Cherokee hunting grounds, which further disrupted their way of life.
Fort Watauga, Tennessee, courtesy of Wikipedia.
A notable settlement was Watauga, in present-day Elizabethton, Tennessee. In 1769, British colonists rented a large tract of land from a Cherokee noble without the consent of the Cherokee leadership. Despite being declared illegal by Virginia and North Carolina for five years, the settlers refused to leave.
In a letter dated February 22, 1774, a British emissary to the Cherokee named John Stuart wrote to the governor of North Carolina saying, “I received a message from the Cherokee… The Nation is extremely uneasy at the encroachments of the white people on their hunting ground.” Stuart also warned of the “consequences” of this settlement and that it “may in a little time prove fatal” as the Cherokee would seek to “redress themselves” should the Watauga settlers “neglect to move off.” Speaking on behalf of the Cherokee, Stuart expressed the nation’s true feelings toward Watauga.
That year, a North Carolina land speculator, Richard Henderson, and frontiersman, Daniel Boone, negotiated with the Cherokee, resulting in the Treaty of Sycamore Shoals in 1775. In the agreement between the Transylvania Land Company and the Cherokee, the Cherokee sold roughly 20 million acres of land in what is now Kentucky and Tennessee to the company in exchange for trade goods. Richard Henderson claimed the Cherokee not only ceded the land upon which Watauga was built, but also “all of their hunting grounds south of the Ohio and Kentucky Rivers and north of the Cumberland River,” which ceded all of what would become Kentucky and Middle Tennessee.
The treaty was controversial and led to violence.
At that time, the Cherokee Nation was not a unified state but rather a complex web of villages and clans, each with its own leaders. As towns in Watauga became a concern, the nation’s most influential leaders convened to address the threat.
Treaty of Sycamore Shoals.
Following the treaty, white settlers began moving into Cherokee territory, and Cherokee leadership became divided. On one hand, famed diplomat Little Carpenter and military leader Oconostota wished for peace. The other faction, led by Dragging Canoe, who was Little Carpenter’s son, wanted war. To Dragging Canoe, force was the only means by which the Cherokee could retain their sovereignty. In a stirring speech, he addressed the grievances of his people and put forth an ominous, though rather prophetic, message:
“We had hoped that the white men would not be willing to travel beyond the mountains. Now that hope is gone. They have passed the mountains and have settled upon Cherokee land. They wish to have that usurpation sanctioned by treaty. When that is gained, the same encroaching spirit will lead them upon other lands of the Cherokee. New cessions will be asked. Finally, the whole country, which the Cherokee and their fathers have so long occupied, will be demanded, and the remnant of Ani-Yunwiya, the Real People, once so great and formidable, will be compelled to seek refuge in some distant wilderness. There, they will be permitted to stay only a short while, until they again behold the advancing banners of the same greedy host. Not being able to point out any further retreat for the miserable Cherokee, the extinction of the whole race will be proclaimed. Should we not therefore run all risks and incur all consequences rather than submit to further loss of our country? Such treaties may be alright for men who are too old to hunt or fight. As for me, I have my young warriors about me. We will have our lands. I have spoken.”
Cherokee Chief Dragging Canoe.
Ultimately, Dragging Canoe’s argument carried the day, winning over the minds of many of his countrymen. While Little Carpenter and Oconostota had their reservations, war was now unavoidable.
Dragging Canoe created a new group to fight the settlers.
In the meantime, colonial governments repudiated these claims by Henderson, the governor of North Carolina, even issuing a proclamation “enjoining… the said settlers immediately to return from the Indian Territory.” If they didn’t, they could “expect no protection from his Majesty’s government.”
Despite this hardline stance by colonial governors, the revolutionary governments that came to power during the American Revolution were more than happy to treat Sycamore Shoals as a legitimate accord.
Despite the controversy, the treaty became the basis for white settlement in the region and is considered the largest private real estate transaction in U.S. history.
The Cherokee did not go into battle alone. At the behest of the British lieutenant governor in Detroit, Michigan, Henry Hamilton, Northern nations, including the Shawnee, Lenape, Ottawa, and Iroquois, met the Cherokee and other prominent Southern nations, including the Creek, Chickasaw, and Choctaw. At this meeting in May 1776, Dragging Canoe and other Cherokee leaders accepted war belts from the Northern leaders, cementing a Native nation alliance determined to halt American encroachment on their lands.
Cherokee War Map.
The Cherokee were the first to take action. The Cherokee War began on July 1, 1776, when they struck along the western frontier, attacking settlements in North Carolina. Isolated farmsteads in the Ninety Six and Spartan Districts were overrun, and the inhabitants were killed. The backcountry militia leaders Andrew Williamson, Francis Salvador, and Andrew Pickens gathered their units and marched against the Cherokee.
Another attack was then launched against the American settlements of the Upper South, in what is now North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. During these offensives, Cherokee forces went after American forts that dotted their eastern border. While this strategy met with moderate success, the Cherokee ultimately failed to take any forts, and Chief Dragging Canoe was wounded in one of the attempts.
However, Dragging Canoe and his forces continued to fight on. In smaller raiding parties, they sought to ambush colonial militia and Continental Army regiments as they marched through mountain passes. Several times, Cherokee parties pushed back American troops, forcing them to wait for reinforcements.
At Lindley’s Fort on July 15, settlers near the Saluda River were besieged by the Cherokee and Loyalists. The attackers were driven off, and several men were captured. With further discovery, it was found that they were white men dressed and painted in Cherokee fashion.
In the summer of 1775, John Stuart, the British superintendent of Indian affairs for the southern district, left his home in Charleston, South Carolina, and moved to Florida. From there, he worked to preserve the Cherokee’s and other Native American tribes‘ allegiance to Great Britain. Stuart’s assistant superintendent, Alexander Cameron, established a base of operations among the Cherokee and directed their actions against the British. Combined with backcountry Loyalists, the Indians would prove a formidable force against the rebels.
Under directions from Charleston, Andrew Williamson and other upcountry militia captains undertook a campaign to destroy the Cherokee resistance. The British militia traveled from town to town, destroying buildings and crops and dispersing the populations. By the end of the summer, Cherokee resistance had broken, and the plan to direct Indian allies against the British had been defeated.
Cherokee War – August 1, 1776.
The summer campaign produced two notable engagements. On August 1, 1776, a combined Loyalist and Cherokee force, led by Alexander Cameron, ambushed Andrew Williamson at Esseneca Ford, also known as Seneca Old Town. Williamson’s command of 330 faced as many as 1,200 Cherokee and Loyalists, who hid behind palisades. Initially driven back, the British lost one of their leaders, Captain Francis Salvador of Ninety Six. Lieutenant Colonel Leroy Hammond and a troop of horsemen counterattacked and held off the Cherokee long enough for Williamson to regroup. The timely arrival of Andrew Pickens with reinforcements turned the tide of battle. Cameron and his force retreated but were pursued by the British, who burned every Cherokee village and field they discovered. The Americans suffered three killed and 14 wounded.
As the war dragged on, Cherokee forces began to lose ground to the relentless army of would-be settlers. All along the border, American troops launched a scorched-earth campaign. And with each victory the Continental forces earned, they burned Cherokee towns and took survivors prisoner. By the fall of 1776, the primary campaign of the war had concluded, and the Patriots had destroyed over 50 Cherokee towns, including crops and livestock. They killed hundreds of Cherokee, enslaving the survivors and sending them as far off as the Caribbean.
These losses devastated the Cherokee. Their homes had been razed, their food destroyed, and their people killed. Before the Cherokee War began, the nation was home to about 12,000 people living in 43 villages across the southern Appalachians. Having seen their population decline for decades in the face of European disease and warfare, these latest losses left most of the Cherokee people hoping for peace.
The Cherokee lost as many as 2,000, and, despite continued British support, could fight no longer. The following spring, a Cherokee delegation led by Attakulla Kulla met with officials from North and South Carolina, Georgia, and Virginia at Dewitt’s Corner in Ninety Six District. They signed a treaty on May 20, 1777, that included a cease-fire and a cession of much of the Cherokee lands within present-day Anderson, Oconee, and Pickens Counties.
Unwilling to give in to the force and cruelty displayed by American forces, Dragging Canoe and his supporters broke off from the Cherokee nation and formed the Chickamauga. “My thoughts and my heart are for war,” Dragging Canoe told his fellow Cherokee leaders, “as long as King George has one enemy in this country. Our hearts are straight to him and all his people, and whoever is at war with us.” Settling in what is now northwest Georgia, the Chickamauga continued to fight American expansion for another two decades.
©Kathy Alexander/Legends of America, updated February 2026.
Also See:
Indian Wars, Battles & Massacres
Frontier Skirmishes between the Pioneers & the Indians
Military Campaigns of the Indian Wars
Sources:
Dean, Nadia; A Demand of Blood: The Cherokee War of 1776, Valley River Press, Cherokee, North Carolina, 2013.
Gordon, John W.; South Carolina and the American Revolution: A Battlefield History, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2003.
Hatley, M. Thomas; The Dividing Paths: Cherokee and South Carolinians through the Era of Revolution, Oxford University Press, New York, 1993.
Journal of the American Revolution
Lumpkin, Henry; From Savannah to Yorktown: The American Revolution in the South, University of South Carolina Press, Columbia: 1981.
Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian
South Carolina Encyclopedia