I’m currently in the midst of writing the fourth episode of the podcast currently titled, “John Sevier in the State of Franklin.” In the course of researching it, I realized how closely related it is to the Anglo-Cherokee war of 1759. My senior research paper was actually on that very subject. As a result, I’m going to go ahead and post it here, because I will touch on it some, but this should provide a much greater context for the events that unfolded in the Smoky Mountains from 1783-1789.
That being said, this was a student research paper, not a scholarly journal article. There’s always a chance I made an error, and I will correct it if someone finds one. However, I stand by my findings. Also, my writing style has dramatically improved since then, so I apologize for how pretentious the prose is.
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In 1759 two brothers went to war. One of these was the Kingdom of Great Britain via its colony of South Carolina. The other was the Cherokee Nation. This was not an easy process and each party went to great pains to prevent it. Up until the autumn of 1759, the Cherokee had been allies of the British since the end of the Yamasee War in 1721 and had been a staunch supporter of the British in the midst of the French and Indian War (judging by the numbers they committed to military actions in the war). So why then, as victory against the French and their native allies seemed so close, did their courses collide in a destructive war? I will endeavor to address some of the factors which lead to the war and attempt to ascertain why the specter of war descended upon them in 1759. To begin, I must address the context of the Anglo-Cherokee relationship prior to the outbreak of hostilities and then proceed to the individual cultural factors that lead to the war.
The first recorded information about the Cherokee from the British perspective comes from 1673 from an expedition made by James Needham and Gabriel Arthur. Arthur described three distinct regions within what is was considered the Cherokee Nation: The lower towns, the Middle towns, and the Overhill towns. Each area had a distinctive dialect. The Cherokee also conducted raids as far south as Florida and had acquired guns from somewhere. At this time the Cherokee possessed no central authority. There was no nationwide council or central agenda even. Each individual settlement could hold a meeting and each Cherokee had a voice; also any decisions must have been unanimously agreed to in the meetings. Even worse than that, from a policy making perspective, any decisions that could be reached were non-binding, therefore Cherokee leaders lacked the coercive power to force a decision to stick. As a result, even by the 1750s, the “Nation” moniker simply referred to a ethnic group not a nation-state. So it is important to keep in mind that since there was no central coercive authority within the Cherokee, there also would be an inability to keep all of the various Cherokee towns and their denizens in line with a state policy. The Cherokee would come to the aid of South Carolina in Yamasee War and began to establish firm trade relations with the British in South Carolina by the late seventeen-teens, thereby beginning a phase of firm diplomatic relations.
In 1730, the dynamics of the relationship changed. The British sent an envoy, Alexander Cuming, to negotiate a new settlement with the Cherokee Nation. Cumings did not come simply to renegotiate trade with the Cherokee, but wanted to establish British sovereignty over the whole of the Cherokee nation. When he arrived in Cherokee territory, Cuming supposedly went around the territory and demanded that the natives become the subjects of King George II. Eventually, Moitoi of Tellico was selected (or influenced Cuming to recognize him) as the “Emperor” of the Cherokee. It is important to note that an institution with such power had never existed in Cherokee society as we know it. Thus, we can make a couple of assumptions: 1) the institution of emperor was not a concept that came out of Cherokee cultural heritage, and 2) this concept resembles European understandings of power. As a result, the idea that native peoples, such as the Cherokee, would accept something like this is something that cannot be taken at face value. One theory put forward by Robert Conley, suggests that Moitoi was not crowned Emperor at all, and that all eyewitness accounts to the contrary, Moitoi was not selected as an emperor, but as the chief trade representative of the Cherokee territory. Another theory, and one that in my opinion has more weight behind it, is from John Oliphant. He states that due to the fracturous nature of Cherokee politics, that a rivalry cropped up in the Overhills between Chota, the mother town of the Overhills, and Tellico, where Moitoi was from. He asserts that out of a desire to cement his stance as a powerful leader in order to centralize authority under himself, that Moitoi used the British crown to legitimize his claim in return for vague admissions of British sovereignty. This desire to band together in order to stave off both encroaching settlers and aggressive native enemies definitely seems like a reasonable motive to force some members of an otherwise quasi-democratic society to adopt an authoritarian prescription to their ails. It also makes sense with evidence of a shifting cultural understandings of power amongst the Cherokee. Even though Cherokee society was very democratic in form, each town had certain influential individuals who could help guide policy in their settlements. Usually this was the headman, but at times it could be the war leader as well. The headman was usually a priest. This was the typical way of doing things. But as contact with Europeans increased, so did the spread of disease and that exacerbated a power struggle between the priests and the war leaders. The priests were the healers of the town and had knowledge of treating the traditional ailments of their people, but as smallpox – a European disease – ravaged their people, it challenged the moral primacy of the priests. It challenged their authority because they believed it was divine retribution, and therefore, the people needed to heed the old ways. Once they did, the disease still did not relent and the priests were unable to cure it. As a result, many priest actually committed suicide. This undermined the priesthood and created a way for war chiefs to gain dominance over priests if they so desired. That might be what played out in Tellico’s rivalry with Chota, where the leader in Chota was referred to as the Uku or “Fire King,” who was a priest. This is significant to the Anglo-Cherokee War because this early misconception of power structures in the Cherokee territory lead to a treaty that was a key factor in determining how the British perceived the Cherokee and how the Cherokee came to resent the British. This is not to say that the British still misunderstood how the Cherokee culture worked some thirty years after the 1730 treaty was ratified, but it offered to the British the idea that they had the moral authority over the Cherokee. This can be seen in the visit of the Cherokee delegation to London. When the Cherokee statesmen, who would go on to be called Attakullakulla, addressed King George II as “the sun” and as their “father” and that they were his “children” and that “in war we shall always be with you.” Attakullakulla was fifteenth and had a limited grasp on the English language at the time. Conley offers an analysis of the language Attakullakulla used in his address to King George II, essentially stating that if the speech was recorded accurately than he could not have said these things without coaching. For instance, the British considered the sun as masculine; the Cherokee considered it feminine. He also referred to himself as “red,” a European perception of his skin color, not a Cherokee perception. Clearly, the British, ascribing to this interpretation of events, would have come to the conclusion that they were the superiors in the relationship on this point alone. Others issues would give reinforcement to this view during the 1750s.
The reasons for a treaty such as the one that came out of 1730, and for ones that would come later, came at a time when the south – particularly South Carolina – were in the throes of the eighteenth-century cycle of war and felt the need to secure allies to ward off the nefarious influences of the French and the Spanish. After the Yamasee War, the South Carolinians realized that they had a strategic need for native allies to help protect them against foreign threats. As a result, they courted the Cherokee for that necessary military aid in exchange for trade.
The mutual need for trade and defense cannot be overstated when it comes to the nature of framing the relationship between the South Carolinians and the Cherokee. The Cherokee nation, as stated previously, were a divided society that had no motivating forces at the top, and the only Cherokee system that stretched across the various regions was clan. As far as the desire for defense goes, the Cherokee were embroiled in a series of conflicts between their neighbors as they competed for the same hunting grounds, those raids typically came from the Creeks and the Iroquois. Initially, defense had not been an issue when the alliance was first forged. The Cherokee were a mighty people and it was the Carolinians who desired military protection from native allies to supplement their militia. In 1721, at the close of the Yamasee War, the Cherokee numbers somewhere near 17,000 people. But by 1755, after a severe smallpox outbreak in 1738 that killed nearly half of the population, the Cherokee only numbered around 10,000. This brought need for defensive aid from the Carolinians into view for the Cherokee. At the outbreak of the War of Jenkin’s Ear, talk of building a fort in Cherokee territory began. Initially, the overture was first made by the French, who were attempting to draw Carolinian’s allies away. When the governor of South Carolina, James Glen, received reports about this in 1746, he immediately courted the Cherokee and also offered to build a fort; neither the forts, a French alliance, nor Cherokee military aid materialized. But in 1751, a Fort amongst the Lower Towns (the towns closest to South Carolina) was finally ordered and would be named Ft. Prince George.
Though the Cherokee had need of some British military aid, Carolina was still more dependent upon it than their native friends. The opposite, though, could be said of trade. The Cherokee operated as harvesters for the British commercial interests in Charleston. The British desired deerskin and in return they would trade for manufactured goods; namely rifles, gunpowder, musket balls, coats, glass beads, cotton shirts, hatchets, and iron cookware. For obvious reasons, a steel blade is better than a stone one, and as such a society would desire to gain more of these things. As a result, by 1750 the Cherokee became entirely dependent on trade goods manufactured by Europeans. The influx of manufactured goods actually caused a cultural shift in Cherokee society; traditional means of manufacturing goods began to disappear. Previously, the Cherokee had been able to sustain their war machine by producing their own war clubs, bows, and flint tools, but their dependence on firearms changed that. Also, traditional crafts, such as pottery and basket weaving began to be replaced by English pots. In order to supply their own demand, the Cherokee were forced to shift their economy from subsistence hunting to commercial hunting. This is not to say that they still did not live off of hunting and subsistence agriculture, they did, but throughout the century deer populations were continually under threat of annihilation. It’s also important to note that firearms, and especially gunpowder, were essential to the Cherokee way of life in this period. Not only were they necessary for defense, but also for food. Without necessary gunpowder the Cherokee would starve. Under normal market circumstances this would not have been an issue. If trade was cut off or prices were too high, you could simply trade with a different partner, but this was virtually impossible for the Cherokee. The closest French outpost was Ft. Toulouse, but it was too far away to supply the Cherokee in the numbers they desired. Georgia was still growing their economy and Virginia was also just out of reach for significant goods traffic, not that it didn’t stop any of the affected parties. But the volatility of settler disputes with the Cherokee allowed South Carolina to impose crippling trade embargoes on the nation. A series of frontier incidents in 1751 lead to just such a trade embargo in the midst of a bloody war between the Creeks and the Cherokee. For six months the Cherokee had to contend with assaults from the Creeks. They so ravaged the Lower Towns that all but two towns were evacuated. Therefore, trade was absolutely vital to the sustainability of Cherokee life. By the 1750s, the Cherokee were dependent on the South Carolinians for their survival.
II.
Traditional causes for the breakout of hostilities between the two staunch allies center around three flashpoints during the French and Indian War, the first of these was frontier disputes between the Cherokee and South Carolina. The second is Settler violence in the Virginia backcountry and the role of blood vengeance, or the blood feud. The third is the role of French sympathies and intrigues in the Cherokee territory.
As late as 1763, The Cherokee claimed a tributary of the Savannah River, Long Canes Creek, as their easternmost boundary with South Carolina. This boarder was meant to serve as fixed boundary for the Nation so as to keep further colonist from encroaching on their valuable hunting grounds, which we have already seen, served as the vital lifeblood of the Cherokee Nation. As a result, any penetration beyond Long Canes Creek was unacceptable. Much of this settler expansion was fueled by population increases via births and immigrants, but served to push settlers beyond the Cherokee’s stated line. By 1758, settlers penetrated fifty miles past Long Canes Creek into Cherokee hunting grounds. Long Canes Creek is only one example. All along the Cherokee frontier, from South Carolina to Virginia, settlers were moving into lands traditionally held and defended by the Cherokee and these settlers competed for the same deer. In some instances the disputes turned violent. In 1756, Cherokee robbed and beat several settlers near and along the Broad River and burned an entire settlement down after they ran the inhabitants off, stealing their possessions in the process. This was in the midst of the French and Indian War, while the Cherokee were allies of the British. This type of behavior fueled resentment along both sides as the governments of the colonies continually ignored requests by the Cherokee to come to negotiate on the issue. As a result, the violence in the backcountry escalated. It did so for several reasons, one of those being the aggressive stance that the Cherokee took against settlers; therefore, Cherokee concepts of justice came to the forefront.
The Cherokee did have conceptions of moral imperatives – things that were moral and things that were immoral. Every year there was a ceremony meant to absolve people of their evil deeds, but the one that was never absolved was murder. To be specific, the Cherokee definition of murder was much more absolute than the current American legal definition of murder. In Cherokee terms, if you are responsible for someone’s death then you are a murderer – no exceptions. And if you or a member of your clan is killed, it is your duty to avenge their death. It was not a concern for the nation, it was a private affair amongst you and your close relatives, and it was a sacred duty. This was because if someone who was killed was not avenged, then their soul or spirit would not pass into “Nightland,” the Cherokee afterlife. So strict was it, that even if someone had committed a grievous act against the Nation, such as treason, then the execution would have to be approved by the condemn’s clan in order to prevent the invocation of vengeance. But, this concept was not immutable either. During the late 18th century, there was a tussle between members of the Blind Savannah clan and the Paint clan which resulted in a member of the Paint clan’s death. Now the leader of the Blind Savannahs who was directly responsible for the death ought to have been the one killed, but he was able to convince members of the Paint clan to kill another member of his clan in his place. When Paint Clansman arrived to take the young man’s life under their right of vengeance, he shot his own uncle (also a Blind Savannah) to clear his debt with the Paints. This demonstrated that it did not matter who was killed in response to blood vengeance, it just mattered that a member of the offending clan be killed in order to atone for the death. In Cherokee society, there were to be no reprisals for killing someone under Blood vengeance. It was a concept that was understood between all Cherokee and the only mechanism that could prevent the blood feud system from spiraling out of control. As previously stated, trade embargoes could come at any time from South Carolina, and most of them were in response to this. The Cherokee had to learn to adapt their culture to that of the Europeans, because this was not a sentiment that was shared between the two cultures. The British did not find this acceptable. But once again, Blood vengeance was not entirely unbendable. In the 1750s, the Cherokee began accepting trade goods in compensation for satisfying the blood feud. But that only worked in best case scenarios. In most cases, the violence was reciprocated between white settlers and the Cherokee as one or the other escalated the issue. But once again, this is only part of the issued that precipitated hostilities.
The third typical theory offered to explain the outbreak of war was French influences within the Cherokee nation. This had always been a nagging fear for the South Carolinians, whose thoughts bordered on paranoia at times. They had seen some of the Creeks carried away in an alliance with the French with the construction of Ft. Toulouse, and the Cherokee’s relationship with these Creeks, the Shawnee, and the Uku of Chota’s friendly relations with the French unnerved them. This was quite an understandable fear too. The Shawnee, enemies of the British (but not of the Cherokee yet) were still allowed into Cherokee towns, and therefore, could move through their territory on the way to attack the frontier settlements of North and South Carolina. Tellico, whose leader had been recognized as Emperor of the Cherokee some thirty years ago, had their power undermined by the Uku of Chota’s courting the French, was now actively doing the same thing. Now the Uku, whose key statesman was Attakullakulla (the man who had personally addressed King George II), and was the centerpiece of British favoritism in the Overhills was also receiving multiple delegations from French, Shawnee, and Ottowans trying to draw them over to the French. The Uku of Chota entertained emissaries from French allied Creeks as late as May 1759 in sight of the British Fort that lay just outside the town. This incident in particular serves as an excellent example of the fears of the South Carolinians. In late April, 1759 the Creek leader Big Mortar, who most certainly was an enemy of the British, arrived in Chota. Captain Demere warned Old Hop of Chota that, “they had not come on a good design.” The Cherokee leader denied it and insisted that he had come to negotiate the use of hunting grounds, Demere said in response that “I knew the contrary, and that several warriors had told me of [Big Mortar’s] bad Talks.” That evening, Old Hop then informed Demere that Big Mortar had conveyed condolences from the French and Spanish that many Cherokee had died and that “they loved the Cherrockees, and they were very sorry to hear that the English had killed many of them.” He also said that these talks made an impression on some of his people because “we have a great many bad people among us,” but he assured Demere of his sympathies. If this had been the only issue, and only letter to Gov. William Lyttelton of South Carolina, this would have been concerning, but not news. Some of the Cherokee (namely Tellico) had sent delegations to the French directly, and received enemies of the British whenever they passed through. But his would not be the only letter from Demere, or from others, on the situation that exploded and directly lead to the war. Two days after Demere’s letters arrived, Lyttleton received a report that fourteen settlers had been scalped in the Yadkin River region, and that the murderers were Cherokee. Three letters arrived the next day, May 5th, from three different sources and each contained the same amount of detail and included the names. Fourteen men, women, and children had been murdered by a Cherokee party. On May 8th, Lyttelton received a report from Lieutenant Coytmore, commander of Ft. Prince George outside Keowee, stating that the war leader Moitoi of Settico returned from “the Dutch Settlement, your excellency has so often heard of” with the scalps of whites. When Coytmore asked Moitoi directly “he did not in the least deny what was said of him, and made no Scruple of telling me that he had taken eight Dutch Scalps.” Then, on May 12th, Demere confirmed the reports from the others, but added another level to this controversy. Demere claimed that Moitoi had stayed with Big Mortar before he left to war against the “Virginians.” In response to the disturbing news, Demere held a conference with the leaders of Chota. They claimed to have known nothing about it and that they were sorrowful about it, but that “the Virginians were at fault, for having killed some of their Men.” From Lyttelton’s perspective, this must have been the worst news, as his fears were seeming to be realized. On it’s face it appeared that French agents had managed to convince war parties from Settico, and a town in the Overhills to make war on them. The reason given to justify this raid was that they were going to make war in the Virginia backcountry, but the Yadkin and Catawba Rivers are clearly within North Carolina, and considering the Cherokee had been to Virginia in large numbers, they would have known when they were there or not. In addition to the seeming French influence, the statements made by Wawatchee of Keowee to Coytmore and the ones made by the leaders of Chota belied something that neither Coytmore of Demere explicitly stated. Either the leaders in Keowee and Chota knew about the raids and did nothing, or worse, they had no way to control their own people. In fact, this was a reality of dealing with the Cherokee, once again, there was no central leadership, therefore, Lyttelton had no way to coerce them diplomatically into peace even if the leaders of the Cherokee favored peace.
Though this incident was darker than others in the past, if it had been the only one, it could easily have be negotiated out, but South Carolina’s patience had run thin. The pattern of settler violence perpetrated by Cherokee warriors was becoming a pattern. French intrigue certainly played a role in this incident, but it was far from the cause. French influence was a catalyst, something that appeared to validate South Carolina’s suspicions of the Cherokee, but it in and of itself shows the negative bias that the British in general held about the Cherokee and not the reality on the ground.
This leads me to another point which intertwines with all of the previously stated issues, and that is the understanding that the British themselves held about the Cherokee and what the Cherokee thought of the British. The Cherokee were a society of peoples who were bound by honor and tradition, much like the British, and the two societies mutually understood certain aspect of each other’s culture and principles, but this did not mean that either side was willing to accept the other’s beliefs. For instance, central to the Cherokee sense of justice, which I previously stated, was the right of blood vengeance. We can assume that the the previous raid by Moitoi of Settico in 1759 was derived out of this desire, but Lyttelton disregarded it as invalid. Furthermore, the Cherokee must have been slighted by a near constant stream of broken promises from the British. In Cherokee society, someone’s oath and duties were a serious affair not to be entered into lightly. In Michelle Daniel’s piece on Cherokee Law, she states brings up the idea of Nightland, the Cherokee afterlife, and that “If a Cherokee or one of his clan brethren violated particular duties or oaths, his ghost would wander the earth forever. For this reason, duties and oaths were taken quite seriously.” She does not elaborate on what oaths are held to this standard, but one can imagine that a society with ideals of this caliber will take promises and treaties seriously, and likewise, will also hold people to this standard as well. As a result, I believe this caused tension between the Overhills (namely Chota) and the British and added to perceptions of dishonesty and trustworthiness that hampered relations significantly. An example of this can be seen in Chota’s efforts to establish a fort near their town. In the Treaty of Saluda, 1754, South Carolina under Gov. James Glen promised a fort to Chota. This fort would become Ft. Loudoun, but it would not be constructed until 1756, and only after colonial competition spurred on its construction. But this was only compounded by the failure of the Treaty of Broad River of 1756. The treaty was seen by the Cherokee of the Overhills as a way to break the trade monopoly of South Carolina and open up reliable trade with Virginia, thereby decreasing their dependence on the other southern colony. The treaty obligated the Cherokee to provide 400 warriors for the defense of Virginia to be armed by the colony, and Virginia would build a fort near Chota. But this was deceptive, whether intentional or not. Virginia dragged their feet on building the fort, and would never garrison it. In September 1756, Commander of Ft. Prince George, Raymond Demere, reported to Lyttelton that, “The Fort … built at Chottee is left quite abandoned. I fear it will soon be taken possession of by our enemies.” Earlier that year (it was reported in August, but it must have happened previously to the report), Old Hop of Chota echoed this same sentiment. He informed Dinwiddie of an impending attack by Savannah Creeks and they indented to destroy the Virginian fort. He stated that “Your Honour promises by your Express that you will provide us with all Necessaries. I desire that there may be some arms and ammunition sent here to the fort for us, and I hope that you do not deceive us.” Clearly, deception as this point was a concern to Old Hop. The chief reason for the fort was the need of defense. If he were to send his men to aid the British it would leave his town exposed to attack, therefore a fort was vital to releasing his warriors. If he honored his end of the agreement, 400 warriors would be dispatched to Virginia and not a single British soldier would be left to defend his town of women and children. Ft. Loudoun would be built and would mitigate this issue somewhat, but the effect it had on their faith in British treaties must have been shaken.
In addition to this, the British did not hold the Cherokee in high esteem either. Contained in the same report sent by Demere to Lyttelton in August 1756, mention above, another letter was included alongside Old Hop’s plea for assistance. This letter was from Major Andrew Lewis, a Virginian who was attempting to get Indian auxiliaries. He wrote to Demere, stating that “They are like the Devil’s pigg they will neither lead nor drive. I have had them in council several days. What they do one day they undo the next and soon, they now insist on my staying till their Green Corn Dance, which is to be eleven days hence.” He was not happy about this and even implied that the Cherokee were blowing the threat of a Creek attack out of proportion, something that Demere noted in his report. Lewis did not hold the Cherokee in high regard. The root of this disdain can be found in the ethical beliefs the British held about military service. Military service was a form of civil service; it’s chief end was to serve your country and monarch. You did receive pay, but that was a reward granted for you by your monarch for rising up to your duty. You did not fight for money. Dowd asserts in his essay that as a result of this European viewpoint, Cherokee were pigeon-holed as mercenaries. This was due to Cherokee demands for gifts. Gift giving was a hallmark of the Anglo-Cherokee relationship to this point. It was standard practice to seal agreements with the exchange of gifts. Even when the 1730 treaty was ratified, it was sealed by exchanging gifts between George II and the Cherokee delegation. Even when the Cherokee and the Upper Creeks settled their war in 1754, they sealed the pact by exchanging gifts. Moreover, gifts during this prolonged war came to serve as pay for the Cherokee auxiliaries. Because of the demands of their Anglo allies, many warriors in the nation had gone to war and not hunted, therefore creating economic imbalances amongst them. In the instance of James Beamer, a trader amongst the Cherokee, who was quickly going bankrupt providing necessities on loan to the nation. It can be assumed, therefore, that these presents served as an economic imperative necessary to supply the families of fighting warriors, but this was not how it was understood. Often, the gifts given were insufficient to cover the costs of the expeditions. What came to be even more insulting, was that when on joint expeditions with the British, officers who had gained war spoils refused to furnish gifts to their native allies. Dowd actually cites an estimate, that South Carolina’s goal was to pay roughly £4 to £6 per Cherokee versus £30 in total cost for one of their soldiers, where £10 was their pay. Yet Cherokee were perceived as greedy; they “occupied a dangerous social place, low, armed, and potentially dangerous.” This perception as mercenaries relayed the view that the Cherokee were fairweather friends of low morals and had no sense of duty or honor. It is critical to understand that this mercenary reputation, combined with perceived French intrigues fostered a foreboding fear of betrayal and rebellion in the Appalachian straddled nation. The South Carolinians understood that the Cherokee were not a united people with a central authority, and therefore were more likely to be divided like the Creeks were between the French and British, but their hope was by backing certain factions within the nation the would be able to gain control of an chaotic political landscape. The problem with that, was their policy seemed to be equally divided. If their Indian policy had been better managed, then perhaps a negotiated peace could have taken hold of the various towns and grievances finally addressed, but it was not to be.
South Carolina had enjoyed a supremacy over southern natives because of their proximity and economic might. This had also been tacitly sanctioned by the home government as well as they sought a unified native policy in the south. Their goal had been to use the Cherokee as the southern equivalent of the Iroquois, but it was doomed to failure. The Cherokee did not have the might or relationships with other nations to act as the proper analog. This allowed them to build a network of alliances previous to the war, but by the war’s beginning, their role would be challenged on multiple fronts, the first being her neighboring colonies. In 1754, the Cherokee reached out to Virginia. Their desire, as previously stated, was to break out of the Carolina oligopoly and Virginia needed native auxiliaries. This directly challenged South Carolina’s role as the chief diplomatic emissary to the Cherokee. And as more warriors traveled north for the war, Virginians continually remained involved with the Cherokee as they required them for the push on Fort Duquesne. This colonial competition for the same auxiliaries could spawn chaotic messages from varying colonial authorities and waste resources, as the Virginian Fort incident had. The home government, foreseeing issues of this manner, sought to challenged colonial governments on their role in native policy as well.
From 1747 to 1754, the Board of Trade ruminated over possible alternatives to colonies role in native affairs. They developed a scheme involving a fort system which held royal agents who would oversee all aspects of policy regarding natives including, but not limited to: regulating trade standards, managing conferences, and ensuring natives gave consent in land cessions. The plan called for a northern and southern superintendent to manage the network of agents and held supreme civilian and military authority where native affairs were involved and could be supported by the British army if necessary. This would have provided a reasonable, stable, and ordered system where there was a clear chain of command, but this iteration of the plan would not be adopted. In 1755, though, the Board of Trade did establish a much weaker version, where they created a northern and southern superintendent, but neither possessed power over the military, nor did they have the ability to override colonial governors. Edmund Atkin, the southern superintendent, was not held in high esteem and was constantly circumvented by both Lyttelton and Dinwiddie, and after backcountry killings in 1757, each governor became more entrenched against interference from Royal agents. Dinwiddie required his auxiliaries, and Lyttelton wanted to regain his place as head of native affairs in the south, the role for which Atkin was supposed to assume.
The third threat came from the Commander-in-Chief of the theater. This was the main reason to previous plan was abandoned. The Commander-in-Chief was designed to be supreme in all military affairs over local authorities, which would come to include native affairs when it involved military action. The problem with this was that it still divided responsibilities between the civilian and military authorities, and when looking at the specific issues relating to the causes of the war, the lines were not clear. If a war party of Cherokee returning to or from missions in Virginian and Pennsylvania assaulted or were assaulted by settlers en route, was this a civilian affair or a military one? If they received inadequate presents due to their service, was this a military or civilian affair? This schizophrenic structure muddled the already confusing issues at hand and resulted in a confused game of “pass the buck” and “the buck stops here” with each person in authority claiming some form of involvement across the way.
This can be seen in 1758 during an exchange between Attakullakulla, William Byrd, and Lyttelton. Atkin, as is understood in this structure, ought to have been the primary diplomat to the Cherokee to rally warriors to the cause, but Gen. Loudoun (the Commander-in-Chief, and Atkin’s superior) didn’t trust him, he appointed Byrd – a Virginian – to recruit en lieu of Atkin. Byrd arrived in Charleston ahead of Atkin, but the presents arranged for the Cherokee were shipped as personal items and could not be touch by Byrd. He managed to get a loan from Carolina and made for Cherokee territory. En route he intercepted Attakullakulla. Now, giving the structure of this supposedly coordinated policy, Attakullakulla should have began negotiating with Byrd (Attakullkulla was en route to settle trade disputes because of a trader in Chota, and secure good presents for his war party). Instead, he refused to talk with Byrd and instead wanted to speak to Lyttelton, who he would usually interact with. This is only one instance where either the natives or the British are confused about who is in proper authority over a particular issue. If there had been a coherent policy, they might have been able to solve the border disputes and reached “satisfaction” on the killings of settlers, but simmering resentment would still have been present due to Anglo-Cherokee perceptions of each other.
Simply put, this is not an extant analysis of the issues. There are still troves of letters and reports from various traders, agents, and officers who interacted with the Cherokee and the principal players in the Anglo-Cherokee War still untreated. The issues relating to gift giving, the nature of the alliance, and the Cherokee’s interpretation of events are still sorely lacking in much of the analysis of the events. It’s hard not to feel somewhat sympathetic toward Lyttelton on the eve of war in 1759. He was dealing with a frontier constituency who had become increasingly vocal against the Cherokee and a batch of murders where all the evidence pointed to a bloody atrocity committed by his so-called allies. But on the other side of Long Canes Creek was another group of people whose warriors had been beaten and killed by their white allies. The Cherokee had shared in the sacrifices of the colonies, and for them they were greeted with anger, hatred, and disdain. To them, when Lyttelton imposed his gunpowder embargo it literally became a matter of life or death. Without gunpowder they could not hunt. Without the hunt, they could not pay their debts and feed their families. As Oliphant says, “They [The South Carolinians] refused to accept that the Cherokee headmen could not deliver up the murderers [of the Yadkin River Massacre], just as the Cherokee failed to grasp that Lyttelton could not overlook the murder of children on the boundary of his own province.” Both sides demanded satisfaction for how the other had been treated. They were supposed to be allies; they were supposed to respect each other. Instead, their friendship had slowly grown bitter and by 1759, the only satisfaction the other could give was war.
Bibliography
Corkran, David H. The Cherokee Frontier: Conflict and Survival, 1740-62. Norman, OK:
University of Oklahoma Press, 1962.
Daniel, Michell. “From Blood Fued to Jury System: The Metamorphosis of Cherokee Law from 1750 to 1840.” American Indian Quarterly 11, No. 2 (Spring, 1987): 97-125.
Dowd, Gregory Evans. “Insidious Friends: Gift Giving and the Cherokee-British Alliance in the Seven Years’ War.” in Contact Points: American Frontiers from the Mohawk Valley to the Mississippi, 1750-1780, edited by Andrew R. L. Cayton and Fredricka J. Teute, 114-150. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, year unknown.
Gragson, Ted L. and Paul V. Bolstad. “A Local Analysis of Early-Eighteenth-Century Cherokee Settlement.” Social Science History 31, no. 3 (Fall, 2007): 435-468.
The Colonial Records of South Carolina, Series 2. Documents Relating to Indian Affairs, 1754-1765, edited by William L. McDowell, Jr.. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1970.
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