A People's History of the American Revolution by Ray Raphael

Author:Ray Raphael
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781620972809
Publisher: The New Press
Published: 2016-05-30T16:00:00+00:00

Cherokees

Early in 1776 Henry Stuart, a British Indian agent, ventured toward the heart of Cherokee country in the southern interior bearing “a full supply of ammunition and some presents to keep the Indians in good temper and to dispose them to pay attention to what we might find necessary to recommend to them.”100 What would the Cherokees do with the ammunition they received? Would they use it on animals or people? And if people, which ones?

On August 25 Henry Stuart reported to his brother John, Superintendent for the Southern District, at great length on the progress of his mission. The Cherokees, he said, were not of one mind. Upon landing at Mobile, Stuart had been greeted by a young warrior called Tsiyu Gansini, or Dragging Canoe, who inquired about

the cause of the present quarrel and disorders in the colonies and the reason why their supplies of ammunition and goods (which were formerly brought from Georgia and Carolina) were stopped. He told me that their nation was under very great apprehensions and uneasiness, and complained much of the encroachments of the Virginians and inhabitants of North Carolina. He said that they were almost surrounded by the white people, that they had but a small spot of ground left for them to stand upon, and that it seemed to be the intention of the white people to destroy them from being a people.

It was the Virginians, Stuart told Dragging Canoe, who were encroaching on Cherokee lands contrary to the king’s orders. Stuart also reminded him that the preceding year at Sycamore Shoals the Cherokee chiefs Attakullakulla (Dragging Canoe’s father), Oconostota, and The Raven (Colonah) had signed away the rights to 27,000 square miles—the heart of Kentucky and some of Tennessee—to a group of land speculators who called themselves the Transylvania Company.

Dragging Canoe, who had walked out of those negotiations, insisted that he would not be bound by the terms of Sycamore Shoals:

He made answer that he had no hand in making these bargains but blamed some of their old men who he said were too old to hunt and who by their poverty had been induced to sell their land, but that for his part he had a great many young fellows that would support him and that they were determined to have their land.101

While Dragging Canoe was belittling his elders, Stuart reported that the “principal Indians did not at all approve of the behaviour of the young fellows” who went out on raids, and that they “hoped we would not pay any regard to what any of their idle young fellows said.” “Old men” versus “young fellows”—it seemed a major rift was in the making among the Cherokee.102

Shortly after his arrival at Chote in the heart of Cherokee country, Stuart witnessed firsthand the tensions between young and old. A delegation of fourteen black-painted warriors from the Iroquois, Shawnee, and other northern tribes tried to convince the Cherokee to join in a united attack against the American settlers. Stuart and Alexander Cameron,

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