Massacre at Cavett's Station : Frontier Tennessee During the Cherokee Wars [1 ed.] 9781621900191, 9781572339637

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Massacre at Cavett’s Station

Massacre at Cavett’s Station Frontier Tennessee during the Cherokee Wars

Charles H. Faulkner

The University of Tennessee Press / Knoxville

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Copyright © 2013 by The University of Tennessee Press / Knoxville. All Rights Reserved. Manufactured in the United States of America. First Edition. Frontispiece: Map of Knox County in the late 1700s and the location of Cavett’s Station. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Faulkner, Charles H. Massacre at Cavett’s Station: frontier Tennessee during the Cherokee wars / Charles H. Faulkner. — First edition. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-1-62190-019-1 ISBN-10: 1-62190-019-3 1. Massacres—Tennessee—Knoxville Region—History—18th century. 2. Frontier and pioneer life—Tennessee—Knoxville Region. 3. Cavett, Alexander, approximately 1746–1793—Homes and haunts— Tennessee—Knoxville Region. 4. Pioneers—Tennessee—Knoxville Region—History—18th century. 5. Cherokee Indians—Wars—Tennessee—Knoxville Region. 6. Creek Indians—Wars—Tennessee—Knoxville Region. 7. Archaeology and history—Tennessee—Knoxville Region. 8. Excavations (Archaeology)—Tennessee—Knoxville Region. 9. Knoxville Region (Tenn.)—History—18th century. 10. Knoxville Region (Tenn.)—Antiquities. I. Title. F444.K7F37 2013 976.8'85—dc23 2013001467

to the memory of Patricia Cridlebaugh, Miss Mary Dowell, and Kincer Fox

Contents

Foreword

ix

Chapter 1. The Omen

1

Chapter 2. The Advancing Banner of a Greedy Host Chapter 3. The Cavetts

Chapter 4. The Lost Station

65

Chapter 5. Digging into the Past

89

95

Chapter 6. A Little Spot of Ground to Stand Upon Chapter 7. To Become Herdsmen and Cultivators Chapter 8. The Prophesy Epilogue

145

References Cited Index

165

149

141

5

101

133

Illustrations

1. Proclamation Line of 1763 2. John Sevier

3. William Blount

16

4. Fort Southwest Point

29

44

5. Blount Mansion

51

7. Bledsoe’s Station

73

6. Knoxville Blockhouse 8. Sharp’s Station

6

52

75

9. Blount Mansion Compound 10. Tombstone of Joseph Lonas

84

90

11. Tombstone of Nancy Cavett Lonas 12. Cavett Monument

92

13. Excavation of a 4-by-4-Foot Unit 14. Recording of a 4-by-4-Foot Unit 15. Tellico Blockhouse

135

90 98

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16. Doublehead Lane in Cavett Station Subdivision

146

Foreword

T

his book began as an article about the Cavett Station massacre. I had just changed direction in the field of North American archaeology from the study of prehistoric Indian cultures in Tennessee to historical archaeology, specifically focusing on the frontier settlement of East Tennessee. The story of the massacre of thirteen settlers a mere five miles from my home caught my attention early on. Since the details of this event and history of the Cavett family appeared to be rare in local histories, I thought that the archaeological excavation of the site of this tragedy would make an interesting and enlightening project. There was also an added urgency to my plans. The traditional site of the Cavett fortified cabin attacked and burned by a large force of Cherokee and Creek warriors on September 25, 1793, was in a planned suburban development, so it was crucial to find and record its exact location before it was destroyed by construction. The march of progress had already trampled too many significant historical sites in Knox County. I was fortunate to obtain permission from the developer, Dan Culp, of what later became the Cavett Station subdivision, to test what I believed to be the site location in 1981. I appreciated Dan’s consent to excavate the site, especially during a time when some developers cast suspicious eyes on archaeologists poking around on their property. At the time, I was able to assemble a cadre of college students and other volunteers who were eager to learn the skills of scientific field archaeology. Because of their enthusiasm and dedication (there were no funds to pay my workers) and the possible location of the cabin seemed relatively undisturbed, I was able to field volunteer crews from October 1982 to May 1984. An archaeological field school under the direction of Dr. Patricia Cridlebaugh from the Department of Anthropology, University of Tennessee, worked at the site from July 13 to August 13, 1983, and volunteers continued to excavate the site until May of the next year. Unfortunately, we found no definitive evidence that the Cavetts had lived at this exact location in the late eighteenth century. After spending over two years searching for the station and a year in the UT historical archaeology laboratory overseeing the analysis of artifacts, I lost

my initial enthusiasm for continuing the research. This was not due, however, to the failure to find the station. As I ventured into the realm of historical archaeology in East Tennessee, I discovered there were dozens of eighteenth and early nineteenth-century home sites threatened by various forms of disturbance. Having graduate students interested in other aspects of pioneer life on the East Tennessee frontier and so many sites to explore, the Cavett Station project was placed on the back burner. However, as I became engrossed in the fascinating history of East Tennessee, I never lost interest in the Cavett saga. While the location of the doomed cabin still eluded me, my archival research had left some puzzling questions. These included stories that there were Cavett survivors of the massacre, and the most perplexing question of all, how and why did an army of 1,000 Indian warriors come undetected within eight miles of Knoxville, the target of a surprise attack? While rummaging through old manuscripts in my office in the fall of 2009, I came upon my unfinished article and file folders of archival information that I had gathered about the Cavetts. Being retired by then from 41 years of teaching in the UTK Department of Anthropology, I realized I now had the time to complete my manuscript. As I perused my written words of 1985, however, the focus of my narrative began to change. My original plan was to focus on the Cavett family and what happened to them on that fateful September morning. Because archaeology could fill in and clarify the gaps in the documentary record about their lives and death on the Tennessee frontier, I continued to include a narrative about my archaeological research even though ultimately I did not find the exact location of the cabin. Nevertheless, I felt the reader should be informed how careful scientific archaeology is conducted and that it can provide an important dimension to our study of the past if scientific archaeological methods are used to locate historic sites. While I did not locate the station through archaeological excavation, my continued study of the archival record revealed the critical role that the Indians played in this unfolding drama. The major change in my study of Cavett Station, then, was to focus on the perpetrators of this tragedy as well as their victims. In doing so, maybe we could answer the most difficult question, why did this tragedy happen? The perpetrators were the Cherokee and Creek Indians who had been at war with the Euro-American settlers in what is now East Tennessee since the beginning of the Revolutionary War. Like most wars, the history of this conflict was written by the victors—the white settlers who overwhelmed their foe with superior technology and tactics. While the Euro-Americans were literate and kept written accounts of their exploits, the North American Indians, while having magnificent oral traditions, had no written language until Sequoyah’s

x

Foreword

invention of the Cherokee syllabary. This was well after the Indian wars were over. Most Cherokee could not speak or read the European languages, and communication between the antagonists in these conflicts was often in the hands of incompetent or self-serving interpreters. This situation was particularly difficult for the Indians, especially when they were confronted with an alien culture and complex treaties that they did not understand. These treaties, most of them dealing with the “purchasing” of Indian land and the source of miscommunication and blatant fraud, were the root cause of the conflicts that ensued from 1776 to 1794, called the Chickamauga Wars, primarily in what is now East Tennessee. The other problem was that many white Americans saw Indian culture as morally homogeneous, even John Sevier’s twentieth-century biographer who consistently calls them “savages.” Certainly the attack on the Cavetts was a savage act, but the idea that all Indians were war-like and bloodthirsty is erroneous. This belief is well illustrated in the history of the Cherokee Nation during the eighteenth century. During the Revolutionary War, the Nation split into two often irreconcilable factions, the war-like Chickamauga and the peace-seeking Overhills. In attempting to present the Indian side of these late eighteenth-century conflicts, it is the latter band on which I focus until their final removal from East Tennessee in the first four decades of the nineteenth century. Not only did the Overhill Cherokee seek peace with the white settlers during the time of gravest conflict in the last three decades of the eighteenth century, but some of them, such as the revered chief Old Tassel and the victims of the Hanging Maw massacre, died as martyrs to the cause of peace. Many early writers of Tennessee history deal with the conflicts between the Cherokee and the white settlers. In spite of the fact that these are secondary sources, I have frequently used them throughout this book since they are readily available in most large libraries to readers who wish to discover more about the stirring settlement history and the Cherokees of East Tennessee during the last three decades of the eighteenth century. These sources include: Carl S. Driver, John Sevier: Pioneer of the Old Southwest (1972); John Haywood, The Civil and Political History of the State of Tennessee from the Earliest Settlement up to the Year 1796 (1823); Stanley W. Hoig, The Cherokees and their Chiefs in the Wake of Empire (1998); Duane King, editor, The Cherokee Indian Nation: A Troubled History (1979); William H. Masterson, William Blount (1954); J.G.M. Ramsey, The Annals of Tennessee to the End of the Eighteenth Century (1853); and Grace Woodward, The Cherokees (1963). The Ramsey book is the standard reference for the early history of Tennessee, as is Haywood’s book, but the former sometimes refers to events out of place and the latter has no index. A major source for this study was the Knoxville Gazette, republished

Foreword

xi

and edited by Steve Cotham in Tennessee Ancestors. Another publication that is cited frequently in this book is the Journal of Cherokee Studies, 26 volumes of this journal being published between 1976 and 2008. A glaring difference can be found in the sources about white settlement and those dealing with the history of the Cherokee. As I read the above books and newspapers, I unabashedly began to sympathize with the Indians, and although I tried to be neutral, this bias shows. Not that one group was more barbaric in their actions than the other; the deaths that occurred on the Tennessee frontier were tragic and like World War II and the Vietnam War, what humans do to each other when they fight is incomprehensible to sane people. War atrocities are, regretfully, still alive and well in the cauldron of war in the twenty-first century. Turning to the lighter side of this book, my gratitude extends to the unseen players who helped me write it, as well as to the people who lived this history and recorded it. Three persons stand out as being invaluable in research for this book. All are gone now, but vividly remain my dear friends in memory. Dr. Patricia Cridlebaugh, who was my graduate student at the University of Tennessee and assistant in the archaeological search for Cavett’s Station; Miss Mary Dowell, Lones family genealogist and Knox County historian, and Kincer Fox, descendant of the Cavetts and former guardian of the cemetery that I believe to be the final resting place of this family. Other persons were also involved in the successful completion of this study. I am grateful for the assistance of the following persons who pointed me in the right direction with my archival research: Donna C. Briggs, Barry Cain, Arlas Cavett, Steve Cotham, Rebecca Gettlefinger, Ruth Paine, Richard Pohlemus, Carroll Ross, Samuel D. Smith, and Sharon Steel-Smith. The survey and testing of the possible site of the Cavett cabin involved many dedicated people. Curtis Kington and John Fiser allowed access to their property to search for the cabin site. Cleve Smith and his sons David and Bruce, conducted a metal detector survey of the area. The archaeological survey of the site was made possible with the help of Jeff Chapman and Richard Polhemus. Three groups worked tirelessly to excavate the site. Shovel tests were conducted by Jerry Kline who manned the transit and volunteer shovelers: John Beretta, Gail (Bush) Guymon, Kelly (Faulkner) McGill, Terry Faulkner, Joe Mode, Wayne Roberts and Kirk Sackett. The University of Tennessee archaeological field school under the direction of Patricia Cridlebaugh included Jackie Cunningham, David Dickey, Ed Harris, Heather Harris, Sara Harris, Joanie Hirschant, Merrit Ireland, Ann Ragan, George Ragan, Kathy Riley, David Silvis, and Lynn Silvis. I wish to particularly thank the Harris family—Ed, Sara, and their daughter Heather—for also volunteering to work

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Foreword

on the site after the field school ended. Besides the Harris’s, volunteers during the continuing excavation of units opened by the field school were Maxine Flitcroft, Lance Green, Charles Hanion, Charles Harrison, Suzanne Hyman, Joe Mode, Lee Ann Wilson, Ben Wolcott, and Ruth Young. Faye Kendall processed and identified the artifacts in my archaeology lab class at UT. And finally, I want to thank my wife, Terry Faulkner, not only because she was one of the best diggers at the site with her “magic” Marshalltown trowel but for her encouragement and patience with a husband who was often gone on weekends and later spent hours at a computer writing this book.

Foreword

xiii

Chapter 1

The Omen

T

here is an old Southern Appalachian superstition that forewarns if a rooster stands in the doorway and crows, a death will occur in the family (O’dell 1944). The location at which the rooster crowed at daybreak on September 25, 1793, at the cabin of Alexander Cavett will never be known, but it served as an alarm clock for his family living at the head of Sinking Creek in what is now West Knox County, Tennessee. Having no more than two rooms and perhaps a sleeping loft, the log cabin sheltered 13 persons: three adult men and ten women and children. Under normal circumstances, crowded cabins were common in frontier Tennessee, but this morning several people were present who had taken refuge at what was called Cavett’s Station, a fortified farmstead, because word had spread that a large Indian war party was on the prowl. Two of the men there that day were members of the Sullivan County, Tennessee, militia, who had been sent to the station to help protect it. Used to such warnings, the Cavetts and their guests were nevertheless starting a typical day—the women preparing to milk the cows and stoking the embers in the fireplace to bake corn pone for breakfast, excited children running to and fro as they are want to do upon awakening, and the men quietly loading their flint lock rifles in preparation for a possible attack. Others also heard the crowing rooster and saw the fireplace smoke curling above the trees that fateful morning. On a ridge above the station, a war party of Cherokee and Creek Indians, perhaps 1,000 strong, had halted their surprise attack on the settlement of Knoxville eight miles away, believing they had been discovered when they heard the town’s reveille cannon. Angry because their original prize slipped from their grasp, they decided to attack the little cabin nestled in the valley below them. The Cavetts soon realized that the Indians were coming and were ready when the warriors, painted black and red in war colors, came whooping out of

the woods. In their first charge, the three adult men and perhaps some of the older boys laid down a curtain of fire from the gun ports in the log walls. A Creek and a Cherokee were killed, and the withering fire wounded three other warriors. The cabin filled with black powder smoke and the acrid smell of hot gun barrels. Children cried softly in the semi-darkness while men shouted orders and the women offered encouragement and helped to load the rifles. Stunned by the ferocity of the defenders, the Indians backed off a safe distance to ponder their next move. Then out of the blue haze from the gunfire, a strange redheaded man appeared, resembling a European yet dressed and painted like an Indian. He approached the cabin with a flag of truce. In perfect English, he informed the besieged that their situation was hopeless, but if they surrendered their lives would be spared and they would be exchanged for Indian prisoners. A life or death decision had to be made. Perhaps trusting the word of this English speaking warrior and knowing that the Indians often took women and children captive, the 13 settlers came out to meet an uncertain fate. Unfortunately, one of the head warriors, seething with rage because his brother had been recently killed by whites, murdered the unarmed Cavett party as they emerged from their small fort, except for a five-year-old boy who was taken captive but later killed in an Indian village. The station was plundered, burned to the ground, and the stock killed. The massacre at Cavett’s Station has been recorded in local history as one of the great tragedies on the eighteenth-century East Tennessee frontier during the time known as the Chickamauga War or Second Cherokee War. The First Cherokee War, ca. 1761–1775, was fought against the British after an initial yet strained alliance formed between the British and the Cherokee to combat the Yamasee Indians then dissolved when conflicts over land rights escalated. After division within the Overhill Cherokee resulted in Dragging Canoe leading a band of what were now known as the Chickamauga Cherokee into southeastern Tennessee and northern Georgia in 1777, they continued raiding and campaigning against American settler incursion into Indian territory until 1794. These conflicts, encompassing the massacre at Cavett’s Station, are collectively known as the Cherokee Wars. Although much has been written about the Cavett Station massacre, some of these popularized accounts are simply legends that have no basis in historical fact. In attempting to tell the true story of what happened on that fateful autumn day over 200 years ago, this book will focus on important questions that have been ignored or inadequately addressed in prior accounts. What political and military events led to the destruction of this station? Who were the principal leaders of the American settlers, and what role did they play in this tragedy? Much has been written about the victims, but who were the Indians who set out to destroy Knoxville and perpetrated this massacre? 2

The Omen

Were there any survivors or Cavett descendants? Several legends have been passed down concerning survivors of this attack, but do these stories have any basis in fact? What was a frontier “station,” and where was the actual location of Cavett’s Station? Why was an Indian army able to approach within eight miles from the frontier town of Knoxville without being discovered, and why were the Cavetts so vulnerable to the attack on their fortified cabin? Finally, was retribution for the massacre of this family a factor in bringing an end to the military power of the Cherokee, and did this event hasten the eventual removal of this tribe to the west? The massacre at Cavett’s Station and the events leading up to it were the culmination of the hatred that festered between the white settlers and the Indians as the ancient homeland of the Cherokee was engulfed by a wave of homesteaders during the last three decades of the eighteenth century. Through the “Land Grab Act” of 1783, the state of North Carolina opened her western territory in what later became the state of Tennessee. Despite early treaties with the Cherokee, land-hungry settlers illegally entered tribal land, and the frontier blazed with warfare. In East Tennessee, the pioneers responded by building fortified settlements for defense and as a base from which to launch retaliatory raids on Indian towns. This guerilla warfare led a Cherokee chief to lament, “We wish . . . to be at peace with you, and to do as we would be done by. We do not quarrel with you for killing an occasional buffalo, bear or deer on our lands when you need one to eat; but you go much further; your people . . . kill all our game; our young men resent the injury, and it is followed by bloodshed and war.”1 However, peace would not come to East Tennessee until statehood in 1796. The following is a narrative of the tumultuous decades of what has been called the Chickamauga War on the East Tennessee frontier.

1. A portion of a speech by the Cherokee chief Corn Tassel, or Utsi’dsata, at the Treaty of Long Island in 1777 (Williams 1974: 176–178). The white settlers also called this distinguished chief Old Tassel, or simply the Tassel.

The Omen

3

Chapter 2

The Advancing Banner of a Greedy Host

I

t was inevitable that the Euro-American settlement of the transAppalachian area after the French and Indian War would result in a prolonged duel to the death between the settlers and the native people of this region. There were circumstances, however, in the last quarter of the eighteenth century that made the conflict especially bloody. After their victory over the French, the British issued the Proclamation of 1763, which was intended to placate the Indians with what the British Crown considered the “vast Indian reservation” west of the Appalachians (figure 1). This proclamation strictly prohibited all white settlement in this region, formalizing the concept of Indian land titles and prohibiting the settlement on any Indian land unless it was secured by treaty or purchase. This was one of the many grievances of the 13 colonies with the Crown, and most of the land-hungry colonists east of the mountains ignored the provisions of the ordinance. On December 24, 1774, Lord Dunmore, Royal Governor of the Virginia colony, wrote to Lord Dartmouth at Williamsburg about these colonists: they do not conceive that the Government has any right to forbid their taking possession of a Vast tract of Country, either uninhabited, or which Serves only as a Shelter to a few Scattered Tribes of Indians. Nor can they be easily brought to entertain any belief of the permanent obligation of Treaties made with those People, whom they consider, as but little removed from the brute Creation (Thwaites and Kellogg 1905:371–372).

Since their arrival in North America, the British had a different relationship with the natives than the French or Spanish. The governments of the

Figure 1. America’s thirteen colonies and the Proclamation Line of 1763. National Atlas of the United States, United States Department of the Interior, 2002.

latter two nations kept a tight rein on their colonists and enforced strict policies on who could settle and where. In addition, French and Spanish colonization was largely for control of territories for exploitation of raw materials; thus, their policies firmly centered on trading and peaceful relations with the Indians. Colonists from the British Isles, on the other hand, were primarily interested in land for individual ownership, and for the most part, did not have the close relationship with the Indians as the French or Spanish. And although the British government attempted to control the interaction between their colonists and the natives, their regulations were either misunderstood or simply ignored. In 1763, the Cherokee claimed what is now East and Middle Tennessee, and parts of North Carolina, South Carolina, Kentucky, and Virginia. Adding to this explosive mix, the Creek, Chickasaw, and Shawnee also claimed 6

The Advancing Banner of a Greedy Host

parts of Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia, and Alabama. In 1768, John Stuart, 2 the British Indian Superintendent of the Southern Department, attempted to alleviate the clash between the flood of settlers and the Cherokee who were mostly concentrated in what is now East Tennessee, northern Georgia, and the mountains of North Carolina by negotiating the Treaty of Hard Labor. According to the treaty, the Cherokee gave up their claims to what is now western Virginia and West Virginia. The same year, English settlers began staking claims on the Watauga River in present-day upper East Tennessee. Although they believed that they were in Virginia, which was theoretically open land for settlement, they were actually in the western territory of the colony of North Carolina since the line between Virginia and North Carolina had not yet been surveyed that far west. This constituted one of the first major violations of the Proclamation of 1763. Also, when the treaty line was finally extended further west in 1771, it was done so to accommodate these settlers on what was actually Cherokee land (Finger 2001:42–43). Although some of these squatters moved off Indian land, many settlers negotiated leases with the Cherokee called the Articles of Friendship. These were ten-year leases on land that the Americans were settling in the Watauga Valley in 1772 (Nance 2004). These fluid treaty lines and leases with the Cherokee naturally caused consternation for the Indians since the flood of settlers often overstepped the boundaries outlined in these agreements. In March 1775 at the Treaty of Sycamore Shoals, Cherokee chiefs Little Carpenter (Attakullakulla) and The Raven (Savanucha or Coronoh) sold the entire tract between the Ohio River and the southern watershed of the Cumberland and Watauga rivers to land speculator and judge Richard Henderson of the Transylvania Company (Govan and Livingood 1977:27; Nance 2004:18). Another older and highly regarded Cherokee chief, Oconostota, apparently fearing a renewal of war with the settlers and the extinction of his tribe, gave a prophetic speech at the signing of the treaty which said in part: It was once hoped that they [the white people] would not be willing to travel beyond the mountains, so far from the ocean on which their commerce was carried on, and their connections maintained with the nations of Europe. But now that fallacious hope had vanished; they had passed the mountains and settled upon the Cherokee lands, and wished to have their usurpations sanctioned by the confirmation of a treaty. When that shall be 2. Stuart, a career British military officer, was highly respected by the Crown and the Cherokees who adopted him as a member of the Cherokee Nation.

The Advancing Banner of a Greedy Host

7

obtained, the same encroaching spirit will lead them upon other lands of the Cherokees. New cessions will be applied for, and finally, the country which the Cherokee and their forefathers had so long occupied, would be called for, and the small remnant which may exist of this nation, once so great and so formidable, will be compelled to seek a retreat in some far-distant wilderness, there to dwell for a short space of time, before they would again behold the advancing banners of the same greedy host, who, not being able to point out any further retreat for the miserable Cherokees, would then proclaim the extinction of the whole race (Ramsey 1853:118).

Not only was the Treaty of Sycamore Shoals illegal according to the stipulations of the Proclamation of 1763, but the Kentucky lands had also been claimed by the Shawnee who had been forced to give them up after their defeat at the Battle of Point Pleasant on October 10, 1774, which ended Lord Dunmore’s War between the Shawnee and the Virginia colonists. The Shawnee continued to be belligerent since they did not accept this coerced agreement. A major schism also occurred in the Cherokee Nation when a young firebrand, Dragging Canoe (Tsu-gun-sini),3 protested the sale at Sycamore Shoals and warned the settlers of reprisals in this “dark and bloody ground” (Govan and Livingood 1977:27). Another dissenter was Cherokee chief Uskwaliguta, called “Hanging Maw” by the whites who later became a friend of the settlers in what was to become the Southwest Territory (Cox 1999:164, 172). The problem of land cession in North America centered on the Europeans and Indians’ different concepts of land ownership and utilization. In Native American culture, an individual could not buy or sell land. Even the tribe, who “owned” or perhaps better “controlled” the land on which they resided could not transfer the sole ownership of their land, nor could individual chiefs who often did not speak for the entire tribe. As anthropologist Harold Driver (1969:481) points out: The Indians of the . . . East had a mixed economy in which hunting and fishing commonly provided as much as half of the diet, and in some cases even more. Population was sparse, and the 3. Probably the most feared Cherokee warrior on the late eighteenth-century Tennessee frontier, Dragging Canoe was born about 1740 in one of the Overhill towns. Accompanying a war party as a youth, he single-handedly dragged a heavy dugout war canoe over a portage with the adult warriors shouting “Tsi yu Gansi ni” which means “he is dragging the canoe.” He remained firmly opposed to Indian land cession all his life, dying in the Chickamauga Lookout Town, March 1, 1792 (Evans 1977).

8

The Advancing Banner of a Greedy Host

areas farmed were a very small fraction of the total landscape. The English colonists tended to regard all land not occupied by Indian farms or houses as open territory to be appropriated by them at will. The result was a series of clashes over land that is still going on today, although now much hedged by legal red tape.

The great Cherokee orator Old Tassel expressed it even more clearly from his heart in the “Cherokee Reply to the Commissioners of North Carolina and Virginia, 1777”: “Again, were we to inquire by what law or authority you set up a claim I say nature and the law of nations, and they are both against you” (American State Papers, Indian Affairs, 1785, Vol. I ). Before the late eighteenth century, the Cherokee had no centralization of power. Each town was politically independent, held together by a common culture, language, and history. Europeans, however, tended to treat the Cherokee as a “nation” seeking a centralized authority with whom to deal. As the eighteenth century progressed, a centralized tribal council was formed, based on the town council model. However, a weakness of this tribal council was the control of the young warriors. With the opening of Kentucky for settlement and the onset of the Revolutionary War, the tribe was split between the older, traditional war leaders and the young warriors (Perisco 1979:95–98). Another problematic factor was the burgeoning fur trade between the Indians and the settlers. While the native people had traded with one another for thousands of years, the insatiable desire for furs by the Europeans caused the Indians to go further and further afield to obtain pelts. This caused disputes among the Indians as well as between the Indians and settlers when tribes laid claims to areas that originally were not within their traditional homeland.4 Old Tassel perhaps most eloquently stated the difference between the white settlers and the Indians when he said: The great God of Nature has placed us in different situations. It is true that he has endowed you with many superior advantages; but he has not created us to be your slaves. We are a separate people! He has given each their lands, under distinct considerations and circumstances; he has stocked yours with cows, ours with buffaloe; yours with hog, ours with bear; yours with sheep,

4. Various tribal claims to Kentucky are a good case in point. During the so-called “Beaver Wars” of the mid-seventeenth century, the Iroquois Confederacy drove the Shawnee out of Kentucky. The Iroquois then claimed this area by right of conquest but ceded it to the British in 1768 under the Treaty of Fort Stanwix (Hinderaker 1997: 14–20). Before this, the Cherokee claimed this area by driving the Shawnee beyond the Ohio River (Woodward 1963: 58).

The Advancing Banner of a Greedy Host

9

ours with deer. He has, indeed, given you the advantage in this, that your cattle are tame and domestic while ours are wild and demand not only a larger space for range, but art to hunt and kill them; they are, nevertheless as much our property as other animals are yours, and ought not to be taken away without our consent, or for something equivalent (Williams 1944:176–178).

Four Indian tribes were engaged with the white settlers in what is now East Tennessee in the eighteenth century. These were the Creek, Chickasaw, Shawnee, and Cherokee. Only the Cherokee lived permanently in this region. While the details are problematical, some archaeologists believe that they lived in the mountains of North Carolina and eastern Tennessee for thousands of years (Dickens 1979; Keel 1976). The Creek lived in northern Georgia and northern Alabama but during the eighteenth century joined the Cherokee in attacking the Tennessee frontier settlements. They spoke a language in the Muskogean family which was related to Chickasaw but was mutually unintelligible, similar to the relationship of English and German in the Indo-European language family. Northern Mississippi and west Tennessee was the home of the Chickasaw, but this tribe was in close contact with the Middle and East Tennessee settlers in the late eighteenth century and generally considered friends of the Euro Americans. The Shawnee spoke an Algonkian language, which was widespread in the Northeast and Midwest. Some apparently had lived earlier in the Cumberland Valley of Tennessee and Kentucky, but by the later eighteenth century the Shawnee were centered north of the Ohio River in what is now the state of Ohio. The Shawnee also joined the Cherokee and Creek in attacking white settlements in Middle and East Tennessee. The Cherokee, speaking a language related to that spoken by the Northeastern Iroquoian people, originally were located in upper East Tennessee and western North Carolina, later moving into northern Georgia and northern Alabama. The Cherokee called themselves “Tsalagi.” Some scholars believe the name Cherokee comes from the Choctaw word cha-la-kee, which means “people of the mountains.” Excavation of prehistoric Indian sites on the Appalachian Summit in the 1970s indicated that the Cherokee had lived in this area for thousands of years (Dickens 1979). While more recent archaeological research suggests that the cultural sequence in this area is more complex than previously thought (Ward and Davis 1999), there is little doubt that the Cherokee lived here in the prehistoric past. All four tribes lived in permanent villages and practiced farming. By the late eighteenth century, they were raising the same crops and livestock as the white settlers. However, hunting, fishing, and gathering wild plant foods were still crucial elements in their diet, and they all claimed what they called vast 10

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“hunting grounds.” These lands were generally devoid of human habitation and were the prime source of contention between the Europeans and Indians since the former considered these “vacant” lands open for settlement. A good example of one of these “vast hunting grounds” was the area that is now eastern and central Kentucky, West Virginia, and Middle Tennessee. These hunting grounds were also fought over by the four tribes who were often enemies, which worked to the Europeans’ advantage. In 1755, the Cherokee fought a bitter war with the Creek nation, temporarily driving the latter from northern Georgia (Hoig 1998:26). Earlier, the Chickasaw and the Cherokee cooperated to drive the Shawnee out of the Cumberland Valley of Middle Tennessee in 1715 and again in 1745 (Burt and Ferguson 1973:41). In 1795, the Creek and Chickasaw went to war, and the latter tribe was actually assisted by the Cumberland settlers in defeating the Creeks (Haywood 1823:148–150). Old animosities die hard, and it was only when these tribes realized that they were losing their homelands to the flood of Old World settlers did they decide to work together, sometimes reluctantly, and usually too late. The beginning of the Revolutionary War further inflamed the growing conflict between the Indians and the white settlers west of the Appalachians. Most of the southern tribes allied themselves with the British against the colonists since the British seemed more concerned with their land claims, and the Indians were reluctant to lose access to the cheap and plentiful British trade goods. In April 1776, British officials including Henry Stuart’s brother and Alexander Cameron met with the Cherokee at the Overhill capital of Chota and asked them not to attack the white settlements until the Americans had been warned to move back within the treaty boundaries. However, the Indians received guns and ammunition and were told if they did strike they were supposed to coordinate their attacks with the British army offensive in the southern colonies (Nance 2004:19). Cameron, resident deputy with the Cherokee and Dragging Canoe’s adopted brother, warned the Indians that any town trading with the colonists would receive no supplies or ammunition from the British (Govan and Livingood 1977:28). Hearing that a large American army was assembling to attack the Overhill5 towns, the Indians decided to go on the offensive in July 1776, when warriors led by Dragging Canoe of Mialoquo, Old Abram of Chilhowee, and The 5. At the time of the Revolution, the Cherokee were divided into three geographical divisions: the Lower towns in northwest South Carolina, the Middle, Out, and Valley towns in the Appalachian Mountains of western North Carolina, and the Overhill towns, located west (or over) the Appalachians in East Tennessee. While sharing the same culture, these divisions generally acted autonomously with the white settlers. After the Revolution, the tribe was pushed into northern Georgia where a large group of settlements was found on the upper Coosa River and its tributaries (Mooney 1975: 178).

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Raven of Chota left their towns in the Little Tennessee Valley and launched a three-prong attack on the Watauga and Nolichucky settlements. Some historians see this as the beginning of the Chickamauga War (Dixon 1976:38). Dragging Canoe and his young warriors, still seething over what they saw as a sellout at Sycamore Shoals, wanted to drive the Wataugans back behind the Proclamation Line of 1763. The American settlers never really trusted their closest neighbors, the Overhill Cherokee, after that fateful decision. Dragging Canoe’s targets were the Holston settlements and Eaton’s Station near Long Island. Old Abram failed to capture the fort in the Watauga settlements, and although The Raven raided far into Virginia, he only destroyed some isolated cabins. Dragging Canoe fought a pitched battle at Eaton’s Station where he was badly wounded and eventually withdrew (Evans 1977:180–182). As Nance (2004:17) succinctly explains, fighting between the Indians and the Euro-American settlers went in cycles. Indian attacks would be quickly followed by retaliatory strikes by the settler militia, after which the Indians would sue for a temporary peace accompanied by the cession of more Indian land. Retribution by the settlers was usually short in coming. On August 2, 1776, Col. Andrew Williamson led over 1,500 South Carolina militia against the Lower Cherokee towns, defeating a large group of Indians and Tories at Oconoree under the leadership of Alexander Cameron. Colonel Williamson went on to burn six additional Lower Cherokee towns (Ramsey 1853:163). In September, a North Carolina force under the command of Gen. Griffith Rutherford decimated the Middle Valley towns. On October 1, the combined forces of Col. William Christian’s Virginia militia and William Russell’s Virginia Rangers marched on the Overhill towns. Entering the Little Tennessee Valley unopposed, Christian negotiated a truce in the capital of Chota with chiefs Attakullakulla and Oconostota. Dragging Canoe refused to negotiate with the Virginians, and they burned the towns of Great Tellico, Citico, Mialoquo, Chilhowee, and Toqua (Schroedl and Russ 1986). General Rutherford’s army destroyed: thirty-six towns in all . . . the corn cut down or trampled under the hoofs of the stock driven into the fields for that purpose, and the stock itself killed or carried off . . . the Cherokee made but poor resistance and fled with their women and children into the fastnesses of the Great Smoky mountains, leaving their desolated fields and smoking towns behind them (Mooney 1975:39).

Describing these devastating attacks on the Cherokee towns, Mooney (1975:41) relates:

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From incidental notices in narratives written by some of the participants, we obtain interesting side-lights on the merciless character of this old border warfare. In addition to the ordinary destruction of war—the burning of towns, the wasting of fruitful fields, and the killing of the defenders—we find that every Indian warrior killed was scalped, when opportunity permitted; women as well as men, were shot down and afterward ‘helped to their end’; and prisoners taken were put up at auction as slaves when not killed on the spot.

The Overhill Cherokee, overwhelmed by this wanton destruction in the fall when their crops were ripe and ready for harvest forced Dragging Canoe and his militants to retreat south and sue for peace. A year later, formal negotiations took place between the Cherokee and the Virginia colony at the Treaty of Long Island of the Holston on July 20, 1777. This involved a large chunk of land in what is now the northeastern tip of Tennessee and a huge area in present-day North Carolina. Many Cherokee, however, did not attend the treaty including chiefs Dragging Canoe and Hanging Maw who believed that the British would crush the rebellion and restore Indian land through the provisions of the Proclamation Treaty of 1763 (Downes 1937:36). But peace was fleeting as Dragging Canoe’s warriors and his Creek and Shawnee allies continued to harass the Tennessee and Kentucky settlers. Dragging Canoe had now established himself in a strong position on the Tennessee River around what later became Chattanooga and adjacent north Georgia. They called themselves Ani-yunwiya, which means “real people” to distinguish themselves from the Overhill, and became known as the Chickamauga Cherokee (Allen 1935). In 1782 they moved deeper into the fastness of the Cumberland Plateau and established what were called the Five Lower towns (Allen 1935). On December 29, 1778, the British captured Savannah, Georgia, and emboldened by this victory the Chickamauga became increasingly hostile. With their Shawnee allies they intensified their raids on the Tennessee and Kentucky settlements. Supplies to carry on the war against the Americans flowed in from Spanish Pensacola. On one occasion 300 horses carried goods valued at 20,000 pounds to the Chickamauga villages (Govan and Livingood 1977:29). In retaliation for the burning of cabins and scalping of victims on the North Carolina and Virginia frontier, in 1779 Col. John Montgomery and Col. Evan Shelby were ordered to raise troops for a preemptive strike against the Chickamauga towns (Ramsey 1853:186–187). According to Ramsey (1853:187–188) the army gathered at the mouth of Big Creek in what is now

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Hawkins County, Tennessee. There they built pirogues and canoes from the forest, and on April 10, 1779, they began their amphibious raid in what is called the Chickamauga expedition. Catching the Indians completely by surprise, the Cherokee, after a brief resistance, abandoned their villages and fled into the mountains. Shelby and Montgomery burned 11 of their villages, destroyed thousands of bushels of corn, and captured a supply of Spanish goods that had been provided by British agents. Sinking their boats and the supplies that they contained, the army returned home on foot. At the same time, Virginia and North Carolina began to survey their future state lines in the upper Tennessee Valley. Now a boundary commissioner, Richard Henderson, who had purchased a large tract in what is now Middle Tennessee north of the Cumberland River, wanted to know if this area was in Virginia or North Carolina. After the line was established, the settlers north of the Holston River and those families settled in Carter’s Valley discovered that they were in North Carolina and not in Virginia as they previously thought (Nance 2004:24). Consequently, they were violating the Treaty of Hard Labor, signed almost a decade earlier. Not that it really mattered to the North Carolina government, which proceeded to organize the area into Sullivan County in 1779. Initially, this probably provided the settlers with some degree of security since they would (theoretically) now be protected under a more organized state organization. The cycle of offensive attacks now shifted back to the Cherokee. After Maj. Patrick Ferguson’s defeat at King’s Mountain on October 7, 1780, Lord Cornwallis urged Thomas Brown,6 the new British Indian superintendent, to urge the Cherokee to attack the American frontier settlements in North Carolina with the continued promise of British trade goods (Nance 2004:25). This appealed to the Overhill Cherokee who had been relatively peaceful since their defeat in 1776 and anticipated the resupply of British goods. At a council meeting at Long Island in May, 1779, Hanging Maw complained that “We are in Want of Ammunition, Paint & other necessary Goods” (Downes 1937:37). Led by The Raven, Cherokee warriors from the Little Tennessee Valley towns joined the Chickamauga in their attacks on the Americans at the Watauga and Nolichucky settlements. The North Carolinians were duly alarmed.

6. British agent John Stuart died in March 1779, and was replaced by Alexander Cameron who now dealt with the Choctaw and Chickasaw and Lt. Col. Thomas Brown who became the Cherokee agent.

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John Sevier

What these nervous North Carolinians needed was a charismatic commander who would snatch the offensive back from the angry Cherokee. Such a man was John Sevier, a Virginian nicknamed “Nolichucky Jack” by his admirers and derisively called “Little John” by his Indian antagonists, although Sevier was far from diminutive in stature or prominence. He was said to be “a tall man . . . well built, blue eyed and fair skinned, with firm chiseled features” (Creekmore 1976:76). John Haywood said that Sevier “had a friendly demeanor, a pleasant address, and, to crown all, he was a soldier. . . . The beloved man of the populace is always distinguished by a nickname: Nolichucky Jack was the one which they gave him” (1823:202). These descriptions match the portrait (figure 2), showing a commanding and no nonsense grassroots leader, who like George Washington, turned heads every time he entered a crowded room. Unlike Washington, however, Sevier came from humble beginnings, and his military prowess was honed leading what were often poorly trained militia troops against the Indians. Growing up in the Shenandoah Valley, where Sevier was born in 1745, he farmed, traded in furs, and owned a tavern, but it was as a citizen soldier that Sevier found his calling. By age 27, he was appointed captain in the Virginia militia (Gilmore 1887:14). In 1774 the Shawnee and their Mingo allies, still claiming the western Virginia area7 as part of their land, began attacking settlements all along the Virginia frontier. Gov. John Murray, Earl of Dunmore, immediately ordered the militia and volunteers to march to the Ohio River and force the Indians back to Ohio in what was called Lord Dunmore’s War (Ramsey 1853:114). On October 10, 1774, they fought the Battle of Point Pleasant at the confluence of the Kanawha and Ohio rivers, in which the Shawnee and their allies under the leadership of Cornstalk were soundly defeated. Lord Dunmore then marched into the Ohio country where he concluded the Treaty of Camp Charlotte, and the Shawnee gave up their claim to the land south of the Ohio River. John Sevier participated in this battle with his younger brother, Valentine Sevier, and companion Tennesseans James Robertson, Evan Shelby, and Shelby’s son Isaac (Simpson-Poffenbarger and Nye 1909:53). Point Pleasant was apparently Sevier’s first major open battle with the Indians, and it is likely Evan Shelby’s flanking movement, which turned the tide of the battle

7. What is now largely eastern Kentucky. The Mingo were Iroquoian-speaking tribes who migrated to Ohio in the mid-eighteenth century.

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John Sevier. Courtesy of the East Tennessee Historical Society.

(Simpson-Poffenbarger 1909:45), was not forgotten by Sevier in his later tactics against the Cherokee. The battle raged for three hours before the Indians finally retreated, which also served as a wake-up call to the young John Sevier that these warriors were not pushovers in a direct confrontation. Sevier acquired land grants in the Watauga Valley in 1775, and he and his wife Sarah Hawkins and their seven children moved to the Watauga settlements in 1776 (Driver 1972:10). He had become familiar with these settlements through his trading connections (Alderman 1970:36). In the summer of 1776, the Overhill Cherokee warned the Wataugans of an imminent attack. Lieutenant Sevier was at the partially built but defensible Fort Lee on Big Limestone Creek but was unable to convince the garrison to stay and fight. They fled northward to Sycamore Shoals and Fort Watauga (Fort Caswell) where they took their stand (Dixon 1976:45). It was there in July 1776, that he teamed up with his old compatriot James Robertson as the officers in charge of the defense of the Watauga fort from the attack by Old Abram and his warriors. According to Ramsey (1853:156–158) one hundred and fifty settlers were crowded within the fort. Seventy-five of that number were from Fort Lee and the Nolichucky Valley. The accurate fire of these riflemen under the 16

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command of Sevier and Robertson repulsed the Indians with considerable loss (Williams 1974:45). Unlike most failed assaults against a fortified position, however, the Cherokee did not immediately withdraw but surrounded the fort for six days and “remained skulking around in the adjacent woods for twenty days” (Ramsey 1853:157). The Indians finally retreated when a relief force from Virginia was sent to the Wataugans’ aid (Haywood 1823:65). This experience appears to have had a lasting effect on John Sevier’s later tactics in fighting the Indians; if practicable, it was better to take the offensive than await attack in a poorly maintained and isolated fort. In 1779, the boundary between Virginia and North Carolina was finally established with the Watauga settlement within the territory of North Carolina. The area was organized as the county of Washington, with John Sevier being promoted as Lieutenant Colonel of the Washington County militia and Isaac Shelby as Colonel Commandant of the county. By this time, the Sevier family had moved again and were living in the Nolichucky Valley on a farm called Plum Grove (Alderman 1970:36). By 1780, the War for Independence was not going well for the Patriots in the South. It was also during that year that John Sevier’s wife Sarah Hawkins died, leaving him with ten children. After the Patriots’ defeat at Camden, South Carolina in August, British General Lord Cornwallis sent Col. Patrick Ferguson with an army of Provincials (American Loyalists, Tories, and militia) to strike the pesky Patriot settlements in the Watauga region. Learning of Ferguson’s movement, Sevier and Shelby organized an expedition of Virginia and North Carolina militia to march into the Carolina mountains and attack Ferguson before he reached Tennessee. Their roles reversed, the hunter Ferguson now became the quarry, and he took up what he thought was an unassailable position on King’s Mountain. The colonel scoffed at the idea that a band of untrained settlers in buckskin could defeat his well-armed and trained Provincials. Planning their moves, the Patriots split into two flanks or wings and surrounded the mountain, Colonel Sevier commanding the Nolichucky boys on the south flank. Their orders were simple: hold fire until you see the enemy and push to the summit as quickly as possible. The attack started at 3 p.m., October 7, with what have been called Colonel Sevier’s “Indian fighters” inching their way up behind rocks and trees until they reached the top, hitting the flank of the enemy (Alderman 1970:98). After repulsing two bayonet charges by the Loyalists, the Patriots squeezed Ferguson’s now disorganized troops between the two wings of their army. Ferguson was killed trying to escape. In a little more than an hour, 206 Provincials were killed, 128 wounded, and 648 made prisoner. The Patriot’s casualties were less than one hundred (Draper 1881). The Advancing Banner of a Greedy Host

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On his way home from the stunning victory at King’s Mountain, Sevier heard that the Cherokee were preparing to attack the frontier settlements (Ramsey 1853:262). Using the same strategy as he did at King’s Mountain, Colonel Sevier quickly organized a preemptive strike with 250 North Carolina militia against the Upper Cherokee towns in December 1780 (Nance 2004:27). Pursuing a large body of Indians across the French Broad River, he encamped on Boyd’s Creek in what is now Sevier County, Tennessee, and advanced on the Indian camp on December 16. The Indians positioned their warriors in a huge semi-circle; concealed in grass, they hoped to lure the militia in and then close in on their flanks. Like a good commander, Sevier wanted to examine the ground he chose to fight on, and catching up with his scouts he immediately noted the enemy’s threatening position. Instead of charging headlong into the trap, he attacked the forward positions of the points of the semicircle with two wings of his army until the rest of his troops came up for an all-out frontal assault (Alderman 1970:132–133). The Indians were soundly defeated. After the battle of Boyd’s Creek, Sevier’s force, now strengthened with Maj. Joseph Martin’s riflemen from Sullivan County, North Carolina, and Col. Arthur Campbell’s regiment from Virginia, marched on the Overhill towns located on the Little Tennessee River. They destroyed every town between the (Little) Tennessee and the Hiwassee rivers, then headed for the Lower Chickamauga towns, where they burned several villages and killed all the livestock they could find, and “spread over the face of the country a general devastation, from which the Indians could not recover for several years” (Ramsey 1853:265–267). Roosevelt (1889:300–304) reported that: “Of all the towns west of the mountains, only Talassee and some towns on the Coosa escaped destruction. Ten principal towns had been destroyed, over 1,000 houses, 50,000 bushels of corn were burned.” In spite of this defeat, Dragging Canoe was encouraged by the Indians’ victory over the Kentucky militia at Blue Licks, Kentucky, on August 19, 1782,8 and he continued his attacks on the Miro and North Carolina settlements from the Lower Chickamauga towns (Nance 2004:27). However, after Sevier’s raid, Dragging Canoe realized he was still vulnerable in his towns east of Lookout Mountain to North Carolina militia attacks, and in 1782 he

8. This battle between about fifty American and Canadian Loyalists and three hundred Shawnee and other Ohio Valley tribes and the Kentucky militia under the leadership of Daniel Boone, John Todd, and Stephen Trigg occurred on August 19, 1782, on the Licking River in northern Kentucky, ten months after Lord Cornwallis surrendered to the Continental army. Boone suspected that the Indians were drawing them into a trap, and after crossing the river and reaching the top of a hill, the enemy ambushed and flanked their lines. The Kentuckians were routed, Daniel Boone’s son being killed in the battle.

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moved his followers to where the Tennessee flowed through the rugged Cumberland Plateau.9 Here the irascible war leader established the “Five Lower Towns” of Crow Town, Long Island Town, Lookout Mountain Town, Nickajack Town, and Running Water Town (Allen 1935; Govan and Livingood 1977:35). Leaving Big Island on the French Broad, Sevier’s little army crossed the [Little] Tennessee River10 at Citico and engaged a council of Overhill Cherokee. They also picked up Indian guides including John Watts, who although then in the camp of the friendly Overhill, was to later become one of the most implacable enemies of the Americans. The wily Watts directed the army to the towns east of Lookout Mountain instead of to the Chickamaugas’ lair beyond the “Canyon of the Tennessee.” There they burned Settico, Vann’s, Chickamauga, and Tuskegee towns. Taunted by the defiant Cherokee from the heights of Lookout Mountain, the troops fought a brief skirmish on the boulder-strewn slopes on September 20, 1782. Taking casualties from a hidden enemy, Sevier’s forces withdrew and marched back to Washington County. This has sometimes been called the last battle of the American Revolution, fought after the victory at Yorktown (Govan and Livingood 1977:36), although as noted above hostilities continued elsewhere after the war ended. Sevier would use this experience in his later battles with the Indians choosing to never engage a dug-in and hidden enemy. In his later years as governor of Tennessee and a member of Congress from the Knoxville District, John Sevier continued to live like most of his frontier compatriots. Despite the fact that he was a strong Federalist and a member of Gov. William Blount’s land speculating cabal, Nolichucky Jack was dearly loved by the western frontiersmen he faithfully led in battle (Masterson 1954:165). Historian J. G. M. Ramsey said of him: he received his guests in the olden style of primitive hospitality and backwoods etiquette. His house was always open, and not infrequently crowded with his old soldiers and comrades in arms. A 9. Sometimes called the valley of the Tennessee, this rough stretch of water had sections with frightful names to boatmen including the “skillet,” “the boiling pot,” and a great whirlpool called the “suck.” It was not until the completion of the Hales Bar Lock and Dam in 1913 that the impounded water drowned out these dangers to navigation (Govan and Livingood 1977: 35). 10. The name Little Tennessee was first used with the name Tennessee River in 1820 to designate the river downstream from the confluence with the Little Tennessee. From this confluence upstream, the river was called the Holston to its meeting with the French Broad. Around 1880 to take advantage of Federal legislation to improve the river, the Holston became the Tennessee below the mouth of the French Broad (Davidson 1978: 8). The original names of these streams will be used here since they are found in the historic sources.

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wandering pilgrim from Natchez or the Missouri, or his countrymen from Cumberland and elsewhere, passing anywhere through the country, would find out the abode of their old captain, and was sure there to receive an old-fashioned welcome. Amongst his visitors were some of the Cherokee chiefs, with whom he recounted past success to one, and defeat and disaster to the other.

America’s Lost State

Besides protecting the frontier with an iron fist, John Sevier was also playing an important role in establishing a more organized local governmental system in the trans-Appalachian West. Ultimately, this system would guide the integration of these pioneers into the emerging United States. It has been suggested by Ramsey (1853:267) that after the peace treaty at Chota, settlers began to follow the route of Sevier’s army to the rich lower French Broad Valley. Because of this increasing settlement of their western territory and the need to raise funds to pay the Revolutionary War debt, in early 1783 the North Carolina Assembly passed the North Carolina Land Act, ceding their western territory to the United States government. Popularly called the “Land Grab Act,” it gave Congress the territory between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River, the state selling a hundred acres for ten pounds, equivalent to about five dollars in modern currency (Toomey 2002:32–33). While the law limited each entry to 5,000 acres, there were ample opportunities for fraud including combining several entries and other loopholes for limited acquisition and illegal sales (Masterson 1954:78). One enterprising group to explore this area during a relatively peaceful interlude was a party of men including James White, who in 1786 built White’s Fort or Station in what later became Knoxville, and a young surveyor, Francis Alexander Ramsey who eventually purchased a large tract around Swan Pond in what is now east Knox County (Rothrock, ed. 1946:25). Although North Carolina repealed the cession act in November 1784, the settlers in the western lands—dissatisfied with the attention the state of North Carolina was giving to these Overmountain people regarding taxes and protection from hostile Indians—attempted to form their own independent state of Franklin (Jones 2007; Williams 1924). On August 23, 1784, delegates from the western territory met in Jonesborough and declared the Washington District independent of North Carolina.11 The formation of what became 11. The Cumberland settlements in the Mero District did not join the Franklin secession.

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known as the “Lost” State of Franklin probably best summarizes the state of confusion and instability of the western frontier at this time. Leaders of this movement were John Sevier and William Blount who were land speculators, and as investors in large tracts of land in this region since 1783, they encouraged large numbers of people to stake claims there. Besides the problem that the Franklinites were technically in a state of rebellion against their parent state, this flood of settlers was trespassing on Indian land that the Cherokee believed was protected by previous treaties. Additionally, the North Carolina Assembly believed these treaties were null and void because the Cherokee had supported the British in the War for Independence (Jones 2007:47–48). These problems were summarily dismissed by such leaders as John Sevier. The Indians, however, were desperate, and the seriousness of the situation was underscored by the powerful Creek Chief Alexander McGillivray who proposed a Spanish-Indian alliance against the Americans (Randolf 1936:39–42). The federal government was slow to react to this latest threat. Unfortunately, the stated Indian policy of the State of Franklin was to relentlessly increase the area of white settlement by Franklinite supporters despite the Indian threats. The Franklinites coveted more Indian land to pay for their fledgling government, and in early 1787, the Franklin legislature passed a law that opened to settlement all of the land south of the French Broad to the Little Tennessee River, exceeding the treaty lines of Dumplin Creek and Coyatee (Ramsey 1853:361; Downes 1936:46). In June, 1785, John Sevier, elected governor of the state of Franklin, parlayed with the Cherokees for more land cessions at Hugh Henry’s Station on Dumplin Creek, a tributary of the French Broad River in what is now Sevier County. Besides Governor Sevier, the principal Cherokee signers of the treaty were Abram, Chief of Chilhowee, and Ancoo, Chief of Chota. In the treaty, the Indians gave up the land on the south side of the Holston and French Broad rivers, as far south as the ridge that divides the drainages of the Little River and the Little Tennessee River (Finger 2001:16–17; Rothrock, ed.1946:26). If legitimate, this treaty, in effect, legalized previous trespassing on Cherokee land. According to one source, however, the Cherokee thought they were only giving temporary permission for settlement. Cherokee chief Old Tassel said that the Cherokee agreed to allow the settlers to stay south of the French Broad until the head men of the Nation had been consulted (Downes 1937:42). The federal government finally acted when on November 25, 1785, they negotiated the Treaty of Hopewell with the largest southern tribes that laid out the boundaries for white settlement in Trans-Appalachia. The first signer with an X for the Cherokees was Old Tassel of Toqua, First Beloved Man, who led the counseling (Kappler, ed. 1904:Vol. II, pp. 8–11). Individual state

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treaties such as Dumplin Creek were now considered null and void. The Cherokee agreed to cease hostilities with the United States, the latter restoring the Nolichucky line in the 1777 Treaty of Long Island (Downes 1936:43). However, the status of the settlers on the north bank of the French Broad was still an unsolved problem as far as the Indians were concerned, and the Americans were particularly alarmed by an article in the Treaty that stated if the Indians found a trespasser on their land they could “punish him or not as they please” (Symonds 1976:30). Considering themselves abandoned by the federal government, the North Carolina and Franklin assemblies immediately condemned the Treaty of Hopewell. The Franklinites felt that the treaty was a “betrayal,” and land-hungry settlers continued to pour into the upper French Broad Valley and claim tribal land (Jones 2007:57–58). Furthermore, the treaty put the Franklinites in an even more precarious position since they now were not protected by either the North Carolina militia or the U. S. army. It also ended any loyalty that the settlers may have had left for the federal government, and they increasingly turned to following the dictates of their local leaders. The Indian response was to begin attacking settlements in the disputed area. White settlers, most being remote from immediate military assistance, retreated to the more fortified stations. The Indian agent of North Carolina described the situation as follows: Could a diagram be drawn, accurately designating every spot signalized by an Indian massacre, surprise, or depredation, or courageous attack, defense pursuit, or victory by the whites or station, or fort or battlefield, or personal encounter, the whole of that section of the country would be studded with delineations of such incidents. Every spring, every ford, every path, every farm, every trail, every house nearly, in its first settlement, was once the scene of danger, exposure, attack, exploit, achievement, death (Mooney 1982:64).

Governor Sevier continued his policy of immediate retaliation on the Cherokee towns. In spring 1786, 160 mounted infantry under his command met at Houston’s Station, crossed the Tennessee River, and destroyed three Valley towns along the Hiwassee River, killing 15 warriors (Ramsey 1853:341–346; Downes 1936:43–44). Following up their attack and finding an obvious trail of the retreating Indians, the army soon realized a large Indian force led by John Watts was waiting in ambush in a narrow passage between large boulders and outnumbered them. After a council of officers, they abandoned their pursuit and returned to Franklin (Haywood 1823:176; Ramsey 1853:341). While being a daring fighter who met the Indians head22

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on in battle, John Sevier was also cautious, determining the strength of the Indians and their position when attacking as he had on the slopes of Lookout Mountain four years before. Despite the growing schism between the state of Franklin and the North Carolina and U. S. governments, Gov. John Sevier appointed a commission to negotiate a second treaty with Old Tassel and Hanging Maw of the Cherokee Nation. Concluded on August 31, 1786, at the town of Coytoy or Coyatee, the treaty was a confirmation of the Treaty of Dumplin Creek, and the commission threatened to destroy any Indian town that harbored the murderer of a white settler unless the guilty person was handed over to the Americans (Ramsey 1853:345). The state of Franklin also informed the Indians that the whole country north of the [Little] Tennessee River to the Cumberland Mountains had been given to them by the state of North Carolina, and they intended to take it “by the sword, which is the best right to all countries.” Nonetheless, all of this land was within Indian territory in the Treaty of Hopewell signed only the year before (Ramsey 1853:343–346; Mooney 1982:64). The Cherokee believed that the harsh Treaty of Coytoy had been forced upon them, and in May 1788, a party of Cherokee12 killed 11 members of the John Kirk family who lived on the Little River 12 miles southwest of Knoxville (Ramsey 1853:419–420). John Kirk, who was away from home when his family was murdered, swore “blood revenge.” During the retaliatory raids led by Col. John Sevier on the Cherokee towns in the Little Tennessee Valley, Maj. James Hubbard enticed the Cherokee chiefs Old Tassel and Abram and three other Cherokees to a parley under a flag of truce. Sequestered in a house in the village of Chilhowee, the Indians were tomahawked to death by Kirk (Ramsey 1853:420). Colonel Sevier was absent when this act of perfidy occurred, some say conveniently (Jones 2007:58). The Maryland Gazette reported this atrocity in the sternest words: Indian chiefs remarkable for their good offices and fidelity, in the darkest situation of our affairs, raised a flag on their part, and came out; they came under the protection of a flag of truce, a protection inviolable even amongst the most barbarous people, sacred by the law and custom of nations, and by the consent of mankind in every age: But under this character, and with the sacred protection of a flag, they were attacked and murdered (Hoig 1998:72). 12. The Overhill claimed that the Creek and Chickamauga were responsible for the murder of the Kirk family. This appears to be a reoccurring mistake since the former were the closest Indians to the white settlements.

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In a letter dated October 17, 1788, John Kirk wrote John Watts the following: I have heard of your letter lately sent to Chudkey (Chucky) John—You are mistaken in blaming him for the death of your uncle. Listen now to my story. For days and months, Cherokee Indians, little and big, women and children, have been fed and treated kindly by my mother. When all was peace with the Tenasee towns, Slim Tom, with a party of Satigo and other Cherokee Indians, murdered my mother, brothers and sisters, in cold blood, when the children just before was playful about them as friends, and the very instant some of them received the bloody tomahawk they were smiling in their faces—This begun the war, and since I have taken ample satisfaction, and can now make peace, except with Slim Tom. Our beloved men, the Congress tells us to be at peace—I will listen to their advice, if no more blood is shed by the Cherokees; and the head men of your nation take care to prevent such beginnings of bloodshed in all times to come. But if they do not, your people may feel something more, to keep up the remembrance of JOHN KIRK, jun., Captain of the Bloody Rangers (Hoig 1998:278–279).

As related by Kirk, the murders of Old Tassel and Abram and this latest round of frontier violence were strongly condemned by the Confederation Congress (Jones 2007:58). Based on requirements in the Articles of Confederation, North Carolina’s determination to regain control of their western lands, the intrigue between Franklin and the Spanish as well as the Franklinites’ treatment of the Indians, and the admittance of Franklin as a separate state was denied by the Confederation Congress. Nevertheless, the Franklinites continued to exercise the powers of a legitimate de facto state by conducting negotiations with the Indians and organizing punitive expeditions against them (Jones 2007:58). The Cherokee declared open warfare on the Franklin settlers after the brutal murder of Old Tassel and Abram. To establish a united front against the Americans, the Overhill and Chickamauga Cherokee attempted to consolidate their forces to attack the frontier settlements in the Franklin region. To counter this threat, Gen. Joseph Martin assembled a militia expedition at White’s Fort, and in September 1788, launched a pre-emptive strike deep into Chickamauga territory. The senior militia officers unanimously elected Martin the commander of the expedition. J. G. M. Ramsey says that Colonel Sevier was in command, but a young militia volunteer in the expedition, George Christian, does not mention Sevier in his eyewitness account of the 24

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clash with the Cherokees (Christian 1978). Samuel Cole Williams says this was an affront to the colonel since many of the men came from Sevier’s militia units and Martin reluctantly accepted the command. Perhaps this had something to do with Sevier’s possible complicity in the murder of Old Tassel and other irresponsible actions as a self-styled “Indian fighter” (Williams 1924:215; Christian 1978). It was said that the governor of North Carolina had issued a warrant for Sevier’s arrest after he learned of the murder of Old Tassel (Brown 1938:278). Haywood’s (1823:196) further comments on Sevier’s role in the murder of Old Tassel may also explain his absence from command: Considering existing circumstances, he could not maintain as much authority now, as at other times; he was routed, proscribed and driven from his home; he took shelter among the frontier inhabitants, who now composed his little army; he relied on them for safety; they consulted only the exasperated feelings of the moment, and had never been instructed in the rules of refined warfare.

Martin’s troops attempted to reach the Five Lower towns by a route through the rugged canyon of the Tennessee River. When the militia advanced on a narrow path along a cliff, the Chickamaugans ambushed them from the heights. Christian recounts the encounter: “the Indians . . . fell back and chose a still more favorable position where they awaited us, from where they gave us a most galling fire. . . . We had three men killed and five wounded” (1978:52). Martin retreated down the mountain; the Indians following the militia who were in a “mutinous state” harassed them all of the way back to the Holston, leaving this large Indian force south of the [Little] Tennessee River (Christian 1978; Ramsey 1853:423; Rothrock, ed. 1946:30). Emboldened by Martin’s retreat, Dragging Canoe mobilized an army of 3,000 Indians including 1,000 Creeks, and hurled these warriors into the Holston Valley, raiding settlements as far as western Virginia (Nance 2004:30; Wilkins 1970:17). In October 1788, over one thousand Indians crossed the [Little] Tennessee,13 one contingent of 300 warriors moving on White’s Fort, their main objective (Nance 2004:30; Ramsey 1853:518). The Indians planned their raid on the settlement that they called the “Place of the Mulberry Grove” while Martin’s troops were still away. But according to Wilkins (1970:17), Whites Fort was spared the attack and the Indians retreated toward their 13. This Indian army was said to include 1,200 Cherokee and 400 Creek. It included a new contingent in Indian warfare on the Southwest frontier—several cavalry companies from the Creek Nation commanded by white men (Downes 1937: 49).

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villages due to a disagreement between the war leaders, John Watts, The Glass, Bloody Fellow, and Categisgy. Based on the affiliation of their leaders, this was a Chickamauga operation. After leaving the Knoxville vicinity, the Indians attacked Gillespie’s Station below the mouth of Little River on the Holston on October 17, 1788, when the men had left the protection of the stockade and were working their fields. Several of the settlers were captured, and after refusing to surrender, the Indians then stormed the station itself (Wilkins 1970:17). Ramsey described this attack: The few men in the fort made a gallant resistance; but, being overpowered by numbers, and their ammunition being expended, the Indians rushed over the walls, or rather the roofs of the cabins which made a part of the fort. Great was the horror of the scene that then ensued. The best accounts say our loss is twenty-eight persons, mostly women and children, as several of the men belonging to the fort, were abroad at the time (1853:518).

After the storming of Gillespie’s Station, Bloody Fellow14 left a note for Sevier and Martin suggesting that they did not intend to kill women and children: The Bloody Fellow’s talk is that he is now upon his own ground. He is not like you are; for you kill women and children and Bloody Fellow does not . . . you beguiled the head man (Tassel) that was your friend and wanted to keep peace; but you began it, and this is what you get for it. When you move off the land then we will make peace. . . . Five thousand men is our number.

14. One of the first Cherokee leaders to follow Dragging Canoe into his mountain fastness below Chattanooga, Bloody Fellow (Nenetooyah) was a formidable enemy of the settlers although he placed his mark on the Treaty of the Holston. Shortly thereafter, he went to see President Washington in Philadelphia to complain that they had been tricked into signing the treaty. Signing the revised treaty after the government raised the annuity to $1,500 a year, he was given a new name by the President, General Eskaqua (Clear Sky) and according to Hoig (1998: 76) left Philadelphia “fully satisfied and pleased.” This sly war chief, however, continued to play both sides by wooing both the Americans and the Spanish (Woodward 1963: 113). Early a strong opponent of ceding Cherokee land, Clear Sky was one of the signers of the early-nineteenth-century treaties that removed these Indians from their homeland in Tennessee.

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One would think a major campaign would have been launched on the Chickamauga towns, but for some reason, the Indians did not return to their hometowns. Ramsey simply states that “General Sevier made a vigorous pursuit, overtook, and re-captured the prisoners” (1853:518). A more detailed account of the recapture of the prisoners is given by Wilkins (1970:18) who says that after the Indians went into winter quarters on what is now South Indian Creek in Unicoi County, Tennessee, they were surrounded by Sevier and the militia on a cold day in January 1789. In desperate hand-to-hand combat, the Indians were soundly defeated. All of the prisoners were rescued, safe and unmolested. A fragile truce was declared after these bloody retaliatory strikes. Besides a certain weariness of the bloodshed in both parties, events took place on a national scale that influenced the relationship between the Indians and the American settlers. A Congressional Proclamation of September 1, 1788, forbade unwarranted attacks on the Cherokee and enjoined all settlers south of the French Broad to depart or remain “at their peril” (American State Papers, Indian Affairs, 1788, Vol. I:478; Downs 1937:49). After the Constitutional Convention in 1787 failed to recognize the state of Franklin, the attempt at secession finally faded away. By this time, most Franklinites felt that they would be better off if they returned to the mother state for protection. Two years later, the state of North Carolina passed an act of secession similar to the one the state formerly passed and then repealed five years earlier, making the old Southwest Territory a federal territory. However, despite these major changes that affected Indian affairs, the central government could not enforce the Treaty of Hopewell. Although the Creeks of Georgia were included in the Treaty of Hopewell, the federal government signed a separate treaty with the tribe in July 1790, who, with the Chickamauga, were continuing their bloody sorties into the Southwest Territory. The Treaty of New York, negotiated with a contingent of Creek chiefs led by the cunning and powerful Alexander McGillivray, son of a Scotch trader and Creek woman, provided a payment in perpetuity for Indian land and the pledge that “all animosities were to cease” between the Creeks and the United States (Callahan 1958:334; Ethridge 2003:199–202). Invited to New York by the recently appointed Secretary of War, Henry Knox, 30 principal chiefs of the Creek Nation dressed in full Indian regalia were feted in a round of gala events including a military review, the latter possibly to intimidate these visiting Indians rather than entertain them. Their principal chief, McGillivray, was rewarded by being made a brigadier general in the American army swearing allegiance and obedience to the United States. The Creeks must have been laughing as they left New York since the treaty was soon repudiated by the pro-Spanish McGillivray. After McGillivray’s death three years later, The Advancing Banner of a Greedy Host

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this powerful tribe returned to their belligerent ways, knowing full well any treaty with the Americans was not worth the paper it was printed on. The Chickamauga, meanwhile, were bolstering their fighting force with the arrival of The Shawnee Warrior (Cheeseekau), accompanied by his younger brother, Tecumseh, late in 1789 to aid Dragging Canoe in his war with the Americans. By 1790, Dragging Canoe’s Running Water town included 100 Shawnee houses with some of these Indians also settled downstream at Nickajack town where the Breath was war chief (Sugden 1997:57). Cheeseekau and Tecumseh spent two years hunting and fighting with the Chickamauga. Historian John Sugden suggests that the latter’s witness to the relentless dispossession of the Cherokee as well as the Shawnee may have been what sparked his belief “that a pan-Indian resistance, based upon the solidarity of all men ‘of one color,’ was both viable and necessary” (Sugden 1997:61). Tecumseh left Running Water in 1791, moving back to his home in the Northwest Territory where he was to become a heroic Indian legend. The Shawnee Warrior stayed with the Chickamauga and was killed in the attack on Buchanan’s Station the next year (King and Evans 1979:57).

William Blount

On May 26, 1790, Congress formed the U.S. Territory South of the River Ohio (known as the Southwest Territory) out of North Carolina’s cession, which would later become the state of Tennessee. President Washington sought a candidate for governor who combined administrative ability with knowledge of how to deal with the Indians. He found such a man in North Carolinian William Blount. Blount and Sevier shared leadership qualities that ultimately placed them in command of the Southwest frontier. Unlike Sevier’s hardscrabble youth, however, young William was one of three sons of prosperous plantation owner Jacob Blount who successfully dabbled in many business interests. Born in Bertie County, North Carolina, in 1749, Blount received a good education in New Bern, North Carolina, and early on he turned to politics. One historian called him “the family diplomat” (Creekmore 1976:31). William Masterson, who wrote the defining biography of Blount, used such terms as “polish,” “ingenuity,” and “geniality” to describe this candidate for governor (1954:20) (figure 3). Like John Sevier, William Blount was respected “as a man of substance and wisdom.” However: His dress and manner were in sharp contrast to those of the men who were accounted leaders in the territory he had come to 28

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Figure 3. William Blount, from a miniature painting. Courtesy of the East Tennessee Historical Society.

govern. . . . [He was] as formal in his manners as in his attire. He wore his hair powdered and clubbed; he dressed in rich fabrics, well-cut and ornamented with the added touches of gold lace and silver buckled shoes. Always the diplomat, he was courteous but noncommittal, approving but not enthusiastic, deliberate but not dilatory—in short, the very man to set a standard for a frontier area (Creekmore 1976:33).

A loyal patriot, Blount served in the thankless job of paymaster for the Continental Army in his home state. He was a member of the Continental Congress in 1783 and 1784 and served again in this body from 1786 to 1787. Blount represented North Carolina at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 and was in the North Carolina convention that ratified it in 1789. Blount appears to have been an ideal choice as governor of the Southwest Territory. But because he would also serve as superintendent of Indian Affairs, some saw a conflict of interest with his influence on the creation of treaty lines and his penchant for land speculation. A Knoxville historian called Blount a The Advancing Banner of a Greedy Host

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“frontier land gambler” (MacArthur 1976:8).Theodore Roosevelt wrote that the governor was willing to claim Indian lands and trusted to luck that the claims would be upheld if a cession was ever made (1889:27). The beginning of his preoccupation with land can probably be traced back to his brother John Gray Blount’s purchase of lands in Richard Henderson’s Transylvania Company in Kentucky (Masterson 1954:32). It was John Gray who introduced the Land Sales Act of 1783 in the North Carolina Assembly, and William supported the North Carolina cession of its western lands to the U. S. Congress, being convinced that Congressional ownership of the land would raise land prices (Masterson 1954:78, 85). Eventually, the governor personally owned over one million acres of land on the western waters that he governed and jointly shared another million or so with his brothers Thomas and John Gray Blount (Toomey 1991:25). However, buying vast acreage in the untamed West was somewhat like putting all of your financial resources in the stock market today. The primary risk was the attitude of the people who already claimed the land, and it was obviously in the governor’s best interest to keep the Indians happy. If the Indians peacefully gave up their land and settlers had legal access to it, a nice windfall profit could be made by Blount’s powdered and bewigged friends. Despite the fact that Blount was from the “civilized” eastern seaboard, he already knew the Indians of the West, as he had been an agent of North Carolina at the Treaty of Hopewell and was a signer of this treaty. Masterson (1954:109) writes: Around smoky fires, in rude shelters, in the wintry forests he had met, talked, and lived with its inhabitants, and, as he studied all men, he studied them. He observed the Indians, reserved in council or excited with rum; he noted the treaty protocol; he watched intently that key figure, the interpreter. He met chiefs, warriors, half-breeds, guides, and hunters.

It has been suggested that Blount’s later dealing with the Indians was motivated by his attempt to negotiate them out of their lands (MacArthur 1976:5). For example, although he was an agent at the Treaty of Hopewell on which the Indians sadly pinned their hopes on peace, he denounced the treaty citing the previous rights of North Carolinians to their western lands (Masterson 1954:109). He was quite aware that the treaty would lower land prices. It should be pointed out, however, that most of Blount’s land holdings were in Middle Tennessee so there is no direct evidence that he would immediately profit from vacated Indian lands around Knoxville. The governor,

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however, originally wanted to establish the territorial capital at the mouth of the Clinch and Emory rivers, which would put it equidistant between the Mero District and the East Tennessee counties (and where he also owned 5,000 acres), but the Indians would not sell the land (MacArthur 1976:6). Upon accepting the governorship, Blount established the first seat of the territory at the house of William Cobb in Sullivan County in October 1790, and two years later the permanent capital of the territory was moved to the recently established White’s Fort (Rothrock, ed. 1946:381–382). Here he purchased a one-half acre lot on April 18, 1792, from James White for $12 and built what has been called the first frame house west of the Appalachians (Warranty Deed, 1792). Before building his frame mansion, Blount lived in a log cabin on what was sometimes called his “plantation” along Second Creek on the present University of Tennessee campus.15 Always the diplomat, the governor named his new seat of government “Knoxville” in honor of Secretary of War Henry Knox who held the purse strings providing federal military protection from the Indians. There is no evidence, however, that Knox was flattered in the least or showed any favoritism in protecting the town. The 41–year-old Blount was ecstatic about his appointment. Certainly the vast extent of western land that he owned was a major factor. Also appealing was the power of treaty making that was vested in federal officials and the need to keep western taxes low. However, his main consideration was a lust for power (Masterson 1954:175). Through his many important contacts and his beguiling personality, Blount had little trouble with the nomination although there were other contenders for the governorship, including his old friend John Sevier. Unlike Sevier, however, Blount was not a tainted Franklinite and Indian fighter (Masterson 1954:176). It is interesting and fortunate that throughout their lives they remained good friends. Some believed that Sevier felt he paid his dues for his Franklin involvement by his secondary role in the territory and had his eye on the governorship of Tennessee that was soon to come (Masterson 1954:266). William Blount’s responsibilities as governor of the Southwest Territory included naming and commissioning all civil and military officers except generals, the latter being nominated to the president. He was also authorized to license politically powerful lawyers. Among his many duties, however, his most important as superintendent of Indian Affairs was making peace with the Indian tribes in the territory. This also turned out to be his most difficult

15. According to a photograph of Knoxville taken during the Civil War, Blount’s cabin on Second Creek was still standing in 1865.

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task. As an intermediary between the dictates of the War Department and the settlers, the governor had to negotiate a delicate balancing act between a nervous federal government—who urged the settlers to only take a defensive stance against Indian aggression—and a sometimes undisciplined militia —who advocated offensive action against marauding Indians. Although the militia sometimes proved to be as great a problem to Governor Blount as the Indians, only they could confront the immediate danger of attack on the territorial frontier in the absence of federal troops in the Southwest Territory in 1791.

The Territorial Militia

The militia in East Tennessee was first organized by the Watauga settlements. It was composed of adult male citizens for defense in times of emergency. This paramilitary force was usually not paid a regular salary or committed to a fixed term of service (American Heritage Dictionary 2000). After Washington County was organized by the state of North Carolina in 1777, a larger and more coordinated militia was formed. In 1792, reacting to the defeat of the Americans by the Indians of the Northwest Territory in 1791, the Second U. S. Congress was given the power to direct the state militias, and for “organizing, arming, and disciplining the militia . . . with the states retaining authority to appoint officers and to impose the training specified by Congress” (Militia Act of 1792a). The Second Militia Act of 1792 provided for the organization of state militias composed of: free able-bodied white male citizens between the ages of 18 and 45 into a local militia company overseen by the state. Members required to arm themselves at their own expense with a musket, bayonet and belt, two spare flints, a cartridge box with 24 bullets, and a knapsack. Men owning rifles were required to provide a powder horn, a quarter of a pound of gun powder, 20 rifle balls, a shooting pouch, and a knapsack (Militia Act of 1792b).

The state militia eventually morphed into the Southwest Territory militia after William Blount became governor. Some have speculated that after the arrival of Governor Blount, the new government policy of defensive war and a paid militia, who enlisted for a specific period of time, hampered the élan of the militia. Previously, although few in number, but enthusiastically volunteering like a band of brothers, they fought not for pay but for the defense of their homes (Brown 1938:308). 32

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Despite problems with enlistment, tour of duty, provisioning, and sometimes nonmilitary tactics, the territorial militia was usually an effective fighting force when confronting the Indians. Because of their inadequate training, however, they sometimes proved to be unreliable in the heat of battle. For example, their desertion from General St. Clair’s army on the Wabash in 1791 added to a tragic defeat for the Americans (Nance 2004:31). William Martin, who fought in the Indian wars during the territorial period, said that “military etiquette was but little observed . . . when fighting came on, everyone fought for himself; officers and all.” He also observed that the best officers “were those that fought best: a good deal like the Indians, leaders rather than commanders” (Martin 1842). Apparently, if their officers were brave, the enlisted men would usually follow their orders. The organization of the territorial militia was based on precedents set by earlier North Carolina statutes. Each county was divided into “bounds” in which militia captains were expected to call up a company, usually consisting of around 70 officers and men (Knoxville Gazette, March 27, 1795). Officers must come from the same county as their enlisted men. They were paid at the same rate as regular troops, six and two thirds dollars per month and were supplied ammunition (Toomey 1991:122; Whisker 1997:102). Apparently the troops carried their own weapons, a letter published in the March 27, 1795, issue of the Knoxville Gazette reporting that during the previous November the Knox County militia was “well equipped with arms, mostly good rifles.” Clothing, however, was not issued and a typical militiaman may have dressed like John Davis who deserted from company headquarters “dressed in a pair of homemade overalls and a white hunting shirt” (Knoxville Gazette, November 23, 1793). At first the soldiers were also required to provide their own rations, being reimbursed at a rate of eight cents a day, the officers twice that amount. Private contractors eventually supplied provisions (Toomey 1991:122). Because of the cost, only the minimum number of troops were usually mustered to meet a specific threat, the length of service also varied from a month to as long as 90 days. No militiaman could be arrested on the way to muster (Toomey 1991:122; Whisker 1997:102). The commander of the troops at the muster was called the “muster master” who was an inspector in charge of taking roll and making sure they had the proper equipment. Gov. William Blount commissioned Adm. David Farragut’s father, George Farragut, muster master of the Washington District on March 1, 1792 (Tennessee Historical Commission 1955:56). David recalled how fine his father looked in his coat trimmed with brass buttons, a cockaded hat of white horsehair, ruffled shirt, sword, and high polished boots (Arnow 1963:415).

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During the Indian wars, the militia seldom convened for a formal, military muster, and later the muster became more of a social gathering. Arnow says: I never found anything to indicate that anybody did anything but have a good time. Women for generations quarreled about the muster, nothing but an excuse to take a man away from home and let him run wild and drink and gamble and sometimes fight they always said. One should add that the men also sang songs and ate gingerbread (1963:414–415).

She also quotes a Dr. Drake of Kentucky who said “the learning [of military skills] was quite eclipsed by heterogeneous drama of foot racing, pony racing, wrestling, fighting, drunkenness, and general uproar” (Arnow 1963:307). According to Humes (1842:5), the Knoxville muster ground in the 1790s was west of town on or near Second Creek. Called “Scuffletown,” it was described by “an old soldier, who with a company of militia on their way to the Cumberland, encamped for six weeks in 1791 near the creek west of town— where, according to his account the soldiers wrestled so much as to give the place the name of Scuffletown which it still bears.” Concern for their families in their absence and sometimes sheer boredom were probably the major problems faced by the militia. The militia was usually not called up until after an attack had taken place, and then the troops were limited to chasing the Indians back to their villages that the militia summarily burned, most of the perpetrators escaping. Thus the militiaman seldom confronted the enemy in a pitched battle. The tactics of the militia have been described as: expert with the rifle and at home on horseback. They moved from place to place, with a rapidity that bewildered the Indians and frequently caught them off guard. The troops made forays into the distant Indian country, struck at the homes of the Indians at the first sign of an outbreak, and destroyed the towns before the warriors could return (Driver 1972:37).

In at least one instance, however, the “foray” into Indian country was apparently a large scale military campaign. This was General Martin’s campaign on the Lower Cherokee towns in September 1788, from White’s Fort (Creekmore 1989). Originally, the army was supposed to consist of 700 mounted infantry and 300 foot soldiers to go by water. Supposedly only one-half the

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men called up enlisted for service, various writers citing numbers from 374 to 800 men. However, a list of payments to men for “Serv performed agst the Chicamoga Indians” contains the names of 922 volunteers, some of the names being familiar in the history of East Tennessee: Colonel V. [antine] Sevier; Lt. J. [ohn] Tipton; Alexan [der] Ramsey; James White; James Adair; Samuel Houston; And [rew] Jackson; and John Ishe. What is really interesting, however, is the number of provisioners paid on this expedition: eight individuals for supplying rations including beef, salt, rye, corn, and flour; two for driving cattle; two for pasturage; two for “waggoning”; and three for incidentals such as “bags,” “linen,” and empty barrels. Plainly this was a large scale military operation and just as obviously it was a dismal failure. The militia was also assigned garrison duty in the forts and stations on the frontiers of the territory. It was from these locations that scouts or “spies” were sent into Indian territory searching for lurking Indian raiding parties (Toomey 1991:124). Scouting was another frontier defensive strategy. Sent out to gather intelligence about hostile Indian activity, these men operated individually or in small groups. Riding circuits between settlements, and sometimes stationed along known Indian trails, scouts were particularly active during spring planting and fall harvesting when people were working outside the protection of forts or stations (McBride, et al. 2003:22). The Mero District kept six spies out to discover the movement of the Indians, these “spies” being well paid at 75 bushels of Indian corn a month (Putnam 1859:198). While this seems like a high wage, Brown (1938:222) notes that the Indians had a special hatred for spies and when they captured a man spying on them, they not only scalped him, but also “chopped” him up. Another source of intelligence was from white traders who lived in the Indian villages, acting as “double agents” in reporting Indian activities. While the territorial militia does not appear to have been well-trained in military tactics, they usually fought hard since they were protecting their homes and families. They were also well-armed and usually had brave, seasoned officers. The greatest problem with the militia seems to have arisen in their philosophy that a vigorous offense was the best defense. This got their leaders in trouble with the federal government who strongly discouraged offensive operations, which usually took a form of punishing retribution on Indian towns, filled with non-combatants. Except for a few towns like Knoxville that were protected by fortifications, most of the settlers lived on farmsteads scattered throughout the countryside, easy targets for small renegade bands of warriors. On the other hand, all the Indians could be usually found in one place and in the heat of battle the “every man for himself ” attitude of the militia resulted in innocent deaths and mass destruction. A good example was

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the destruction caused by Col. Evan Shelby and his militia of Virginia and Watauga men who attacked the mostly peaceful Upper Cherokee towns on the Little Tennessee, “burning eleven or more villages . . . including some one thousand homes and destroying an estimated fifty thousand bushels of corn.” This left the Cherokee in a desperate situation, many on the verge of starvation (Hoig 1998:64). The bottom line was that at no time during the history of the U.S. could one find a more mismatched and incendiary pair of combatants. While the settlers could outgun the Indians, and eventually overwhelm them in sheer numbers, in a bizarre way the psyche of the militia and the Indian warriors was dangerously similar. The majority of the early settlers in the Southwest Territory were Scots-Irish, who like the Indians had a long history of warfare conducting raids along the border of Scotland and England before coming to America. In his book Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America, author James Webb points out how they prized aggressiveness, distrusted government, and reserved the right to determine whether to obey the laws they lived under or not (Oliver 2005). The settler’s idea of order was based on a strong sense of self-sovereignty; the basis of their social order was retribution justice (Fischer 1989:765). The southern mountain feud is the classic example of their eye-for-an-eye philosophy, no matter the guilt or innocence of a victim. When embedded in warfare, this attitude can escalate into what is sometimes barbaric behavior. In their war with the white settlers on the Southwest frontier, the Cherokee, for example, followed the law of lex talionis, an eye for an eye, hence the deliberate killing of innocent women and children. The militia, in their retaliatory strikes, seems to have sometimes tried to find the guilty warriors and punish them, but they also killed the innocent in what could be called “collateral damage” as they sacked Indian towns. Often these towns were occupied primarily by the elderly, women, and children while the adult males were out hunting or on raiding parties. This created a continual round of bloody retaliation. Despite the problems with an all-volunteer national defense force, some American leaders feared the formation of what could become a powerful professional army. With the defeat of General St. Clair on the Wabash, however, it became obvious that a strong and professionally trained federal army was needed to counter the serious Indian threat. With this in mind, President Washington and Secretary of War Knox reorganized the small standing army into what were called Legions from 1792 to 1796. The Legion was a force that combined the heavy and light infantry, the artillery, and the cavalry into combat brigades, large enough to deal with the growing Indian forces. The Legion was divided into four self-contained subunits, each commanded by

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a brigadier general, with Gen. “Mad” Anthony Wayne in overall command. The sub legions became the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Regiments of the U. S. army (Kochan 2001). There is no evidence that the Legion played a significant role in the Cherokee wars although they were present in the Southwest Territory as early as March 1793.

The Peaceful Path to War

Despite the militia’s success in protecting most of the frontier settlements, the Americans could not win this war with an enemy who used hit-and-run guerilla tactics. What was needed, the settlers insisted, was permission to engage the foe in offensive action, meeting them on the battlefield with the support of federal troops as was done in the Northwest. Even these tactics would not guarantee success as witnessed at General St. Clair’s defeat on the Wabash. Fearing fighting an all-out Indian war on two fronts after the Wabash disaster, Secretary of War Knox became even more adamant about refusing to send federal troops to the Southwest Territory and using the militia for offensive operations on the southern frontier. In a letter to President Washington, Secretary Knox said in part: How different would be the sensation to reflect that instead of exterminating a part of the human race by our modes of population, we had persevered . . . and imparted to the aborigines our knowledge. But it has been conceived to be impracticable to civilize the Indians of North America. The opinion is probably more convenient than just (American State Papers, Indian Affairs, Vol. I:35 and 53).

In February 1786, Secretary Knox warned Congress that the Indians were being armed and encouraged by the British to attack the Americans on the frontier because they did not want to give up their western posts. Knox “urged that a strong military force be raised to subdue any Indians who would not respond to a more humane approach” (Callahan 1958:316). However, in the words of Knox’s biographer, he was one of the Indians’ best friends in the U. S. government: He had toward them the kind and considerate attitude . . . and in his counsels to the heads of the government, especially to Washington, Knox continually urged friendly moderation toward the tribes. He suggested that the mode of obtaining their lands be

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properly defined and regulated; that the advantages of commerce and the real blessings of civilization should be extended to them; and that proper penalties be provided for lawless persons who violated the treaties with them. If our nation had followed the advice of Henry Knox in regard to the Indians, its relations with them would have been a different story (Callahan 1958:315–316).

It is not surprising that Secretary Knox strongly advised Governor Blount to seek a peaceful solution with the southern tribes by attempting to separate Indian land from areas of white settlement as stipulated in the Hopewell Treaty (Toomey 1991:89–90). Blount, however, proposed a new treaty to replace the Treaty of Hopewell—one in which the Cherokee would cede even larger portions of their land (American State Papers, Indian Affairs, 1791, Vol. I:81–82). This was a grave mistake since most of the Cherokee constantly referred to the provisions of the original Treaty. In fact, it is said that the Cherokee were encouraged to come to Blount’s treaty ground because they thought the purpose of the meeting was to devise some means to enforce the Hopewell Treaty (Symonds 1976:30). A large delegation of Cherokee and the governor met on June 23, 1791, at the site of the future territorial capital of Knoxville four months before it was surveyed as a town. Blount had already decided to name this place Knoxville to honor his superior and hopefully gain favors from Secretary Knox in the federal government’s dealing with the Indians. J. G. M. Ramsey (1853:555) describes the proceedings: Tradition says that Governor Blount received and entertained the chieftains with signal attentions and marked ceremonials. The treaty ground was at the foot of Water-street, where the Governor appeared in full dress. He wore a sword and military hat, and acted throughout the occasion the polite and courteous negotiator. He remained seated near his marquee, under and surrounded by the tall trees which then shaded the banks of the Holston. His officers, civil and military, stood near him, uncovered and respectful.

For ten days, Governor Blount hammered out the Treaty of Holston with the Cherokee chiefs (Columbian Sentinel 1791). The length of the negotiations was due to the Indians’ immediate realization that they were supposed to cede more of their tribal land. It was probably also exacerbated by the free flow of whiskey at such treaty gatherings and the suspicion of some chiefs that

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the Americans might kidnap them (Toomey 1991:94). Nonetheless, some Chickamaugans signed the treaty including John Watts, Middle Striker, and the Otter Lifter (Kappler, ed. 1904:32) Although Watts was a signer, he exclaimed that these men who talked of peace were the same ones who killed his uncle, Old Tassel, and after speaking, left the meeting for fear of embarrassing himself by breaking down in tears (American State Papers, Indian Affairs, 1791, Vol. I:204). A sullen Doublehead also made his mark on paper, but reluctantly (Ramsey 1853:556). Ramsey does not mention the presence of Dragging Canoe at this treaty signing, although Woodward (1963:11 3) says he was there with his Chickamaugans.16 The Treaty of 1791 encompassed a triangular section in North Carolina and Tennessee extending from the Clinch River almost to the Blue Ridge and included the entire Holston and French Broad drainages (Mooney 1982:82). Whereas the earlier treaties had nibbled away at the heartland of the Cherokee nation, the Treaty of Holston took a huge bite out of the land that they believed was bequeathed to them by the Great Spirit. As evidence of the Indians’ frustration, the boundaries of the treaty were still unsettled 28 years later during negotiations of the Treaty of 1819. After its original signing in Knoxville, because of the vague boundaries of this treaty and the continued encroachment of white settlers, most Cherokees were dissatisfied with the treaty and felt that they were duped. Despite their misgivings about the boundary lines of this treaty, one section of the agreement that would prove useful had a profound effect on the Cherokee less than five years later. Article XIV of the treaty stated in part: That the Cherokee Nation may be led to a greater degree of civilization, and to become herdsmen and cultivators, instead of remaining in a state of hunters, the United States will from time to time furnish gratuitously the said nation with useful implements of husbandry. And further to assist the said nation is so desirable a pursuit, and at the same time to establish a certain mode of communication, the United States will send such, and so many persons to reside in said nation as they may judge proper, not exceeding four in number, who shall qualify themselves to act as interpreters (Kappler, ed. 1904:11, pp. 29–31). 16. An interesting note on the Indians’ encampment is found in Humes (1842: 7) who says the militiaman who described Scuffletown in 1791 also described the “encampment of John Watts and Doublehead before the cabin of William Blount, then standing on a knoll between the hill on which East Tennessee University now is and the river.

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On December 28, 1791, a delegation of disgruntled Cherokee chiefs led by Bloody Fellow met with Governor Blount’s superiors in Philadelphia to repudiate portions of the Treaty of Holston (Carter, ed. 1936). After a long session lasting until January 11, President Washington proposed an addition of $500 to the $1,000 annual annuity, and on January 31 the secretary of war wrote to Governor Blount to refrain from calling out the territorial militia, except in “cases of real danger,” and have the treaty boundary line surveyed as soon as possible (Ramsey 1853:560–561). The importance of Article XIV was also reiterated by Chief Bloody Fellow: “The treaty mentions ploughs, hoes, cattle, and other things for a farm; this is what we want; game is going fast away among us. We must plant corn and raise cattle, and we desire you to assist us” (Woodward 1963:117). Governor Blount also continued to negotiate with the new Chickamauga Chief John Watts who replaced Dragging Canoe, the latter dying suddenly in March 1792. The two met in May 1792, at the town of Coyatee where the governor planned to remind the Cherokee that they had not lived up to the agreements in the Treaty of Holston. Now it was John Watt’s turn to give the governor the Cherokee version of the pomp and ceremony of a parlay, or what the Indians called a “Talk.” Quoting from Alderman (1970:264): It was one of the memorable occasions of Territorial history. The 2,000 or more warriors had been arranged in two parallel lines, forming a long lane through which the official party was to pass. In the middle of the ceremonial ground, at the end of the two lines, a pole had been erected from which an American Flag had been raised. As the Governor’s party was escorted down this array of Cherokee Warriors, shouts of welcome and the salute of guns were loud in every quarter. The Territorial Officials, hearing the wild cheers, felt that the talks ahead might put an end to the frontier warfare. As they reached the foot of the flagpole and dismounted, handshakes were exchanged between the two races of people. It seemed a happy occasion.

Governor Blount apparently left Coyatee feeling that peace might be within his grasp. He mounted a morale-building campaign to assure the public and their leaders, such as James Robertson of the Mero District that progress was being made toward peaceful relations with the Cherokee (Masterson 1954:218). However, the Chickamauga, apparently considering themselves safe in their new stronghold near Fort Payne, Alabama, continued to attack the Mero settlements resulting in retaliatory measures by the whites.

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Another dark cloud on the horizon was the new Spanish Governor of Louisiana, Baron de Carondelet, who replaced Governor Estaban Mero,17 and considered the American settlers in the Southwest Territory a threat to Spanish interests. Unlike his predecessor, Carondelet encouraged the Creek and Chickamauga to wage war against the Americans and guaranteed all the supplies they would need for such action (Toomey 1991:106–107). In an attempt to counter the Spanish influence, Blount met with the Chickasaw and Choctaw tribes in Nashville on August 7–10, 1792. Although the Choctaw did not attend in large numbers due to Spanish pressure, the governor hoped to encourage these Indians to join the expeditions against the hostile tribes in the Northwest by distributing payment and gifts (Masterson 1954:225). Ramsey suggests the few Cherokee that were present at this conference were spies who were trying to determine the strength of the Mero District with plans to mount an attack in the near future (1853:598–599). The meeting accomplished little except to keep the Chickasaw friendly with the Americans, although Masterson (1954:226) suggests “the Spanish influence in the western end of the Territory was temporarily checked.” But due to the Cherokees’ smoldering dissatisfaction with the Treaty of Holston, the settlers found no peace on the Southwest frontier in 1792. The southern tribes were also emboldened by the disastrous defeat of the American army by northern tribes led by chiefs Little Turtle of the Miami tribe and the Shawnee Blue Jacket on the Wabash River on November 4, 1791. General St. Clair’s army included groups of militia that had been placed in the front of the line, proved unreliable, and were routed. They left over 600 enlisted men and officers dead and wounded on the field of battle (Callahan 1958:320). On September 12, 1792, correspondence from two traders in Knoxville to the Connecticut Courants reported that: I am sorry to inform you of our present alarming situation—the five Chickamauga towns as well as the Creeks, have declared war on the United States, and the celebrated John Watts has marched at the head of 500 Warriors with the intent of committing depredations on some part of the frontiers, many imagine

17. The Mero District was named in honor of Spanish Governor Mero who the Cumberland settlers regarded as their friend since at first he generally maintained a “mild and conciliatory official intercourse with them” (Ramsey 1853: 507). It appears that the Cumberland settlers had more trust in their Spanish neighbors than their own government since the former controlled their outlet to the sea. However, they soon discovered that the Spanish adopted measures to restrain their expansion and check their commerce.

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they are destined against this place, others Cumberland. . . . I was fortunately in Chota at the critical period of their declaring war, and discovering the results of their councils, rode all night express, to give Governor Blount the information. The Governor immediately called the people of the country out for the defense of the frontiers. I must conclude, friend, with the hope that Congress will relieve our helpless state, in doing which no time is lost (King and Evans 1979:57).

The major blow centered on the Mero settlements on the Cumberland when on September 30, a party estimated from 300 to 700 Cherokee, Creeks, and Shawnee struck Buchanan’s Station, four miles south of Nashville, protected by only fifteen adult men. Despite being greatly outnumbered, none of the men, women, or children were killed or wounded in the attack in their fortified position. The Indians suffered considerable losses, including The Shawnee Warrior being killed and John Watts being wounded in the attack (King and Evans 1979:57; Ramsey 1853:566–567). That Knoxville was also threatened with attack is indicated by correspondence from one of the Connecticut agents in town who reported from the French Broad on September 19, 1792: “I have been informed that there are 600 Indians out against this part of the country—likewise they have killed two men, brothers, of the name Gillespy, who live on Holston, and that Knoxville is evacuated” (King and Evans 1979:57). On October 6, 1792, the Knoxville Gazette reported that: A few days past, young Gillespie was conducted safe to Nine Mile (Craig’s station) by John Christian and two young Cherokee, (the Warrior’s Son and Kulsatehee) from Estanaula, where he was purchased from the eight Creeks who took him, by James Carey, with the assistance and interposition of Chulenah, and other chiefs of the Upper Cherokees, for two hundred and fifty pounds of leather (equal to eighty-three dollars and thirty-three cents) and a fifteen pounds sterling horse. The Creeks value a white prisoner and a negro at the same price and treat them equally as slaves. Young Gillespie was taken from his father’s house, within twenty miles of this place, on the 12th of September, and his elder brother was killed and scalped by the same party

Because of these increased hostilities, Governor Blount placed the territorial militia on active duty (Downes 1937:247). By the end of November 1792, 42

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the major base for Gen. John Sevier and the militia had been completed near the confluence of the Clinch and Tennessee rivers. Called a “blockhouse,” this installation was named Southwest Point, located on the Clinch River roughly one-half mile upstream from the later site of the much larger fort by the same name (Haywood 1823:278; 284–285; Banker 1972:16). In the December 14, 1792 issue of the Knoxville Gazette, it was reported that “The advantageous situation of General Sevier’s main force at Southwest Point, and the activity of his troops under his command at the different stations on the frontiers, have secured this district [Washington] from Indian depredations since our last [the December lst issue of the Gazette].” Southwest Point continued to be the main base under the command of General Sevier during 1793, although federal troops were assigned to this fort the same year (figure 4). Since neither the American militia nor the Indians could gain the upper hand with conventional battlefield tactics, the combatants had to content themselves with burning villages and cabins, stealing livestock and destroying crops, laying ambuscades along trails, taking captives, and killing the innocent. The one ingredient that was needed for the East Tennessee frontier to boil over into another full-scale war was for one side to gain a decisive military advantage. The Indians may have believed that they had gained such an advantage in early 1793. Anxious to pacify or at least neutralize the still powerful Cherokee nation, the U. S. government now sought a strategy to appease these Indians by appearing less belligerent. But such a policy of appeasement was flawed since the Cherokee had been extremely difficult to deal with since the Revolutionary War. Since then, their nation was divided into the pro-American Upper towns and the violently anti-American five Lower Chickamauga towns. Also this decision to extend the hand of peace did not take into consideration that the belligerent Creeks, working in collusion with the Spanish in Florida and the Chickamauga Cherokee, were again sweeping up from Alabama and Georgia to harass the white settlements in Middle Tennessee. To show the government’s friendly intent, a strong directive was sent from Secretary Knox to Governor Blount requesting he avoid all-out war on the southern frontier and reduce the size of the militia. On May 17, 1793, Secretary Knox wrote to Governor Blount that: It is indeed a serious question to plunge the nation into a war with the southern tribes of Indians, supported as it is said they would be. But if that war actually exists, if depredations are repeated and continued upon the frontier inhabitants, the measure of protection is indispensable, but that protection can only be of the defensive sort (author’s emphasis). If other, or more extensive The Advancing Banner of a Greedy Host

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Figure 4. Fort Southwest Point, ca. 1800. From Fort Southwest Point, Archaeological Site, Kingston, Tennessee: A Multidisciplinary Interpretation, edited by Samuel D. Smith, 1993.

measures shall be necessary, they must probably result from the authority expressly given for that purpose by Congress (Carter, ed. 1936:256–258).

Bowing to his superior’s orders, Blount mustered all the troops out of Gen. John Sevier’s East Tennessee Washington District brigade except for a company of infantry and a cavalry troop, and he also ordered a similar reduction of military forces in the Mero District of Middle Tennessee (Masterson 1954:237). Despite pleas from the settlers for the militia to take offensive action against the hostile Indians, neither Governor Blount nor the two militia generals, James Robertson of the Mero District and Sevier of the Washington District, would agree because of a lack of congressional approval (Nance 2004:3 1–32). These decisions also further destabilized the situation on the Tennessee frontier since the volunteer retaliatory forces raised by the settlers were much more difficult to control than a federal military command. Thus, the die was cast for the bloody warfare that was to inflame the East Tennessee frontier in 1793. The bellicose Creeks lost no time in taking advantage of the Americans while their military guard was down. On March 23, 1793, a disturbing dispatch appeared in the Knoxville Gazette: The Shawanese . . . as having passed the lower Cherokee towns, on their way to the Creeks, are still with the Lower Creeks, exciting them to war with the United States, particularly against 44

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Cumberland; and no doubt remains but that their success will equal their most sanguine wishes. Daily accounts from the Indian country continue to confirm the belief, that both Creeks and Cherokees are on all occasions urged by the Spanish officers, in West Florida, to make war on the frontier citizens of this territory.

The settlers throughout the Tennessee frontier were duly alarmed, and gathering at the stations they contemplated marching to the nearest Indian village to mount a preemptive strike. Since there were near-by Upper Cherokee villages and these Indians had of late professed a desire for peace, Governor Blount issued a proclamation forbidding the settlers to cross the [Little] Tennessee River and invade Cherokee territory. In the meantime, the War Department continued to urge peaceful negotiations with the tribes in the Southwest Territory. Secretary Knox instructed Governor Blount to invite the principal Cherokee chiefs and bring them to Philadelphia for a conference with President Washington (Toomey 1991:150). A skeptical Blount with hat in hand met with chiefs John Watts and Hanging Maw at Henry’s Station on April 6 and invited them to accompany him to meet the president. Among other grievances, the Cherokee were upset that the militia scouts (rangers) were spying in their territory. The governor assured the Indians that American rangers were only patrolling to protect the settlements from the Creeks. The Cherokee, in turn, condemned the actions of the Creeks and claimed that they wanted peace (Knoxville Gazette, April 20, 1793). The Cherokee showed little interest in going to Philadelphia, however. In spite of Blount’s attempt to bring the Cherokee to the peace table with the federal government, many settlers no longer trusted the War Department to protect them, and felt that their best defense was to continue to kill Indians, no matter what their tribal affiliation or profession of friendship. Such a hostile attitude on the part of some whites resulted in the murder of a friendly Chickasaw warrior, John Morris, while he was a guest of Governor Blount in Knoxville. On May 24, as Morris, his brother James Anderson, and the Cherokee chief Hanging Maw tended to their horses between the governor’s mansion and plantation,18 they were fired upon by several unknown persons. The assailants also stole three horses. (Knoxville Gazette, June 1, 1793). Morris was mortally wounded and died the next day. Haywood (1823:298) writes, “The Cherokee was supposed to be the object, but he escaped.” A 18. The governor’s plantation was on the main campus of the University of Tennessee close to the mouth of Second Creek. It was here that Blount lived in a log cabin while his “mansion” was being built.

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suspect was named in a letter from Governor Blount to Secretary Knox and a warrant for his arrest issued, but no further word seems to have been written about this incident. Governor Blount ended his letter to Knox by saying “people in general are prejudiced, that they believe every murder is committed by the Cherokee, commit it who will” (American State Papers, Indian Affairs, 1792:Vol I:455). Because of a strong friendship between the Chickasaw and the Americans, the governor acted as chief mourner, and Morris was given a military funeral. Although Blount’s remorse over this murder pacified the Chickasaw, this act was proof to the Cherokees that the whites could not be trusted, even when their people were under the protection of the territorial government. Perhaps to underscore their frustration, on the very day that Morris was laid to rest, Indians killed and scalped Thomas Gillum and his son James, in Raccoon Valley (Ramsey 1853:577). As many as 40 Indians might have been involved and the governor sent Capt. John Beard19 with 50 mounted infantry in pursuit (Ramsey 1853:577). Apparently two unusual war clubs were found with the bodies of the Gillums, and some believed that they belonged to the Shawnee (Brown 1938:387). This started a catastrophic chain of events because it was Beard, obsessed with punishing the Indians, any Indians, for the murder of the Gillums, who attacked a party of innocent Cherokee a few days later, thus provoking even the moderates of that nation to take up the tomahawk with the Creeks. At daybreak on June 12, Captain Beard and his company of 56 mounted infantry attacked the house of the Cherokee chief Hanging Maw where a number of Indian leaders had assembled for a “Talk” with government agents at the request of Governor Blount. The governor left for Philadelphia on June 7, and he still hoped the Cherokee would follow him from Hanging Maw’s home in the company of John McKee, a U. S. Indian agent. On June 3, McKee had informed Governor Blount that Doublehead, the Otter Lifter, and other chiefs of the Chickamauga towns had arrived at Hanging Maw’s with their principal chief, John Watts, expected that day (Moore 1923:221). While it has been claimed that Doublehead and Watts were at the Maws on June 12 when Beard struck, there are no other references to their presence at Maw’s house on that date. But even if they had already returned to the Lower towns, this incident certainly was the breaking point in any attempt to reach a peaceful settlement with the Americans and was undoubtedly a factor in the brutal attack on Cavett’s Station three months later. The tragedy of Beard’s attack, 19. Also spelled Beaird or Baird.

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of course, was that he tried to kill the principal chief of the Cherokee, who was pro-American and had on several previous occasions aided the embattled settlers against renegade Indians. While merely speculation, this could have been the second attempt to kill Hanging Maw, the first being the ambush at Governor Blount’s, as related by Haywood. The question, of course, was why would the Americans want to kill a friendly and influential Indian? The only reasonable possibility is that there was a conspiracy of white settlers who wanted to continue all-out war with the Indians, hoping to eventually drive them out of the territory. Ramsey (1853:77) reported that 12 or 15 Indians were killed at the Maw’s house including Hanging Maw’s wife, Scantee, a Chickasaw chief, and other principal Indians. The Knoxville Gazette (June 15, 1793) reported Fool Charley, one of the chiefs of the Hightower [River], and Betty, the daughter of Kirtakiska [Kittigeskee], were killed. Apparently Hanging Maw’s wife was only wounded, as well as Maw himself and Betty, the daughter of Nancy Ward (Moore 1923:222). A white man, William Rosebury, who was married to an Indian woman, was also killed, and the government agents Maj. Robert King and Daniel Carmichael barely escaped with their lives. King and Carmichael reported that at the risk of their lives they pleaded with the enraged Beard and his men to spare the rest of Hanging Maw’s family and refrain from burning his house. The role of Hanging Maw in seeking peace with the white settlers cannot be overstated. Governor Blount had declared that “If there is a friendly Indian in the Cherokee nation, to the United States, it is Maw, and he is a very great, beloved man (Moore 1923:222). Apparently, however, Hanging Maw was not particularly friendly to the white settlers in his earlier life. A common frontier tale told in Daniel Boone’s family was that “the Maw” was angry about the Treaty of Sycamore Shoals and stirred up trouble with the Shawnee when the settlers encroached on their joint hunting ground in Kentucky. In 1776, Jemima Boone and two other teen-aged girl friends were captured by Indians who planned to take them north to the Shawnee villages. The leader of the party was recognized by Jemima as the Cherokee chief Hanging Maw who had visited with her father. Boone and others rescued the girls after a harrowing pursuit, but Maw and some of the Shawnee escaped thereafter (Bakeless 1939:125). After the death of Attakullakulla in 1780 and Oconostota’s demise in 1782, Old Tassel and “the Maw” became headmen in the Upper or Overhill towns (Woodward 1963:103–104). With the earlier separation of the Upper (Overhill) and Lower Chickamauga towns, the Tassel and the Maw became the so-called peace chiefs in the former, with Dragging Canoe and later John

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Watts playing the role of war chief in the latter. Both Tassel and Maw were principal signers of the treaties of Coyatee and Holston, the former being murdered and the latter wounded at a peace conference with the whites. After Beard’s raid on his home in 1793, Hanging Maw and his family were forced to hide in the woods for their safety. The next year, the Maw asked Governor Blount to construct a blockhouse on a tract of land that he owned below Nine Mile Creek to protect him from marauding whites (Tellico Blockhouse n.d.) It was probably no coincidence that both Governor Blount and Gen. John Sevier were absent from Knoxville at the time of the Beard massacre at Hanging Maws. Although the governor had charged Beard to vigorously pursue the killers of the Gillums, he had forbidden him to cross the Tennessee into Cherokee territory. John Sevier was in Jonesboro, and ironically, the governor had stopped to see him on the way to Philadelphia to discuss ways to pacify the frontier (Masterson 1954:246). Blount needed all the advice and help he could get, since after the raid on Hanging Maw’s house, Captain Chisholm wrote to General Sevier that 200 Indians “were in arms in thirty minutes [and the] . . . frontier [was] in a most lamentable situation” (Ramsey 1853:577). Doublehead wrote to Secretary Daniel Smith: I am still among my people, living in gores of blood. We have lost nine of our people that we must have satisfaction for. There is some of the first and principal headmen of our nation fell here, and they are not without friends . . . This is the third time that we have been served so when we were talking peace, that they fell on us and killed us (American State Papers, Indian Affairs, Vol. I:460).

The Indians, of course, demanded the arrest and punishment of Beard and his men. Secretary Smith, who Blount placed in charge as acting governor of the Territory in his absence, arrested Beard and brought him before a courts martial on charges of misconduct and breach of orders (Haywood 1823:300; Moore 1923:223). Apparently Beard’s defense was that the Indians’ trail from the Gillums led to Hanging Maw’s house, but it was the strong public sentiment that led to the dismissal of charges against Captain Beard with Smith lamenting ‘‘to my great pain, I find, to punish Beard by law, just now, is out of the question” (Ramsey 1853:577). To add insult to injury, Beard was up to his old tricks a short time later as an article in the Knoxville Gazette (July 27, 1793) related: On Thursday the 16th inst. 124 men assembled at Blackburn’s plantation, on the north side of Holston, seventeen miles from this 48

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place, and contrary to the orders of the government, proceeded from thense headed by Capt. John Beaird, of Knox County, across the Tennessee, at Southwest Point, to the Indian towns on the Highwassee [sic] river. They returned on Tuesday, the 23rd inst. To this place, and say, that near Chestooe, the first town they came to, they killed six Indian men, and a squaw by accident; they burnt the town and proceeded up the Highwassee in the Old Highwassa town. Here, the Indians were, as they say, in blockhouses, and did not show themselves til the white men approached very near, when they fired, killing one man . . . and wounded another . . . On this they returned to their home precipitaley [sic].

It has been suggested that some enraged settlers in the territory may have actually welcomed the fact that the governor was away on business and passed his responsibilities to Smith since the latter was said to have favored extreme measures against the Indians (Driver 1972:114). The Indians, for their part, were not idle during the long, hot summer, ambushing the settlers at every opportunity, stealing their horses, and burning their farms. The August 13th edition of the Knoxville Gazette (1793) listed 15 settlers dead and 11 wounded, and concluded the casualty list by stating “We hope the day is not far distant when the people of this territory will be permitted to avenge the blood of their friends and relations thus cruelly shed by the hands of unrelenting barbarians.” Judging from the hostilities in August and early September, that day of retribution had come. On August 4, a volunteer company of 180 men under the command of Col. George Doherty crossed the [Little] Tennessee and burned several Cherokee towns including Big Tellico; Tynola, a town on the Hiwassee River; and Big Valley Town killing both men and women and taking prisoners (Knoxville Gazette, August 27, 1793). The Indians retaliated by striking Henry’s Station with a force of 300 warriors and although they were unable to invade this strongly defended station they captured two men and put them to death “in a most cruel manner”(Knoxville Gazette, September 14, 1793). It was now evident that full-scale warfare was going to erupt on the East Tennessee frontier. The Indians were believed to be massing under the leadership of John Watts at Estanaula Town in Georgia to strike at Knoxville. The August 27th Knoxville Gazette reported that ‘‘all their young men and warriors had gone to John Watts, at Eustanaula [Estanaula] where they were to hold a council and war dance.” General Sevier was advised to order into duty onethird of the militia from the upper three counties, but they were not expected to reach Knoxville until the first of September (Haywood 1823:304–305). On September 12, the Spanish agent in the Cherokee Nation requested Governor The Advancing Banner of a Greedy Host

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Baron de Carondelet to supply the Indians with “seven hundred pounds of powder and fourteen hundred pounds of ball for the Cherokees, then embodied to the number of seven hundred, to take satisfaction for the death of those Indians who had been lately killed by Beard and his party at ‘The Hanging Maws’” (Haywood 1823:309). Also fearing a major attack on the Cumberland settlements, Capt. Nathaniel Evans of Boyd’s Creek rendezvoused at Knoxville with 180 mounted troops and proceeded to Nashville where they were stationed when Cavett’s Station was attacked (Ramsey 1853:579). Governor Blount was still in Philadelphia and Gen. John Sevier and the militia were now at Ish’s Station south of the Holston River (Ramsey 1853:579). Strange as it might seem at this crucial time, these troop movements left the capital of the Territory, Knoxville, virtually unprotected and leaderless in September 1793. When the state of North Carolina opened a major portion of her western territories in what is now East Tennessee to land purchasers in the “Land Grab Act,” the price of ten pounds per hundred acres attracted hundreds of settlers anxious to acquire cheap western land. One of these settlers was James White from Rowan County, North Carolina, who settled what became Knoxville in 1786 when he established a “station” or fort on a high plateau on First Creek near its confluence with the Holston River, now the Tennessee. On October 3, 1791, White surveyed 64 lots of one-half acre each that were sold at lottery, the official date of the founding of Knoxville (Abernethy 1932:50; Folmsbee and Deaderick 1941:6; Ramsey 1853:558). One historian (Creekmore 1976) says that the name “Knoxville” was given to the town before it was surveyed, already envisioned by Governor Blount as the location of a future city. By 1792, several houses and business establishments were under construction in Knoxville including the frame home of the governor on a lot overlooking the Holston River. The original home of the governor and capitol of the Southwest Territory was a story-and-a-half, timber frame house with outbuildings including a detached kitchen and office. Today, these buildings are restored and open to the public (figure 5). The earliest description of the town was written two years later by Abishi C. Thomas: “Here are frame Houses and Brick Chimneys [and] there is in it ten stores & seven taverns, besides tippling Houses, one Court House [and] no prison which they boast of not being an article of necessity” (Keith, ed. 1950:447–448). Two forts were located in town. At the north end was the earlier James White fort or station, described as follows: “on each corner was a strong cabin, but of less imposing appearance than Mr. White’s which was two stories high. Between these corners stockades were placed eight-feet high, impenetrable to small arms, and having port-holes at convenient height and distance. A massive gate opened in the direction of a spring” (Ramsey 1853:374). 50

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Figure 5. Blount Mansion. Photo by the author.

At the opposite end of town was the Blockhouse or Barracks, built by the War Department on the highest eminence in town along the river.20 This was a substantially built log building standing two stories tall (figure 6). The Blockhouse was protected by a stockade and several cannon. It was large enough to garrison the small federal command that was sent from North Carolina to protect the town and provide shelter for its inhabitants. On March 9, 1793, the Knoxville Gazette reported: “On Tuesday, the 27th ult. arived [sic] here, after a long and tedious march from Salisbury in North Carolina, a company of federal troops commanded by M: Rickard. The order and discipline displayed by this company, affords a new proof of the military abilities of this war-worn veteran, as well as his attention to duty.” By mid-1794, Secretary Knox reported that 75 non-commissioned officers and privates of the 12th Company of the 3rd Sub Legion were in the Southwest Territory (Lowerie and Clarke, eds. 1832:67; Smith, ed. 1993:19). By 1794, the muster roll indicates 22 out of 75 men were stationed in Knoxville (Prouty 1993 :515–516). One source on frontier forts in East Tennessee states that the Knoxville Blockhouse was not completed until 1794 (Smith, ed. 1993:469). It is recorded that the Legislative Council of the Territory met in the “barrack” in 1794 (Ramsey 1853:630). Ramsey (1853:559) describes the “barrack” as follows: 20. Located where the Knoxville/Knox County courthouse now stands.

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Figure 6. Knoxville Blockhouse, ca. 1794. Courtesy of the East Tennessee Historical Society.

[the] barrack was an extensive but not costly structure. It stood upon the ground now the L of the Mansion House, but extended more than twice its length, towards the river; the building was made of logs notched closely together. It was thus secure against attacks with small arms. The second story projected two feet on every side beyond the walls of the first, so as thus to prevent the application of fire to them in case of a siege. In both stories and in the floor of the second, port-holes were left at suitable distances. The entire area around it, as far as a rifle could reach, was cleared—even a stump large enough to protect the body of an assailant, was eradicated. The site was well selected, and well adapted to its purposes. The structure itself was designed with military skill.

That it was not completed when the federal troops arrived in the spring of 1793 is suggested by later advertisements in the Knoxville Gazette by Commander Rickard. In four editions of the 1793 Gazette, Rickard advertised a reward for deserters. On March 23, April 6, and July 13, he asked that prisoners be brought to his camp New Boston, near (italics mine) Knoxville. On December 7, Rickard again advertised for the capture of a deserter, stating that “Whoever secures the said deserter in any jail in the United States, or to 52

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the commanding officer at (author’s emphasis) Knoxville, shall receive Eight Dollars reward, and all reasonable charges paid.” He signed the ad, “William Rickard, Lieut. Comm’dt, Camp Knoxville on the banks of the Holston.” These advertisements suggest that the Barracks may not have been completed until later in 1793, perhaps even early 1794. That the Blockhouse was definitely garrisoned by the following October is revealed in a letter from Abishi Thomas to John Gray Blount stating “that the commandant of the blockhouse had lodged several malefactors in his stronghold “ (Keith, ed. 1950:447–448). In any case, there is certainly evidence that the fledgling frontier town was ill prepared for the attack that was about to come. On June 13, Capt. John Chisholm sent a letter from Knoxville to Gen. John Sevier that warned in part: “This will bring on inevitable war; the Indians are making vigorous preparation for an assault on us. The frontier is in a most lamentable situation. Pray, sir, let us have your immediate presence, for our all depends upon your exertion” (Ramsey 1853:577). Chisholm’s “inevitable war” reached a climax in September 1793. By this time the Knoxville Gazette reported that four stations were attacked, seven farm houses burned, 170 horses stolen; 53 settlers killed, and at least 19 seriously wounded. The Indians fared even worse with two large towns burned and several smaller villages destroyed, seven killed at the peaceful parley at the home of the Cherokee chief Hanging Maw; the murder of John Morris at Blount Mansion; an untold number wounded; and 27 taken captive. After the attack on Hanging Maw’s house, the burning of the Upper Cherokee towns and the murder of Morris, it was only a matter of time before Knoxvillians believed their vulnerable town would be attacked (Ramsey 1853:579–580). The Indians’ intelligence network must have been functioning well informing them about the precarious situation in Knoxville in late summer. On the evening of September 24, 1793, an army of Indians crossed the Tennessee River below the mouth of the Little Tennessee, headed for Knoxville. The absence of Governor Blount and dispersal of the American forces must have been an enticement to strike the territorial capital where large quantities of supplies were known to be stored. The Indian army appears to have been the largest force ever to attack the Americans on the East Tennessee frontier. The size of this force “was computed from their trails and fires at from 1000 to 1500 warriors, of which about 100 were mounted on horses, they marched in 15 files, each making a large and plain trace or path” (Knoxville Gazette, October 12, 1793). Ramsey (1853:580) states that 700 were Creeks, 100 of which were mounted, and 300 were Cherokee. In addition, one historian states there were a few Shawnee from Running Water, one of the Chickamauga towns (Evans 1976:103). The leaders were John Watts and Doublehead; other prominent Cherokee in the The Advancing Banner of a Greedy Host

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group were James Vann and Bob Benge. While a large contingent seems to have been Creek, this was obviously a Cherokee operation. Cherokee prisoners, taken later that year, reported that John Watts was the leader of this Indian army and that it was composed of men from every town in the nation. 21 They said that almost every man from Turkey’s Town, Sullyquoah, Coosawatee, and other principal towns were in the group and they were joined by a large number of the Upper Creeks. None of these towns appear in Smith’s identification of eighteenth-century Cherokee settlements (1979). Coosawatee was a town in northern Georgia that was later destroyed by John Sevier. Few Overhill Cherokee in the Upper towns seemed to have been involved in this attack. To avoid being discovered, the Indians carefully circumvented Ish’s Station where Sevier was headquartered with the militia, and Campbell’s Station, which was well defended (Moore 1923:223). The Indians apparently sent a scouting party ahead of the main force. The scouts, reconnoitering around Ish’s Station, were fired upon by a sentry, and Pumpkin Boy, Doublehead’s brother, was killed (Alderman 1970:270). That so large a force went undetected is very surprising since Ramsey (1853:579–580) says Sevier sent scouts to guard the approaches to Knoxville, but they did not detect the enemy. Another historian states that the Indians moved quickly along a ridge infrequently traveled by the settlers (Rule 1900:73). Even if the Indians were able to elude detection, it is also inexplicable that Knoxville and surrounding stations such as Cavetts were left virtually unprotected, especially since the Knoxvillians (and presumably General Sevier) knew that the Indians were coming. Indians captured by Captain Doherty’s raid across the Tennessee River in August all agreed that most of their nation was assembling with Watts at Estanaula where they were preparing for war (Haywood 1823:304). Thus, a month earlier the East Tennesseans were expecting an attack and believed it would be directed at Knoxville. (Haywood 1823:304). It is also clear that the Knoxvillians even knew that the Indians would strike on the 25th of September and were making preparations to waylay them before they could reach the town. One of the most exciting stories of the bravery and fortitude of frontier men in Knoxville relates how General James White and his “immortal 38” planned to defend the exposed town (Foster 1852:331–332). Gen James White was then advanced a little beyond the prime of manhood, of muscular body, a vigorous constitution, and of that cool and determined courage which arises from a principle of original bravery, confirmed and ennobled by the faith of the 21. It is believed the “nation” refers to the Chickamauga.

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Bible. He was the projector and leader of the enterprise. Robert Houston, Esq., from whose verbal statements the substance of much of this narrative is copied, was of the age of twenty-eight, and was a personal actor in the scene. It was viewed to be manifest to those who were acquainted with Indian movements, that the party would come up the back way near the present plantation of Mrs. Luttrell and Henry Lones, rather than the straighter way now traveled by the stage. The company from Knoxville accordingly repaired to a ridge on that road, which may now be inspected about a mile and a quarter from Knoxville. This ridge is marked by the irregular and shelving rocks of the road, which passes over it. On the side of the ridge next to Knoxville, our company was stationed at the distance of twenty steps from each other, with orders to reserve their fire till the most forward of the Indian party was advanced far enough to present a mark for the most eastern man of our party. He was then to fire. This fire was to be the signal to every man on our own to take aim with precision. This would be favored by the halt thus occasioned in the ranks of the Indians. And these latter, it was hoped, astonished at the sudden and fatal discharge of thirty-eight rifles extended over so long a line, would apprehend a most formidable ambuscade, and would quit all thought of further aggression, and betake themselves to the readiest and safest retreat. But to provide for the worst, it was settled before-hand, that each man on discharging his piece, without stopping to watch the flight of the Indians, should make the best of his way to Knoxville, lodge himself in the block-house, then standing at the present mansion of Mr. Ethelred Williams (now Known as the ‘Mansion House’) where three hundred muskets had been deposited by the United States, and where two of the oldest citizens of the forty, John McFarland and Robert Williams, were left behind to run bullets and load. 22 .

Since the Knoxvillians realized that they were going to be the point of the attack and even knew the possible route of the attackers, why did Sevier 22. When Reverend Stephen Foster wrote about the stand of James White and his men in 1852, the boundaries of Knoxville were the Holston (Tennessee) River to the south, First Creek to the east, what became the railroad yards a few years hence to the north, and Second Creek to the west. Using today’s topography and Western Avenue as the back road to town, the ridge on which Knoxville College stands is probably where White placed his men. Brown (1938: 392) says that the ridge was probably the one called McKinney’s Ridge, near New Gray Cemetery.

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station his troops at Ish’s Station rather than in Knoxville where the Barracks was at least partially standing? Perhaps it had to do with the size of his command although the exact number of men with Sevier is unclear. An article in the Knoxville Gazette (October 12, 1793) called Sevier’s force at Ish’s “a small command” but both Haywood (1823:307) and Moore (1923:223) say he had 400 men with him, the latter calling them mounted infantry. Perhaps Ramsey’s narrative (1853:579–580) more closely approximates the size of Sevier’s command when he says that “Captain Michael Harrison, with his company of eighty light horse from Washington County . . . visited the several stations on Pigeon” before coming to Sevier’s headquarters at Ish’s Station, south of Holston. It was Harrison who was sent to scout the countryside, so it seems that Sevier’s force was dispersed at a crucial time. Even so, it is unlikely that Sevier would have confronted the Indians in open country unless he could have set up an ambush as James White planned on the outskirts of Knoxville. They probably decided that their safest bet was to “fort up” in the stations and let the Indians attack them there since the latter were never adept at siege tactics on a stoutly stockaded settlement. In Chapter 5, this miscalculation on the part of the settlers and General Sevier is studied in more detail. Fortunately for the citizens of Knoxville, the Indians were having no better luck coordinating their attack. A disagreement arose whether to proceed directly to Knoxville or to attack settlements along the way. Doublehead wanted to plunder every house that they encountered, but some of the Creeks gave the order to press forward and not delay the march. Doublehead also had an altercation with Vann who advised leniency for the women and children when they captured Knoxville; Doublehead insisted that all whites be killed (Ramsey 1853:580). This bickering delayed the march, and the Indians did not reach their objective before dawn as they had planned. When daylight broke on the 25th, the Indian force was at the head of Sinking Creek, about eight miles from their target. Realizing that they would not be able to surprise the Knoxvillians under the cover of darkness, the Indians were further unnerved when they heard the retort of the town’s revile cannon fired at sunrise (Ramsey 1853:580). Thinking that they had been discovered, they halted their advance within sight of Alexander Cavett’s station. According to local legend, they were alerted to its presence by the crowing of a rooster. Infuriated that their plans to destroy Knoxville had gone awry, the Indians turned their wrath on the little station in the valley below them.23 23. The station was located in Grassy Valley between the ridge along which Kingston Pike now runs and on which Bearden High School is located to the south and Black Oak Ridge to the north. Since it is unlikely they would have traveled near the western road out of Knoxville, close to Campbell’s Station, they probably came up Black Oak Ridge on the north side of Grassy Valley.

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War, as fought by the Native Americans, was much different than that of the European nations that they encountered. In the Old World, the term war was usually reserved for conflicts between two factions with formal political organizations, an established leader or commander, military tactics that included large bodies of troops in frontal assaults, and weapons such as cannons, which allowed the capture of fortified locations. In addition, while European wars were often fought for economic gain, military action was also employed to capture and hold territory. Indians, however, had much different reasons to go to war and employed very different tactics. In fact, some anthropologists suggest that at least before the European colonization of the Americas, the Indians in the eastern Woodlands usually did not practice true warfare but attacked their enemies in small groups called “raids.” Nevertheless, as one historian remarked: “war was their ‘beloved occupation’ and they could not live without it” (Haywood 1823:222). Although “booty” or economic gain was important in some Indian warfare, the motivation often appears to be “feuds” or a protracted series of reprisals. While chiefs often led war parties, in many instances anyone could muster an armed group to take revenge on another person or group that harmed (usually killed) a member of their family. In practice then, there was no strong leadership, and it was every man for himself. Usually lacking a large number of combatants, the Indians relied on stealth and surprise to defeat their enemies. They seldom engaged in siege warfare to capture a fortified position since they had no siege equipment nor carried supplies for a protracted engagement. If they did capture a house or fort, they would loot and then burn it and fade away to their home territory, sometimes taking prisoners with them. Anthropologist Harold Driver states that the most distinctive feature of Indian warfare in the Eastern Woodlands was an emphasis on the torture of prisoners (1969:324). Describing this gruesome practice, Driver says that: “Generally the prisoner was tied to a stake, frame, or platform, and tortured with fire, blows, mutilation, stabbing, shooting with arrows, or dismemberment while still alive. . . . The prisoner might also be required to run the gauntlet” (1969:324). While the Indians usually reserved such treatment for captives of enemy tribes, their use of these techniques on white prisoners gained a special enmity among the settlers. The Creeks had a term fisisiko, which translates as “no heart” or “heartless,” meaning a warrior who showed no mercy toward his enemies (Ethridge 2003:103). Taking scalps from both dead and living victims was a particularly common practice among some Indian tribes although there are misconceptions connected with it. One of the most common is that the Indians learned scalping from white men who used them as bounty trophies. The taking of human body parts including scalps goes far back and was practiced by Indians The Advancing Banner of a Greedy Host

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in Tennessee before white contact.24 There is ample evidence, however, that both whites and Indians took scalps on the frontier, and such mutilation of the human body was a way of taking revenge and collecting a trophy to prove it. In 1760, the North Carolina legislature passed an act, which provided it would pay bounties on Indian scalps in order to encourage enlistment in the militia (Whisker 1997:101–102). Some of the most barbaric body mutilation in warfare took place between federal and confederate forces in Missouri during the Civil War where human scalps, ears, noses, and other body parts were displayed on guerilla fighters’ saddles (Winik 2001). More specifically, war among the Creeks was largely a personal matter because every man competed for war titles and ranking among his peers. A warrior’s rank depended on his accomplishments, including the number of scalps he had taken and personal talents such as swiftness, bravery, stealth, and recklessness. A special term hadjo was reserved for a man who was not mindful of his own safety in a battle (Ethridge 2003:103–104). As in the Creek Nation, the basic principle of southern Indian law applied to the Cherokee, this principle being the blood feud or revenge for the killing of one of their people by a foreigner, white or Indian (Reid 1970:154). Whether by accident or design, such a killing often led to war. Any headman who could organize and inspire warriors could also recruit a war party. However, there was no formal central command structure to plan strategy or execute tactics; every warrior was a volunteer and could attack, fight, and retreat as he pleased (Reid 1970:177–181). The Cherokees prepared for war by sending the “war hatchet” to all the towns in the Nation and to their allies. While the headman struck the war pole with his club and sang the war song, warriors joining the war party blackened their faces and streaked them with paint and placed feathers in their hair (Woodward 1963:41). Volunteers for the war party were said to paint their faces with vermilion, one eye circled in black, the other white. As they danced the war dance, each warrior pretended to strike an enemy with a red and black painted war club, the dance ending in four loud war whoops (Wilkins 1970:14). Then the headman led his warriors to a site where they exchanged their ceremonial wardrobe clothing worn when they fought their enemies. The women waited at this site with that clothing, the men dressed in their fighting gear, and then headed down the war trail with the headman in the lead 24. A human burial found at the Mason site during the UTK archaeological excavation of prehistoric Indian villages in the Tims Ford Reservoir from 1965–1966 showed clear evidence of scalping. Radiocarbon dates from the site indicate it was occupied by prehistoric Indians between A.D. 770–890 (Faulkner 1968).

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(Woodward 1963:41). Eyewitness British officer Henry Timberlake describes their weapons in 1762 as: guns, bows and arrows, darts, scalping knives, and tommahawks (sic), which are hatchets; the hammer part of which is made hollow, and a small hole running from thence along the shank, terminated by a small brass-tube for the mouth, makes a complete pipe. . . . This is one of their most useful pieces of field-furniture, serving all the offices of hatchet, pipe, and sword; neither are the Indians less expert at throwing it than using it near, but will kill at a considerable distance (King, ed. 2007:27).

According to custom, they fasted on the first day and thereafter were only allowed a daily ration of a cup of corn meal (Wilkins 1970:14). Before returning home, the Cherokee warriors painted the scalps they took red and mounted them on a pole at the head of the line of warriors as they entered the village (Oswalt and Neely 1996:445–446). On their return to the village, the warriors were sequestered in the council house for 24 days to purify themselves since they were unclean if they had killed a person or touched a dead body. Though no longer practiced, the Cherokee ethnologist William Harlan Gilbert, Jr. obtained information about the scalp dance that was celebrated every night with the snake dance. The women danced first in the scalp dance. They always stood quietly behind the musician until he came to a certain note. Then there was a snake dance around the fire in which they proceeded in a stooped posture and moved according to the beat of the drum. The song they sang was repeated four times. During the dance, they raised their hands and made motions as if striking the enemy. The men then joined the dance. A man would dance beside the woman and hold a stick with scalps hanging from it as he danced. War songs were sung at this dance also (1943:354). Many writers, including Harold Driver (1969), discuss the taking of captives by Indians on the warpath. Apparently ransom was the main reason that the Indians on the Southwest frontier took prisoners, however, they might be killed later in the towns. If ransom or blood revenge was not their objective, the captive (Indian, black, or white) would often be kept as a slave (Toomey 1991:126). Women appeared to be more favorably treated than men prisoners, the former sometimes marrying an Indian and having children with him. Slaves were property among the Creeks, but their position was more like tenant farmers. They lived with their owners and tended crops and stock, but being property, they still could be bought and sold (Ethridge 2003:116). In the December 19, 1793, issue of the Knoxville Gazette is a list of 17 prisoners,

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“citizens of the United States, in the Creek Nation, who are treated like slaves and are sold from master to master, at as high a price and in the same manner as negroes are sold.” Four Cherokee headmen were identified in the Indian army that attacked Cavett’s Station: John Watts, Doublehead, James Vann [or Van], and Bob Benge. Watts and Doublehead were recognized chiefs and appear to have been leaders of the expedition. James Vann had not yet made his mark on the Southwest frontier, but he would do so in later years. Bob Benge was not a chief but played a crucial role in the massacre of the Cavetts. Who were these men, what made them such bitter enemies of the Americans, and what happened to them after that fateful day in September?

John Watts

John Watts’s Indian name was Kunoskeskie, the son of a white man named John Watts Sr. who had been an interpreter for the Cherokee (Moore 1923:203; Williams 1974:207). Leadership was in his blood; his mother was the sister of Old Tassel and Watts was sometimes called “Little Tassel.” At the death of the Tassel in 1788, Watts became a leader among the Cherokee, harboring a bitter enmity for the Americans because of the treacherous murder of his uncle. This was unfortunate for the settlers because unlike Doublehead who was content to lead small guerilla bands, Watts had superior leadership qualities that always put him at the head of a large group of warriors. He also liked to play at international intrigue. After he became a chief of the Chickamauga towns upon the death of Dragging Canoe in 1792, Watts moved his residence to Willstown in what is now Alabama to be closer to Pensacola and Spanish supplies (Woodward 1963:113). Finally, Watts was as cunning as he was charismatic. He duped Governor Blount into believing that the Chickamauga desired peace even as they were planning an attack on the Mero District (Moore 1923:212). The blow fell at Buchanan’s Station in September 1792, where Watts was seriously wounded (Moore 1923 :215). This quieted the fiery warrior for a time, and he only took up the tomahawk again after the massacre at Hanging Maws. The raid on Knoxville was John Watt’s final campaign; he laid down his tomahawk for good at a peace conference at Tellico Blockhouse in November 1794 (Moore 1923:244). When Moravian missionaries Abraham Steiner and Frederick deSchweinitz met John Watts’ son, John Watts, Jr., in the Overhill country in 1799, they described the former’s father as: “Chief John Watts [who] lives quite far down in the country; is a half-breed and is commended as a sensible, faithful, industrial man, who lives quite independently” (Williams, ed. 1928:470). Watts died a peaceful death in 1802, unlike his three compatriots on the Knoxville raid. 60

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Doublehead

One historian claims that Doublehead and Pumpkin Boy were Old Tassel’s brothers and that after his murder they vowed revenge on the whites (Woodward 1963:109). This is doubtful since other ethnohistorians do not mention such a family relationship, but there is no question that Doublehead, whose Indian name was Tuckalatugue, harbored a burning hatred for the Americans. His possible presence at the attack on Hanging Maws’ when he was “living in gores of blood” as he described in a letter to Secretary Smith (American State Papers, Indian Affairs, Vol. I, 460), and the death of his brother Pumpkin Boy at Ish’s Station made him a particularly vengeful enemy. One particular gruesome story was that Doublehead and his nephew Bob Benge ate the flesh of one of their victims in Kentucky (American State Papers, Indian Affairs, 1793, Vol. I: 436, 438). Although his depredations were usually committed when he fought with the Chickamauga, he apparently had no direct affiliation with them (Moore 1923:232). After the attack on Cavett’s Station, Doublehead returned to his favorite haunt in the Cumberland area and was responsible for a number of attacks on the settlers in early 1794 (Knoxville Gazette, March 13, 1794). These were the last acts of violence by Doublehead; in June of that year he accompanied a Cherokee delegation to Philadelphia to conclude a treaty with Secretary Knox (Knoxville Gazette, July 17, 1794). After this, Doublehead became a principal chief. Although for several years he violently opposed relinquishing a single square foot of Cherokee territory, at the Treaty of Tellico in 1805 he was a principal signer to the ceding of all the Cherokee land north of the Duck River (Moore 1923:237). The Cherokee bitterly resented his complicity in this sale, and in the summer of 1807 after a great ball play on the Hiwassee River, his own people killed him.25

James Vann

One writer has called James Vann one of “the most intemperate characters in the [Cherokee] Nation” (Wilkins 1970:34). Like the other Indian leaders of the great Knoxville raid, he fought with every means at his disposal to save the Cherokee lands from the horde of white settlers who streamed across the 25. This game was played by several tribes in the eastern woodlands and is called stickball by the Cherokee. It is the forerunner of the modern lacrosse and is still played today in Cherokee, North Carolina. Besides being a means of social cohesion, this rough and tumble game had a great ritual significance involving highly competitive matches between villages (Mooney 1890).

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mountains. And like his compatriots Doublehead and Bob Benge, he died a violent death. His 1809 murder in a tavern clutching a bottle of whiskey epitomized the intemperate side of his life: a heavy drinker who could be a benevolent leader one moment and a homicidal drunkard the next (Wilkins 1970:48–49). Vann was probably born ca. 1768. His father was a canny Scotch trader from Charleston named Clement Vann, and his mother was a full-blood Cherokee named Waw-Li. Except for the attack on Cavett’s Station, little was recorded about his youth, and like most young warriors he joined such raiding parties for glory and booty. That he was more than just a young upstart, however, is suggested by an incident on the march to Knoxville. According to Ramsey (1853:580), a reason for the delay in reaching Knoxville before daybreak was that Doublehead and Vann, both aspiring to leadership of the raid, quarreled about whether to spare the women and children; Vann advised leniency. After the Chickamauga were soundly defeated by the Americans in 1794, Vann settled down to expand his father’s trading business by providing the Cherokee with modern farming and domestic implements. Six years later, he was the wealthiest man in the Cherokee Nation and had become a headman in the Upper towns. While Vann united his tribe to stand up for its treaty rights, he realized that hunting was no longer profitable, and he was a chief negotiator in the treaty negotiations of 1805–1806 when the Cherokee relinquished their Middle Tennessee hunting grounds (Wilkins 1970:34–36). It was at this time that he again came head-to-head with his old nemesis Doublehead. But even after the death of his rival, Vann was never able to assume sole leadership of his people.

Bob Benge

Born in one of the Overhill towns to a white trader named John Benge and a Cherokee mother whose brother was Old Tassel (Evans 1976). Bob later lived in the Chickamauga Running Water Town where he came under the influence of two of the whites’ most feared enemies, the Cherokee Dragging Canoe and the Shawnee Chiksika, later known as Tecumseh (Brown 1938:479). It was in the company of Shawnee warriors that he frequently raided the American settlements of the upper Holston Valley of southwestern Virginia. In August 1791, Benge was reported to have killed several settlers near Mocason [sic] gap at Clinch Mountain and “has attached him self to the Shawanese” (Tennessee Ancestors 1985:37). Called “Captain Benge” in Virginia, he earned the reputation of courage and leadership among the Cherokee and was considered notoriously cunning and dangerous among the white settlers (Evans 1976:100). 62

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In the spring of 1792, this redheaded warrior known as “The Bench”26 in Tennessee, struck the Ratcliff settlement on the upper Holston but withdrew when a militia company led by Capt. James Cooper hunted him. By fall of that year, he was ambushing travelers on the Nashville-Kentucky road with Doublehead (Evans 1976:101). After the acquittal of Captain Beard for his part in the massacre at Hanging Maws’ house, Benge was one of the first to heed the call of Watts to retaliate by striking Knoxville, the heart of the East Tennessee American settlement (Evans 1976:103). Because of his excellent command of English, Benge was the intermediary when Cavett’s Station was captured. After the massacre at the station, Bob Benge again aimed his sights on the white settlements in southwest Virginia. After a raid in April 1794 on a house in Washington County, Lt. Vincent Hobbs and the Lee County militia ambushed Benge’s war party near the foot of Stone Mountain as Benge’s party made their way back to the Chickamauga towns with their captives. Leading the group, Benge was the first to fall in a hail of shot (King 1976:108). A few days later, the governor of Virginia received a gift from Lt. Hobbs, a neatly wrapped package containing a red-haired scalp (Evans 1976:100).

26. Apparently Benge was so notorious that he became the “boogeyman” of the Southwestern frontier. Mothers threatened their children by telling them if they were not good, the Bench would get them (Evans 1976: 100).

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Chapter 3

The Cavetts

T

he Cavetts were among the thousands of white settlers who moved south in the valleys of the Appalachian Mountains after the British victory in the French and Indian War. According to Cavett family tradition (also spelled Cavet, Cavit, Cavitt, and Calvit on early documents), the family originated in France, moving through England to settle in Ulster, Northern Ireland. Like so many of their Scots-Irish brethren, they emigrated to America, and in 1711, Richard Cavett was living in Paxton Township near Linglestown, Pennsylvania. Richard was killed by Indians in 1757 and was survived by his wife, Susannah Whitley Cavett and seven children, including a daughter Margaret and six sons: John, Moses, Alexander, Michael, Richard, and George. Moses and Alexander appear to have been very close, the former estimated to have been born ca. 1743 and the latter ca. 1746 in Goochland County, Virginia (Carter 2000). By 1763, Moses was living near Lexington, Virginia, and in February 1775, Moses and Alexander Cavett were in Fincastle County (later Botetourt County), Virginia, where they were appointed by the County Court to appraise an estate. Two years later, the brothers appear to have resided in what is now upper East Tennessee where they signed a petition in Washington County pertaining to the establishment of a courthouse in November 1777. It is possible that their older brother Joseph (John?) preceded them into the Tennessee country since a Joseph Calvit is listed on the 1776 Petition of the Watauga Association (Dixon 1976:75). Capt. Moses Cavett fought at the battle of King’s Mountain under the command of Col. Isaac Shelby on October 7, 1780 (Cavett n.d.). Moses’ son Richard recorded that: Shortly prior to that battle [King’s Mountain], tho then in my fifteenth year, I was enrolled in my father’s company, not by a

regular draft but from the exigencies of the settlement. I carried some clothing to Col. Shelby’s quarters and asked him to prevail on my father to let me go with them against the Tories. He spoke to my father on the subject but he refused because of the necessity of guarding the settlement from the cruel inroads and butcheries of the hostile Indians (Cavett n.d.).

Between 1782 and 1790, land deeds record Moses and Alexander Cavett purchasing considerable acreage in what was then Sullivan County, North Carolina, on or near the Holston River (Knox County, Tennessee, Deed records 1782–1790). In 1777, the General Assembly of the State of North Carolina created Washington County, which roughly corresponded to the present boundaries of Tennessee. In 1778, a man named Alexander Cavil is listed on the Washington County List of Taxables (Alderman 1970:58). This is probably Alexander Cavett. Two years later, Washington County was again divided, the new county being named Sullivan (Rothrock, ed. 1946:42). At that time, the Holston River extended through what later became Knox County down to the confluence of the Little Tennessee River. Since the Cavett tracts were in Sullivan County, there is no clear evidence exactly when Alexander first moved to what is now Knox County, created in 1792 by Gov. William Blount. The first recorded land acquisition by Alexander Cavett in Knox County was 640 acres at the head of Sinking Creek, purchased from Thomas Hutchings in 1790, and afterwards he made improvements on the land until his death in 1793 (Tennessee Superior Court 1807). That Alexander Cavett was in Knox County by November 1792, is recorded in a summons for one Daniel Allen to appear as a witness in a civil suit between A. Cavett and Samuel Shipley in the Knox County Court of Pleas and Quarter sessions. Concerning a debt, the case was dismissed. Virtually nothing is known about Alexander Cavett’s immediate family except for what is found in the accounts of the massacre. One important clue is that on the first day of the Knox County Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions, July 16, 1792, the court received the oath of Alexander Cavett “that Susannah Cavett departed this life the 29th day of April 1792” (Rothrock, ed. 1946:51). If Susannah was Alexander Cavett’s wife, why would an oath that she died be required in the Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions as to her death? Judge Carroll Ross wrote the author that: “my initial thought would be that, since there were no official death certificates in those days, any pleading or court proceeding that required the signatures of both parties in a marriage would require some evidence that one of the parties was no longer alive. His oath would provide that evidence. For instance, if the 66

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proceeding was some form of property transaction, his oath of his wife’s death would provide legal notice that there were no residual hereditary rights that a surviving spouse might have in his real property. That should remove any potential ‘cloud’ on the title of the property” (Ross 2009).

Since Alexander’s wife is not specifically listed in the newspaper as one of the victims, this could also be his aged mother Susannah Whitely Cavett. Alexander was born ca. 1746. If his mother was between the ages of 20 and 30 when he was born, she would have been between 66 and 76 years of age. While elderly in that time and place, she certainly could have still been alive when Alexander settled in Knox County. However, Judge Ross’ explanation of the meaning of the oath taken by Alexander suggests that it was his wife who passed away in 1792 since she would be the next of kin. Alexander Cavett’s name appears in Knox County legal documents two more times. On January 22, 1793, he was called for jury duty (Knox County, Tennessee Court minutes, 1792–93). All this really tells us as far as the eighteenthcentury American jury system is concerned is that Alexander Cavett was a white male and owned property. On January 26, 1793, court records also show that he was the plaintiff in the case involving Samuel Shipley. The newspaper reports and later writers all say that the victims were members of Alexander Cavett’s family, three of them being adult males or “gunmen.” This is incorrect. Two of the “gunmen” were members of the Sullivan County militia. One of the militiamen was Francis Bowery who served under Col. Gilbert Christian’s command and Capt. James Grigg’s company in 1793 protecting settlers from the Cherokee. According to official records, he died at Cavett’s Station while most of his company was on the other side of the river (Clark 1990; Summers 1746–1784). This means that he was under General Sevier’s command at Ish’s Station. Another interesting record is found in the genealogy of George Birdwell, born in Botetourt County, Virginia, and moving to Sullivan County in March 1779. The next year Birdwell is recorded as living on the north side of the Holston River adjacent to the land of Alexander Cavett. In Francis Bowery’s account, it states that he served in the militia with George Birdwell. The other slain militiaman was John Spurgeon who is simply listed as being killed at Cavett’s Station (Clark 1990). There is little doubt that Alexander Cavett was friends with Francis Bowery and probably knew John Spurgeon as well. The question now is why were these two men in the wrong place at the wrong time? Were they simply visiting the Cavetts since they were stationed nearby, or were they sent by Sevier to help protect this family? Since the militia was sometimes sent to guard the stations in time of Indian trouble, the latter scenario seems likely. The Cavetts

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The only other information about the family is in accounts of the massacre. It appears that the remaining ten persons were women and children of the Cavett family. We know the attackers spared one child, Alexander Jr.—only to be later killed by the Creeks. So Alexander, ca. 47 years of age, still had small children too young to fight. We do not know if one of the women was his wife, but had she still been living she certainly would have helped in the defense of her family. Hugh Dunlap, an early settler in Knoxville, later wrote that “after they surrendered they were murdered . . . the mother, two grown daughters, and perhaps some small children” (Dunlap 1842). The question, of course: is this Alexander Cavett’s mother or his wife? While most of the other victims were possibly women and children in the Cavett family, it is also likely some were neighbors who were taking shelter in the station while their men were serving in the militia. It seems strange that except for Alexander and his young son, none of the other victims were named in the newspapers or official records. However, if one scans the Knoxville Gazette published in the 1790s, children were seldom mentioned upon their deaths.

Cavett’s Station

Why was the Cavett home called a “station?” In descriptions of fortifications on the Tennessee and Kentucky frontiers, authors often used the terms “fort,” “blockhouse,” and “station,” sometimes interchangeably. These were structures that provided the inhabitants with extra architectural protection from attackers. In West Virginia, the term “fort” seems to have been used for any kind of fortified settlement (McBride, et al. 2003). A true fort was a sizeable architectural complex protected by a strong stockade and housing several families, military personnel, and sometimes civic administrators as well. The term blockhouse often referred to a substantially built log cabin with portholes or “loopholes” through which weapons could be fired. Historian J. G. M. Ramsey described such a cabin belonging to Andrew Creswell: The house was a new log cabin, with a single door, fastened by a shutter of hewed puncheons, too thick to be penetrated by a bullet. His stable was so placed, immediately to the rear of his house, that Mr. Creswell himself could not open the door of it without first entering the dwelling house, and going to the head of the bed, and raising a large bolt, with a long lever. Near the lever was a porthole, through which he defended his stable, and on each side of his house were others through which he defended his family.

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A typical late eighteenth-century blockhouse was a strong log structure that usually had an overhanging (“overjutting”) second story used to fire down on the enemy if they reached the walls (Featherstonhaugh 1844; Nance 2004:40). A more substantial blockhouse was described in the account of the Indian attack on Buchanan’s Station as blockhouses surrounded by a stockade. The Knoxville Gazette (October 6, 1792) reported that during the attack on this station “The Indians fired 30 balls through the port hole in the overjutting, which lodged in the roof in the circumference of a hat.” What did the East Tennessee settlers mean by the term “station?” While a station could grow into a fort by the addition of people and structures, most stations remained small and housed three to five families (O’Malley 1987:34). Of the many definitions of the term “station” in Webster’s Dictionary one finds “a place established to provide a public service.” Ramsey recounted the public service and definition of a station as follows: “At first, each of these stations was a single cabin in the midst of a clearing. When Indian disturbances broke out, the inhabitants clustered together in the strongest one near them and it became a Station” (Ramsey 1853:376). Thus a station served as a temporary place of refuge for travelers and the neighborhood in case of an Indian attack. Sometimes militia were briefly garrisoned at stations during times of Indian trouble as in the fall of 1792 when troops under the command of John Sevier were placed in several frontier stations (Knoxville Gazette, December 14, 1792). Besides East Tennessee, frontier stations or forts have also been studied in Middle Tennessee (Smith 2000), Kentucky (O’Malley 1987), and West Virginia (McBride et al. 2003). Nancy O’Malley (1987) believes that the term “station” was used in the way-station sense in Kentucky. Fortified homesteads on main roads or trails that were well-known to local people in that state were usually called stations. Bryant and Strode’s stations in Kentucky are described as rectangular palisaded or “picketed” areas with blockhouses or cabins at the corners and cabins arranged along the long axis, their outer walls constituting part of the defensive perimeter. There are even several examples of unstockaded stations in Kentucky. Constant’s Station, for example, consisted of three or four cabins surrounded by a fenced yard (O’Malley (1987:28). As the eighteenth century came to a close and the Indian wars came to an end, the term station disappeared from the frontier lexicon in Kentucky (O’Malley 1987). The most serious problems facing settlers who lived in stations were the constant threat of Indian attack and the sometimes-long periods of close confinement. The inhabitants were usually safe inside the compound, but the necessity of leaving the station was fraught with danger. Opportunistic surprise attacks were often made on small groups of men, women, and even children

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who were out tending their crops or stock. On July 24, 1794, John Ish, the proprietor of Ish’s station, was killed and scalped while plowing his fields (Ramsey 1853:594). One of the most famous attacks recounted in the Tennessee history books involved Catherine Sherrill Sevier, the second wife of John Sevier, known as “Bonnie Kate.” On July 21, at daybreak, some women were milking just outside the fort [Watauga] when Indians broke from the green skirting of the forest. All of the women made it inside except a tall athletic young woman named Catherine Sherrill, who was rescued dramatically as she leaped high on the wall and was pulled up over the top by a shower of arrows and lead balls. The strong hand that pulled Catherine Sherrill to safety was that of John Sevier, a man who would become her husband four years later (Dixon 1976:45).

The swift closing of a stout gate was only one of many precautions taken to protect the stations or forts. Richard Cavett, Moses Cavett’s son, recounted the following in a sworn statement for a pension for Revolutionary War service: The young men, capable of wielding the rifle were either in service or left to guard the homes of the settlers. In this last, mothers, daughters, and sisters were united and it was one continuous watch and peril. My father was almost always on campaign. He had four sons and five daughters. I was the eldest and in his absence, with the council and aid of my mother I commanded the home fortress. I kept my gun in hand—or when I sat down to eat I lay or laid it across my lap—or when going to bed the door was barricaded and I lay down with my weapon of defence [sic] in my arms. The door in the morning was carefully opened after sunrise and a circuit of observation taken around the premises (Cavett n.d.).

A detailed description of an Indian attack on Sharp’s Station and its inhabitants is related in a history of Union County, Tennessee: Early in December [1794], the weather being mild, several of the Sharps crossed the Clinch and Powell Rivers to a saltpeter mine, said to have been owned by them, for niter for gunpowder. Nicholas Gibbs, Henry Sharp (Sr.), Conrad Sharp and Levi

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Hinds remained at the Station, as well as several small children, women, girls and boys from near-by cabins. Just before dark, Gibbs heard owls hooting on the mountain above the Station, arousing his curiosity and convincing him and the others that the Indians were again on the prowl.27 He placed the small children in one of the cabins, while the women, girls and boys were divided into several groups to ward off a possible attack. Suddenly all was quiet and shortly thereafter the chain at the stockade gate rattled and those inside were ordered to open the gate. This aroused the dogs and they rushed around the stockade barking madly. The Indians’ order to open the gate was met with gunfire, which continued all night long. As morning came, the Indians retreated, leaving their blood spattered all around the Station, but there were no injuries suffered by those inside the stockade. There were bullet holes left in the old log fort, which served to remind the occupants for a long time of the battle waged at Sharp’s Station (Graves and McDonald 1978:116–117).

Col. William Fleming, a member of the Virginia Land Commission who visited Fort Harrod, Kentucky, in 1780, graphically described daily life in the crowded forts and stations: the whole diet and filth of the fort, putrid flesh, dead dogs, horse excrements and human odour . . . the ashes and sweepings of the filthy cabbins [sic] . . . striping skins to dress and washing every sort of dirty rags and clothes in the spring . . . makes the most nauseous potation of the water [the spring was in the fort] . . . and will certainly contribute to render the inhabitants of this place sickly (Clarke 1959:207).

Two stations have been archaeologically studied in Tennessee: Bledsoe’s Station located in what was the Mero District in the 1790s (now Sumner County) and Sharp’s Fort or Station on the Clinch River in present-day Union County. Dr. Kevin E. Smith from Middle Tennessee State University studied Bledsoe’s Station in a long-term historical and archaeological project from 1995–1998 (Smith 2000). Artifacts found in these tests and in the plow zone

27. Another Indian trick was to “gobble up” the white man. Using a small bone “mocker,” they imitated the call of the wild turkey (Brown 1938: 223).

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revealed the location of at least 15 buildings making up portions of the stockade wall and 12 pit or “root” cellars beneath the structures. The plan was apparently like Bryant and Strode’s stations and Gillespie’s Station, which was attacked in East Tennessee in 1788. Construction artifacts such as wrought nails and window glass indicated that most of the buildings were probably simple log cabins, occupied by several families (Smith 2000:179–180). In 1998, the excavation of Bledsoe’s Station revealed two lengths of stockade walls. The stockade was built by placing closely spaced posts in a shallow trench (figure 7). Smith (2000:180) describes the stockade as follows: Unlike the standard reconstructions of fortified stations with carefully selected large posts of relatively equal size, the evidence from Bledsoe’s Station indicates a haphazard and probably remarkably untidy looking wall. In some sections, laborers were using split logs with smaller unmodified posts covering the breaks between split logs. In other sections, single unmodified posts of various sizes are indicated. The suggestion is a clear haste in the construction process, and probably the use of whatever trees were available nearby.

The excavation of Arbuckle’s Fort in Greenbrier County, West Virginia, also revealed a shallow stockade trench. The post molds indicate that larger posts were placed from one to eight inches apart, often not in a straight line. Like the Bledsoe’s Station stockade, smaller posts were used to fill the gaps between the larger posts. While most of the larger posts extended to the base of the trench, the smaller posts did not, suggesting that the trench was partly backfilled before they were placed in the palisade wall (McBride, et al. 2003:46). Adjacent to Sharp’s Fort, the Norris Reservoir on the Clinch River is slowly washing the site away. Because of the serious impact of this relentless erosion, archaeological survey and testing were conducted on this site in 1993 and 1994 by the University of Tennessee Department of Anthropology (Faulkner and Andrews 1994). Controlled surface collecting in the reservoir drawdown zone and 125 one-by-one-foot shovel tests in the terrace remnant above the surfacecollected area revealed seven features and the probable location of at least four cabins at the corners of a square stockaded area. At least one-third to one-half of the station area had been eroded away by the reservoir. While the method of testing the site did not allow an estimation of the size and construction of these buildings, at least one of them may have had a limestone-filled cellar beneath its floor (Faulkner and Andrews 1994:34–39) (figure 8).

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Figure 7. Archaeological interpretation of Bledsoe’s Station. From Bledsoe Station: Archaeology, History, and Interpretation of the Middle Tennessee Frontier, 1770–1820. Tennessee History Quarterly, Vol. LIX, (3), 2000.

One interesting characteristic shared by both Bledsoe and Sharp’s stations is an apparent flimsy stockade/palisade construction, although the posts at the latter site were widely placed in individual postholes, sometimes referred to as earthfast construction. In this study, the term “palisade” is used for a structure built with posts set vertically and close together to form a defensive barrier. A defensive “fence” has wider spaced vertical posts supporting horizontal boards or “stringers” on which vertical planks or “pickets” are attached. If built for defensive purposes, both types can be called a stockade. At Sharp’s Station, two postholes visible in the drawdown zone were approximately one foot square, and one of these features contained a post mold .50–.60 feet in diameter. They were spaced 12 feet apart suggesting that this may have actually been a fence with vertical pickets attached to horizontal cross pieces between the vertical upright posts. The location and orientation of these postholes indicate that the The Cavetts

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fence was an early component of the station and possibly connected the corner cabins suggesting a defensive structure (Faulkner and Andrews 1994:12–13). What appears to be the same kind of defensive fence was built around two late eighteenth-century homesteads in and near Knoxville—Blount Mansion and Ramsey House. In 1992, the author began a multi-year excavation project with a UT Department of Anthropology archaeological field school at Blount Mansion, home of Gov. William Blount from 1792–1800. An 1865 photograph of the site shows a quadrangular arrangement of buildings including the mansion, kitchen, slave quarters, and the governor’s office connected by a fence. The detached kitchen and office have been restored. Built shortly after Knoxville was laid out in 1791 and named the territorial capital, this compound corresponds to what has been identified as an urban farmstead (Faulkner 1993; Young 2000). During three field seasons at the mansion, large multiple postholes were found at the corners of the kitchen, slave quarters, and office. The superposition of these postholes made the exact dimensions of most of these features somewhat tenuous, but three were distinct enough to provide measurements. One posthole at the northeast corner of Blount’s office measured one foot square containing a post mold .50 feet in diameter. The interior depth of the feature was 2.23 feet. A posthole at the southwest corner of the office was also one foot square, extended just over one foot into the subsoil, and contained a post mold measuring .55 x .35 feet in diameter. A posthole at the southeast corner of the slave quarters was 1.2 feet square, containing a post mold .55 feet in diameter and extending 1.2 feet into the subsoil. The large size of these postholes and their location at the corners of these buildings indicate that the posts anchored the corners of a rectangular stockade (Faulkner 1993; Young 2000) (figure 9, page 84). Archaeological evidence of a substantial defensive fence was also found at Ramsey House. Identification of these lines of postholes as a defensive perimeter was based on an early date for setting the posts in deep square or rectangular postholes, the size of the posts ranging from .50–1.0 foot in diameter. This fence connected four of the earliest buildings in a domestic compound (Faulkner 2001:30). Spacing of the posts ranged from four to ten feet, apparently depending on vulnerability from an outside threat, with horizontal boards nailed to the upright posts or horizontal stringers nailed to the posts and vertical planking or “pickets” nailed to the stringers (Faulkner 2008:50). The above was the type of defensive fence that protected eighteenthcentury Fort Independence, a frontier home site and militia post in South Carolina that was excavated by Beverly Bastian in November 1980 (Bastian 1982). The earthfast method was used to build the fence at Fort Independence, the postholes ranging in size between 31½ in. to 471/14 in. and the posts being from 74

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Figure 8. Sharp’s Station. From An Archaeological Study of Sharp’s Fort, Union County, Tennessee. Department of Anthropology, University of Tennessee, 1994.

9½ in. to almost 20 inches in diameter (Bastian 1982:65), and spaced about 20 feet apart (see Bastian 1982:figure 6). Despite the large size of the posts at Fort Independence, Bastian points out that the South Carolina fort “had only the appearance of a stockade, being nothing more than a good, tall, sturdy fence.” Unfortunately we have very little firsthand information on the construction of Cavett’s Station and its type of defense. That it was called a station and sometimes a blockhouse indicates that some elements of its construction made it more formidable to an attack. The initial report of the attack in the Knoxville Gazette states that the Indians “burnt his [Cavett’s] houses, destroyed his cattle, sheep and hogs, and retreated” (October 12, 1793). The fact that more than one house is implied suggests these might have been placed within some kind The Cavetts

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of defensive perimeter. A shelter for the animals is mentioned, and Ramsey (1853:581) states that “the house and stables were plundered and burnt.” In a follow-up article on the massacre, the Knoxville Gazette referred to the Cavett residence as a “block-house” (February 13, 1794). As mentioned earlier, the term blockhouse was used to describe a strong log cabin with loopholes rather than windows that could be used to fire at attackers. However, other writers indicate they were often parts of a defensive enclosure (Smith and Nance 2000:20). Another historian described Cavett’s Station as “nothing but the log house dwelling of a family” (Foster 1852:330). Interestingly, Ramsey’s list of the stations and their federal garrison strength on the Knox County frontier in December 1792 does not include Cavett’s Station (1853:565). This suggests that it merely consisted of a fortified cabin and outbuildings. Nevertheless, even if it was protected by some kind of palisade or defensive fence, attacks at other East Tennessee stations such as Gillespie’s Station indicate that this was not sufficient to hold off a large and determined Indian war party.

The Massacre

Details of the attack on Cavett’s Station and the killing of its inhabitants were apparently obtained from Indians who were later captured. These details are graphically described in a letter from acting Gov. David Smith to the secretary of war in two issues of the Knoxville Gazette. On September 27, 1793, acting Governor Smith was the first to report the massacre in a letter to Secretary Knox: With much concern, I have to inform you, that besides other previous depredations by the Cherokees, of a less nature, they made an invasion into this district on Wednesday, September 25th instant, in force as is generally believed, not less than a thousand; in many places they marched in files of twenty-eight abreast, each of which is ’tis supposed was composed of 40 men; besides, they appeared to have about a hundred horse. They crossed the Tennessee below the mouth of Holston, on Tuesday evening, marched all night towards this place, and about sun rise or a little after, attacked and carried the house of Mr. Alexander Cavet, about seven miles below this place. His whole family, thirteen in number, fell a sacrifice. A man of common delicacy would want language to convey to another, the horrid manner in which the poor women and children were treated, as much as I do to make you sensible of the sufferings of the frontier inhabitants, pent up in their small huts. General Sevier lay, at that time, on the 76

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lower frontier, on the south bank of Holston, about eight miles from the Tennessee, at one Ishe’s, with about four hundred men. I speak in round numbers, for I have had no return. He had got there but a few days before; I am now endeavoring to augment his number, to enable him to pursue the enemy; they crossed the Clinch the same evening. Lieutenant M’Clelland is now out with a party of horse, reconnoitering their movements. General Sevier has told me, that every night of his stay at Ishe’s, the Indians were reconnoitering his camp, till his sentinels one night killed one of them, since which they have been more cautious. The large party of Indians passed up on the north side of Holston, within three miles of the General’s camp, and I suppose would have marched higher, perhaps to this place, but for fear of his intercepting them, as they know not his number (American State Papers, Indian Affairs, 1793, Vol. I:468).

On October 12, 1793, the Knoxville Gazette reported the attack in more detail, probably gleaned by then from local residents and Governor Smith’s report to the secretary of war: The 25th ult. an army of Cherokees passed the Tennessee, 30 miles below this place, computed, from their trails and fires at from 1000–1500 warriors, of which about 100 were mounted on horses, they marched in 15 files, each making a large and plain trace or path. Their intention evidently was to attack and plunder this town, but day overtaking them, eight miles short of it, they halted, killed Alexander Cavet and family, consisting of 13 persons, men women and children, burnt his houses, destroyed his cattle, sheep, and hogs and retreated—The cruelty and obscenity presented in the killing, and upon the bodies of this unfortunate family (Not one of whom escaped the horrid carnage) equal if not surpass whatever has before seen or the imagination can conceive.

The sordid details of this massacre continued in the February 13, 1794, issue of the Knoxville Gazette: Often as we have occasion to mention the murder of Alexander Cavet and family, on the 25th of September last, we have not, until lately, been informed of the manner of their being taken out of the block-house. When the Indians, numerous as they were attacked the house, there were only three gunmen in it, The Cavetts

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who defended it till they killed one Creek and one Cherokee, and wounded three others. The Indians then offered terms if they would surrender, viz. That their lives would be saved, and that they should be immediately exchanged for the Indian prisoners among the whites, which were accepted—but, as soon as they left the house, Doublehead and his party fell on them and put them to death in the shocking manner mentioned in the first account of the inhuman and savage murder, except one son, saved by John Watts, as stated in a former paper. The terms were offered on the part of the Indians, by Bob Benge, a half breed, who spoke English, and exerted himself but in vain, to save the unhappy victims from the murdering hands of Doublehead and his party. It appears, from the best information yet obtained of the number of Indians that there were seven hundred Cherokees and two hundred Creeks.

A Cherokee eyewitness also recalled the massacre of the Cavett family. A young warrior called “the Ridge”28 from the village of Pine Log in Georgia accompanied John Watts on the Knoxville raid and afterwards frequently related: “that the women and children . . . were hewn down by the ferocious Doublehead [and I] spoke of this foul deed with abhorrence, and declared that he turned aside, and looked the other way, unwilling to witness that which he could not prevent” (Wilkins 1970:25). Apparently John Sevier obtained the identity of the perpetrators of the attack and other information from Indians captured in his retaliatory strike on the Cherokee and Creek in early October. The story of the killing of the Cavett family was recounted by several historians and passed down as local legend. Only one, an account by historian W. D. Peters, deviates considerably from the ones related in the Knoxville Gazette. Peters writes: The treacherous chief Doublehead then proposed a treaty of peace or a cessation of hostilities declaring that he and his band were anxious to withdraw without further bloodshed and that after the brutal murder of their comrades would return peaceably to their own country. The . . . prisoners in the fort were so strongly

28. Often called “Major” Ridge because he later became leader of the Cherokee Lighthorse Guard, the Ridge was one of the assassins of his nemesis Doublehead several years later. During the Cherokee Removal in the 1830s, he was the leader of the so-called “Treaty Party” and was himself assassinated by the anti-treaty Ross faction in the West (Wilkins 1970).

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impressed with the peaceable utterances of the wily old warrior, his evident grief at the loss of his most promising young bucks and apparently sincere regrets for having some unaccountable misguidance of faith been led to attack a harmless settler and innocent women and children caused Cavatt to agree to a council of peace. The strong bars that fastened the heavy oaken doors were let down, the two chieftains and their advisers entered and sat themselves down on the floor in the most friendly and unconventional manner. At a given signal that redskins on the outside rushed through the open door and with their frightful war cries fell upon the now defenseless settlers with tomahawks, battleaxes and butted guns, beating, cutting, slashing and mangling them in the most horrible manner conceivable (Peters 1894).

The origin of this story is not known. However, it seems highly unlikely that Alexander Cavett would have invited the Indians into his house. As time passed, the massacre was embellished with details, their origin and veracity being unclear. For example, Ramsey (1853:581) adds that “Cavet himself was found in the garden barbarously murdered, and having seven bullets in his mouth, put there by himself, for the greater convenience of speedily loading his rifle.” The most interesting legends, however, involve survivors of the massacre. One story is that a son was away from home in Indiana buying farm tools (Fox 1983). Another is that Nancy Cavett, who married into the Lones family29 survived the massacre (Dowell 1983b; Peters 1894). Nancy Cavett Lonas is buried in the near-by Mars Hill Cemetery and her gravestone reads “In Memory of our Mother, Nancy A. Lonas, Born November 29, 1807, Died October 31, 1884.” Nancy Lonas, who will be discussed in detail later, was Alexander Cavett’s niece, the daughter of his brother Thomas. Ramsey related another story of the Cavett massacre (1853:580): The Indians had expected to reach Knoxville before day, on the morning of the twenty-fifth, but some detention at the river had prevented. The horsemen had out-marched the main body, and some altercation between the leaders occurred, and produced confusion. Knoxville being the principal object of attack and plunder, orders were given by some of the Creeks to press forward at once, and not delay their march, by stopping to disturb and 29. The Lones family were prominent late eighteenth-century Knox County pioneers who split into two factions during the Civil War, one group changing the spelling of their name to Lonas.

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plunder the smaller settlements. Doublehead advised a different policy, and insisted on taking every cabin as they passed. A further cause of delay was the rivalry between this chief and Van, each of whom aspired to the leadership of the expedition. Upon the question, “shall we massacre all the inhabitants of Knoxville, or the men only?” these savage warriors differed in opinion; Van advising lenity to the women and children.

A different version of this altercation is found in Foster (1852:331): “Van, a Cherokee Chief, possessed a little captive boy that was riding behind him. Doublehead became envious at this sight, picked a quarrel with Van and to satiate his malice killed the little boy with a stab of his knife.” There is substantial evidence that a young son of Alexander Cavett survived for a short time after the massacre. In a letter to Governor Blount dated November 18, 1793, John McKee reported that: “I have been informed one of the family, a small boy, is yet alive, and a prisoner in the Creek nation; he was taken by Watts, who had no other way of saving him from the fury of the young fellows, but by giving him to the Creeks.” Ramsey identifies him as Alexander Cavet, Junior, and says he was later killed in the Indian towns (1853:581). The Knoxville Gazette, October 11, 1794, reported that: “the child of Alexander Cavet, also called Alexander, taken near this place in Sept. 1793, when the rest of the family were massacred, was killed by a Creek warrior, by the stroke of a tomahawk, three days after his arrival in the nation.” John P. Brown’s 1938 history of the Cherokee Indians says that the Knoxville raiding party led by Doublehead left 100 Indians in upper East Tennessee to spy on the movements of the militia and in retaliation burn General Sevier’s home, killing or capturing his family. Brown attributes an October 13, 1793, attack on the Lewis cabin in Greasy Cove near Sevier’s home to this marauding band in which Mrs. William Lewis and her five children were killed (1938:396–397). Ramsey records an earlier date (1778) for the killing of the Lewis family, but the November 23, 1793, issue of the Knoxville Gazette confirms the October 13 attack: On Sunday, the 13th of October, a party of Indians, consisting twenty-eight, killed Mrs. Lewis and five children, and burnt their dwelling and other houses, in the Greasy Cove, on the frontiers of Washington county, 20 miles from Jonesboro, near the path that leads across Bald Mountains to North Carolina.

No mention is made in either account that the Indians who killed the Lewis family were the perpetrators of the Cavett massacre, and there seems to be 80

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some confusion about the origin of the Lewis incident. Nonetheless, it is possible that a group of Indians took advantage of the absence of Sevier’s militia from East Tennessee and attacked the Lewis cabin. The origin of the Brown account, however, is not known.

Known Only to God

Other legends and stories about what happened to the earthly remains of the rest of the family abound. The earliest European settlers held a special reverence for the dead, and preparations for the body and burial in a coffin were normally carried out by family and friends (Bettis, et al. 1978). Since there were no immediate survivors of the family, the Cavetts’ neighbors assumed the mournful task of putting them to eternal rest. It is also sad that we only know the full names of four of the victims: Alexander Cavett, senior: Alexander Cavett, Jr.; Francis Bowery; and John Spurgeon. The other nine women and children are known only to God. One of the closest neighbors of the Cavetts was the Jacob Lones family. Mary Dowell, the great granddaughter of Jacob, related several stories about the Cavett massacre that were handed down in her family. One was the Lones’ heard the gunfire at the station and were members of the group who buried the Cavetts (Dowell 1983a). In a letter to a Cavett family descendant, she described how they found the dismembered bodies of the victims with their intestines strung on a palen fence30 (Dowell 1983a). There is also a note that James Campbell from near-by Campbell’s Station went with others to prepare the Cavetts’ bodies for burial and help to dig the graves of the victims (Dowell 1983a). Considering the number and condition of the bodies, there has been some question about where and how they were buried. The most logical place would have been nearby Mars Hill Cemetery in which a stone marker stands today commemorating the massacre. According to Cavett family documents, this cemetery was the location of what they called the “grave” (Cavett n.d.). Since Susannah Cavett had passed away the year before, it seems likely that the family would have been buried at the same location as her interment. The use of the singular “grave” also suggests that the Cavetts were buried in a mass grave. On the other hand, Campbell used the plural “graves.” 30. The palen fence, introduced to North America by English settlers, consisted of stout vertical posts set into the ground on which horizontal stringers (boards) were fastened to attach narrow vertical “pickets.” In recent times, palen fences were usually placed around front yards or gardens (Evans 1978). It is possible that this fence was built in the same way but was more substantial to hinder attackers.

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In 1983, Kincer Fox, a descendant of the Cavett and Lones families, headed a group of volunteers clearing the brush and weeds off what had become the neglected overgrown Mars Hill Cemetery. Fox told the author that while he was working in the cemetery he encountered a large circular area where the ground was softer, and he speculated that this might be the location of the mass grave of the Cavetts (Fox 1983). The Knoxville Journal and Tribune reported the dedication of the monument to the Cavetts in the cemetery on September 25, 1921: Despite the rain yesterday afternoon, the Sons of the American Revolution unveiled the monument erected in memory of the Cavite family on the spot where they were massacred in their home, now Mars Hill Cemetery, about eight miles from Knoxville on the Kingston pike. A feature of the event was the attendance of a direct descendant of one of the chiefs who commanded the 1,000 Indians in the attack, and a descendant of one of the first men to reach the scene of the massacre after it happened. The name of a descendant of one of the attacking party was Benge. His presence had not been anticipated by those in charge of the ceremony. Mr. McElwee, a descendant of one of the men first to reach the scene of the massacre was also expected. His home is at Rockwood. The program was carried out in a school house [Second Mars Hill School] near the cemetery on account of the rain. Dean J.D. Hoskins, of the University of Tennessee, made the address of the day touching on the history of the Cavite family and Knoxville in revolutionary days.

Kincer Fox was an eight-year-old eyewitness to the dedication of the monument. In an interview with the author in March 1983, he said that he recalled the dedication ceremonies because of the uniforms worn by the UT ROTC color guard. The first part of the ceremony was at the Broom-Mynatt house located just above the spring. His father and his father’s friends told him that the Cavetts were buried in a corner of the Mynatt’s garden. The ceremonies were interrupted by a fierce thunderstorm, and the group sought shelter in the 2nd Mars Hill School. While this might suggest that the Cavetts were buried at or near the location of the station rather than in the Mars Hill Cemetery, the latter area seems the most logical place of internment. A record of the graves in the cemetery was first compiled by the Admiral Farragut Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution in 1956 (Smith and Amick 1956). A later survey was conducted by Robert McGinnis (1982). According to local history, the cemetery was associated with the Gal82

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laher View Baptist Church, founded in 1855 and moved from this location to Gallaher View Road in the early 1890s, where it is now known as the Gallaher Memorial Baptist Church. McGinnis recorded all of the tombstones with names and dates, in addition to two “unmarked” graves with limestone fieldstones as markers. The author recalls seeing field stone markers in 1983, but neither is present on the surface today. One of these field stone markers can be seen in a corner of a photograph of the monument in the author’s possession. The earliest burial date that I saw was 1856, corresponding to the founding of the former adjacent church. The layout of the graves is quite unusual. They are laid out in a quadrangular pattern with most of the graves on the west end and a few found along the south and north edges of the graveyard. The center of the cemetery has no markers except for the Cavett dedication monument (figure 12). A slight depression can be seen just south of the marker. There is a cluster of early graves just west of the marker and along the edges dating from the 1860s to the 1870s. A few feet west of this are two parallel alignments of gravestones— the first containing the graves of Joseph Lones [d. 1872] and his wife Nancy Cavett Lones [d. 1884] (figures 10 and 11). The latest alignment to the west is actually outside of the original boundary of the cemetery and is marked by a wrought iron gate enveloped in a huge cedar tree. These graves are largely from the early 20th century, including the graves of Maccager Kidd and his wife Mary Ann. What is striking about the arrangement of graves in this cemetery is what appears to be an avoidance of the center of the plot of ground with burial taking place occasionally on the periphery and moving west through time. It certainly appears that later burial parties were avoiding the center of the graveyard. Did the families of these mid to late-nineteenth century deceased know someone was already buried there? We know at least one of the field stone markers was located in the center of the field near the depression. There is no question that originally two field markers were here as reported by Smith and Amick (1956) and one stone was observed by the author. While the evidence is circumstantial, we know that Susanna Cavett passed away on April 29, 1792, and had to be buried somewhere in this vicinity. It is certainly possible that she was the first person buried in what became the Cavett cemetery. When the Cavett family was killed, their bodies were likely interred where Susanna was laid to rest. Moses Cavett, Alexander’s brother, died nine years later, and his wife Agnes passed away in 1820. The field stone markers observed in 1985 probably marked their graves. The Cavett cemetery was not used again until after the Gallaher Baptist Church was built in 1855 when the congregation started burying their dead in what they remembered The Cavetts

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Figure 9. Sketch of the Blount Mansion compound based on archaeological excavations. By Terry Faulkner.

was already sacred ground. At that time, the Cavett gravesites were still well known, and their location was avoided.

Retribution

When Cavett’s Station was attacked, Gen. John Sevier was immediately informed at his base at Ish’s Station. Concerning General Sevier’s location with the militia at that time, Haywood says: Gen. Sevier lay at this time on the lower frontier, on the south bank of the Holston, about eight miles from the Tennessee, at one Ish’s, with about four hundred men. He had arrived there but a few days before. His forces were ordered to be augmented, that he might pursue and chastise the enemy, who crossed the Clinch the same night. He received orders to this effect (1823:307).

Not knowing how many Indians were in the attacking party and where they might strike next, Sevier sent a scouting party of light-horse north of the Tennessee River toward the Clinch to determine the strength and disposition of the enemy (Ramsey 1853:583). In a letter, Mary Dowell related that: “My great grandfather, Jacob Lones— appointed by John Sevier, as captain of the local militia headed the group that pursued the Indians after the massacre— 84

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They reported that the horse tracks where the Indians forded the Clinch River still had muddy water in them. This was near where Oak Ridge is today” (Dowell 1983b). Before he could pursue the enemy, it was necessary for General Sevier to strengthen his command. Word was quickly dispatched from Knoxville for assistance from the Washington and Hamilton districts, with Sevier’s reinforced army eventually numbering between 600 and 700 men.31 The general briefly describes this campaign in his journal (Sevier 1790–1815). Leaving Knoxville October 9th, he crossed the Hiwassee River and marched into Georgia, arriving at the town of Estanaula (Sevier calls it Eastenoly in his journal) on the Coosa River where they received fire from the enemy and took casualties. Undaunted, Sevier’s little army moved on to the confluence of the Coosa and Hightower rivers where the Indians made a stand. The battle of Hightower has been described by both Haywood (1823) and Ramsey (1853). The Indians were dug in on the opposite bank, and Sevier’s troops were nearly ambushed by the hidden foe as they swam their horses across the river. Seeing the danger, his men rapidly rode back to a ford above the town, drawing the Cherokee out of their entrenchments with this flanking movement. They proceeded to rout the Indians between the army and the river. The town was then put to the torch, and 300 cattle were destroyed (Haywood 1823:309). Two days after torching Hightower, Sevier sent a taunting note to the Indian leaders. It read (exactly as transcribed from his journal): Your murders and savage Barbarities have caused me to come into your Country Expecting you would fight like men, but you are like Bairs and Wolves. The face of a white man can makes you run fast into the woods and hide, u see what we have done and it is nothing to that we shall do in a short time. I pity your women & children for I am sure they must suffer and live like dogs but you are the Cause of it. You will make war, & then is afraid to fight,—our people whiped yours mightily two nights ago Crossing the river and make your people run very fast J.S.

31. One of the militia men who appears on the roster is Richard Cavett, Moses Cavett’s son, who in a pension or annuity statement swore that “I was in two battles at Lookout Mountain in which Genl. Martin commanded and in another under Genl. John Sevier on the Hightower River” (Cavett n.d.). Richard Cavett’s name also appears on the muster roll of the Lookout expedition (Creekmore, 1989: 195).

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TO the Cherokees and their warriors if they have any (Sevier 1790–1815)

Ramsey says that Sevier wanted to attack the Cherokee and Creek towns further downstream, but taking the advice of his scouts who warned him that the single path to these villages was an ideal setting for an ambush, he ordered the militia home (Ramsey 1853:587–588). This differs from Haywood’s account that said they proceeded down the Coosa where they destroyed additional Creek and Cherokee towns (Haywood 1823:308). Sevier does not mention destroying other towns in his journal and reports returning to Ish’s Fort on October 24. The Knoxville Gazette reported that General Sevier and the militia: returned to this place [Knoxville] on the 24th of October, after having been seventeen days in the nation, and penetrated quite through it to the Creek country, with the loss only of 3 men killed and 3 wounded—On his attempting to pass the Hightower river, his advance, led by Capt. Evans, of the Knox mounted infantry, was warmly opposed by a large body of Creeks and Cherokees, who were strongly posted for the purpose, when a smart action ensued, in which Capt. Evans and Lieut. M’Clellan, distinguished themselves in a very particular manner by their bravery. In a few minutes the Indians gave way on all quarters, leaving behind them several of their dead on the field, all their baggage and sundry arms. They were also seen to carry off many wounded during the engagement. After this action the Indians abandoned their towns as the General approached, which were destroyed together with the provisions found in them. Success has ever crowned the arms of this experienced and valuable officer (November 23, 1793).

Although Sevier does not mention destroying other towns on the Coosa after the engagement on the Hightower, in his official report written to Governor Blount from Ish’s Mill, October 25, 1793, he states he destroyed several Creek and Cherokee towns near Turnip Mountain (American State Papers, Indian Affairs, 1793, Vol. I:468). He also reported: “We took and destroyed near three hundred beeves, many of which were of the best and largest kind. Of course losing so much provision must distress them very much. Many women and children might have been taken; but, from the motives of humanity, I did not encourage it to be done, and several taken were suffered to make their escape” (Ramsey 1853:587–588). 86

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An interrogation of Cherokee prisoners taken at Estanaula provided information that: John Watts was the person who headed the army which took Cavit’s Station, and that it was composed of Cherokees from every town in the Nation; that from the Turkey’s Town, Sullyquoah, Coosawatee, and several other principal towns; that they were almost every man was out; that they were joined by a large number of the Upper Creeks who had passed Estanaula on their return only a few days before the arrival of Gen. Sevier’s army (Haywood 1823:307).

The Etowah campaign of October, 1793, was the last military service rendered by John Sevier and the only one for which he was paid (Ramsey 1853:588). Although Governor Blount had been in Philadelphia pleading to allow the Southwest Territory settlers to take offensive action, the federal government condemned what they considered an unauthorized attack and refused to immediately pay the militia (Nance 2004:32). While Governor Blount’s trip to Philadelphia did not result in the federal government authorizing offensive military action against the southern tribes, the governor was heartened by President Washington’s remarks in his Annual Address of 1793, which noted that relations with the Cherokee and Creek were on a “critical footing” and advised Congress to find a solution. The Southwest Territorial Assembly also sent a memorial to the U.S. House of Representatives urging that decisive action be taken against the hostile Indians (Toomey 1991:175). Federal troops were stationed at Fort Southwest Point at the confluence of the Clinch and Tennessee rivers and at Tellico Blockhouse on the Little Tennessee (Nance 2004:33). However, the U.S. government was still reluctant to engage in a two-front war until the northern tribes were pacified, and Governor Blount became convinced that the only way to assure adequate federal protection was for the Southwest Territory to become a state.

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Chapter 4

The Lost Station

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lexander Cavett died intestate. Since his entire family perished with him, his next closest kin, brothers Moses, Richard, and Michael, inherited his property, with the tract later descending to Moses who lived on the property (Cavett n.d.). Moses died in 1802 and appears to have been buried near his brother in the Mars Hill Cemetery. The Cavett tract was inherited by his wife Agnes (Nancy) Meetch Cavett who, according to Moses’s last will and testament, should hold the tract during her natural life and at her death the land be sold by his executor and the monies arising from the sale of the tract equally divided between his sons—Richard, John, Moses, and Thomas and his married daughters Rebecca Cavett Holloway, and Susanna Cavett Shoemaker (Cavett n.d.; Tennessee Superior Court 1807). The Knox County tax list for 1806 lists Agnes Cavett owning 640 acres in the county (Creekmore 1980:89). Sometime before the death of Moses Cavett, Thomas Hutchings, who sold the 640–acre tract to Alexander Cavett in 1790, and then living in Nashville, attempted to recover the tract in court, claiming that he had not legally conveyed it to Alexander. Since the original deed was apparently destroyed when the Cavett’s house was burned, witnesses for the Cavetts including James White, founder of Knoxville, testified that they saw and read the deed of conveyance, that it was for the 640 acre tract on which the Cavitt family was killed, and that Hutchings acknowledged receiving part of the purchase money for the tract. The court judgment was in favor of Moses Cavitt (Tennessee Superior Court 1807). Although it appears that Alexander Cavett had legal ownership to the property, did the swearing of an oath to his wife’s death have something to do with problems of the conveyance of the deed? In other words, was Alexander already aware before his death that there was a problem with the conveyance of his deed to his survivors?

After the death of Hutchings in 1804, fearing that his heirs might again attempt to seize the Cavett property at the demise of the witnesses to the existence of the deed of conveyance, Thomas Cavitt again went to court to verify and perpetuate the earlier testimony of James White and the other witnesses. By the time Agnes Cavett died in 1820, Thomas Cavett had bought up the other family members’ share in the property, purchasing John’s share in 1813 and Richard’s share in 1820 (Knox County Tennessee Deed Records). Agnes Cavett was probably laid to rest next to her husband in the Mars Hill Cemetery. A field stone marker seen earlier by the author probably marked their resting place. Thomas Cavett’s daughter, Nancy, who was born in 1807, married Joseph Lones in 1823. The next year, Thomas Cavett sold the 640-acre tract to Joseph Lones. According to family lore, Joseph and Nancy Lones lived on or near Kingston Pike, about 100 yards west of where the Red Lobster restaurant now stands. Since it is unlikely that Moses would have built his house on or near where his brother and family met such a horrible death, it is probable that Joseph and Nancy lived in the Moses Cavett house. Joseph Lones died on May 25, 1872 (his surname is spelled Lonas on his gravestone), and Nancy followed him in death on October 31, 1884. Their gravestones are in the Mars Hill Cemetery (figures 10 and 11). On May 26,

Figure 10. Tombstone of Joseph Lonas. Photo by the author.

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Figure 11. Tombstone of Nancy Cavett Lonas. Photo by the author.

1873, the estate of Joseph Lones deeded as a gift 164 acres to his daughter, Mary Ann Lones Kidd, wife of Maccager Kidd. Mary Ann died on October 25, 1907, and is also buried in the Mars Hill Cemetery. At her death, this tract was deeded to her daughter Lula, who married Fred Broome. After Lula Kidd Broome’s death on October 15, 1939, the land passed on to her two daughters—Flossie Walker, who lived on the south side of the spring, and Mae Mynatt, who sold her portion of the inheritance on the north side of the spring to developer Dan Culp. He was still the owner of the property when this study first began in 1982 (Cavett n.d.). It is now covered by houses in the Cavett Station subdivision. All of the early deed records for the 640 acres of the Cavett property state that it was located at the head of Sinking Creek. The source of Sinking Creek (Ten Mile Creek) is in several large springs near the intersection of Broome Road and Walker Springs Road, from which it meanders south to the Tennessee River. One of these springs in the Cavett Station subdivision is called Cavett’s Spring. Cavett’s Spring is one of several large springs that issue forth in the long NE–SW trending Grassy Valley through the heart of Knox County. Grassy Valley was one of the earliest areas settled in Knox County. According to historian W.D. Peters (1894), the earliest settler in this fertile Eden was Ebenezer Byram who built a log cabin near the source of Sinking Creek in 1787. He was followed by the Cavetts, Flemings, Loves, and Walkers who established farms in this rich valley before the end of the eighteenth century. The Valley runs from the vicinity of Adair’s Fort, 32 established in 1789, and southwest to Campbell’s Station on Turkey Creek, built in 1787 (Rothrock, ed. 1946:363,329). Several major creeks flow from this valley into the Tennessee River to the south, including Ten Mile Creek, whose small tributary Sinking Creek, heads up at Cavett’s Spring, which was within the 640 acres purchased by Alexander Cavett. The Mars Hill Cemetery is located about 35 yards north of Cavett’s Spring. The monument in the cemetery to the Cavetts (see figure 12) reads: IN GRATEFUL MEMORY TO THE DEFENDERS OF CAVETT BLOCKHOUSE Upon this spot stood the house of Alexander Cavett, who was murdered together with two men and the Cavett family of twelve September 25th 1793 after heroic resistance against a combined Creek and Cherokee force numbering one thousand warriors

32. Adair’s Fort was located in the present-day Knoxville suburb of Fountain City.

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thereby insuring failure of the intended attack upon the town of Knoxville ERECTED BY TENNESSEE SOCIETY SONS OF THE REVOLUTION SEPTEMBER 25, 1921

Like many historical markers, the Cavett monument contains erroneous facts about the incident, for example, stating that 14 persons were killed in the massacre. It is also highly unlikely that the station stood where the cemetery is now located. This site is too far from the nearest fresh water source. Early frontier dwellings were almost always sited close to a spring from which water could be most easily transported and readily available in case of a siege. Also, even if the Cavetts are not buried in this cemetery, it is unlikely later burials would be made where the tragedy took place. As discussed earlier, however, it is very likely that the Cavetts, including Moses and his wife Agnes, were buried here. Several nineteenth-century historians have suggested a more exact location of the station within the 640-acre tract close to the spring. One of the earliest locations given was in an address by Dr. Thomas William Humes in 1842 at the Church Street M.E. Church in Knoxville. Humes (1842:15) stated that the station was eight miles from Knoxville, near the present resi-

Figure 12. Cavett Monument. Left to right: Kincer Fox, The Harris Family, an unidentified field school student, and Patricia Cridlebaugh. Photo by the author.

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dence of Joseph Lonas. In 1852, Reverend Stephen Foster wrote: “On the road from Knoxville to Major Martin’s is passed Joseph Lonas on the creek, the former celebrated Cavet’s Station. . . . It is eight miles below Knoxville and seven miles above Campbell’s Station” (Foster 1852:330). Major Martin was probably Samuel Martin, a prominent businessman who acquired the David Campbell place at Campbell’s Station in 1824 (Rothrock, ed. 1946:330–331).This also suggests that the Lones farm was on or near present-day Kingston Pike. Historian J.G.M. Ramsey also mentions that the station was at the head of Sinking Creek, but is much more specific about its location. He says that the Cavett house: “stood on the plantation now owned by Mr. Walker, about eight miles west of Knoxville, and about 600 yards north of the present stage road [now Kingston Pike], where its foundation can still be seen today” (1858:580–581). There is no evidence that the Walkers owned the tract on which Cavett’s Spring is found, but they owned considerable acreage north and west of what is now Walker Springs Road. The “stage road” is undoubtedly present-day Kingston Pike, which as far as is known, runs along the same route as it did in the mid nineteenth century when Ramsey described the location of the station. Six hundred yards north of Kingston Pike would put the location to the south of Cavett’s Spring. W.D. Peters in his 1894 history of Kingston Pike states that Cavett’s Station was at or near where the residence of Maccajer Kidd now stands. An 1895 map of Knox County (Pill 1895) shows the residence of Maccager Kidd on the south side of the spring, close to the modern house of Curtis Kington.33 The 1895 map also shows the residences of a J. Brown and G. Jones on what appears to be the north side of the spring. Perhaps tenants on the Kidd property, no other information is known about these families. Kincer Fox (1983) told the author that one of his family members said that the Kidd house was in the little valley along the stream, but a surface survey of this area found no evidence of a former building there. The Mynatt and Broome family tradition is that the station was just behind the Broome-Mynatt house above the spring. This would be expected if the Cavetts wanted direct access to a fresh water source. Other informants also believed that the station was in the immediate vicinity of the BroomeMynatt house. In a 1983 interview with Mary Dowell, she stated that her parents told her that the station was not far from the cemetery, towards Kingston Pike. She also related that the monument is on the site of the Cavett family 33. The Kington house was torn down in the 1990s for a subdivision.

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grave (1983b). A 1992 letter from Arlas O. Cavett, a descendant of the Cavett family, states that the “old block house” was located near the creek about 100 to 150 yards south of the Cain house, which stands directly west of the Mars Hill Cemetery. By 1982, the author felt there was sufficient documentary evidence to try to find Cavett’s Station with an archaeological excavation.

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Chapter 5

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rchaeology, when practiced correctly, is a science with a precise and testable research design to collect data from the earth in a systematic manner so that our cultural past can be accurately reconstructed. The research design for the study of the possible Cavett cabin location began with carefully examining the areas around the former Broome-Mynatt house that appeared relatively undisturbed by nineteenthth and twentieth-century activities. Once such areas were delimited, tests would be systematically excavated below surface to determine if late eighteenth-century artifacts and/or foundation and chimney features from the cabin were present. Commonly recovered artifacts such as ceramics and nails changed rapidly through time, and distinctive examples of these types have been archaeologically recovered on several late eighteenth-century domestic sites in the Knoxville area such as the James White Second House site (Faulkner 1984), Blount Mansion (Young 2000), and John Sevier’s cabin at Marble Springs (Faberson and Faulkner, eds. 2005).34 The other evidence that was expected was the remains of a large, hot fire producing abundant charcoal and ash deposits that are indestructible through time in the ground, in addition to numerous burned and melted artifacts such as glass. If a log cabin such as that at Cavett’s Station burned in an area, which had remained relatively undisturbed since 1793, it should have left a clear and distinct archaeological “footprint.” 34. One of the most common refined tablewares in late eighteenth-century Knoxville home sites is called creamware, the first English ceramic to be widely manufactured and distributed and identified by its creamy-colored lead glaze. It remained common until ca. 1800. In the last decade of the eighteenth century, most nails were wrought nails with handhammered shanks and heads. These were replaced about 1800 by machine-made cut (square) nails. Both of these artifact types would be common at the site of Cavett’s Station.

The possible site of Cavett’s Station was surveyed on April 29, 1981, to determine if any artifacts or features such as a cabin foundation were visible on the surface. Most of the area was covered with bramble and trees, except for an open area where the Broome-Mynatt house had stood. This area, however, was disturbed by bulldozing when the house was razed. Based on soil contours and a few artifacts recovered in disturbed areas, it appeared the heaviest domestic occupation here extended 500 feet east of Gallaher Road and 300 feet north of the terrace above the spring and small tributary of Ten Mile Creek. The site was recorded with the Tennessee Division of Archaeology site survey files as 40KN67.35 To understand the age and function of artifacts (ceramics, building materials, etc.) and features (foundations, trash pits, etc.) on an archaeological site resulting from human behavior, it is necessary to carefully uncover and accurately record the horizontal (spatial) and vertical (chronological) relationship of these remains. Spatial relationships are established by grid points (stakes or other markers) on the ground surface accurately tied with an engineer’s transit by distance and direction to a permanent datum point (iron rebar was used at 40KN67). Vertical relationships are determined from a permanent benchmark or established elevation point that are used to tell the archaeologist the chronological or relative age of artifacts recovered in the ground. North-South and East-West grid points are measured from the datum allowing the accurate spatial or horizontal position of all artifacts and features across the site. The next phase of archaeological research is testing, that is, the systematic removal of soil to find buried artifacts, ideally in undisturbed context. Testing of site 40KN67 was accomplished by what is called “shovel testing,” digging small shovel-width holes (in this case a 1-by-1-foot square centered on the grid points) to subsoil to determine the stratigraphy or natural/cultural soil formation, locate buried features such as foundations, and collect an assemblage of artifacts from the site. Specifically, we were looking for a concentration of late eighteenth-century artifacts and the remains of the foundation of the Cavett cabin as well as identifying charred wood and ash concentrations from the burned cabin dating to 1793. From October 29, 1982 to February 24, 1984, 214 1-by-1-foot shovel tests were dug by seven volunteers in 21 days when weather permitted and family, friends, and students could find time to help. The shovel tests were excavated 35. This is the standard method of permanently recording archaeological sites in the nation, the numeral 40 meaning Tennessee, the 40th state alphabetically, KN designating Knox County, and 67 indicating it is the 67th archaeological site in this county officially recorded at the Tennessee Division of Archaeology.

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on grid at five-foot intervals and all soil was screened through ¼–inch mesh. Depth of the tests to the culturally sterile gravelly clay/loam subsoil ranged from .20 feet to 2.1 feet below surface, the latter depth reached in a buried gully. One hundred and eighty four shovel tests produced artifacts, and several indicated buried strata including buried humus layers36 and ash/charcoal lenses. The age of these buried strata was equivocal, however, as to age and origin because of the absence of diagnostic artifacts in the small samples. The next step was to excavate what are called units or blocks to more fully expose strata and features and to produce more artifacts for study. Units are usually square and can be of various sizes depending on a number of factors such as the number and type of features that might be uncovered, the depth of the cultural deposits, and the size of the excavation crew. Since the excavation crew usually consisted of six to seven persons, a larger number of small units, on this project 4-by-4-feet in size, were excavated on seven different areas of the site. This size allowed a two-person team to effectively excavate these units, one person digging with a mason’s trowel and other small tools, and the other screening the soil through ¼–inch mesh. From July 16–August 13, 1983, 12 students in Dr. Patricia Cridlebaugh’s archaeology field school in the Department of Anthropology, UT Knoxville, dug six days at the site. Nine volunteers worked three days at the site from May 5– May 18, 1984 (figures 13 and 14). Four units were placed where the shovel testing revealed buried charcoal, ash lenses, and humus strata. The buried strata were north and east of the Broome-Mynatt house and suggested that an earlier structure, possibly burned, stood at this location. All of the artifacts found in these strata, however, date from the last half of the nineteenth and earlier twentieth century. Of the 265 identifiable nails, 60% were wire (drawn) and 39% were fully machine cut (Kendall 1987). The latter appear in the Knox County area ca. 1830 and the former ca. 1890 in building construction (Faulkner 2008). Only two wrought nails were recovered, and while these might indicate a late-eighteenth century house was located nearby, it is just as likely these came to the site in recycled boards. About 75% of the refined earthenware (table ware) was whiteware, most of it conforming to the vessel types used in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century (Kendall 1987). No creamware or other late eighteenthcentury ceramics were positively identified. It is disappointing, but there is no conclusive archaeological evidence that Cavett’s Station stood at or near-by the Broome/Mynatt house. One might 36. Buried humus layers usually indicate older ground surfaces.

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Figure 13. Excavation of a 4-by-4-foot unit by Ed Harris and Jackie Cunningham. Photo by the author.

argue that in the short period of time the Cavetts lived here (ca. 3 years) few household goods would have accumulated on site. This is very unlikely, however, since virtually everything they owned would have been destroyed on the site and should be present, albeit in a burned condition. Based on the location of the ash lenses and associated artifacts, it seems probable that these remains are from the Brown and/or Jones houses mentioned earlier. So where was Cavett’s Station? While it makes sense, perhaps, that they would have wanted to be close to their drinking water source, the area immediately around the spring is not high ground defensible from attack. If the family opted for the most defensible location closest to the spring, where would it be? Less than 1,000 feet south is a low ridge/knoll that stands about 60 feet above the little stream valley. This landform is about 600 yards north of Kingston Pike (the old stage road of J.G.M. Ramsey) and the former location of the Maccager Kidd house, both mentioned by the respective authors as the site of Cavett’s Station. The ridge/knoll was owned by Curtis Kington and John Fiser during our project. The Kington property had been extensively landscaped and except for a cultivated garden, the entire area was heavily covered with vegetation when both landowners graciously allowed a surface survey on May 4–5, 1985. Because of the ground cover and the time 98

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Figure 14. Recording of a 4-by-4-foot unit. Patricia Cridlebaugh (back to the camera) records the team’s findings. Ed Harris (foreground, kneeling) takes measurements while Sara and Heather Harris (background) look on. Three field school students are unidentified. Photo by the author.

element, I decided to use a metal detector survey on the Kington and Fiser properties that was ably conducted by Cleve, David, and Bruce Smith of Jefferson County, Tennessee. Four areas were surveyed with metal detectors: the top of the knoll on both the Kington and Fiser properties, the woods between the valley floor and the summit of the knoll, and two small rises on the valley floor. Datum points were established in these areas to triangulate any material removal from the ground. There was a heavy concentration of late-nineteenth and early twentieth-century metal artifacts along the fence line between the Kington and Fiser properties and around a possible sinkhole east of the Kington residence. A scatter of earlier metal artifacts was found on one of the small rises in the valley including cut nails, horseshoes, horseshoe nails, and a silver plated fork. This could have been the location of a later nineteenth-century barn, or as suggested by Cleve Smith, a place where Civil War cavalry refitted their horses. The only possibly significant artifact was a lead musket ball found in the woods above the valley floor. This, of course, could have been fired by a later hunter. The area of the Kington and Fiser properties was surveyed once more by the author and his wife Terry after the Kington house was razed for a subdivision. As in previous reconnaissance, no eighteenth-century artifacts Digging into the Past

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were found in the disturbance around the house, but finding such artifacts seemed unlikely due to the intensity and disturbances of the later nineteenth and twentieth-century occupation here and the fact that the Cavetts only lived somewhere in this area for about three years. Both sides of the little stream issuing from Cavett’s Spring are now completely covered with subdivisions. It is very unlikely that we will ever know exactly where this tragedy transpired.

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Chapter 6

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hile individuals can be singled out for stealing Indian land, ever since the signing of the Articles of Confederation, the U.S. government implemented a national policy of frontier expansion that would presumably cost the least amount of lives of settlers and the least amount of cash for a monetarily strapped, fledgling government. Ergo the government’s policy of the large-scale acquisition of Indian territory, detailed in what were called land treaties. Later, the U.S. government also instituted a policy of acculturation, that is, a process by which Native culture would be gradually absorbed into the dominant Euro-American socio-cultural pattern until they became totally assimilated in white American culture. The clash of these two lifeways during the Cherokee wars of the late eighteenth century was fueled by two critical misunderstandings stemming from these policies. The Indians never really understood the European notion of private ownership of land, and they refused to give up their Native identity in spite of European pressures to forsake it, especially through the inducement of modern technology. The Cherokee’s bond with their land was the foundation of their native religious beliefs. Most Indians were animistic in that they saw no separation between the Spirit and the entities of the natural environment such as plants and animals existing on their land. The Great Spirit or “Great Mystery” was the creator of all these things in the natural world. It is difficult for people today to understand how the Cherokee continued to bounce back from decades of destruction of their villages in raids such as the Rutherford expedition. While the loss of their homes was tragic, however, these were viewed as temporary shelters; their sacred land was believed to be eternal.

In 1776, the charismatic Cherokee war chief Dragging Canoe prophesized that the white men were “leaving [us] only a little piece of ground to stand upon, and it seems their intention to destroy us as a Nation” (Stuart 1776). How could a tribe called the “War lords of the southern Alleghenies” (Woodward 1963:34) at the beginning of the eighteenth century be on the road to oblivion 100 years later? The simple answer, of course, is that the Cherokee had given up most of their tribal land to the white settlers. While explanations for the rapid acquisition of Indian land by Europeans usually center on the latter’s numerical and technological superiority, there are a number of reasons why this happened so quickly throughout North America. Even after witnessing the technological superiority of the Europeans and quickly adopting what they saw as useful elements of it (e.g. steel weapons) throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the Cherokee, like most cultures, stubbornly maintained their own cultural patterns of social order, government, and warfare. Chief Old Tassel said it most succinctly: “We are a separate people.” In many instances, these cultural patterns were incomprehensible and sometimes repugnant to both sides and fueled one of the bloodiest wars in this emerging country’s history. This downward spiral of the Cherokee Nation toward defeat and eventual removal was exacerbated by the Revolutionary War. The Cherokee were forced to pick sides, and unfortunately for them, they chose the British at the beginning of the war, hoping the Crown would force the American settlers back across the Proclamation Line of 1763. This resulted in the enmity of the American settlers who largely ignored the proclamation of the Crown, believing that they had the right to build homes on what they called vacant land but what the Indians claimed as their hunting grounds. By the onset of the Revolution, the Proclamation of 1763 was null and void, the first of several promises from the whites that the Cherokee had set their hopes on to stem the flood of settlers invading their homeland. This trust in the words that the white men set down on paper also victimized the Cherokee because few could speak or read English, and so were at the mercy of white interpreters who were usually employed by the Americans. Treaties between the Indians and the Americans were wrought with other problems, not the least of which was the fact that the people on both sides wielding the pen often lacked the strength or will to enforce the treaties, and sometimes were not even authorized to sign them in the first place. Land treaties were supposed to clearly define areas that belonged to each side and were usually accompanied by the acquisition of vast areas of Indian territory. Most treaty boundary lines in the largely uncharted Indian country, however, were extremely vague; for example, the points of reference might be

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such natural features as a mountaintop or a meandering river valley. As to the use of the compass, the Cherokee called it “the land stealer.” The Cherokee certainly knew where they had lived for thousands of years, but the settlers sometimes did not even know what colony (state) they were in. Witness the confusion of the settlers in Carter’s Valley who initially did not know if they were in Virginia or North Carolina. As it turned out, they were in the western territory of North Carolina, which made them trespassers on Cherokee land. Another problem was that more than one tribe could claim an area as their homeland/hunting ground. While the Cherokee and other southeastern tribes did not wage war primarily for territorial gain, the former allied themselves with the Chickasaw to drive the Shawnee from the Cumberland Valley and temporarily wrested northern Georgia from the Creeks. Although what is now eastern Kentucky and West Virginia was sold at the Treaty of Sycamore Shoals by the Cherokee, the Shawnee also claimed this territory and both tribes continued to contest its settlement by the Virginians. Enforcing the treaties by both sides was also a serious issue. While the Americans usually had the state or territorial government to back them up, the enforcers, so to speak, were the local militia, who were not professional soldiers and often lacked discipline when encountering non-combatants. And of course, these enforcers had a personal stake in the dispute since some of them had illegally made their homes on Indian land. After the Revolution, the settlers in the upper Tennessee Valley realized that they could no longer rely on the federal army for protection and thus had to count on the state or territorial militia to come to their aid. This situation reached a flashpoint with the formation of the state of Franklin, which was generally ignored by both the North Carolina state government and the federal government, making it unlikely for settlers to expect help from either or to heed pleas to abide by the treaties. But sometimes American leaders urged fair play for the Indians. In a letter from the North Carolina Gov. Alexander Martin to Col. John Sevier on February 11, 1782, he implored: Sir: I am distressed with the repeated complaints of the Indians respecting the daily intrusions of our people on their lands beyond the French Broad River. I beg you, sir, to prevent the injuries these savages justly complain of, who are constantly imploring the protection of the state and appealing to its justice in vain. By interposing your influence on these, our unruly citizens, I think will have sufficient weight, without going into extremities disgraceful to them and disagreeable to the state. You will, therefore, please to warn these intruders off the lands reserved

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to the Indians by the late act of the Assembly, that they remove immediately, at least by the middle of March, otherwise they will be drove off. If you find them still refractory at the above time, you will draw forth a body of your militia on horseback, and pull down their cabins, and drive them off, laying aside every consideration of their entreaties to the contrary.

This is a strong and clear order from the North Carolina government that John Sevier served. Of course Sevier ignored it because he was one of the “unruly” citizens. Alexander McGillivray, the Creek chief, called him a “barbarian” for apparent complicity in the murder of Old Tassel (Hoig 1998:72). Governor Johnson of North Carolina after hearing about the murder of Old Tassel issued a warrant for Sevier’s arrest and said “I fear that we shall have no peace in the western counties until this robber and free booter is checked” (Brown 1938:278). The Land Grab Act of North Carolina in 1783 further inflamed the tinderbox situation between the settlers and the Indians when thousands of the former poured into the Tennessee region seeking cheap, and what seemed to be unlimited, land. While many landowners lived on their modest claims, literally millions of acres were controlled by absentee land barons whose primary concern was to make money. After the failure of the state of Franklin, even the settlers who purchased the tract they farmed did not have clear title to their property on the French Broad. It was not until 1807 that the state of Tennessee finally legalized their claims in this river valley. Another problem that became acute at this time was the increased formation of land companies that acquired millions of acres of land. Both the central government and the Indians were now struggling against what were nascent corporations, backed by powerful people like William Blount and John Sevier and also outside investors who had deep pockets. A good example was the Muscle Shoals intrigue. After the Revolution, the state of North Carolina surveyed millions of acres in what is now Middle Tennessee, known as the Military Reserve, for land grants for officers who served during the war. This was a boon to these corporate members who profited by the fact that very few veterans possessed the capital to move to this wilderness. This allowed the speculators to buy tracts from the veterans, often for depreciated prices (Masterson 1954:69–70), not to mention the fact that the Land Grab Act was in violation of all previous Indian treaties. When the Military Reserve was surveyed, the surveyors reported to the land-dealer-North Carolina legislators, including William Blount, that a several million acre tract of rich land lay in the great southern bend of the Tennessee River, which was then located

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in the western territory of Georgia and not Tennessee as previously supposed. It was obvious that a trading post at Muscle Shoals37 would reap substantial profits due to increasing river transportation on the Tennessee and a short portage linking it with the Alabama River. The Alabama River provided straight access to the Gulf of Mexico so that the Spanish-controlled Mississippi could be by-passed (Masterson 1954:71–72). February 1784, found Blount presenting a petition to the Georgia legislature requesting title to 300,000 acres in the Bend that was approved (Masterson 1954:81). In October 1785, members of what was now known as the Bend Company including John Sevier, John Donelson, and Zachariah Cox floated down the Tennessee and opened a land office, issued warrants, and claimed generous grants for themselves (Keith, ed. 1950:221–222; Whitaker 1926). Their well-laid plans, however, were thwarted by some members of the Georgia legislature and the Indians’ unwillingness to sell the land. In 1788, during what has been called the “Spanish Conspiracy,” Sevier corresponded with Don Diego Gardoqui, the Spanish charge d’affaires, in the hopes of salvaging the Muscle Shoals project (Masterson 1954:151). Blount and Sevier were still involved with the development at Muscle Shoals as late as 1798 although it was now under the leadership of Zachariah Cox and the Yazoo Company (Masterson 1954:335). The Indian leaders also had problems honoring treaty stipulations. In the first place, individual tribal members did not “own” the land they lived on, it was tribal land. Their understanding was that even when their land was sold it only meant that the purchaser was “leasing” the tract that they actually lived on. Sole ownership of land or right of inheritance was totally foreign to them. Since there were thousands of acres where no one permanently lived, the Indians felt that they could continue to use it. Settlers then accused the Indians of trespassing. Both sides felt that they were cheated in the transaction. Also, while chiefs or headmen signed the treaties, most tribal members did not believe these individuals had the right to sell land owned by the tribe, especially in perpetuity. Young warriors who still wanted to exhibit their prowess found a new enemy and raised war parties to attack the whites they thought illegally lived on tribal land. According to Indian custom, anyone could raise a war party, and in the end, chiefs or headmen could not, or would not stop a band of angry marauding warriors from attacking the white settlements. 37. This was a shallow stretch of the Tennessee River in Colbert County, Alabama, that was named for the ubiquitous river mussel that thrives in shallow running water. A hindrance to river traffic since the first European settlement, the problem was not permanently solved until the opening of the Muscle Shoals Canal in 1890 (Govan and Livingood 1977: 358).

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After the Treaty of Long Island in which the Cherokee signed away the Watauga area where the settlers already had a strong foothold, the Nation split into two factions. The peace faction, who had faith in the treaties to preserve the peace and led by older chiefs Old Tassel and Hanging Maw, largely remained in the Little Tennessee and Hiwassee river valleys, staying close to the white settlements in the Holston and French Broad drainage. The war faction, led by Dragging Canoe, moved to the fastness of the Lookout Mountain area for protection for their villages from which they launched their raiding parties. On the one hand, this weakened the tribe by the loss of members seeking peace; on the other, the war faction temporarily increased their power through alliances with the near-by Creeks in northern Georgia. Ironically, the most serious problem for the peace faction was their proximity to the Holston/French Broad settlements, putting them within easy striking distance of the North Carolina state and Southwest Territory militias. With the settlers’ penchant for seeing all Indians as potential enemies, the innocent were now often attacked, further fanning the flames of hatred and revenge. While the Overhill peace faction continued to seek harmony with their white neighbors, the latter often referred to them as “varmints” or “barbarians.” Concerning WhiteIndian relationships in 1783, the Moravian missionary Martin Schneider said of the settlers: “these people would rather like to extirpate them all together, & take their land themselves; they scarce look upon them as human creatures which I often could perceive in their Conversations” (Williams, ed.1928:253). But were the Overhill ruthless “savages” (as they were perceived by the white settlers) with no redeeming human qualities? In 1762, Lt. Henry Timberlake spent three months as a guest of these Indians in the Little Tennessee Valley (King, ed. 2007:27) and observed: “They are of a very gentle and amicable disposition to those they think their friends, but as implacable in their enmity, their revenge being only completed in the entire destruction of their enemies.” In 1766, they were visited by John Hammerer, a Lutheran missionary, who said: ‘That they loved strangers among them and are hospitable but are poor” (Williams, ed. 1928:246). Ethnologist William Gilbert describes the Cherokee who remained in the Great Smoky Mountains after removal as: “Well featured and of erect carriage, of moderately robust build. They were possessed of a superior and independent bearing. Although grave and steady in manner and disposition to the point of melancholy and slow and reserved in speech they were withal frank, cheerful, and humane, as well as honest and liberal” (Gilbert 1943:194). When the Cherokee next came to the bargaining table in 1785, the Overhill still had confidence that signing the Treaty of Hopewell would bring peace since it was supported by the new American government rather than

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the state of North Carolina. The state still held a grudge against the Cherokee since they had supported the British in the Revolution, and many North Carolinians thought this made all treaties with the tribe null and void. It was clear, however, that the new American nation was weak, and although many whites strongly supported the peace movement, the federal government was unable to enforce the treaty. This was perfectly obvious to the Cherokee war faction. Although the treaty agreed to recognize most of the Indian land claims, the Chickamauga Cherokee repudiated the Treaty of Hopewell and still insisted the Americans illegally claimed tribal land based on the Proclamation of 1763. In 1783, Old Tassel replaced The Raven as head chief of the Overhills. Unlike his predecessor, Old Tassel was a man who tirelessly attempted to keep his people at peace with their Franklin neighbors. He was described as: “A stout, mild-mannered but resolute man with a round face and pleasant countenance, Tassel was noted for his sagacity and profundity of Thought. He was also widely reputed for his honesty . . . there is no doubt that Corn Tassel . . . was one of the most beloved Cherokee chiefs” (Hoig 1998:62). Unfortunately for Old Tassel, he was head chief of the Overhills during the tumultuous creation of the state of Franklin by what one historian called “John Sevier and his Indian hating friends” (Woodward 1963:103). The Franklinites lost no time intimidating the Overhill. On August 31, 1786, they attempted to trump the Treaty of Hopewell with their own version of a treaty signed at the town of Coyatee where the Cherokee, some say at gunpoint, were forced to sign the treaty relinquishing their lands north of the (Little) Tennessee River. The Franklin militia further tried to cower Old Tassel and Hanging Maw at a parlay at Chota, threatening the chiefs that their land north of the (Little) Tennessee River had been sold by North Carolina to the state of Franklin, and if any Cherokee attacked a white settlement in this area their village would be burned in retaliation (Hoig 1998:68). They were referring to the Treaty of Coyatee, which the illicit Franklin government had no authority to negotiate and sign. Old Tassel refused to concede to the bogus Franklin claim (Hoig 1998:68–69), and this probably signed his death warrant. Sevier’s militia returned to the Upper towns in June 1788, under the command of James Hubbard, a notorious Indian antagonist. General Sevier was reportedly “away on business.” Hubbard lured Old Tassel, his son, and three other chiefs to Chilhowee under a flag of truce, where they were unarmed, locked in a house, and eventually tomahawked to death by John Kirk. The militia rode away, leaving the bodies unburied (Hoig 1998:76). When the Cherokee returned to Chilhowee and found the bodies, it was said that Old Tassel’s hand still clutched the violated truce flag. Some say it was Sevier who

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had raised this flag and then left the unarmed Indians to the wrath of Kirk (Downs 1937:247). Others such as the Tennessee historian John Haywood defended Sevier: Suspicion, ever alive toward the conduct of military commanders, attributed to Colonel Sevier a voluntary absence, whilst many of those who were present, acquitted him of all presentiment of the horrid act. Colonel Sevier never acted with cruelty before or since; he often commanded; he was never accused of inhumanity; he could not have given his consent on this occasion (1823:196).

After the brutal murder of Old Tassel and his companions, the Overhill moved their capital from Chota to Estanaula on the Coosa River in northern Georgia. This town was later renamed New Echota in the early nineteenth century. Abandoning their capital indicates the enmity and distrust they now felt toward the whites. Chota and its’ companion town Tanasi were sacred ground to the Cherokee, the most important of the eighteenth-century Overhill towns where several prominent Cherokee leaders were born, resided, and/ or were buried (Schroedl and Russ 1986). The capital of the Overhill from the late 1740s to 1788, in 1753, Chota was called their “Mother Town” (Schroedl and Russ 1986:9). Almost a decade later, Lt. Henry Timberlake, peace envoy from the Virginia colony, was a guest in Chota and labeled it on a map as “the Metropolis” (King, ed. 2007:16). The peace articles that Timberlake carried were read in the town-house of Chota, described by him as “raised with wood, and covered over with earth . . . built in the form of a sugar loaf, and large enough to contain over 500 persons” (King, ed. 2007:17). In 1784, Brother Martin Schneider, a Moravian missionary, said that Chota “consisted of upwards of 30 Houses besides Hothouses” (Williams, ed. 1928:256). The size of the Chota townhouse described by Henry Timberlake in 1763 indicates that the population of this town was much smaller two decades later. By this time, of course, the town had been destroyed several times by the American militia. After the cold-blooded murder of their chiefs, however, many Cherokee wanted to get as far away from the white settlers as was possible, not knowing who could be trusted anymore. But fear was probably not the only cause. According to their value system, they felt morally superior to the whites who had now convinced the Indians that they were unpredictable and “crooked.” The traditional Cherokee lived in a closed, corporate community organized by kinship rather than the voluntary associations of Europeans (Riggs 1999:24–25). As much as they valued the technology gained from their white neighbors, the Cherokee still wanted to maintain as much distance

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from them as was possible. In 1785, chief Old Tassel sadly complained, “Your people have built houses in sight of our towns” (Ramsey 1853:3 19). Practicality also may have had a hand in convincing the Indians to move their capital to Georgia. By 1788, the population center of the Cherokee nation had moved south. Woodward (1963:151) suggests that the new capital was located in what they believed to be the center of their Nation, which would be more accessible to all of their people. It is interesting that despite the schism between the Lower and Upper towns in 1777, like Chota, Estanaula was the capital of both groups with the near-by Chickamauga now having a greater influence on tribal policy. East Tennessee finally came under full federal control when the Southwest Territory was formed in May 1790. The settlers were heartened by the odds that they would be led by a more stable and responsive government. For the Cherokee, the existence of a leader of a stronger federal agency that they could directly deal with provided a ray of hope. Disregarding his motives for the moment, Gov. William Blount seemed anxious to negotiate a new peace settlement with the Cherokee. Blount may have also envisioned a silver lining in the continued urging of the secretary of war for a peaceful settlement. Outwardly the federal government seemed sincere in extending the hand of friendship. Even the “Great Father,” President Washington, seemed to understand the Indians’ plight. On January 7, 1793, he issued the following proclamation: Whereas I have received authentic information, that certain lawless and wicked persons of the western frontier, in the State of Georgia, did lately invade, burn and destroy a town belonging to the Cherokee Nation, although in amity with the United States, and put to death several Indians of that Nation: and whereas such outrageous conduct, not only violates the rights of humanity, but also endangers the public peace; and it becomes the honor and good faith of the United States to pursue all legal means for the punishment of those atrocious offenders; I have therefore; saw fit to issue this proclamation, hereby exhorting all the citizens of the United States, and requiring all the officers thereof, according to their respective stations, to use their utmost endeavors to apprehend and bring those offenders to justice. And, I do moreover offer a reward of Five Hundred Dollars, for each and every of the above named persons, who shall be so apprehended and brought to justice, and shall be provided to have assumed or exercised any command or authority among the preperators (sic) of the crime

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aforesaid, at the time of committing the same (King and Evans 1979:59).

Governor Blount had great hopes that his Treaty of Holston with the Cherokee in 1792 would be a success. Despite the pomp and ceremony at the signing of this treaty, by this time the Cherokee were very suspicious of the Americans’ motives but the Overhill chiefs attended, nevertheless. They basically staked their future on the hope that the latest treaty would rectify some of the problems with the Treaty of Hopewell. The Chickamauga, however, did not trust the Americans, and their leader, Dragging Canoe, boycotted the meeting. After several days of negotiations, the peace leaders realized that the governor wanted to replace the Treaty of Hopewell with a new treaty resulting in the loss of more tribal land. Chief John Watts signed the treaty, but cried afterward. He saw the handwriting on the wall—there would be no peace and an all-out war was inevitable. The retaliatory raids between the Americans and the Cherokee continued with atrocities on both sides. Throughout this period of conflict beginning with the Revolutionary War, blood revenge drove both sides to kill innocent victims. The carnage culminated with the attack on the peace party at Hanging Maw’s and the massacre at Cavett’s Station. Any semblance of rules of warfare was disregarded. Flags of truce were violated with the murder of Old Tassel and massacre of Alexander Cavett’s family. Despite the order from the War Department for the territorial militia to refrain from offensive attacks on the Indian towns, lex talionis prevailed in the American camp. For their part, the Cherokee ratcheted up their version of warfare by now attempting to destroy entire American towns. This last ditch change in strategy was due to a new Cherokee war chief. Dragging Canoe had died suddenly on March 1, 1792, and was replaced by the beguiling John Watts. Watts appears to have been cannier than his predecessor in dealing with the Americans; his father was white, and it is likely he spoke some English. Living in both worlds he seems to have been more comfortable in dealing with the Americans, acting as a scout for John Sevier in their raid on the Chickamauga towns in 1782 (although trying to misdirect the general’s plan of attack) and ten years later, he ceremoniously feted Governor Blount at Coyatee. Watt’s amity was deceptive. He successfully cooperated with his former enemies, the Creeks, in raids on the settlers, and he was one of the leaders in the first abortive attack on the future town of Knoxville in October 1788. In this attack, Watts demonstrated his prowess by copying the Americans’ organization of their armies with large numbers of combatants on the ground and the use of cavalry as a screen. By then he undoubtedly bore a deep hatred

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for the Americans due to the murder of his Uncle Old Tassel, and it was this raid that convinced him that the capture of the centers of American strength might be the only way to defeat them. This culminated in his September 1792, attack on Buchanan’s Station with 1,000 Cherokee, Creek, and Shawnee warriors, which some think was a prelude to taking Nashville and the attempted attack on Knoxville a year later. This new strategy by John Watts was unlike the previous hit-and-run raids on isolated cabins and small settlements by roving war parties under the leadership of Dragging Canoe. As early as the aborted raid on White’s Fort in 1788, Watts had changed the organization of random war parties into what could be called Indian armies. In his 1854 History of Tennessee, W.H. Carpenter states that “John Watts, a half-breed chief of the lower Cherokees, had latterly increased the military efficiency of his warriors by the formation of three companies of mounted men.” In the present day United States, a military company can range from 75–200 individuals. The make-up of such a Wattsled force was described by Joseph Brown, a white captive in the Lower Cherokee towns, regarding the attack on Gillespie’s Station: During that whole summer [I788] there was war, with frequent alarms of white people coming, and at one time a Col. Martin got to Chattanooga, within twenty miles of where I lived; but the Indians killed three of his captains, and he only killed one Shawnee and one negro. No Cherokees were killed, but they raised an army of three thousand men. borrowed one thousand Creeks, to go with fifteen hundred Cherokees on foot, and five hundred mounted Cherokees, many of whom were half-breeds, and dressed like white men; they kept them ahead of the army, and the white men who met them thought them a scouting party of whites, and by this scheme readily taken prisoners, when they should be kept until it was convenient to kill them without giving alarm. Several men were taken this way the day they got to Gillespie’s Fort (Ramsey 1853:513–514).

Hoig (1998:82–83) says this about Watts’ later war strategy: “By late September [1792], Watts had determined his objectives. First he would wipe out the western Cumberland settlements, then turn back and fall upon the detested Wataugans to the east. He would carry out these goals with a wellorganized, coordinated plan of military strategy. He himself would lead the main force.” This strategy was probably due to an increase in Cherokee strength by consolidation with the Creek and Shawnee. Not only was the attack on

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strong fortified settlements unusual in Indian warfare, but also, the reported size of an Indian force of over 1,000 warriors in the attack on Buchanan Station and the planned raid on Knoxville appear to have been launched by the largest native army assembled on the Southwest frontier. There is certainly a possibility that the strength of these forces was exaggerated. The method of estimating the size of Watt’s Indian army seems a little unreliable; based on “trails and fires” they left on their way to Knoxville. It is also conceivable that the number of Indians was magnified by captives taken by John Sevier on his retaliatory strike into Georgia after the Cavett massacre who wanted to impress their captors. The most likely scenario, however, is that the Knoxvillians themselves overstated the number of attackers to convince the federal government that more help was needed from the horde of Indians that was now threatening the frontier. In any case, Watts seems to have been able to gather and lead larger war parties that would be capable of capturing larger settlements. There are other reasons why the size of this war party could be questioned. It seems more likely such a large force would have been observed before it approached Knoxville. General Sevier had sent Captain Harrison from Ish’s Station to scout for the expected attackers. What seems puzzling, however, is that the general did not send out a local commander of the scouting party who knew the countryside. Harrison came down to Knoxville with the Sullivan County militia and may not have been familiar with all of the possible routes into town. It is also questionable whether a large group could move in such an orderly and rapid manner as reported. Acting Gov. David Smith’s report that “they marched in files of twenty-eight abreast, each of which ’tis supposed was composed of 40 men” suggests that there was an element of formal military leadership, perhaps attributed to a stronger central command under John Watts. Where this information originated is unknown, but the fact that it appeared in the Knoxville Gazette on September 14th probably means it was obtained by local trackers. Another interesting description of counting Indians in a war party is found in the April 10, 1794, issue of the Knoxville Gazette. Tracking a party of Indians who had attacked travelers on the Kentucky Road in Middle Tennessee, James Ore with a party of Hawkins County militia reported that “the party of Indians, as appeared by their marks and figures, engraved on trees, were 26 in number, that they had taken four scalps, and one from the beard of a Dunkard preacher—It appeared from the tracks that they had sixteen stolen horses.” The other question is could such a large party move as fast as reported since only 100 were said to be mounted. According to the newspaper accounts,

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the war party crossed the Tennessee below the mouth of the Holston (now below where the Little Tennessee flows into the Tennessee proper) and marched 30 miles from the evening of the 24th to sunrise of the 25th, approximately 8–9 hours. The time a person could walk such a distance at a steady pace would be two miles an hour or 15 hours. However, a human walking at a fast pace could do 4.5–5.0 miles per hour and reach Cavett’s Station in 6–7 hours. Henry Timberlake, the British Emissary to the Cherokees from 1756–1765, provides us with a description of the Indians’ athletic ability compared to three British officers: the vulgar notion of the Indians uncommon activity [athletick diversions] was contradicted by three officers of the Virginia regiment, the slowest of which could outrun the swiftest of about 700 Indians that were in the place: but had the race exceeded two or three hundred yards, the Indians would then have acquired the advantage, by being able to keep the same pace a long time together; and running being likewise more general among them, a body of them would always greatly exceed an equal number of our troops (King, ed. 2007:27).

Since the Cherokee appear to have been excellent distance runners rather than sprinters, it is possible these Indians could have reached the Knoxville area overnight, although fires reported along their trail suggest that they stopped along the way. The initial newspaper account (Knoxville Gazette, October 12, 1793) stated that the Indian army numbered 1,000–1,500 warriors, identified by Ramsey (1853:580) as 200 Cherokee and 700 Creeks, 100 of whom he said to be mounted. Considering Carpenter’s statement (1854) that Watts had mounted cavalry, and the speed of the army to the vicinity of Knoxville, it seems likely that more warriors were riding horses. A later edition of the Gazette (February 13, 1794), stated: “It appears, from the best information yet obtained of the number of Indians, there were seven hundred Cherokees and two hundred Creeks.” Perhaps the Cherokee questioned earlier in Georgia by John Sevier put the onus of blame on the Creeks for the massacre since the latter were also the Indians who took the Cavett boy captive and later killed him. By the early autumn of 1793, an attack by the Cherokee on Knoxville was inevitable. All indications are that the inhabitants of the town were aware of this. As early as April of that year, the Knoxville Gazette reported that “Notwithstanding the assurances of peace the Creeks have given the United States . . . upwards [of] six hundred have lately passed the Cherokee lower towns

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for war against the United States; and that many more are daily expected.” In August, Knoxvillians knew that the Cherokee were assembling at Estanaula under the leadership of John Watts to invade the Territory. Haywood says that: “Universally, throughout the whole Territory, a powerful invasion by the Cherokees was every day expected. It was supposed that they would aim at Knoxville, because of the goods and ammunition stored there. The people everywhere asked ‘Is not the country to be defended’” (1823:304–305). Two strategies were open to the Knoxvillians. From the military standpoint, it would seem prudent to concentrate the militia in town where with the available federal troops they could take a strong defensive position to repel the invaders. Some evidence indicates that the barracks or blockhouse was not completed at this time, but some kind of military structure must have stood in town since James White left two elderly citizens to cast bullets and load the 300 muskets stored there by the federal army. In the narrative of the “Immortal 38” it states: “Here [the blockhouse] it was proposed to make a last and desperate struggle; that by possessing every port-hole in the building, and by dealing lead and powder through it to the best advantage, they might extort from an enemy of nearly forty times their number, a high price for the hazard of all they had on earth that was dear and precious” (Ramsey 1853:582). Concerning the federal troops, it is surprising that the role of these soldiers is not noted during the preparation for the attack. The other option to defend the town was to sally forth into the countryside and lay in ambush for the unsuspecting Indians. When General Sevier was asked to come and bring one-third of the militia of the three upper counties and a troop of light horse, he arrived in Knoxville a few days after August 1 (Haywood 1823:305). Capt. Michael Harrison with a company of 80 light horse from Washington County joined General Sevier, who by now had moved the militia to Ish’s Station west of town. It was Captain Harrison’s light horse that scouted the countryside looking for the Indians on September 24 (Ramsey 1853:579–580). The decision of General Sevier to abandon the town and move his force into open country is troubling. On the one hand, this move might be explained by a statement by Haywood that “the general wished to fall upon some means of delaying the intended blow till some better preparations could be made to receive it” (1823:305). That Sevier opted to take his force into the countryside was probably due to two tactics he favored when fighting Indians. One tactic was avoiding being bottled up in a fort, especially one still under construction, as was the case at Fort Lee in 1776. Being an aggressive leader, he also believed it prudent to meet the foe head-on, thus allowing him to maneuver his troops to gain the winning advantage. Such a tactic depended on one important factor— knowing exactly where the enemy was at all times. 114

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This turned out to be Sevier’s fatal flaw on September 25, 1793. John Watts had laid a ruse to convince the general that he was coming up the south side of the Holston River and that Ish’s Station would be a point of attack. This may have been what Sevier thought Watts had done the year before at Buchanan’s Station, soften up the outlying defenses before tackling the main target. Indeed, Watts was sending scouts to reconnoiter the station for several days while Sevier and the encamped militia were there. That Watts did not try to hide his intentions as would normally be the case might explain Pumpkin Boy’s death as he deliberately exposed himself to the sentries. Sevier probably thought he could waylay the Indians as they approached the station or repulse them with his strong force if they attacked it. In a letter written in 1827 by Col. David Campbell, founder of Campbell’s Station and later forwarded to Lyman Draper, is an interesting account of the incident at Ish’s Station prior to the Indian attack on the Cavett cabin: The number of families increased after we got a good fort built about the time the Territorial government took place there was [sic] about ten or twelve families in the Station. From the second year after we settled the place until the Holston treaty took place we experienced a kind of half peace half war. And indeed the same scene took place after the treaty. The Indians frequently stealing our horses and leaving some of us without any. About two years after the Holston Treaty the Indians became more troublesome, frequently killing and stealing horses and devastating parts of the country. Col. John Sevier marched about six or seven hundred men down to the frontier and encamped at his fort [Ish’s Station] on the south side of the Holston River about five miles from Campbells Station. When his army was encamped the Indians massed an army of perhaps fourteen or fifteen hundred. When they about fourteen or fifteen miles below our Station, they sent two spies, Double Head and his Brother, the Pumpkin Boy to view Sevier’s en-campment in the night. They came near to where a sentry stood [who] shot and killed Pumpkin Boy. About this same time another spying party went up as far as Cavetts, about half way between our station and Knoxville, and stole a horse from Cavett and came back by us and took a horse out of the field about the middle of the day without being discovered until some hours later. The second night after taking these horses, the army of Indians passed along us within about four or five hundred yards of our Station, went on to Cavetts and destroyed them all, burned the houses went A Little Spot of Ground to Stand Upon

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across the country to Clinch River burning some houses as they went along. We did not know of their passing along until the next morning when we found the trails where they marched along. We concluded that there were at least two thousand and that their view was to take Knoxville and then return by us and take the Station on their way back. We immediately sent two of our men on two of our best horses to inform Colonel Sevier. There was [sic] just eleven men of us in the Station at the time. We unanimously concluded to try to defend the place while we were able to shoot a gun. Most [of the men] were good gunners and tryed [sic] soldiers—each man had two good muskets and an excellent rifle all well loaded and ready by his side. We fixed everything in good order as we could, filled all our vessels with water—least they might attempt to set the houses on fire, then watched for their coming with anxiety, every moment expecting to see them coming. Until, toward evening a party of men from Knoxville who had heard of the fate of Cavetts family came to the place to see what was done. And when they came there they concluded to ride down to our Station to see what had become of us. The Indians crossed Clinch River, went down and recrossed the Tennessee below the mouth of the Clinch, dispersed and went home without being checked. Colonel Sevier commanded an army of the militia into the Indian country in the fall season, had a skirmish with them, killed some of them and destroyed some of their Towns. There was still a kind of partial warfare with the Cherokees until the Nickajack Campaign which put an end to the war with that nation. We were confined to the Station for about nine years before we could settle safely out on farms.

While the above narrative contains details that are found in other accounts of the Cavett massacre, there are other statements that could clarify some of the incidents, although this is the only source where others are mentioned. The most interesting is the Indians’ supposed behavior during the two days before the attack. The writer says that after they reached the Tennessee [Little Tennessee] they sent two spies to scout out Campbell’s Station, one of them being Doublehead. If this is true, he was a witness to his brother’s death, which might have had an influence on his savage treatment of the Cavett captives. At the same time, it is related that another party of Indians stole up to the Cavett farm and stole a horse. On the second night, the entire army of Indians approached the Station from the Little Tennessee Valley and struck it at daybreak. If these assertions are true, it means a large group of Indians was 116

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in the neighborhood for at least two days and knew where Cavett’s Station was located. In other words, why did Sevier’s scouts not discover such a large war party, and did the Indians truly stumble upon this station by accident? Historian William Rule also points out another mistake made by Sevier —that the large Indian army would not move as quickly as it did, thus avoiding detection or ambush in the open. Rule also points out that not only did Watts plan to hold Sevier at Ish’s, but also that: they had formed their plan, that by a movement too quick for discovery and by a ridge not commonly traveled by our warriors, they would pass the forces at Ish’s and Campbell stations, seizing the favorable moment of the absence of Sevier’s troops, to fall upon Knoxville entirely unsuspected, scalp the inhabitants in their beds, pillage the only two little stores in the place, and in the light of the blazing ruins, make off with their booty, divided into two or three parties, to elude pursuit, prevent delay and make good their escape (Rule 1900:69).

Watts also did not have to worry about the federal troops. Most of these soldiers had been assigned to various outposts, and thus far appeared totally ineffective in protecting the frontier. Besides welcoming them to Knoxville in February, 1793, the only other positive recognition of their presence was on the return of Governor Blount in October when the Knoxville Gazette (October 12, 1793) reported: Last Thursday night, arrived at this seat, near this place, his excellency, Governor Blount, in good health, accompanied by Col. David Henley and David Allison, Esq. from Philadelphia and a number of gentlemen from the territory. Next morning his arrival was announced by a Federal salute by the garrison, by a detachment of troops, stationed at this place, commanded by Mr. Rickart. And it is pleasing to add that his Excellency’s return has diffused universal joy throughout all ranks of his fellow citizens.

The only other mention of these troops is in wanted advertisements placed in the Gazette for deserted soldiers. Except for the “Immortal 38” who anticipated that the Indians might come knocking on the back door but whose opinion would have probably been brushed aside, Watts’ plan was working like a charm. It is very likely they would have made it to town and possibly taken it except for one flaw in their tactics. When faced with a difficult decision, the Indians were not capable of A Little Spot of Ground to Stand Upon

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implementing a sound strategy even when directed by a strong leader. Not only did Watts have to keep the Creeks in line, but also there was obvious dissension among his own lieutenants. In the end it was every warrior for himself, lex talionis prevailed, and the Cavetts were caught in the maelstrom. The attack on Cavett’s Station bears an uncanny resemblance to failed attacks led by Watts on White’s Fort (later to become Knoxville) in 1788 and Nashville in 1791. Like the 1793 Knoxville raid, the 1788 incursion was led by four chiefs: Bloody Fellow, Categiskey, John Watts, and Glass who sought revenge for the murder of their beloved Old Tassel. A disagreement arose between the leaders as to whether to attack the main target (Whites Fort) or a smaller station. They settled on attacking Gillespie’s Station where mostly women and children were killed (Ramsey 1853:518). A similar disagreement between the war leaders of the attack on Buchanan’s Station was reported by Alderman (1970:265–266): A short distance from Buchanan’s Station, the Chiefs held a council to plan their attack. An argument started between Watts and Taloliskee, Creek Chief, over which place to attack first. Watts wanted to bypass Buchanan’s and strike Nashville. The Creek Chief wanted to take the smaller station first. Watts lost. The weakness of the Indians strategy was again demonstrated, in that each chief was a law unto himself. He was in supreme command of his band. Unless all were in agreement, a coordinated effort was difficult.

There is also some contradiction about the leaders of the Cavett massacre. In a letter from John McKee to Governor Blount dated November 18, 1793, he states that: “the Lower towns, with Watts and Bloody Fellow are for war. These two chiefs, with many others from different parts of the nation, were at the massacring of Cavett’s family.” This is the only mention of Bloody Fellow being at Cavetts. From all indications, Bloody Fellow was an advocate for peace. He was one of the Cherokee parties that traveled to Philadelphia for an audience with President Washington and Secretary Knox, and by the authority of the President was given a new name General Eskagua or Clear Sky (Hoig 1998:76). In his description of the attack on Cavett’s Station, Foster (1852:331) implies that Hanging Maw was aware of the massacre before it happened. He says “The ‘Hanging Maw’ was a leading man in the councils of his people. His opposition to the scheme of an indiscriminate massacre, was strenuous and weighty.” Again, there is no other mention of this Cherokee leader being

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involved with the attack on the Cavetts, and although he had reason enough for revenge, Hanging Maw remained a constant and loyal friend of the whites. The reported killing of a young captive boy before the attack is also unclear. According to Stephen Foster (1852:33 1), a captive boy riding with Vann was killed by Doublehead after an argument between the two. This scenario is unlikely since it seems improbable that a captive white boy would accompany a war party. While Foster may have been circuitously relating the death of young Cavett, there is also the possibility that there is some truth to this tale. In a footnote, Foster (1852:331) continues his intrigue: This circumstance operated to the permanent prejudice of Doublehead. He received from this deed the appellation of “Kill-baby.” With this name he was grievously taunted by Van on a subsequent occasion, that he conceived of murdering the latter. Van became aware of his intention and adopted the following expedient to evade it. The party at the time now alluded to was at Kingston. Van had taken the freest liberties and used the most irritating language to Doublehead. He then gave out word that he should start home at a specified hour the next morning. Doublehead calculated upon the hour and took measures to waylay him by a party of his men. But Van instead of waiting the fore-mentioned time, set out early the preceding night, was too fast for his enemies and got home in safety.

Vann was undoubtedly referring to the number of children killed at the station. “Bad blood” existed between Vann and Doublehead, and there is good evidence that Vann and the Ridge plotted the assassination of Doublehead in 1807 with the Ridge chosen as executioner (Hoig 1998:95). It was the Ridge who was supposedly horrified by the murder of the Cavetts. Thus, Doublehead counted his enemies among both the white settlers and the Cherokees. The furiousness of the attack on the Cavetts seems somewhat unusual— not in the fact that women and children were killed because this happened a number of times during Indian raids. We know that women and children were even scalped as reported in the pages of the Knoxville Gazette. The gruesome dismemberment of the bodies, however, did not seem to be commonplace, and one might question the reason for this slaughter. Surely it was not a reprisal for trespassing on Indian land as was the case for attacks along the French Broad. The most likely cause was blood revenge. Since Doublehead appears to have been the instigator of this atrocity, it may have been due to the death of his brother Pumpkin Boy two days earlier at Ish’s Station. Another

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possibility is that relatives of the killed Cherokee and Creek warriors in the party took immediate revenge on the helpless family. Maybe it was just frustration on the part of Doublehead and his followers. After all, their plans to capture Knoxville were now foiled, and they had not been able to attack stations along their way. Here was their chance. Whatever the motive(s), this incident does underscore a serious problem of Indian leadership in war. Although Watts appears to have been a charismatic leader in forming and directing a large war party, he obviously had no control over what individuals did during the attack. Another question is why the Cavetts found themselves in such a vulnerable predicament. Their little station was eight miles from Knoxville and help could not be expected from there or other forts, either. The blockhouse that had been completed near the mouth of the Clinch River in November 1792 would later become Fort Southwest Point (Smith, ed. 1993:18) ca. 20 miles west. Campbell’s Station was only nine miles from the Cavetts, and by June 1792, a public road was ordered to be laid out from Knoxville to Campbell’s Station (Ramsey 1853:568). Now Kingston Pike (US 11), by 1795 it had been improved as a wagon road and during the following year at least 300 vehicles traveled over it on route to Middle Tennessee (Patton 1976:185). This road passed a few hundred yards from Cavett’s Station (Ramsey 1853), but its condition at this early date is unknown. Apparently the local residents had already “forted up” at Campbell’s, Ramsey stating that “Campbell’s Station—one of the chief forts of the country—and in which at this time, twenty families were stationed for mutual protection and the Indians considered it too strongly held and bypassed it” (1853:580). It seems strange that the Cavetts, too, would not have sought protection here. Ish’s, also a larger station, was close and was manned by John Sevier and the militia, but it lay on the south bank of the Holston. It was undoubtedly prudent for the settlers to stay in the larger stations since most apparently knew they were facing a substantial Indian force. Were the Cavetts not adequately warned, or did they underestimate the size of the attacking force? Unfortunately, we do not know the extent of the Cavett’s defenses. From all indications, it was a small outpost, but obviously it was strong enough to keep the Indians at bay for a short time. If the station was truly surrounded by 1,000 warriors, their situation was obviously hopeless. But the fact that the majority of the besieged were women and children, perhaps gave them some hope. Both the Cherokee and Creek took captives, the majority often being women and children. In November 1792, a report was transmitted by Governor Blount to the secretary of war listing the casualties of white settlers from January 1791 to November 1792 (American State Papers, Indian Affairs, 1792, Vol. I:329–331). Of the 61 white males listed, 43 were killed (70%) and only 4 (6.5%) were listed as prisoners. Women fared better with 12 killed (42.8%) 120

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and 16 (57.1 %) taken captive. Surprisingly, of the 15 children recorded as killed or captured, 75% (12) were killed and only 3 (18.7%) were spared as captives. The December 19, 1793, edition of the Knoxville Gazette contains a “List of prisoners, citizens of the United States, in the Creek nation, who are treated as slaves and sold from master to master, at as high a price and in the same manner as negroes are sold.” Of the 20 prisoners, only three were white adult men, six were adult white women, and 11 were children from five to 15 years of age. Like other frontier newspaper accounts of children, no Christian names are given. After the massacre, the Indians traveled north across the Clinch River undoubtedly to avoid the angry militia who was certain to come after them. Before moving on the attackers, however, General Sevier called for reinforcements. Riders were dispatched to the Washington District, and the militia at Ish’s was augmented by the arrival of troops under the command of Capt. James Richardson, Colonel Kelly, and Col. John Blair from the Washington District and militia from the Hamilton District commanded by Colonel Christian, bringing the army to a force of 600–700 men (Ramsey 1853:583– 584). Sevier’s journal entries for the campaign are brief, mainly noting where they spent the night and listing the officer of the day and rear guards. Leaving Ish’s on October 9th, the army headed south. By October 14th, they were at Estanaula on the Coosa River where they apparently engaged the Indians, suffering two men wounded. In his journal, Sevier wrote that “last night Colonel Kelly with Know [Knox] Reg [?] is detached to Coosacootee returned & burnt the place.” It was here that the general gave the following order: It is ordered that from this time forward no person presume to set on fire any Indian Hutt [sic] or town in which there is corn or . . . provision without there is orders from me to do the same. No firing of guns in or out of camp except leave from me or a field officer be first obtained, and as the officers of every rank is sensible of the banefull Consequences of such unwarrantable Conduct It is earnestly requested that they will use their utmost exertion to present the same.

For the next three days, they marched to the forks of the Coosa and Hightower38 rivers, arriving there on the 18th after being fired upon by Indian skirmishers but receiving no casualties. It was here that they fought the

38. In the late eighteenth century, the Etowah River was called the Hightower. That battle was at a place called Myrtel Hill near the present city of Rome, Georgia (Desmond 1998).

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entrenched Cherokee and Creek on the Hightower, described in detail in Sevier’s report to Governor Blount. There is nothing in Sevier’s journal that specifically mentions the battle except that “Weir and Pruit killed John Wallan wound.” On the 19th, they moved four miles below the forks to “Camp Nou town.” The next day found them 25 miles toward home at “Head of Arnutekah Creek.” Here Sevier makes an entry “Wallan died of his wounds last night.” It was also at this encampment that he wrote his manifesto to the Cherokee. On the 24th, the militia arrived at what Sevier called “Camp Henry” where the militia was discharged and on the 25th returned to Ish’s fort and Knoxville (Sevier 1790–1815). Two questions are pertinent here. Are John Sevier’s journal entries the same as those in the report he submitted to Governor Blount, and what was the result of the Etowah raid? While Sevier’s terse writing style leaves much to speculation, there is one glaring discrepancy in these two accounts. While the general informs the governor that he destroyed other Cherokee and Creek towns after the battle of Hightower, no mention of this is found in the journal. If one examines the time frame after the battle to Sevier’s return to Ish’s, there does not appear to have been enough time to destroy several towns. John Sevier’s Etowah campaign appears to be business as usual as far as the general was concerned. Being unsure about the Indians’ strength and location, it was prudent for him to wait for reinforcements before pursuing them. The discovery of muddy hoof prints in the Clinch made him believe that the Indians had abandoned their attack on Knoxville, but he must have been surprised because this was not the usual direction of escape taken by Indian raiders after striking the upper Tennessee region. Normally they headed directly south to the relative safety of their villages in the fastness of the Cumberland Plateau. One possible escape route was to turn south after crossing the Clinch, along a trail at the foot of Walden’s Ridge, an outlier of the plateau. Perhaps Watts went north again to trick Sevier. However, the fast disappearance of 1,000 Indians, most of whom were supposedly on foot, is difficult to comprehend. One might expect that Sevier would assemble an overwhelming force before striking back as he was going over 100 miles into enemy territory, possibly facing 1,000 or more Indian fighters. However, he only gathered a force of 600–700 militia, approximately the same number of men he took to the much closer Overhill towns in 1780. While making for the Indians’ lair at the forks of the Coosa and Hightower rivers, he burned at least one town on the way. Having the reputation of using a scorched earth policy as far as Indian towns were concerned, it seems unusual that he would command his troops to refrain from torching Indian houses containing provisions unless ordered to do so.

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While not recorded in his journal, in his report to Governor Blount he wrote that he “acted in obedience to an order from Secretary Smith and did not encourage the capture of women and children and those so taken were allowed to escape” (Ramsey 1853:588). It is unclear how often the militia took prisoners. The number of Indians captured is seldom mentioned in accounts on attacks on their villages. One instance appears in the Knoxville Gazette: Two Cherokee Indians, a fellow and a squaw taken on the Tennessee, by Capt. Harrison, in a late scout, have been brought to this place, they inform, that the town on the south side of the Hightower River, where a part of General Sevier’s army had the late combat, is the principal place of rendezvous for the Creeks and Cherokee . . . this town is principally inhabited by Creeks, and is governed by a Creek Chief called Buffalo Horn (December 7, 1793).

The Knoxville Gazette (December 7, 1793) reported that “Since General Sevier’s expedition [the Etowah campaign] the Indians have done but very little mischief on the frontiers of this district,” and Ramsey concurs that “the Indians had, in a great measure, ceased their hostilities against the Cumberland settlements” (1853:591). But is there evidence Sevier’s raid into Georgia greatly weakened the Cherokee and the Creeks militarily? The impact on the Indians’ fighting force does not seem to have been as severe as in previous Sevier campaigns. In fact, Indian attacks in the Hamilton and Mero districts continued unabated during the following year. On January 16, 1794, the Gazette reported that the neighbors of two men killed near Well’s Station on December 23, 1793, pursued the Indians who murdered them to Hanging Maw’s camp where they killed three men, “and we are sorry to add that, forgetting the respect due to themselves, they killed seven squaws.” The similarity to Beard’s attack on Hanging Maw’s house in June 1793, is enigmatic, and it seems unusual that Ramsey does not mention this incident in his book. Was this an example of self-censoring his remarks since innocent Indian victims were again killed, or did the Indians dismiss this retaliation due to the recent murder of the Cavetts? On March 12, a party of Creeks and Cherokee under the leadership of Doublehead ambushed a post rider and 12 persons traveling with him near Middleton’s Station. Four men were killed, and the Knoxville Gazette (March 27,1794) noted that [Doublehead] “with his own hands, since the Treaty of Holston, to which he was a signer, has shed as much human blood as any man (not a Jacobite) of the age.”

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The most egregious attack occurred April 22, 1794, on the cabin of William Casteel who lived south of the French Broad above Knoxville. The attack, reminiscent of the massacre at Cavett’s Station, was briefly mentioned in the April 24th Knoxville Gazette , which reported “William Casteel and his wife, and five children were killed, on the south side of the French Broad, eight miles from this town. Several guns were heard, about daybreak, near the same place.” J.G.M. Ramsey, whose father Francis Alexander Ramsey helped save the life of a young Casteel girl who had been tomahawked and scalped, described the bloody scene. The other members of the family suffered similar wounds; Mrs. Casteel apparently putting up a ferocious resistance (Ramsey 1853:592–593). On May 8, 1794, the Gazette reported that: On the 30th ult. Lieut. Col. Kelly, with a party of Knoxville militia, went in pursuit of the Indians who killed the Casteel family, as mentioned in our last, and on the day following, about day break, an advanced party of his command, forded the Tennessee, near Tellassee, where they found the Indians encamped, fired on them, killed one fellow and wounded another; one squaw was killed contrary to the wishes or intentions of the party; the Indians betook themselves to the almost inaccessible spurs of the mountain, but by the exertions of the men, who ascended it, in the face of very heavy fire, they were routed, five warriors killed, and several squaws and children taken prisoners, who were set at liberty. Col. Kelly brought off three horses, lately taken from the frontiers. He left undisturbed their corn, horses, and other property that he found at Tellassee.

It is unclear if the order to refrain from taking Indian prisoners by Secretary Smith was standard procedure or that this was done as the war wore down. In the pages of the Knoxville Gazette for the year 1794 the Indians killed a total of 64 white settlers. Sixty-five percent of the fatalities were adult men, only 11% were women, but percentage-wise twice as many children were killed (15%) as in the 1791–1792 period. One black child was killed. Only seven whites were taken captive, two adult men, two adult women, and three children. A black man and black woman were made prisoners and the sex of three additional black captives not recorded. While not identified as such, it is assumed that these were African-American slaves. All told, as many people were killed in this one year period than in the previous two years. During this time, however, the Indians were not sending large war parties against the frontier stations but were back to hit-and-run ambuscades of single individuals

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and travelers. While the situation suggests that bloodshed was far from ending on the Southwest frontier after Sevier’s Etowah campaign, there seems to have been a change in the attitude of the settlers and the Cherokee to one another. One might expect that the cruelty of the attack on the Cavett and Casteel families would have raised the local populous’ enmity toward the Indians to a new level. If the news reports of the time can be used as a gauge, however, the immediate reaction of the settlers seems low key. While the narration of the Cavett slaughter and immediate retribution of this heinous act was followed in more detail for several months in the Gazette, the story soon faded into the realm of folklore. The reaction to the Casteel massacre seems even more downplayed. Only accounts of the attack on the cabin and the retaliatory raid by Colonel Kelly and the militia are found in the Gazette. The militia was able to track the Indians to the vicinity of the Overhill town of Tellassee and kill six warriors. However, they released the women and children prisoners and most importantly did not burn the village or destroy the Indians’ crops. Ramsey writes that although Governor Blount found it almost impossible to restrain William Casteel’s neighbors from a devastating retaliation on the Cherokee, the efforts of the civil officers of Knox County, “had great influence in tranquillizing the people and persuading them to acquiesce in the design of the Government, to obtain peace by negotiation, rather than by arms” (Ramsey 1853:593–594). The officers—including James White, Samuel Newell, William Wallace, Henry Hambleton, William Lowery, David Craig, and Thomas McCollough—met at the house of James Beard and wrote, printed, and circulated an address to their fellow citizens to which James White was a known friend of the Cherokee (Scott 1856:4). Perhaps Colonel Kelly already felt this temperance in the absence of a scorched earth policy at Tellassee. There does seem to have been restraint on the part of the white settlers against the Indians in the early 1790s. Fewer towns were burned during this time, a far cry from the devastating attack on the Middle towns by Gen. Griffith Rutherford in 1776. This militia terror expedition, later known as the Rutherford Trace, perhaps destroyed as many as 70 western North Carolina villages with hundreds of acres of crops cut down or trampled, and livestock killed or seized (Beadle 2006:1–7). Horror stories of the Trace include Cherokee prisoners being shot and scalped or sold into slavery, and one account stated a group of women was walled up in a house and burned alive (Beadle 2006:6). While the pages of the Knoxville Gazette contain accounts of Cherokee women being killed by the territorial militia, apologetic remarks for such behavior were often included. Certainly the treatment of individual Indians

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on the Southwest frontier does not seem to match the cruelties of the militia and soldiers a hundred years later on the western Plains at the Cheyenne village of Sand Creek where women and children were scalped and their bodies mutilated “in the most horrible manner;” or the massacre at Wounded Knee, South Dakota where wounded women and children were left for hours in open wagons in freezing weather (Brown 1970:90, 445). The greatest loss of life among the Cherokee women and children in the Rutherford raid and in Sevier’s later scorched earth policy appears to have been due to the refugee problem and death from starvation and disease. In the end, we have no idea how many Cherokee actually died from these attacks in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. How much did John Sevier’s campaigns have to do with what may have been a changing attitude on the part of the settlers, and what was his legacy after he retired from military service? There is little doubt that he had the admiration of the men who served under him, and some scholars have credited the general with rescuing the frontier from an Indian victory. Driver believed that: “Sevier usually employed a plan of devastation as that best calculated to bring the savages to peaceable manners of living . . . [and] . . . it was responsible for the evacuation of the Indian lands” (1972:37–38). Sevier’s accomplishments were also praised by John Brown who wrote “There was little glamour about Sevier’s warfare, but it saved the frontier by carrying the offensive to the Indian towns as fast as horseflesh could move” (1938:308). Not all historians of the frontier share a view of Sevier’s untarnished military accomplishments, however. In his 1894 edition of The Winning of the West, Theodore Roosevelt says of Sevier’s involvement in the murder of Old Tassel that: He was a member of the Cincinnati, a correspondent of Franklin, a follower of Washington. He sinned against the light and must be condemned accordingly . . . there is no blinking the fact that in this instance Sevier and his followers stood on the same level of brutality with “keen Lord Evers” and on the same level of treachery with the ‘assured’ Scots at the battle of Ancram Muir (1894:191–192).

Driver wrote that Roosevelt’s criticism of John Sevier was unwarranted, and pointed out that he fought the Indians for 20 years participating in 35 hard won and decisive battles for which he was respected by the men who followed him (1972:38). Regarding his final campaign into Georgia, some people complained that the general should have concentrated on wiping out the Chickamauga towns, the main source of trouble (Govan and Livingood 1977:46). 126

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Ramsey said the settlers at that time hoped General Sevier would next attack the Lower towns “as the most effectual means of procuring a permanent peace” (1853:591). However, John Sevier, now 48 years of age, was ready to permanently hang his rifle over the mantle. Despite Ramsey’s description of the retired John Sevier entertaining Cherokee chiefs in his home, there seems to be little doubt that he continued to hold them in contempt. His biographer, Carl Driver, quoting Sevier’s own words in a letter to the secretary of war says that: “To the end of his life, Sevier believed the Indians were licentious and erratic and led a ‘vagrant, lawless, debauched and immoral life and nothing will ever deter those itinerant nations from their common desperate and rapacious practices’” (Driver 1972:144). Also, Sevier’s belief that peace and “increased population and expanded settlements would solve the Indian question” was a harbinger of Manifest Destiny39 (Driver 1972:143;). It was left to the Mero settlements—who had suffered the most from Chickamauga attacks—to strike a final crushing blow on their antagonists despite the federal government’s continued admonition to refrain from offensive action. Fed up with the constant raiding by the Chickamaugans in 1794, the Mero militia launched a major attack on the Lower towns. On September 6, 1794, Brig. Gen. James Robertson sent the following message to Maj. James Ore (Ramsey 1853:610): The object of your command is, to defend the District of Mero against the Creeks and Cherokees of the Lower Towns which I have received information, is about to invade it, as also to punish such Indians as have committed such depredations. For these objects, you will march, with the men under your command, from Brown’s Block-house40 on the eighth instant, and proceed along Taylor’s Trace, towards the Tennessee; and if you do not meet this party before you arrive at the Tennessee, you will pass it, and destroy the Lower Cherokee towns, which must serve as a check to the expected invaders; taking care to spare women and children, and to treat all prisoners who may fall into your hands, with humanity, and thereby teach those savages to spare the 39. The concept of Manifest Destiny in the mid nineteenth century was the American belief that it was the divine destiny of the Euro-Americans to spread civilization across the continent from the Atlantic seaboard to the Pacific coast, “from sea to shining sea.” This is, of course, at the expense of the Native people who would be forced out of the way by national decree in the late eighteenth century in eastern North America. 4 0. Brown’s Blockhouse was located four miles south of Nashville on Richland Creek.

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citizens of the United States, under similar circumstances. Should you, in your march, discover the trails of Indians returning from the commission of recent depredations on the frontiers, which can generally be distinguished by the horses stolen being shod, you are to give pursuit to such parties, even to the town from whence they come, and punish them for their aggressions in an exemplary manner, to the terror of others from the commission of similar offenses, as above expressed, the defense of the District of Mero against the expected party of Creeks and Cherokees. I have the utmost confidence in your patriotism and bravery, and with my warmest wishes for your success, I am, sir, your obedient servant. James Robertson, B.G. (Ramsey 1853:610).

Nickajack and Running Water towns were the principal centers of the belligerent Chickamauga and were at the fords where the Creeks crossed the Tennessee River from Georgia to attack the Mero settlements. Ore’s troops made the same crossing during the night of September 12 about four miles below the town of Nickajack, and the next morning completely surprised and surrounded the town. Nineteen women and children were made prisoners in the town, and it was burned to the ground. Indians in the larger and more hostile Running Water town four miles above Nickajack heard the gunfire and tried to stop the attack at a narrow place along the river but were driven back. Running Water was also destroyed without further opposition. From 50 to 70 warriors were killed in the towns, the militia suffering only three wounded (Ramsey 1853:610). After the victory at Nickajack and Running Water, Ramsey says that: “The Etowah campaign, penetrating as it did, to the most southern towns of the Cherokees, and the splendid victory of the Cumberland troops at Nickajack and Running Water, broke the spirit of the Indians and disposed them to peace” (1853:620). Interestingly, Governor Blount did not believe that the Georgia attack by his compatriot John Sevier played a major role in bringing the Cherokee to the peace table. Blount thought it was Ore’s Nickajack expedition, the socalled Creek-Chickasaw War, and his persistent efforts at negotiation through his emissaries to the Cherokee, principally John McKee, that brought a longsought calm to the Southwest frontier (Masterson 1956:276). While the Upper Cherokee towns seemed disposed to find a peaceful solution through negotiations, the Lower towns and especially the Creek Nation were still beating the war drums. However, the attention of the Creeks had been turned from attacking American settlements to the specter of inter-tribal warfare between their nation and the Chickasaw in early 1795. The Knoxville Gazette reported that:

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Thus war between the Chickasaws and Creeks has actually commenced without the hope of a peace being shortly patched up between them. The Creeks are the aggressors, for, in addition to the many insults sustained by the brave and friendly Chickasaws, at the hands of the numerous and blood thirsty Creeks, the Creeks actually shed the first blood. Certainly the United States will not behold with indifference the numerous Creeks, who have perseveringly killed the citizens of the United States, without intermission for upwards twenty years, invading and destroying the only red friends they have on earth, the small but virtuous nation of Chickasaws, who have manifested their attachment by fighting and bleeding in their cause in three successive campaigns north and west of the Ohio . . . and who have become objects of vengeance to the Creeks from their known attachment to the United States (March 27, 1795).

On July 17, 1794, the Knoxville Gazette reported that over 100 warriors of the Chickasaw and Choctaw nations had passed through Nashville on their way to join Gen. Anthony Wayne to fight the combined northern tribes. Wayne and his Legion of the United States soundly defeated the northern Indians led by Blue Jacket and his Shawnee warriors and Little Turtle of the Miami tribe at the Battle of Fallen Timbers on August 20, 1794. This was a crippling blow to the belligerent southern Indians who still dreamed of a confederacy of northern and southern tribes to fight the Americans. A different twist was put on the victory by the Knoxville Gazette which earlier suggested that: “Would it not be wise in government to turn the arms of the Chickasaw and Choctaw whose friendship appears in so unquestionable shape against [the Creeks and Lower Cherokee] and compel them to make a more distant situation from the United States” (July 17, 1794). It is no surprise that Governor Blount would attribute the cessation of hostilities to his persistent efforts to bring the Indians to the peace table. Certainly one of the greatest obstacles to peace was lex talionis. Since the start of the Cherokee wars in the 1770s, this “law” drove the Indians’ continued belligerency even after suffering disastrous defeats. However, there may have been a significant change in the attitude of the Upper Town Cherokee toward applying the law to the white settlers by 1794. Many Upper Cherokee tried to maintain peaceful relations with their white neighbors before the massacre of the Cavetts and Casteels but were constantly thwarted in their efforts by the enmity created by this cycle of blood revenge, often not of their making. After these tragedies, there is evidence that many Cherokee may have rejected

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the curse of lex talionis. In a letter to Governor Blount from Hanging Maw on May 25, 1794, the chief said in part: Casteel’s family were [sic] killed by a fellow from Tallassee who had his mother killed. The white people came and killed six Indians and our people are willing to drop it. The fellow who was sent by [Indian agent] McKee was one of those killed at Tallassee, He was my relation and it is forgotten—the death of my relation is to me as if he had died a natural death. I have sent to the [Middle] Valleys and they have all one talk and that talk is of peace (Knoxville Gazette, June 5, 1794).

In a letter from John McKee to Governor Blount written on the same date, the Indian agent informed the governor that: I have had two interviews with the Maw and those who were with him, six in number, and they gave me the most unreserved assurances that the whole nation were for peace. This information (if true) is truly flattering, and though I have too often found the Indian talks delusory, yet from the tenor of their talks and the present situation of the nation, I am induced to credit their assurances (Knoxville Gazette, June 5, 1794).

Even the Chickamauga may have realized the futility of blood revenge against the whites. McKee wrote Governor Blount on June 19, 1794, that a relative of Bob Benge was raising a party of warriors in Will’s Town to take revenge for the killing of the redheaded warrior. They were apparently waiting for John Watts to approve this action, but there is no further evidence that this retaliation was carried out (Knoxville Gazette, June 19, 1794). Action may have spoken louder than words. The Knoxville Gazette reported on July 31, 1794, that a party of Creeks killed and scalped John Ish while he was plowing his fields. A retaliatory militia raid would normally immediately follow the wanton killing of such a prominent member of the frontier community. However, a party of ten Cherokees led by Major King and Lieutenant Cunningham tracked the murderers, captured one of the Creeks, and brought him back to Hanging Maw’s camp where he was thrown to the ground by the Chickamauga chief Middle Striker and threatened with being scalped alive by a furious Hanging Maw. So relieved that the Overhills were not guilty of killing John Ish and for the capture of the guilty Creek murderer some of the militia joined the Cherokee in the war dance (Knoxville Gazette, July 31, 1794). 130

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In the Blount Journal, July 29th, 1794 (p. 97), Governor Blount notified David Campbell, John McNairy, and Joseph Anderson to: hold a Court of Oyer and Terminer and General Gaol delivery at Knoxville to commence on the first day of August next and to continue the same by adjournment from day to day, not exceeding three days, for the trial of a Creek Indian, apprehended on suspicion of being guilty of the murder of John Ish, a citizen of the United States resident in this territory—to hear try and determine, to give judgment and award execution thereon. Given under my hand and seal at Knoxville this 29th day of July 1794. (Signed) Wm Blount. (Tennessee Historical Commission 1955)

Concerning this trial, in his usual cryptic style, John Sevier entered in his Journal: “Monday 4 Dry weather, Creek Indian hung Knoxville.” A letter from John McKee to Governor Blount dated August 11, 1794, reported that a Cherokee spy had brought news to Hanging Maw’s camp that a party of nine Creeks had crossed the (Little) Tennessee on their way to attack the white settlements. Raising the war whoop 12 Cherokee warriors gave pursuit, when reaching the Tennessee crossing the number of the pursuit party had reached 53 Cherokees and a body of federal troops. Catching up with the Creek war party they killed and scalped one, wounded another, and retrieved a large amount of booty. When the Cherokee returned to camp they triumphantly sung the death song and fired guns in the air. That night they danced the scalp dance after the “. . . victory over their enemies, in which the white and red people heartily joined.” McKee continued: “That the upper Cherokee are sincere in their friendship for the citizens of the United States, and determined for war with the Creeks is no longer problematical—they have stepped too far in Creek blood to look back—they have passed the Rubicon.” (Knoxville Gazette, August 25, 1794). Taking advantage of the friendly overtures of the Overhill Cherokee, the U. S. government continued their diplomatic offense. On July 17, 1794, the Knoxville Gazette reported that 19 Cherokee chiefs had arrived in Philadelphia, delegated by the Nation to conclude a treaty of “lasting peace” with President Washington. The Gazette related that one of the chiefs meeting with the president was none other than the feared Doublehead. The meeting with the president and the secretary of war took place on June 26th. Although the Cherokee’s annuity was raised from $1,500 to $5,000 in goods, in typical fashion Doublehead divided the spoils only among the Chickamaugans, the Overhill Cherokee being completely left out of the treaty rewards. This further A Little Spot of Ground to Stand Upon

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distanced the Overhill from the Chickamauga (Woodward 1963:115), a reaction that certainly benefited the on-going peace effort in the short term. Not that the Americans were ready to forgive the Nation as a whole; the Knoxville Gazette (July 17, 1794) curtly pointed out that Doublehead had continually violated the Treaty of Holston while the Nation was still “murdering the citizens of the United States and robbing them of their property.” The suspicion of the Americans is understandable, and it was not until Ore’s raid on the Lower towns in September that the Chickamaugans were serious about discussing peace. The Overhill Cherokee, however, continued to seek accommodation with the settlers in the territory. On November 7–8, 1794, at the Cherokees’ request, Governor Blount held a council at Tellico Blockhouse with leading Cherokee including Hanging Maw, John Watts, Bloody Fellow, and Glass who gave assurances of peace to the governor (Hoig 1998:88; Woodward 1963:116). The presence of John Watts at this “Talk” may have been a signal that the Chickamaugans were weary of war after their Lower towns were destroyed in the Ore campaign. Mooney (1982:79) says that “all differences were arranged on a friendly basis . . .” The governor met again with the chiefs of both the Upper and Lower towns in December to exchange prisoners and retrieve stolen horses. The Lower towns were again represented by Watts and Bloody Fellow who pledged their support in preventing hostile Creeks from attacking the Cumberland and Kentucky settlements (Knoxville Gazette, January 9, 1795). After the December council, Governor Blount issued the following statement: “Peace with the Indians exists now not openly in name or upon paper in the form of a treaty but in fact, and he who shall violate it shall deserve the severest punishment of the laws and execrations of his follow citizens” (Brown 1938:440). An article in the Knoxville Gazette on December 26 reiterated that “from the best information that can be collected, peace with the whole of the Cherokees appears highly probable, and war on the part of the Creeks, against the frontiers of Cumberland and Kentucky, quite probable.” To demonstrate their friendship and loyalty to the Americans, 500 Cherokee warriors fought with Gen. Andrew Jackson against the Red Stick Creeks at Horseshoe Bend on the Tallapoosa River on March 27, 1814 (Remini 1977). The Creeks did not sign a final peace treaty with the Americans until after their defeat at Horseshoe Bend, Alabama in 1814 (Ethridge 2003:240–241).

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Chapter 7

To Become Herdsmen and Cultivators

A

s early as 1789, President Washington envisioned a policy of assimilation of the Native Americans in the eastern United States, which he expected to be completed in 50 years and bring lasting peace (Oswalt and Neely 1996:447). By the last decade of the eighteenth century, assimilation of the Cherokee showed promise. They were readily forsaking elements of their Native lifestyle, thereby becoming dependent on Euro-American material culture such as guns, clothing, iron agricultural tools, and even metal “pots and pans.” According to Mooney: Firearms had been introduced into the tribe about 100 years before [1800], and the Cherokee had learned well their use. Such civilized goods as hatchets, knives, clothes, and trinkets had become so common before the first Cherokee war that the Indians had declared that they could no longer live without the traders. Horses and other domestic animals had been introduced early in the century, and at the opening of the war of 1760 according to Adair [1775], the Cherokee had ‘a prodigious number of excellent horses,’ and although hunger had compelled them to eat a great many during that period, they still had, in 1775, from two to a dozen each, and bid fair soon to have plenty of the best sort, as, according to the same authority, they were skillful jockeys and nice in their choice. Some of them had grown fond of cattle, and they also had an abundance of hogs and poultry, the Indian pork being esteemed better than that raised in the white settlements on account of the chestnut diet (1982:82).

But acculturation is a selective process. While the Cherokee were anxious to obtain the white man’s goods such as iron tools and guns that would greatly improve their daily lifeways, they were loath to give up such ancient traditions as hunting wild game. The disappearance of wild game could be offset by the acquisition of cattle, hogs, and sheep from Europe, but the Cherokee did not possess such animals in sufficient numbers to compensate for the loss of game in the eighteenth century. After the buffalo were gone, the Plains Indians, with their large herds of horses, chose to starve in the 1880s and 1890s rather than eat their horses (Driver 1969:505). Deer were to the Cherokee as buffalo were to Plains tribes like the Sioux and Cheyenne. During the Colonial period (1746–1774) at Chota, whitetailed deer and bear were the predominant meat sources. Pigs and chickens were also well established. Smaller mammals, such as raccoons and opossums; birds, primarily represented by the wild turkey; and fish and turtles made up a small percentage of their diet. The bones of cattle were also present, but the consumption of beef did not markedly increase until the Revolutionary War and Federal periods as did the meat from pigs and chickens (Bogan, Lavalley, and Schroedl 1986:491). The end of the deer skin trade; disappearance of wild game, particularly the white-tailed deer; and greater availability of domesticated animals all played a role in this emerging pattern. In late January 1794, Governor Blount ordered the construction of the Tellico Blockhouse on the (Little) Tennessee at the request of Chief Hanging Maw. Ramsey describes the blockhouse as “a strong work of considerable size, with a projection on each square, furnished with portholes, and calculated to stand a siege by an enemy provided with small arms only” (1853:564). The original blockhouse was enclosed by a 16-foot high palisade with bastions and included an officer’s quarters, barracks, a well, and a parade ground (figure 15). The blacksmith shop and the “hotel” or inn were situated outside the compound (Polhemus 1977:17–19). On August 19, 1794, Governor Blount issued a license to Robert Wilson granting trade with the Cherokee Indians “. . . on the north bank of the Little Tennessee at or near the Tellico Blockhouse” (Tennessee Historical Commission 1955:98). In October Wilson and four other men were given license to trade with the Southern Indians at the blockhouse (Tennessee Historical Commission 1955:102–103). The blockhouse was thus a “factory”: the military and Indian agent sharing space within the complex, which occupied the eastern end and lower half of the palisaded enclosure (Pohlemus, personal communication, August 11, 2012). So-called factories were established in North American territories in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries to facilitate Indian trade usually associated with forts. In 1796 the Federal gov-

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Figure 15. Tellico Blockhouse. Key: A, guard house; B, new barracks (post-1799); C, Miller’s house; D, Tellico factory structure (trading post); E, old barracks; F, Captain Butler’s quarters; G, blockhouse structure; H, blockhouse structure; I, blockhouse structure. From Tellico Archaeology: 12,000 Years of Native American History, revised edition, by Jefferson Chapman, 1995.

ernment took control of these facilities until the factory system ended in 1822 (Wyman 1998). An agent, John McKee, was at the Blockhouse “whose ostensible business it was to receive prisoners, horses, deserters, Negroes, and other articles that the Indians would bring” (Haywood 1823:403). A small garrison of American troops was also stationed there. While having a garrisoned trading post in the Overhill country allowed the governor to keep an eye on the Indians, more importantly it put in effect one of the articles of the Treaty of Holston, which said in part: “That the Cherokee Nation may be lead to a greater degree of civilization, and to become herdsmen and cultivators, instead of remaining in a state of hunters, the United States from time to time furnish gratuitously the said nation with useful implements of husbandry” (Kappler, ed. 1904). Chief Bloody Fellow also reiterated this request when he met with Secretary of War Knox in Philadelphia in January 1792: The treaty mentions ploughs, hoes, cattle, and other things for a farm; this is what we want; game is going fast among us. We must plant corn and raise cattle, and we desire you to assist us. . . . In former times we bought the traders goods cheap; we could

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then clothe our women and children; but now game is scarce and goods dear, we cannot live comfortably. We desire the United States to regulate this matter (Woodward 1963:117).

As the Cherokee abandoned their native technology, they became increasingly enmeshed into the market economy of the Europeans. Early exchange was in the deerskin trade, but due to the loss of their hunting grounds and changes in fashion, this commodity became a thing of the past, especially after the invention of the cotton gin in 1793.41 Farmland and its’ attendant land speculation now dominated the frontier economy. Traditionally, the British had been the Cherokees’ principal trading partner, but this source dried up after the Revolution, and the trade blockade made the Indians ever more dependent on the Spanish and the emergent American market. When Major Ore attacked Nickajack town, their chief, the Breath, was killed, and Ore’s men found a letter on his body from the Spanish Governor Carondelet that Spain could no longer supply the Cherokee with war goods (Woodward 1963:116). On May 25, 1794, the Cherokee chief Hanging Maw wrote to Governor Blount that: “The Spaniards have always been persuading us to go to war; but that is over, as we are determined not to take their talks. We listened to the Spanish talks a good while, but we have found them to be liars and we are now determined to take the United States by the hand” (Knoxville Gazette, June 5, 1794). In 1794, Governor Blount had also authorized the construction of Fort Grainger in what is now Loudon County. This fort was mentioned in the July 31, 1795 issue of the Knoxville Gazette in a description of Campbella by Eliza Campbell: CAMPBELLA, or the beautiful plains is the name of Judge Campbell’s country seat. It lies on the north side of the great Tennessee, opposite to the confluence of that river and the river Holston. At this place is erected Fort Grainger, so-called after Mrs. Governor Blount. The beauty of the place is expressive of the accomplishments of the amiable lady after whom the fort was named.

Virtually nothing has been written about this fort and its exact location has never been discovered. We do not know what immediate effect the establish-

41. At the Tellico Blockhouse, the number of deerskins fell from 18,182 lbs. in 1796 to 10,226 lbs. in 1798 (Polhemus 1977: 10).

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ment of Fort Grainger had on the Cherokee, but it added evidence that by 1794 the Territorial government was gaining more control of the Overhill on the Little Tennessee. However, it was important enough for the continued protection of the Southwest frontier that on November 10, 1794, Governor Blount wrote the secretary of war that the post should be maintained (Smith, ed. 1993:19). To survive, the Overhill Cherokee now had to reach a lasting accommodation with their white neighbors. Even though they acquired European farming techniques and domesticated animals, Americans’ thirst for their land continued to be their greatest threat for survival. With peace on the horizon and a local trading partner from which to acquire American goods, one would expect the Cherokees’ lives to stabilize. However, their people continued to leave the Little Tennessee Valley for the Hiwassee and northern Georgia. The Moravian missionaries Abraham Steiner and Fredrick DeSchweinitz visited Chota in 1799 and reported that “we could discover only five houses, which were scattered over the plain” (Williams, ed. 1928:472). Acculturation could not assuage their suspicion of the settlers’ motives. Although the Cherokee continued to sell their land in the Little Tennessee Valley during the first two decades of the nineteenth century, this was not the only reason for the gradual abandonment of their homeland. The next land treaty, called the First Treaty of Tellico, was signed on October 2, 1798 (Kappler, ed. 1904:52–55). The cession was a large tract of land that lay between the Hawkins line, north bank of the Tennessee (Little Tennessee) and Chilhowee Mountain. It was signed in the town of Tellico as an addendum to the Treaty of Holston in 1791. A number of white settlers had gone over the northern 1791 treaty line, and the United States government wanted to legitimize their claims rather than move them off by force. The Indians did not want to sell, but they were under pressure from the government to relinquish their remaining land on the north side of the Tennessee. Though not well documented, Woodward (1963:127–128) suggests a conspiracy in the John Adams and Thomas Jefferson administrations to literally blackmail the Cherokee to sell their land. While the opening of the Tellico Blockhouse and factory appeared to be a godsend from which to easily acquire the trade goods they now depended on, this turned out to be a Trojan horse. According to Woodward although it is largely undocumented, the Cherokees bought more goods than they could pay for from the factory at the Tellico Blockhouse. Unfortunately, the goods that they received were shoddy, and they were disappointed in the low value given their pelts. To redress their grievances, the Cherokee appealed to presidents Adams and Jefferson to allow them to trade with private traders as they had in the past, but they were denied. Also, the factories were instructed to force the Cherokees to purchase To Become Herdsmen and Cultivators

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the factory goods to keep them in debt to the government. The Adams administration arranged to resolve the debts to the government in exchange for land cessions, and this was continued during Jefferson’s tenure. The next major cession was signed on October 25 and 27, 1805. On the 25th the Cherokee ceded a large tract west of the Tennessee River and the Cumberland Mountains and on the 27th they ceded a tract at Southwest Point (Kappler, ed. 1904:82–83). In Article II of the latter cession it states that: from the present cession made by the Cherokees, and other circumstances, the site of the garrisons at South West Point and Tellico are become not the most convenient and suitable places for the accommodation of said Indians, it may become expedient to remove the said garrisons and factory to some suitable place; three other square miles are reserved for the particular disposal of the United States on the north bank of the Tennessee, opposite to and below the mouth of the Hiwassa.

The removal of the Tellico Factory and the garrison of the Tellico Blockhouse occurred in the spring of 1807 (Polhemus 1977:12). Since this was also the site of the Cherokee Indian agency, the move isolated the Overhill on the Little Tennessee even further from their agent and source of trade goods. The move also accelerated the migration of the Indians south to the Hiwassee River and beyond to what they thought was their final haven in Georgia. The Indian signers of this treaty include Black Fox (Ennone), the Glass (Tagwadihi) and the infamous Doublehead (Kappler, ed. 1904:83). The Glass was a war chief in the Lower Chickamauga towns during the Cherokee wars and was later a prominent elder in the Nation (Klink and Talman, eds. 1970). He was also an assistant to Black Fox who became principal chief of the Chickamauga in 1801. By this time, Doublehead had buried the hatchet, and according to Woodward, was secretly bribed with two tracts by governmental officials to help smooth the way with the often-unpredictable Chickamauga (1963:29). The Overhill Cherokee accused the Chickamaugans of treason for selling land without permission from the Tribal Council. For his complicity in this cession, Doublehead was assassinated during the Green Corn Dance in Hiwassee Town in September 1807, by the Ridge and two other conspirators. The next year, a group of younger Overhill chiefs rose up against the older Chickamauga chiefs who had signed the treaties and deposed Black Fox and the Glass from the National Council (McLoughlin 1992:109–127). The Treaty of 1805 finally connected East Tennessee to the Cumberland area. Before this date, the Cherokee used the Cumberland Plateau as a hunt-

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ing ground, and in 1802, the French traveler André Michaux described the plateau through which the “road” from Fort Southwest Point to the Cumberland River passed as “a country uninhabited . . . to which they give the name of the Wilderness” (Michaux 1802:47).That such a “road” existed as early as 1795 is indicated by a piece in the Knoxville Gazette, July 31, 1795, announcing: “We have the pleasure to inform the public that the waggon road from this place has been completed, and as that a waggon with a ton weight has actually passed it; and that the commissioners have entered into a contract for its completion in the month of October in whose hands ample funds are provided for that purpose.” In 1799, the General Assembly of the new state of Tennessee appointed William Walton, William Martin, and Robert Kyle to establish a new East– West road over the plateau. This 100 mile long toll road was 15 feet wide with the sides of hills leveled and bridges or causeways built at stream crossings. It was officially named the Cumberland Turnpike but was popularly called the Walton Road (Dickinson 1995:127). It appears that deadlines for the completion of the roads were not met in the eighteenth century, either. Much of the southern portion of this area was still in Cherokee hands, and not surprisingly, pressure continued on the Cherokee Nation to sell this tract of land to the flood of settlers entering the state. Small portions of it continued to be nibbled away until 1819. On February 27 of that year, the last treaty between the U.S. and the Cherokee Nation directly affecting the Overhill Cherokee on the [Little] Tennessee was signed in Washington, D.C. (Kappler, ed. 1904:177–181). This included a large tract of Cherokee land north of the Hiwassee River, including their entire homeland on the Little Tennessee River (Mooney 1975:106). By 1819, the Overhill had abandoned the Little Tennessee Valley. In 1807, the population of Chota was listed as 34 persons. A decade later only one house was reported in this village, occupied by a chief named Old Bark (Schroedl and Russ 1986:14) who had signed the Treaty of 1805. When these Indian lands were resurveyed in that year, the government commissioners determined that a considerable number of white settlers were on Indian land (NaNations 2000:1).

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Chapter 8

The Prophesy

L

ess than a half century before the abandonment of their beloved [Little] Tennessee Valley, the revered chief Oconostota prophesized that: “the country which the Cherokee and their fathers had so long occupied, would be called for, and the small remnant which may exist of this nation, once so great and so formidable, will be compelled to seek a retreat in some far-off wilderness” (Ramsey 1853:118). By the end of the eighteenth century, the Cherokee realized that to continue to survive in the white man’s world they had to turn to effective subsistence agriculture, receive a formal education including learning English, and emulate the American governmental system. All this was to be accomplished without losing their native identity; no mean task as they confronted local, state, and federal pressures to assimilate. By 1799, the Moravian missionaries observed in their travels through the Overhill country: “that in the course of the last summer 300 plows . . . [and] a mill at government expense” (Williams, ed. 1928). When the federal road was built through the Cherokee Nation in Georgia in 1804, they asked the U.S. government to provide the Nation with blacksmiths and wheelwrights, gristmills and sawmills, and cotton gins (McLoughlin 1984:24). By the third decade of the nineteenth century, most mixed bloods or me42 tis lifeways much more resembled that of the whites than their full-blood tribal brethren. Although they still considered themselves as Cherokee and were accepted as such, many lived on plantations worked by black slaves and became businessmen and traders, and were wealthier than most of their white neighbors. In the 1820s, Major Ridge who rode with John Watts on the Knoxville raid of 1793, now lived in a mansion described as an elegantly white painted, two story, eight room house with 30 glass windows sitting on 42. A French term preferable to the terms “half-breed” or “mixed blood.”

280 cleared acres where he grew cotton, tobacco, and wheat; raised cattle, hogs, and sheep; and tended a large orchard of peach, apple, cherry, and plum trees. In the vicinity was a prosperous trading post in which Ridge was a silent partner (Wilkins 1970:186–188). In 1801, the Moravians established Spring Place Mission in northwest Georgia where Cherokee youth learned the “arts of civilization”: reading and writing in English, the Christian religion, the mechanical arts and farming for boys, and household skills such as spinning and weaving for girls (Schwarze 1923). The largest mission school was Brainerd Mission, established by Congregational and Presbyterian missionaries on Chickamauga Creek near presentday Chattanooga. Brainerd Mission was a Christian School where the Indian children began their day with prayer and hymns, memorized Biblical tracts, said grace before meals, and ended their day with more prayers and hymns (McLoughlin 1984:138). The academic curriculum included Bible study; vocational training for boys such as stock raising, smithing, and carpentry; and domestic skills for girls as well as the “three Rs” (Nichols 2010). One early observer remarked that the Indian children at these schools “all gave flattering evidence of promising geniuses” (Blackburn 1807:85). In 1803, the Reverend Gideon Blackburn, a young Presbyterian minister from Maryville, Tennessee, established a mission school for the Overhill children near Tellico. His curriculum included the “three Rs,” but he emphasized personal cleanliness, the use of cutlery while eating, and keeping a strict schedule (Woodward 1963:124–125). At a council on the Hiwassee River in 1805, Blackburn had his students read English books, sing hymns in English, and demonstrate their ability to spell and cipher. In the audience was none other than Gov. John Sevier. After the performance of the Cherokee children, the grizzled old warhorse reportedly shook Blackburn’s hand, and with tears streaming down his cheeks proclaimed “I have often stood unmoved amidst showers of bullets from the Indian rifles, but this effectually unmans me. I see civilization taking the ground of barbarism, and the praises of Jesus succeeding the war whoop of the savage” (Woodward 1963:124–125; Blackburn 1808:417). During this period, the Cherokee themselves were taught to read and write in their own language. In 1825, the Nation officially adopted the writing system invented by the legendary Sequoyah a few years before. The system, with its 86 characters for the syllables in the Cherokee language, spread rapidly through the tribe, and from 1828–1834 writers used Sequoyah’s syllabary to print the Cherokee Phoenix, the official newspaper of the Cherokee Nation. A major change that occurred between 1800 and 1828 was the emergence of a republican form of government in the Nation. In the late eighteenth century, the establishment of a more centralized tribal council was primarily to 142

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regulate relations with the white settlers and other Indian tribes. The council was composed of both young warriors and distinguished elder men representing all of the towns. The principal weakness of this body was that it did not force compliance in internal tribal affairs, for example, the council was unable to heal the rift between the Overhill and Chickamauga until 1794 (Persico, Jr. 1979:97–98). In the first three decades of the nineteenth century, the National Council as it was called began passing resolutions and making laws that dealt with internal affairs. Most importantly, in 1810 they passed an act at the Willstown Council which abolished lex talionis, in this case clan revenge (Reid 1970:75, 154). By 1820, district courts of law were established with judges appointed for each district; however, councils were still called “to administer justice in all cases and complaints” (Persico, Jr. 1979:104). A set of articles was adopted in 1825 that primarily confirmed and formalized the National Council’s control over Cherokee lands and other public property. Particular articles forbade any power to principal chiefs to dispose of public property and make treaties and guaranteed Cherokee citizens the right to hold and dispose of their property as they pleased, provided it was not sold to a non-Cherokee (Persico, Jr. 1979:101). The Cherokee Constitution was adopted in 1828 and modeled after the U.S. Constitution with three branches that conformed to previously established Cherokee patterns of government. Like the United States executive branch, it provided for the establishment of a strong principal chief, with veto power over the National Council (Persico, Jr. 1979:101–102). Despite the fact that the Cherokee Nation had now become a literal republic that even President Washington could not have foreseen in his wildest dreams, many white Americans continued to believe that all Indians were “savage” and that efforts to “civilize” them had been unsuccessful. Unfortunately for the Cherokee, they were now concentrated in the state of Georgia where this feeling had reached fever pitch. In 1795, the corrupt Georgia legislature, under the influence of bribery, passed the Yazoo Land Act which for practically nothing gave speculators 35 million acres of the state’s western lands. As problems of corruption arose, Georgia ceded her western lands in 1802 to the federal government in the Articles of Agreement and Cession in exchange for three stipulations. One of these was “The United States shall at their own expense extinguish for the use of Georgia, as early as the same can be peaceably obtained on reasonable terms, the Indian title to all lands [author’s emphasis] within the state of Georgia.” The Cherokee had not approved of this agreement nor were even included in the discussions (Vipperman 1978:103–104). This agreement between Georgia and the U.S. government remained on the back burner until two events occurred two decades later that sealed the fate The Prophesy

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of the Cherokee Nation. In 1828, gold was discovered in northern Georgia, much of it on Cherokee land, and white prospectors streamed illegally into Indian territory. This exacerbated the friction between the Cherokee and the Georgians, and when President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act of 1830, the way seemed clear to rid the state of its “Indian problem” once and for all. While the removal was supposed to be voluntary, great pressure was also placed on the Cherokee and President Jackson to sign removal treaties. To strengthen their hand, the state of Georgia instituted various acts of harassment against the Cherokee hoping to encourage their flight west of the Mississippi, despite a ruling by Justice Thomas Marshall and the U.S. Supreme Court that the Cherokee Nation was a “distinct” self-governing community and that the National Government, not Georgia, had authority in Indian affairs. In 1835, the federal government, particularly President Andrew Jackson, in collusion with the state of Georgia officials, determined to remove the 16,542 Cherokee remaining in the East to land west of the Mississippi River. A “treaty” was signed on March 14, 1835, on condition that the Cherokee Council must approve it. This illegal treaty was rejected in October of that year at the Red Clay Council (Iobst 1979:182). As had been the misfortune of these Indians, a new removal treaty was signed in December, 1835 that was again rejected by a large number of Cherokee leaders, but the die was cast. In May 1838, the United States’ own “final solution” became a reality when U.S. troops were sent throughout the Cherokee Territory to force these people from their homes. This travesty was not “carried into effect without resort to fraud, bribery, corruption, intimidation, and harassment; nor without violation of Federal law, of treaty guarantees, and of orders of the United State Supreme Court” (Vipperman 1978:108). Except for a small remnant that hid in the mountains and are the ancestors of the Eastern Band of the Cherokee, 13,000 persons were rounded up, often at bayonet point, and placed into concentration camps until arrangements could be made to move them west on the “Trail of Tears.” Thousands died of exposure and starvation during the horrendous journey “to a far off wilderness” in one of the coldest winters on record.

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A

s historic events are recalled from generation to generation, the causes, effects, places, and persons are transformed as each generational curtain rises. Even more than the written or oral dialogue, the landscape on which the historic drama unfolded often becomes unrecognizable from the original setting. I find it difficult to comprehend that a war over 200 years ago, which lasted approximately 20 years and cost thousands of lives, left no lasting memorial on the landscape. One has to search hard to find the places where this terrible tragedy struck in the late eighteenth century. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the location of Cavett’s Station was only vaguely recalled. Three houses had already stood on the presumed site of the doomed station, above what was locally called Cavett’s Spring. One of the rivulets remaining in Grassy Valley, it still trickles from the edge of the terrace, and would be difficult to find if one did not know precisely where to look. It is hard to imagine that a pioneer family depended on this water source. Above the spring was a large oak tree when I first visited the site in 1981. I pondered if it had stood a silent vigil over the melancholy scene of the massacre. The only living witness? On September 25, 2009, I drove out to the Cavett Station subdivision and the Mars Hill Cemetery. I had not been back for almost a quarter century. When we excavated the possible site of the station in 1984, except for scattered trees and shrubs along the brook that flows from the spring, most of the subdivision acreage was an open field of weeds and high grass. Neat houses and manicured lawns of a modern subdivision now cover these fields. Unlike the spring, however, the site of our excavation was easy to find. The entrance on Broome Road boasts a large sign that reads Cavett Station Subdivision. As one drives along the serpentine street named Alexander Cavett Drive, this historic theme is perpetuated by a side street named Doublehead Lane (figure 16). I am sure that the old war chief would be surprised that a street is named after him; I certainly was. As I drove north from the subdivision on Broome Road 216 years after the terrible events in this now peaceful rural area of Knox County, I recalled

the little graveyard on a low ridge behind the Cain house, surrounded by the open pastureland. I drove right past it. The ridge, largely open 25 years ago, is now covered with houses and large trees, the little valley, the small stream, and Cavett’s Spring are now hidden from view from the cemetery. After receiving permission from the property owner, I walked through their rear yard and entered the west end of the cemetery, immediately behind the house. The cemetery, too, had changed since my first visit when it was overgrown with vegetation, and Kincer Fox was hacking his way through the underbrush. Small trees around the periphery of the graveyard have gotten tall, and the grass is regularly mowed courtesy of the Cain family and the Sons of the Revolution. Largely hidden by underbrush in 1985, the memorial stone to the Cavetts now prominently stands in the center of the cemetery. There is no evidence of the two field stone markers; perhaps they were removed when the site was cleared and mowed. The black granite marker is an appropriate tribute to the slain Cavett family although only a few people know that it exists. Like many historic markers, the inscription contains errors; primarily that it does not mark the location of the station. There is something about the solemnity of the large stone, however, that enshrines where the Cavetts were laid to rest.

Figure 16. Doublehead Lane street sign in Cavett Station subdivision. Ironically, the intersecting street and corresponding street sign reads Alexander Cavett Drive. Photo by Terry Faulkner.

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Unlike Cavett’s Station, the presence of the Cherokee here in their former homeland is celebrated all around us. One cannot drive or walk anywhere in Knoxville without seeing a Cherokee street name or business named after this tribe. There is a Cherokee Country Club and a Cherokee bluff along the Tennessee River and a park named after the immortal Sequoyah. Ironically, however, it was in Knoxville that this Indian Nation lost a major portion of their homeland in the Treaty of the Holston. A monument marks the site of the treaty signing at Volunteer Landing Park. But what physical evidence of this once powerful Southeastern tribe exists today in East Tennessee? If one takes a drive up the Little Tennessee Valley to look for Cherokee presence, one can visit the Cherokee Museum and see the excavated ruins of the Tellico Blockhouse. However, the sites of their villages—Mialoquo, home of Head Warrior Dragging Canoe; Toqua, home of the martyred chief Old Tassel; and Chota, beloved capital of the Cherokee Nation—are mostly submerged by the Tellico Lake impoundment of the Little Tennessee River. Only Chota can be visited by the public. Covered by the waters of Tellico Lake, the site of the ancient townhouse was raised above the reservoir and connected by a causeway to the mainland. The Chota monument, directly above the townhouse site, consists of seven clan monuments: Bird, Blue, Deer, Long Hair, Paint, Wild Potato, and Wolf clans and a pillar for the Nation. The monument also holds the remains of the great chief Oconostota, which were recovered when the Chota townhouse site was archaeologically excavated before inundation. Other Cherokee remains from Chota are buried in a modern mound at the Cherokee Museum. Thousands of others still remain below the waters of Tellico Lake. Revered by the Cherokee, the Nunne’hi or Immortals were spirits who lived under the mountains and the waters. Long before the Trail of Tears, the Overhill heard voices of spirits in the air, warning them of war and misfortune in the future and inviting the Cherokee to come live with them. The Cherokee would have to gather in their townhouse and pray and fast for six days. Knowing the Immortals were happy forever, the people of a Hiwassee Valley town decided to go with them and gathered in their townhouse. On the seventh day, the Nunne’hi came and took them under the water. On a warm summer day, when the wind ripples the surface, one can hear them talking below. When the Cherokee dragged the river for fish, the net always caught although the water was deep. They knew their lost kinsmen held it, those who do not want to be forgotten (Mooney 1982:335–336).

Epilogue

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Index

Page numbers in boldface refer to illustrations. Abram (Cherokee), 21 Adair’s Fort, 91 Adair, James 35 Adams, President John, 137–38 Algonkian language, 10 Ancoo (Cherokee), 21 Arbuckle’s Fort, 72 archaeology at Cavett’s Spring: archaeological survey, 96, 99–100; archaeological testing with units, 96–97, 98, 99; placement of archaeological units, 97; locational evidence of cabin remains based on historic documentation and historic features, 98–100; metal detector survey, 99; determining age and function of artifacts, 96 Articles of Confederation, 101 Articles of Friendship, 7 Beard, Captain John, 46–48 Benge, Bob (Cherokee), 62–63, 73 Big Tellico town (Cherokee), 49 Blackburn, Reverend Gideon, 142 Black Fox (Ennone, Cherokee), 138 Bledsoe’s Station, 71–73 Bloody Fellow (Nenetooyah, Cherokee): led attack on Gillespie’s Station, 26; repudiated portions of Treaty of

Holston, 40; meets with President Washington, 40; given new name of General Eskagua or Clear Sky, 118; requests for farm implements for Cherokee, 135–36 Blount, John Gray, 30 Blount, Governor William: youth, 28; personality, 28; portrait, 29, land acquisitions, 30, Continental Congress, 29; Constitutional Congress, 29; appointed Governor of the Southwest Territory, 28; “plantation” near Knoxville, 31; dealing with Indians, 30; Superintendent of Indian affairs, 30; Bend Company, 105; Muscle Shoals project, 104–5; Spanish Conspiracy, 105; Continental Congress, 29; Constitutional Congress, 29; creates Knox County, 66; builds Tellico Blockhouse, 132; Council at Tellico Blockhouse, 132 Blount Mansion, 50, 51, 74, 75, 95 Blue Jacket (Shawnee), 41 Boone, Daniel, 18, 47 Bowery, Francis, 67, 81 Boyd’s Creek, Battle of, 18 Brainerd Mission, 142 Breath (Cherokee), 28 Broom, Lula Kidd, 91 Brown’s Blockhouse, 127 Buchanan’s Station, 42

Cameron, Alexander, 11 Campbell, Col. Arthur, 18 Campbell’s Station, 54, 91, 120 Camp Charlotte, Treaty of, 15 Canyon of the Tennessee, 19 Carondelet, Governor Baron de: replaced Governor Mero, 41, supplied arms to Cherokee, 49–50; ends arms trade with Cherokee, 136 Carter’s Valley, 14, 103 Casteel massacre, 125, 130 Cavett, Alexander: birth date, 65; in Sullivan/Washington counties, North Carolina, 66; in Knox County by 1790, 66; court records, Knox County, 66; legal documents, Knox County, 67; died intestate, 89 Cavett, Alexander, Jr.: taken by Indians, 68, 78; killed by Creeks, 80, 81 Cavett, Agnes Meech, 83, 92 Cavett, Arlas, 94 Cavett family: alternate spelling of family name, 65; emigration from Ulster to America, 65; Richard Cavett in Pennsylvania, 1711; Moses and Alexander in Virginia, 1743–1745; in North Carolina (now Tennessee) 1777, 65 Cavett massacre: Alexander Jr. spared in massacre, 68; body of Alexander Sr. described, 79; no living descendants of Alexander Cavett, 79; letter from Col. David Campbell about attack, 115–16; terms of surrender offered by Bob Benge 78; murder of family, 76–79; two militia men killed, 67, 81 number of Indians in attack, 77, 113; John Sevier and militia pursue attackers, 77, 121 Cavett monument, 91–92, 146 Cavett, Captain Moses: children: Richard, John, Moses, Thomas, Rebecca Cavett Hollowway, Susanna Cavett Shoemaker, 89; at Battle of Kings 166

Index

Mountain 65; land deeds in Sullivan County, North Carolina 1782– 1790, 66; inheritance of Alexander Cavett tract 89–90; court case with Thomas Hutchings, 89; buried in Mars Hill cemetery, 89 Cavett, Richard (Alexander’s father): in Paxton Township Pennsylvania, 1711, 65; children, 65; killed by Indians, 1757, 65 Cavett, Richard (Moses’ son), 70, 85 Cavett Spring, 91, 93, 100, 145 Cavett’s Station: possible location, 56; referred to as log house cabin, blockhouse, 76 Cavett, Susannah, 66, 83 Cherokee Indians: age of Cherokee culture, 9; origin of name, 9; geographical divisions of tribe, 11; town organization, 9; tribal council, 9; tribal land, 105; character, 106; value system, 108; warfare, 54; weapons, 59; use of cavalry, 111; introduction of firearms, 133; relationship with white settlers, 106; introduction of domesticated animals, 133–34; deerskin trade, 134; trade with white settlers, 134 Cherokee Museum, 147 Cherokee National Council, 143–44 Cherokee Phoenix, 142 Chickamauga Expedition, 13–14 Chickamauga town (Cherokee), 19 Chickasaw Indians: location in northern Mississippi and west Tennessee, 10; friends of the Americans, 41; fought with General Anthony Wayne, 129 Chilhowee town (Cherokee), 12, 107 Chisholm, Captain John, 53 Choctaw Indians: meet with Governor Blount in Nashville, 41; friendly to Americans, 41; fought with General Anthony Wayne, 129

Chota town (Cherokee): capital of Overhill Cherokee, 11, 108; visited by Henry Timberlake, 108; townhouse described, 108, 147 Christian, Col. William, 12, 121 Chisholm, Captain John, 53 Citico town (Cherokee), 12 Cobb, William, 31 Coosawattee town (Cherokee), 54 Cornwallis, General Lord, 14, 17 Coyatee, Treaty of, 23, 107 Coyatee town (Cherokee), 40 Cox, Zachariah, 105 Creek Indians: location in Georgia and Alabama, 10; work in collusion with Spanish, 43; raid frontier with Chickamauga Cherokee, 27; sign Treaty of New York, 27, 132; feted by Secretary of War Knox in New York City, 27; Creek-Chickasaw War, 128–29 Crow town (Cherokee), 19 Cumberland Turnpike (Walton Road), 139 DeSchweinitz, Frederick, 137 Doherty, Captain George, 49, 54 Donelson, John, 105 Doublehead (Tuckalataque, Cherokee): reluctantly signed Treaty of Holston, 39; leader of Cavett murders, 78; meets with President Washington and Secretary Knox in Philadelphia, 61, 132; fought with Chickamauga in Cumberland region, 61; assassinated by his own people 61, 138 Dowell, Mary, 81, 84, 93 Dragging Canoe (Tsu-gun-sini, Cherokee): origin of English name, 8; established five lower towns, 18–19; aided by Tecumseh, 28; prophesy of, 102; death of, 39, 110

Dumplin Creek, Treaty of, 21, 23 Dunlap, Hugh, 68 Eaton’s Station, 12 Estanaula town (Cherokee): Cherokee capital moved from Chota to Estanaula in northern Georgia, 108–9; plans to attack Knoxville here, 49–54; skirmish with John Sevier, 85, 121 Etowha campaign, 85–87 Fallen Timbers, Battle of, 129 Farragut, David, 33 Farragut, George, 33 Federal army in Knoxville, 51–53, 117 Ferguson, Col. Patrick, 14, 17 First Treaty of Tellico, 137 Franklin, State of: formation of “Lost State,” 20, 103; not recognized by United States Congress, 27; considered Treaty of Hopewell a betrayal, 22; John Sevier elected Governor, 21 Fleming, Col. William, 71 Fort Grainger, 136–37 Fort Harrod, 71 Fort Independence, 74–75 Fort Lee, 16 Fort Stanwix, 9 Fort Southwest Point: major base for John Sevier and the militia, 43; federal troops stationed at, 87; Fort Watauga, 16 Foster, Reverend Stephen, 55 Fox, Kincer, 82, 146 Gallaher View Baptist Church, 83 Gillespie’s Station: attack on, 26; protected by palisade, 76; similar to attack on Cavett’s Station, 118 Index

167

Gillum, Thomas, 46 The Glass (Tagwadiki, Cherokee), 28, 118, 132 Gibbs, Nicholas, 70–71 Grassy Valley, 56, 91 Great Spirit (Great Mystery), 39, 101 Hamilton District, 121 Hanging Maw (Uskwa’li-gu’ta, Cherokee): headman in Overhill towns, 47; plea for trade trade goods, 14; acquaintance with Daniel Boone, 47; militia attack on house, 46–47, opposed to murder at Cavett’s Station, 118; seeks peace with white settlers, 130, 132; rebuffs Spanish trade goods, 136; requests Governor Blount to build Tellico Blockhouse, 134 Hard Labor, Treaty of, 14 Harrison, Captain Michael, 56, 114 Henderson, Richard, 14, 30 Henry’s Station, 44, 49 Holston, Treaty of, 38–40, 147 Horseshoe Bend, battle of, 132 Houston, Sam, 35 Houston’s Station, 22 Hubbard, Major James, 23, 107 Indian hunting grounds, 10–11 Indian treatment of prisoners, 57–58 Indian Removal Act of 1830, 144 Indian warfare, 57 Iroquois Indians, 9–10 Ish, John, 35, 130 Ish’s Station: John Sevier and militia at station, 50, 56, 84, 86; Cherokee spying on, 77, 115 Jackson, Andrew: battle of Horseshoe Bend, 132; signs Indian Removal 168

Index

Act of 1830, 144; in General Martin’s campaign, 35 Jefferson, President Thomas, 137–38 Kidd, Mary Ann Lones, 91 Kidd, Maccager, 91, 93 Kings Mountain, battle of, 17 Kingston Pike, 120 Kirk, John, 23–24, 107 Knox, Henry, Secretary of War: naming of Knoxville, 38; seeks peace with Indians, 37–38, 43 Knoxville (also see White’s Fort): site of Treaty of Holston, 38–40; early description of, 50; muster ground, 34; blockhouse (barracks), 51–52; Federal troops in town, 51 Land Grab (Sales) Act 30, 104 Legion (American army), 36–37 Lewis, Mrs. William, 80 lex talionis, 36, 129, 143 Little Carpenter (Atta-kulla-kulla, Cherokee), 12, 47 Little Turtle (Mishikinakwa, Miami), 41 Lonas, Jacob, 81 Lonas, Nancy Cavett, 79, 90 Lones, Joseph, 83, 84, 90 Lones family, 79 Long Island town (Cherokee), 28 Long Island, Treaty of, 13, 39 Lookout Mountain, Battle of, 25, 34 Lookout Mountain town (Cherokee), 28 Lord Dunmore’s War, 15 Lowery, William, 125 Marshall, Justice Thomas, 144 Manifest Destiny, 127 Martin, Major Joseph, 24–26, 34–35 Martin, Governor Alexander, 103 Mars Hill Cemetery, 81, 82, 90, 91, 145

Mason archaeological site, 58 McGillivray, Alexander (Hoboi-HilliMiko, Creek): Spanish-Indian alliance, 21, at Treaty of New York, 27; made brigadier general in American army, 27 McKee, John, 46, 130, 135 Mero District, 35, 41, 44, 60, 71, 123, 127 Mero, Governor Estaban, 41 Mialoquo town (Cherokee), 11, 12, 147 Michaux, André, 139 Middle Cherokee towns, 11 Middle Striker (Yaliunoyuka, Cherokee), 39, 130 Middleton’s Station, 123 Militia: organized in Tennessee, 32; personal equipment, 32; pay and provisions, 33; muster, 34; scouting, 35 Militia treatment of prisoners, 13, 49, 107, 125 Militia Acts of 1792, 32 Military Reserve, 104 Mingo Indians, 15 Montgomery, Col. Joseph, 13 Moravian missionaries, 141, 142 Morris, John (Chickasaw), 45–46 Murray, Governor John, 15 Muscle Shoals project, 104–5 Mynatt, Mae, 91 Nickajack expedition, 127–28, 136 Nickajack town (Cherokee), 12 Nunye`hi (Cherokee Immortals), 147 Oconoree, Battle of, 12 Oconostota (Cherokee), 12, 141 Old Abram (Ooskia, Cherokee), 11–12, 23–24 Old Bark (Cherokee), 139 Old Tassel (or Corn Tassel, Cherokee): signer of Treaty of Hopewell, 21;

replaced the Raven as the head chief of the Overhill Cherokee, 107; murdered with Old Abram under a flag of truce, 23, 39, 104; rejected Treaty of Coyatee, 107 Ore, Major James, 112, 136 Otter Lifter (Cheakoneske, Cherokee), 39, 46 Out Cherokee towns, 11 Overhill Cherokee towns, 11 palen fence, 81 Peters, W. D., 91,93 Plains Indians, 134 Plum Grove, 17 Point Pleasant, Battle of, 15 Proclamation of 1763, 6, 7, 12, 13, 103 Pumpkin Boy (Cherokee), 54, 115 Ramsey, Francis Alexander, 20, 35, 124 Ramsey House, 74 Ramsey, James G. M., 20, 93, 124 Raven (Savanuch, Cherokee), 11–12, 107 Red Clay Council, 144 Red Stick Creeks, 132 Rickard, Lt. Commander William, 51, 53 Ridge, “Major” (Cherokee): witnessed the Cavett massacre, 78; plots assassination of Doublehead, 119; owned plantation in Georgia, 141–42 Robertson, James, 15, 16, 44 Roosevelt, Theodore, 126 Ross, Judge Carroll, 66–67 Rule, William, 117 Running Water town (Cherokee), 28, 128 Russell, William, 12 Rutherford, General Griffith, 12, 125 Rutherford Trace expedition, 125 Sand Creek massacre, 126 scalping, 57–58 Index

169

Schneider, Martin, 106 Settico town (Cherokee), 28 Sequoyah, 142 Sevier, Catherine Sherrill (“Bonnie Kate”), 70 Sevier, John: birth and early years, 15; children, 16; tactics fighting Indians, 114; Governor of state of Franklin, 21; in Nolichucky Valley at Plumb Grove, 17; first wife Sara Hawkins, 16, 17; at Kings Mountain, 17; painting of, 16; Hiwassee River campaign, 22–23; involvement of murder of Old Tassel, 107–8, 126; Bend Company involvement, 105; Spanish Conspiracy, 105; pursues Cavett Station attackers, 84; Etowah campaign, 121–23; taunts Indian leaders on Etowah campaign, 85; retires at Marble Springs, 95 Sharp’s Fort, 70–71, 74 Shelby, Evan, 13, 36, 66 Shawnee Warrior (Cheeseekau, Shawnee), 28, 42 Smith, Acting Governor David, 76, 112 Spanish Conspiracy, 105 Spring Place mission, 142 Spurgeon, John, 67, 81 St. Clair, General Arthur, 33, 36–37 Steiner, Abraham, 137 Stuart, John, 7 Sugden, John, 28 Sullyquoah town (Cherokee), 54 Sycamore Shoals, Treaty of, 8, 12, 103 Tanasi town (Cherokee), 108 Tecumsee (Shawnee), 28 Tellassee (Talasee) town (Cherokee), 18, 124–25 Tellico blockhouse: Federal troops at, 87; construction and plan, 134–35; deerskin trade, 136 170

Index

Tellico factory, 137–38 Thomas, Abishi, 50 Timberlake, Lt. Henry, 106 Tipton, John, 35 Trail of Tears, 144 Transylvania Company, 30 Treaty of 1805, 138 Toqua town (Cherokee), 12, 147 Turkey’s town (Cherokee), 54 Tuskegee town (Cherokee), 28 Tynola town (Cherokee), 49 Valley Cherokee towns, 11 Vann, James (Cherokee), 54, 61 Vann’s town (Cherokee), 28 Wabash River, Battle of, 41 Walker, Flossie, 91 Walton, William, 139 Washington District, 33, 43, 44, 124 Washington, President George: appoints William Blount governor of the Southwest Territory, 28; Annual Address of, 1783; reorganized standing army, 36; policy of Indian assimilation, 133 Watts, John (Kunoskeeskie, Cherokee): becomes Cherokee chief, 40, 60; leadership qualities, 60; feted Governor Blount at Coyatee, 110; war strategy, 111; Knoxville attack plans, 117; leader of Knoxville raid, 54, 114, 117 Wayne, General Anthony, 129 White’s Fort (Knoxville), 31, 34, 111, 118 White, James: established Whites Station/Fort, later town of Knoxville, 20, 50; leader of “immortal 38,” 54–55, 114, 117