Settlers versus Natives: Battle of Hightower, October 17, 1793

The Cherokee-American War (1775-1794) was one of the longest-running conflicts between Natives and Settlers, skirmishes on frontier towns and settlements and raids on Native villages punctuated by pitched battles.  The Battle of Hightower, sometimes called the Battle of Etowah, after a nearby Cherokee village, was one of these contests.

In the 1785 Treaty of Hopewell, the Cherokee agreed a specific set of boundaries for their homeland and hunting range.  This included areas in Tennessee, eastern North and South Carolina, nd Northern Georgia.  They also received assurances that the United States would keep trespassers out of Cherokee land.  If anyone trespassed on Native land, they could be punished as the Cherokee saw fit, with the exception of anyone accused of murdering a Cherokee.  These were to be punished by American jurisdiction.  The Cherokee also agreed to suspend trade with Spain.  However, there was no way to enforce this clause or any other terms of the treaty.  Settlers continued to make their way onto Cherokee land and Spanish traders infiltrated Cherokee territory, too. 

John Watts led a band of 1,000 Chickamauga and Muscogee warriors in attacks against American settlements.  The settlers, under Col. John Sevier, retaliated.  The two sides skirmished back and forth and tempers flared.  Near Knoxville Road on the French Broad River, Watts' force ambushed Cavett's Station.  The settlers there offered to surrender in return for promises of clemency, which Watts intended to allow them.  However, another Cherokee leader, named Doublehead, opposed Watt's lenient position and began killing prisoners despite the efforts of Watts and James Vann, whom we've already run across, to stop him.  This would deepen already hard feelings between Watts, Vann and Doublehead, which would fester later, but more on that.

Sevier learned of the attack and mustered his forces.  They caught up with a portion of Watts' force under a leader named Kingfisher in what is now Rome, Georgia and what was then near the Cherokee town of Etowah.  The Cherokee took up a defensive position on Myrtle Hill and tried to prevent Sevier from fording the Etowah River to attack.  Sevier forded the River further downstream and, when the Cherokee rushed to stop him, turned around and made straight for the village.  When Kingfisher was killed, Cherokee resistance collapsed.  Sevier's men rushed and burned the village of Etowah.  Nor was that all.  He burned several more Cherokee and Creek villages before heading back to Knoxville.

The war between the two sides would flare up again in 1794, as the frontier was never quiet.  The battle ground on Myrtle Hill is now a cemetery with a monument honoring Sevier's part in the battle, as he later became a governor of Tennessee.