Places: Fort Loudoun, Monroe County, Tennessee

We've already run across Fort Loudoun in two separate posts, one dealing with Cherokee leader Oconostata, who was the only Native leader of this era to capture a fort during wartime, and in discussing the Cherokee Trail.  Now it's time to take a closer look at this historic place.

Construction of this remote British outpost began in 1756 in an effort to help garner Cherokee support (read intimidate them into supporting), the British side of the Seven Years War (1755-1763).  It was one of the first significant British outposts west of the Appalachians and its architects planned for a grand fortress in the then-current star style. The bastions on each corner which formed the points of the star were to allow the Fort's guns to fire down on attackers from all sides.  Though some portions of the Fort were built of stone, a wooden palisade with simple overhangs propped up by logs was its main defense.   Like most forts of the day, it had barracks, and officers quarters, service buildings and a parade ground, which appears in the reconstruction maintained today by the National Park Service. 

At first, relations between the garrison at Fort Loudon and the local Cherokee were frequent and cordial.  The Fort lay along the Cherokee Path, which made Native access to it convenient.  That changed when the British became suspicious of the Cherokees' intentions during the War and began to believe they were awaiting an opportunity to defect to the French.  In 1758, several leaders who were held hostage at nearby Fort George were massacred by the garrison there and the Cherokees rose in anger.  Led by Oconostata, sometimes known as Stalking Turkey, the Cherokee besieged the Fort even as more reports came in of clashes between local militia and Cherokee war parties in South Carolina.  Though the garrison held out for several months, the Cherokee persisted and it had to surrender.  As the garrison was marching out, the Cherokee killed several and took most of the others prisoner.

The British retaliated by sending an army under General James Grant deep into Cherokee country, provoking the Anglo-Cherokee War (1759-1761).  Several Cherokee towns were burned, including the main Lower Town of Keowee, also along the Cherokee Trail.  It took all the efforts of Henry Timberlake, the British peace commissioner who ventured into Dragging Canoe's territory of the Overhill Towns and Superintendent John Stuart, head of the British Indian Department for the South, to patch up relations between the British and Cherokee. 

After the Seven Years War, the British did not reoccupy the fort.  It slowly crumbled into ruin and the property on which it sat changed hands through the years.  Beginning in 1935, archeologists from the Works Progress Administration conducted research digs on the site.  It was later reconstructed and became a National Historical Landmark in 1965.  Several places nearby take their name from the Fort, including Loudoun County, with its county seat at Loudon, also Fort Loudoun Dam, and Loudoun Lake, Fort Loudon Electrical Cooperative, Fort Loudoun Medical Center in Lenoir City, and a middle school, among others.