Natives versus Settlers: the Long Cane Massacre, February 1, 1760

The Anglo-Cherokee War, 1759-1761 was the result of misunderstood motives on both sides of the conflict.  The Cherokee expected that British authorities would respect their hunting range and keep settlers out.  The British were concerned that the Cherokee might switch allegiance to the French.  There was a concurrent war going on, the Seven Years/French and Indian War, 1756-1763. 

There were mutual attacks on both sides.  The British sent punitive raids deep into Cherokee territory, burning several villages.  Cherokee forces captured Fort Loudoun after several leaders taken hostage had been killed.  In this tense environment, Settlers in outlying areas decided to flee their farmsteads until hostilities calmed down.  Around 150 settlers had established a settlement near Long Cane Creek, in what is now McCormick County, South Carolina.  They determined to head to Fort Moore, near Augusta, Georgia to await a more peaceful time.  On July 1, 1760, about 150 men, women and children in 150 wagons struggled to cross the boggy creek bed.  Wagons got stuck and the going was slow.  There, they were ambushed by a force of Cherokee Indians.  Casualties were 23 Settlers killed and about 21 Cherokee killed.  The Settlers were armed and able to fight back.  However, some captives were taken, including Ann Calhoun, a relative of future Senator and Vice President John C. Calhoun.  A tombstone marks the spot near Troy, South Carolina where the incident happened.

Places: Fort Prince Goerge, South Carolina

Forts and fortified blockhouses served an important dual purpose on the frontier.  They were supposed to provide protection for local inhabitants during conflict with the Natives.  And they were also meant to impress the local Natives into not attacking in the first place.  Sometimes, the forts failed on both counts.  Such was the case of Fort Prince George.

As we've seen with Fort Loudoun, built across from the key Cherokee town of Tellico, the British often chose sites for their forts both along Native trails and often adjacent to important Native towns.  Such was the same for Fort Prince George, built on the Cherokee Trail across the river from the important Lower Cherokee town of Keeowee in 1753.  The Fort was named for then-Prince of Wales, later George III.  It and the town site of Keeowee are submerged by Lake Keeowee in Pickens County, not far from the college town of Clemson.  The fort was a wooden stockade that took only two months to build, complete with bastions for cannons trained on the Cherokee town. 

The site is most important for an incident that occurred in 1759, during the Anglo-Cherokee War.  A Cherokee delegation arrived in Charleston for peace talks with the royal governor, and was promptly taken hostage.  They were escorted to Fort Prince George for safekeeping.  A few months later, in 1760, while Attakullakulla worked with the British to secure their release, a war party lead by Oconostata killed a British officer outside the walls of Fort Prince George.  All the Native hostages inside were killed in retaliation, which set off attacks on Fort Prince George, Fort Loudoun, Fort Dobbs and the town of Ninety-Six.  Although the town and most of the forts held out, Oconostata took Fort Loudoun by siege, not an easy thing to do and almost unheard of for a Native commander.  Hostilities between the Cherokee and British ended by 1761 and the Fort was abandoned by 1768.  It was not used by either side during the Revolution and moldered into ruin.  Archaeologists excavated it prior to it being submerged under the lake, finding Native skeletons, cannon and musket balls, rum bottles, cooking utensils and glass fragments, among other things.  The local museum houses a replica model of the fort, shown below.

Great Leader: Attakullakulla of the Cherokee

Dragging Canoe was reckoned one of the most talented Native commanders in his day.  And he had his father, in part, to thank.  Like father, like son couldn't describe two men better than Attakullakulla, First Beloved Man of the Cherokee from 1761-1775, and the son he raised to lead the Chickamauga Cherokee.

Attakullakulla (c 1708-1777) is a Cherokee name meaning
leaning wood.  The English referred to him as Little Carpenter, both from his name having something to do with wood, and from the fact that he was short, with a slender build.  Further descriptions of him indicated a pleasant personality, mild mannered, well-spoken, intelligent and witty.  He was born in Eastern Tennessee.  His son later stated that Attakullakulla was of the Nipissing tribe, captured and assimilated into the Cherokee while still a small child.  He married Nionne Ollie, herself a Natchez raised by Oconostata, and had several children.  One of whom became Dragging Canoe.  Another son was Turtle at Home, a noted warrior and lieutenant of his brother. 

In 1730, he went to England as part of a Cherokee delegation.  After that, he became firmly convinced of the need to keep the Cherokee firmly on the side of the English in the various colonial wars sweeping over North America.  He several times rejected any advances by the French in their efforts to co-opt the Cherokee as auxiliaries.  Finally, in around 1740, he was captured in a battle with the Ottawa and sent to Montreal as a prisoner.  Upon his release in 1748, Attakullakulla became a trusted advisor to more senior leaders within the Cherokee Nation.  He became known as a trusted diplomat and representative for his people.

He would need all his skills at diplomacy during the French and Indian War (1755-1762).  During the war, he worked to keep trade lines open between the British and the Cherokee, to keep the peace between Settlers and Natives and to assist the British.  However, in 1759, a delegation of Cherokee went to Charleston to negotiate with the colonial governor.  There, they were taken hostage instead and taken to Fort Prince George.  Attakullakulla signed a treaty, agreeing to turn over any Cherokee guilty of raiding American settlements.  In 1760, Attakullakulla came to Fort Prince George to negotiate for return of the hostages, but he had reckoned without Oconostata, whom we've already met.  He was also at Fort Prince George, and lured a British officer outside in an invitation to parley.  Instead, the officer was killed and the British inside the fort retaliated by killing all the Native hostages.  Oconostata redeemed himself by taking Fort Loudoun, one of the few, if not the only time a British fort was taken by Natives in wartime.  Meanwhile, the fallout for the death of the hostages and the escalating tension between Cherokee and British was blamed on Attakullakulla. 

Finally, after a punitive British raid on the Middle and Lower towns, Attakullakulla was able to persuade the British to agree a treaty with the Cherokee.  But his troubles did not end.  On the way home from the treaty negotiations, he was robbed on the road by angry frontiersmen.  Throughout the rest of his life, he would work to limit frontier settlement in Cherokee country, but to little avail.  By the time of the American Revolution (1775-1783), Attakullakulla decided that the best way to placate the Whites was to allow them some land.  After he and several other older leaders ceded land to the state of Virginia, Dragging Canoe and his own father parted ways.  Dragging Canoe would lead his people to Tennessee and the formation of the Chickamauga Cherokee.  Father and son never healed their relationship.  Attakullakulla died in 1777 and was succeeded as First Beloved Man by Oconostata.