250 and Counting

Category: Native American History

  • Battle of the Black Hole–September 19, 1776

    Cover art for September 19, 1776: Historical Marker noting the location in Wayah Creek (west of Franklin, NC) where the Battle of the Black Hole took place. via NC Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.

    The Battle of the Black Hole, also known as the Battle of Coweecho River, lasted about two hours and had surprisingly few casualties, considering its location and just how fierce the fighting was.

    Colonel Andrew Williamson essentially marched into an ambush in a deep gorge, and had to fight their way out. They began by using a circular formation because they found themselves surrounded. But because they were in such a tight spot geographically, they realized that the only way out is through, as the expression goes. Williamson led a bayonet charge, which drove out the Cherokees, who were low on ammunition anyway.

    Four Cherokees were killed altogether, and eleven militiamen were killed, plus twenty-four men were wounded.

    Interestingly, the exact location of the battle is not known, but based on contemporary accounts, historians have placed it at or near Wayah Gap in Macon County, NC. For some time there was an argument that it took place further north, in Swain County, a place called “Indian Grave Gap.” But given the militia groups’ respective destinations as they moved, this location doesn’t make sense.

    The fact is, much of the correct information for this battle had to be painstakingly teased from contemporary reports. At one point it was thought that it was General Rutherford’s men who had fought the battle, but that was based on a single article written nearly a hundred years later. Furthermore, that article was based on sketchy research.

    So the Battle of the Black Hole was brief, it was relatively bloodless, and it was the last battle in the Cherokee-American War that would take place in North Carolina, though many more were to come in other states.

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  • Do The Fight Ring–August 12, 1776

    Cover art for August 12, 1776: "Brigadier General Andrew Pickens With SC Militia", by Robert Wilson, 1977. via National Park Service at the Ninety-Six Historical Site.

    Andrew Pickens was a plantation owner whose property was near Seneca, South Carolina, which is almost as far west as you can go and still be in South Carolina.

    As the Cherokee-American wars wore down, Pickens was able to sign peace treaties with the tribe, which was known as the Treaty of Hopewell.

    Meanwhile, in the American Revolution, Pickens had to surrender the fort in the Ninety-Six District. He agreed to sit out the war as part of his parole, but when the British later destroyed most of his property, all bets were off. He led numerous campaigns in South Carolina and Georgia, making him popular enough the he was elected to the House of Representatives from 1781 through 1793.

    It’s worth noting that some of his Revolutionary War battles were the basis of some scenes in the 2000 film The Patriot.

    Andrew Pickens was one of only nine Representatives to vote against the Eleventh Amendment to the Constitution, which prevents states from sovereign immunity in lawsuits against them by citizens of another state. For example, under the amendment a private citizen from Virginia is allowed to sue the state of Tennessee, and Tennessee cannot claim that the person has no standing because they’re not a citizen of Tennessee.

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    And no, I do not apologize for the title of today’s episode.

  • Escalation Everywhere–August 1, 1776

    Cover art for August 1, 1776: "The Arrival of Princess Charlotte at Harwich" by John Clevely the Elder, 1761.

    At this point, Americans were fighting a two-front war. More accurately, they were fighting two wars against different enemies: the Cherokee in the southwest areas of the country (so far), and the British…well, practically everywhere else. But today we’ll focus on the British in New York.

    After yesterday’s disaster in the Ninety-Six District of South Carolina, the Cherokees, plus a bunch of Loyalists, moved east about 30 miles to Seneca, which at that time was called Esseneca Ford.It was there that they met up against Andew Williamson, who they outnumbered by something like four-to-one. But with the assistance of some men on horseback, plus another batch of reinforcements, the Cherokees were forced to retreat.

    In New York, the British, along with a huge number of Hessian mercenary soldiers, were massing in Staten Island with an eye toward taking Manhatten, Long Island and the Hudson Valley in an effort to cut off New England. George Washington will be facing an enormous battle very soon, but on Monday we’ll be telling you about something at least as important fo the General.

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  • Farewell, Francis–July 31, 1776

    Cover art for July 31, 1776: watercolor art of Francis Salvador. Via American Battlefield Trust.

    As I mentioned very early in this podcast, Francis Salvador’s life was especially notable for two things: the day he was elected to public office, and the day he died. And in his case, the dates were notable largely for the fact that Francis Salvador was a Sephardic Jew, making him the first man of his faith to be elected to office in America, and the first of his faith to die in the Revolution.

    Francis Salvador was born in London, but his family were part of a Portuguese and Spanish Sepharidic Jewish enclave in that city. Salvador had an uncle who’d invested heavily in the British East India Company, and they still owned lots of land in Portugal, so they were pretty comfortable financially.

    Until, that is, the Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755, and the subsequent failure of the East India Tea Company. They were in much worse shape after those two blows, but by that point Salvador had already purchsed some land in South Carolina. In 1773 he emigrated to America, intending to bring his family over when he had the money to do so, but he was killed before they could make the move.

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    P.S. Thanks to Mike for stepping in and recording this episode when I had a power failure preventing me from getting it done.

  • What To Do With Those Natives?–July 26, 1776

    Cover art for July 26, 1776: Official portrait of Justice James WIlson as a Supreme Court Associate Judge, by Robert S. Susan, after Leopold G. Seyffert, after Max Rosenthal, ca. 1936. Now part of the Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States.

    That Native American relations were considered at all as part of the Articles of Confederation is a little bit of a mystery, but it’s possible that the Congress was just looking for some across-the-board consistency when it came to that sort of thing.

    After all, you couldn’t have the folks in the Southern States battling with the Cherokee while the Northern States, which were more or less peaceful with the Iroquois, doing nothing to assist. It’s just too many variables to consider.

    Ultimately, the Federalists won this argument, in the sense that Native American relations would be left to the US government to deal with, provided that the rights of the individual states were not infringed upon.

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  • The Battle of Island Flats–July 20, 1776

    Cover art for July 20, 1776: Historical Marker in Kingsport, Tennessee, commemorating the Battle of Island Flats. Via Historical Marker Database.

    The Battle of Island Flats was yet another step in the Chickamauga War, or the Cherokee-American War (call it what you like).

    We first talked about this on July 1, when the first attacks began in earnest. And then again just under a week ago at the Battle of Fort Lindley. The thing about these conflicts is that they tended to come in bunches, and then there would be long periods in which nothing happened. So it was never easy to determine whether the battles were over. Island Flats was also the farthest west battle of the war, thus far, so this was probably not viewed right away as an extension of the previous two.

    Unfortunately, the battles went on (and off) for over fifteen years before the Army came in with a major offensive, and the Cherokees were forced to seek a peace treaty. It didn’t end tensions between the Native Americans and the US government, to be sure, but some peace is better than none, I guess.

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  • The Battle of Fort Lindley–July 15, 1776

    Cover art for July 15, 1776: part of the vacant field where Fort Lindley once stood. Via SC Department of Archives and History.

    The raids along the Catawba River in North Carolina we talked about on July 1 were just the beginning of the Cherokee-American Wars; the next major effort was an attack on Fort Lindley, not far from modern-day Greenville, South Carolina.

    It’s not entirely clear when Fort Lindley was first constructed; there are indications here and there that it was already considered “old” in 1776. In the 1760s there were some Native American disturbances going on in the area, so it’s possible that the fort was built by an individual looking for personal protection.

    The structure was called Fort Lindley, or “Lindley’s Fort” because at the time it was most recently owned by a Loyalist named James Lindley. Unfortunately for him, when the Patriots fled to the fort and Major Downs moved in to assist, Lindley, who was part of the battle, essentially wound up attacking his own home.

    As noted in the episode, the attack was unsuccessful and Downs pursued his attackers, eventually capturing about ten men. They were immediately brought to the jail in the Ninety-Six District, which we talked about a little bit back in November.

    The photo in today’s artwork was probably taken in the 1970s as part of the application for the site’s historical marker; it’s a photo of the land where the fort most likely stood. What’s not entirely clear is what happened to it after the 1770s, as no efforts have been made to excavate the site and determine what parts of Fort Lindley still remain to be found, or even what sort of layout it had. There is evidence of a ditch about three feet wide, and possibly two rock pits nearby, but not much else. And given that the historical marker notes that the fort was about “600 yards south” of its location, chances are that the site itself is on private land rather than a public park of some kind.

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  • The Chickamauga Wars–July 1, 1776

    Cover art for July 1, 1776: "The abduction of Jemima Boone by Shawnee in 1776", by Charles Ferdinand Wimar, 1853. Now hanging in the Mildred Land Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis, MO.

    The Chickamauga Wars, also known as the Cherokee-American Wars, was really just an escalation of the hostile relationship between Americans and the Cherokee tribe.

    The problem really started during the French and Indian War, which ran from 1758-1761. During that war, British forces simply destroyed many Cherokee towns, which were never reoccupied. Some treaties were signed after the war, and then boundaries established, but the colonists resented those boundaries. They showed their resentment by largely ignoring them, forcing officials in charge of Indian Affairs to put together new treaties with new boundaries. Go figure, those didn’t work either.

    Things got ugly in 1773 when Daniel Boone led about 50 settlers through the Cumberland Gap. Natives from several tribes descended on a foraging/scouting party, capturing them and then ritually torturing them to death. Among the dead was Boone’s son James.

    Tensions continued to rise until this day in 1776, when they escalated into full-scale raids and battles which came in fits and starts, and then would settle into long periods of no activity.

    This went on into the 1790s before the Army came in with a major offensive, forcing the Cherokees to back down and seek a peace treaty, formally ending the Chickamauga Wars.

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  • Making A Play For The Natives–May 25, 1776

    Cover art for May 25, 1776: The first page of the address to the Iroquois Indians. It's in George Wythe's handwriting, but the identity of the person making the speech was not recorded.

    The Continental Congress knew that good relationship with the Native Americans was the smart thing to do, but it took them months to put together the Committee for Indian Affairs, even when their first attempt to bring the natives in failed miserably.

    In that first try, they came to the upstate New York and framed the Revolution as though it was a family dispute. The Iroquois, taking that literally, decided to stay out of the affair, then.

    This time around, the Iroquois (and shame on me, I should be saying Haudenosauree) came to Philadelphia, but in my humble opinion they weren’t treated especially well, having to wait for several days to meet with the Congress, and several more days to hear the proposal that the Committee for Indian Affairs put together. Small wonder, then, that they simply left without even responding to the Americans’ offer.

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  • Rules for Native American Trade–January 27, 1776

    Cover art for January 27, 1776: Engraving titled Washington and Fairfax and a War-Dance by John Rogers, 1857.
    Engraving titled Washington and Fairfax and a War-Dance by John Rogers, 1857. The event depicted actually took place in 1779.

    As noted in the episode, there were several different rules laid down for trading with Native Americans at that time, and some of them were designed to ensure that they remained on our side or, at worst, that they remained neutral in Revolution-based matters.

    But the rules wound up working out well for both sides: the various tribes were able to get the materials they wanted, and trade was conducted under better-controlled conditions.

    In addition, they led to trade-related treaties with several tribes up and down the coast during the next year or so. And with over 80 tribes east of the Mississippi River at that time, that’s a lot of treaties to negotiate.

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