August 17, 2016 • 29 mins
During the French and Indian War, a clash between Cherokee tribes and the British -- who had been allies -- slowly escalated on the southern end of the larger conflict.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Steph you missed in history class from dot com. Hello,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy B. Wilson and
I'm Molly Frying. Oh, the Seventh the Seven Years War
has come up before on the podcast, right. It is
(00:23):
essentially a world war that spanned from seventeen fifty six
to seventeen sixty three, and it was part of a
very very long arc of conflict between Britain and France.
That arc was so long. But I just want to
mention again that, like one time you and I joked
that there should be a website that was, like was
England at War with France? Dot com? You could just
(00:45):
put in a year and the website would tell you
in two different listeners obligingly made that website for us.
We will link to them in the show notes. So,
the North American theater of the Seven Years War is
known as the French and Indian War, and it was
initially sparked over the question of who should control the
Ohio River Valley, whether that was Britain or France. France
formed alliances with a number of Native American peoples and nations,
(01:09):
Thus the name the French and Indian War it's relatively
northern in terms of like what gets the most screen
time when people are talking about the French and Indian War,
Really the northern part of Britain and France's colonies in
North America are where like most of the battles took place.
Most of the maps really focused on that part, ranging
(01:32):
from northern Virginia and Maryland up through no Nova Scotia
and Quebec and what's now Canada. But that is not
the only place that this conflict was going on, and
today we are going to talk about a more southern
part of it, which was the Anglo Cherokee War, which
went from seventeen fifty nine to seventeen sixty one. Prior
(01:52):
to Europeans arrival in North America, the Cherokee lived in
much of what would later become the Southeastern United States
that in includes North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama.
And when European colonists began settling in these areas, the
Cherokee and the many other Native American tribes and nations
who were living in this part of the world were
(02:14):
forced into progressively smaller territory. Introduced diseases including a smallpox
outbreak in six reduced their population as well. By the
first half of the eighteenth century, the Cherokee Nation was
not really established as one formal, monolithic entity. It comprised
(02:34):
about sixty towns in and around the southern Appalachian Mountains.
Most of these settlements were situated in river valleys to
take advantage of the rich soil there, while also having
access to places to hunt animals like deer. As the
Cherokee developed closer economic ties to the British colonies, deer
hunting and the selling of deer hides became an increasingly
(02:56):
important part of their way of life. A why of
this area can be hard to get to, so for
a time these towns had less and less frequent contact
with European colonists than areas that were more readily accessible.
The Appalachian Mountains formed a natural barrier that offered the
Cherokee a degree of protection from both introduced diseases and
(03:18):
the colonists themselves. Basically, for a while, epidemics tended to
strike Cherokee communities a little bit later than they did
other Native American peoples, and its population had more time
to recover between them. Consequently, By the turn of the
eighteenth century, the Cherokee people's population was roughly twenty thousand,
and this included a fighting force of about six thousand.
(03:41):
By comparison, in seventeen twenty, Navy neighboring South Carolina had
a total population of approximately nine thousand white colonists and
twelve thousand enslaved Africans, while North Carolina had roughly ten
thousand white colonists and about three thousand enslaved Africans. You'll
see some variations in these numbers if you go to
(04:02):
research what the population was in the southern colonies. There
just was not a lot of official counting in this
part of the continent until the seventeen nineties census, which
was much later. Yeah, when everybody is estimating their numbers
are never quite going to match up. Yeah. I kept
trying to find something more precise, and I got lots
(04:22):
of wildly different estimates. Yeah, but things really started to
shift for the Cherokee people in the seventeen thirties and
seventeen forties. In seventeen thirty eight, a massive smallpox epidemic
cut its population approximately in half. The total Cherokee fighting
force was still larger than those of its most immediate
native neighbors, but the colonial populations had continued to grow
(04:44):
as well. Soon the white populations of both North Carolina
and South Carolina each outnumbered the population of the Cherokee nation.
Plus this same mountain region that had offered the Cherokee
some protection from it colonial neighbors had sort of turned
into this buffer between British territory and French territory, with
(05:06):
the Cherokee community itself forming part of that buffer. It
was physically positioned between the colonial influences of two massive empires,
with each of them trying to expand. This mountainous geography
also made it hard for the nation to act as
a unified front when dealing with increasing pressure from its
British and French neighbors. Mountains and valleys roughly separated the
(05:30):
nation's settlements into groups known as towns, the overhill towns,
the valley towns, out towns, middletowns, and lower towns. The
words and descriptions of these regions varied among Cherokee dialects,
and consequently there has been some level of debate about
exactly how to classify them. At least three different dialects
(05:52):
of the Cherokee language had developed among these towns, and
it wasn't just the lay of the land that created
divisions among the Cherokee. The Cherokee themselves were not particularly
centralized or monolithic at this point. For the most part,
each town had its own council, with the council house
large enough for the whole town to assemble. But even
(06:12):
in one single town where everyone spoke the same Cherokee dialect,
further divisions often appeared among the Cherokee's seven matrilineal clans.
Clan loyalty was often a lot more important than town loyalty,
so if the council made a decision that the clan
didn't agree with, the clans members typically stuck together. Although
(06:33):
the colonial governments in North America often recognized one particular
Cherokee leader as being the chief over the entire nation,
there wasn't really a unified nation yet, and this person
often wasn't someone who was universally recognized as a leader
among all of the towns. This contributed to even more divisions,
as the British held negotiations with someone who didn't actually
(06:56):
speak for the Cherokee as a whole. By the mid
seventeen forties, this relatively decentralized Cherokee Nation was really caught
in the middle of a huge storm of pressures. The
Cherokee lower towns where at war with the Muskogee Creek
Nation for about forty years, ending in seventeen fifty five.
(07:17):
The proximity of Spanish territory to the newly chartered Colony
of Georgia had raised fears among the British that the
Spanish would start a slave up uprising with the ultimate
goal of taking over Georgia and South Carolina. In its aftermath,
France and Britain became more overtly hostile toward one another,
as France began trying to establish settlements in the Ohio
(07:39):
Valley and generally doing a much better job of forming
alliances with Native nations than Britain was doing. The Cherokee
had for the most part sided with the British, but
the British worried that they would be swayed to the
French side, and the Cherokee Nation had become increasingly dependent
upon British economic interests through trade, typically the trade in
(08:01):
deer hides. That market at this point was becoming oversaturated
and white tailed deer were being overhunted, and this was
affecting both the Cherokee economy and its food supply. Part
of this was due to an increasing number of white
colonists who were settling in Long Canes, which was a
stretch of territory that was supposed to belong to the
Cherokee the Cherokee following a seventeen thirty treaty. There were
(08:24):
also widespread reports of fraud by by British traders when
the Cherokee came to sell these deer hides, like reports
of say twelve pounds of hide being reported as only
ten pounds. Through the seventeen forties and seventeen fifties, there
were numerous negotiations and treaties between the Cherokee towns and
(08:45):
the British colonies, especially South Carolina, outlining land use, trading relationships,
and sovereignty. They also involved a number of requests from
several directions to build forts in Cherokee territory. One was
Fort Prince George under the command of Lachlan Macintosh in
the Lower Territory. The other was Fort Loudon in Upper
(09:06):
Cherokee Territory. All these things that we've just talked about
really just scratched the surface. It's a glimpse into this
huge confluence of pressures and disputes that were already in
the works when the war broke out. Conflicts between colonists
and Native Americans, and we're talking about American history are
often depicted as just being about land, but this was
(09:26):
way more complicated than that. We will talk about the
war that resulted after a by word from a sponsor.
So in the spring and summer of seventeen fifty seven,
diplomatic relations between Britain and the Cherokee towns were really
(09:48):
starting to crumble in Cherokee territory. Colonists from Britain had
been encroaching further and further into Long Canes, which, as
we said before, was supposed to be Cherokee territory. Also,
there wasn't a centralized system among the colonies to negotiate
treaties between Britain and the Native people's It was all
(10:08):
basically on a colony by colony basis. In the process
of trying to secure a trading relationship with Virginia, the
Cherokee had sent about two hundred and fifty fighters as
part of a larger larger native force to help protect
the Virginia frontier from French expansion. This fighting force had
arrived in Virginia to find themselves without the presence of
(10:28):
provisions and weapons that they had been promised, and without
a guide. This lack of provisions was a twofold problem. Obviously,
it meant that the Cherokee force did not have the
supplies that they needed to do what they were there for.
But in addition to that, the Cherokee's cultural view was
that these presents were a symbolic seal on their agreement
(10:49):
with Britain to provide aid to Virginia. So by failing
to deliver, Britain had broken its end of the bargain,
and not for the first time. This prompted the Cherokee.
He forced to take what they needed from plantations that
they passed, and, according to at least one account, to
kill a member of another tribe who objected to what
they were doing. Then that November, four Lower Towns Cherokee
(11:13):
hunters were killed by white colonists from long canes. These
killings were incredibly gruesome. The bodies had been scalped, and
the perpetrators also stole and sold the skins from their
victims dear. Following the terms of their seventeen thirty treaty
with Britain, the Cherokee petition South Carolina Governor William Henry
(11:35):
Littleton for justice. The governor's response was, from the Cherokee
point of view, not satisfactory at all. He said that
if the guilty party were found, they would of course
be punished, but that he couldn't condone an innocent person
being punished for something that he wasn't actually personally involved with.
The Cherokee worldview was that Britain was collectively responsible for
(11:59):
the killing, and so Britain needed to be brought to justice,
but Britain's point of view was that such a justice
was only possible if the individual guilty parties were actually found.
The governor also avoided the issue of colonial encroachment into
Long Kanes entirely. This idea of collective responsibility and justice
(12:19):
was a huge factor in the Cherokees perspective on the war.
The following March, five Virginia colonists were killed in what
may have been an act of revenge, although there's some
documentation to suggest that it was actually sparked by the
theft of horses. This apparent act of retribution, though, set
off a series of violent incidents between the Cherokee fighting
(12:43):
force and Virginia colonists, with approximately twenty Cherokee being killed
in Virginia. This stoked massive anti British sentiment in the
Cherokee Nation, and on September seventeenth, seventeen fifty eight, the
Lower Town's Cherokee informed Lachland Macintosh at Prince George that
they were sending a war party to Virginia for revenge.
(13:04):
McIntosh sent word to Governor Littleton and convinced the Cherokee
to wait for his answer. Littleton's response arrived in October,
and in it he did promise restitution for the Cherokee
who had been killed in the form of gifts, but
he fell back once again to the British worldview of
needing to find the individual culprit before administering justice. He
(13:27):
also admonished the Cherokee nation for not taking its complaints
to Francis Fauqier, who was the Lieutenant Governor of Virginia,
and the Governor. Littleton stressed that the Cherokee Nation had
no right to declare war on the entire colony. Of
Virginia for the actions of a few people. Even though
it wasn't a particularly satisfactory answer from the Cherokee perspective,
(13:50):
this letter, combined with the efforts of Cherokee leaders to
maintain calm, did lead to an uneasy piece, which lasted
until the following February of seventeen fifty nine. The winter
had been quite difficult, and most of the Cherokee towns
were low on supplies and poorly armed. Word reached the
Cherokee nation that Atta Kula Coula, a leader who had
(14:12):
a reputation for negotiation and peace building, had been treated
poorly by the British while he was in Virginia. He
and his party were still away, and while they were gone,
further rumors began to spread that Britain was going to
attack the now poorly defended Cherokee nation directly. However, when
Atta Kula Coola returned home in March, he smoothed things over.
(14:33):
He downplayed what had been admittedly not very great treatment
in Virginia, and after a series of councils that lasted
into April, it seemed like the Cherokee and the British
would continue to be at peace. If kind of uneasily.
But then, on April twenty six of seventeen fifty nine,
(14:54):
a renegade Cherokee fighting force attacked a series of settlements
in North Carolina along Yadkin and Cataba Rivers, killing and
scalping as many as twenty colonists, including children. The majority
of headman in the Cherokee Nation did not condone this
series of raids and denounced them outright. At a Kulakula,
(15:14):
who was in the middle of trying to negotiate a
greater piece with Virginia, suspected that these raids were a
deliberate attempt to undermine his efforts. This act of violence
against North Carolina, though, led Governor at Littleton of South
Carolina to implement a trade embargo against the Cherokee Nation,
meaning that the Cherokee could no longer buy the ammunition
(15:35):
that they needed to hunt deer or sell the hides
of the deer back to South Carolina. As we said earlier,
South Carolina was their biggest trading partner at this point,
and this trade had become a big staple of the
Cherokee economy, and consequently, deer who were being hunted for
their hides to sell had become a major food source,
(15:56):
so this embargo was disastrous. A delegation of peacemakers went
to Littleton in Charlestown which would later be Charleston to
try to work out in agreement. In October of seventeen
fifty nine. Littleton refused to accept the deer hides the
delegation had brought as a gift, and then took the
delegation hostage, saying he would only release them in exchange
(16:19):
for the Cherokee who had committed the April raids in
North Carolina. This really flew in the face of diplomatic
protocols uh and this delegation under armed guard was being
brought back to Fort Prince George when they encountered a
second piece delegation that was also in route to Charlestown
representing different Cherokee towns. Littleton and his men captured most
(16:44):
of this second delegation as well, although four of the
of the Cherokee headman escaped. Having seen these other delegates
from the first delegation under armed guard, they returned to
Cherokee's territory with the report that the headsman from multiple
Cherokee towns were being treated as slaves. Uh there was,
(17:05):
prior to contact with the Europeans not a lot of
different difference between the terms prisoner and slave in most
Cherokee dialects, so this basically led to a huge rumor
that Britain was going to come and enslave all of
the Cherokee. And not long after Littleton finally arrived in
Fort Prince George in December, a smallpox epidemic weakened his
(17:27):
already exhausted force. The epidemic then spread through the diplomats
and the Cherokee hostages in the fort. At first, at
A Kulakula kept trying to negotiate a peace, and he
was able to free part of the delegation in exchange
for the promise that four of the people involved in
that North Carolina attack would surrender themselves. In the end,
(17:50):
though those four refused to go, and at A Kula
Coula had to go into hiding with his family. The
freed hostages also became bitterly resentful of Written for having
imprisoned them in the first place. Following the deaths of
several Cherokee hostages due to smallpox in the fort, this
ongoing series of incidents blossomed into an all out war.
(18:14):
Beginning in January and February of seventeen sixty, the Cherokee
laid siege to Fort Prince George and Fort Loudon and
massacred colonists in the surrounding frontier settlements. The worst of
these massacres was on February first, seventeen sixty, when a
band of Cherokee fighters attacked a caravan of Scott's Irish
colonists who were retreating from their settlement in Long Canes.
(18:37):
These colonists are trying to get back to Fort More
near Augusta, Georgia. About a hundred Cherokee attacked roughly a
hundred and fifty fleeing colonists, killing twenty three of them,
including John C. Calhoun's grandmother Catherine. On February sixteenth, a
party of Cherokee headman went to Fort Prince George to
parlay with Lieutenant Richard quite Moore, who was then in
(19:00):
manned and once lured out of the fort, quite Moore
was ambushed. Several in his party were injured, and quite
Moore ended up dying of his wounds. British soldiers in
the fort went to make sure this wasn't an escape attempt,
One was killed and another wounded by the prisoners. In response,
the British force opened fire and killed fourteen Cherokee leaders
(19:21):
who had been imprisoned there. Following this massacre of Cherokee
diplomats at Fort Prince George, Cherokee raids against the colonists
in and around the Appalachian Mountains increased. Most of the
Cherokee towns that had been against war with Britain wound
up joining the battle as well. Because much of Britain's
fighting force in North America was at this point devoted
(19:44):
to fighting in the French and Indian Wars more northern theater,
Britain's initial attempts to win the war were small and unsuccessful.
Reinforcements were called in from North Carolina and with a
force from Fort Dobbs and but Fabra, attempting to resist
the Cherokee and rescue colonists. Colonel Archibald Montgomery, sent in
from New York, destroyed several Cherokee villages in the lower
(20:07):
Towns and attempted to do the same in the Middletowns,
but on June he was defeated by a Cherokee ambush.
Believing he had at that point done is ordered Montgomery
and his force withdrew. He was basically like, I think
I've done what they asked me to do, so I'm
gonna leave now. Another relief force commanded by Colonel William Bird,
(20:29):
attempted to relieve the besieged Fort Loudon and July, but
also failed. The fort eventually surrendered to the Cherokee force
besieging it, and many of the British force stationed there
wound up being massacred in return for the Cherokee delegates
who had been previously massacred earlier at Fort Prince George.
Lieutenant Colonel James Grant arrived in Charlestown, South Carolina, which
(20:53):
again is now Charleston in January of seventeen sixty one.
He and a fighting force of nearly three thousand, the
largest that Britain had sent in response to the fighting
in Cherokee Territory, began to systematically move through the territory.
Grant's force destroyed at least fifteen Cherokee towns, mostly among
the middle and outtowns, and destroyed nearly one thousand, five
(21:17):
hundred acres of corn. At this point after three years
of fighting, a coalition of eight headman from the Overhill
towns sued for peace. They brought beads from each of
the remaining Cherokee towns as a show that they did
have the right to speak for the whole nation. A
peace treaty between the Cherokee Nation and Virginia was signed
(21:37):
on July twentieth, seventeen sixty one, and one with South
Carolina was signed on December eighteenth of seventeen sixty one.
Uh And we will talk about the aftermath of all
this after another brief word from a sponsor. So, the
(22:00):
population of the Cherokee Nation was obviously dramatically affected by
the Anglo Cherokee War, both through losses in battle and
through the widespread destruction of towns and crops. About a
third of the Cherokee population died during the war and
in its immediate aftermath, and over the next fifteen years
basically right up until the start of the Revolutionary War,
(22:22):
the nation gradually seated nearly fifty thousand square miles of
land to Britain. This war also helped solidify the Cherokee
Nation into a more centralized leadership structure. There in the
destruction of so many towns in the Cherokee territory, a
lot of Cherokee basically became refugees, and so communities that
had previously been separated by geography started living together. And
(22:47):
the subsequent years, the idea of meeting a principal chief
who could officially speak for the whole nation started to
take hold, and the Cherokee Nation as an actual official,
formal entity was formed in seventeen ninety four. The war
affected the Anglo colonists as well. The fighting led to evacuations,
(23:07):
often to British forts that then became overcrowded, which led
to disease. Enslaved Africans also took the opportunity to escape
during this chaos, and the number of escapes during this
time roughly doubled. As we noted at the top of
the show, the Anglo Cherokee War was connected to the
French and Indian War, and when that greater war ended
(23:29):
in seventeen sixty three, Britain wound up with control of
Canada and Florida, as well as previously held French territory
east of the Mississippi River. This meant that the Cherokee
Nation was no longer in this position of being surrounded
by three different colonial governments, but instead, the acquisition of
this land started paving the way for Britain's later expansion
(23:52):
into and through Cherokee territory. This expansion would eventually culminate
in the Indian Removal Act of eighteen thirty, after which
the Cherokee and other tribes and nations in the area,
including the Muskogee Creek, the Seminole, the Choctaw, and the Chickasaw,
were all forcibly removed to Oklahoma. There were also a
lot of people who resisted the Removal Act, and that
(24:14):
is why, for example, there is an Eastern band of
the Cherokee that's headquartered in North Carolina, and then two
other federally recognized Cherokee tribes that are headquartered in Oklahoma.
And while you were researching, uh, I think you found
a quote that kind of artfully sums up all of this. Yeah,
(24:34):
it's in the words of James Adair, who published a
book on North America's Native American populations in seventeen seventy five,
and he said, quote, we forced the Cherokee to become
our bitter enemies by a long train of wrong measures,
that's the Anglo Cherokee War. It's this is one of
those episodes that as I got into it just kept
(24:56):
turning out to be a more and more complicated tangle
of more and more factors. Yeah, there's so much back
and forth to it. Yeah, like it's such an escalation
that happens in these tiny steps that are sort of
blooming into larger and larger scenarios that. Yeah. Well, and
then later on a number of the British officials who
(25:19):
had been involved in it were like that was the
wrong move, Like not that that helped at all, right,
Like the hindsight, they were like that we could have
prevented that if we had done these things differently. So, yeah,
I wanted to do some more Native American history and
(25:39):
I wanted to do some Cherokee history that was not
the removal, because I feel like that's the part that
a lot of people learned, especially if you're from North
Carolina or Oklahoma. Um. But yeah, even so, that's still
just a huge complicated tangle. I'm hoping you have peppy
listener mail and do well, it's at least much funnier
than this. So this is one of many notes that
we have gotten along these same lines. I just picked
(26:01):
one of them. This one's from Will because we had
asked in our episode on Butter versus Margarine if somebody
from UH, from Wisconsin could just confirm the thing that
we had trouble confirming, which is whether it's still illegal
to reserve margarine in a restaurant. UH. And this is
one of those things where, after lots of people sent
me the link, when I tried googling the same thing,
(26:23):
I was like, there it is. Why was this not
there when I tried before we recorded? So Will says,
I just want to confirm that, yes, Wisconsin still has
laws on the books regarding oleo margarine, with penalties that
include fines an imprisonment up to a year. May I
present to you Wisconsin State Statute ninety seven point one
eight so, he says, as a native Scannie, I'm constantly
(26:44):
reminded about ninety seven point one eight four. When I
travel outside the state and stop for breakfast, I look
for butter for my toast, and all I can find
on the table is margarine. WHEREZ in Wisconsin pro statute,
you would never find any margarine on a table in
a restaurant. I also vividly recall the early nineteen eighties
sitting around my grandmother's kitchen table and hearing all the
(27:04):
family stories of Olio smuggling trips to those gas stations
in Illinois. As a kid, I thought my leg was
being pulled alcohol running during prohibition. Now that makes sense,
but running margarine. And then he sends Will uh so, yes,
thank you too, Will and all the other folks who
sent me the actual name of the statute. I, like
I said, I'm not sure why I had so much
(27:26):
trouble finding it while I was researching the thing. It's
possible because some time has passed that I did find it,
and I wasn't sure if that law was still in
effect or not, because sometimes state governments like haven't updated
the website yet to include the things that have been
recently removed. So yeah, this this act basically spells out
(27:47):
number one, exactly what margarine is, including what color it
is on the love of bon tentometer that we've talked
about before. H And then it sets all of these
things about how if you want to sell margarine reads Alee,
it has to be packaged, it has to be a pound,
there has to have the words oleo margarine or margarine
on it with a specific type, and like there has
(28:08):
to be enough contrast with the background. You can't like
use really pale lettering to have the word margarine on there. Um,
And it gets into this whole bit about how in
public eating places it has to be required by customers. Um.
You also can't serve it to students, patients or inmates
of state institutions as as a substitute for butter and like,
(28:31):
unless there is a specific reason, like ordered by a position. Um.
And then it gets into the fines and possible imprisonment.
So thank you will and all the other folks who
sent us the information that yes, this law is still
actually in effect. If you'd like to write to us
about this or any other podcast, where History podcasts at
(28:52):
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for this episode and all the other episodes Holly and
(29:13):
I have worked on together, plus an archive of every
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(29:35):
stuff works dot
Welcome to Steph you missed in history class from dot com. Hello,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy B. Wilson and
I'm Molly Frying. Oh, the Seventh the Seven Years War
has come up before on the podcast, right. It is
(00:23):
essentially a world war that spanned from seventeen fifty six
to seventeen sixty three, and it was part of a
very very long arc of conflict between Britain and France.
That arc was so long. But I just want to
mention again that, like one time you and I joked
that there should be a website that was, like was
England at War with France? Dot com? You could just
(00:45):
put in a year and the website would tell you
in two different listeners obligingly made that website for us.
We will link to them in the show notes. So,
the North American theater of the Seven Years War is
known as the French and Indian War, and it was
initially sparked over the question of who should control the
Ohio River Valley, whether that was Britain or France. France
formed alliances with a number of Native American peoples and nations,
(01:09):
Thus the name the French and Indian War it's relatively
northern in terms of like what gets the most screen
time when people are talking about the French and Indian War,
Really the northern part of Britain and France's colonies in
North America are where like most of the battles took place.
Most of the maps really focused on that part, ranging
(01:32):
from northern Virginia and Maryland up through no Nova Scotia
and Quebec and what's now Canada. But that is not
the only place that this conflict was going on, and
today we are going to talk about a more southern
part of it, which was the Anglo Cherokee War, which
went from seventeen fifty nine to seventeen sixty one. Prior
(01:52):
to Europeans arrival in North America, the Cherokee lived in
much of what would later become the Southeastern United States
that in includes North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama.
And when European colonists began settling in these areas, the
Cherokee and the many other Native American tribes and nations
who were living in this part of the world were
(02:14):
forced into progressively smaller territory. Introduced diseases including a smallpox
outbreak in six reduced their population as well. By the
first half of the eighteenth century, the Cherokee Nation was
not really established as one formal, monolithic entity. It comprised
(02:34):
about sixty towns in and around the southern Appalachian Mountains.
Most of these settlements were situated in river valleys to
take advantage of the rich soil there, while also having
access to places to hunt animals like deer. As the
Cherokee developed closer economic ties to the British colonies, deer
hunting and the selling of deer hides became an increasingly
(02:56):
important part of their way of life. A why of
this area can be hard to get to, so for
a time these towns had less and less frequent contact
with European colonists than areas that were more readily accessible.
The Appalachian Mountains formed a natural barrier that offered the
Cherokee a degree of protection from both introduced diseases and
(03:18):
the colonists themselves. Basically, for a while, epidemics tended to
strike Cherokee communities a little bit later than they did
other Native American peoples, and its population had more time
to recover between them. Consequently, By the turn of the
eighteenth century, the Cherokee people's population was roughly twenty thousand,
and this included a fighting force of about six thousand.
(03:41):
By comparison, in seventeen twenty, Navy neighboring South Carolina had
a total population of approximately nine thousand white colonists and
twelve thousand enslaved Africans, while North Carolina had roughly ten
thousand white colonists and about three thousand enslaved Africans. You'll
see some variations in these numbers if you go to
(04:02):
research what the population was in the southern colonies. There
just was not a lot of official counting in this
part of the continent until the seventeen nineties census, which
was much later. Yeah, when everybody is estimating their numbers
are never quite going to match up. Yeah. I kept
trying to find something more precise, and I got lots
(04:22):
of wildly different estimates. Yeah, but things really started to
shift for the Cherokee people in the seventeen thirties and
seventeen forties. In seventeen thirty eight, a massive smallpox epidemic
cut its population approximately in half. The total Cherokee fighting
force was still larger than those of its most immediate
native neighbors, but the colonial populations had continued to grow
(04:44):
as well. Soon the white populations of both North Carolina
and South Carolina each outnumbered the population of the Cherokee nation.
Plus this same mountain region that had offered the Cherokee
some protection from it colonial neighbors had sort of turned
into this buffer between British territory and French territory, with
(05:06):
the Cherokee community itself forming part of that buffer. It
was physically positioned between the colonial influences of two massive empires,
with each of them trying to expand. This mountainous geography
also made it hard for the nation to act as
a unified front when dealing with increasing pressure from its
British and French neighbors. Mountains and valleys roughly separated the
(05:30):
nation's settlements into groups known as towns, the overhill towns,
the valley towns, out towns, middletowns, and lower towns. The
words and descriptions of these regions varied among Cherokee dialects,
and consequently there has been some level of debate about
exactly how to classify them. At least three different dialects
(05:52):
of the Cherokee language had developed among these towns, and
it wasn't just the lay of the land that created
divisions among the Cherokee. The Cherokee themselves were not particularly
centralized or monolithic at this point. For the most part,
each town had its own council, with the council house
large enough for the whole town to assemble. But even
(06:12):
in one single town where everyone spoke the same Cherokee dialect,
further divisions often appeared among the Cherokee's seven matrilineal clans.
Clan loyalty was often a lot more important than town loyalty,
so if the council made a decision that the clan
didn't agree with, the clans members typically stuck together. Although
(06:33):
the colonial governments in North America often recognized one particular
Cherokee leader as being the chief over the entire nation,
there wasn't really a unified nation yet, and this person
often wasn't someone who was universally recognized as a leader
among all of the towns. This contributed to even more divisions,
as the British held negotiations with someone who didn't actually
(06:56):
speak for the Cherokee as a whole. By the mid
seventeen forties, this relatively decentralized Cherokee Nation was really caught
in the middle of a huge storm of pressures. The
Cherokee lower towns where at war with the Muskogee Creek
Nation for about forty years, ending in seventeen fifty five.
(07:17):
The proximity of Spanish territory to the newly chartered Colony
of Georgia had raised fears among the British that the
Spanish would start a slave up uprising with the ultimate
goal of taking over Georgia and South Carolina. In its aftermath,
France and Britain became more overtly hostile toward one another,
as France began trying to establish settlements in the Ohio
(07:39):
Valley and generally doing a much better job of forming
alliances with Native nations than Britain was doing. The Cherokee
had for the most part sided with the British, but
the British worried that they would be swayed to the
French side, and the Cherokee Nation had become increasingly dependent
upon British economic interests through trade, typically the trade in
(08:01):
deer hides. That market at this point was becoming oversaturated
and white tailed deer were being overhunted, and this was
affecting both the Cherokee economy and its food supply. Part
of this was due to an increasing number of white
colonists who were settling in Long Canes, which was a
stretch of territory that was supposed to belong to the
Cherokee the Cherokee following a seventeen thirty treaty. There were
(08:24):
also widespread reports of fraud by by British traders when
the Cherokee came to sell these deer hides, like reports
of say twelve pounds of hide being reported as only
ten pounds. Through the seventeen forties and seventeen fifties, there
were numerous negotiations and treaties between the Cherokee towns and
(08:45):
the British colonies, especially South Carolina, outlining land use, trading relationships,
and sovereignty. They also involved a number of requests from
several directions to build forts in Cherokee territory. One was
Fort Prince George under the command of Lachlan Macintosh in
the Lower Territory. The other was Fort Loudon in Upper
(09:06):
Cherokee Territory. All these things that we've just talked about
really just scratched the surface. It's a glimpse into this
huge confluence of pressures and disputes that were already in
the works when the war broke out. Conflicts between colonists
and Native Americans, and we're talking about American history are
often depicted as just being about land, but this was
(09:26):
way more complicated than that. We will talk about the
war that resulted after a by word from a sponsor.
So in the spring and summer of seventeen fifty seven,
diplomatic relations between Britain and the Cherokee towns were really
(09:48):
starting to crumble in Cherokee territory. Colonists from Britain had
been encroaching further and further into Long Canes, which, as
we said before, was supposed to be Cherokee territory. Also,
there wasn't a centralized system among the colonies to negotiate
treaties between Britain and the Native people's It was all
(10:08):
basically on a colony by colony basis. In the process
of trying to secure a trading relationship with Virginia, the
Cherokee had sent about two hundred and fifty fighters as
part of a larger larger native force to help protect
the Virginia frontier from French expansion. This fighting force had
arrived in Virginia to find themselves without the presence of
(10:28):
provisions and weapons that they had been promised, and without
a guide. This lack of provisions was a twofold problem. Obviously,
it meant that the Cherokee force did not have the
supplies that they needed to do what they were there for.
But in addition to that, the Cherokee's cultural view was
that these presents were a symbolic seal on their agreement
(10:49):
with Britain to provide aid to Virginia. So by failing
to deliver, Britain had broken its end of the bargain,
and not for the first time. This prompted the Cherokee.
He forced to take what they needed from plantations that
they passed, and, according to at least one account, to
kill a member of another tribe who objected to what
they were doing. Then that November, four Lower Towns Cherokee
(11:13):
hunters were killed by white colonists from long canes. These
killings were incredibly gruesome. The bodies had been scalped, and
the perpetrators also stole and sold the skins from their
victims dear. Following the terms of their seventeen thirty treaty
with Britain, the Cherokee petition South Carolina Governor William Henry
(11:35):
Littleton for justice. The governor's response was, from the Cherokee
point of view, not satisfactory at all. He said that
if the guilty party were found, they would of course
be punished, but that he couldn't condone an innocent person
being punished for something that he wasn't actually personally involved with.
The Cherokee worldview was that Britain was collectively responsible for
(11:59):
the killing, and so Britain needed to be brought to justice,
but Britain's point of view was that such a justice
was only possible if the individual guilty parties were actually found.
The governor also avoided the issue of colonial encroachment into
Long Kanes entirely. This idea of collective responsibility and justice
(12:19):
was a huge factor in the Cherokees perspective on the war.
The following March, five Virginia colonists were killed in what
may have been an act of revenge, although there's some
documentation to suggest that it was actually sparked by the
theft of horses. This apparent act of retribution, though, set
off a series of violent incidents between the Cherokee fighting
(12:43):
force and Virginia colonists, with approximately twenty Cherokee being killed
in Virginia. This stoked massive anti British sentiment in the
Cherokee Nation, and on September seventeenth, seventeen fifty eight, the
Lower Town's Cherokee informed Lachland Macintosh at Prince George that
they were sending a war party to Virginia for revenge.
(13:04):
McIntosh sent word to Governor Littleton and convinced the Cherokee
to wait for his answer. Littleton's response arrived in October,
and in it he did promise restitution for the Cherokee
who had been killed in the form of gifts, but
he fell back once again to the British worldview of
needing to find the individual culprit before administering justice. He
(13:27):
also admonished the Cherokee nation for not taking its complaints
to Francis Fauqier, who was the Lieutenant Governor of Virginia,
and the Governor. Littleton stressed that the Cherokee Nation had
no right to declare war on the entire colony. Of
Virginia for the actions of a few people. Even though
it wasn't a particularly satisfactory answer from the Cherokee perspective,
(13:50):
this letter, combined with the efforts of Cherokee leaders to
maintain calm, did lead to an uneasy piece, which lasted
until the following February of seventeen fifty nine. The winter
had been quite difficult, and most of the Cherokee towns
were low on supplies and poorly armed. Word reached the
Cherokee nation that Atta Kula Coula, a leader who had
(14:12):
a reputation for negotiation and peace building, had been treated
poorly by the British while he was in Virginia. He
and his party were still away, and while they were gone,
further rumors began to spread that Britain was going to
attack the now poorly defended Cherokee nation directly. However, when
Atta Kula Coola returned home in March, he smoothed things over.
(14:33):
He downplayed what had been admittedly not very great treatment
in Virginia, and after a series of councils that lasted
into April, it seemed like the Cherokee and the British
would continue to be at peace. If kind of uneasily.
But then, on April twenty six of seventeen fifty nine,
(14:54):
a renegade Cherokee fighting force attacked a series of settlements
in North Carolina along Yadkin and Cataba Rivers, killing and
scalping as many as twenty colonists, including children. The majority
of headman in the Cherokee Nation did not condone this
series of raids and denounced them outright. At a Kulakula,
(15:14):
who was in the middle of trying to negotiate a
greater piece with Virginia, suspected that these raids were a
deliberate attempt to undermine his efforts. This act of violence
against North Carolina, though, led Governor at Littleton of South
Carolina to implement a trade embargo against the Cherokee Nation,
meaning that the Cherokee could no longer buy the ammunition
(15:35):
that they needed to hunt deer or sell the hides
of the deer back to South Carolina. As we said earlier,
South Carolina was their biggest trading partner at this point,
and this trade had become a big staple of the
Cherokee economy, and consequently, deer who were being hunted for
their hides to sell had become a major food source,
(15:56):
so this embargo was disastrous. A delegation of peacemakers went
to Littleton in Charlestown which would later be Charleston to
try to work out in agreement. In October of seventeen
fifty nine. Littleton refused to accept the deer hides the
delegation had brought as a gift, and then took the
delegation hostage, saying he would only release them in exchange
(16:19):
for the Cherokee who had committed the April raids in
North Carolina. This really flew in the face of diplomatic
protocols uh and this delegation under armed guard was being
brought back to Fort Prince George when they encountered a
second piece delegation that was also in route to Charlestown
representing different Cherokee towns. Littleton and his men captured most
(16:44):
of this second delegation as well, although four of the
of the Cherokee headman escaped. Having seen these other delegates
from the first delegation under armed guard, they returned to
Cherokee's territory with the report that the headsman from multiple
Cherokee towns were being treated as slaves. Uh there was,
(17:05):
prior to contact with the Europeans not a lot of
different difference between the terms prisoner and slave in most
Cherokee dialects, so this basically led to a huge rumor
that Britain was going to come and enslave all of
the Cherokee. And not long after Littleton finally arrived in
Fort Prince George in December, a smallpox epidemic weakened his
(17:27):
already exhausted force. The epidemic then spread through the diplomats
and the Cherokee hostages in the fort. At first, at
A Kulakula kept trying to negotiate a peace, and he
was able to free part of the delegation in exchange
for the promise that four of the people involved in
that North Carolina attack would surrender themselves. In the end,
(17:50):
though those four refused to go, and at A Kula
Coula had to go into hiding with his family. The
freed hostages also became bitterly resentful of Written for having
imprisoned them in the first place. Following the deaths of
several Cherokee hostages due to smallpox in the fort, this
ongoing series of incidents blossomed into an all out war.
(18:14):
Beginning in January and February of seventeen sixty, the Cherokee
laid siege to Fort Prince George and Fort Loudon and
massacred colonists in the surrounding frontier settlements. The worst of
these massacres was on February first, seventeen sixty, when a
band of Cherokee fighters attacked a caravan of Scott's Irish
colonists who were retreating from their settlement in Long Canes.
(18:37):
These colonists are trying to get back to Fort More
near Augusta, Georgia. About a hundred Cherokee attacked roughly a
hundred and fifty fleeing colonists, killing twenty three of them,
including John C. Calhoun's grandmother Catherine. On February sixteenth, a
party of Cherokee headman went to Fort Prince George to
parlay with Lieutenant Richard quite Moore, who was then in
(19:00):
manned and once lured out of the fort, quite Moore
was ambushed. Several in his party were injured, and quite
Moore ended up dying of his wounds. British soldiers in
the fort went to make sure this wasn't an escape attempt,
One was killed and another wounded by the prisoners. In response,
the British force opened fire and killed fourteen Cherokee leaders
(19:21):
who had been imprisoned there. Following this massacre of Cherokee
diplomats at Fort Prince George, Cherokee raids against the colonists
in and around the Appalachian Mountains increased. Most of the
Cherokee towns that had been against war with Britain wound
up joining the battle as well. Because much of Britain's
fighting force in North America was at this point devoted
(19:44):
to fighting in the French and Indian Wars more northern theater,
Britain's initial attempts to win the war were small and unsuccessful.
Reinforcements were called in from North Carolina and with a
force from Fort Dobbs and but Fabra, attempting to resist
the Cherokee and rescue colonists. Colonel Archibald Montgomery, sent in
from New York, destroyed several Cherokee villages in the lower
(20:07):
Towns and attempted to do the same in the Middletowns,
but on June he was defeated by a Cherokee ambush.
Believing he had at that point done is ordered Montgomery
and his force withdrew. He was basically like, I think
I've done what they asked me to do, so I'm
gonna leave now. Another relief force commanded by Colonel William Bird,
(20:29):
attempted to relieve the besieged Fort Loudon and July, but
also failed. The fort eventually surrendered to the Cherokee force
besieging it, and many of the British force stationed there
wound up being massacred in return for the Cherokee delegates
who had been previously massacred earlier at Fort Prince George.
Lieutenant Colonel James Grant arrived in Charlestown, South Carolina, which
(20:53):
again is now Charleston in January of seventeen sixty one.
He and a fighting force of nearly three thousand, the
largest that Britain had sent in response to the fighting
in Cherokee Territory, began to systematically move through the territory.
Grant's force destroyed at least fifteen Cherokee towns, mostly among
the middle and outtowns, and destroyed nearly one thousand, five
(21:17):
hundred acres of corn. At this point after three years
of fighting, a coalition of eight headman from the Overhill
towns sued for peace. They brought beads from each of
the remaining Cherokee towns as a show that they did
have the right to speak for the whole nation. A
peace treaty between the Cherokee Nation and Virginia was signed
(21:37):
on July twentieth, seventeen sixty one, and one with South
Carolina was signed on December eighteenth of seventeen sixty one.
Uh And we will talk about the aftermath of all
this after another brief word from a sponsor. So, the
(22:00):
population of the Cherokee Nation was obviously dramatically affected by
the Anglo Cherokee War, both through losses in battle and
through the widespread destruction of towns and crops. About a
third of the Cherokee population died during the war and
in its immediate aftermath, and over the next fifteen years
basically right up until the start of the Revolutionary War,
(22:22):
the nation gradually seated nearly fifty thousand square miles of
land to Britain. This war also helped solidify the Cherokee
Nation into a more centralized leadership structure. There in the
destruction of so many towns in the Cherokee territory, a
lot of Cherokee basically became refugees, and so communities that
had previously been separated by geography started living together. And
(22:47):
the subsequent years, the idea of meeting a principal chief
who could officially speak for the whole nation started to
take hold, and the Cherokee Nation as an actual official,
formal entity was formed in seventeen ninety four. The war
affected the Anglo colonists as well. The fighting led to evacuations,
(23:07):
often to British forts that then became overcrowded, which led
to disease. Enslaved Africans also took the opportunity to escape
during this chaos, and the number of escapes during this
time roughly doubled. As we noted at the top of
the show, the Anglo Cherokee War was connected to the
French and Indian War, and when that greater war ended
(23:29):
in seventeen sixty three, Britain wound up with control of
Canada and Florida, as well as previously held French territory
east of the Mississippi River. This meant that the Cherokee
Nation was no longer in this position of being surrounded
by three different colonial governments, but instead, the acquisition of
this land started paving the way for Britain's later expansion
(23:52):
into and through Cherokee territory. This expansion would eventually culminate
in the Indian Removal Act of eighteen thirty, after which
the Cherokee and other tribes and nations in the area,
including the Muskogee Creek, the Seminole, the Choctaw, and the Chickasaw,
were all forcibly removed to Oklahoma. There were also a
lot of people who resisted the Removal Act, and that
(24:14):
is why, for example, there is an Eastern band of
the Cherokee that's headquartered in North Carolina, and then two
other federally recognized Cherokee tribes that are headquartered in Oklahoma.
And while you were researching, uh, I think you found
a quote that kind of artfully sums up all of this. Yeah,
(24:34):
it's in the words of James Adair, who published a
book on North America's Native American populations in seventeen seventy five,
and he said, quote, we forced the Cherokee to become
our bitter enemies by a long train of wrong measures,
that's the Anglo Cherokee War. It's this is one of
those episodes that as I got into it just kept
(24:56):
turning out to be a more and more complicated tangle
of more and more factors. Yeah, there's so much back
and forth to it. Yeah, like it's such an escalation
that happens in these tiny steps that are sort of
blooming into larger and larger scenarios that. Yeah. Well, and
then later on a number of the British officials who
(25:19):
had been involved in it were like that was the
wrong move, Like not that that helped at all, right,
Like the hindsight, they were like that we could have
prevented that if we had done these things differently. So, yeah,
I wanted to do some more Native American history and
(25:39):
I wanted to do some Cherokee history that was not
the removal, because I feel like that's the part that
a lot of people learned, especially if you're from North
Carolina or Oklahoma. Um. But yeah, even so, that's still
just a huge complicated tangle. I'm hoping you have peppy
listener mail and do well, it's at least much funnier
than this. So this is one of many notes that
we have gotten along these same lines. I just picked
(26:01):
one of them. This one's from Will because we had
asked in our episode on Butter versus Margarine if somebody
from UH, from Wisconsin could just confirm the thing that
we had trouble confirming, which is whether it's still illegal
to reserve margarine in a restaurant. UH. And this is
one of those things where, after lots of people sent
me the link, when I tried googling the same thing,
(26:23):
I was like, there it is. Why was this not
there when I tried before we recorded? So Will says,
I just want to confirm that, yes, Wisconsin still has
laws on the books regarding oleo margarine, with penalties that
include fines an imprisonment up to a year. May I
present to you Wisconsin State Statute ninety seven point one
eight so, he says, as a native Scannie, I'm constantly
(26:44):
reminded about ninety seven point one eight four. When I
travel outside the state and stop for breakfast, I look
for butter for my toast, and all I can find
on the table is margarine. WHEREZ in Wisconsin pro statute,
you would never find any margarine on a table in
a restaurant. I also vividly recall the early nineteen eighties
sitting around my grandmother's kitchen table and hearing all the
(27:04):
family stories of Olio smuggling trips to those gas stations
in Illinois. As a kid, I thought my leg was
being pulled alcohol running during prohibition. Now that makes sense,
but running margarine. And then he sends Will uh so, yes,
thank you too, Will and all the other folks who
sent me the actual name of the statute. I, like
I said, I'm not sure why I had so much
(27:26):
trouble finding it while I was researching the thing. It's
possible because some time has passed that I did find it,
and I wasn't sure if that law was still in
effect or not, because sometimes state governments like haven't updated
the website yet to include the things that have been
recently removed. So yeah, this this act basically spells out
(27:47):
number one, exactly what margarine is, including what color it
is on the love of bon tentometer that we've talked
about before. H And then it sets all of these
things about how if you want to sell margarine reads Alee,
it has to be packaged, it has to be a pound,
there has to have the words oleo margarine or margarine
on it with a specific type, and like there has
(28:08):
to be enough contrast with the background. You can't like
use really pale lettering to have the word margarine on there. Um,
And it gets into this whole bit about how in
public eating places it has to be required by customers. Um.
You also can't serve it to students, patients or inmates
of state institutions as as a substitute for butter and like,
(28:31):
unless there is a specific reason, like ordered by a position. Um.
And then it gets into the fines and possible imprisonment.
So thank you will and all the other folks who
sent us the information that yes, this law is still
actually in effect. If you'd like to write to us
about this or any other podcast, where History podcasts at
(28:52):
how stuff Works dot com. We're also on Facebook at
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at miss in History. Are tumbler is miss in History
dot tomble dot com, and we're also on panterst at
pitchs dot com slash missed in History. Our instagram is
missing history, and you can come to our website which
is missing history dot com to find h shore notes
for this episode and all the other episodes Holly and
(29:13):
I have worked on together, plus an archive of every
episode ever. You can also come to our parent company's website,
which is how stuff works dot com to look up
just about anything your heart desires. You can do all
that and a whole lot more at how stuff works
dot com or missed in history dot com For more
on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how
(29:35):
stuff works dot
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