Testing the Rusted Chain
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Testing the Rusted Chain: Cherokees, Carolinians, and the War for the American Southeast, 1756-1763 by Daniel J. Tortora Department of History Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Elizabeth Fenn, Supervisor ___________________________ Barry Gaspar ___________________________ Wayne Lee ___________________________ Susan Thorne ___________________________ John Thompson Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of History in the Graduate School of Duke University 2011 ABSTRACT Testing the Rusted Chain: Cherokees, Carolinians, and the War for the American Southeast, 1756-1763 by Daniel J. Tortora Department of History Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Elizabeth Fenn, Supervisor ___________________________ Barry Gaspar ___________________________ Wayne Lee ___________________________ Susan Thorne ___________________________ John Thompson An abstract of a dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of History in the Graduate School of Duke University 2011 Copyright by Daniel J. Tortora 2011 Abstract In 1760, when British victory was all but assured and hostilities in the northeastern colonies of North America came to an end, the future of the southeastern colonies was not nearly so clear. British authorities in the South still faced the possibility of a local French and Indian alliance and clashed with angry Cherokees who had complaints of their own. These tensions and events usually take a back seat to the climactic proceedings further north. I argue that in South Carolina, by destabilizing relations with African and Native Americans, the Cherokee Indians raised the social and political anxieties of coastal elites to a fever pitch during the Anglo-Cherokee War. Threatened by Indians from without and by slaves from within, and failing to find unbridled support in British policy, the planter-merchant class eventually sought to take matters into its own hands. Scholars have long understood the way the economic fallout of the French and Indian War caused Britain to press new financial levies on American colonists. But they have not understood the deeper consequences of the war on the local stage. Using extensive political and military correspondence, ethnography, and eighteenth-century newspapers, I offer a narrative-driven approach that adds geographic and ethnographic breadth and context to previous scholarship on mid-eighteenth century in North America. I expand understandings of Cherokee culture, British and colonial Indian policy, race slavery, and the southeastern frontier. At the same time, I also explain the origins of the American Revolution in the South. iv Contents Abstract .............................................................................................................................. iv List of Figures ................................................................................................................... vii Abbreviations ...................................................................................................................... x Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................... xii Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1: “The Chain of Friendship”: The Carolina-Cherokee Alliance ........................ 17 Chapter 2: “A small Spark may kindle a great Fire”: Imperial Tensions Threaten the Alliance ............................................................................................................................. 45 Chapter 3: “Would to God that these were all chimaeras and creatures of the brain”: Crown and Colony Collide in 1758 .................................................................................. 78 Chapter 4: “A good Deal of Mischief done upon the Frontiers of Virginia”: The Forbes Campaign Heightens Cherokee Discontent .................................................................... 101 Chapter 5: “To effect an amicable accommodation with them”: Governor Lyttelton Seizes Hostages and Marches into Cherokee Country ................................................... 131 Chapter 6: “This awful Malignancy”: The Upheaval of the Charles Town Smallpox Epidemic of 1760 ............................................................................................................ 174 Chapter 7: “If Not by Fair Means by Force”: The Cherokees Attempt to Rescue the Hostages .......................................................................................................................... 192 Chapter 8: “The Tourrant hath been so Great”: The Cherokee Offensive of 1760 ........ 217 Chapter 9: “A Peace…Cannot Be Too Soon Made”: Cherokees Defeat Montgomery and Capture Fort Loudoun ..................................................................................................... 247 Chapter 10: “The absolute necessity of suing for pardon”: The Grant Campaign Brings Destruction and Ruin to Cherokee Country .................................................................... 289 Chapter 11: “The Town of Lyes”: Negotiating a Peace Reveals Deep-Seated Tensions 321 Chapter 12: “A Firm and Lasting Friendship…and…a Perfect Tranquility”: The Path to Revolution ....................................................................................................................... 347 v Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 378 Bibliography ................................................................................................................... 392 Biography ........................................................................................................................ 412 vi List of Figures Figure 1: Joree, 2009. Photo courtesy David Linton Waters. ............................................ 3 Figure 2: Cherokee Villages in the Mid-Eighteenth Century ........................................... 16 Figure 3: French Louisiana in the 1750’s. From Jean-Bernard Bossu’s Travels, ed. Seymour Feiler (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1962), 23. .............................. 29 Figure 4: George II, by Enoch Seeman, 1730. Courtesy of the Royal Collection. .......... 31 Figure 5: Engraving by Isaac Basire of the Cherokee Indians who visited London in 1730, ca. 1740-1760. Courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution........................................ 32 Figure 6: Eastern North America during the French and Indian War Era. ....................... 47 Figure 7: Austenaco, Great Warrior. From the Royal Magazine, 1762. Courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution. .................................................................................................... 54 Figure 8: William Henry Lyttelton, by Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1772. Courtesy of Hagley Hall. ................................................................................................................................... 62 Figure 9: The Little Tennessee Valley of 1757, by Chester Martin. Courtesy of Fort Loudoun State Historic Area. ........................................................................................... 68 Figure 10: Eighteenth-century rum bottle found in the Cherokee Overhills. Courtesy of the McClung Museum....................................................................................................... 75 Figure 11: Henry Bouquet. After Benjamin West’s 1760 painting. Courtesy of the Yale Collection of Western Americana, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. .......... 82 Figure 12: The Forbes and Braddock Roads. Adapted by Kent Steinbrunner from Walter O’Meara, Guns at the Forks (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1979), 255. .. 117 Figure 13: “View of Fort Prince George & part of the Country about it.” Journal of Captain Christopher French, 95. Courtesy of the Library of Congress. ........................ 147 Figure 14: The South Carolina State House, from Biographical Directory of the South Carolina House of Representatives, vol. 2 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1977). .............................................................................................................................. 159 Figure 15: South Carolina during the French and Indian War Era ................................. 165 vii Figure 16: Inside a model of a mid-eighteenth century Cherokee town house at Oconaluftee Indian Village, Cherokee, NC. ................................................................... 193 Figure 17: Cherokee Townhouse at Chota [mid-eighteenth century], by Thomas Whyte. Courtesy of the McClung Museum. ................................................................................ 194 Figure 18: Archaeologist’s rendition of eighteenth-century Chota. Courtesy of Richard Thornton. ......................................................................................................................... 202 Figure 19: Catherine Calhoun gravestone, 2009............................................................. 223 Figure 20: Creek villages. From John Mitchell’s 1755 Map. Courtesy of Special Collections, Hunter Library, Western Carolina University. ........................................... 235 Figure 21: South Carolina’s French and