The Storm is Gathering . . . Again
In this year of 1758 we are covering in 2022, the war clouds are gathering up again.
It's been mostly quiet at Fort Loudoun.
The past 2 years
were all Defense.
For simplicity,
the following can be stated:
1756 was spent building forts.
1757 was spent scouring the woods for enemy.
The Cherokee allies did that mostly.
We hope one day
to hold a Veterans Ceremony
for their efforts,
as a way of telling more
about our
contested past.
The Catawba, Nottoway, Tuscarora allies also assisted our Virginia Regiment.
1758
The year of Offense.
1758 is going to be another expedition like Braddock's except this one is coming from a different direction. And a different safer strategy will be used. Forts and encampments will be established every 50 miles in stead of one long run.
The target as it has always been since 1755:
Fort DuQuesne.
What Next
after taking Fort DuQuesne?
The site of Braddock's Defeat is still there.
Lying in wait are the skulls and bones
of that 1755 horrific massacre,
waiting and waiting for 3 years
in the woods for a visit.
We believe mostly skulls, not bones, were left.
Robert Griffing's painting shows mostly just a skull left.
And whose skull?
Peter Halkett or his son or both at that big unusual tree?
They were never buried.
Until this visit,
as Robert Griffing calls it - The Reunion.
Benjamin West drew a sketch of this moment. He never evolved it into a full fledged painting though. Find that in here.
That tree is long gone.
A Museum sits on the site of this battle.
An old steel town neighborhood.
The Rust Belt lives here.
Back to the Gathering Storm:
Various pieces of the puzzle are all on the move to and from Fort Loudoun.
Let us look at those moving parts. There's a lot of moving parts going on.
We hate to include this first item as one of the moving parts, but essentially it is.
1. Colonel George Washington has had dysentery since before Nov 1757.
The painting by Eric Cherry above shows Colonel George Washington sitting on the left of the fort, facing West. But our Colonel George Washington isn't back yet. He will be on his way back to Fort Loudoun Winchester VA on 2 April 1758.
2. But before GW shows up, Captain Robert Stewart has left his command of Fort Loudoun. He wants to pursue a British officer commission to protect his future. He's seen others do so who had a lesser rank in this Virginia Regiment.
He asked Dinwiddie to be free to apply Nov 9, 1757.
He asked George Washington to be free to apply Nov 24, 1757.
At some point his request was granted.
This leaves Lt. Thomas Bullitt in command of Fort Loudoun.
Lt Charles Smith is still foreman of completing the building of that fort.
3. The Cherokee have arrived too soon. The Cherokee allies started in January 1758 on their way towards Winchester.
President John Blair, head of Council, and acting as leader of Virginia while both Lt Governor and Governor are not present, agrees with Colonel George Washington that the Cherokee are coming too early.
It is not clear why they came too early.
Did Virginia's request for help not be specific on when to come? Did the Cherokee decide on their own? Did the Cherokee expect the war campaign would begin once they arrive? Did anyone really think to coordinate this timing?
The War Machine is not ready.
Winchester will not have enough to support them. Blair recommends they go to Lord Loudoun in NYC who can provide them presents and support.
But now they're here.
They're here in Winchester. Their horses are probably stabled on Indian Alley. There is a lot of them. Like almost 400 in this small town, this town of taverns (they call them Ordinaries or "tippling houses") on just about every street.
But what do the Whites really not know?
They don't know that the White War Machine is too late for the Cherokee to stick around. That's hunting season, even though last year during hunting season some came. There's still no presents, though. Their people are expecting them to come back with presents and prizes of war soon. They've been gone too long.
4. Two companies of the Virginia Regiment are coming back.
They were on loan to Charleston SC. They were the companies of Lt Col Adam Stephen and Captain George Mercer They are coming back to Winchester VA too. They won't be in Winchester until end of March beginning of April. Captain
George Mercer gets promoted. When the 2nd VA Regiment is created under Byrd III, George Mercer becomes Lt Colonel under Byrd.
Everything is happening in April of 1758.
Especially the War Machine.
Compiled and authored by Jim Moyer 3/19/2022, to be updated 3/20/22, 3/22/22, 3/23/2022
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Cherokee activity
Notes from Research from
Carolina in Crisis: Cherokees, Colonists, and Slaves in the American Southeast, 1756–1763.. By Daniel J. Tortora. (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2015.
Taken mostly from
Chapter 3: Killed on the Path, Cherokee in the campaigns against Fort Duquesne
1756
page 44
From 1755 to 1758, eight hundred Cherokees and more than 200 Catawbas, Meherrins, Nottoways, and Tuscaroras participated . "
Without Indians to oppose Indians, we may expect little success" - GW 1756
Only 13 Cherokee and 5 women helped in any foray towards Duquesne in 1756
Overhill Cherokee just fought a war with the Creeks. They were waiting for benefits from SC and VA.
March 1757
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April 1757
page 43
From the lower towns, Keowee and Estatoes
Wawhatchee, Keerarustikee, Youctanah, The Swallow
Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Southern Department, Edmond Atkin:
Not finding the presents which they expected, they ransacked the local farms.
quote from Dinwiddie to Clement Read, April 12,15, 1757
quote from Clement Read to Dinwiddie, April 5, 1757
page 43 "the Govr knew not how to treat Indians"
Swallow: "the Govr made him a liar" because he wasn't receiving any presents to turn around to give his people.
David Preston explains natives were not "subservient auxillaries." source
Preston, "Make Indians of our White Men p 282
Wood, "I have now made a Path"
May 1757
page 44
230 Cherokee . . Wawhatchee took 4 scalps, 2 prisoners in May 1757
and a few weeks later Cherokee ranged 35 miles beyond Fort Duquesne hit a party of 10 Frenchmen. killing two and wounding two.
They captured a French officer who had coordinated 1756 attacks on the Va frontier. Swallow died in that battle. Carried his son on their backs 115 miles back to Fort Cumberland.
June 1757
page 45
Cherokee scouted Fort Duquesne, took 2 more scalps.
John Dagworthy to GW June 14, 1757
GW to William Fairfax June 25, 1757
John Stanwix to GW July 18,1757
summer of going from fort to fort to see if they could get presents
even later arrival of some Sandy Creek veterans such as Round O from the Out Towns of Steco and Ostanaco suffered same treatment on lack of presents
some stayed thru the winter
some went home
GW writing that the Cherokee friendship well worth cultivating; indispensably necessary; demonstrated commitment beyond a doubt; endured a train of mismanagement; without any reward of thanks or even provisions to help them on their march home . . .they were justly fired with the highest resentment . . . our interest with those indians is at the brink of destruction
GW to John Stanwix June 28,1757
GW to Robt Dinwiddie Nov 5, 1757
July 1757
page 45
Atkin screwed up putting some Cherokee from Chota and some Mohawk who were diplomats in a Winchester prison thinking they were spies.
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1758
Spring new sorties
Winter, 180 warriors from the Overhill Towns went by water to the Ohio, Fort Masaic, the French fort, Anglicized to Fort Massac
Others went to Virginia and Pa.
From April to August, 17 groups of Cherokee went on sorties and training the whites - source is Capt Bosomworth April 12, 1758 at Fort Loudoun, and Forbes Headquarters papers file 132
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Review of book I used for research:
Carolina in Crisis: Cherokees, Colonists, and Slaves in the American Southeast, 1756–1763.. By Daniel J. Tortora. (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2015.
Reviewed by Gary Sellick (University of South Carolina) Published on H-War (October, 2016) Commissioned by Margaret Sankey
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Following a similar model to that used in Alan Taylor’s The Divided Ground (2007), Tortora looks at the ways in which the Cherokee nation and white colonists in the South Carolina borderlands interacted during times of war. Unlike Taylor, whose focus was on the oft-studied topic of the Revolutionary War, Tortora looks at a largely unexplored conflict, the Cherokee War of 1760-61.
Often lost within the larger, global Seven Years’ War, the Cherokee War, which was largely localized in South Carolina, according to Tortora not only began the ultimate demise of the Cherokee nation on the East Coast but also sowed the seeds of revolution among white colonists. While some of these claims are overstated in Tortora’s narrative, the Colby College professor’s first major monograph provides a fascinating and well-researched work that highlights an aspect of the southern Seven Years’ War often neglected by more northern-focused scholars.
Tortora uses a wealth of primary sources, including colonial newspapers, correspondence, and the oral testimony of the Cherokee people in order to write a chronological narrative of the Cherokee War and its surrounding era. While Tortora clearly knows the topic intimately, the narrative occasionally is bogged down in the minutiae that often accompanies dissertation-cum-monographs. There are too many names for most readers to remember, and very few of the characters are explored in any detail. The few that are, namely the British governors of South Carolina, are clearly marked as the villains of the piece. This simple characterization loses the nuance of the colonial side of the argument. Tortora is much more successful in his thorough exploration of the complicated Cherokee leadership structure, highlighting the anxiety of puppet leader Attakullakulla, and the frustrated anger of Oconastota, among many others.
Carolina in Crisis gives a strictly chronological narrative of Anglo-Cherokee relations in the American Southeast during the length of the Seven Years’ War. The first four chapters lay the foundation for the war that will follow, providing an all-too-familiar tale of white excess and Indian frustration that was the background to so many conflicts during the colonial era. The fifth chapter is also foundational to the narrative, focusing on the effects of a smallpox epidemic in South Carolina, but at nine pages is underdeveloped, which is unfortunate due to the interesting ideas that Tortora is able to draw from its short length. Chapters 6 through 8 provide the high-water mark in the author’s study of the Cherokee during this period, providing a fantastic insight into both the successes and excesses of the Cherokee offensives of 1760 in South Carolina. The rise is followed by the fall in the next two chapters, which show how Cherokee overextension and British numbers helped turn the tide against the Indian nation. Again, the narrative is well written and shows Tortora’s strength as a masterful storyteller. The final chapter makes one of Tortora’s most original arguments: that the divisions wrought by the Cherokee War in South Carolina caused the divides that would soon lead to revolution in the following decade.
For all of the successes of this work, and there are a good many of them, Tortora has overstretched himself here in two main ways.
Firstly, he never convincingly links “the Cherokee Indians to the turmoil that followed in the era of American Independence” (p. 186). While providing an excellent portrayal of Cherokee life and culture, the white colonists are always somewhat two-dimensional in the book. This is particularly true in the final chapter, where Charleston elites are put into one of two groups, either pro- or anti-British establishment. In a book with a modest length of only 280 pages (including endnotes), the nuance of Revolutionary South Carolina is missed, with little of the conflict between lowcountry elites and upcountry settlers studied in any detail. Instead, colonists are painted as increasingly anti-British throughout the book, a fact contradicted by the vicious civil war that would affect South Carolina when the Revolutionary War began in 1775. Indeed, if Tortora would have sidelined the Revolutionary War aspect of his thesis, a more thorough and original focus on the Cherokee nation, at a critical moment in its history, would have been possible.
The second main flaw in Tortora’s work is his focus, or lack thereof, on the titular slaves of South Carolina. Tortora was clearly influenced by Jim Piecuch’s excellent Three Peoples, One King (2008), a monograph that entwines the destinies of whites, Indians, and slaves during the Revolutionary War. Tortora emulates Piecuch’s model in recounting the Seven Years’ War. Unfortunately, while Anglo-Indian relations form the core of his work, Tortora’s focus on slaves in the region is much less thorough. Slavery has an almost spectral place in the narrative, ever-present but largely peripheral to the main action. As a result, scholars of slavery in the southern British colonies may be disappointed by its lack of centrality in the work, particularly given its prominent inclusion in the book’s title.
These grievances aside,
however, Tortora has written an original and engaging work in Carolina in Crisis. His use of Cherokee speeches and original correspondence gives the Indian nation a voice rarely heard from this defining moment in their history. The book also provides a grand narrative to a military campaign that was devastating to both white and Indian populations in the South Carolina borderlands, and yet is largely ignored by most scholars of the Seven Years’ War. Tortora should therefore be given credit for finding an aspect of an oft-written-about topic and engaging it in an insightful way. In addition, Tortora’s writing style is thoroughly entertaining, and will engage even the most timid reader. The book would be an excellent course reader for a class on Anglo-Indian relations in the colonial period. Overall, Carolina in Crisis is an original contribution to the history of the Seven Years’ War and should be read by anyone with an interest in this period, and the Cherokee nation in particular.
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