Daniel Boone in the Cherokee Homeland

Boone was not the first long hunter to venture across the Blue Ridge Mountains into the upper Tennessee River valley stretching west to the Cumberland Mountains. This valley was the homeland of the Cherokee, the Aniyvwiya, “the principal people,” as they called themselves. At the time of Daniel Boone, the Cherokee already had a long history of allying with British interests, serving alongside British military against French soldiers, conferencing with colonial authorities, and engaging in the deerskin trade. 

The homeland which the Cherokee controlled covered what is several states today extending in general from the Ohio River to the Tennessee River and east across the Appalachians into today’s North Georgia, Upstate South Carolina, and western North Carolina. They were a matrilineal society with women playing important roles in making tribal decisions. They were demonstrably more democratic in their self-governance than the British and French agents following the dictates of their monarchs. Cherokee women did the farming, not the men. Europeans had cows and pigs; Cherokee had deer and bear. The two peoples were different, and they were alike. They were bound to clash.

During the 1700’s, the Cherokee (Tsalagi) were sought as trading partners by British agents interested in fostering a trade in deer skins for items of interest to the Cherokee people: copper pots, cloth, guns, knives, and a host of manufactured goods which the Cherokee favored to improve their lives. To promote the alliance, Cherokee headmen crossed the ocean to England. Attakullakulla (ata-kul’-kulla), the later renowned Peace Chief also called “Little Carpenter,” did so in 1730 in a party of seven ambassadors. During his four months there, he met with King George II and experienced British life in London. Several years after his return, he was captured by Ottawa warriors at the behest of French authorities in Quebec who kept Attakullakulla for seven years. But returning to his people afterward, he attended a conference of Cherokee with colonial South Carolina leaders at Fort Prince George on the Keowee River in 1755. Through his diplomacy on behalf of the Council of Chota and his eloquent oratory, he fashioned a substantive treaty for the Cherokee with the British colonists. 

The next year, North Carolina’s royal governor Arthur Dobbs built a fort in the backcountry to protect scattered settlers on the frontier against incursions by French and French-allied Indians. The Colonial governors in Virginia and South Carolina built Fort Loudoun in 1756/57 along the Little Tennessee River in today’s East Tennessee to help protect the Cherokee from attack by French-allied Indians in today’s Alabama. Cherokee went to war against the French and their northern Indian allies on behalf of the British, but the British officers did not always recognize the value of the alliance. In 1758, mistreated and disgruntled Cherokee warriors under Attakullakulla left Great Britain’s Forbes Expedition against the French at Fort Duquesne (today’s Pittsburg) in western Pennsylvania, heading home to the Little Tennessee River. A second unescorted party of withdrawing Cherokee was attacked with many killed in western Virginia by local militia who saw them as horse thieves. Cherokees were outraged. Attakullakulla’s demands for the murderers to be surrendered to them were ignored. Fearing a Cherokee uprising, South Carolina leaders stopped delivery of gunpowder to the Cherokee towns. Thus, arose the Cherokee War of 1759-1761, which unsettled the frontiers of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia. 

In October 1759, Cherokee leaders went to Charleston to sue for peace with the royal authorities. They needed that gunpowder and lead to hunt for skins to trade for goods. These emissaries were taken prisoner and marched back to Fort Prince George and held there. Attakullakulla successfully negotiated the release of some of the captured Cherokee headmen. Two months later, in February 1760, he sought to negotiate for the release of the others. Through treacheries on both sides, however, the fort’s commander was ambushed, and the remaining 23 hostages were murdered in retaliation. Attakullakulla was then shunned from the Council of Chota because he remained connected to the leaders of the garrison. Elsewhere, Fort Dobbs in then-Rowan County, North Carolina, was attacked on February 27, 1760. But the garrison of soldiers there, firing from the three levels of loopholes in the massive fort, fended off the party of attaching Cherokees. Potential attacks on the Moravian settlement farther east at Bethabara were tempered by the rapport these kind and generous settlers had shown to Cherokees passing through their community seeking food and supplies. 

With Attakullakulla powerless, in March, the Cherokee’s First Beloved Man Cunne Shote (Standing Turkey) led Cherokee warriors in a long siege of Fort Loudoun, attempting to starve out the garrison. He favored a French alliance over one with the British. In June 1760, a British army under Scottish General Archibald Montgomerie marched into the Lower Towns and the Middle Towns, destroying Cherokee villages, but he withdrew from the region after meeting with intense fighting on June 27 at Etchoe Pass (south of Franklin, N.C., on US Hwy 23). The siege at Fort Loudoun continued until August. The starving soldiers there surrendered and were allowed to march away under the arrangements of the truce. The next day, 700 Cherokee warriors attacked the encampment of withdrawing soldiers, killing two dozen. 

As tensions arose across the frontiers, soldiers under Colonel James Grant marched into the Cherokee homeland, destroying more Cherokee villages in the Lower and Middle valleys. Meanwhile, provincial soldiers under Colonel William Byrd III marched through Virginia along the Holston River. The Cherokee sued for peace, signing a treaty at Fort Robinson on Long Island of the Holston (Kingsport, Tennessee.) Thereafter, Attakullakulla, the Peace Chief, replaced Conne Shote as the favored Cherokee leader. 

THE BIRTH OF SEQUOYAH (above): On December 1, 1760, Daniel Boone was ranging along the Blue Ridge Mountains with his hunting companion Nathaniel Gist. From atop Whitetop Mountain near today’s Damascus, Virginia, he saw from there all the countryside to the west which he yet had to hunt. This was land stretching out across the Holston and Clinch river valleys. Gist was an Indian trader with the Cherokee then and later. As was the custom with the Cherokee, he took a wife among them. At sometime around 1776, he fathered a child with Wuh-teh, who raised the boy alone. The child was Sequoyah, later creator of the Cherokee syllabary which enabled the Cherokee to write down their history and to print a newspaper. 

In 1763, a paternalistic King George III, then age 24, issued the Proclamation of 1763 to separate his Cherokee “children” from his colonial “children,” forbidding any colonial settlements west of the Blue Ridge Mountains, in lands whose waters drained to the west into the Tennessee and Ohio rivers. In time, colonial settlements began to encroach, but Attakullakulla was not heartless. He accommodated existing settlements by moving the accepted boundary westward in Virginia. Yet, even more settlers came west, most down the Holston River valley through Virginia after Lord Dunmore’s War and others from North Carolina after the War of the Regulation. The earliest arrivals established the self-governing Watauga Association at Sycamore Shoals in 1772. 

In 1775, one land speculator, Richard Henderson of Salisbury, North Carolina, hired Daniel Boone to gather together at Sycamore Shoals the headmen of the Cherokees to treat with Henderson for the lease of 20 million acres of land between the Ohio River and the Cumberland River, about two-thirds of today’s Kentucky. At the treaty for this Transylvania Purchase in March 1775, Attakullakulla signed the agreement as did most of the other headmen. But Attakullakulla’s son, Tsi’yu-gunsini (Dragging Canoe) refused to sign. He vowed to fight against encroaching settlements and attacked Fort Watauga in 1776. He continued his violence against encroaching settlements during another 16 years with his band of renegade Cherokee called Chickamauga. 

From Sycamore Shoals in March 1775 while the treaty was underway, Daniel Boone and his party of 30 road cutters, set off for the Long Island of the Holston from which they began to mark a trail for others to follow through the valleys of southwest Virginia, across the Cumberland Gap, and north to a spot along the Kentucky River where they built a settlement on the Kentucky frontier they named Fort Boonesborough. Thus, began Boone Trace and, with it, America’s westward movement with its hopes and ambitions, its perils and tragedies for two peoples—those arriving and those already home. 

Attakullakulla Welcomes You Into His World

Attakullakulla, Peace Chief of the Cherokee Nation from about 1754 until his death (ca.1780-­1783), was called the "most important Indian of his day." He was trained to become a leader among the Cherokee people. In 1730, when only about fifteen, he boldly volunteered to travel to England to meet King George II. Back home, he sought to unify the Cherokees Nation to ensure their survival; he strengthened ties with the British, a nation he saw as too powerful to ignore. 

In 1775, Attakullakulla, known to whites as “Little Carpenter” for his ability to build alliances, and 1,200 Cherokees met with Judge Richard Henderson of North Carolina, and signed the Treaty of Sycamore Shoals for desperately needed guns and ammunition. But, Attakullakulla and the Cherokees later said Henderson had misled them, and that his claims of purchase were invalid. White settlers, however, flooded through the overmountain region of North Carolina and into Kentucky. 

Nobody knows Attakullakulla like Rob Rambo does. He has studied this great Cherokee leader intensely as an academic and has portrayed him in the first person for 25 years. Those audiences fortunate enough to experience Rob’s program feel as if they have traveled back in time and met “Little Carpenter” himself. Rob’s sharing of Cherokee culture and practices as Attakullakulla in English and Cherokee, his comparing of Anigelisi and Tsalagi preferences and expectations cause his audiences to think twice about their own choices and beliefs. “We are different,” Rambo’s Attakullakulla declares, “but we are the same also, as the Great Father above made us both.” 

Captain Robert K. Rambo (USA, Ret.) earned his BA (History) from the Virginia Military Institute, his teacher certification (History) at University of Virginia­Wise, and his M.A. (US History­ Cherokee Studies Program) at Western Carolina University. His research centered on Attakullakulla during the 18th­century. He has researched and portrayed Attakullakulla since 1993 at parks, museums, schools, universities, powwows, and for the Kentucky Humanities Council’s Chautuaqua program. Mr. Rambo has appeared in key roles in several films, and also portrays several other historical characters from other periods and cultures.

Organizations wishing to host Robert Rambo as “Attakullakulla” can reach him through Rambo History (ramboshistory.com).

Touching History

Several museums, historic sites, and parks offer visitors the opportunity to experience more of the history of the Cherokee people during the 18th Century. 

Fort Loudoun State Park

The French and Indian War lives at Fort Loudoun State Park in Vonore, Tennessee. A replica fort overlooking Tellico Lake, living history programs, reenactments, and exhibits in the visitor center tell the story of the 18th Century fort’s brief but dramatic existence on the western frontier of colonial America. tnstateparks.com/parks/fort-loudoun and fortloudoun.com

Sycamore Shoals State Historic Area

The history of East Tennessee before statehood is anchored at Sycamore Shoals in Elizabethton, Tennessee. Through exhibits at the museum, reenactments around the replica fort, and interpretive programs including a seasonal outdoor drama, Liberty: The Saga of Sycamore Shoals, the histories of the Watauga Association, the Transylvania Purchase, the siege of Fort Watauga, and the mustering of Overmountain Men for the campaign to what became the Battle of Kings Mountain all come alive. tnstateparks.com/parks/sycamore-shoals

Museum of the Cherokee Indian

The history and heritage of the Cherokee people is to be experienced in Cherokee, North Carolina. Permanent exhibits include the 13,000-year story of the Cherokee and “Emissaries of Peace: 1762 Cherokee & British Delegations.” Artifacts and artwork are also on display. The museum sponsors the traditional dance group Warriors of AniKituhwa. cherokeemuseum.org

Sequoyah Birthplace Museum

The impressive story of Cherokee written literacy is shared in Vonore, Tennessee. The featured exhibit shares the story of Cherokee silversmith Sequoyah, himself illiterate, creating a writing system for the Cherokee language. Programs and events throughout the year celebrate Cherokee heritage. sequoyahmuseum.org

Fort Dobbs State Historic Site

The only state park system historic site related to the French and Indian War in North Carolina is in Statesville. Visitors experience a year-round program of reenactments, encampments, militia drills, and military history. In 2019, the completed replica fort opens to the public with its three floors of platforms from which provincial guard soldiers could fire through 100 loopholes to repel the advance of any enemy. fortdobbs.org

Historic Bethabara Park

Arriving from Pennsylvania in 1753 in North Carolina’s backcountry, Moravian settlers built Bethabara, the first of six towns in their near-100,000-acre settlement of Wachovia, surrounding today’s Winston-Salem. Visitors can walk among the foundation ruins of the village which first prospered as a farming community, supporting the establishment of Bethania in 1759 and Salem in 1766. The history is shared in exhibits and film in the visitor center. The park hosts events throughout the year. historicbethabara.org