Dragging Canoe's Speech
This is (supposedly) what Dragging Canoe said before he stormed away in protest from the negotiations that later resulted in the so-called "Henderson Purchase." It should be pointed out that there were no tape recorders there and that the accuracy of this transcription is completely dependent upon whoever wrote it down when he said it:
By Dallas Bogan
Dragging Canoe, often called the Tecumseh of the South, was one the Cherokee tribe's most devoted chiefs. He angrily opposed the terms of the deal in which the Cherokee Nation signed away some of their valuable land to the whites and received very little in return. He broke away from the Cherokees in 1776, forming an aggressive wing of the tribe known as the Chickamauga Cherokees. Dragging Canoe strongly recommended that the patriotic Cherokees to join in parting of the tribe. After this episode, they settled at various places along the main stream south known as the Chickamauga Creek. It was therefore appropriate to call themselves Chickamaugans.
Dragging Canoe was the son of the famous narrator, Chief Attakullakulla. Dragging Canoe chose for his headquarters the site of an ancient Creek village on the Chickamauga, near present day northeast Chattanooga, Tennessee. Many well-known chiefs joined him, Chief Ostenaco among them. This old Indian had fought side by side with George Washington on the Virginia frontiers and knew intimately. He knew not only our first president but also the likes of Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry.
Dragging Canoe's brother, Chief Little Owl also traveled with him and settled on the Chickamauga less than two miles upstream.
The first celebration of Independence Day, July 4, 1776, took place at Fort Patrick Henry where Kingsport, Tennessee, now stands. Sometime previous to that date the whites invited the Cherokees to a meeting of the two forces. The white man's main object was to win the Indians from the side of the British. Totally ignoring the meeting call, Dragging Canoe, on that first Fourth of July, remained at home in the Chickamauga town puffing on his trusty pipe.
The American representatives had invited the Cherokees who were present and who were still allies of the British, to join in this celebration. The Cherokees were totally ignorant concerning the American's "Declaration of Independence," and had no idea what the celebration was all about. During the readings of the manuscript the tribe listened and joined in with the whites, not knowing what was going on, dancing merrily with them. However, in just a few days they again returned to the British and resumed their mutual warfare against the Americans.
A few years before Dragging Canoe chose Chickamauga as his headquarters, a Scotch trader by the name of John McDonald was appointed assistant superintendent of the British concerns in the South. McDonald's place of residence soon became a prominent meeting place for Tories and Cherokees. Henry Hamilton, of Detroit, Michigan, then Governor of the Northwest Territory, had supplied McDonald's site with thousands of dollars worth of supplies for the Indians' use in their warfare against the whites. Most of these supplies had been brought by horseback from Pensacola, Florida.
Everything seemed satisfactory with McDonald and Dragging Canoe until one spring morning in April 1779, when a multitude of soldiers, numbering about 600 men in command of Col. Evan Shelby and John Montgomery, floated down the Tennessee River form Fort Patrick Henry. Upon reaching the mouth of Chickamauga Creek, this party captured a fisherman and made him lead the whites to Dragging Canoe's center of operations, some seven miles upstream.
The party of 600 whites caught the Indians by surprise and burnt their village to the ground. At the time, Dragging Canoe was away from home, so the whites had little difficulty in defeating the remaining Cherokees.
A detailed report of the combat was made by Thomas Jefferson and sent directly to General Washington. The report stated that Shelby's men captured 20,000 bushels of grain, also goods to the value of 25,000 pounds (about $75,000 in today's money). McDonald took a serious monetary loss along with 100 head of cattle and 150 horses. The whites sank their pirogues (a type of canoe). The American officers bought the stolen horses and rode back to their homes. Shelby's men moved on up the Chickamauga and destroyed Little Owl's village. Dragging Canoe and his trusted followers were not discouraged at the destruction of the towns. The villages were rebuilt.
In 1775 the Cherokee Indians had been making treaties with the United States for 55 years. They had already signed away a significant portion of their land when a white man by the name of Richard Henderson convinced Cherokee leaders to sell 20 million acres spanning part of North Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky. It turned out to be the largest private real estate deal in the history of the United States. The selling price was 2000 pounds of sterling and 6 wagonloads of trade goods, about a quarter cent per acre. Among the negotiators was Attakullakulla, a prominent Cherokee chief. A young chief named Dragging Canoe vehemently protested the transaction. Bitter that his people had given up almost everything they owned, he feared this would bring about the extinction of the Cherokee. The land that sold was Cherokee hunting grounds, lands that they depended on for survival. Dragging Canoe warned that he would fight and he told the white men they were buying “dark and bloody ground.” He deemed the deal illegal as Cherokee law dictated that land cession must meet with unanimous approval among the tribe. Shortly thereafter Dragging Canoe moved his people to Chickamauga Creek, near present day Chattanooga, and formed the Chickamauga band of the Cherokee.
The American Revolution erupted just a month after the Henderson land deal. Most of the Cherokee tried to remain neutral, but Dragging Canoe took the opportunity to strike out at the encroaching white settlements. His forces were small at first but he continued to gain followers over the next 20 years as he and the Chickamaugas fought to preserve their heritage.
Among his cohorts was a young half blood named Bob Benge. Benge is believed to have been born sometime around 1760 in the Cherokee village of Toque. His mother was Cherokee and his father was a white trader of Scottish descent who had lived with Indians for most of his adult life. The older Benge was known to stand by his word. He was so highly respected among the Cherokee that Dragging Canoe once sent his own son to defend Benge in battle. Bob Benge was raised as an Indian along with his brother and sister. He was also related to Sequoyah, who later invented the Cherokee alphabet, and some sources say they were half brothers.
Around 1777, Benge’s family moved south to live among the Chickamaugas in a town called Running Water. Here Benge met and befriended a small band of Shawnee that had come to contribute to Dragging Canoe’s cause. Several Cherokee, including Benge, joined the Shawnee in raiding white settlements. Benge quickly rose to leadership as he established a reputation of being a courageous and swift warrior.
In 1785 Bob Benge led a war party northeast to the Holston River area of Tennessee and Virginia. The Indians came upon a cabin owned by Archibald and Fannie Dickson Scott. When night fell they broke down the door and rushed in shooting and killing Archibald. The four children living in the cabin were killed with tomahawks and scalped. After looting the house, they set it ablaze and rode away with Mrs. Scott to present day Kentucky, where the loot was divided equally among the warriors. The chief then divided the group sending nine warriors to steal horses from nearby Clinch River settlements and four men went to hunt with Mrs. Scott in tow. She was left alone with the oldest of the group and escaped to a white settlement. Benge’s presence on this raid is only assumed by Scott’s testimony of hearing Benge’s name spoken several times.
Shortly after the raid a notorious militia leader by the name of John Sevier used the dark of night to surprise the Cherokee settlement Ustalli Town on the Hiawassee River. Sevier’s militia managed to capture a young Indian boy and kill five men acting as a rear guard, but they found the town abandoned, fires still burning in some of the houses. Sevier ordered his men to torch the town and then gave chase to the fleeing Cherokee, whom Bob Benge had led away. The militia was met with an ambush from Benge and his warriors giving the Cherokees time to reach safety, but the young boy captured earlier was brutally murdered during the fray.
In another incident during the summer of 1791, Bob Benge led a war party of six to southwestern Virginia. On their first raid they killed two white adults and kidnapped a woman and a boy of eight. The next raid ended with four dead and a nineteen year old girl captive. They quickly returned home with their prisoners and the scalps of their victims. Such raids made Benge notorious for infiltrating and ravaging well guarded enemy territory leaving only ghosts.
Bob Benge reached legendary status among the white settlers of Virginia and Tennessee. He took on the nicknames of “Captain Benge,” “The Bench,” “Chief Benge,” and “Chief Bench.” Mothers in the region commonly warned their children, “if you don’t watch out, Captain Benge will get you.”
A well known Indian killer by the name of Moses Cockrell liked to brag about what he would do to Bob Benge given the opportunity for engagement. In the Spring of 1793 Benge and a war band set up an ambush in the Holston River area when they saw three men approaching with a pack train. Benge identified one of the men as Moses Cockrell and, knowing of Cockrell’s slanderous talk, decided to kill his companions and take on Moses one on one. So Benge dropped his firearm and leapt from cover, tomahawk in hand. Cockrell immediately turned and ran when he realized it was Benge. The pursuit continued for two miles until Cockrell came upon a settler’s cabin and took refuge. As a last ditch effort, Benge hurled his tomahawk and missed, leaving Cockrell to suffer in his own embarrassment.
Though notoriously brutal and cruel to white settlers Benge occasionally showed mercy to his victims. He and a group of warriors once encountered a party of whites traveling to Nashville. The first shot was fired by a Cherokee, and all seven white men hastily fled the ambush, abandoning the four women to meet their grim destinies. Benge captured a horse that escaped from the women and tied it to a tree. He then gently assured each of them that they would be spared, built them a fire for warmth, and left them safe.
Benge joined a raid led by his cousin John Watts near Knoxville. Benge’s Uncle Doublehead was also present and was determined destroy and rob as much as possible. The group came upon Cavett’s Station, a small outpost. Although the whites were severely outnumbered, they chose to fight anyway. Watts took pity on them and offered them a chance to surrender peacefully. Since Benge spoke fluent English, he was chosen to negotiate with the whites. He told them they would be saved and exchanged for Cherokee prisoners. Doublehead watched and grew furious feeling that no whites should be spared. As soon as the white men opened the gates, Doublehead flew into a rage, attacking and killing the settlers with his axe. Benge tried to protect them unsuccessfully. Another Cherokee warrior, James Vann, picked up a little boy to save him, but Doublehead lunged at the boy, smashing his skull. Benge left Cavett’s Staion infuriated with Doublehead for killing innocent people after leading them to believe they would be spared. He vowed never to fight with Doublehead again.
Once on a visit to the Cherokee settlement Nickajack, Bob Benge overheard negotiations for a prisoner exchange between the Cherokee and some white settlers. Three white children had been captured from a river boat, and their father was trying to arrange a trade for some Indians whom had been captured by militia leader John Sevier. The “owner” of the youngest white child lived in another town and was not willing to relinquish ownership to the white father. Upon hearing this, Benge announced, “I will bring the girl, or her owner’s head,” and galloped away on his horse. He arrived back at Nickajack the following morning with the young white girl. There is no evidence of what transpired when he retrieved the girl.
Benge conducted his final raid on April 6, 1794. After a short farewell to his wife and children, he headed out with seven warriors toward Virginia. The war party ended up at the house of Peter and Henry Livingston. The two brothers were outside working when they saw smoke rising from the area where the house was located. As they rushed toward the house they found that their mother and a black child had been tomahawked, killing the child and mortally wounding the woman. Their wives and children had been taken. The brothers rallied help from other settlers before pursuing Benge and his war band. They were afraid an ill prepared chase might jeopardize the safety of their captive family. The local militia called upon all members to aid in the rescue mission. Having dealt with Benge before, they suspected he was responsible, and they knew where he might be headed.
Confident that he wasn’t being followed, Benge slowed his pace. He and his warriors took their time breaking camp the following day, and Benge spoke easily with his prisoners. He told Elizabeth Livingston that he was taking her to an Indian town, and he asked her for information on various settlers. He said that within a year he would have stolen every Negro in the area.
As the Chickamauga war band made their way through the mountains they were ambushed by the white militia. Bob Benge was shot dead. His scalp was sent to the governor of Virginia, and the offender was rewarded with a new rifle. To the great relief of white pioneers, the most feared warrior of the Chickamauga band would fight no more. It’s difficult to imagine killing innocent people as a means of fighting. Though their tactics were objectionable, Benge and the Chickamaugas were lashing out against a force that rendered them all but powerless. Their freedoms and possessions were gradually taken away so that didn’t even notice until it was too late. A violent uprising was all they had left after broken treaties and back room deals had stolen their livelihood.
Benge’s death marked the end of the Chickamauga resistance. Dragging Canoe had been dead since 1792 and there was no one left to lead them. The Cherokees continued to yield to white colonization until they had nothing left to give but themselves. They were finally removed west in 1838.
Source: http://www.chattoogariver.org/index.php?req=benge&quart=Su2004
Cherokee Women: Gender and Culture Change, 1700-1835. By Theda Perdue. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998. xi, 252 pp. $40.00. ISBN 0-8032-3716-2.
"Without a woman, the dance could not have taken place" (p. 2). This statement, part of a crucial metaphor in Theda Perdue's study of Cherokee women, refers to an incident she observed at a Cherokee stomp dance in Oklahoma in the summer of 1993. Late in the evening, when most dancers were weary, a male singer led a group of young men to the fire at the center of the dance ground. The singer tried to coax others to join them, but for an awkward interval no women came forth. As bystanders began to wonder if there would be another round of dancing, a female dancer moved in behind the singer and, using the heavy turtle shell rattles on her legs, "set the rhythm and permitted him to sing" (p. 2).
In the stomp dance, as in all facets of traditional Cherokee life, women and men follow anciently prescribed roles that complement each other and make it possible for Cherokees to live balanced lives. Perdue examines the interplay between the Cherokees' desire for balance, their creation of a symmetrical society, and their construction of gender. Her thesis is that important elements of their traditional definition of gender survived numerous assaults from Euro-American influences and remain vital today. In her words, "the story of most Cherokee women is not cultural transformation ... but remarkable cultural persistence" (p. 11).
Before European contact, the Cherokees practiced a gender-specific division of labor: women farmed and men hunted. This fundamental separation of responsibilities empowered women even as it stimulated the emergence of a distinct women's culture. As heads of matrilocal households women owned considerable property-the house itself, adjacent storage buildings, a kitchen garden, and produce from allotted portions of communally owned cornfields. A kinship system based on matrilineal clans was the source of Cherokee identity and the sinew of society. Motherhood was a social as well as a biological function: "Only those who belonged to Cherokee clans ... only those who had Cherokee mothers were Ani-Yuna Wiya, the Real People [Cherokee] " (p. 59). Women exerted political influence by participating in community council meetings, and they had significant roles in Cherokee ceremonial life. "Beloved Women," elders with supernatural powers, exercised essential spiritual authority, while "War Women," who gained status by accompanying men to battle, possessed the right to decide if captives lived or died.The arrival of Europeans and the subsequent establishment of the United States disrupted Cherokee life but failed to destroy its foundations. The deerskin trade brought men to the forefront economically, and male-dominated European methods of diplomacy diminished the importance of women in political negotiations. Christianity and "civilization" rested on hierarchical, patriarchal relationships, which missionaries attempted with mixed success to impose on Cherokee families.
Previous studies of the impact of Euro-Americans on Cherokee society have concluded that the importance of women declined dramatically after contact. Cherokee Women proves otherwise. Perdue goes beyond the usual emphasis on economics and politics to examine cultural dynamics. She skillfully uses ethnohistorical methods to demonstrate that although changes occurred, essential values persisted. Women became preservers of Cherokee traditions, and thev remain so today. Pointing to the recent leadership roles of Wilma Mankiller in Oklahoma and Joyce Dugan in North Carolina, Perdue concludes, "these women did not become chiefs by succeeding in business or law; they became chiefs because they embodied the values of generations of Cherokee women, values apparently still honored and respected by men and women alike" (p. 195).
Cherokee Women is a valuable addition to the growing scholarship on American Indian women. Nonspecialists interested in native people will enjoy its clarity of style and organization. Specialists and students (particularly those in graduate courses) in American Indian studies, women's history, and United States history will appreciate its challenging themes, fruitful methodology, and astute analysis of sources. Perdue provides a model for future scholarship on the place of women among other native peoples-those non-Cherokees who lived in Alabama, for example. The major disappointment with this study is that it ends with the onset of Cherokee removal from the Southeast. There is a definite need to bring the story of Cherokee women into the twentieth century. Certainly, their dance goes on.
BECKY MATTHEWS
Auburn University
Copyright University of Alabama Press Apr 2000Cherokee Women Had Important Influence in Daily Life of Tribe
ARKANSAS TERRITORY — As Cherokee children of the 1820s sit around the wood stoves in the kitchens of their farmhouses on the Cherokee Reservation between the White and Arkansas rivers, they learn the history of their tribe. Their mothers tell them how important women and children were to the tribe in the old days when all the tribe lived east of the Mississippi River.
In the 1500s, the Spanish explorers Hernando de Soto and Juan Pardo, met women chiefs with “considerable power among the southeastern Indians. Cherokee beloved women” were people of influence; like Nancy Ward, who spoke in council meetings and conducted negotiations.
The Cherokees were a matrilineal tribe, which means daughters could inherit things from their mothers. So women could own property separately from their husbands, such as a house that a daughter inherited from her mother.
The matrilineal clans owned the agricultural fields they farmed, and women often sold food and other goods to the European explorers and settlers.
Work among the Cherokees was divided between women and men. The work year was divided into two seasons — the warm and the cold. During the warm season, women grew food plants in the kitchen gardens near their houses and grew corn in the larger agricultural fields. Men fished and did some hunting during the warm season. The cold season was the main times for men to hunt, while the women collected wild foods and firewood.
Besides growing the food plants, women ran the household, cooked, and made baskets and pottery. They ground corn into meal in large wooden pestles or bowls, by pounding it with a mortar.
They also cured animal skins, after the men had dressed the skins in a preliminary way. The women often smoked the hides and sometimes used natural dyes to color them yellow, red, green, blue, or black. The women then sewed the skins into clothing, using an awl and sinew like a needle and thread.
Cloth for clothing was also made by the women. They wove, twined, and plaited plant and animal fibers with their fingers into pouches and sashes. On an upright loom ‘with suspended threads they Wove capes, called mantles, of buffalo, rabbit, or opossum hair or the fiber from plants such as nettle, hemp, mulberry, or cane.
Sometimes they made a very light and warm cape by first weaving a net cloth, then attaching to the net small turkey, swan, or duck feathers.
Children helped the women collect wild vegetables, berries, fruits, nuts, and seeds. There were some wild foods available every season of the year. Little girls also helped with housework, tended the gardens, and learned to make pottery and baskets.
Boys learned to hunt by going hunting with the men. Boys liked to compete in bow-and-arrow shooting contests and in foot races. They learned to play “chunkey,” a game based on throwing spears at a rolling, wheel-shaped stone. When they were older, they played a ball game that was an important part of town life.
