Chickamauga (tribe)

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The Chickamauga (also Chikamaka) are an American Indian people related to the Cherokee people. The Chickamauga Cherokee group differed from the other Cherokee in the late eighteenth century in a dispute over continued accommodation of encroachment by white settlers, despite repeated violations of treaty agreements. Dragging Canoe, their leader, declared themselves to be the real Ani Yv Wi ya, the Real Cherokee, and declared the other groups to be "Rogues and Virginians".

All the Cherokee were already resentful of white settlers after the Iroquois ceded Cherokee land in the Treaty of Fort Stanwix in 1768. In 1775, North Carolina's Richard Henderson laid claim to 27,000 square miles of Cherokee territory between the Cumberland and Kentucky rivers, claiming that Attakullakulla ("Little Carpenter") and other chiefs had sold the land for ten thousand pounds worth of trade goods. Some of the chiefs later swore that they had been deceived, but agreed to uphold the cession.

Attakullakulla's son, Dragging Canoe, broke with his father and led a group of younger warriors in an attack on squatters living on the ceded land. They caused great terror among the settlers, but being unsupported by the powerful Creek nation to their south, and cut off from British trading sources, they soon ran short of ammunition. In the summer of 1776, pusued by 6,000 militiamen, they were driven south along the Chicamauga and Tennessee rivers, where they settled and regained strength, only to be ravaged by a smallpox epidemic in 1778.

In 1778–79 when Savannah and Augusta, Georgia were captured by the British, they supplied Dragging Canoe's band with guns and ammunition, and together they were able to gain control of parts of interior South Carolina and Georgia. In 1779, Virginia launched a counterattack, destroying eleven Cherokee towns and most of their food supply. Dragging Canoe responded with punitive raids, which led to Governor Thomas Jefferson sending an expedition of seven hundred Virginians and North Carolinians against him in December, 1780. Although charged to scupulously observe the distinction between accomodationist and militant Cherokees, the force, led by Arthur Campbell and John Sevier became anxious as they approached the Chicamauga towns, and turned, instead, on the friendly Cherokee, claiming that they were wolves in sheep's clothing. They burned seventeen neutral towns and destroyed 50,000 bushels of corn, killed 29 men, most of whom offered no resistance, and took 17 prisoners.

After the Revolution, Dragging Canoe turned to the Spanish for support, attacking settlements in the Carolinas in 1784 and 1785. By the time of his death in 1792, the resistance of the Chikamaka Cherokee had led to some grudging respect from the settlers, and the Treaty of Tellico Blockhouse in 1794, while ceding yet more land, led to a period of relative peace in the 19th century.

There are disputes about what the name Chikamaka/Chickamauga means. Many historical sources document that the name means "Boiling Pot" and refers not only to a place, but also to the mood of the people who had reached the boiling point in response to their ill treatment.

Chickamauga is the anglicized spelling, but the oldest, eyewitnesses spelled it Chikamaka. These were the Moravians who lived among the people. (Source: Henry Thompson Malone's book)

Prior to Dragging Canoe, The Cherokee lived in this area and were designated as Chickamaugi Cherokee.

Another group of people has another idea for its meaning and says the name Chickamauga is a corruption of the Creek Indian word in the Muscogee language translates to Town of the War Chief. This may have been what the outsiders called them but Dragging Canoe referred to his followers as the Real Ani Yv Wi Ya, translates to The Real Cherokee.

The lands that later were used by the Chickamauga Cherokee was once the traditional location of many Creek Indian towns that came into the possession of the Cherokee Tribe after the Battle of Talliwa in 1755.

It wasn't until the 1800's that the Chickamauga Cherokee were recognized by the government as separate from the Cherokee groups (both eastern and western) as a separate Cherokee people.

Sources

Chikamaka Spelling from the book "Cherokees of the Old South a People in Transition" by Henry Thompson Malone, The University of Georgia Press Athens

Nash, Gary B. The Unknown American Revolution: The Unruly Birth of Democracy and the Struggle to Create America. Viking, 2005. ISBN 0670034207.

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