Dragging Canoe

Dragging Canoe (ᏥᏳ ᎦᏅᏏᏂ, pronounced Tsiyu Gansini, c. 1738 – February 29, 1792) was a Cherokee red (or war) chief who led a band of Cherokee warriors who resisted colonists and United States settlers in the Upper South. During the American Revolution and afterward, Dragging Canoe's forces were sometimes joined by Upper Muskogee, Chickasaw, Shawnee, and Indians from other tribes, along with British Loyalists, and agents of France and Spain. The Cherokee American Wars lasted more than a decade after the end of the American Revolutionary War.

During that time, Dragging Canoe became the preeminent war leader among the Indians of the southeast. He served as war chief, or skiagusta, of the group known as the Chickamauga Cherokee (or "Lower Cherokee"), from 1777 until his death in 1792.

Tsiyu Gansini was born about 1738. Dragging Canoe was the son of Attakullakulla (Tsalagi, or "Little Carpenter")—a Nipissing head-man—and Nionne Ollie ("Tame Doe"). Many members of these two Native American groups then lived with the Cherokee and had adapted to Cherokee society. Attakullakulla, Dragging Canoe's father, was born to the Nipissing near Lake Superior. His mother had been born to the Natchez but was adopted as a daughter by Cherokee Chief Oconostota's wife.

Dragging Canoe's family lived with the Overhill Cherokee on the Little Tennessee River in what is now southeast Tennessee. He survived smallpox at a young age, which left his face marked. Dragging Canoe's brother, The Badger, also became a Cherokee chief.

According to Cherokee legend, he was given his name because of an incident in his childhood. When he wanted to join a war party moving against the Shawnee, his father said that he could accompany the war party as long as he could carry his canoe. The youth tried to prove his readiness for war but could only drag the heavy canoe.

Dragging Canoe had his first experience in actual combat during the Anglo-Cherokee War. In its aftermath, he was recognized as one of the strongest opponents to encroachment by white colonists onto Cherokee territories. Eventually, he became the headman of Mialoquo ("Great Island Town", "Amoyeli Egwa" in the Cherokee language) on the Little Tennessee River. When the Cherokee chose to ally with the British against the colonists at the onset of the Revolutionary War, Dragging Canoe was eager to fight and was assigned to be at the head of one of the major forces of the three-pronged attack which opened the war with the frontiersmen of the Overmountain settlements, with his force attacking Heaton's station in the Battle of Island Flats. Dragging Canoe barely survived the battle.

Following the colonial militias' counterattacks in late summer and fall 1776—which destroyed the Cherokee Middle, Valley, and Lower Towns in Tennessee and the Carolinas—his father and Oconostota sued for peace. Opposing his father's counsel and refusing to admit defeat, Dragging Canoe led a band of about 500 Overhill Cherokee out of the towns, and they settled further south. This occurred in early 1777. The group migrated along the Tennessee River to the area seven miles upstream from where the South Chickamauga Creek joins the Tennessee, in the vicinity of present-day Chattanooga. Thereafter, frontiersman referred to them as the "Chickamauga" because of their settlement by the creek. They established 11 towns, including one later referred to as "Old Chickamauga Town." This was across the river from the trading post of a Scotsman—who was the assistant superintendent of the British concerns in the region—John McDonald. McDonald regularly supplied the Chickamauga with guns, cannons, ammunition, and supplies to fight the American colonists.

In spring of 1779, American pioneer Evan Shelby led an expedition of frontiersmen from Virginia and North Carolina to destroy Dragging Canoe's Chickamauga towns. Shelby reported their success in a letter to Patrick Henry, saying "...[ the Chickamauga Cherokee ] are reduced to a Sense of their Duty and a Willingness to treat for peace with the united States..."