Patriots & Indians: Shaping Identity in Eighteenth-Century South Carolina

By Jeff W. Dennis

“Dennis shows, lucidly and vividly, how white South Carolinians and Natives struggled with each other through the Revolutionary era . . . a sparkling read.” —Walter Nugent, author of Habits of Empire

Patriots and Indians examines relationships between elite South Carolinians and Native Americans through the colonial, Revolutionary, and early national periods. Eighteenth-century South Carolinians interacted with Indians in business and diplomatic affairs—as enemies and allies during times of war and less frequently in matters of scientific, religious, or sexual interest. Jeff W. Dennis elaborates on these connections and their seminal effects on the American Revolution and the establishment of the state of South Carolina.

Dennis illuminates how southern Indians and South Carolinians contributed to and gained from the intercultural relationship, which subsequently influenced the careers, politics, and perspectives of leading South Carolina patriots and informed Indian policy during the Revolution and early republic. In eighteenth-century South Carolina, what it meant to be a person of European American, Native American, or African American heritage changed dramatically. People lived in transition; they were required to find solutions to an expanding array of sociocultural, economic, and political challenges. Ultimately their creative adaptations transformed how they viewed themselves and others.

“In this meticulously researched volume, Jeff Dennis focuses on the Cherokee and South Carolinians to explore the complex relations between Indians and colonists in the Revolutionary era. Dennis provides a valuable new perspective on America’s founders, identifying a clear link between Revolutionary radicalism and animosity toward Indians that shaped national policy long after the Revolution.” —James Piecuch, author of Three Peoples, One King

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: May 15, 2017
• ISBN: 9781611177572

Book preview

Patriots & Indians

Patriots & Indians

SHAPING IDENTITY IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY SOUTH CAROLINA

Jeff W. Dennis

THE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA PRESS

© 2017 University of South Carolina

Published by the University of South Carolina Press

Columbia, South Carolina 29208

www.sc.edu/uscpress

25  24  23  22  21  20  19  18  17

10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

can be found at http://catalog.loc.gov/

ISBN 978-1-61117-756-5 (cloth)

ISBN 978-1-61117-757-2 (ebook)

Front cover illustration: © Matt Maniscalco

For Tasha and Chloe,

the two greatest blessings in my life

The objects of these murders & massacres were on harmless, peaceable, and almost defenseless people, circumstances which give them a just claim to the compassion of every humane & noble mind, & it is unworthy of American Valor.

Andrew Pickens and fellow South Carolina justices denouncing actions taken against the Cherokees in eastern Tennessee, Justices of Abbeville County, July 1788

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction

One

Beyond the Mountains and Over the Sea: A Tour of Cultures with Thomas Sumter and Ostenaco

Two

The Cherokee War of 1759–61 and the Philopatrios-Philolethes Debate

Three

Alienation: Indians, Britons, and Carolinians, 1763–75

Four

The British and Indian War: The American Revolution in South Carolina

Five

A Backcountry George Washington: Andrew Pickens and Southern Indian Policy in the Early Republic

Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

Index

ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS

Indian Peoples of the Southeast

Green Corn Dance, Hidatsa

Choctaw Belle

Tul-lock-chish-ko, Drinks the Juice of

the Stone, in Ball-player’s Dress

A Draught of the Cherokee Country

Ostenaco’s Farewell Address

View of St. James’s Palace

Skyacust Ukah

Cunne Shote, Cherokee Chief

William Moultrie

Francis Marion at the 1761 Battle of Etchoe

Christopher Gadsden

Henry Laurens

His Most Sacred Majesty, George III

Cantonment of His Majesty’s Forces in North America

A View of Charles-Town, the Capital of South Carolina

A General Map of the South British Colonies in America

The Cherokees Are Coming

The Militia under General Pickens Defeating the Indians

John Rutledge

William Henry Drayton

"A Map Shewing the Marches of the

Army of Col. Andrew Williamson"

Thomas Sumter

General Andrew Pickens

Hopothle Mico, the Talasee King

The Cherokee Country

The Plan of Civilization

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Each of us is an individual by committee. We look upon the contributions and ideas of many people whenever we view the work of any one person. That principle certainly holds true in any larger effort towards scholarship. This book could not have been completed without the expertise and kindness provided by others. It is with deep and sincere gratitude that I wish to acknowledge the following people.

To begin, this book originated during studies conducted at the University of Notre Dame under advisor Gregory Evans Dowd. Notre Dame provided generous fellowships for research, teaching, and travel. Professor Dowd is an exemplary professional, scholar, and mentor. He encouraged me greatly and helped me throughout the initial process of research and writing. Thank you, Greg. Thanks also to Professors Walter T. K. Nugent and Wilson D. Miscamble, C.S.C. of Notre Dame for their thoughtfulness and intellectual support.

For the book’s final completion, I am most indebted to Charles Baxley, Director for the Southern Campaigns of the American Revolution. This manuscript would not have been achieved without his inspiration and untiring efforts on my behalf. Charles is an amazing friend and facilitator, and the Southern Campaigns is a model of historical vigor and investigation. My special thanks also go to co-director David Reuwer, as well as Barbara Abernethy, John Allison, Bill Anderson, Greg Brooking, Will Graves, Nancy Lindroth, Jack Parker, Jim Piecuch, Tom Powers, Ben Rubin, John Robertson, Steve Rauch, Bobby Ross, Mike Scoggins, Christine Swaeger, Daniel Tortora, Bob Yankle, and other Campaigns contributors.

I am grateful to all of the curators and archivists who assisted at the research institutions consulted during the creation of this book, particularly those who serve at the Charleston Library Society, the South Carolina Historical Society, the Caroliniana and Thomas Cooper libraries at USC, and the South Carolina Department of Archives and History. Special thanks to Alex Moore of USC Press for his encouragement and sound judgment as well as to Linda Fogle and Bill Adams for their helpful assistance in processing the manuscript.

Andrew Goulston and my niece Barbara Dennis assisted in digitizing images while Matt Maniscalco created a variety of skillful artistic works for the book. Will Tomory of Southwestern Michigan College perused the whole of the text, lending his impressive skills as a wordsmith and editor. Thank you so much Will for your assistance. Thanks also to my brother Greg Dennis for his suggestions in proofreading.

Finally, I wish to acknowledge those individuals who hearten me to strive towards the better than the lesser self. In this regard, I recognize my parents, Janice and Robert; my brothers Randy, Terry, Greg, Don, Brian, and their families; my spiritual mentors and most trusted confidants, Dan Heintz, Dale and Betty Duvall, Lois Johnson, Albert and Joyce Fritz, Dan and Linda Ferguson, Paul, Lois and Ken Fox; and my family in Kentucky, the Roarks and Harry Sigler. I especially am thankful for my wife Tasha and daughter Chloe, who cheer and inspire every day.

Introduction

The American founding was a collective enterprise with multiple players who harbored fundamentally different beliefs about what the American Revolution meant … The American founding was, and still is, a group portrait.

Joseph Ellis, American Creation, 16–17

I

Writing in 1988, historian James Axtell stressed how "it is taking us painfully long to realize that throughout most of American history the Indians were ‘one of the principal determinants of human events.’ It is insufficient, Axtell cautioned, to tell parallel stories of American development and Native American decline. Scholars should seek instead to understand the mutual history of continuous interaction and influence" shared by these peoples.¹

Axtell’s admonition appears especially relevant concerning colonial America and the formative years of the United States. The founding of America, Joseph Ellis writes, was a collective enterprise with multiple players who harbored fundamentally different beliefs about what the American Revolution meant … The American founding was, and still is, a group portrait.²

The effort to comprehend America’s birth as a pluralizing, integrative enterprise represents more than ingenious novelty. It is centerpiece to accurately knowing the story. In Three Peoples, One King, for example, Jim Piecuch offers helpful explication on the contributions of Loyalists, Indians, and slaves in the southern Revolution. Piecuch shows that the British effort failed not because these peoples lacked courage or virtue, but largely due to relentless, often brutal repression by the rebels. Nevertheless, following the Patriot perspective, generations of American historians have tended to overlook or malign the British-aligned solely because they pursued a different dream for America’s future.³

Thankfully, since the 1980s, a variety of thoughtful works have been published that explore the multiracial and multicultural identity of the founding era.⁴ In particular, Richard White’s Middle Ground brilliantly prepared colonial history,⁵ while scholars such as Edward Countryman, Gregory Dowd, and Alfred Young worked to extend new syntheses to the Revolution and early republic.⁶

Much work remains of course. Little has been undertaken, for instance, to explore the personal relationships between Indians and the American Revolutionary elite. Referencing the middle ground experiences of such luminaries as George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson, Richard White remarks, That so many names significant in the larger American history occur in this story without dominating it indicates that parameters of American history need readjusting. Colonial and early-American historians have made Indians marginal to the periods they describe. They have treated them as curiosities in a world that Indians also helped create.⁷

The founding fathers were of prime importance in the struggle for independence, a truly remarkable group of leaders.⁸ Understanding their interactions with others—and perhaps no people seemed more other than Indians—may reveal a great deal about the meaning and boundaries of the American Revolution. Whether as enemies or allies, James Axtell suggests, Native Americans did more to ‘Americanize’ British subjects, than any other human factor:⁹ Without the steady impress of Indian culture, the colonists would not have been ready for revolution in 1776, because they would not have been or felt sufficiently Americanized to stand before the world as an independent nation. The Indian presence precipitated the formation of an American identity.¹⁰

On the eve of the American Revolution, at least 150,000 Eastern Woodland Indians still resided in North America in spite of the disease, war, and dislocation introduced through colonial expansion. Native Americans were present throughout the thirteen colonies. They were a visible and integral part of colonial life.¹¹ All of the founding fathers personally observed and met with Indians. In many instances, this intercultural experience was considerable and influential. Indeed, the full story of American Revolutionaries and Native Americans is too rich and multifarious to examine comprehensively in one text. This book offers only a beginning, with primary investigation given to the relationships between Indians and the founding fathers of the Lower South, particularly South Carolina.

South Carolina was the colony most proximate to the greatest numbers of Indians at the time of the American Revolution. Catawbas, Cherokees, and Creeks resided along its borders; Chickasaws and Choctaws often visited the province as well. Native peoples deeply affected colonial South Carolina’s strategic, economic, and social development.¹² Each of the colony’s leading Patriots had substantial interaction with Indians. Without that experience, Thomas Sumter, Francis Marion, and Andrew Pickens almost certainly would be unknown today; William Henry Drayton may well have remained a Loyalist; and Henry Laurens, Christopher Gadsden, and William Moultrie might not have achieved the status or skills they needed to help guide their state and nation through the Revolution.

South Carolina served as a vital theater in the birth of American independence. The successful defense of Charles Town¹³ in June 1776 helped preserve the Revolution at a critical time early in the war. Effective partisan campaigning in 1780–81 combined with key Patriot victories at King’s Mountain and Cowpens to drive General Charles Cornwallis towards final surrender at Yorktown. In addition, elite South Carolinians numbered among America’s leading statesmen. Christopher Gadsden starred at the Stamp Act Congress. Henry Laurens chaired the Continental Congress. John Rutledge and Charles Pinckney III contributed important ideas and leadership at the Constitutional Convention.¹⁴

II

The relationships between leading South Carolina Revolutionaries and Native Americans represent a noteworthy chapter within the American creation story. Throughout the thirteen colonies and even across the Appalachians, each region and each American people played a meaningful role in the shaping of the Revolution. As Edward Countryman reminds us, none of these stories reveals its full sense unless we see it in reference to the others.¹⁵ With this in mind, it would appear helpful to provide some comparative context by region as preface to discussion of experiences in the Lower South. Following is a brief account of relationships between prominent Revolutionaries and Indians in New England, the Mid-Atlantic, and the Chesapeake.

Compared to other colonists, New England Revolutionaries generally were those least engaged with Indians. Yankee maritime emphasis, and perhaps Puritan disdain for wilderness, worked to limit opportunities for cultural exchange. Wars and the gradual extension of colonial settlement reduced the Native population of present-day Massachusetts to only a few hundred people by the time of the Revolution. Still, Indians remained in New England and they managed to preserve many aspects of Native culture.¹⁶

John Adams ranked as the leading New England founding father. He supped and shared the calumet with headmen on several occasions. Following one such ceremonial dinner, he wrote: "It was a Savage feast, carnivorous Animals devouring their Pray [sic]. Yet they were wondrous polite … they made me many Bows, and a cordial Reception. The future Second President never became much of an ethnographer. Commenting on the meeting above, he further noted how Louis, their Principal, speaks English and french as well as Indian."¹⁷

Other New England Patriots also knew Native Americans. Israel Putnam nearly was killed by them during the Seven Years’ War. Roger Sherman was a supporter of Eleazar Wheelock’s Indian mission in New Hampshire. Benjamin Lincoln negotiated for land with the Penobscots of Maine.¹⁸ Nevertheless, only two leading New England Patriots, Henry Knox and Timothy Pickering, engaged quite regularly with Indians, and their experiences came primarily as federal officials after the Revolution. Knox, who served as Washington’s first Secretary of War, emerged as the prime architect for Federalist civilization policy. He urged that Native peoples be assimilated and not evacuated or eliminated. Integrity and fairness should mark American relations, Knox insisted, and Indian lands must be purchased honorably, not taken by swindle or conquest.¹⁹ Pickering knew little of Indians before Washington appointed him as a special emissary to the Seneca in 1790. Thereupon, he became a trusted friend of the Iroquois. Pickering succeeded Knox as Secretary of War late in 1794. A most comprehensive and vigorous advocate for philanthropy, he continued to manage Indian affairs through the Adams administration.²⁰

New England was the region with the least Native contact, yet it also was the place where Patriots most frequently used Indians as icons for independence. An Indian weathervane topped the cupola of Boston’s Province House. An Indian princess regularly appeared in the patriotic engravings of Paul Revere. Maine frontier settlers cloaked themselves in Indian garb while resisting proprietors. And, of course, at least some members of Sam Adams’ and John Hancock’s Sons of Liberty dressed as Indians at the Boston Tea Party. Especially in Boston, where Natives had become something of a rarity, colonists could imagine and image Indians easier than actually knowing them.²¹

Native peoples were more numerous and played a greater role in the economic and political life of the mid-Atlantic colonies. Several Revolutionaries here had extensive experiences with Native Americans. William Livingston spent a year at age fourteen working with a missionary to the Mohawk. Charles Lee married a Seneca woman, a very great beauty he met during the Seven Years’ War. Lee lived for a time among the Iroquois, who adopted and named him Ounewaterika, meaning boiling water. Charles Thomson also was adopted by Indians. The Delaware (Lenape) people called him Weghwulawmoeng, meaning Man who speaks the Truth. During the Seven Years’ War, Thomson served as a scribe for the headman Teedyuscung, and in 1759 he published a sympathetic Enquiry into the Causes of Alienation of the Delaware and Shawanese Indians. Following the Revolution, Thomson contributed heavily to Jefferson’s intellectual defense of American aboriginals in Notes on the State of Virginia.²²

Benjamin Franklin, of course, ranked as the most prominent mid-Atlantic Patriot. Scientist, publisher, and skilled statesman, Franklin occasionally claimed some philosophic pleasure taken from Native Americans. More commonly he used them for political purposes. This especially was the case during the 1750s and 1760s when he worked to discredit and remove the Penn proprietorship. Franklin served as a commissioner to the Carlisle conference with northern and Ohio Indian nations in 1753. His 1754 Albany Plan of Union pointedly referenced Native alliance. Franklin once cited the Iroquois confederation in this context: "It would be a very strange Thing, if Six Nations of ignorant Savages should be capable of forming a Scheme for such an Union … and yet that a like Union should be impracticable for ten or a Dozen English Colonies."²³

During 1755, as war developed in the Ohio country, it was Franklin who arranged for many of the wagons and horses that General Edward Braddock needed for his campaign. Following Braddock’s defeat, Franklin personally went west to help restore order; stockades were built and bounties offered on enemy warrior scalps. During 1763, the Ottawa headman Pontiac helped inspire new Indian warfare against the English. Angered by the success of his confederates, late that year a group of frontiersmen known as the Paxton Boys murdered twenty innocent Moravian Indians. They would have killed many more had Franklin not prepared defenses and persuaded them to quit their march upon Philadelphia.²⁴

In truth, Franklin was more interested in Indian lands than in Indian peoples. He was a leading partner in the Vandalia company which sought title to twenty million acres of trans-Appalachian territory.²⁵ Western lands were a favorite investment of many members of the mid-Atlantic elite. The land rush peaked after the Revolution when the United States gained title to the Northwest. James Wilson invested and lost most of his fortune in western acquisitions. George Clinton’s post-war friendship with Iroquois spokesman Joseph Brant helped smooth over several dubious land deals. Pennsylvania’s Robert Morris was the biggest land-grabber. Through his North American Land Company, he purchased an enormous tract of land south of Lake Ontario for $1/3 million. Morris personally parleyed with the Seneca leader Cornplanter as well as other Iroquois headmen. After the speculative bubble burst during the 1790s, however, the only acreage left for the famed Financier of the Revolution was a small plot in the Philadelphia debtor’s prison.²⁶

Chesapeake Revolutionaries too were enamored with Indian lands—so much so, Woody Holton maintains, that imperial efforts to limit and regulate colonial expansion helped push many elite Virginians to declare for independence. George Washington, George Mason, Arthur and Richard Henry Lee, Patrick Henry, and Thomas Jefferson all were principals in western land companies. Only a few hundred Indians yet resided in the Chesapeake at the time of the Revolution. Even so, Virginia founders were keenly interested in the transmontane west and occasionally travelled there, while Indians from many nations frequented Williamsburg. Virginia Patriots had considerable interaction with Native Americans.²⁷

No leading Revolutionary engaged in a more extensive array of western experiences than George Washington. Take away his services during the Seven Years’ War and his encounters with Native Americans, and in all likelihood, Washington never would have emerged as the Revolution’s indispensable man. At Fort Necessity and before Fort Duquesne, Washington early and painfully learned to respect the skill of Indian warriors. Surviving Braddock’s defeat, he was appointed command over the Virginia frontier. Washington knew his troops were no match for enemy Indians and he promptly advocated for hiring Native allies. As the young colonel assured Lieutenant Governor Robert Dinwiddie, such auxiliaries would be worth more than twice their number of white men.²⁸

In 1770, Washington returned to the Ohio country in expectation of receiving a large land bounty in reward for his Seven Years’ War service. Keeping an eye out for the best lands, he revisited old battle sites and met again with warriors familiar from his days as a frontier officer. Among other holdings, Washington eventually acquired title to 30,000 acres along the Kanawha River upon which he planned to raise buffalo beef for sale to future settlers. In 1784, Washington made another trip west, in part to study the feasibility for creating an Ohio-Potomac waterway; he cut this journey short after noting a general dissatisfaction of the Indians with white intruders north of the Ohio.²⁹

Many Native Americans knew Washington as Conotocarious, meaning town-devourer or town-taker. The Continental commander-in-chief certainly merited this appellation during 1779 when he dispatched thousands of Continental troops to destroy Iroquois crops and villages. As president, Washington would authorize a similar town-razing tour of Ohio Indian towns. These episodes were war-time measures, nonetheless. Washington did not relish harming Indians. He insisted that the poor wretches be treated with honesty and benevolence. In harmony with his Secretary of War Henry Knox, Washington supported an ambitious agenda to civilize and gradually transform Native peoples into American citizens.³⁰

Thomas Jefferson eagerly expanded Washington’s civilizing factory system—but he warped its original purpose. The Third President, in fact, became the prime strategist for Indian removal policy. Although stopping short of outright coercion, he instructed federal officials to deceive, bribe and threaten headmen into removing their peoples beyond the Mississippi. During Jefferson’s administration, civilization primarily came to mean pacification in anticipation of removal. Indians who chose not to pacify would be shown little patience. Eventually their land rights—and even perhaps their nation—would be extinguished.³¹

Jefferson, as Joseph Ellis characterizes him, was an American Sphinx. This especially appears true when considering his experiences with African and Native American peoples. In regard to the latter, no founding father was more intrigued with Native languages, histories and customs than Thomas Jefferson. He transcribed Indian dialects and excavated Indian burial mounds. He refuted the Comte de Buffon’s claim that American aborigines were inferior to Old World peoples. He organized the Lewis and Clark Expedition and proudly displayed Indian artifacts within Monticello’s entry hall. Regardless, Jefferson’s philosophic reverence for the Indian failed to translate into policies beneficial for real Native peoples. Jefferson’s first political priority seemed always to satisfy his land-hungry southern and western yeoman constituency.³²

Patrick Henry was another famous Virginia Patriot who had substantial dealings with Native Americans. An avid speculator, he completed an extensive trip down the Holston River in 1768 to spy out Indian lands. Henry helped engineer extensive Cherokee land cessions as Virginia’s governor during the Revolution. He paid several Cherokee headmen due regard at Williamsburg, even while privately expressing relief that these Indians will not … remain here but a short Time. During 1778, Henry secretly authorized George Rogers Clark’s expedition into the Illinois country, hoping to claim that vast region as Virginia’s own. He was governor again in 1786 when news arrived that his brother-in-law, Colonel William Christian, had been killed by Indians in Ohio. Henry responded promptly by authorizing a retaliatory town-burning strike.³³

The fiery Revolutionary had another side, though. During the 1780s and 1790s, Henry enthusiastically supported the civilization and christianizing of the Indians, an object so desireable, and so truly great, as deeply to interest the feelings of every good American and good man. Henry even proposed a bill to subsidize intermarriage between frontier whites and Native Americans with the children of these unions to receive full citizenship at birth.³⁴

Father of the Constitution James Madison engaged with Indians for personal profit as well as in public service. In 1784, he accompanied the Marquis de Lafayette to observe the treaty at Fort Stanwix. They met with the Oneida headman Grasshopper whom Madison had known during the Revolution. The Americans broke out five kegs of brandy and an all-night celebration ensued. These libations were intended to help smooth over negotiations for land. Sure enough, the following year Madison and his partner James Monroe arranged a purchase of nearly 1000 acres along the Mohawk Valley. Madison eventually netted more than $3000 from this speculative deal and used the profits to remodel his home at Montpelier.³⁵

As Jefferson’s secretary of state and subsequently as president himself, Madison genuinely seemed to enjoy hosting the many headmen who visited Washington. He was more bipartisan than Jefferson, once supporting a Federalist plan for a national society of officials, professors, and ministers who would work to bring civilization to the Indians. Even so, the Fourth President consented to Andrew Jackson’s brutal warfare against the Creeks as well as William Henry Harrison’s destruction of Native villages during the War of 1812.³⁶

Within each of the three regions described above, Revolutionaries knew and interacted with Native Americans. In the case of New England, contact tended to be peripheral although Bostonians regularly used Indians as their symbol for independence. Leading mid-Atlantic and Chesapeake Patriots pursued more extensive experiences with Indians, being particularly interested in their lands. From Maine to Virginia, Native Americans played a significant part in the formation of American identity. To follow Axtell’s line of argument, without Indians there may have been no Sons of Liberty and no Boston Tea Party. Without Indians there would have been no Albany Plan for Union and no French and Indian War. Without Indians there would have been fewer forced founders and no George Washington as the Continental commander-in-chief.³⁷

III

An interesting trend appears upon review of the interaction between Native Americans and leading New England, mid-Atlantic, and Chesapeake Patriots. In general, more conservative Revolutionaries such as Washington, Adams, and Knox displayed greater tolerance towards Indians than radical Revolutionaries such as Jefferson, George Clinton, and Arthur Lee.³⁸ Centrist Revolutionaries, including Franklin and Madison, usually treated Indians better than the radicals but with less patience than the conservatives.

Relationships between the South Carolina founders and Native Americans demonstrate a similar pattern. Here radical leaders such as Christopher Gadsden and William Henry Drayton called for the total destruction or exile of Indian communities, while conservative spokesmen such as Henry Laurens and John Rutledge acted with more forbearance and sought to limit bloodshed.³⁹

This correlation reflects the importance of Indians in the creation of American identity. The relationship might even serve as a type of gauge helping to indicate a particular founder’s ideological orientation. In brief, Revolutionaries who sought a more complete, radical break from the imperial order more eagerly used Indians as an anvil against which they pounded out their new collective self. Native peoples certainly were not the only others of the Revolutionary world. They were, however, non-white, non-Christian, non-slave allies of Britain who inhabited many millions of acres of highly arable land. For radical leaders, as well as for most frontier whites, Indians served as a defining enemy in the American Revolution.⁴⁰

Experiences with Native Americans afforded South Carolinians essential practical as well as psychological training in self-sufficiency. Through enlistment in Indian warfare, engagement in Indian trade and diplomacy, and commitment to speculation in Indian lands, many South Carolinians came to think and to act independently of Great Britain. When the Revolution did come, it came with great violence in the Lower South, and much of this was directed against Native peoples. Following independence, some southern leaders such as Andrew Pickens imagined an American identity broad and honorable enough to include Indians. By the early nineteenth century, however, most policymakers had decided upon a more radical approach, that of excising the southeastern nations.

One

Beyond the Mountains and Over the Sea

A TOUR OF CULTURES WITH THOMAS SUMTER AND OSTENACO

God is the maker of white & red People, and we are all his Children … there is no difference between them and Us; we are both alike; the Blood flows in their Veins as in Ours; & we have mutually the same passions and desires.

Ostenaco, Cherokee headman, address to British Indian superintendent John Stuart, October 20, 1765

I

In November 1761, Thomas Sumter, a young Virginia militia sergeant, joined Lieutenant Henry Timberlake on a mission to help restore peace with the Overhill Cherokees of eastern Tennessee. Sumter and Timberlake lodged that winter with the Indians. The following spring they accompanied a band of Cherokees to Williamsburg. There it was decided that the two Virginians would sail for England with the Second Warrior Ostenaco and two other headmen, Cunne Shote (Standing Turkey) and Woyi (the Pigeon). At London in the summer of 1762, the five men were wined and dined, beset by onlookers, and given an appearance at the Court of St. James’s. That August, Sumter escorted the three Cherokees back across the Atlantic, as Timberlake remained behind in England. The party landed and stayed several weeks at Charles Town, South Carolina, before traveling back to the Overhill Cherokee villages. Wintering for a second time with the Cherokees, Sumter grasped the occasion to capture a French-Canadian agent, the Baron de Jonnes.

The Timberlake expedition gave Thomas Sumter a firsthand view of Native American life probably unsurpassed by any other leading Patriot of the Revolution. The exposure that he and Ostenaco were afforded to one another’s culture, and especially to imperial London, was quite extraordinary. These two leaders gained a direct view of many of the peoples and institutions located at the center as well as near the periphery of the British Atlantic world. The adventure impacted upon how they understand their own and one another’s peoples, and their relative place in the world. For Sumter, the experience brought the small measure of fame and fortune he needed to escape debt and obscurity in Virginia. Without his service in the Timberlake expedition, in all likelihood there would have been no Gamecock of Revolutionary War fame.

Thomas Sumter was born on July 14, 1734 at Preddy’s Creek, about twelve miles northeast of Charlottesville. Located deep within the Virginia piedmont, the settlement at Preddy’s appears to have embodied the rustic, rough-and-tumble type of social order found in much of the colonial Backcountry. Here adversaries often confronted one another violently through bold and decisive acts. Sumter adopted this warrior ethos early in life. He also developed a taste for blood sports such as cockfighting and foxhunting. His family owned land and he received some formal education. Nonetheless, Sumter always remained a man of martial pride and self-sufficiency. He had no patience with foolish or devious behavior. Even as an elderly person, Sumter gave a strong impression that he was a man not to be meddled with.¹

Thomas Sumter enlisted in the Virginia militia in 1756, the year after General Edward Braddock’s defeat. Sumter was assigned to Colonel George Washington’s command which had been tasked with halting the incursions of enemy warriors upon the frontier. This provincial deterrent proved insufficient, however, and during the next several years Washington requested and received hundreds of Cherokee and Catawba mercenaries. Sumter no doubt encountered Ostenaco at this time as well as Attakullakulla, the Cherokees’ leading diplomat.²

During 1758 Sumter served under Colonel William Byrd III in the Forbes campaign which finally reduced Fort Duquesne and drove the French from the upper Ohio. Promoted to sergeant, in 1760 Sumter joined other militia stationed along the Holston River at the outbreak of the Cherokee War. Neither Byrd nor his replacement Colonel Adam Stephen had much inclination to march against the Cherokees. Virginia troops remained encamped during the conflict. In the fall of 1761, Stephen helped negotiate a treaty between Virginia and the Cherokees. Upon the Indians’ request, the Colonel dispatched Lieutenant Henry Timberlake, along with interpreter John McCormack and Sergeant Thomas Sumter, to carry a copy of the treaty to the Overhill villages. On November 28, 1761, the three men left Fort Robinson at the Long Island on the Holston with about ten days of provisions