If you look it up, you will find that there have been somewhere in the range of 40 treaties between the Cherokee nation and the U.S. government (or the British government that preceded it). Two of these treaties have made their way into the new Tennessee social studies curriculum.
One is the Treaty of New Echota — the infamous 1835 treaty that started the “Indian Removal” now commonly referred to as the Trail of Tears.
The other is the Treaty of the Holston, which was signed in 1791 at the present-day site of Knoxville. Although this treaty and the negotiations behind it were not major turning points in the history of the United States or the Cherokee people, there are things about it that left an impression on Tennessee.
First of all, the Treaty of the Holston came during a rather complicated period of history on the frontier. It occurred after the American Revolution and the failed attempt to form the state of Franklin but before Tennessee became a state. This period (between 1790 and 1796) was the era of the “Territory South of the Ohio River,” also known as the Southwest Territory.
This was a transition time in Tennessee history, to say the least. People who lived in the present-day location of Tennessee had gone from being British subjects to revolutionaries to citizens of North Carolina to residents of the state of Franklin to residents of the Southwest Territory — all in about 16 years.
By 1790, fighting was frequent between Cherokee warriors and settlers in East Tennessee and the new settlements of Middle Tennessee. Part of the problem was that no one was sure where Cherokee land began and ended. To make the situation even more confusing, the appointed leader of the Southwest Territory was an outsider from North Carolina named William Blount rather than the popular John Sevier.
When he first got to the Southwest Territory, Blount resided at Rocky Mount, a private home in present-day Sullivan County. Meanwhile, there was a fort known as White’s Fort 60 miles southwest of there, along the large river known as the Holston (today we refer to this body of water as the Tennessee River).
White’s Fort seemed like a good, central location for a treaty negotiation. Blount invited Cherokee leaders to join him there in June 1791. According to historian Betsy Creekmore, the event was quite a sight:
“He (Blount) ordered built on the bank of First Creek an elaborate pavilion where he himself would sit. He wore for the occasion his finest uniform trimmed with gold lace, and he insisted that members of his party and the settlers from White’s Fort who attended the meeting should be dressed in their showiest and best clothes to represent the power and importance of the United States. Twelve hundred Cherokee arrived for the meeting, and William Blount had been right. They were impressed with the pavilion, and the bunting, and the gold lace of the governor’s party. But they were no more impressed than were the whites at the sight of the Cherokee chieftains, tall and straight and wearing every bit of finery they possessed.”
After several days of ceremony and negotiation, the Treaty of the Holston was signed on July 2, 1791.
So what were some of its terms?
The treaty stated that “there shall be perpetual peace and friendship between the citizens of the United States of America and the individuals comprising the whole Cherokee nation of Indians.”
Under the treaty, the United States government paid the Cherokee nation $1,000 per year (a lot more money then than it is now). This amount was later raised to $1,500.
Under the treaty, the present-day site of Kingston became the southwest boundary of the continental United States. (Because of this boundary, the U.S. army fort at that location would later be known as Fort Southwest Point.)
The Cherokee agreed to let boats navigate the Tennessee River and allowed for the creation and use of a road across the Cumberland Plateau. This road would later start at Fort Southwest Point and work its way across the plateau, crossing the Cumberland River at another fort known as Fort Blount (near present-day Gainesboro).
The treaty was very clear about Cherokees’ right to their own land. “If any citizen of the United States, or other person not being an Indian, shall settle on any of the Cherokees’ lands, such person shall forfeit the protection of the United States, and the Cherokees may punish him or not, as they please,” it stated.
Perhaps the most important part of the treaty is where the Cherokee nation agreed to move toward farming and settled life and away from “remaining in a state of hunters” — a “civilization” program that had been suggested by President George Washington.
So was the Treaty of the Holston a success?
Absolutely not. Within a matter of months, practically every one of the terms of the treaty was broken. Soon the Cherokee were reporting that American citizens were settling and hunting on their land, and Americans were reporting numerous acts of violence against them on land or on passageways guaranteed to them by the treaty.
It should also be pointed out that not every Cherokee leader agreed to the Treaty of the Holston. Notably absent from the negotiations was Dragging Canoe, leader of the warlike branch of the Cherokee known as the Chickamaugans.
In 1795, only four years after the Treaty of the Holston, volunteer soldiers from East and Middle Tennessee took part in the Nickajack Expedition against these very Chickamaugans. Soldiers eliminated every warrior they could find in villages such as Nickajack and Running Water. By 1798, it was time for another big treaty, today known as the First Treaty of Tellico.
There is, however, one long-term result of the Treaty of the Holston. During the negotiations, Blount decided that White’s Fort was a better place for a center of government than Rocky Mount. The capital of the Southwest Territory was moved to the community around White’s Fort, which Blount named for his immediate superior, Secretary of War Henry Knox. Thus the city of Knoxville was created along the banks of the Holston.
What many people today don’t realize is that the name of the river in Knoxville remained the Holston for quite a long time. It wasn’t until a federal statute in 1890 declared that the start of the Tennessee River was, in fact, where the French Broad and Holston rivers merge. It was only then that the city of Knoxville was officially located on the Tennessee River.
Go to tnhistoryforkids.org to learn more tales of Tennessee history.
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Dragging Canoe not only attended the Treaty of Holston and signed it under his other name Cheakoneske (Otter Lifter) in 1791, he wrote a letter with Little Turkey and Hanging Maw to Governor Samuel Johnson of North Carolina on March 10, 1789 to negotiate the location where it would be held. That original letter is held in the Greer Collection of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and is signed by him last. He had more than one name that he used at different times. Cheucunsene (Canoe Dragger) was one of those names. Another was Cheakoneske (Otter Lifter). There are many misconceptions about this man. The biggest misconception is that he died on March 1, 1792. He was alive and well at the age of 84 in 1816 when he met with President James Madison at the Treaty of Washington which he signed last after the young John Ross. He used his name Cheucunsene (Canoe Dragger). The Chickamauga Chiefs all made peace with America at the Treaty of Holston and Dragging Canoe stepped aside in 1792 at age 60 because he founded the Chickamauga in 1775 when he declared war on the Americans at the Treaty of Sycamore Shoals when Americans began invading Cherokee and Shawnee lands under the pretense of a Revolution. With the Chickamauga War officially over he saw no reason to be a War Chief. It also was customary for a War Chief to step aside at age 60 and allow a younger protege to take over, serving as an advisor.
He chose his protege John Watts (Little Turkey) to take his place and in 1792. Cheucunsene (Dragging Canoe) was set to meet with President George Washington in Philadelphia in June of 1793 under his name Cheakoneske (Otter Lifter) alongside Hanging Maw, Doublehead, and others but an officer named Beard ambushed the Cherokee in retaliation for a Shawnee attack that had no connection to the Cherokee. The man responsible got off because he was friends with Colonel John Sevier who many in Tennessee today seem to think was a heroic figure (he was actually an outlaw, rapist, and murderer of both women and children). John Watts / Little Turkey declared war on the Americans because the Americans allowed Beard and others to go unpunished after they killed 9 Cherokee and wounded numerous others, including a daughter of Nancy Ward who was the Beloved Woman. When the war ended Dragging Canoe met with Governor Blount on October 11, 1794. The Glass, John Watts, Bloody Fellow, Hanging Maw, and others were with him. Cheucunsene (Dragging Canoe) was still alive and met with Colonel William Whitley. Colonel Whitley had taken Cherokee women and children captive and kept them in Kentucky. One of them was a daughter of Cheucunsene (Dragginng Canoe) named Amasvyi Consene (Waters Mixed Dragger). She later married a man named Thomas Chandler and took the name Amasa Chandler. Colonel Whitley took several of the captives to Willstown to exchange them with Dragging Canoe under his name Otter Lifter in 1795. He intentionally left Amasvyi with a minister and his wife in Surrey, North Carolina because he knew she was worth more than one returned slave.
In “Old Frontiers” by John P. Brown on page 446 there is an account provided of this exchange. Colonel Whitley refused to return her if all of his slaves captured weren’t exchanged for Cherokee he brought with him first. A mixed race Black-Cherokee lieutenant warrior named John Taylor refused returning two black women who had taken as wives. He said, “You cannot have them!” and threatened to take his scalp if he tried to take the women from him. Other warriors gathered and Colonel Whitley started talking tough. Dragging Canoe, as Otter Lifter, basically told him that he should calm down or he would be killed. Dragging Canoe called on John Watts (Little Turkey) to resolve the issue and John Watts informed John Taylor that he couldn’t keep the women because Colonel Whitley had Dragging Canoe’s six year old daughter and wouldn’t return her unless he retrieved his “property” first. John Taylor knew that Dragging Canoe would kill him if he was the reason Dragging Canoe didn’t get his daughter back so he returned them to Colonel Whitley.
I know in Tennessee men like John Sevier and Daniel Boone are viewed as heroes and men like Dragging Canoe were considered villains, but what the Americans call the “Revolution” the Shawnee and Cherokee viewed as an conspiracy to invade lands that King George III forbid them from settling on. As long as they answered to King George III they had to remain east of the Appalachian Mountains. Virginia banking firms saw money to be made through land speculators like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Richard Henderson. They organized the revolution not for some ideals of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” They did it for profit. The law firm of Isaiah Isaacs and Jacob Cohen in Virginia played an enormous role in the conspiracy. A man named Haym Salomon who worked for Mayer Rothschild as a proxy and financed the entire American Revolution himself. That’s why the East India Trading Company Flag became the United States of America Flag.
Here is a link to the 1789 letter Dragging Canoe wrote and signed last. This was the letter that actually made the Treaty of Holston possible in 1791: http://wardepartmentpapers.org/images/large/1789/NCU16_2.jpg