Imagine the Scene

Surrounded by Hidden Foes

The exact location of this battle has not been confirmed by archaeologists. However, a review of all eyewitness accounts, test of the mileages one offers, and the topography, suggest this cove as the best candidate for the site of an ambush on the front of the militia column.[c]

Look to the left along Wayah Road (toward Franklin).

In 1776 there is a Native American trail where the road runs today. You see Patriot militiamen make their way slowly toward you up the valley on horseback, probably in pairs side-by-side.[1] The militia wear standard backwoods clothing, not uniforms, and carry long guns, hatchets, knives, and perhaps some swords. Each pair likely stays close to the one ahead of them, because troops have found signs of Cherokees in the area. Still, the line may stretch almost two miles. As you watch, the front or “vanguard” of the army probably rides into this cove. Militiaman Arthur Fairies wrote, “‘we marched into a valley or rather a hollow, named Black Hole, surrounded by mountains on all sides only except the entrance.’”[2]

Look around the cove.

It is roughly 10:30 in the morning. Suddenly guns blaze from the woods in front of you, and men fall. “In an instant in front, in rear, on the right and the left, the warwhoop sounded,” soldier Joseph McJunkin wrote. “The warwhoop was answered by a shout of defiance, and the rifles of the Indians answered by an aim equally deadly.”[d] As far as you can see in each direction, Cherokees hidden in the trees on both sides of the valley are marked by their muzzle blasts. The militia likely dismount, take cover as best they can, and begin shooting back.

Fairies wrote, “‘the Indians were flanked all around us, and fired on our guard, and all our regiment was soon engaged, & the firing of the Indians incessant.’”

The militia find themselves shooting in all directions. You also hear a continuous din of gun reports reverberating up the valley as the rest of the army defends itself. The militia get increasingly desperate as smoke fills the area, further obscuring their attackers.

A number of the Cherokees maneuver to the lower slopes, eager for the hand-to-hand combat with war clubs preferred in their culture, because it is considered more courageous.[3] As they emerge you see they are in traditional battle dress: loin clothes and red body paint, accented by different shapes in black on the face and body—the color of death.[4] “It was not only a woodsman’s fight from tree to tree,” McJunkin says, “but often from hand to hand.”

Capt. Francis Ross, 41, finds himself in a vicious fight alongside the vanguard. A gunshot drops him with a slight but bloody head wound. Fairies wrote, “‘the Indians thought to have his scalp and… struck him with the gun in his hand, until the force of the strokes broke the butt piece; but the Captain recovering, seized the fellow and overcame him getting his scalp.’”[5]

Fierce Fighting Fizzles

Turn left on Wayah Road and drive 0.6 miles to the Lyndon B. Johnson Job Corps Training Center. Pull into the blocked off driveway on the right prior to the main entrance.

The Cherokees hide in tall grass on open parts of the hillsides. One source suggests the militia does not stop to fire initially as they charge, because reloading would be difficult on the slopes, while exposing them to the Cherokee guns.[e] An N.C. soldier heard later that the S.C. troops also fire swivel guns—tiny cannons mounted on rods—at the hidden enemy.[f]

It’s unclear where the Cherokee lines ended, but math suggests it could have been around here.[g] Regardless, the militia column stretched beyond it. Soldiers try to push up the mountainsides in both directions. Whether the warriors are driven off, or begin running out of ammunition, eventually they retire up-slope. After one or two hours, the heavy fire dies away as the warriors pull over the mountaintops.

At least four of the Cherokees remain behind dead, while an unknown number of casualties were taken away to prevent scalping by the militia. Fairies says one of the warriors “was afterward discovered to be a woman, painted and armed like a warrior.”

After the Battle

Fairies declared the battlefield, “‘A most dreadful sight to behold.’”[6] He says the Cherokees “left baggage of about two hundred of them, that is to say, blankets, moccasins, boots, some guns, matchcoats, deer-skins,” and more. The militia camped there overnight, “burying our dead and attending the sick and wounded.” Among the dead were “three or four scalped and one sadly speared and tomahawked.”

Fairies says the sick and wounded were sent back to Canucca with 100 men as guards the next day. The force Rutherford left there heard the sounds of the battle and sent 200 men this way, who presumably ran into them.[h]

The S.C. army marched on, continuing on the trail up the route now followed by Wayah Road to Wayah Gap, through “‘immense numbers of Indian camps,’” Fairies says, presumably those of their attackers.

From there they wended down through more camps the next day. On spotting a Cherokee woman, according to Fairies, a couple of men shot and wounded her. She told them that all of the Overhill men from modern Tennessee, and most of the Middle Town warriors from this side of the mountains, a total of 500–600, had been at the Black Hole. The Cherokee fighters regrouped and were awaiting them at the Nantahala River (now Lake), she said. She was badly wounded, so they killed her, supposedly as an act of mercy. The army made its way over and along the mountains to the Valley River and went south down it destroying villages over several days. Eventually it met up with Rutherford’s army east of modern Murphy before heading home.[i]

Ten days later, on Sunday the 29^th, the North Carolinians pass this way from the gap downhill as they head home. Lt. William Lenoir reported, “we marched by ware (sic) the South army fought the Battle saw the Dead Indians lying…” The militia dead were “buried in the swamps and a pole causeway made, over which we marched.”[7]

This was the last direct confrontation between massed Cherokees and militia in modern North Carolina. Raids by both sides continued for years, and more open battles occurred across the mountains.

For a wonderful view of the surrounding mountains, drive 5.2 miles uphill from the first stop to the crest at Wayah Gap, following the South Carolina army. (Around 2.9 miles, after a sharp curve left, you will see the state historical marker about this battle on the right. There is a long pullout across the road if you wish to read it.) At the gap, take the Forest Service road to the right. A 4.4-mile drive, on a sometimes bumpy dirt road, takes you to a parking lot just past the observation tower on Wayah Bald. For those with mobility issues, a patio at the tower is fully accessible using a paved trail from adjacent parking.

Battle Map

The Battle of the Black Hole: All locations except the trail route are approximate; “X” marks each tour stop. 1) S.C. militia march up trail to Wayah Gap as Cherokees await. 2) Vanguard is ambushed, becomes surrounded; hand-to-hand combat occurs. 3) Both sides fire all along the lines, and soldiers try to move up the slopes. 4) Cherokees withdraw as ammunition runs out.