Biography

The boy who became Tsiyu Gansi-ni or “Dragging Canoe” was born around 1732 to the wife of the most prominent Cherokee leader of the time, Attakullakulla. He survived smallpox[1] and grew up in Chota, scene of many key political events for the Cherokee nation, in what then was North Carolina. Now it is under Tellico Lake in Tennessee (west of Great Smoky Mountains National Park). He earned his name as a child by hiding in a canoe to join a war party against his father’s wishes. Attakullakulla discovered him and said moving it to the river by himself was the only way he could go with them. The youngster successfully dragged it over the sand.[2] Nothing more is known of him until the Revolution. By then he was war leader of the Overhill town of Mialoquo.[3] Given his age and status, it seems likely he fought in the French & Indian War against the British.

When the Transylvania Company offered to buy 20 million acres of Cherokee homeland in 1776, Attakullkulla argued for it. Perhaps he realized there was little the nation could do to stop the European-Americans, though he later said he wanted the goods as payment for damage by colonists. But Dragging Canoe spoke against it, saying whites would not be satisfied until the Cherokees were wiped out. His father and some other leaders nonetheless signed the resulting Treaty of Sycamore Shoals. He complained to British agents that his people “were almost surrounded by the White People, that they had but a small spot of ground left for them to stand upon and that it seemed to be the Intention of the White People to destroy them from being a people.”[4]

Dragging Canoe refused to honor the treaty, and most younger warriors joined him, from 700–1,000 men. Starting in May, these and others launched attacks all along the colonial frontier. Dragging Canoe led the force that was defeated by Virginia and N.C. militia at the Battle of Long Island Flats (Tenn.), in which his thigh was badly injured. After the elders again voted for compromise in October, agreeing to betray Dragging Canoe to the militia[5], he and his followers moved southwest to Chickamauga Creek near today’s Chattanooga, Tenn. He settled at Runningwater Town, close to modern Haletown. That area became the base of the “Chickamauga Cherokees” for an 18-year campaign against white encroachment. He forged an alliance with longtime rivals the Shawnees and, after the Americans defeated the British, negotiated for supplies from the Spanish in Florida.[6] He lost the Battle of Boyd’s Creek near Knoxville in December 1780 due to betrayal by his cousin Nancy Ward. After whites massacred a group of Cherokee leaders, though, most Cherokees followed his policies.[7] In 1788, he defeated a militia force at Lookout Mountain near Chattanooga.

He encouraged Cherokee involvement in the multi-nation alliance that defeated an American army in modern Ohio in late 1791. He died the next year, around age 60, and was buried at Runningwater Town. The town and his grave now lie under Nickajack Lake.

Dragging Canoe believed he was upholding traditional Cherokee values. During one raid when several white women were captured, he killed a warrior who tried to rape one of them. He said, “No warrior should behave that way.”[8] His resistance played a major part in the survival of his people and those values.

More Information

• Bender, Albert, ‘Dragging Canoe’s War’, HistoryNet, 2017 <https://www.historynet.com/dragging-canoes-war.htm> [accessed 25 September 2020]
• Cucumber, Devin, Oconaluftee Indian Village, In-person interview, 8/27/2020
• Dean, Nadia, A Demand of Blood: The Cherokee War of 1776 (Cherokee, N.C.: Valley River Press, 2012)
• Evans, E. Raymond, ‘Notable Persons in Cherokee History: Dragging Canoe’, Journal of Cherokee Studies, 2.1 (1977)
• Museum of the Cherokee Indian, ‘Exhibits’ (Cherokee, N.C., 2020)
• Reynolds, William R., The Cherokee Struggle to Maintain Identity in the 17th and 18th Centuries (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2015)
• Rozema, Vicki, Footsteps of the Cherokee: A Guide to the Eastern Homelands of the Cherokee Nation, Second (Winston-Salem, NC: John F. Blair, Publisher, 2007)
• Stuart, Henry, ‘Letter from Henry Stuart to John Stuart, Volume 10, Pages 763-785’, Documenting the American South: Colonial and State Records of North Carolina, 1776 <https://docsouth.unc.edu/csr/index.php/document/csr10-0351> [accessed 7 November 2024]
• Wolfe, Dustin, Oconaluftee Indian Village, In-person interview, 8/27/2020

[1] Bender 2017.

[2] Museum 2020.

[3] Dean 2012.

[4] Stuart 1776.

[5] Evans 1977.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Cucumber 2020.