Davidson’s Fort

Rutherford Launches an Invasion

Location


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Coordinates: 35.6276, -82.1807.

Type: Sight
Tour: Cherokee
County: McDowell

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Although not proven, local tradition backed by some evidence holds that Davidson’s Fort occupied the site where the Mountain Gateway Museum is today. It is possible it was somewhere else nearby.

There is parking at the museum and across the street.

Mug with a fortifications map saying, "Wilmington 1781"

Context

Button for audio tourFrom May to July of 1776, Cherokees angered by repeated violations of a treaty blocking European-American settlements past the Eastern Continental Divide attacked whites from Virginia to South Carolina.

Situation

Cherokee

Urged to action by northern tribes and the outspoken war chief of one town, Dragging Canoe, Cherokees killed at least 40 people in North Carolina. Many Cherokees did not support their actions. They were living their normal lives in permanent towns throughout the southern Appalachians. Contrary to a fake letter circulated by white settlers, the British tried to prevent the attacks.

Militia

The overall commander of militia in the local multi-county district, Brig. Gen. Griffith Rutherford, gained permission from the North Carolina Council of Safety to retaliate by destroying Cherokee villages—whether or not they were involved in the raids. He gathered various county regiments at Quaker Meadows (modern Morganton) and marched this way.

Date

Saturday, September 1, 1776.

Timeline

Girl in a white tee shirt with a picture and list of patriot women

Imagine the Scene

Preparing to Invade

Walk into the right side yard of the museum (when facing the back), toward Catawba Avenue, until you can see the front yard by the river.

Button for audio tourAround you or likely within your view is a palisade—loose wall of vertical logs—possibly with a square blockhouse in one or more corners. Inside may be one or more buildings “such as a barracks, officers’ quarters, (and) a magazine for storing powder and weapons.”[1]

The rising tensions with the Cherokees led local part-time militia soldiers under Capt. Samuel Davidson to build the fort to protect local farmers in Spring of 1776, which was completed by May. There was good reason to be concerned: Under a 1768 treaty between Britain and the Cherokee, European-Americans are not supposed to be living here, west of the treaty border. By June a company of militia referred to as “rangers” were stationed here, presumably to scout for warrior bands. Sometime that month Cherokees attacked the fort and drove the rangers out. They retreated to Cathey’s Fort near modern Marion.[2]

Photo of the Gateway Museum from the side, a stone one-story building with a pointed roof and porch, and a gazebo on the right with the river further right
(AmRevNC photograph)

Rutherford arrives in August from the direction you are facing with more than 2,000 militia from the county self-defense regiments and volunteers, having camped at Cathey’s Fort on the way. They now make an informal camp all around Davidson’s Fort, roughly a half-mile in each direction. Rutherford may have had them make improvements to the fort. Small militia companies join the army here, along with some natives of the Catawba nation, traditional enemies of the Cherokee.

On Saturday, September 1, Rutherford leaves 300–400 men to protect the region[3] and marches west with around 2,400, including 1,900 soldiers, 80 light cavalry, and 350 pack-horse drivers.[4] The Council of Safety has made sure the forces are well supplied. With them go “nearly 1,400 packhorses, a herd of beef cattle, and a small arsenal that included long rifles, hatchets, and a few small field cannons. Lacking official uniforms, militia members take along their own clothing and many used their own hunting rifles.”[5] The army has six weeks’ worth of supplies.

The men, horses, and cows head upriver (toward today’s Asheville) bound for a commercial center of the Cherokees at Nĭkwăsĭ´ (modern Franklin), where Rutherford plans to rendezvous with a similar force from South Carolina.

Return and Results

Button for audio tourThe army returns here in the first week of October. The exact date is unclear, in part because some units marched ahead, and one appears to have gone straight past to Cathey’s Fort.[a] The combined armies destroyed 52 villages, including 11 by Rutherford’s out of around 40 in North Carolina[6] and modern Tennessee. They followed “a standard tactic—burn every house, cut down or trample the crops, seize or kill livestock, kill any Cherokees that fought back, and move on to the next towns… In some cases, prisoners would be taken and sold as slaves. In other cases, Cherokees were shot and killed, some scalped and, according to one account… a group of women villagers in Burning Town were walled up in a house and burned alive.”[7]

An official report stated Rutherford “‘destroyed the greater part of the Valley Towns, killed twelve & took nine Indians, (and imprisoned) Seven White Men, from whom he got four (enslaved) Negroes, a considerable Quantity of Stock & Deer leather, about 100 (weight) of gunpowder & 2000 of Lead…’”[8] Presumably the white men were Tories and/or accused of supplying the Cherokees with weapons. By far the biggest impact was that the bulk of the Cherokee Nation found itself going into autumn and winter in the North Carolina mountains with no homes, livestock, or stored or growing crops.

After the expedition, a company is stationed here at all times during the war, with different men rotating through.

Many of the men on the campaign go on to fight in key battles in N.C. at various times throughout the war—some on the side of the British! Others, including a few Moravians, tried to remain neutral during the Revolution.

Reproduction Fort

Visit the Gateway Museum if you wish, which features exhibits about mountain life focused on the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Then for help imagining what the fort looked like, take a short drive to visit the reproduction at the privately owned Davidson Fort Historical Park:

To get there:

  1. From the parking lot, drive out Water Street (away from Catawba Avenue).
  2. At the end of the block, turn left on Mauney Avenue.
  3. Drive one block to South Railroad Street, and curve right to follow it (as it becomes Lackey Town Road).
  4. Drive 0.5 miles to the park, on the left at 173 Lackey Town Road.

The fort is only open for special events, but the outside is visible year-round. It is a best guess at how the original looked, based on eyewitness accounts and standard practices of the day.

Photo of a two-story log blockhouse and wall of vertical logs
(AmRevNC photograph)

If you are taking the Cherokee Campaigns Tour, and want to stay closer to the route taken by Rutherford’s army than your mapping app will provide, follow Rutherford Trace Route 1.

Historical Tidbits

A dramatic arrowhead monument to the fort is on Highway 70 at the intersection with Catawba Avenue. It is off by 20 years on the date of the fort’s construction. Records suggest Capt. Hugh Waddell started a fort in the area in 1756 to protect the Catawbas, allies of the British during the French & Indian War. That was never finished, however.

Perhaps 6,000 people attended the monument’s 1939 dedication, a county history book says. Included were 20 Catawbas and Cherokees, despite the sculpture wrongly showing one of their ancestors in a Plains-tribe headdress. The great-great-granddaughter of the only European-American born at the fort unveiled the monument.[9]

Mug saying "More than a minute-man," with a drawing of a Continental officer

More Information


[1] Martin 2014.

[2] History Timeline.

[3] Beadle 2006.

[4] Jones 2011.

[5] Chappo 2016.

[6] Villages destroyed from Dean 2012, the most comprehensive book on the 1776 campaigns; number in North Carolina from Ganyard 1968.

[7] Beadle.

[8] Jones.

[9] Earlier fort, dedication details: Fossett 1976.

[a] According to Lt. William Lenoir (de Roulhac 1940).

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