Nancy Ward: American Patriot or Cherokee Nationalist?

During the American Revolution, Nanye’hi, or Nancy Ward, a Cherokee beloved woman (or honored elder woman), took risks that often have been misinterpreted. She sent trusted messengers to American forts to warn the inhabitants of impending Cherokee attacks, and she was known to offer food to American troops. In the minds of ethnocentric settler people, Ward helped Americans because she felt that white ways were superior to her own, and she embraced assimilation to Western ways. As confirmation of Ward’s desire to become like whites, many admirers offer an anecdote about her rescue of Lydia Bean, a white woman, from execution by Cherokee warriors. They bolster their argument with their telling point that later she asked Bean “to teach her how to make butter and cheese.”¹ Others, as Sara Parker noted, interpreted her actions as reflecting “a romantic attachment to a white man.”² Although Nancy Ward’s actions were informed by her kinship ties and friendships with American colonists, she took these actions not because she felt American society was superior or because her brief marriage to a white man led her to hold all Americans dear to her heart but because she continued to carry out her functions as a beloved woman at the same time she sought new ways for the Cherokee to thrive in a changing world.

In her efforts to prevent bloodshed, Ward earned accolades from Cherokee and white Americans alike. To the Cherokee she was aniyvwiya, one of the real people, and a well-respected, honored leader and culture bearer. To white American settlers she was a friend and ally who protected them from Cherokee warriors. She became known as the “Cherokee Rose” or “White Rose” or “Wild Rose,” the “Pocahontas of the West,” and a Cherokee “princess and prophetess” by those who believed her to be “the constant friend of the American pioneer.”³ So enthralled did white Americans become with the image of her as the savior of white settlers that they styled her the “patron saint of Tennessee,” and the Daughters of the American Revolution named a chapter in Chattanooga, Tennessee, after her.⁴ Tennesseans went so far as to group Ward along with racist colonizers of Cherokee people—Andrew Jackson and Davy Crockett—as symbols of honor for Tennessee.⁵

Ward’s seemingly inconstant allegiance to the Cherokee led some white Americans to lay claim to her as an American patriot and apparent traitor to the Cherokee.⁶ These claims of American patriotism took on the illusion of fact, as evidenced by contemporary accounts from both whites and Cherokee. The Wyandot Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution lists Ward as one of their revolutionary ancestors and identifies her rank as a patriot whose state of service was North Carolina.⁷ Some contemporary Cherokee affirm Cherokee American patriotism by recognizing Ward not only as a Cherokee beloved but also as an American patriot.⁸ Although Ward’s actions have been interpreted in such a way as to sculpt her into an American patriot icon, she was, in fact, a dedicated Cherokee nationalist and Cherokee patriot like her uncle, Attakullakulla, another peacemaker, and her cousin, the war leader Dragging Canoe.⁹ Interestingly, Attakullakulla also aided the revolutionaries, but he has not been praised as an American patriot. The attribution of American patriotism to Ward’s actions at a time when the Cherokee had little standing among the thirteen colonies that would become the United States and, in fact, were defending their territory and lives from British colonizers, including the revolutionaries, serves to legitimate American nationalism and expansionism.

Questions have been raised about Ward’s loyalty to the Americans because she allowed a boy, Samuel Moore, to die who had been captured in 1776 at the same time as Bean.¹⁰ Moore was tortured to death, while Bean was spared. The boy may have been treated differently because he was in the fort at Watauga when the Cherokee laid siege to it and in the ensuing battle lost several men. The boy as a male was subject to retaliation for the death of the...