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3. Reconsidering Chestowee: The 1713 Raid in Regional Perspective
- University of Nebraska Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
One of the first substantive narrative accounts of a Yuchi community in the southeastern interior was documented in the South Carolina Board of Indian Trade’s May 1714 inquest into the Cherokee attack on the Yuchi town of Chestowee.1 Although Chestowee was far distant from Charles Town, the raid concerned the board because the Yuchis and Cherokees were both English allies, and it appeared that licensed Carolina traders incited the attack and upset a critical balance in the backcountry.2 Testimony in the case reveals that the raiders sacked the town, killed many of the defenders, and enslaved the remainder to pay off accumulated trading debts. The commissioners investigated the role of traders Alexander Long and Eleazer Wiggan in the affair and concluded to free all the Yuchi prisoners , ban Long and Wiggan from the Indian trade, and recommended their further prosecution by the colony.3 The Board of Trade account of the Chestowee affair is significant as a documentary point of departure for discussions of colonial era Yuchi history. Earlier ethnohistoric treatments interpreted Chestowee as the last vestige of a late Mississippian Yuchi chiefdom in eastern Tennessee that was expunged by Cherokee conquest.4 More recent analyses situate the Chestowee affair as part of a mounting trend of trader abuses that helped spark the catastrophic Yamasee War 3. Reconsidering Chestowee The 1713 Raid in Regional Perspective brett riggs riggs 44 of 1715.5 This chapter reexamines the geopolitical contexts of the Chestowee incident and situates the massacre as an episode characteristic of the chaotic “shatter zone” that engulfed eastern North America in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.6 The Board of Trade Account Testimony in the Chestowee hearings was convoluted, but the key depositions reveal a well-planned conspiracy to “cut off” the Yuchis. Deponents at the hearings indicated “that 2 or 3 Year agoe there was a difference between Mr. [Alexander] Long and one or two People of Chestowe about debts,” and Long declared that “he was abused by some Euchees and his hair torn off 2 or 3 Year agoe.”7 Witnesses noted that Long swore “he would be revenged on the People of Chestowe,” that “he would have some of the Euchees’ Heads on a Pole,” and that “the Euchee should be cut off before green Corne Time.” Long and fellow trader Eleazer Wiggan conspired with Cherokee leaders Flint and Caesar to exact revenge on Chestowee, and promised the Cherokees “a brave Parcel of Slaves if Chestowe were cut off,” a particular enticement to pay off Cherokee trading debts.8 Long apparently sought sanction for his conspiracy from South Carolina ’s governor, Charles Craven, in letters carried to Charles Town by Flint and Caesar in May 1713, and told the Cherokees to expect the governor’s orders to cut off Chestowee. In response, Craven sent an “Order to Capt. [Robert] Card to treat the Euchees civily.” Long and his co-conspirators, who may have included many of the Carolina traders among the Cherokees, delayed the delivery of Craven’s letter “behind the Mountains” and presented a false document represented as the governor’s orders to cut off Chestowee. Trader and explorer Price Hughes secured a promise from Cherokee leaders “not to molest the Euchee till the Agent [Thomas Nairne] came.” Hughes was apparently aware that the governor’s orders had been detained, and he journeyed to fetch the directive to the Cherokee leaders. In the meantime Long exhorted his Cherokee co-conspirators to carry out the attack on Chestowee before explicit orders to the contrary arrived. An expedition led by “the War Captain of [3.236.81.4] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 17:02 GMT) Reconsidering Chestowee 45 Euchase, Flint, and Caesar, and one or two more att the Middle Settlements contrived the cutting off of the Euchees and kept itt very private till they came near the Town then painted with a Design to fall on them.”9 The group excluded the Cherokee Lower Towns from “their Design because they shoold not come in with them for a Share” of the slaves and loot. Long supplied the raiders with “a Quantity of Powder and Bulletts for Caesar and Flint to cut them off.” The raiders fell suddenly upon Chestowee, and after a desperate fight, “the Euchees killed their own People in the War House to prevent their falling into the Hands of the Cherikees.”10 The enslaved Euchee survivors were given over to traders Long, Wiggan, Clea, Dillon, Douglas, Richardson...