Carolina in Crisis: Cherokees, Colonists, and Slaves in the American Southeast, 1756–1763 by Daniel J. Tortora (review)

Daniel J. Tortora’s Carolina in Crisis: Cherokees, Colonists, and Slaves in the American Southeast, 1756–1763, a new history of the Seven Years’ War in the Southeast, charges headlong into one of the most fraught issues in the history of the colonial South, and the overall result is illuminating and impressive. In recent years scholars have been treated to a number of excellent works regarding specific aspects of the indigenous Southeast. Our understanding of the Indian slave trade, the effects of merchant capitalism, and various individual Native communities has increased dramatically. Our understanding of African enslavement has increased dramatically, too, thanks to the growing sophistication of demographic analysis and attention to cultural history on both sides of the Atlantic. If one believes that it is impossible to render the history of the South fully and honestly without including multiple perspectives, then the main problem facing students of the region’s history is how, exactly, to go about that project. Carolina in Crisis provides one possible template, and it is a promising one indeed.

The book’s brief introduction reminds readers of the importance of Indian affairs to colonial policy makers, gives an overview of the Seven Years’ War in broad strokes, and reviews the extant literature on the Anglo-Cherokee War to set the stage. The book then proceeds chronologically through the conflict and its aftermath, explaining how, in a short time, “Cherokees went from British allies to enemies to neglected nuisances” (p. 1). A blow-by-blow account is beyond the scope of this review, but the basics are as follows: Cherokees were justifiably aggrieved by a series of increasingly outrageous actions on the part of South Carolina, including taking high-level hostages, and the Cherokees responded by engaging in violence they viewed as appropriate, even necessary. Cherokee warriors scored several key victories, such as killing British officers and forcing the capitulation of Fort Loudoun in 1760, but these victories only served to inflame British desires to launch a terrifying campaign against the Cherokee Lower Towns, destroying several with their associated cornfields completely, and sending refugees into the mountains. Such actions eventually brought peace to the region, but it was a troubled peace. Not only had provincial and imperial soldiers alienated the vast majority of Cherokees, but also South Carolina’s merchants and planters believed that British forces had not been harsh or thorough enough and thus quarreled with British officials, in a prelude to the independence crisis of the next decade. At every stage, Tortora provides fine-grained accounts from multiple Cherokee, white, and, to a lesser extent, African American perspectives. Readers will benefit from Tortora’s ability to weave these disparate and occasionally divergent strands together into a cohesive, engaging narrative.

Carolina in Crisis showcases Tortora’s solid research in archival and published sources and his clear mastery of the historical literature. Still, Cherokee and African American viewpoints and voices are difficult to recover. Occasionally, the sections on African American responses to the crisis seem truncated, though tantalizing. Students of Native American history hoping for a thoroughly Cherokee-centric take on the war may wish that more had been made of the clash between Attakullakulla and Oconostota; the ramifications of the war for Cherokee conceptions of gender; the interplay between clan, town, and nation; and the Cherokee delegations that traveled to London mentioned near the beginning and end of the book. Even these minor quibbles are not totally fair, though. Scholars constantly look for histories, whether to add to their own bookshelves and lecture notes or to assign to students, that convey the full complexity of the colonial era and the diversity of its peoples without overvaluing white perspectives and undervaluing the perspectives of others. For the Seven Years’ War in South Carolina, Carolina in Crisis fulfills that need admirably, and it is a welcome...