The Journal of William Dells: The Many Violences of the Cherokee Expedition of 1776

Between August and September 1776, thousands of Continental soldiers and militia from North and South Carolina descended upon the Lower and Valley towns of the Cherokee Indians. Led by military officers Griffith Rutherford (North Carolina) and Andrew Williamson (South Carolina), the Cherokee Expedition of 1776 blazed a path of destruction through Cherokee Country, wiping out entire communities while displacing thousands of people. As the revolutionary leadership justified its course of action: the “attempts by John Stuart [British superintendent for Indian affairs in the South]…to stir up the Savage Indians to attack our Western frontier…particularly the Cherokees” and the resulting attacks “upon our settlements, [who] burned several Houses and Murdered about sixty Persons” necessitated such a response. It should be noted, though, that the attacks were not made explicitly at Stuart’s instigation and were only carried out by Cherokee dissidents known as “Chickamaugas”— led by Dragging Canoe—who had grown frustrated with settlers’ incessant encroachments upon Cherokee lands. In the minds of the Chickamaugas, violence was the only option left after centuries of diplomacy and trade that resulted in treaties of dispossession. Therefore, in August and September 1776, the revolutionaries responded to the Chickamaugas’ initial attacks with an even more destructive violence of their own. Fortunately for historians, the Filson Historical Society possesses the journal of William Dells, a Cherokee Expedition soldier who tracked and detailed the entire foray into Cherokee Country.¹

One of the first important details that we get from William Dells’s “A Journall of the Motions of the Continentall Armey…against the Cherokee Indians” is how much Native Americans were on the minds of the revolutionaries throughout the war, their anxieties about the loyalties of those various Indigenous groups, and the important roles Native peoples played in that conflict, as either allies or foes. While the Cherokees were, as Dells put it, “Suspect to be a Grand Enemey to the Americans Liberty,” other Indigenous groups, like the Catawba, allied themselves with the revolutionaries, which explains why “33 Catawba Indians” accompanied the expedition and guided American forces into the valley towns. In contrast to the popular histories about the American Revolution that depict that struggle as a civil war and a war of revolution, the actual conflict was also one that involved Native Americans, as evidenced by primary sources like Dells’s journal. In other words, the Indigenous peoples of North America were not casual observers or mere sideshows to the larger revolutionary struggle being waged in 1776.²

The Dells journal also offers a sprawling panoramic tour of Cherokee Country on the eve of revolution. Dells described Cherokee territories in western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee as a mix of mountains, bogs, valleys, rivers, glades, and a few roads, although he focused especially on the “Impregnable” mountains that he considered among the “Most Delightfull prospect[s] As Ever Your Eyes Beheld.” Travelling along these lands often proved treacherous, as Dells consistently noted the mountainous terrain being “very Steap and Dangerous being… Very Narrow” and the glades exceedingly “boggy” and wet. Dells further demonstrated an intimate knowledge of the land by reliably identifying landmarks such as the Pidgeon River, Hominy Creek, Big and Little Swannanoa Rivers, Rich Land Creek, and French Broad River. More importantly, Dells also captured the intercultural and cosmopolitan dimensions of Cherokee Country. He observed how deerskin traders like “one Scotts” and “one Hicks,” along with other “Wite men,” lived on plantations nearby and in Cherokee towns, with “their [Cherokee wives] and Children.” And he noted that several Cherokee individuals spoke “good English,” a reflection of the intimate interactions between Cherokee and European worlds. He also mentioned the several “Negroes” who lived in Cherokee towns, either as freedmen or runaway slaves. Regarding Cherokee towns, Dells often remarked how Cherokee communities comprised “100 Houses” with hundreds of “Acres of Corn,” horses, cattle, and other livestock, which resembled the colonial towns that Dells and the other soldiers came from.³

At the same time, Dells diligently recorded the expedition’s mundane and at times perilous movement throughout Cherokee Country. He often started...