Chickamauga Timeline
THE DUMPLIN SETTLEMENT

THE DUMPLIN SETTLEMENT

After the treaty of 1777, the Overhill Cherokees preserved the peace, under great difficulties, for

three years. It was in the midst of the Revolutionary war, and the British emissaries were

constantly exerting themselves to foment trouble. Cameron refused to furnish the Indians with

goods as long as they were at peace with the Americans. The towns appointed a committee of

their old chiefs to ask aid from the governor of North Carolina. James Robertson, the agent

among them, was of opinion that if the state would supply them with goods nothing but peace

would ensue. The governor, however, did nothing; and in the meantime the Chickamaugas went

to the support of the British, and in 1780 induced the Overhill towns to join them in a second

invasion of the settlements, while the frontier militia were away fighting the British at King's

Mountain. As we have seen, by the opportune return of Colonel Sevier, and the prompt action of

the border authorities, the settlements were saved, the Indian forces were defeated, and their

towns destroyed. They again sued for peace, which was concluded at a treaty held at Long

Island in the summer of 1781. This treaty was never broken by open war, though there were

repeated murders and depredations committed on both sides.

The tract of country adjoining the Overhill towns on the north, and extending back from the

Little Tenne&see to the French Broad River, is known in our public records as the territory

south of the French Broad and Holston rivers and west of the Big Pigeon River. Its history would

have made a shorter name famous. Had it been called Dumplin, after the creek on which the

treaty was held which gave its inhabitants the first color of title to the lands on which they lived,

it would have gone down in song and story along with Watauga and Cumberland, the other two

original independent governments in Tennessee.

"It was settled under the most extraordinary circumstances, in defiance of. the rights of the

Indians, whose hunting ground it was, and in violation of the treaties both of the State of North

Carolina and the United States."

Its settlers had the sympathy and support of the State of Franklin, but when that government fell,

and all support was withdrawn from them, they boldly erected for themselves an independent

government in the midst of the Cherokee reservation.

The history of American colonization does not exhibit a more daring, determined, heroic, and

alas, lawless struggle for the possession of a country than that waged by the pioneers of

Dumplin.

Could a diagram be drawn, accurately designating every spot signalized by an Indian massacre,

surprise or depredation, or courageous attack, defense, pursuit, or victory by the whites, or

station, or fort, or battlefield, or personal encounter, the whole of that section of country would

be studded over by delineations of such incidents. Every spring, every ford, every path, every

farm, every trail, every house, nearly, in its first settlement, was once the scene of danger,

exposure, attack, exploit, achievement, death.

On the other hand, the Indians who opposed these aggressive, masterful backwoodsmen appeal

not less strongly to our sympathy. Their Overhill towns on the south bank of the. Little

Tennessee River served as a kind of breakwater to retard the restless tide of immigration pouring

into their hunting grounds. Not only their physical distress, which was certainly not more

tolerable than the sufferings of the settlers, bnt their feeling of utter helplessness in the presence

of great wrongs; the impotent chafing of their proud spirits as they saw their hunting grounds

diminish, and the wild game grow scarcer, rendered their position pathetic in the extreme.

On account of his advanced age Oconostota made the Old Tassel (Koatohee) and the Old Raven

(Savaiiukeh) speakers for him in the treaty of Long Jsland in 1777. From that time they were

looked upon as the leading men of their nation.

In 1783 the State of North Carolina undertook by legislative enactment to open for settlement all

the Cherokee hunting grounds lying north and west of the French Broad and Tennessee rivers.

Notwithstanding the opening of this immense territory, the frontiersmen continued to push their

settlements south of the French Broad, into the small district I have denominated Dumplin,

which was still reserved to the Indians. The Tassel complains that his young men are afraid to

go out hunting on account of the white men ranging the woods and marking trees. Colonel

Martin, writing in 1784, says they have actually settled, or at least built houses within two miles

of the beloved Town of Chota.

In the meantime the daring young State of Franklin arose and, being wholly in sympathy with the

frontiersmen, there was no longer any restraint put upon their aggressions. One of its first

legislative acts provided for the holding of a treaty with the Cherokees at Dumplin Creek. The

treaty was held May 31, 1785, though The Tassel and other principal chiefs of the nation

refused to attend. Under this treaty the Indian line was moved far down towards their towns, and

located on the ridge dividing the waters of Little River from those of the Little Tennessee.

Following this treaty The Tassel wrote the governor of North Carolina that the white people had

built houses in sight of his towns. A little later in the same year he told the United States

commissioners, at the treaty of Hopewell:

"If Congress had not interposed I and my people must have moved. They have even marked the

land on the bank of the river near the town where I live."

In less than a year the frontiers had passed the line established by the treaty of Dumplin, and the

Franklin authorities then determined to have all the Indian lands lying north of the Little

Tennessee River. This purpose they announced to the chiefs of the Overhill towns in what is

called the treaty of Coyatee. It seems that two young men bad been murdered on the twentieth

day of July by two or three young fellows who had been hired by an old warrior from

Chickamauga to take satisfaction for his two sons who had been killed by the white people in the

spring. Thereupon Cols. Alexander Outlaw and William Cocke, at the head of 250 militiamen,

marched to Chota Ford, and sent for the head men of the towns. When The Tassel and

Scollacutta appeared they charged them with breaking through all their talks and murdering

the young men. The Tassel denied that it was his people who had spilt the blood and spoilt the

talk. He said the men who did the murder were bad men and no warriors, who lived in Coyatee,

at the mouth of Holston about twenty miles below Chota.

Upon this disclosure, Colonels Outlaw and Cocke marched their forces to Coyatee, killed two of

the "very Indians that did the murder,'' destroyed the town house, burned the bad men's homes,

and destroyed their proportionate part of the village corn. They then renewed their conference

with The Tassel and Scollacutta, begun at Chota Ford. After the general charge of breaking

all the good talks in ''Kentucky, Cumberland, and here at home,'' they charged them specifically,

and very unjustly with the murder of Colonels Donelson and Christian.(My brother, William

Christian,'' The Tassel replied, ''took care of everybody, and was a good man; he is dead and

gone. It was not me nor my people that killed him. They told lies on me. He was killed going

the other way, over the river.''

Colonels Outlaw and Cocke then delivered the following ultimatum to the Indians "We now tell

you plainly that our great counselors have sold us the land on the north side of the Tennessee

(Little Tennessee) to the Cumberland Mountains and we intend to settle and live on it, and if you

kill any of our people for settling there, we shall destroy the town that does the mischief.'' There

was no foundation in fact for the claim that they had bought the land; The Tassel told them he

had never heard of it, though he had talked with the great men from Congress last fall at the

treaty of Hopewell. But as he was powerless to prevent their taking possession of it, he hoped

they should live friends together on it, and keep their young men at peace. Such was the treaty of

Coyatee!

By the following spring a land office had been opened for all the land north of the Little

Tennessee, and the frontiersmen were actually settling on the banks of that stream.Thus we find

the pioneer settlers and the Overhill Cherokees lined up, face to face, with nothing but the thread

of the Little Tennessee River as. a barrier between them.

While The Tassel was engaged in these peaceable negotiations, the remoter towns of the

Cherokees committed frequent acts of hostility against the frontiers, for which they were

punished by the settlers.

In 1782 Colonel Sevier marched against the Lower towns and destroyed everything from Bull

Town, on Chickamauga Creek, to Estanaula, on the Coosa River. In 1783 Major Fine destroyed

Cowee, on the headwaters of the Little Tennessee. In 1786 Governor Sevier, of Franklin, crossed

the Unaka Mountain and destroyed the Valley towns, on the Hiwassee River.

None of these campaigns, it will be observed, was directed against the Overhill towns, nor were

any of the Indian depredations approved by The Tassel; on the contrary, he tried to dissuade the

Chickamaugas from such acts until he found it was of no use, when he advised Agent Martin of

the condition of affairs, and turned the matter over to him.

In the meantime, after a restless, active and stormy career of four years, the State of Franklin

collapsed, an order was out for the arrest of Governor Sevier, and he was a fugitive on the

frontiers, no longer pretending to any office, civil or military. He had with him Maj. James

Hubbard, late an officer in the Franklin militia and a small body of mounted riflemen.

Source: Tennessee, the Volunteer State Moore and Foster, The S. J. Clarke Publishing Co. 1923

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