On April 2, 1781, Nashville's early settlers barely managed to fend off an attack by a force of Chickamauga Cherokees led by Dragging Canoe. The "Battle of the Bluffs" is one of the most famous incidents of Nashville's early history. The details of the battle are related in every account of the "founding" of Nashville. Less well known are the events leading up to the battle.

Dragging Canoe opposed the settlement of the Middle Cumberland area from the very beginning. In 1775 a land speculator named Richard Henderson met with a group of influential Cherokee leaders in East Tennessee. He wanted to buy the Cherokee claim to most of Kentucky and part of Middle Tennessee - Henderson's purchase about two million acres of land. This area was an important hunting ground for the Cherokee and many other tribes.

Under the Cherokee system of government, such an agreement needed unanimous consent to be considered binding - anyone who disagreed could not be expected to abide by its terms and the agreement was not valid. Although his father (Atta Kulla Kulla) favored the deal, Dragging Canoe, objected vehemently. In an address to the council, Dragging Canoe predicted that selling the land would result in the extinction of the Cherokee. It was then that he told them that the land they were getting would be a 'dark and bloody ground'. He refused to consent to the agreement, and warned that he and his warriors would fight for the land. But some other chiefs signed the agreement, which became known as Henderson's Purchase. This in spite of the proclamations of Royal Governors Dunmore of Virginia and Martin North Carolina declaring the transaction illegal and contrary to English law in February and March 1775. On the 4th of November, 1778 the Virginia House of Delegates declared the Transylvania Purchase void. A warrant for the arrest of Henderson and his fellow conspirators was also issued, all proving the invalidity of this agreement

The American Revolution broke out one month after Henderson's Purchase was signed. Many Cherokee towns tried to stay neutral in the conflict but a war faction emerged. Dragging Canoe was a principal leader. Because the American settlements were steadily encroaching on Cherokee territory, the war faction seized the opportunity to launch military strikes against them. Many Cherokee towns were destroyed during the war - even the neutral ones. As a result Dragging Canoe moved his people to Chickamauga Creek, near present day Chattanooga. These settlements became known as the 5 Chickamauga Lower Towns.

No attempt was made to settle the Middle Cumberland area until the winter of 1779-80 (SEE CUMBERLAND COMPACT). From the Wautauga settlements in East Tennessee, James Robertson led a group of men to the French Lick by an overland route. John Donelson led another group, made up of the families of the men in the Robertson group. They planned to travel by boat down the Tennessee River to the Cumberland River. From there they would make their way up the Cumberland to the French Lick, the future site of Nashville.

Near Chattanooga they came under heavy fire as they passed the Chickamauga towns on the Tennessee. The Indians captured one boat with 28 people on board, but most of the settlers reached their destination. They built Fort Nashborough and other fortified stations as protection against expected hostilities. In the fall of 1780 the Chickamaugans began regular raids on the Cumberland stations. The "Battle of the Bluffs" was only one in a long series of assaults aimed at driving the settlers away.

During the next few years, conditions deteriorated in the rest of the Cherokee Nation, just as Dragging Canoe had predicted. The Chickamauga towns grew stronger as more warriors joined the effort to hold on to their ancestral lands. They sent war parties to East and Middle Tennessee, and Georgia to fight for Cherokee land, and also to help other Indian nations threatened by white settlements in the Ohio country, Kentucky, and Virginia.

But the white settlements also grew stronger with booming populations migrating from back East, and they managed to withstand the Indian assault. Then, in 1792, shortly after launching efforts to form a confederacy of southern tribes, Dragging Canoe died. His followers fought on for two more years.

The Chickamaugans fought for the survival of the Cherokee people for almost 20 years. Peace followed the treaty, a result of their determined struggle. The American government didn't want another war with the Cherokee. During this period the Cherokee revived their national culture, grew strong again, and through treaty negotiations and legal challenges resisted the United States government's Indian ‘Removal’ policy until 1838.

It's a shame that this part of Nashville's history is so neglected. Historical markers and monuments all over the city portray Native Americans as the nameless, faceless enemy. This one-sided view ignores an important part of the city's heritage - we need to see the whole picture. A monument dedicated to Dragging Canoe and the Chickamauga warriors should stand in Riverfront Park, next to the replica of Fort Nashborough, to remind us of a part of Nashville's history that is almost forgotten.

THE BATTLE OF THE BLUFF"S

DONELSON'S DIARY

COLDWATER

THE CUMBERLAND SETTLEMENT

While the stirring events narrated in the chapter immediately preceding were taking place, another history-making enterprise was being put on foot- the establishment of the settlement on the bend of the Cumberland River.
• ;It will be remembered that James Robertson had been appointed Indian agent with his residence among the Cherokees. He lived with them at Chota and his influence on them was great and salutary. In 1779, he notified the pioneers of the Watauga that the Indians were planning an attack; Thereupon Evan Shelby, anticipating the threatened movement, attacked the savages and thereupon defeated them. The time was opportune for the location of the settlement at the French Lick.
• Of this enterprise James Robertson and John Donelson were the leaders. They formed a partnership under the impulse and direction and, more than all else, under the inducements of Richard Henderson, It seems strange, indeed, that historians so generally have ignored Henderson's connection with the Cumberland enterprise. Haywood and Ramsey say nothing of this man who was the directing and controlling impulse in both the colonization and early government of the "wilderness empire of the Cumberland." Henderson's ability is nowhere seen more' clearly than in his selection of his leaders. That he could induce such a man as James Robertson to leave a self-governing Community which he had largely founded and where he had a prosperous and happy home to brave again the hardships and dangers of a primeval and almost unknown country, shows most conclusively Judge Henderson's powers of persuasion. John Donelson, too, was a man of standing, substance and influence in Virginia before be came to Tennessee, Yet Roosevelt, following Ramsey and Haywood, says that, after the Virginia Legislature, in 1778, had discountenanced the validity of the Transylvania purchase, Judge Richard Henderson "drifts out of history."
• But Dr. Archibald Henderson, a descendant of Judge Richard Henderson says: "With the bursting of the Transylvania bubble and the vanishing of the golden dreams of Henderson and his associates for establishing the fourteenth American colony in the heart of the trans-Alleghany region, all might have seemed lost. But is Richard Henderson disheartened by this failure of his imperialistic dreams? Does he, as Mr. Roosevelt crassly affirms, 'drift out of history'? No; the purest and greatest achievement of his meteoric career still lies before him. The genius of the colonizer and the ambition of the speculator, in striking conjunction, inspire him to attempt to repeat on North Carolina soil, along solidly practical lines, the revolutionary experiment which the extension of the sovereignty of the Old Dominion over the Kentucky area had doomed to inevitable failure. It was no longer his purpose, however, to attempt to found an independent colony, separate from North Carolina and hostile to the American Government, as in the case of the Transylvania, which had been hostile to the royal government and founded in defiance thereof. Millions of acres within the chartered limits of North Carolina had been purchased by him and his associates from the Cherokees on March 17, 1775. One of the courses of the Great Grant, as it was called, read 'down the sd. (Cumberland) River, including all its waters to the Ohio River'; and James Robertson in his deposition before the Virginia Commissioners, April 16, 1777, describing the Sycamore Shoals Treaty, categorically stated: 'The Indians then agreed to sell the land as far as Cumberland River and said Henderson insisted to have Cumberland River and the waters of Cumberland River, which the Indians agreed to.' " *
• Henderson was of the opinion that the Cumberland region was within the limits of North Carolina. Robertson thought it was in Virginia. The truth could be ascertained only by a survey. In 1779, these two states appointed a joint commission to make a survey and extend their boundary. North Carolina appointed Richard Henderson and William B. Smith; Virginia appointed Dr. Thomas Walker and Daniel Smith.
• While their survey was proceeding, James Robertson, with the untiring energy and sure efficiency which characterized him, proceeded actively to recruit a party for the preliminary exploration.
• Preceding this time for many years hunters had come into the country surrounding the French Lick. We have already spoken of Charleville, Demonbreun, Dr. Thomas Walker and Ms party, and of others. As a matter of fact there is no question that numerous parties and individuals ventured into this region, but few of whose names have been preserved and of whose journeys and discoveries there is no verbal or written account. Of those who are known and who made some impress of their presence were: John Rain,, Kasper Mansker, Abraham Bledsoe, John Baker, Joseph Drake, Obediah Terril, Uriah Stone, Henry Smith, Ned Cowan, Joseph Holliday and Thomas Sharp Spencer, the last named of whom was the most important. He came in 1776 and remained until the arrival of the permanent settlers in 1779. Haywood, Ramsey, Putnam and other historians tell many anecdotes of him in connection with his gigantic size, strength and fearless intrepidity. Many anecdotes are also told by these historians of other hunters, trappers and traders of these times. These forerunners subserved an indispensably useful purpose in preparing the way for the permanent settlers. In 1778, the first settlement of about a dozen families located near Bledsoe's Lick, now Castalian Springs, in Sumner County. Near this settlement Richard Hogan, Spencer and Holliday planted corn in the same year. "About the same time a number of French traders advanced up the Cumberland River as far as the 'Bluff,' where they erected a trading post and a few log cabins."
• Such was the setting when James Robertson, with a party of eight white men and one negro, set forth from Holston settlement on February 6, 1779, to make a preliminary examination and to plant corn "that bread might be prepared for the main body of emigrants in the fall." They erected a few log huts and forts on the high ground near the Lick and also put in a crop of corn there.
• Leaving three of their number to protect the crop from the ravages of the wild beasts, the rest returned for their families. On the way back Robertson visited George Rogers Clark at Post St. Vincent in the Illinois to consult him about Virginia "cabin rights" still thinking that the bend of the Cumberland was in that state. He then repaired to Watauga to take charge of the migration.

THE MIGRATION FROM EAST TENNESSEE TO THE BEND OF THE CUMBERLAND

It was the plan to send two parties, one comprising men, goods and some horses and other livestock; the other by water, including all the women and children and most of the household goods. It was a part of the plan that Robertson, after arriving at the Bluffs, should send some of the men to Muscle Shoals on the Tennessee River and to leave signs there whether or not it was practicable for them to make the rest of the trip by land. But this part of the program was found to be impracticable for Robertson to perform on account of the severity of the weather, the threatened attacks of the Indians and the almost impenetrable forests and canebrakes which intervened.
• Robertson's party, by land, passed through Cumberland Gap, Southern Kentucky as far as Red River, thence south to the Cumberland opposite the French Lick which point they reached on Christmas Day, 1779, and, on New Year's Day, 1780, crossed the river on the ice to the present site of Nashville.
• The other party, by water, was led by John Donelson, who fortunately wrote a journal in the form of a diary, telling in a simple but absorbing narrative, the daily experiences and adventures of the argonauts. No famed Jason ever led his adventurers in search of the golden fleece on a journey beset with more hardships and danger. No novelist, of most inventive imagination, ever told more fascinatingly of the perils of his hero. So interesting and important is it that it is reproduced in full in this chapter.
• Donelson's fleet consisted of about thirty boats, comprising mostly flatboats, dug-outs and canoes, besides the adventure which served the purpose of a flag ship and was virtually a large scow, containing more than thirty men besides some families. Although they started on December 22, 1779, they really did not begin the voyage until February 27, 1780, when they left Cloud Creek.
• On the last day of March they met Judge Henderson, who, it will be remembered, was one of the commissioners who had been appointed by North Carolina to run the boundary line, conjointly with the Virginia commissioners, between the two states. They had not proceeded far before the commissioners disagreed and ran two separate lines.

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

The Snake Doctor

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