Fort Watauga and the Cherokee War

Fort Watauga and the Cherokee War. . , In May 1776 the Cherokee chiefs, alarmed by the expansion of white settlers onto their land, gave the Wataugans twenty days to leave their lands or face war. The Wataugans asked for more time and built Fort Watauga (also called Fort Caswell) near a spring in a bottom one-half miles northeast of the mouth of Gap Creek. Anger among the Cherokee, who had allied themselves with the British, mounted when they heard of this stockade building. In mid July Old Abram of Chilowee led 300 warriors against Fort Watauga. (Dragging Canoe and The Raven of Chote, with 400 men, attacked the Holston and Carter's Valley settlements.) Counting on surprise, the Cherokee expected to destroy the whites easily. However, Nancy Ward, a Cherokee married to a white man, warned her white friends that a raid was coming. The Watauga and Nolichucky settlers fled their homes taking refuge in Fort Watauga and sending warnings to the other settlements. Old Abram attacked Fort Watauga at daybreak on July 21 surprising several women who were outside the fort milking. Their screams alerted the defenders, who manned the walls and began firing on the Indians. All of the women made it into the fort safely, John Sevier pulling one of them, Catherine Sherrill, into the fort over the wall. Captain James Robertson commanded a garrison numbering only 75 "men, boys, and Negroes fit to bear arms" and possessing only six pounds of powder. As weak as they were, they still repulsed the Cherokee in a battle that lasted three hours. The Indians then settled down to a loose siege. An attempt to burn the fort failed when Anne Robertson poured boiling water onto the torchbearers. In early August, Old Abram learned that the Holston settlers had defeated Dragging Canoe in the Battle of Long Island Flats on July 20. The Cherokee then lost heart and retreated. This incident began an Indian war that did not end until 1794. , "Strange as it may appear this territory owes its present consequence to this handful of men. It is very probable that if this small party had given way, the people would have generally (if not all) fled to the eastern side of the Allegheny Mountains. , William Tatham, a veteran of the fight at Fort Watauga writing in 1793 for the Knoxville Gazette., (Captions) , "Around the fort was a kind of glade and the Indians could approach nearest the fort on the north shore of the river, which was skirted with trees, Behind these the chief portion of the enemy posted themselves, one got behind a tree.... and watching an opportunity when Sevier peeped through a port hole, the Indian shot. The ball struck in the timber but an inch or so from the hole." , James Sevier, twelve years old at the time of the siege., Always located near a source of water, the frontier fort was typically built of pointed logs connecting several cabins. Blockhouses, with overhanging second-stories, were placed at the corners to guard the walls. The settlers sheltering in the fort lived in the cabins which sometimes had two floors with roughly dressed wooden floors but which were usually one-story with dirt floors. The defenders pierced the fort's walls with loopholes through which they could fire, This reconstruction of Fort Watauga is based on archacological and historical research., Escape At least 225 men, women, and children "forted up" within Fort Watauga. Conditions soon became squalid and considerable sickness and suffering resulted.