And Then There Were Thirteen with Dr. Henry Lumpkin was an instructional series debuted by SCETV in the mid-1970s. The 20-episode series featured lectures by Dr. Henry Lumpkin of the University of South Carolina Department of History filmed on actual battle sites and campaign areas of the American Revolution in South Carolina.
We find ourselves with Professor Lumpkin at White Water Falls where, in the old frontier of the South, the eighteenth century frontier, lay along the lines of the great Indian lands of the five important warrior tribes: the Cherokee, the Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, the Seminole. The professor pointed out that these were not wandering, nomadic people, but rather they were a settled people with complicated system tribal governments. By this time in the eighteenth century, most of their warriors were musket armed. All of the five warrior tribes sided either passively or actively with the British. The Catawba in South Carolina sided with the patriots.
The Cherokee took to the warpath with some three to five thousand warriors. Professor Lumpkin observed that if they had had better communication with the British in 1776, the outcome of the battle might have been different. Also, if the British agents had been able to raise the warriors of the Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Seminoles to cooperate with the Cherokee, thus putting into the field some fifteen to twenty thousand fighting men, that too could have had a very serious effect. As it was in the 76 campaign the Cherokee power was successfully broken. When the Cherokee bartered for peace, they had to give up much of their land.
Watch and listen as Professor details the elements of the campaign and learn more about the individuals and tribal nations in the Side Notes.
Side Notes
- Explore the History, Culture, and Traditions of Native Americans.
- Native Nations in Colonial South Carolina. Walter Edgar.
- Snowbird Cherokee - 1995 ETV Classic - When the United States government decided that the presence of Indian tribes was an inconvenience to be solved and passed the Indian Removal Act, leading to the deaths and displacement of over 60,000 people between 1830 and 1850.
- Chickamauga Cherokee - is a Native American group who separated from the Cherokee from the American Revolutionary War to the early 1800s. Most of the Cherokee people signed peace treaties with the Americans in 1776-1777, after the Second Cherokee War. Followers of the skiagusta (war chief) Dragging Canoe moved with him down the Tennessee River, away from their historic Overhill Cherokee towns. Relocated to a more isolated area, they established 11 new towns to distance themselves from encroaching colonists. Frontier Americans associated Dragging Canoe and his band with their new town on Chickamauga Creek and began to refer to the band as the Chickamauga. The Chickamauga moved further west and southwest into present-day Alabama five years later, establishing five larger settlements. They were then more commonly known as the Lower Cherokee; a term closely associated with the people of the five lower towns.
- The Cherokee people are one of the Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands of the United States. Prior to the 18th century, they were concentrated in their homelands, in towns along river valleys of what is now southwestern North Carolina, southeastern Tennessee, southwestern Virginia, edges of western South Carolina, northern Georgia and northeastern Alabama with hunting grounds in Kentucky, together consisting of around 40,000 square miles.
- Learn more about the other five warrior tribes: Creek, known also as Muscogee Nation, Chickasaw Nation, Choctaw Nation, Seminole Tribe.
- The Life and Times of Andrew Pickens.
- Andrew Williamson (1730-1786) was a commanding officer in the South Carolina backcountry militia from the inception of the war until the fall of Charleston on May 12, 1780. He led the South Carolina militia not only during the Cherokee Expedition in 1776 but also at Briar Creek, Stono Ferry, and many other engagements.
- Francis Salvadore | American Battlefield Trust (1747-1776 Considered the first Jewish person to die in the Revolutionary War, Francis Salvador was born to a prominent family in London, England, with ties to the British East India Company in 1747. Since the founding of the colonies in North America, the Salvador family was instrumental in setting up Jewish communities in the New World. In July 1776, Salvador earned the nickname "Southern Paul Revere" when he rode over 30 miles to warn militia units in the backcountry of South Carolina of an Indian attack. Over a month later, Salvador led a group of militiamen towards the Keowee River, where British and Native Americans were camped and were ambushed by the group on August 1st, 1776. During the fight, Salvador was wounded and scalped by the Native American soldiers, and he died of his wounds. He was 29 years old at the time of his death.
- Alexander Cameron - Alexander Cameron, British Indian agent among the Cherokees, was a native of Scotland who emigrated to Georgia in the 1730s and enlisted in the British army during the Seven Years' War. In 1764 the British appointed him commissary to Chota in the Cherokee territory, and he lived among the Tennessee Cherokees for the next fifteen years. In early 1776 Cameron attempted to mediate between white settlers who had moved into disputed territory at Watauga and Nolichucky and the Cherokees, who demanded their removal. When the settlers refused to leave, the Cherokees attacked, and the settlers blamed the unrest on Cameron, accusing him of inciting the Indians.
- John Stuart and Alexander Cameron - A Demand of Blood: The Cherokee War of 1776.
- Dragging Canoe (1738 – 1792) was a Cherokee red (or war) chief who led a band of Cherokee warriors who resisted colonists and United States settlers in the Upper South. During the American Revolution and afterward, Dragging Canoe's forces were sometimes joined by Upper Muskogee, Chickasaw, Shawnee, and Indians from other tribes, along with British Loyalists, and agents of France and Spain. The Cherokee American Wars lasted more than a decade after the end of the American Revolutionary War. During that time, Dragging Canoe became the preeminent war leader among the Indians of the southeast. He served as war chief, or skiagusta, of the group known as the Chickamauga Cherokee (or "Lower Cherokee"), from 1777 until his death in 1792.
