(Editor’s note: Third in a series)
Dr. James Livingood, professor of history at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, wrote about events before the American Revolution in “Chattanooga Country, An Illustrated History.” Below are excerpts.
“By the eve of the American Revolution, matters in the Tennessee country took on an entirely new dimension. Pioneers built their cabins to the west of the mountains; ambitious speculative interests schemed to acquire huge chunks of Indian land. Although the British in 1763 closed the western territory to white settlement and exploration, they had no possible way of enforcing this policy or of retarding the frontiersmen’s tenacious quest for more land. Locally, jurisdiction over the region had passed to the colony of North Carolina when the original Carolina colony divided, and the Tarheels were now ready to utilize its unknown wealth.
“Although British policy favored the Indians, all was not well within the inner circle of the Cherokee. Harsh retaliation following the fall of Fort Loudoun turned many braves to bitterness. They felt degraded, deceived, and now confused by the trouble between the English and their American colonists.
“A provocation in March of 1775 brought the American struggle for independence directly to the Chattanooga country. In violation of British policy and law a North Carolina land investor, Judge Richard Henderson, headed a group called the Transylvania Company which planned to buy some 20 million acres from the Cherokee. Amid the colorful procedures accompanying the ‘big talk,’ the older chieftains agreed to this sale of much of their ancient territorial claim. But in this crumbling world of the Cherokee Nation, one warrior stepped forward to condemn the agreement.