Town Crier: Cherokees rout the British at Fort Loudoun (part 2)

Published 8:00 am Saturday, January 11, 2025

As European nations ventured around the world in the 1700’s, adding conquests and colonies to their portfolios, face-offs and struggles against each other were bound to come to a head at various times and places. In the 1750’s, a world conflict erupted between primarily Britain on one side and France and Spain on the other. This “world war” saw fighting in Europe, Asia, Africa, South America and North America. In the American colonies the war was known as “The French and Indian War” and things came pretty close to home as the British tried to secure the Cherokee Nation as their ally agains the French to the west and their Native American cohorts. Just up the road, about half way to Knoxville, you can visit Fort Loudoun, reconstructed from the plans and archeological information from the original. Built as part of the British effort to maintain a stronghold in this part of their empire, it was to aid trade with the Cherokee as well as defend against French encroachment and to protect the Cherokee villages when their warriors were away fighting alongside the British. Things didn’t go as planned…

In charge of Fort Loudoun was Captain Paul Demeré. There were around two hundred British regulars for soldiers, and 60 or more women and children dependents including Cherokee women who some of the men had married. On the other side were hundreds of Cherokee who were becoming increasingly disgruntled. Demeré and his officers had, in the summer of 1758, talked a Cherokee force to join the Forbes Expedition to capture the French fort at what is now Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. After a long slog with nothing to show during the summer, the Cherokee left. On the way back to their villages some European settlements were raided. The settlers in response attacked the Indians, killing several. Some of the Cherokee from the Fort Loudoun area, including Cherokee leader Attakullakulla, were held prisoner even though they weren’t involved. Throughout 1759, these suspicions and raids went back and forth until the situation between the British and Cherokee deteriorated, turning allies into foes.

At the end of 1759 and beginning of 1760 things were going awry in the South Carolina Cherokee communities. There were peace talks, arrests, ambushes and Cherokee held as prisoners. In February of 1760 a party of Cherokee under Oconostota came to negotiate the release of the prisoners. When the commander of the fort in South Carolina came out to negotiate he was killed in an ambush. In the panic that followed, the garrison killed the Cherokee prisoners! Outright war was at hand. Oconostota moved against Fort Loudoun.

Oconostota’s ally already at the fort was Standing Turkey. He attacked the fort for four days beginning on March 20, 1760, and then, held off by the British cannon, surrounded the fort and lay siege. The British had been worried about just this type of situation since the previous September when a Cherokee raid had tried to capture the herd of cattle the fort maintained. Four months of supplies had been laid up inside the palisades and the situation at hand would put the preparations to the test. A British relief column of 1,200 soldiers moved from South Carolina, destroying Cherokee villages and towns as they advanced, then moved into North Carolina conducting the same actions until they got into a fight at Echoee where the Cherokee’s rifles were more accurate and with further range than the military muskets the British used. The Cherokee also focused on shooting the pack animals which made a further advance impossible due to lack of supplies.

The result of this action was that no help was coming for the British at Fort Loudoun. Their supplies gradually decreased until the men were distributed only handfuls of corn a day, eating the horses and finally finishing the bread in July. Soldiers were beginning to desert in an effort to avoid starving to death. By the southern heat of early August, the British leaders decided they must surrender. In the deal they made with the Cherokee, the British would only take their personal firearms and enough ammunition to make the retreat back to South Carolina. The British flag was lowered on Aug. 8 and the soldiers began their retreat. When the Cherokee took possession of the fort, they discovered the British had buried barrels of gunpowder hiding them from the Indians, in hopes that the Cherokee would not find them and that they would be there in the event of the fort being recaptured. And, the British had taken the artillery that the Cherokee were looking to gain and thrown them in the river. With the terms of the surrender broken, the Cherokee were outraged.

On August 10, a day’s march from the fort, near modern day Tellico Plains, the Cherokee attacked the retreating garrison. The 180 or so British regulars were faced with as many as 700 attacking Cherokee. During the battle, three officers, 23 soldiers and three women were killed on the British side before they decided to surrender. Only one officer survived and was taken prisoner along with the others. They were eventually ransomed.

The summer of the next year, a large force of British and colonial soldiers attacked the Cherokee and overwhelmed them in a series of raids and fights, finally bringing an end to this war.

Fort Loudoun was in ruins when it was visited by a peace party in 1762. By the late 1800’s only the well remained. Then, in the 1930’s, the fort was rediscovered through archeological work. The original designs and descriptions of the fort matched the remains. The reconstructed fort there now is a short distance from the original site, as the TVA dammed the river in the 1970’s, flooding the location.

The Cherokee Nation survived in the southeast until in the late 1830’s, they were forced by the American government to resettle in present day Oklahoma. But for one fight in the summer of 1760, they defeated the greatest empire on Earth.

Mark Hannah is a Dalton native who works in film and video production.