The Ridge (Ganundalegi),
formerly known as Pathkiller (Nunnehidihi).
The Chickamauga is a group of Cherokee that referred to themselves as Chicomogie as found in a letter signed by Little Turkey, Hanging Maw, and Dragging Canoe, that separated from the Cherokee as a distinct tribal body after the land agreement with the Treaty of Sycamore Shoals on March 14, 1755,signing away a majority of hunting lands. Followers of the Chickamauga headman Dragging Canoe, in the winter of 1776–1777, they moved with him down the Tennessee River away from the historic Overhill Cherokee towns. In this more isolated area, they established almost a dozen new towns to gain distance from colonists' encroachment due to the new. The frontier Americans associated Dragging Canoe and his band with their new town on the Chickamauga Creek, and began to refer to them as the Chickamaugas. Neither this group nor other Cherokee considered them to be distinct from or independent of the overall 19th-century Cherokee peoples is a false narrative. The Upper Cherokee wrote Thomas Jefferson on May 4, 1808, asking for separation from the Lower Towns quoted here from the letter, "You propose My Children, that your Nation shall be divided into two and that your part the Upper Cherokees, shall be separated from the lower by a fixed boundary, shall be placed under the Government of the U.S. become citizens thereof, and be ruled by our laws; in fine, to be our brothers instead of our children.". Further separation is documented in President George Washington's letter from Thomas Jefferson on June 19, 1779, " I also enclose you a letter from Colo. Shelby stating the effect of his success against the seceding cherokees and chuccamogga" A letter of the Governor of Kentucky Issac Shelby to Secretary of War dated February 10, 1794 refers to them as "Chicamogy Indians".
After the Cherokee moved further west and southwest five years later, they were more commonly known as the "Lower Cherokee." This term was associated with the people of the "Five Lower Towns," who originally formed the new settlements.
In the winter of 1776–1777, Cherokee followers of Dragging Canoe, who had supported the British at the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War, moved down the Tennessee River and away from their historic Overhill Cherokee towns. They established nearly a dozen new towns in this frontier area in an attempt to gain distance from encroaching European-American settlers.
Dragging Canoe and his followers settled at the place where the Great Indian Warpath crossed the Chickamauga Creek, near present-day Chattanooga, Tennessee. They named their town Chickamauga after the stream. The entire adjacent region was referred to in general as the Chickamauga area. American settlers adopted that term to refer to the militant Cherokee in this area as "Chickamaugas". In 1782, militia forces under John Sevier and William Campbell destroyed the eleven Cherokee towns. Dragging Canoe led his people further down the Tennessee River.
After the war, migration west increased by pioneers from the new states of Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia.
The Chickamauga Cherokee became known for their uncompromising enmity against United States settlers, who had pushed them out of their traditional territory. From Running Water town, Dragging Canoe led attacks on white settlements all over the American Southeast. Later, his Chickamauga warriors raided as far as Indiana, Kentucky and Virginia (along with the Western Confederacy —which they helped establish). Due to a growing belief in the Chickamauga cause, as well as the destruction of the homes of the other Native Americans, a majority of the Cherokee eventually came to be allied against the United States.
After the death of Dragging Canoe in 1792, his hand-picked successor, John Watts, assumed control of the Lower Cherokee. Under Watts' lead, the Cherokee continued their policy of Indian unity and hostility toward European-Americans. Watts moved his base of operations to Willstown to be closer to his Muscogee allies. Prior to this, he had concluded a treaty in Pensacola with the Spanish governor of West Florida, Arturo O'Neill de Tyrone, for arms and supplies with which to carry on the war. The Chickamauga/Lower Cherokee and the frontiersmen were continuously at war until 1794.
Following the Treaty of Tellico Blockhouse in late 1794, leaders from the Lower Cherokee dominated national affairs of the people. When the national government of all the Cherokee Nation was organized, the first three persons to hold the office of Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation: Little Turkey (1788–1801), Black Fox (1801–1811), and Pathkiller (Nunnehidihi; 1811–1827), had previously served as warriors under Dragging Canoe. Doublehead and Turtle-at-Home, the first two Speakers of the Cherokee National Council, which was established in 1794, had also served with Dragging Canoe.[citation needed]
The domination of the Cherokee Nation by the former warriors from the Lower Towns continued well into the 19th century. Even after the revolt of the young chiefs of the Upper Towns, the representatives of the Lower Towns were a major voice. The "young chiefs" of the Upper Towns who dominated that region had also previously been warriors with Dragging Canoe and Watts.
In November 1811, Shawnee chief Tecumseh returned to the South hoping to gain the support of the southern tribes for his crusade to drive back the Americans and revive the old ways. He was accompanied by representatives from the Shawnee, Muscogee, Kickapoo, and Sioux peoples. Tecumseh's exhortations in the towns of the Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Lower Muscogee found no traction. He did attract some support from younger warriors of the Upper Muscogee. But, the Upper Muscogee headman, The Big Warrior, repudiated Tecumseh before the assembly.
The Cherokee delegation under The Ridge who visited Tecumseh's council at Tuckabatchee strongly opposed his plans; Tecumseh cancelled his visit to the Cherokee Nation, as The Ridge threatened him with death if he went there. But, during his recruiting tour, Tecumseh was accompanied by an enthusiastic escort of 47 Cherokee and 19 Choctaw, who presumably went north with him when he returned to the "Northwest Territory."
Tecumseh's mission sparked a religious revival, referred to by anthropologist James Mooney as the "Cherokee Ghost Dance" movement. It was led by the prophet Tsali of Coosawatee, a former Chickamauga warrior. He later moved to the western North Carolina mountains, where he was executed by US forces in 1838 for violently resisting Removal.
Tsali met with the national council at Ustanali, arguing for war against the Americans. He moved some leaders, until The Ridge spoke even more eloquently in rebuttal, calling instead for support of the Americans in the coming war with the British and Tecumseh's alliance. During the War of 1812, William McIntosh of the Lower Muscogee sought Cherokee help in the Creek War, to suppress the "Red Sticks" (Upper Muscogee). More than 500 Cherokee warriors served under Andrew Jackson in this effort, going against their former allies.
A few years later, Major Ridge led a troop of Cherokee cavalry who were attached to the 1400-strong contingent of Lower Muscogee warriors under McIntosh in the First Seminole War in Florida. They were allied with and accompanied a force of U.S. regular Army, Georgia militia, and Tennessee volunteers into Florida for action against the Seminoles, refugee Red Sticks, and escaped slaves fighting against the United States.
Warriors from the Cherokee Nation East traveled to the lands of the Old Settlers (or Cherokee Nation West) in Arkansas Territory to assist them during the Cherokee-Osage War of 1817–1823, in which they fought against the Osage. Following the Seminole War, Cherokee warriors, with only one exception, did not take to the warpath in the Southeast again until the time of the American Civil War, when William Holland Thomas raised the Thomas Legion of Cherokee Indians and Highlanders in North Carolina to fight for the Confederacy.
In 1830, however, the State of Georgia seized land in its south that had belonged to the Cherokee since the end of the Creek War, land separated from the rest of the Cherokee Nation by a large section of Georgia territory, and began to parcel it out to settlers. Major Ridge dusted off his weapons and led a party of thirty south, where they drove the settlers out of their homes on what the Cherokee considered their land, and burned all buildings to the ground, but harmed no one.*
CIMI
Kin 26: White Cosmic World-Bridger
I endure in order to equalize
Transcending opportunity
I seal the store of death
With the cosmic tone of presence
I am guided by the power of heart.
Stand up and go to the highest place - the place which everyone knows exists.*
*Star Traveler's 13 Moon Almanac of Synchronicity, Galactic Research Institute, Law of Time Press, Ashland, Oregon, 2016-02017.
The Sacred Tzolk'in
Visshudha Chakra (Alpha Plasma)
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