page_title: Chickamauga Cherokee
section_title: Peacetime leaders of the Lower Towns
hierarchical_section_title: Chickamauga Cherokee / Aftermath of the wars / Peacetime leaders of the Lower Towns
caption_attribution_description: English: Portrait of Major Ridge by Charles Bird King, 1838, J. T. Bowen's hand-colored lithograph after Henry Inman, Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts ᏣᎳᎩ: ᎠᏂᏯᏩᏍᎩ ᏄᎬᏫᏳᏒ ᏣᎴᎩ
context_page_description: The Chickamauga Cherokee were a group that separated from the greater body of the Cherokee tribes during the American Revolutionary War. The majority of the Cherokee people wished to make peace with the Americans near the end of 1776 following several military setbacks and the reprisals that followed. The Chickamauga followers of headman Dragging Canoe moved with him down the Tennessee River away from their historic Overhill Cherokee towns in the winter of 1776–77. Relocated in a more isolated area, they established 11 new towns in order to gain distance from colonists' encroachments. 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. Five years later, the Chickamaugas moved further west and southwest into present-day Alabama, establishing five larger settlements. They were then more commonly known as the Lower Cherokee. This term was closely associated with the people of these "Five Lower Towns".
context_section_description: John Watts remained the head of the council of the Lower Cherokee at Willstown until his death in 1802.  Afterward, Doublehead, already a member of the triumvirate, moved into that position and held it until his death in 1807. He was assassinated by The Ridge, Alexander Saunders (best friend to James Vann), and John Rogers. The latter was a white former trader who had first come west with Dragging Canoe in 1777. By 1802 he was considered a member of the nation, and was allowed to sit on the council. He was succeeded on the council by The Glass, who was also assistant principal chief of the nation to Black Fox. The Glass was head of the Lower Towns council until the unification council of 1810.
  By the time John Norton (a Mohawk of Cherokee and Scottish ancestry) visited the area in 1809–1810, many of the formerly militant Cherokee of the Lower Towns were among the most assimilated members. James Vann, for instance, became a major planter, holding more than 100 African-American slaves, and was one of the wealthiest men east of the Mississippi.  Norton became a personal friend of Turtle-at-Home as well as John Walker, Jr., and The Glass, all of whom were involved in business and commerce.  At the time of Norton's visit, Turtle-at-Home owned a ferry with a landing on the Federal Road between Nashville, Tennessee and Athens, Georgia, where he lived at Nickajack. This community had expanded down the Tennessee as well as across it to the north, eclipsing Running Water.
  When Georgia and the US government increased pressure for the Cherokee Nation to cede its lands and remove to the west of the Mississippi River, such leaders of the Lower Towns as Tahlonteeskee, Degadoga, John Jolly, Richard Fields, John Brown, Bob McLemore, John Rogers, Young Dragging Canoe, George Guess (Tsiskwaya, or Sequoyah) and Tatsi (aka Captain Dutch) were forerunners. Believing that removal was inevitable in the face of settlers' greed, they wanted to try to get the best lands and settlements possible. They moved with followers to Arkansas Territory, establishing what later became known as the Cherokee Nation West. They next moved to Indian Territory following an 1828 treaty between their leaders and the US government. They were called the "Old Settlers" in Indian Territory and lived there nearly a decade before the remainder of the Cherokee were forced to join them.
  Likewise, the remaining leaders of the Lower Towns proved to be the strongest advocates of voluntary westward emigration, in which they were most bitterly opposed by those former warriors and their sons who led the Upper Towns.  Ultimately such leaders as Major Ridge (as The Ridge had been known since his military service during the Creek and First Seminole Wars), his son John Ridge, his nephews Elias Boudinot and Stand Watie, came to believe that they needed to try to negotiate the best deal with the federal government, as they believed that removal would happen. Other emigration advocates were John Walker, Jr., David Vann, and Andrew Ross (brother of then Principal Chief John Ross). They agreed to the Treaty of New Echota in 1835, which resulted in the Cherokee removal in 1838–1839.
caption: The Ridge (Ganundalegi), formerly known as Pathkiller (Nunnehidihi), illustration from History of the Indian Tribes of North America.
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