Dragging Canoe

Dragging Canoe (ᏥᏳ ᎦᏅᏏᏂ, pronounced Tsiyu Gansini, "he is dragging his canoe") (c.1738–February 29, 1792) was a Cherokee war chief who led a band of disaffected Cherokee against 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/nations, along with British Loyalists, and agents of France and Spain. The series of conflicts lasted a decade after the American Revolutionary War. Dragging Canoe became the preeminent war leader among the Indians of the southeast of his time. He served as war chief of the Chickamauga Cherokee (or "Lower Cherokee") from 1777 until his death in 1792, when he was succeeded by John Watts.

Biography

He was the son of Attakullakulla ("Little Carpenter"), who was born to the Nipissing. He and his mother were captured when he was an infant, and they were adopted into the Cherokee tribe and assimilated. His mother was Nionne Ollie ("Tamed Doe), born to the Natchez and adopted as a captive by Oconostota's household.