Tsiyugunsini "Dragging Canoe" (c.

1738 – March 1, 1792)

(Son of Chief Attakulkulla and Nannie Ollie)

From the Cherokee Registry

As a 12-14 year old boy he was told he couldn't go with the war party unless he could
drag the fully loaded war log canoe on land into the water. His enthusiasm and endeavors
earned him the name Tsi'ui-Gunsin'ni "Dragging Canoe". This was circa 1750 when his
father Atakullakulla led war parties against the French & their Native allies, including
Shawnee, in the Ohio Valley. (From Wikipedia)

Tsiyugunsini, "He is dragging his canoe", known to whites as Dragging Canoe, (c. 1738 –
March 1, 1792) was an American Indian war leader who led a dissident band of Cherokee
(joined by Upper Muskogee, Chickasaw, Shawnee, and Indians from other tribes/nations,
along with British Loyalists, French and Spanish agents, renegade whites from the
colonies, and runaway slaves), against the United States in the American Revolutionary
War and a decade afterwards, a series of conflicts known as the Chickamauga wars,
becoming the pre-eminent war leader among the Indian of the Southeast of his time. He
served as principal chief of the Chickamauga, or Lower, Cherokee from 1777 until his
death in 1792, upon which he was succeeded by John Watts.

Son of Attakullakulla ("Little Carpenter" in English), who was part Shawnee and part
Nipissing, and a mother who was a Natchez living in a town of refugees from that tribes
who had settled among the Overhill Towns on the Little Tennessee River, he contracted
smallpox at a young age, which left his face pock-marked. According to Cherokee
legend, his name is derived from an incident in his early childhood in which he attempted
to prove his readiness to go on the warpath by hauling a canoe, the attempt resulting in
him only being able to drag it.

Dragging Canoe did later get his chance to take part in war, initially against the Shawnee
and Muskogee (later his two closest allies), but he gained his first real taste in the Anglo-
Cherokee War (1759-1761), along with prior forays into the Ohio country as well. In the
aftermath of this war, he became one of the most vocal opponents of encroachment by
settlers from the British colonies onto Indian, especially Cherokee, land. Eventually he
became chief of Great Island Town (Amoyeli Egwa in Cherokee, written Mialaquo by the
British) on the Little Tennessee River.

When the Cherokee opted to join in the fighting of the American Revolution on the side
of the British, Dragging Canoe was at the head of one of the major attacks. After his
father and Oconostota refused to continue further after the wholesale destruction of the
Cherokee Middle (Hill), Valley, and Lower Towns, Dragging Canoe led a band of the
Overhill Cherokee out of the towns to the area surrounding Chickamauga River (South
Chickamauga Creek) in the Chattanooga area, where they established eleven towns in
1777, including the one later referred to as "Old Chickamauga Town" across river from
place where the British commissary John McDonald had set up shop, doing so on the
advice of Alexander Cameron, the British agent to the Cherokee. From this location,
frontiersmen gave his group the name the Chickamauga Cherokee, and later called them
the Lower Cherokee.

After the Chickamauga towns were destroyed a second time in 1782, Dragging Canoe's
band moved down the Tennessee River to the "Five Lower Towns" area below the
obstructions of the Tennessee River Gorge: Running Water (now Whiteside), Nickajack
(near the cave of the same name), Long Island (on the Tennessee River), Crow Town (at
the mouth of Crow Creek), and Lookout Mountain Town (at the site of the current
Trenton, Georgia). From Running Water, Dragging Canoe led attacks on white
settlements all over the American Southeast, especially against the colonial settlements
on the Holston, Watauga, and Nolichucky Rivers in East Tennessee, and the Cumberland
River settlements in Middle Tennessee (after 1780), sometimes raiding into Kentucky
and Virginia as well. His brothers Little Owl, The Badger, and Turtle-at-Home are known
to have taken part in his wars as well.

Dragging Canoe died March 1, 1792, from exhaustion or an apparent heart attack after
dancing all night celebrating the recent conclusion of alliance with the Muskogee and the
Choctaw, despite a failed similar mission to the Chickasaw, from whence he had just
returned, plus a recent victory by a Chickamauga war band on the Cumberland River
settlements. He is considered by many to be the most significant Native Americans leader
of the Southeast, and provided a significant role model for the younger Tecumseh, who
was a member of a band of Shawnee living with the Chickamauga/Lower Cherokee and
taking part in their wars.

Chief Dragging Canoe - Another Article

For seventeen years, Dragging Canoe led a war trail against settlements in Georgia,
Virginia, and the Carolinas. The militia of these states retaliated by destroying Indian
crops and more than 50 Cherokee towns. The old chiefs wanted peace, but Dragging
Canoe wanted to continue the fight. He and his followers built new settlements in
Georgia and became known as the Chicamaugans. This die-hard band of Chicamaugans
conducted guerrilla raids, leaving a trail of scalps, murdered victims, and ruined crops. In
1777 Dragging Canoe killed a man named David Crockett, his wife and several of his
children. Two of David's sons, Joseph and James, were taken prisoner and kept for 17
years. Another son, John, married and had nine children. The fifth of these was named
Davey Crockett, after his murdered grandfather. This is the Davey Crockett who fought
alongside Andrew Jackson in the Creek War of 1813, became a U.S. Senator, and later
died a hero at the Alamo.

http://thejamesscrolls.blogspot.com/2009/04/dragging-canoe-1738-1792.html