"Building Forts in Their Heart": Anglo-Cherokee Relations on the Mid-Eighteenth-Century Southern Frontier

This dissertation examines the relationship between the Cherokees and South Carolina in the mid-eighteenth-century. Specifically, it focuses on the military and economic alliance begun in the early eighteenth century and formalized with the Treaty of Whitehall in 1730. This alliance was both strengthened and strained in the 1750s, temporarily breaking in the Cherokee War of 1759-1761. While most historians of the Seven Years' War treat the Cherokee War as a minor incident and blame the outbreak of war on the heavy handed tactics of South Carolina's young and relatively inexperienced governor, this project examines the tensions in place before the Seven Years' War, and the interplay between Cherokee and colonial perceptions of alliance. In the mid-eighteenth century, Cherokee and South Carolinian diplomatic decisions were shaped by the need to address new security concerns and develop defenses against the French and other American Indian groups. This dissertation focuses on the political, diplomatic, and economic activities of these allies, unpacking the cultural significances of public exchanges such as treaty making, negotiations, trade, and the evolving political climates in both Native and colonial centers of power. These public actions demonstrate commitment to protection against mutual enemies, particularly in the Seven Years' War. At the same time, the alliance was tension-filled, as Cherokees and South Carolinians alike regarded each other as untrustworthy. This study also examines the personal and kin-based relationships at trading and military posts to uncover the meaning of imperial and colonial policies on the local level for Cherokees, traders, and soldiers. Ultimately, these relationships could not contain the rupture that led to the Cherokee War of 1759-1761. The Cherokee War was the result not of the poor decisions of one man but of an alliance strained to the breaking point by a host of factors in 1759. The strength of the alliance, built by compromise, trade, and negotiation over the past sixty years, meant that Cherokees and South Carolinians attempted to rebuild the alliance in the aftermath of war, though its nature irrevocably changed, becoming less focused on trade and more concerned with land sales and delineation of boundaries.