On this day 250 years ago near the ruins of the Cherokee town of Nikwasi (present-day Franklin, North Carolina), Lt. William Lenoir of the North Carolina militia commanded by Brig. Gen. Griffith Rutherford recorded that
we marchd by whare the South army fought the Battle saw the Dead Indians lying & where the buried their dedd in a Branch & made a Cosey over them & by a small town and Naukersy and Join’d our Bregade where 2 men had Dyed in our absence-
P.S. One of the Giltford men, Saml. Curry, was left behind sick, was killed and sculp.
“Naukersy” was probably the Cherokee town of Nikwasi (or Nequassee), which had been destroyed by Rutherford’s men earlier in the month. The 1776 campaign by North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and Georgia militia against the Cherokees is referenced in most modern histories as a genocidal tragedy for the Cherokees. But the American policy before this campaign had clearly been to persuade the Cherokees (and other Native American tribes on the frontier) to maintain neutrality in the conflict between America and Britain and to acquire land from the Cherokees through negotiation rather than conquest. Then the Cherokees attacked without warning frontier settlements in the Carolinas massacring women and children settlers as well as men, while the Americans were focused on defending Charleston from British invasion. The invasion in August 1776 was launched in response to the Cherokee attacks.
The American militia commanders can certainly be condemned for conducting a scorched earth campaign against the Cherokee that destroyed Cherokee villages, orchards, livestock and crops without distinguishing between the Cherokee villages that remained peaceful and the villages with warriors that had gone on the warpath. And there were certainly some atrocities committed by individual militiamen against Cherokee combatatants and noncombatants, although some Cherokee warriors also murdered helpless Americans during the campaign. So I want to honor Private Samuel Curry of the Guilford County militia who was scalped and killed while sick and the two other anonymous North Carolina militia who died from illness on this campaign against Cherokees who had allied with the British in war against the United States.
Lt. Lenoir would continue in active service in the militia through the end of the Revolution including as a captain at the Battle of Kings Mountain where he was wounded. After the Revolution he served in the North Carolina legislature where he became President of the State Senate and then President of the State Council.
Sources: “Revolutionary Diary of William Lenoir”, The Journal of Southern History, Vol. 6, No. 2 (May, 1940), pp. 247-259 at 257 accessed at
https://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/wm9AFJ_Nequasee_Franklin_NC; https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=75523; https://www.dncr.nc.gov/blog/2016/09/10/rutherford-trace-and-destruction-nikwasi
