WE WILL HAVE OUR LANDS

Whole Indian nations have melted away like snowballs in the sun before the white man’s advance. They leave scarcely a name of our people except those wrongly recorded by their destroyers… Finally the whole country, which the Cherokees and their fathers have so long occupied, will be demanded, and the remnant of Ani-Yunwiya, THE REAL PEOPLE, once so great and formidable, will be compelled to seek refuge in some distant wilderness. There they will be permitted to stay only a short while, until they again behold the advancing banners of the same greedy host. Not being able to point out any further retreat for the miserable Cherokees, the extinction of the whole race will be proclaimed. Should we not therefore run all risks, and incur all consequences, rather than submit to further loss of our country? Such treaties may be alright for men who are too old to hunt or fight. As for me, I have my young warriors about me. We will have our lands. A-WANINSKI, I have spoken.

Dragging Canoe (Cherokee) On Concluding the Transylvania Treaty Cherokee Country, 1775

N.B. Dragging Canoe split with those Cherokees who sold off their lands at a pittance and regrouped with like-minded Cherokees and others into the Chicamaugas band. In April 1779, the same month that Onondaga was burned by the opening phase of Sullivan-Clinton Campaign, Dragging Canoe’s villages were burned down by a force of southern rebel militias.