Dragging Canoe (ᏥᏳ ᎦᏅᏏᏂ, pronounced Tsiyu Gansini, – February 29, 1792) was a Cherokee red (or war) chief who led a band of Cherokee warriors who resisted 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 Native Americans from other tribes, along with British Loyalists, and agents of France and Spain. The Cherokee American Wars lasted more than a decade after the end of the American Revolutionary War.
During that time, Dragging Canoe became the preeminent war leader among the Native Americans of the southeastern United States. He served as war chief, or skiagusta, of the group known as the Chickamauga Cherokee (or "Lower Cherokee"), from 1777 until his death in 1792.
Biography
Tsiyu Gansini was born about 1738. Dragging Canoe was the son of Attakullakulla (Tsalagi, or "Little Carpenter")—a Nipissing head-man—and Nionne Ollie ("Tame Doe"). Attakullakulla, Dragging Canoe's father, was born to the Nipissing near Lake Superior. His mother had been born to the Natchez but was adopted as a daughter by Cherokee Chief Oconostota's wife.[1]Many members of these two Native American groups then lived with the Cherokee and had adapted to Cherokee society.
Dragging Canoe's family lived with the Overhill Cherokee on the Little Tennessee River in what is now southeast Tennessee. He survived smallpox at a young age, which left his face marked. Dragging Canoe's brother, The Badger, also became a Cherokee chief.
According to Cherokee legend, he was given his name because of an incident in his childhood. When he wanted to join a war party moving against the Shawnee, his father said that he could accompany the war party as long as he could carry his canoe. The youth tried to prove his readiness for war but could only drag the heavy canoe.
War chief of the Cherokee
Dragging Canoe had his first experience in actual combat during the Anglo-Cherokee War. In its aftermath, he was recognized as one of the strongest opponents to encroachment by white colonists onto Cherokee territories. Eventually, he became the headman of Mialoquo ("Great Island Town", "Amoyeli Egwa" in the Cherokee language) on the Little Tennessee River. When the Cherokee chose to ally with the British against the colonists at the onset of the Revolutionary War, Dragging Canoe was eager to fight and was assigned to be at the head of one of the major forces of the three-pronged attack which opened the war with the frontiersmen of the Overmountain settlements, with his force attacking Heaton's station in the Battle of Island Flats.