In this engaging history, Daniel J. Tortora explores how the
Anglo-Cherokee War reshaped the political and cultural landscape of
the colonial South. Tortora chronicles the series of clashes that
erupted from 1758 to 1761 between Cherokees, settlers, and British
troops. The conflict, no insignificant sideshow to the French and
Indian War, eventually led to the regeneration of a
British-Cherokee alliance. Tortora reveals how the war destabilized
the South Carolina colony and threatened the white coastal elite,
arguing that the political and military success of the Cherokees
led colonists to a greater fear of slave resistance and revolt and
ultimately nurtured South Carolinians' rising interest in the
movement for independence.
Drawing on newspaper accounts, military and diplomatic
correspondence, and the speeches of Cherokee people, among other
sources, this work reexamines the experiences of Cherokees, whites,
and African Americans in the mid-eighteenth century. Centering his
analysis on Native American history, Tortora reconsiders the rise
of revolutionary sentiments in the South while also detailing the
Anglo-Cherokee War from the Cherokee perspective.