Cowee Bald, situated at 5,080-feet on the Macon-Jackson line just south of where those counties corner with Swain, was once a natural grassy area to which white settlers drove livestock for fattening. According to the “North Carolina Gazetteer,” the name Cowee is of Cherokee origin that signifies “place of the Deer Clan.”

Now the site of a fire tower and a complex of communications and meterological equipment, the open area offers an excellent spot from which to obtain some of the best views in the region. To the south, one looks out over Franklin into north Georgia. To the east, the view is over Sylva back through Balsam Gap toward Waynesville. To the west, the high dark line of the Nantahalas is etched against the skyline.
The Cowee Range arises just south of Bryson City and bends southeastward to a point where it abuts with the Balsams near Highlands. As such, it divides the two dominant river systems of the region: the Little Tennessee and the Tuckaseigee.

Cherokees living at the towns centered around their major settlement of Cowee on the Little Tennessee and those at the towns near present-day Whittier on the Tuckaseigee passed back and forth via a tortuous trail crossing the Cowees near the old bald. Rock shelters and hunting camps at Rattlesnake Mountain and Slipoff Creek, dating human use in the immediate high country back many thousands of years, have been excavated by archaeologists.

Much has transpired here, but the most dramatic recorded moment in Cowee Bald’s history occurred in July 1761. At that time, a British expeditionary force numbering over 2,800 soldiers under the command of Lt. Col. James Grant passed over the mountains in this area from the Cherokee towns at Cowee, which they had burned to the ground, to the Tuckaseegee settlements, which met a similar fate.
Astonishingly, the route of the expeditionary force is clearly delineated on a powder horn now on display at the Museum of the Cherokee Indian. Carved in the artistic scrimshaw style perfected by sailors for use on whale bone, the horn was presumably made by one of the participating soldiers. In 1976, it was obtained by George M. Clark of Chattanooga from Thomas and Vanessa Doyle of Dun Laoghaire, Ireland, and donated to the museum.(The illustration of the powder horn used with this article is a drawing of the actual horn.)

It’s supposed, but not verified, that a member of the Doyle family (whose ancestors served for many generations in the British Army) made the carving as a personal commemoration. The horn is dated “1762” under the inscription: “A new map of carolina and Likwise a plan of Ye Cherokee Nation Congurd by the arme Commandt by Lieeutt Col Jas Grant.” The horn provides the only contemporary map that delineates the invasion route. And it is one of the few maps that locates several of the Cherokee settlements.

In an article entitled “A Powder Horn Commemorating the Grant Expedition Against the Cherokees” (Journal of Cherokee Studies, Summer 1976), Duane King, former director of the Museum in Cherokee, describes the incidents leading up to the invasion and the crossing of the Cowees. According to King, the 1761 war was the culmination of a series of events initiated several years earlier. At that time, a number of Cherokee warriors who had been fighting in Pennsylvania as English allies were murdered by white frontiersmen in Virginia while returning home.

Enraged and bound by traditional law to exact blood revenge, relatives of the slain warriors struck at English settlements in North Caro-lina. Cherokee leaders who traveled to Charleston, S.C., seeking to placate matters were summarily chained and marched to Fort Prince George in Indian country (present-day Pickens Coun-ty, S.C.). An ultimatum went out that they would not be released until the Cherokees responsible for the killings were surrendered for punishment.

As tensions evolved into conflict, the commander at Fort Prince George was killed, as were the 22 members of the Cherokee delegation confined in the fort. The bounty paid by South Carolina for Cherokee scalps was upped to 35 pounds apiece. An army under the command of Col. Archibald Montgomery burned towns in the lower Indian settlements but hastily withdrew to Charleston after sustaining heavy casualties in an ambush at Etchoe Pass.

The aroused Cherokees captured Fort Loudon in present-day east Tennessee and killed 25 or so of their white prisoners. South Carolina officials -- “determined to bring the Cherokee Nation to its knees” -- increased the scalp bounty to 100 pounds and requested British troops. Enter Lt. Col. James Grant, who landed in Charleston with a veteran force of about 1,200 British regulars in January 1761.

The powder horn depicts the route from there to Fort Ninety-Six, where the force arrived on May 18. Now numbering over 2,800 soldiers the expedition included Carolina Provincials, a battalion of Royal Scots, over 400 rangers, 240 wagoneers, a score each of Catawaba and Chickasaw scouts, and 81 black slaves. Six Mohawk warriors also joined the party, not because they favored either side but “purely for the love of fighting.”

Carrying their weapons and “minimal supplies” of “blankets, bearskins, and liquor,” the army moved out into Indian country trailed by 600 pack horses. At eight o’clock on the morning of June 10, “the high blue wall of the Cowee Moun-tains loomed in the foreground” and all hell broke loose. For the next five hours a ferocious running battle ensued along the banks of the Little Tennessee.

After sinking their dead in the river, the British reorganized and marched along the river burning towns and destroying crops. On the night of June 25, Grant left a contingent of 1,000 to guard sick and wounded soldiers at the Cowee Townhouse and set out over the Cowees with his British regulars to launch a major assault on the Cherokee “Out Towns” located along the Tuckaseigee.

The power horn delineates their progress up through Leatherman Gap, across the headwaters of Alarka Creek in the Big Laurel region just north of Cowee Bald, through Wesser Gap, and on down Connelly Creek to present-day Whittier.

Grant’s force of Indian Corps scouts and 1,500 soldiers had all fought in rough country before; indeed, some among the British had fought in the European Alps and other rough terrain. But the mountainous terrain here in present-day Western North Carolina also gained their respect.

Capt. Christopher French recorded in his diary: “The mountain which is upwards of two miles to the top and extremely steep which made a fatigue beyond description to get up it (was) the strongest country I ever saw, anything we had yet passed being nothing in comparison to it. (The) mountain ... was so very steep and made slippery by some rain ... that it was nearly as difficult to get down as up.” Grant reported to his superiors that the crossing represented “perhaps (the) steepest in America.”

Along the Tuckaseigee they encountered little opposition as the Cherokees had fled to the hills, but they destroyed the towns of Stickoee (Whittier), Kithuwa (the ancient mother town at Governor’s Island), Tuckareetchee (Bryson City) and Tesuntee. A letter written by Lt. Francis Marion -- who subsequently became renowned as the “Swamp Fox” during the American Revolution -- described the episode in as follows: “We proceeded, by Col. Grant’s orders, to burn the Indian cabins. Some of the men seemed to enjoy this cruel work, laughing heartily at the curling flames, but to me appeared a shocking sight. But when we came, according to orders, to cut down the fields of corn, I could scarcely refrain from tears. Who, without grief, could see ... the staff of life sink under our swords with all their precious load, to wither and rot untasted in their mourning fields?” As a farewell message, Grant’s Mohawk warriors rammed a stick down the throat of one of the captured Tuckaseigee Cherokees, stuck arrows through his neck, and cleaved his head before returning to Cowee.

Sick, exhausted, victorious, and no longer in a fighting mood, Grant’s army withdrew from Indian country after 33 days of sustained battle, having made their point with a scorched earth policy that demoralized the Cherokee.

A relative peace ensued that lasted until the outbreak of the American Revolution in 1776 when the Cherokee, still remembering the part played by Carolinians in the 1761 invasion, launched savage attacks against the colonial frontier.

The Cowee Bald area is easily reached these days via Forest Service roads 86 (from Whittier) and 70 (from the Cowee community in Macon County). But in 1761, Grant’s hardened British regulars found the crossing -- so meticulously depicted by some talented and unnamed survivor on his powder horn -- to be one of the most memorable yet attempted in North America.

Subsequent crossings during the Civil War and the Indian wars proved to be even more arduous. Even so, the 1761 crossing of the Cowees certainly ranks as one of the more dramatic military maneuvers in our immediate region’s history.
(George Ellison is a writer who lives in Bryson City. He wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 287713, or at ellisongeorge@cs.com

 

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