the release of the remaining 24 Cherokee
hostages. In February 1760, he reappeared
outside Fort Prince George requesting a par-
ley with its commander, Lt. Richard Coytmore,
who was then treacherously shot outside the
fort. The enraged British then executed all
their Cherokee hostages in retaliation, and a
bloody frontier war erupted.
Oconostota next besieged Fort Loudon in
Tennessee while a force of 1,200 men under
Col. Archibald Montgomerie marched to their
relief. The Cherokees intercepted and am-
bushed Montgomerie at Etchoe Pass on June
27, 1760, and drove the force back with heavy
losses. Deprived of food, the garrison at Fort
Loudon surrendered with Oconostota’s guar-
antee of safe passage. However, he could not
or would not restrain the anger of his braves,
who pursued and slaughtered the survivors on
October 10, 1760. The following year a larger
column of 2,500 men under Col. James Grant
moved into the Cherokee homeland, laid
waste to villages, and despoiled crops. Worse,
Grant artfully avoided Oconostota’s traps and
withdrew in good order. To mitigate further
suffering to both sides, a peace conference
was formally concluded in the summer of
1761, and hostilities ceased. The Cherokees
apparently forgave Oconostota for the de-
struction they endured; shortly afterward, he
relinquished his position as war chief in favor
of a higher position as civil chief.
In 1763, Oconostota sought to regain
Britain’s favor by siding with it during the re-
bellion of the Ottawa chief Pontiac. Three
years later both he and Attakullakuula ven-
tured to New York to confer with Sir William
Johnson and signed a peace treaty with the
Six Nations. Despite his willingness to abide
by peace, Oconostota’s position was compli-
cated and frustrated by the massive influx of
colonialists encroaching upon his lands. The
British government tried earnestly to accom-
modate Indian demands, but settlers openly
disregarded the Proclamation Line of 1763,
which formally forbade white migration over
the Appalachian Mountains. Oconostota
nonetheless remained firmly committed to de-
fending his ancestral domain. “We shall give
no part of our land away unless we are paid
for it,” the chief declared, “and indeed we
want to keep the Virginians at as great a dis-
tance as possible as they are generally bad
men and love to steal horses and hunt deer.”
But thereafter, the relative weakness of his
tribe against the innumerable Europeans tem-
pered Oconostota’s outlook on war. In the best
interest of Indian survival, the former war
chief became a staunch advocate for peace.
By 1770, Oconostota refused all invitations
of northern tribes to join a coalition against
the English, and four years later he also de-
clined to support the Shawnee Cornstalk
during Lord Dunmore’s War. In 1775, he reluc-
tantly agreed to sell an additional 20 million
acres of land to North Carolina rather than
wage war. However, following the onset of the
American Revolution, Oconostota again sided
with Great Britain and unleashed his warriors
against frontier settlements. For three years
the ebb and flow of ambush, murder, and retal-
iation bloodied the soil of Georgia and North
Carolina. In 1776, the Americans captured
Oconostota’s Overhill towns, forcing him to
conclude a peace treaty. The aged chief again
proved unable to control his restless warriors,
and frontier warfare soon resumed in full fury.
In 1780, the Americans under Col. John Sevier
and Arthur Campbell launched several punish-
ing attacks against the Cherokee villages, and
the tribe then formally withdrew from hostili-
ties. Oconostota, old and infirm, resigned as
chief in July 1782 and was succeeded by his
son, Tuckesee. He died at Chota the following
spring, a legendary Cherokee warrior, unable
to stem the tide of European frontier expan-
sion that overpowered his tribe and others.See also
PontiacBibliography
Bryant, James A. “Between the River and the Flood: The
Cherokee Nation and the Battle for European Su-
premacy in North America.” Unpublished master’sOCONOSTOTA