88 An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States
were at war with the resistant Cherokees called "Chickamaugas."
The settlers hated both the Indigenous people whom they were at
tempting to displace as well as the newly formed fe deral government.
In 1784, a group of North Carolina settlers, led by settler-ranger
John Sevier, had seceded from western Carolina and established the
independent country of Franklin with Sevier as president. Neither
North Carolina nor the federal government had exerted any con
trol over the settlements in the eastern Tennessee Va lley region. In
the summer of 1788, Sevier ordered an unprovoked, preemptive at
tack on the Chickamauga towns, killing thirty villagers and forcing
the survivors to flee south. Sevier's actions formed a template for
settler-federal relations, with the settlers implementing the federal
government's final solution, while the federal government feigned an
appearance of limiting settler invasions of Indigenous lands.16
Facing the fierce resistance of Indigenous nations in the Ohio
Country and the fighting between the Muskogee Na ti on and the
state of Georgia, Washington's administration sought to contain
Indigenous resistance in the South. Yet now the settlers were pro
voking the Cherokees in what would soon be the state of Tennes
see. Secretary of War Knox claimed to believe that the thickness of
settlers' development, converting Indigenous hunting grounds into
farms, would slowly overwhelm the Indigenous nations and drive
them out. He advised the squatters' leaders to continue building,
which would attract more illegal settlers. This disingenuous view
ignored the fact that the Indigenous farmers were well aware of the
intentions of the settlers to destroy them and seize their territories.
In the 1785 Treaty of Hopewell between the federal government
and the Cherokee Nation, the United States had agreed to restrict
settlement to the east of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The several
thousand squatter fa milies who claimed nearly a million acres of
land in precisely that zone were not about to abide by the treaty.
Knox saw the situation as a showdown with the settlers and a test
of federal authority west of the mountain chains, from Canada to
Spanish Florida. The settlers did not believe that the federal gov
ernment meant to protect their interests, which encouraged them
to go it alone. In the face of constant attacks, the Cherokees were
desperate to halt the destruction of their towns and fields. Many