Crowtown, Alabama

Crowtown (Cherokee: ᎧᎫᎾᏱ, romanized Kagunyi; also Crow Town) was a Chickamauga Cherokee settlement located on Crow Creek near the Tennessee River in present-day Jackson County, Alabama, in the vicinity of modern Stevenson. Established around 1782 as one of the Five Lower Towns of the Chickamauga Cherokee, Crowtown served as a base for resistance against American frontier expansion until the mid-1790s.^[1][2] The original town site was inundated in 1939 by the impoundment of Guntersville Lake behind Guntersville Dam.

The founding of Crowtown is inseparable from the broader Chickamauga movement. In 1775, Cherokee leaders including Attakullakulla and Oconostota signed the Treaty of Sycamore Shoals, ceding a vast tract in present-day Kentucky and Tennessee to the Transylvania Company. Dragging Canoe, the son of Attakullakulla, opposed the cession and reportedly warned the purchasers that the land would be "dark and bloody."^[3]

When the American Revolutionary War began, Dragging Canoe allied with the British and launched raids on frontier settlements in 1776. The retaliatory expeditions of Griffith Rutherford, Andrew Williamson, and William Christian destroyed more than 50 Cherokee towns across the Carolinas, Georgia, Virginia, and Tennessee in the summer and autumn of that year. The elder Cherokee leaders sued for peace, but Dragging Canoe refused to accept the resulting land cessions. In early 1777, he led approximately 500 followers away from the Overhill Towns and settled along the Chickamauga Creek near present-day Chattanooga, establishing eleven new towns. American frontiersmen began calling this group the "Chickamauga," after the creek.^[3][4]

In 1782, militia forces under John Sevier and Colonel William Campbell destroyed the eleven Chickamauga towns along Chickamauga Creek. Dragging Canoe, through his brother Little Owl, requested and received permission from the Muscogee (Creek) chief Alexander McGillivray to resettle on Muscogee territory further down the Tennessee River. Dragging Canoe then established five new settlements, known as the Five Lower Towns, in more defensible locations below the Tennessee River Gorge (known to rivermen as "the Suck"):^[1][3][5]

• Running Water Town (Cherokee: Amogayunyi), near present-day Whiteside, Tennessee—Dragging Canoe's headquarters
• Nickajack Town (Cherokee: Ani-Kusati-yi, "Koasati Old-place"), near present-day New Hope, Tennessee
• Lookout Mountain Town (Cherokee: Utsutigwayi), near present-day Trenton, Georgia
• Long Island Town (Cherokee: Amoyeligunahita), east of present-day Bridgeport, Alabama
• Crowtown (Cherokee: Kagunyi), near present-day Stevenson, Alabama

Crowtown and Long Island Town were the southernmost and westernmost of the five, situated in what is now northeastern Alabama. Together, the Five Lower Towns formed a chain of settlements controlling a stretch of the Tennessee River below the Gorge, a strategically significant corridor for movement between the Cherokee, Muscogee, and Chickasaw territories.^[2]

Territorial governor William Blount reported to the Secretary of War in 1792 that "Crow Town lies on the north side of the Tennessee [River], half a mile from the river, up Crow Creek, 30 miles below the Suck. [It] is the lowest town in the Cherokee Nation and contained 30 huts in 1790."^[2][6]

The site lay near the confluence of Crow Creek and the original channel of the Tennessee River, in a landscape of river bluffs and bottomland that provided both agricultural ground and natural cover. Crowtown's position at the downstream end of the Five Lower Towns chain placed it closest to the Muscogee and Chickasaw nations to the south and west, facilitating the diplomatic and military alliances that sustained Chickamauga resistance.^[2]

The Five Lower Towns, including Crowtown, functioned as staging areas for raids against American frontier settlements along the Cumberland River (around present-day Nashville), the Holston River, and into Kentucky during the 1780s and early 1790s. Dragging Canoe had led a force against Fort Nashborough on April 2, 1781, in the engagement known as the Battle of the Bluffs.^[4][7]

The Chickamauga received significant material support from foreign powers. During the American Revolution, the British supplied arms and ammunition through Pensacola and Mobile. After Britain's defeat, Dragging Canoe turned to Spain, which controlled Louisiana and the Gulf ports. Through the diplomatic efforts of Alexander McGillivray, Spain signed the Treaty of Pensacola on May 30, 1784, formalizing an alliance of commerce and mutual support with both the Upper Muscogee and the Lower Cherokee. Spanish governor Esteban Miró promised to provide guns and ammunition, and by the mid-1780s, Creek warriors supplied by Spain were joining Chickamauga raiding parties. This external support sustained the Five Lower Towns' capacity for armed resistance well beyond the end of the Revolutionary War.^{[4][8][circular reference]}

Dragging Canoe died on February 29, 1792, at Running Water Town, reportedly from exhaustion after an all-night celebration of a newly concluded alliance with the Muscogee and Choctaw. His chosen successor, John Watts (Kunokeski, also known as Young Tassel), assumed leadership of the Lower Cherokee. Watts continued armed resistance but increasingly faced a deteriorating strategic position as American settlement intensified and foreign support diminished.^{[3][9][circular reference]}

In September 1794, after continued raids on Cumberland settlements prompted Governor Blount to sanction military action, Major James Ore led an expedition of approximately 500 militiamen from Tennessee and Kentucky against the Five Lower Towns. The force included Colonel John Montgomery commanding the territorial militia and Colonel William Whitley of Kentucky commanding the Kentucky 6th Regiment.^[10]

On September 12, 1794, Ore's force launched a surprise assault on Nickajack Town, overwhelming its approximately 200 inhabitants. Around 70 Chickamauga were killed, including the local chief known as The Breath, and about 20 were captured. The militia then advanced on Running Water Town and destroyed it as well. Both towns' food stores were burned. American casualties were minimal—three wounded, none killed.^{[10][11][circular reference]}

Although Crowtown itself was not directly attacked during the Nickajack Expedition, the destruction of Running Water and Nickajack—the two most militarily active of the Five Lower Towns—effectively ended organized Chickamauga resistance. Crowtown, Long Island Town, and Lookout Mountain Town were abandoned in the weeks following the expedition as the remaining Cherokee in the region recognized that further armed resistance was untenable.^[1][10]

On November 8, 1794, Cherokee leaders Hanging Maw (representing the Upper Cherokee) and John Watts (representing the Lower Cherokee) met Governor Blount at Tellico Blockhouse and signed a treaty formally ending the Cherokee–American wars. The treaty required the Lower Cherokee to recognize the boundaries established by the earlier Treaty of Holston (1791) but imposed no additional land cessions. The agreement marked the permanent end of the Chickamauga resistance movement that had persisted since 1776.^{[12][circular reference]}

Despite the abandonment of Crowtown as a Chickamauga base in 1794, Cherokee families continued to settle in the Crow Creek area in the early nineteenth century. By the early 1800s, the broader Crowtown area encompassed several miles of settlement along the creek and river. The creation of Jackson County, Alabama, in 1819 brought increasing pressure from white settlers, and many Cherokee families moved to the south side of the Tennessee River. Cherokee presence in the area ended with the forced removals of the 1830s along the Trail of Tears.^[2][6]

The 1782 site of Crowtown, located half a mile from the confluence of Crow Creek and the original channel of the Tennessee River, was inundated in 1939 when the Tennessee Valley Authority closed the spillway gates at Guntersville Dam, creating Guntersville Lake. The dam's construction prompted the largest archaeological project in Alabama history at that time; investigators from the Alabama Museum of Natural History located several hundred sites in the reservoir area, and 23 of the most significant were excavated by the Works Progress Administration and the Public Works Administration.^[2][13]

A historical marker erected in 2008 by the Jackson County Historical Association and the Alabama Historical Association near Stevenson commemorates the site of Crowtown and its role in Chickamauga Cherokee history.^[2]

• Cherokee–American wars
• Chickamauga Cherokee
• Dragging Canoe
• Historic Cherokee settlements
• John Watts (Cherokee chief)
• Nickajack Expedition
• Running Water Town
• Trail of Tears
• Treaty of Tellico Blockhouse

• Brown, John P. (1938). Old Frontiers: The Story of the Cherokee Indians from Earliest Times to the Date of Their Removal to the West, 1838. Kingsport, Tennessee: Southern Publishers.
• Calloway, Colin G. (1995). The American Revolution in Indian Country: Crisis and Diversity in Native American Communities. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-47569-3.
• Mooney, James (1900). Myths of the Cherokee. 19th Annual Report. Bureau of American Ethnology.