Explaining the Cherokee War of 1776

In the summer of 1776 Cherokees decided to attack the frontiers of Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia, provoking the first U.S. war against an Indigenous nation and one of the most destructive ever. Why did they do it? Usually the divisive, even existential debates that unfolded in Native communities over war and peace with settlers are hard for historians to recover today. But in Cherokee country, British officials hoping to suppress the American Revolution wrote about the those debates in extraordinary detail. Join scholar Brian DeLay to explore how the Cherokee War of 1776 offers a unique window into dilemmas that Indigenous people across the continent would have to grapple with over the coming century.