Dragging Canoe

Who was Dragging Canoe?

Tsiyu Gansini, "He is dragging his canoe", known to whites as Dragging Canoe was a Cherokee war chief who led a band of Cherokee against colonists and United States settlers in the Upper South.

Beginning during the American Revolution, his forces were sometimes joined by Upper Muskogee, Chickasaw, Shawnee, and Indians from other tribes/nations, along with British Loyalists, French and Spanish agents. The series of conflicts, lasting for a decade after the American Revolutionary War, were known as Chickamauga Wars. Dragging Canoe became the pre-eminent war leader among the Indians of the Southeast of his time. He served as principal chief of the Lower Cherokee from 1777 until his death in 1792, when he was succeeded by his pick, John Watts.