Patriots and Indians: Shaping Identity in Eighteenth-Century South Carolina by Jeff W. Dennis

Abstract

Reviewed by: Patriots and Indians: Shaping Identity in Eighteenth-Century South Carolina by Jeff W. Dennis McIntyre Ivy Farr Patriots and Indians: Shaping Identity in Eighteenth-Century South Carolina. By Jeff W. Dennis. (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2017. Pp. x, 225. $29.99, ISBN 978-1-61117-756-5.) "The American founding was a collective enterprise . . . . a group portrait," as Jeff W. Dennis quotes historian Joseph J. Ellis in the epigraph to this much-needed work (p. 1). Long ignored in historians' examinations of the ideological origins and consequences of the American Revolution, Native Americans have been left on the fringes of the national portrait, even cropped entirely out of the narratives of independence and the early republic. Throughout this lively—at times even witty—work, Dennis uses correspondence, autobiographies, newspapers, and military records to construct a more complete picture. Illuminating South Carolina Indians' indispensable role in the Revolution, he also reveals how southern revolutionaries developed their brand of patriotism in tandem with and in opposition to Native Americans. The differences between Native American and European cultures led to frequent clashes in the Carolina backcountry. None was more influential than the Cherokee War of 1759–1761, which was as formative to South Carolina as [End Page 963] Bacon's Rebellion was to the Chesapeake or as town hall meetings were to New England. Perhaps ironically, men such as Thomas Sumter, Andrew Pickens, and William Moultrie who fought against Indians in the first Cherokee War showed more compassion toward Native Americans in their later interactions during the Revolution and in the new republic. The desire for land also shaped South Carolinians' revolutionary thought. Like the Founding Fathers of Virginia, South Carolina's leaders shifted to support American independence after Britain prohibited their movements west. As the Revolution began, "to be pro-American in South Carolina became concomitant with being anti–Native American," as Patriots defined themselves against "others" in the colony (pp. 81, 82). No group was more "other" than Native Americans. Contact with Native peoples helped white Carolinians define their political ideologies; it also helped them develop the unique fighting style that proved crucial in the Revolution in the southern colonies. Francis Marion, Sumter, and Pickens, well known to every student of South Carolina history, learned their guerrilla tactics fighting Indians nearly twenty years earlier. The crucial Patriot victories at King's Mountain and Cowpens were greatly aided by the Catawbas, who sheltered and supplied Patriot troops prior to the battles. Native Americans received the same thanks whether they sided with the British or the Patriots. On their way through the upcountry, British troops scorched Catawba villages. After the war, the Creeks and Chickamaugas endured Patriot wrath for their alliances with the British. As they destroyed Indian villages and crops, Americans demanded ever more land in exchange for peace. Despite a brief respite from violence under the strong Federalist administrations of Presidents George Washington and John Adams, that policy collapsed with Jeffersonian republicanism. Thomas Jefferson's government excluded Native Americans from citizenship and blazed the path for their removal under President Andrew Jackson. While explaining the development of American patriotism for South Carolina's leading (white) men, Dennis also illuminates Native Americans' struggle to maintain their own patriotism. Cherokee leader Attakullakulla believed that negotiating with the encroachers would preserve peace, but by the time of the Revolution, many Cherokees saw him as an accommodationist and blamed him for the loss of traditional lands. His son, Tsi.yu Gansi.ni, and the Aniyunwiya ("Real People"), however, felt that warring with the enemy was the only way to ensure their survival; indeed, he argued that not engaging their enemies made the Cherokees less patriotic. In hindsight, neither path preserved Native people's dwindling autonomy. Historians long ago examined the ideological origins and consequences of the American Revolution through political theory and pamphlets, but we still know little about the distinctly American ideologies that developed from contact with Native Americans. Dennis's work has begun to rectify this omission, giving future scholars of the colonial, Revolutionary, and early national periods much to consider. [End Page 964] McIntyre Ivy Farr South Carolina Historical Society Copyright © 2018 The Southern Historical Association