Nancy Ward - Changes To Cherokee Society

Changes To Cherokee Society

In the beginnings of the 1760s the Cherokees had entered an alliance with the American colonists who were fighting the French and Indian War. In exchange for their assistance the European-Americans promised to protect them against the Creeks and Choctaws. This led to the building of military stations and frontier posts in Cherokee land and with them, settlers came into the nation. After an incident in West Virginia where frontiersmen killed a group of Cherokees, who were returning from the conquering of Fort Duquesne helping the British, the Natives killed more than 20 settlers in order to get revenge. A two year lasting conflict began in which the Cherokees accomplished to capture Fort London defeating the British forces.

As a Ghigau, Nancy had the power to spare captives and in 1776, following a Cherokee attack on the Fort Watauga settlement on the Watauga River (at present day Elizabethton, Tennessee), she used that power to spare a Mrs. William (Lydia Russell) Bean, whom she took into her house and nursed back to health from injuries suffered in the battle. Mrs. Bean taught Nanyehi a new loom weaving technique, revolutionizing the Cherokee garments, which at the time were a combination of hides, handwoven vegetal fiber cloth, and cloth bought from traders. This weaving revolution also changed the roles of women in the Cherokee society, as they took on the weaving and left men to do the planting, which had traditionally been a woman's job.

Mrs. Bean also rescued two of her dairy cows from the settlement, and brought them to Nanyehi, who learned to raise the cattle and to eat dairy products, which would sustain the Cherokee when hunting was bad.

The combination of loom weaving and dairy farming helped transform Cherokee society from a communal agricultural society into a society very similar to that of their European-American neighbors, with family plots and the need for ever-more labor. Thus some Cherokee adopted the practice of chattel slavery. Nanyehi was among the first Cherokee to own African-American slaves.

After a truce, Carolina Rangers and Royal Scots joined the British light infantry invading Cherokee territory burning crops and towns. The Cherokees surrendered giving up a large portion of their lands.