1760–1761
British campaigns destroy Cherokee towns and crops
Southern Appalachians; Cherokee people
In June 1760, Archibald Montgomery’s expedition burned Cherokee Lower Towns. In June–July 1761, James Grant’s expedition destroyed towns and food crops in the Middle settlements and neighboring communities. Grant’s journal records orders to destroy food and prevent replanting, using threatened starvation to press the Cherokee into peace negotiations.
Dates preserve the source’s precision. This entry is part of a selected historical record; its qualifications and sources are retained below.
Context / qualification
The two campaigns were separate expeditions. Grant’s account documents the attacker’s actions and aims, not a neutral assessment of Cherokee losses. This entry makes no town, acreage or casualty total and does not establish a particular land cession. A reported proposal to arm enslaved people remains unverified; a defeated motion would not prove deployment.
Sources
- Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States (2014), chapter 4
- Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, chapter 3, p. 55 (recruitment proposal lead); supplied print pages, edition/year unidentified
- Nic Butler, “Abraham the Unstoppable, Part 5” (2019), June 1–4, 1760 chronology and notes 1–2; Charleston County Public Library ↗
- James Grant, expedition journal, June–July 1761, especially June 12–15 and covering letter; transcription of Florida Historical Society Quarterly 12(1) (1933), pp. 25–36 ↗
- James Grant journal, Florida Historical Quarterly 12(1), article 5 (1933); UCF publication record ↗