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In response to numerous Cherokee raids in the summer of 1776, the South Carolina government coordinated an offensive with North Carolina leaders. Col. Andrew Williamson led 2,000 South Carolina militiamen north into Cherokee territory in early September 1776 with orders to join Gen. Griffith Rutherford’s North Carolinians.
On September 19, Williamson and his men marched into an ambush in a gorge known as the “Black Hole.” The battle lasted for nearly two hours, and the militiamen eventually were surrounded and forced into a circular formation, leading to the engagement being known colloquially as “The Ring Fight.” Williamson eventually led a bayonet charge, driving the Cherokees from the field. For such a long battle, both sides suffered few casualties. The Cherokee left four dead on the field, in exchange for eleven dead and twenty-four wounded militiamen. A week later, Williamson’s force united with Rutherford at Hiwassee.
The exact location of the defeat of the Cherokees by a force under Col. Andrew Williamson in 1776 has been the subject of inquiry and speculation for over a century. According to James H. O’Donnell III, Williamson and his troops withdrew into a mountain cove known as the “Black Hole.” In 1874 John McDowell, at that time the surveyor of Macon County, supplied Draper with a map and account (Draper MSS., 1KK85-87) detailing the Williamson forces’s battle with the Cherokee. The site lies one mile north of where Burningtown Creek flows into the Little Tennessee River, just north of the Swain/Macon County line. That part of Swain County is identified on United States Geogological Survey maps as “Indian Grave Gap.” Other historians have posited that the site is near Wayah Gap, based off of the topography and contemporary accounts.
Lyman Draper and Silas McDowell corresponded about the subject in 1873. David L. Swain and subsequently James Mooney drew upon McDowell’s work to credit Gen. Rutherford with defeating the Cherokees at Wayah Gap in 1776. Yet, based on contemporary accounts, the Williamson expedition was the only one of the two present at the “Black Hole” engagement.
In October 1776 Willie Jones on behalf of the North Carolina Council of Safety reported to Virginia Gov. Patrick Henry on the expeditions against the Cherokees. In that report, based upon the work of a member of Rutherford’s party, the rout of the Cherokees by Williamson’s forces is the principal topic. Likewise William Lenoir’s diary recounting his experiences in the Rutherford campaign confirms that it was Williamson who was involved in the battle.
References:
James H. O’Donnell III, Cherokees of North Carolina in the American Revolution (1976)
Lyman Draper Manuscripts, Series KK, North Carolina Papers (microfilm), North Carolina State Archives
Walter Clark, ed., Colonial Records of North Carolina, VI, 260-261, 313, and 314, and X, 860-861
J. G. deRoulhac Hamilton, “Revolutionary Diary of William Lenoir,” Journal of Southern History, VI, (May 1940), 247-259
Patrick O’Kelley, Nothing But Blood and Slaughter, I (2004)
U.S. Geological Survey Maps, North Carolina State Archives
Robert L. Meriwether, The Expansion of South Carolina, 1729-1765 (1940)
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