Settlers vs. Cherokees not for faint-hearted

“The [white settlers’] 1776 retaliatory expedition against the Cherokees illustrates the increasingly racial tone of border warfare….

“At Tomasee [in what is now northeast Georgia], where General Williamson’s troops surrounded a group of Cherokee warriors, some engaged in hand-to-hand combat. During one intense fight, a North Carolina bruiser… placed his long thumbnails on either side of the Cherokee’s eye, about to gouge it from the socket. According to a witness, the Cherokee man cried ‘Canaly!’ which he took to mean ‘Enough!’ (but which may actually have been ‘Ga-na-li!’ meaning ‘Beast!); ‘Damn you,’ says the white man, ‘you can never have enough while you are alive.’

“He threw the Cherokee down, scalped him alive, then beat him to death with the butt of a rifle.”

— From “Slavery in Indian Country: The Changing Face of Captivity in Early America” by Christina Snyder (2010)

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