Born about 1740 in one of the Overhill Towns in east Tennessee, Dragging Canoe was the son of the Attakullakulla, perhaps the greatest diplomat ever produced by the Cherokees. Denied permission by his father to participate in a war party against the Shawnees, the youth hid in an overturned canoe where he knew a portage by the party had to take place. Impressed by his tenacity, Attakullakulla gave him permission to go on the war party if he could carry the canoe over the portage. Unable to lift the heavy vessel, he began dragging it along the portage. The cheering warriors began to chant “tsi-yu gansi-ni!” which means, “He is dragging the canoe!” From that time, he was known as Dragging Canoe.

In time, Dragging Canoe became the leader of a small band of warriors known as the Chickamaugas, a diverse group who resisted white settlement in Tennessee for almost 20 years. Shortly before the outbreak of the American Revolution in the spring of 1775, Richard Henderson signed the Treaty of Sycamore Shoals with the Cherokees led by Attakullakulla. This privately negotiated treaty ceded central Kentucky and northern Middle Tennessee to Henderson. The enraged Dragging Canoe correctly advised the whites that, “You have bought a fair land, but there is a black cloud hanging over it. You will find its settlement dark and bloody.”