Today in Chickamauga History - October 20
1786, October 20: Report of the Committee Regarding Intelligence of the Hostile Inentions of the Indians - Resolve to gather and ready troops to protect against hostile Indians gathering in Shawnee towns near American frontier. List of troops required from each state included. States must pay Federal Treasury to finance the soldiers and officers. - Notable Person/Group: Cherokee, Warriors, Banditti - https://wardepartmentpapers.org/s/home/item/38288
1792, October 20: Letter to George Washington from Arthur Campbell –
Sire
An unexpected and important event has taken place, the late agression of the Creek and Cherokee Indians.1
To reap the fruits of victory, it will be necessary to establish two or more Posts, on the banks of the Tennesee, below the Cumberland Mounta⟨ins.⟩ The mouth of Duck-river, and near Nicojac seems the most eligible spots, the first to be convenient to keep up an intercourse with the Chickasaws, and the other to awe the lower Cherokees, and upper Creek Towns.3
Arthur Campbell –
1. For accounts of recent Creek and Cherokee aggression, see the report on “the attack . . . upon Buchanan’s Station,” Ky., of 30 Sept., the account of “Indian depredations in the district of Miro, and on the Kentucky road, from the 3d to the 14th of October, 1792,” and the return of the number of “persons killed, wounded, and taken prisoners” in the Southwest Territory since 1 Jan. 1791, in ASP, Indian Affairs, 1:294–95, 329–32. GW enclosed these reports in his letter to the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives of 7 Dec. 1792.
3. Henry Knox already had dismissed the idea of establishing a post on the Duck River, a tributary of the Tennessee River approximately sixty miles southwest of Nashville, in his letter to Blount of 22 April 1792, because “it is to be apprehended that starting a new object at the mouth of Duck river, would have the effect to excite suspicions and jealousies” among the Indians and “the risque of injury would far over balance any advantages, and therefore the attempt ought not to be made” (see Knox to GW, 21 April 1792, note 1).
Nickajack refers to a region along the Tennessee River near the Tennessee-Alabama border, west of present-day Chattanooga, where the major north-south trails used by Indians and traders intersected. The name of one of the Lower Towns of the Cherokee in that region, it was also the name of a large cave from which various bandits, both Indian and white, sometimes surprised travelers on the river. - https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-11-02-0127