Last updated: April 18, 2026
- Type: Former Cherokee Lower Towns
- Active: 1779–1794
- Location: Tennessee River at Nickajack Cave and Running Water Creek
Nickajack and Running Water were two of the Five Lower Towns, the southern stronghold of the Chickamauga Cherokee under the leadership of Dragging Canoe from 1779 to 1794. They occupied the part of the Tennessee River Gorge that lies in modern Marion County and were among the most important indigenous towns in the region during the late 18th century. Both were destroyed in the Nickajack Expedition of September 1794, an event that ended Cherokee military resistance east of the Mississippi and opened the Sequatchie Valley and surrounding lands to American settlement.
Why Dragging Canoe came here (1777–1779)
As American settlement pushed into the Overhill Cherokee country in eastern Tennessee during the 1770s, a faction of Cherokee led by Dragging Canoe rejected the treaties being signed by older Cherokee leaders. This faction, which Americans called the Chickamauga Cherokee, initially established towns along Chickamauga Creek near modern Chattanooga. After those towns were attacked by Virginia militia in 1779, Dragging Canoe relocated his followers further downriver to a more defensible area west of Lookout Mountain, founding the Five Lower Towns:
- Nickajack, in modern Marion County, at the mouth of Nickajack Cave
- Running Water, in modern Marion County, along Running Water Creek
- Lookout Mountain Town, in modern Dade County, Georgia
- Long Island, in modern Jackson County, Alabama
- Crowtown, in modern Jackson County, Alabama
What the towns were like
Nickajack and Running Water were substantial communities by late-18th-century Southeastern standards , home to Cherokee, Creek, escaped African-American slaves, dissidents, and at times renegade whites. They functioned as bases for raids on American settlements as far away as the Cumberland settlements near Nashville.
Nickajack Cave was centrally important: Cherokee forces used the cave as a refuge and as a source of saltpeter (for gunpowder), and it was a spiritually significant landscape feature long before European contact.
The Chickamauga Wars (1776–1794)
For nearly two decades these towns anchored Cherokee resistance to American settlement. Raids by Chickamauga warriors and counter-raids by American militia defined frontier life in what is now Tennessee, northern Alabama, and northwest Georgia.
The Nickajack Expedition (September 12, 1794)
On September 12, 1794, a Southwest Territory militia of about 550 men under Major James Ore, guided by former Cherokee captive Joseph Brown, crossed Monteagle Mountain and attacked the Lower Towns. Nickajack was burned first; Running Water was burned the same day. About 70 Cherokee were killed; only three Americans were wounded.
The raid was legally unauthorized, Tennessee's frontier leaders had acted without explicit federal approval, but it was decisive. Chickamauga resistance collapsed. Within two months, the formal end of hostilities was ratified at the Treaty of Tellico Blockhouse on November 7–8, 1794.
What remained
Nickajack the town was not rebuilt. The cave remained central to regional memory and was used again in the 19th century for saltpeter mining (War of 1812 and Civil War), and later as a tourist curiosity.
With the completion of Nickajack Dam in 1967, the mouth of the cave and the sites of the former towns were partially flooded by Nickajack Lake. The cave entrance is today gated to protect an endangered gray bat colony, and can be viewed from a TVA observation platform. Nothing of the original town structures remains above water.
Notable figures
- Dragging Canoe (c. 1738–1792), Cherokee war leader; founded Nickajack in 1779 and led the Chickamauga resistance until his death.
- Joseph Brown, former captive of the Chickamauga; his knowledge of the towns made the 1794 expedition possible.
- Major James Ore, commander of the militia that destroyed the towns.
Modern significance
The destruction of Nickajack and Running Water is a foundational event in the history of Marion County. Every later story, the 1817 formation of the county, the Jasper land purchase from Betsy Pack, the industrial era, the modern communities, stands on what happened here in 1794. The site is commemorated today in place names (Nickajack Cave, Nickajack Lake, Nickajack Dam), in the New Hope and South Pittsburg vicinity, and in historical markers along the Tennessee River.