History of Marion County, Tennessee

The Cherokee Lower Towns

Dragging Canoe, the Chickamauga Wars, and the destruction of Nickajack and Running Water

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Last updated: April 18, 2026

For roughly fifteen years at the end of the 18th century, what is now Marion County was the southern stronghold of the Chickamauga Cherokee, a faction led by Dragging Canoe that rejected the treaties older Cherokee leaders were signing with the expanding United States. Two of their towns, Nickajack and Running Water, stood on what is now the Marion County stretch of the Tennessee River. Their destruction in 1794 effectively ended Cherokee military resistance east of the Mississippi and opened the Sequatchie Valley to American settlement, setting the stage for the county's subsequent history.

Dragging Canoe and the split of 1777 to 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. Americans came to call this faction the Chickamauga Cherokee. They first 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 and founded the Five Lower Towns.

The Five Lower Towns

Two of the five, Nickajack and Running Water, were in what is now Marion County. They were substantial communities by late-18th-century Southeastern standards, home not only to Cherokee but also to Creeks, escaped enslaved Black people, dissident settlers, and at times white renegades. They functioned as bases for raids on American settlements as far away as the Cumberland settlements near Nashville, and as trading centers along the Tennessee River.

Nickajack Cave

Nickajack Cave was centrally important to the town of Nickajack. Cherokee forces used the cave as a refuge and as a source of saltpeter for gunpowder, and the cave had been a spiritually significant landscape feature for Mississippian and earlier peoples long before European contact. Read more about Nickajack Cave →

The Chickamauga Wars, 1776 to 1794

For nearly two decades the Lower Towns anchored Cherokee resistance to American expansion into what is now Tennessee, northern Alabama, and northwest Georgia. Raids by Chickamauga warriors and counter-raids by American militia defined frontier life across the region. Sequoyah, who later created the Cherokee syllabary, is associated with the broader Lower Towns region through his early life near Willstown.

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. It was, however, decisive. Chickamauga resistance collapsed within weeks, and the formal end of hostilities was ratified at the Treaty of Tellico Blockhouse on November 7 and 8, 1794. The treaty opened the area to American settlement and set up the conditions for the creation of Marion County in 1817.

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 (during the War of 1812 and the 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

Why it still matters

The destruction of Nickajack and Running Water is the foundational event in the history of Marion County. Every later chapter, the 1817 formation of the county, the Betsy Pack land purchase for Jasper in 1819, the industrial era, and the modern communities along the river, sits on top of what happened here in 1794. The name is still carried by the cave, the lake, the dam, and several modern place-name references along the river.

Related

About Nickajack and Running Water (community page) →
About Nickajack Cave, Lake, and Dam →
The early history section of the main history page →

Sources