Editing Nancy Ward (section)

== Revolutionary War years ==
The Cherokee had to face multiple issues during the Revolutionary War. Most of the tribes were originally allied with the British against the rebel colonists.{{efn|The British supported Dragging Canoe's war against the settlers and supplied him with weapons.}} They wanted to expel the European-American settlers from their lands. Ward's cousin, the [[skiagusta|war chief]], [[Dragging Canoe]], wanted to ally with the British against the settlers, but Nanyehi wanted to keep peace with the rebels. In early July 1776, Ward, warned a group of white settlers living near the [[Holston River]] and on the Virginia border about an imminent attack by her people.<ref name=Rhoden/> In late July 1776, [[Dragging Canoe]], [[Oconostota]], and [[The Raven (Cherokee)|The Raven]] led a surprise attack on the [[Overmountain settlements]] of [[Battle of Island Flats|Heaton's station]], [[Fort Watauga]], and Carter's Valley, respectively. After being beaten back by the frontiersmen, Cherokee raiding parties continued attacks against the isolated settlements in the region. State militias retaliated, destroying Native villages and crops.<ref name=Rhoden>{{cite book | last1=Rhoden| first1=Nancy L.| title=The Human Tradition in the American Revolution| date=2000| publisher=Scholarly Resources Inc| location=Wilmington, Del.| isbn=978-0842027489| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vTwkF0xf3bkC&pg=PA125}}</ref> The [[Rutherford Light Horse expedition|Carolina Light Horse Rangers]] and Virginia Royal Scots formed a punitive expedition against Cherokee settlements in Fall of that year, that burnt most of the [[Overhill Cherokee]] towns, crops, and winter supplies. Devastated, the Cherokee sought peace in January 1777, and gave up hunting grounds in east Tennessee to the American frontiersmen.<ref>The Keetoowah Society and the Avocation of Religious Nationalism in the Cherokee Nation, 1855-1867, U.S. GenNet, Inc.</ref><ref>Carl Waldman, ''Atlas of the North American Indian'' (New York: Facts on File Publications, 1985)</ref>

===Captive rescue===
In her role as a Beloved Woman, Nancy Ward had the authority to spare captives. Following the Cherokee attacks on the Watauga settlements, she saved settler Lydia (Russell) Bean, the wife of [[William Bean]], at what is present day's [[Elizabethton, Tennessee]]. She took Bean into her house and nursed her back to health from her wounds. A recovered Bean taught Nanyehi a new loom-weaving technique, which she then taught other women in the tribe. The Cherokee women had typically made garments by sewing a combination of processed hides, handwoven vegetal fiber cloth, and cotton or wool cloth bought from traders. Women wove all the cloth in the village for tribal members'  garments.<ref name=King>{{cite book | editor-last1=King| editor-first1=Duane H.| title=The Memoirs of Lt. Henry Timberlake : The Story of a Soldier, Adventurer, and Emissary to the Cherokees, 1756-1765| date=2007| publisher=Museum of the Cherokee Indian Press| location=Cherokee, N.C.| isbn=9780807831267| page=122| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vHr-cf5j0AEC&pg=PA122| access-date=28 March 2015}}</ref>

Lydia Bean had reclaimed two of her dairy [[cow]]s from the settlement. While she was living with Nanyehi, she taught the Cherokee woman how to care for the cows, milk them, and process the milk into dairy products. Both the animals and their products would sustain the Cherokee when hunting was bad.<ref name=King/> Starr wrote that Nancy Ward successfully raised cows and was said to have been the first to introduce that industry among the Cherokees.<ref name = "starr"/> Those Cherokee who adopted loom weaving and dairy farming began to resemble European-American subsistence farmers. According to a 1933 account, Nanyehi was also among the first [[Slavery among Native Americans in the United States#Native American adaptation of African slaves|Cherokees to own African-American slaves]].<ref name= "Davis">{{cite journal | last1=Davis| first1=J. B.| title=Slavery in the Cherokee Nation| journal=Chronicles of Oklahoma| date=1933| volume=11| issue=4| url=http://digital.library.okstate.edu/Chronicles/v011/v011p1056.html| access-date=28 March 2015| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150310044812/http://digital.library.okstate.edu/Chronicles/v011/v011p1056.html| archive-date=10 March 2015| url-status=dead}}</ref>{{efn|Many Cherokee who adopted the practice of [[chattel slavery]] tended to be Cherokees in the Deep South, where they were developing cotton plantations.<ref name= "Davis" />}}

===Cherokee–American War years===
With the signing of the [[Treaty of Dewitt's Corner]] in early 1777, Dragging Canoe, whose lone counsel to continue the war against the frontier settlements had been dismissed, left the area of the [[Historic Cherokee settlements|traditional Cherokee towns]] with many like-minded warriors and their families. The group traveled further down the Tennessee River valley, away from the White men.  He and about 500 Cherokee settled 11 new tribal towns centered on the convergence of the Tennessee River with [[Chickamauga Creek|South Chickamauga Creek]]. This band was thereafter known as the [[Chickamauga Cherokee|Chickamauga (or Lower) Cherokee]].

Ward's peace efforts had not prevented another invasion of the Cherokee territory by the North Carolina militia in 1778. The force under [[Evan Shelby]] destroyed more villages and demanded further land cessions. Ward and her family were captured in the battle, but they were eventually released and returned to Chota.<ref name=Felton>{{cite book | last1=Felton| first1=Harold W.| author-link=Harold F. Felton| title=Nancy Ward, Cherokee| date=1975| publisher=Dodd, Mead| location=New York| isbn=9780396070726| url=https://archive.org/details/nancywardcheroke00felt}}</ref> In 1780, Ward continued to warn Patriot soldiers of attacks, in an effort to prevent further retaliatory raids against her people. According to folklorist, [[Harold Felton]], she even sent cattle to the starving militia. In July 1781, Nanyehi negotiated a peace treaty between her people and the Americans. No longer facing a major Cherokee threat along the western frontier, the [[Overmountain Men]] were able to send a considerable amount of man power to support the eastern seaboard militias and [[George Washington|Washington]]'s Continental army against British General [[Cornwallis]]' forces in the American Revolution.<ref name="TNEN"/>

Ward continued promoting alliance and mutual friendship between the Cherokee and the Americans, helping negotiate the [[Treaty of Hopewell|Cherokee Treaty of Hopewell]] (1785).<ref name="TNEN"/> Nanyehi objected to further sales of Cherokee lands to whites, but her objections were largely ignored.<ref name=EB/> The Cherokee were under pressure in Georgia and Alabama from encroachment by White settlers. Some leaders believed that ceding lands bought them some time and helped preserve the Cherokee people. The Chickamauga, however, continued their relentless fight against frontier settlers up to the 1794 establishment of the [[Cherokee Nation (1794–1907)|Cherokee Nation]].