Returning Corn to Keowee: Cherokee Women Peacemakers in the Anglo-Cherokee War

During the Anglo-Cherokee War (1758-1761), British forces regularly targeted Cherokee women, their homes, and their cornfields, as a primary method of destabilizing Cherokee polities. The Lower Town of Keowee, located directly across from a major battleground, was particularly impacted, with Keowee families forced to evacuate their homes to escape the violence. My paper tracks the tandem peacemaking processes that ended the Anglo-Cherokee War: the official treaties made between Virginia, South Carolina, and Cherokee leadership, and the Cherokee women of Keowee, whose return to their homes marked the end of the war on the ground. In doing so, I offer methods for finding and interpreting Cherokee women as political actors in every sphere of Cherokee political life.