Appalachian Figures Series – The Story of Hanging Maw of Chota
Hanging Maw of Chota appears in the records under several spellings and names. Federal documents and later histories record him as Hanging Maw, Hanging Maugh, Hanging Man, Scolacutta, Squollecuttah, and related variants. That difficulty is part of the story. He lived in a world where Cherokee names passed through English-speaking clerks, treaty copies, military letters, and printed government records, each one trying to capture a Cherokee leader inside the spelling habits of another language.
Hanging Maw belonged to the Overhill Cherokee world of the Little Tennessee River valley. Chota, the town most closely tied to his memory, stood in present-day Monroe County, Tennessee. The Tennessee Encyclopedia describes Chota as an Overhill Cherokee village in the Little Tennessee River valley and notes that it had become larger than nearby Tanasi by the 1740s. Archaeological and written evidence describe Chota with a central plaza, an octagonal townhouse, and public spaces where political and ceremonial life took place.
Chota and Cherokee Diplomacy
Chota was not simply a village on the map. It was one of the places where Cherokee political life, diplomacy, and memory met the growing power of colonial and later American expansion. By the late eighteenth century, the old Overhill towns were under pressure from war, trade, land hunger, and shifting alliances. In that setting, Hanging Maw’s importance came from his role as a Cherokee leader who appeared again and again in moments when peace was possible, fragile, or nearly broken.
The documentary record does not give Hanging Maw a full biography in the modern sense. It gives scattered but powerful glimpses. Those glimpses show him as a chief engaged in talks with American officials, a signer of a major treaty, a victim of frontier violence, and a leader connected to the creation of a federal post near the Overhill towns. His life was lived in the dangerous space between Cherokee sovereignty and the expanding United States.
The 1789 Talks with Joseph Martin
One of the strongest early records of Hanging Maw comes from a January 15, 1789 report by Joseph Martin to Henry Knox. Martin reported that he met with Hanging Maw, identified as a Cherokee chief, and that Hanging Maw wished to settle quarrels and return to his nation to help stop war. The same report also tied the situation to John Sevier, plunder, frontier hostilities, and the larger effort to restore peace after the Revolutionary era.
That source matters because it places Hanging Maw in the records before the Treaty of Holston. He was not merely a name added to a treaty list in 1791. He was already part of the diplomatic world that federal officials, frontier leaders, and Cherokee towns had to navigate. The report also shows the instability of the time. Peace did not depend on one agreement or one meeting. It depended on whether Cherokee leaders, federal officials, territorial authorities, and armed settlers could restrain violence long enough for diplomacy to work.
The Treaty of Holston
Hanging Maw’s clearest appearance in a major federal record came with the Treaty of Holston, signed July 2, 1791. The treaty was framed as an agreement of peace and friendship between the United States and the Cherokee Nation. It defined boundaries, set terms for trade, addressed prisoners, promised protection of Cherokee lands not ceded, and attempted to regulate violence between Cherokee people and citizens of the United States.
His name appears in the signer list as “Squollecuttah, or Hanging Maw.” That line is one of the most important pieces of primary evidence for his status. He stood among Cherokee chiefs and warriors whose marks represented not only individual consent, but the difficult political reality of a nation negotiating under pressure.
The treaty also reveals the central contradiction of the period. Article VII stated that the United States guaranteed Cherokee lands not ceded by the treaty, while other articles laid out cessions, roads, trade controls, and American claims to authority. In practice, frontier violence and settler pressure continued to threaten Cherokee towns after the treaty was signed. For Hanging Maw, the treaty did not end the crisis. It placed him deeper inside it.
The Attack at Hanging Maw’s House
The most dramatic surviving records involving Hanging Maw come from June 1793. A Papers of the War Department record dated June 13, 1793 says Secretary Smith wrote to Hanging Maw after an “unprovoked attack” at Hanging Maw’s place. Smith urged the Cherokee chiefs not to join the Creeks in war and to accept President Washington’s invitation to Philadelphia. The document identifies Knoxville, Coyatee, Hanging Maw’s, Seneca, and Philadelphia in the diplomatic geography of the crisis.
A second War Department record, dated June 17, 1793, shows how seriously territorial officials feared the consequences. In that letter to Edward Adair, Smith worried that the attack on Hanging Maw’s house might lead the Cherokee Nation to seek satisfaction before hearing from the President. The record calls the attack an “unwarrantable act committed by the white people at the Hanging Maw’s” and connects the crisis directly to the Holston Treaty.
These records show the weakness of federal promises on the frontier. The Treaty of Holston had tried to prevent retaliation and regulate violence through formal demands for satisfaction. Yet when violence reached Hanging Maw’s own home, the peace that diplomats had written into treaty language nearly collapsed. The United States could promise justice, but Cherokee leaders had to decide whether those promises meant anything after blood had already been shed.
Holding the Line Against a Wider War
Hanging Maw’s importance was not only that he suffered violence. It was that the attack against him became a turning point in the struggle to keep the Cherokee Nation from wider war. Smith’s June 1793 letter to Hanging Maw shows American officials pleading for restraint. They feared that young warriors, angry relatives, and allied Native powers could turn one attack into a general conflict.
That fear was not imaginary. The early 1790s were filled with rumors, raids, revenge killings, and shifting alliances among Cherokees, Creeks, Chickasaws, Choctaws, frontier settlers, and federal officials. Hanging Maw stood in the middle of that storm. His role was not passive. The records show him as one of the Cherokee leaders whose decisions mattered to the survival of peace.
Tellico Blockhouse and the Search for Protection
After the violence of the early 1790s, Hanging Maw’s name appears again in connection with the Tellico Blockhouse. The Tennessee Encyclopedia states that the Tellico Blockhouse was built in 1794 and 1795 at the confluence of the Tellico and Little Tennessee Rivers, near Fort Loudoun. It also notes that Overhill Cherokees sought a renewed alliance with the federal government for protection from aggressive settlers. In 1794, Governor William Blount agreed to a request from Hanging Maw to build a new federal post that became both a military fort and trading post.
That request can be read as an act of survival. Hanging Maw had seen how dangerous the frontier had become. A federal post near the Cherokee towns could serve American interests, but it also answered a Cherokee need for protection, trade, and a recognized place where diplomacy could happen. The Tellico Blockhouse became one of the most important federal-Cherokee meeting grounds in the region.
The 1794 Conference
On November 8, 1794, Hanging Maw appeared again in a conference between Governor William Blount and Cherokee representatives. The Papers of the War Department identifies him as Scolacutta, also called Hanging Maw, alongside John Watts of Will’s Town and other Cherokee chiefs. About 400 warriors and several United States citizens were present. The conference addressed the destruction of Nickajack and Running Water, frontier aggression, Creek hostility, prisoners, horses, and the desire for permanent peace.
This conference shows the breadth of Hanging Maw’s world. Chota was central to his memory, but his diplomacy reached Tellico, Will’s Town, the Tennessee River, Kentucky, and the wider southern frontier. He was part of a Cherokee leadership network trying to survive both outside pressure and internal division. Some Cherokee leaders leaned toward war, some toward accommodation, and many moved between those positions depending on what settlers and federal officials did next.
Death and the Widow’s Petition
Hanging Maw died in April 1796. The Adams Papers Digital Edition notes that he was not killed in the attack on his home, but died apparently peacefully. It also states that his wife had been injured in an earlier attack by white settlers on their home, where several other friendly Native people were killed. In January 1797, Hanging Maw’s widow petitioned Congress for compensation connected to that attack and other losses.
That petition is a powerful ending to the documentary trail. It shows that the violence did not end when the shooting stopped. Families carried wounds, losses, and claims into the halls of the American government. Hanging Maw’s widow asked for recognition from the same government whose treaties had promised order on the frontier. Her petition reminds us that Cherokee diplomacy was not only conducted by famous male chiefs. It also continued through the claims of widows, families, and communities left to live with the cost of broken peace.
Remembering Hanging Maw of Chota
Hanging Maw’s story belongs in Appalachian history because it is rooted in the Overhill towns, the Little Tennessee River valley, and the contested frontier that became Tennessee. He was not an outsider to the region’s story. He was one of the Native leaders who shaped it before county lines, state borders, and later historical memory narrowed the landscape into settler narratives.
His life also shows why Chota mattered. Chota was a place of council, memory, diplomacy, and survival. Through Hanging Maw, we see a Cherokee leader trying to hold together peace in a time when peace was constantly undermined by land hunger and violence. His name in the Treaty of Holston, his appearance in War Department correspondence, his connection to Tellico Blockhouse, and his widow’s petition after his death all point to the same larger truth. The Appalachian frontier was not simply a line of settlement moving west. It was a homeland where Cherokee leaders fought, negotiated, endured, and tried to protect their people from a future being forced upon them.
Sources & Further Reading
United States. “Treaty with the Cherokee, 1791.” Avalon Project, Yale Law School. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/chr1791.asp
United States War Department. “Treaty of Holston with the Cherokee Nation of Indians.” Papers of the War Department, 1784–1800. https://wardepartmentpapers.org/s/home/item/41698
Martin, Joseph. “Report of Talks with Hanging Maw of Cherokees and Plunder by John Sevier.” January 15, 1789. Papers of the War Department, 1784–1800. https://wardepartmentpapers.org/s/home/item/39753
Blount, William. “Search and Pursuit of the Creeks, Etc.” June 5, 1793. Papers of the War Department, 1784–1800. https://wardepartmentpapers.org/document/44826/
Smith, Daniel. “Don’t Join the Creeks in the Unprovoked War.” June 13, 1793. Papers of the War Department, 1784–1800. https://www.wardepartmentpapers.org/s/home/item/44875
Smith, Daniel. “An Action that May Involve the Nation in Ruin.” June 17, 1793. Papers of the War Department, 1784–1800. https://wardepartmentpapers.org/document/44901/
Smith, Daniel. “Indians Must Refrain from Acts of Violence.” June 20, 1793. Papers of the War Department, 1784–1800. https://wardepartmentpapers.org/document/44921/
Blount, William. “Conference with Cherokee Leadership.” November 8, 1794. Papers of the War Department, 1784–1800. https://wardepartmentpapers.org/s/home/item/48562
United States Congress. American State Papers: Documents, Legislative and Executive, of the Congress of the United States, Class II, Indian Affairs, Volume 1. Washington: Gales and Seaton, 1832. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.35112103282408
United States Congress. Report of the Committee of Claims, on the Petition of the Widow of the Late Scolacuttaw, or Hanging Maw, One of the Chiefs of the Cherokee Nation of Indians. Philadelphia, 1797. https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/8309361
Adams, John. “Adams Papers Digital Edition.” Massachusetts Historical Society. Note on Hanging Maw, his wife, and his widow’s 1797 petition. https://www.masshist.org/publications/adams-papers/index.php/view/ADMS-04-11-02-0220
Timberlake, Henry. The Memoirs of Lieut. Henry Timberlake. London, 1765. Project Gutenberg. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/65256
Timberlake, Henry. The Memoirs of Lieut. Henry Timberlake. Public Domain Review. https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-memoirs-of-lieut-henry-timberlake-1765/
Schroedl, Gerald F. “Chota.” Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture. https://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entries/chota/
Schroedl, Gerald F., ed. Overhill Cherokee Archaeology at Chota-Tanasee. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Department of Anthropology and Tennessee Valley Authority, 1986. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-antiquity/article/overhill-cherokee-archaeology-at-chotatanasee-gerald-f-schroedl-editor-with-contributions-by-james-f-bates-arthur-e-bogan-emanuel-breitburg-lori-la-valley-robert-d-newman-wayne-d-roberts-kurt-c-russ-gerald-f-schroedl-and-andrea-b-shea-university-of-tennessee-department-of-anthropology-report-of-investigations-38-and-tennessee-valley-authority-publications-in-anthropology-42-knoxville-1986-xxii-551-pp-tables-illustrations-2400-paper/1BA5131F4476A83CABCB8181BA37776B
West, Carroll Van. “Tellico Blockhouse.” Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture. https://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entries/tellico-blockhouse/
Faulkner, Charles H. Massacre at Cavett’s Station: Frontier Tennessee during the Cherokee Wars. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2013. https://utpress.org/title/massacre-at-cavetts-station/
Thomas, Cyrus. “The Cherokee Nation of Indians.” Fifth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1883–1884. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1887. https://repository.si.edu/bitstream/handle/10088/91635/Cherokee%20Nation%20of%20Indians.pdf
Starr, Emmet. History of the Cherokee Indians and Their Legends and Folk Lore. Oklahoma City: Warden Company, 1921. https://archive.org/download/historyofcheroke0000star/historyofcheroke0000star.pdf
Mooney, James. Myths of the Cherokee. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1900. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/45634/45634-h/45634-h.htm
Brown, John P. Old Frontiers: The Story of the Cherokee Indians from Earliest Times to the Date of Their Removal to the West, 1838. Kingsport, TN: Southern Publishers, 1938. https://archive.org/details/oldfrontiersstor0000brow
Reynolds, William R., Jr. The Cherokee Struggle to Maintain Identity in the 17th and 18th Centuries. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2015. https://books.google.com/books?id=ZzpwBgAAQBAJ
Smithers, Gregory D. The Cherokee Diaspora: An Indigenous History of Migration, Resettlement, and Identity. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015. https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300169605/the-cherokee-diaspora/
Pearl, Matthew. The Taking of Jemima Boone: Colonial Settlers, Tribal Nations, and the Kidnap That Shaped America. New York: Harper, 2021. https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-taking-of-jemima-boone-matthew-pearl
Faragher, John Mack. Daniel Boone: The Life and Legend of an American Pioneer. New York: Henry Holt, 1992. https://archive.org/details/danielboonelifel00fara
Blackmon, Richard D. Dark and Bloody Ground: The American Revolution Along the Southern Frontier. Yardley, PA: Westholme, 2012. https://www.westholmepublishing.com/book/dark-and-bloody-ground/
Author Note: Hanging Maw’s story is one of those Appalachian histories where the primary records are scattered across treaties, government letters, and later memory. I wanted to treat him as a Cherokee leader in his own right, not just as a name in frontier violence records.