About

This free public event at Historic Smithfield in Blacksburg will bring together Cherokee people and a descendant of the 6,000 man militia army that invaded the Cherokee lands in 1776 in reprisal for a Cherokee effort to take back what they saw as their lands in what is now east Tennessee, Western North and South Carolina and Kentucky from Southern backcountry settlers. We will offer a forum between descendants on the legacy of the war, living history recreations of those on both sides of the conflict, historic trade demonstrations, and a dramatization of the Avery Treaty of 1777 that ended the war at the Long Island of the Holston(present day Kingsport, TN). The event will be held at the actual 1776 house (still in its original location after nearly 250 years) of the Virginia commander of the militia at the Long Island treaty Colonel William Preston, where his deputy and fellow commissioner to the Long Island Treaty William Christian organized the Virginia wing of the offensive against the Cherokee. Everyone is invited-free to the public.