SUMMARYDragging Canoe (Tsiyu Gansini): walked out, never folded, 1775–1794 (Nov 8, 2026; TANASI line research)
RECORD (Tennessee Encyclopedia, "Chickamaugas," Fred S. Rolater)Richard Henderson signed with Cherokees led by Attakullakulla on March 19, 1775; Dragging Canoe, Attakullakulla's son, "led the opposition" and warned whites they were buying a "dark and bloody ground"; after the 1776 fighting the most anti-settler Cherokees "moved into several abandoned Creek towns including Citico and Chickamauga"; "Dragging Canoe died suddenly" on February 29, 1792; "The specific end of the Chickamauga period came on September 12, 1794," when Southwest Territory militia destroyed Nickajack and Running Water
RECORD (Wikipedia, "Dragging Canoe")born c. 1738; in early 1777 he led about 500 Overhill Cherokee south to South Chickamauga Creek near present Chattanooga and set up 11 towns
RECORD (A History of the Daniel Boone National Forest 1770–1970, ch. VIII, USFS, on npshistory.com)"The so-called Treaty of Sycamore Shoals or the Treaty of Watauga was actually not a treaty in any sense of the word"; "none of the purchasers signed the document"; Dragging Canoe said "The white people wanted too much of the Cherokee hunting grounds."
DISPUTED (the famous quote)no source opened gives a 1775 document with the words "dark and bloody ground" in his mouth. A. Gwynn Henderson ("Dispelling the Myth," Kentucky Heritage Council, p. 2, citing Archibald Henderson, The Conquest of the Old Southwest, 1920, pp. 233–34) gives it as "a dark cloud hung over the land known as the Bloody Ground" and calls it "reported"; John Filson (1784) calls Kentucky "the Bloody-Grounds" without naming him. Label: reported speech, carried by later writers; the exact phrase is later attribution until the original testimony is opened
PATTERNa private land company buys a nation's hunting ground without a treaty, the son of the signer refuses, and the record keeps his refusal only through the buyers' side
LENS (WW9)NEVER SIGNED. NEVER FOLDED. Chickamauga ground is Chattanooga ground
OPENthe depositions taken about the Henderson purchase (Draper Manuscripts; Virginia and North Carolina inquiries), word for word, for what Dragging Canoe actually said; Cherokee-language sources on his name; British Indian Department letters (Stuart, Cameron) 1776–77. Connects: P860, P862, P864.