Savanukahwn ( Cherokee) was known as the Raven of Chota in the late 18th century. The nephew of

Oconostota Oconostota (c. 1710–1783) was a Cherokee ''skiagusta'' (war chief) of Chota, which was for nearly four decades the primary town in the Overhill territory, and within what is now Monroe County, Tennessee. He served as the First Beloved Man of C ...

, he became

First Beloved Man Principal Chief is today the title of the chief executives of the Cherokee Nation, of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, and of the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians, the three federally recognized tribes of Cherokee. In the eighteenth ...

of the Cherokee in the fall of 1781. He was ousted by the elders of the Overhill towns in 1783 in favor of the more pacifist

Old Tassel Old Tassel Reyetaeh (sometimes Corntassel) (Cherokee language: ''Utsi'dsata''), (died 1788), was "First Beloved Man" (the equivalent of a regional Cherokee chief) of the Overhill Cherokee after 1783, when the United States gained independence from ...

. During the Second Cherokee War, Savanukahwn led the attack against the frontier settlements of Carter's Valley in 1776, in what is now eastern Tennessee but was Cherokee territory. Dragging Canoe of Great Island led the attack on the settlements along the Holston River, and Abraham of Chilhowie led the attacks on the Watauga and Nolichucky rivers, also in what is now

East Tennessee East Tennessee is one of the three Grand Divisions of Tennessee defined in state law. Geographically and socioculturally distinct, it comprises approximately the eastern third of the U.S. state of Tennessee. East Tennessee consists of 33 count ...

Sources

*Alderman, Pat. ''Dragging Canoe: Cherokee-Chickamauga War Chief''. (Johnson City: Overmountain Press, 1978) *Brown, John P. ''Old Frontiers''. (Kingsport: Southern Publishers, 1938). *Haywood, W.H. ''The Civil and Political History of the State of Tennessee from its Earliest Settlement up to the Year 1796''. (Nashville: Methodist Episcopal Publishing House, 1891). *Moore, John Trotwood and Austin P. Foster. ''Tennessee, The Volunteer State, 1769-1923, Vol. 1''. (Chicago: S. J. Clarke Publishing Co., 1923). *Ramsey, James Gettys McGregor. ''The Annals of Tennessee to the End of the Eighteenth Century''. (Chattanooga: Judge David Campbell, 1926). 18th-century Cherokee people 18th-century Native Americans People of pre-statehood Tennessee {{NativeAmerican-politician-stub