The Cherokee, after siding with the Province of Carolina in the Tuscarora War of 1711–1715,  had turned on their British allies at the outbreak of the Yamasee War of 1715–1717, until switching sides, once again, midway through the war.

This action had ensured the defeat of the Yamasee.

The Cherokee then remained allies of the British until the French and Indian War.

At the 1754 outbreak of the war, the Cherokee were allies of the British, taking part in campaigns against Fort Duquesne (at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) and the Shawnee of the Ohio Country.

In 1755, a band of Cherokee one hundred and thirty-strong under Ostenaco (or Ustanakwa) of Tamali (Tomotley) had taken up residence in a fortified town at the mouth of the Ohio River at the behest of the Iroquois (who are also British allies).

For several years, French agents from Fort Toulouse had been visiting the Overhill Cherokee on the Hiwassee and Tellico Rivers, and had made inroads into those places.

The strongest pro-French Cherokee leaders zre Mankiller (Utsidihi) of Talikwa(Tellico Plains), Old Caesar of Chatuga (or Tsatugi, Chatooga), and Raven (Kalanu) of Ayuhwasi (Hiwassee).

The "First Beloved Man" (or Uku) of the nation, Kanagatoga (or "Stalking Turkey", aka 'Old Hop'), is very pro-French, as is his nephew, Kunagadoga, who will succeed him at his death in 1760.

During the second year of the French and Indian War, the British had sought Cherokee assistance against the French and their native allies.

The English had reports, which proved accurate, that indicated the French were planning to build forts in Cherokee territory (as they had already done with Ft. Charleville at Great Salt Lick on the Cumberland River); Ft. Toulouse, near present-day Montgomery, Alabama; Ft. Rosalie at Natchez, Mississippi; Ft. St. Pierre at modern day Yazoo, Mississippi; and Ft. Tombeckbe on the Tombigbee River).

Once the Cherokee agreed to be their allies, the British had hastened to build forts of their own in the Cherokee lands, completing Fort Prince George near Keowee in South Carolina (among the Lower Towns); and Fort Loudoun (near Chota at the mouth of the Tellico River) in 1756.

Once the forts were built, the Cherokee had raised close to seven hundred warriors to fight in western Virginia Colony under Ostenaco.

Oconostota and Attakullakulla led another large group to attack Fort Toulouse.

In 1758, the Cherokee participate in the taking of Fort Duquesne (present-day Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.)

However, they feel their efforts are unappreciated.

While traveling through Virginia, on their way home, several Cherokee are murdered by Virginians.

The Cherokee had been promised supplies, but misunderstood where they were to get them from.

After taking some horses they believed were rightly theirs, several Virginians had killed and scalped between thirty and forty of them.

The Virginians later claim the scalps as those of Shawnees and collect bounties for them.

While some Cherokee leaders still call for peace, others lead retaliatory raids on outlying pioneer settlements.

The Anglo–Cherokee War breaks out in 1758 when Virginia militia attack Moytoy (Amo-adawehi) of Citico in retaliation for the theft of some horses by the Cherokee.

Moytoy's reaction is to lead retaliatory raids on the Yadkin and Catawba Rivers in North Carolina, which begins a domino effect that ends with the murders of twenty-three Cherokee hostages at Fort Prince George near Keowee and the massacre of the garrison of Fort Loudoun near Chota (Itsati).

These events usher in a war that will not end until 1761.

The Cherokee are led by Aganstata of Chota, Attakullakulla (Atagulgalu) of Tanasi, Ostenaco of Tomotley, Wauhatchie (Wayatsi) of the Lower Towns, and Round O of the Middle Towns.

British army officer John Forbes, promoted to brigadier general in In December 1757, has been assigned to command an expedition to capture Fort Duquesne, which guards the vital forks of the Ohio River.

General Edward Braddock had tried and failed to capture the fort in 1755, with disastrous consequences for both the British army and Braddock himself, who was mortally wounded in a bloody engagement nine miles short of the objective.

Forbes begins his campaign in the summer of 1758.

His plan is to complete slow and methodical march to Fort Duquesne, taking great pains to secure his lines of supply and communication with a string of forts along a newly constructed road from the Pennsylvania frontier.

Rather than move on Fort Duquesne via Braddock’s road, which begins in western Maryland, Forbes begins his march in eastern Pennsylvania.

This decision leads to major political infighting among the Pennsylvanians and Virginians in his expedition, as both colonies claim the Ohio River country.

Forbes is able to quell the dissent by agreeing to improve Braddock's original road, but travel the route through Pennsylvania, which is longer but requires fewer river crossings.

This also gives the tactical advantage of forcing the French to divide their assets and defend both approaches.

With just under seven thousand regular and provincial troops, Forbes begins his push from his main stores in Carlisle, Pennsylvania into the trackless wilderness of western Pennsylvania.

Born on his family's Pittencrieff Estate in Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland in 1707, the son of an army officer, Forbes had decided in his second year as a medical student to become a soldier and was accepted and commissioned as a lieutenant in the Scots Greys in 1735.

He saw action in the War of the Austrian Succession and in the Jacobite rising of 1745, serving under the Duke of Cumberland as acting quartermaster-general.

Promoted to a Lieutenant-colonelcy in the Scots Greys in 1750 and in 1757 made Colonel of the 17th Regiment of Foot, he had been sent to the fighting in the New World at the outbreak of the war with France.

His first action in North America had come in 1757 when he was dispatched to reinforce an attack on the French fortress of Louisburg.

Forbes cuts a wagon road over the Allegheny Mountains, later known as Forbes Road, west of Raystown (now Bedford, Pennsylvania) building a series of fortifications such as the fort at Raystown and ...

...Fort Ligonier to serve as supply depots. 

Lieutenant Colonel George Washington, who had been a member of Braddock’s campaign, accompanies the expedition, serving at the fore of one of the Virginia provincial regiments.

Forbes, very ill, does not keep up with the advance of his army of between five thousand and seven thousand men, but entrusts it to his second in command, Lieutenant Colonel Henry Bouquet, a Swiss officer commanding a battalion of the Royal American Regiment.

Bouquet had entered the British Army in 1754 as a lieutenant colonel in the 60th Regiment of Foot (The Royal American Regiment), a unit made up largely of members of Pennsylvania's German immigrant community.

After leading the Royal Americans to Charleston, South Carolina to bolster that city's defenses, the regiment had been recalled to Philadelphia to take part in Forbes' expedition.

Bouquet sanctions a reconnaissance of Fort Duquesne by Major James Grant of Ballindalloch.

Grant divides his force into several parts the next morning.

A company of the 77th, under a Captain McDonald, approaches the fort with drums beating and pipes playing as a decoy.

A force of four hundred men lies in wait to ambush the enemy when they go out to attack McDonald, and several hundred more under the Virginian Major Andrew Lewis are concealed near the force's baggage train in the hope of surprising an enemy attack there.

The French and native force is in fact much larger than anticipated, and moves swiftly.

They overwhelm McDonald's decoy force and overrun the party that had been meant to ambush them.

Lewis's force leaves its ambush positions and goes to the aid of the rest of the force, but the French and natives have by now then gained a point of high ground above them and force them to retire.

The natives use the forest to their advantage.

In the one-sided battle in the woods, the British and American force suffers three hundred and forty-two casualties, of whom two hundred and thirty-two are from the 77th Regiment, including Grant, who is taken prisoner.

Out of the eight officers in Andrew Lewis’s Virginian contingent, five are killed, one is wounded and Lewis himself is captured.

Nevertheless, most of Grant's force escapes to rejoin the main army under Forbes and Bouquet.

The Franco-native force suffers only eight killed and eight wounded.

A plaque on the Allegheny County Courthouse, erected in 1901 commemorates the site of the battle, and the hill where the battle was fought is today called Grant Street, in Pittsburgh.

The strategic objective of the Forbes Expedition, like the earlier unsuccessful Braddock Expedition early in the war, is the capture of Fort Duquesne, a French fort constructed at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers in 1754 (site of present-day downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania's Golden Triangle).

Forbes commands between six thousand and eight thousand men, including a contingent of Virginians led by George Washington.

Forbes, very ill, does not keep up with the advance of his army, but entrusts it to his second in command, Lieutenant Colonel Henry Bouquet, a Swiss officer commanding a battalion of the Royal American Regiment.

The expedition methodically constructs a road across what is now the southern part of Pennsylvania's Appalachian Plateau region, staging from Carlisle and exploiting the climb up via one of the few southern gaps of the Allegheny through the Allegheny Front, into the disputed territory of the Ohio Country, which is at this time a largely depopulated native tributary territory of the Iroquois Confederation.

This well organized expedition is in contrast to a similar expedition led by Edward Braddock in 1755 that ended in the disastrous Battle of the Monongahela.

Working for most of the summer on the construction of the road, periodic fortified supply depots, the expedition had not come within striking distance of Fort Duquesne until September 1758.

A reconnaissance force had been soundly defeated in the Battle of Fort Duquesne in mid-September when its leader, Major James Grant, had attempted to capture the fort instead of gathering information alone.

The French, their supply line from Montreal cut by other British actions, attack one of the expedition's forward outposts, Fort Ligonier, in an attempt to either drive off the British or acquire further supplies, but are repulsed in the Battle of Fort Ligonier.

The Treaty of Easton concluded on October 26, 1758, causes the remnants of the Lenape (Delaware), Mingo, and Shawnee tribes in the Ohio Valley to abandon the French, and sets up the conditions that ultimately will force them to move westward once again.

This collapse of native support makes it impossible for the French to hold Fort Duquesne and the Ohio Valley.

When the expedition nears to within a few miles of Fort Duquesne in mid-November, the French abandon and blow up the fort.

Three units of scouts led by Captain Hugh Waddell enter the smoking remnants of the fort under the orders of Colonel George Washington on November 24.

General Forbes, who is ill with dysentery for much of the expedition, only briefly visits the ruins.

He is returned to Philadelphia in a litter, and dies not long afterward.

The collapse of native support and subsequent withdrawal of the French from the Ohio Country helps contribute to the "year of wonders", the string of British 'miraculous' victories also known by the Latin Annus Mirabilis.

The French had beaten off the initial British attack, but Lignery understands that his force of about six hundred cannot hold Fort Duquesne against the main British force of more than ten times that number.

The French had continued to occupy Fort Duquesne until November 26, when the garrison set fire to the fort and left under the cover of darkness.

As the British march up to the smoldering remains, they are confronted with an appalling sight.

The natives had decapitated many of the dead Highlanders and impaled their heads on the sharp stakes on top of the fort walls, with their kilts displayed below.

The British and Americans will rebuild Fort Duquesne, naming it Fort Pitt after the British prime minister William Pitt, who had ordered the capture of this strategic location.

The Cherokee finally declare open war against the British in 1759 (but are fighting independently and not as allies of France).

A number of Muscogee under Big Mortar move up to Coosawatie.

These people have long been French allies in support of the Cherokee pro-French faction centered in Great Tellico.

The governor of South Carolina, William Henry Lyttelton, embargoes all gunpowder shipments to the Cherokee and raises an army of eleven hundred men, which marches to confront the Lower Towns of the Cherokee.

Desperate for ammunition for their fall and winter hunts, the nation sends a delegation of moderate chiefs to negotiate.

The twenty-nine chiefs are taken prisoner as hostages and sent to Fort Prince George, escorted by the provincial army.

Lyttleton thinks this will ensure peace.

Governor Lyttleton returns to Charleston, but the Cherokee are still angry, and continue to attack frontier settlements into 1760.

In February 1760, they attack  Fort Prince George in an attempt to rescue their hostages.

The fort's commander is killed.

His replacement massacres all of the hostages and fends off the attack.

The Cherokee also attack Fort Ninety Six, but it withstands the siege.

The Cherokee expand  their retaliatory campaign into North Carolina, as far east as modern day Winston-Salem.

An attack on Fort Dobbs in North Carolina is repulsed by General Hugh Waddell.

However, lesser settlements in the North and South Carolina back-country quickly fall to Cherokee raids.

Governor Lyttleton appeals for help to Jeffrey Amherst, the British commander in North America.

Amherst sends Archibald Montgomerie with an army of twelve hundred troops (the Royal Scots and Montgomerie's Highlanders) to South Carolina.

Montgomerie's campaign razes some of the Cherokee Lower Towns, including Keowee.

It ends with a defeat at Echoee (Itseyi) Pass when Montgomerie tried to enter the Middle Towns territory.

Later in 1760, the Overhill Cherokee defeat  the British colonists at Fort Loudoun and take it over.