Battle of Island Flats

The Cherokee plan was three attacks at once. In mid-July 1776 Dragging Canoe, Oconostota and The Raven were to strike Eaton's Station, Fort Watauga and Carter's Valley together, hoping to drive the Washington District settlers back over the mountains. Nancy Ward, the Cherokee diplomat, sent messengers with a warning, so about 160 militia, hardened by Dunmore's War, gathered at Eaton's Station on the ridge east of Long Island. Accounts count four settlers and thirteen Cherokee killed. The attacks came as the Cherokee expected British help after the Declaration of Independence.

What the plaque says

Battle of Island Flats In the area to the S.W. was fought this first battle of the Revolution in the West, July 20, 1776. Colonial Militia under Capt. James Thompson, defeated a force of Cherokees under Dragging Canoe, in a short, bloody struggle. It was also the turning point in the settlers' warfare with the Cherokee, who were British allies.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Warriors' Path State Park — 3.0 mi
  A state park around Fort Patrick Henry Lake on the Holston at Kingsport, named for the Great Indian Warpath, with an unfinished late-1800s railroad grade, mountain-bike trails and a marina.
• Long Island of the Holston — 4.4 mi
  A four-mile island in the Holston at Kingsport, Cherokee council and treaty ground, the start of Boone's Wilderness Road in 1775, and in part returned to the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians in 1976.
• Rocky Mount Museum — 13 mi
  William Cobb's log house at Piney Flats, where Governor William Blount ran the Southwest Territory from 1790 to 1792, now a living-history museum set in 1791 with a reconstructed cabin for the enslaved.
• Jonesborough Historic District — 16 mi
  Tennessee's oldest town, chartered in 1779, where Elihu Embree printed The Emancipator in 1820 and a hay wagon by the courthouse started the National Storytelling Festival in 1973.

More markers nearby

• Douglass High School — 1.9 mi
• Donelson's Flotilla — 2.1 mi
• Ford vs. Ford — 7.2 mi
• Gov. McMinn's Home — 7.3 mi