eir waywest into the Appalachians and met the Cherokee. Contact became continuous with thefounding of the Carolina colonies. Virginian Abraham Wood tried unsuccessfully tomaintain his trade monopoly with the Cherokee and sent two men, James Needham andGabriel Arthur, to the Cherokee Overhill capital at Echota in 1673, but the following yeara group of Cherokee met with rival Carolina traders along the upper Savannah River. Atreaty with South Carolina followed in 1684 beginning a steady trade in deerskins andIndian slaves. Although contact was limited initially to white traders, important changesbegan to occur within the Cherokee as a result. Leadership shifted from priest to warrior,and warriors became hunters for profit. Increasing dependence on trade goods also drew the Cherokee to the British as allies intheir wars against the French and Spanish between 1689 and 1763. Cherokee relationswith their neighbors were not always friendly before contact. They raided Spanishsettlements in Florida during 1673 and fought the coastal tribes of the Carolinas, butEuropean trade and competition aggravated these rivalries and destabilized the region. By1680 most of the tribes had gotten their first firearms, and the Cherokee had fortified theirlarger villages. Constant fighting with the erupted in the east followed by a growingfriction with the Creek and Choctaw to the south. To the west there was a traditionalhostility with the Chickasaw (also a British ally). To the north, the struggle between theFrench, Dutch, and English in the fur trade started the Beaver Wars and a period ofconquest by the Iroquois League which spread across the Great Lakes and the OhioValley. In 1660 large groups of Shawnee were driven south by the Iroquois. The Cherokeeallowed one group to settle in South Carolina and serve as a buffer between them and the .Other Shawnee were permitted to locate in the Cumberland Basin of Tennessee for asimilar purpose against the Chickasaw....
