towns in ruins, most of the Cherokee town leaders thereafter sought peace. Several Beloved Men traveled to Charleston to negotiate a peace. In May 1777, Colonel Williamson led a South Carolina delegation to Dewitt’s Corner, near present-day Due West in Abbeville County to settle the requested peace terms. Georgia also sent delegates. As a result of the treaty negotiations, the Cherokee were forced to surrender vast tracts of territory in North Carolina and South Carolina. The Treaty of Dewitt’s Corner differed from previous Cherokee treaties, in that this time, South Carolina dictated its terms to an enemy defeated in combat. The victorious colonials set a boundary line between South Carolina and the Cherokee running along the crest of Oconee Mountain, and mandated that American law had precedence over Cherokee law in dealings between the two peoples. The Cherokee lost nearly all of their land in South Carolina. Most of present-day Anderson, Greenville, Oconee, and Pickens Counties comprise lands given up by the Indians in the treaties. In return, South Carolina pledged to regulate trade and travel moving into and out of the remaining Cherokee territories in their jurisdiction. Aftermath By the end of 1776, the majority of the Cherokee people wished to make peace with the American colonists. Following the signing of the Treaty of Dewitt's Corner, Dragging Canoe and his large group of followers moved further down the Tennessee River away from the historic Overhill settlements in order to resist the colonials from a more secure position. They settled in the Chickamauga Creek area (near present-day Chattanooga), an association which caused them for a time to be referred to as the "Chickamauga Cherokee." Notes 1777 treaties United States and Native American treaties Cherokee and United States treaties Native American history of South Carolina