[3] He first appeared in historic records in 1730, noted as accompanying Alexander Cuming, a British treaty commissioner, and six other Cherokee to England.
Attakullakulla journeyed to Pennsylvania, to Williamsburg, and then to Charles Town, securing the promise of British trade goods as compensation for participation in fighting.
But this was not enough to satisfy young Cherokee who wished to honor their cultural obligation of "blood revenge" and sought social status.
Hoping that matters might be forgiven, Attakullakulla led a Cherokee war party against the French Fort Massiac, and tried to negotiate peace with the British.
The colonial governor, William Henry Lyttelton, seized the delegates as hostages until the Cherokee surrendered those men responsible for killing white settlers.
Having raised an expeditionary force of 1,700 men, Lyttelton set out for Fort Prince George, with the hostages in tow, and arrived on December 9, 1759.
Attakullakulla was forced to sign a treaty agreeing that the Cherokee would deliver suspected "murderers" in exchange for the nearly two dozen hostages confined at Fort Prince George.
Attakullakulla again attempted to negotiate a peace, but this was not achieved until 1761, when the British and South Carolina military conducted a punitive expedition against the Middle and Lower Towns.
Throughout the 1760s, he would work in vain to stall white settlement in the western Carolinas and Overhill Territory, and was a frequent guest of colonial officials in Charles Town and Williamsburg.
In June 1761 a British expedition dispatched by General Jeffery Amherst and commanded by Colonel James Grant destroyed several Cherokee Lower and Middle towns in the Carolinas.
[19] In 1772 Attakullakulla leased lands to the Watauga Association, an organization formed by Anglo-American settlers who wanted to create an independent community in what is now the upper eastern corner of Tennessee.
In 1775 he favored the so-called Transylvania Purchase, by which North Carolina colonel Richard Henderson bought twenty million acres in present-day Kentucky and Middle Tennessee from the Cherokee.
[19] In May 1775, Attakullakulla, Oconostota and other elderly chiefs relinquished the sovereignty of the Cherokee Nation (now roughly the states of Kentucky and Tennessee) for £10,000.
[9] During the Revolutionary War, Attakullakulla was one of a party of elder Cherokee leaders who ceded lands to Virginia, contrary to the wishes of younger warriors.
Attakullakulla's son, Dragging Canoe, the Chickamauga Cherokee leader during the Cherokee-American wars, split with his father during this time.
Stuart being again menaced, for refusing to aid in the mediated reduction of Fort George, Attakullkulla resolved to rescue his friend or die trying.
Attakullakulla had a daughter named Rebecca "Nikiti" Carpenter with his first wife Nionne Ollie and another known as "Weena" with one of the survivors of the Loudon battle.