He worked to try to keep the Cherokee people of the Overhill region out of the Cherokee–American wars being fought between the European-American frontiersmen and the Chickamauga band warriors led by Dragging Canoe.
An advocate of peace, Old Tassel strove—with only some success—to keep the people of the Overhill towns out of the Cherokee–American wars being fought between the white settlers and the Chickamauga band, in what are now the eastern Tennessee and southeastern Kentucky regions.
[2][3]: 11 In 1786 Old Tassel and Hanging Maw were forced to sign the Treaty of Coytoy, which threatened punishment if any murderer of whites was sheltered by the Cherokee.
[4] Outraged by the Treaty of Coytoy, in May 1788 a Cherokee party killed eleven of the twelve members of the John Kirk family, who were homesteaders on Little River southwest of present-day Knoxville, Tennessee.
[4] Col. John Sevier, who was attempting to suppress the Overhill uprisings, led retaliatory raids against numerous Cherokee towns in the Little Tennessee Valley.