During the Ridges youth, Cherokee Nation faced constant threats, and so, the young warrior had a duty to keep an eye to encroaching neighbors, i.e., The Creeks, Shawnees, Chickasaws, and Choctaws together with a new force from the Southern mountains, the Americans.
The people paid dearly when they choose the wrong side of the American Revolution. The Ridge witnessed American riflemen burn his town and destroy the Cherokee territory, and at 17 he took his first America scale to fight the Americans.
In 1805, the population of the Cherokee people had significantly reduced to, 12,000 and more than half of its land was lost.