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HUNTINGTON FREE LIBRARY AND READING ROOM
MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN HEYE FOUNDATION
MYTHS OF THE CHEROKEE
BY
JAMES MOOlsrEY
EXTRACT FROM THE NINETEENTH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE <? BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY
WASHINGTON
GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
19 02
Cornell University Library
The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library.
There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text.
http://www.archive.org/cletails/cu31924104080076
MYTHS OF THE CHEROKEE
BY
JAMES IVEOONEY
CONTENTS
I — Introduction 11
II — Historical sketch of the Cherokee 14
The traditionary period 14
The period of Spanish exploration — 1540-? 23
The Colonial and Eevolutionary period — 1654-1784 29
Eelations with the United States 61
From the first treaty to the Removal— 1785-1838 61
The Removal— 1838-1839 130
The Arkansas band— 1817-1838 135
The Texas band— 1817-1900 143
The Cherokee Nation of the Weslr-1840-1900 146
The East Cherokee— 1838-1900 NL57
III — Notes to the historical sketch 182
IV — Stories and story-tellers 229
V— The myths 239
Cosmogonic myths 239
1. How the world was made 239
2. Theflrstflre 240
8. Kana'tl and Selu: Origin of corn and game 242
4. Origin of disease and medicine 250
5. The Daughter of the Sun: Origin of death 252
6. How they brought back the Tobacco 254
7. The journey to the sunrise 255
8. The Moon and the Thunders 256
9. What the Stars are like 257
10. Origin of the Pleiades and the Pine 258
11. The milky ;way 259
12. Origin of strawberries '. 259
13. The Great Yellow-jacket: Origin of fish and frogs 260
14. The Deluge <l 261
Quadruped myths 261
15. The four-footed tribes 261
16. The Rabbit goes duck hunting : 266
17. How the Rabbit stole the Otter's coat 267
18. Why the Possum's tail is bare 269
19. How the Wildcat caught the turkeys 269
20. How the Terrapin beat the Rabbit 270
21. The Rabbit and the tar wolf ' 271
22. The Rabbit and the Possum after a wife 273
23. The Rabbit dines the Bear 273
24. The Rabbit escapes from the wolves 274
25. Flint visits the Rabbit 274
26. How the Deer got his horns 275
27. Why the Deer's teeth are blunt 276
28. What became of the Rabbit 277
29. Why the Mink smells 277
30. Why the Mole lives under ground 277
6 CONTENTS [ETH. ANN,19
V— The myths — Continued.
Quadruped myths — Continued. ^"^'^
31 . The Terrapin's escape from the wolves 278
32. Origin of the Groundhog dance: The Groundhog's head 279
33. The migration of the animals >, . v. — 4- 280
34. The Wolf's revenge: The Wolf and,the Dog 280
Bird myths <'. 280
35. The bird tribes 280
36. The ball game of the birds and animals 286
37. How the Turkey got his beard 287
38. Why the Turkey gobbles 288
39. How the Kingfisher got his bill 288
40. How the Partridge got his whistle •- . . 289
41. How the Eedbird got his color 289
42. The Pheasant beating corn; The Pheasant dance 290
43. The race between the Crane and the Humming-bird 290
44. The Owl gets married 291
45. The Huhu gets married 292
46. Why the Buzzard's head is bare 293
47. The Eagle's revenge 293
48. The Htmter and the Buzzard 294
Snake, fish, and insect myths 294
49. The snake tribe 294
50. TheUktenaand the UWiisCi'tl 297
51 . Agan-Uni'tsi's search for the Ifktena 298
52. The Eed Man and the Uktena 300
53. The Hunter and the TJksu'hl 301
54. The UstA'tll 302
55. The Uw'tsCifi'ta 303
56. The Snake Boy 304
57. The Snake Man 304
58. The Rattlesnake's vengeance 305
59. The smaller reptiles, fishes, and insects 306
60. Why the Bullfrog's head is striped 310
61. TheBuUfrog Ipver '. , 310
62. The Katydid's warning 311
Wonder stories - 311
63. tjfitsaiyl', the Gambler 311
64. The nest of the TlSt'nuwa 315
65. The Hunter and the Tla'nuwa 316
66. U'tlftfi'ta, the Spear-flnger 316
67. N(ifi''yunu'wl[, the stone man 319
68. The Hunter in the Dakwa' 320
69. AtagA'W, the enchanted lake 321
70. The Bride from the south 322
71. The Ice Man 322
72. The Hunter and Selu 323
73. The underground panthers 324
74. The Tsundige'wl 325
75. Origin of the Bear: The Bear songs 325
76. The Bear Man : 327
77. The Great Leech of Tlanusi'yl 329
78. The NCiflng'hl and other spirit folk , 330
79. The removed townhouses 335
MOONEY.] CONTENTS 7
V — The myths — Continued.
Wonder stories — Continued. Page
80. The spirit defenders of NlliwasI' .' 336
81. Tsul'kaiil', the slant-eyed giant '. 337
82. Kana'sta, the lost settlement 341
83. Tsuwe'nahl, a legend of Pilot knob 343
84. The man who married tlie Thunder's sister 345
85. The haunted whirlpool 347
86. Yahula 347
87. The water cannibals, 349
Historical traditions '.... 350
88. First contact with whites 350
89. The Iroquois wars 351
90. Hiadeoui, the Seneca 356
91. The two Mohawks 357
92. Escape of the Seneca boys 359
93. The unseen helpers 359
94. Hatcinondon's escape from the Cherokee 362
95. Hemp-carrier 364
96. The Seneca peacemakers 365
97. Origin of the Yontoiiwisas dance 365
98. Ga'na's adventures among the Cherokee 367
99. The Shawano wars 370
100. The raid on Tikwali'tsi 374
101. The last Shawano invasion 374
102. The false warriors of Chilhowee , 375
103. Cowee town 377
-104. The eastern tribes 378
N 105. The southern and western tribes 382
.- 106. The giants from the west 391
107. The lost Cherokee 391
108. The massacre of the Ani'-Kuta'njf 392
109. The war medicine 393
110. Incidents of personal heroism 394
111. The mounds and the constant fire: The old sacred things '_ . . . 395
Miscellaneous myths and legends 397
112. The ignorant housekeeper 397
113. The man in the stump : 397
114. Two lazy hunters , 397
115. The two old men .'. 399
116. The star feathers 399
117. The Mother Bear's song 400
118. Baby song, to please the children 401
119. When babies are born: The Wren and the Cricket 401
120. The Eaven Mocker 401
121. Herbert's spring 403
122. Local legends of North Carolina. 404
123. Local legends of South Carolina 411
124. Local legends of Tennessee 412
125. Local legends of Georgia 415
126. Plant lore 420
VI — Notes and parallels 428
VII— Glossary 506
ILLUSTRATIONS
Page
Plate I. In the Cherokee mountains 11
II. Map: The Cherokee and their neighbors 14
III. Map: The old Cherokee country 23
IV. Sequoya (Sikwayl) 108
Y. The Cherokee alphabet 112
VI. Tahchee (TatsI) or Dutch 140
VII. Spring-frog or Tooantuh (Du'stu') 142
VIII. JohnEoss (Gu'wisguwl') 150
IX. ColonelW. H. Thomas (Wil-Usdi') 160
X. Chief N. J. Smith (TsaladiW) 178
XI. Swimmer (A'yun'inl) 228
XII. John Ax (Itagft'nuhl) 238
XIII. Tagwadihl' 256
XIV. AyMa 272
XV. Sawanu'gl, a Cherokee ball player 284
XVI. NIkwM' mound at Franklin, North Carolina 337
XVII. Annie Ax (Sadayl) 358
XVIII. Walinr, a Cherokee woman 378
XIX. On Oconaluftee river 405
XX. Petroglyphs at Track-rook gap, Georgia 418
FiGUBE 1. Feather wand of Eagle dance 282
2. Ancient Iroquois wampum belts 354
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I I-
MYTHS OF THE CHEROKEE
By James Moonet
I— INTRODUCTION
The myths .given in this paper are part of a large body of material collected among the Cherokee, chiefly in successive field seasons from 1887 to 1890, inclusive, and comprising more or less extensive notes, together with original Cherokee manuscripts, relating to the history, ' archeology, geographic nomenclature, personal names, botany, medi- cine, arts, home life, religion, songs, ceremonies, and language of the tribe. It is intended that this material shall appear from time to time in a series of papers which, when finally brought togetJier, shall constitute a monograph upon the Cherokee Indians. This paper may be considered the first of the series, all that has hitherto appeared being a short' paper upon the sacred formulas of the tribe, published in the Seventh Annual Report of the Bureau in 1891 and containing a synopsis of the Cherokee medico-religious theory, with twenty-eight specimens selected from a body of about six hundred ritual formulas written down in the Cherokee language and alphabet by former doctors of the tribe and constituting altogether the largest body of aboriginal American literature in existence.
Although the Cherokee are probably the largest and most impor- tant tribe in the United States, having their own national government and numbering at any time in their history from 20,000 to 36,000 per- sons, almost nothing has yet been written of their history or general ethnology, as compared with the literature of such northern tribes as the Delawares, the Iroquois, or the Ojibwa. The difference is due to historical reasons ^hich need not be discussed here.
It might seem at first thought that the Cherokee, with their civi- lized code of laws, their national press, their schools and seminaries, are so far advanced along the white man's road as to offer but little inducement for ethnologic study. This is largely true of those in the Indian Territory, with whom the enforced deportation, two generations ago, from accustomed scenes and surroundings did more at a single stroke to obliterate Indian ideas than could have been accomplished
11
12 MYTHS OF THE CHEKOKEE [eth.ann.19
by fifty years of slow development. There remained behind, however, in the heart of the Carolina mountains, a considerable body, outnum- bering today such well-known western tribes as the Omaha, Pawnee, Comanche, and Kiowa, and it is among these, the old conservative Kitu'hwa element, that the ancient things have been preserved. Moun- taineers guard well the past, and in the secluded forests of Nantahala and Oconaluf tee, far away from the main-traveled road of modern progress, the Cherokee priest still treasures the legends and repeats the mystic rituals handed down from his ancestors. There is change indeed in dress and outward seeming, but the heart of the Indian is still his own.
For this and other reasons much the greater portion of the material herein contained has been procured among the East Cherokee living upon the Qualla reservation in western North Carolina and in various djgtached settlements between the reservation and the Tennessee line. This has been supplemented with information obtained in-the Cherokee Nation in Indian Territory, chiefly from old men and women who had emigrated from what is now Tennessee and Georgia, and who consequently had a better local knowledge of these sections, as well as of the history of the western Nation, than is possessed by their kindred in Carolina. The historical matter and the parallels are, of course, collated chiefly from printed sources, but the myths proper. With but few exceptions, are from original investigation.
The historical sketch must be understood as distinctly a sketch, not a detailed narrative, for which there is not space in the present paper. The Cherokee have made deep impress upon the history of the southern states, and no more has been attempted here than to give the leading facts in connected sequence. As the history of the Nation after the removal to the West and the reorganization in Indian Territory pre- sents but few points of ethnologic interest, it has been but briefly treated. On the other hand the affairs of the eastern band have been discussed at some length, for the reason that so little concerning this remnant is to be found in print.
One of the chief purposes of ethnologic study is to trace the, development of human thought under varying conditions of race and environment, the result showing always that primitive man is essen- tially the same in every part of the world. With this object in view a considerable space has been devoted to parallels drawn almost entirely from Indian tribes of the United States and British America. For the southern countries there is but little trustworthy material, and to extend the inquiry to the eastern continent and the islands of the sea would be to invite an endless task.
The author desires to return thanks for many favors from the Library of Congress, the Geological Survey, and the Smithsonian Institution, and for much courteous assistance and friendly suggestion from the oflicers and staff of the Bureau of American Ethnology; and
MOONEY] ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 13
to acknowledge his indebtedness to the late Chief N. J. Smith and family for services as interpreter and for kindly hospitality during successive field seasons; to Agent H. W. Spray and wife for unvarying kindness manifested in many helpful ways; to Mr William Harden, librarian, and the Georgia State Historical Society, for facilities in consulting documents at Savannah, Georgia; to the late Col. W. H. Thomas; Lieut.- Col. W. W. Stringfield, of Waynesville; Capt. James W. Terrell, of Webster; Mrs A. C. Avery and Dr P. L. Murphy, of Mor- ganton; Mr W. A. Fair, of Lincolnton; the late Maj. James Bryson, of Dillsboro; Mr H. G. Trotter, of Franklin; Mr Sibbald Smith, of Chero- kee; Maj. R.C.Jackson, of Smith wood, Tennessee; Mr D. R. Dunn, of Conasauga, Tennessee; the. late Col. Z. A. Zile, of Atlanta; Mr L. M. Greer, of EUijay, Georgia; Mr Thomas Robinson, of Portland, Maine; Mr Allen Ross, Mr W. T. Canup, editor of ^e Indian Arrow, and the officers of the Cherokee Nation, Tahlequah, Indian Territory; Dr D. T. Day, United States Geological Survey, Washington, D. C, and Prof. G. M. Bowers, of the United States Fish Commission, for valuable oral information, letters, clippings, and photographs; to Maj. J. Adger Smyth, of Charleston, S. C, for documentary material; to Mr Stansbury Hagar and the late Robert Grant Haliburton, of Brooklyn, N. Y., for the use of valuable manuscript notes upon Cherokee stellar legends; to Miss A. M. Brooks for the use of valuable Spanish document copies and translations entrusted to the Bureau of American Ethnology; to Mr James Blythe, interpreter during a great part of the time spent by the author in the field; and to various Cherokee and other informants mentioned in the body of the work, from whom the material was obtained.
11— HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE CHEROKEE The Tkaditionakt Period
The Cherokee were the mountaineers of the South, holding the entire Allegheny region from the interlocking head-streams of the Kanawha and the Tennessee southward almost to the site of Atlanta, and from the Blue ridge on the east to the Cumberland range on the west, a territory comprising an area of about 40,000 square miles, now included in the states of Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama. Their principal towns were upon the headwaters of the Savannah, Hiwassee, and Tuckasegee, and along the whole length of the Little Tennessee to its junction with the main stream. ItsSti, or Echota, on the south bank of the Little Tennessee, a few miles above the mouth of Tellico river, in Tennessee, was commonly considered the capital of the Nation. As the advancing whites pressed upon them from the east and northeast the more exposed towns were destroyed or abandoned and new settlements were formed lower down the Tennessee and on the upper branches of the Chattahoochee and the Coosa.
As is always the case with tribal geography, there were no fixed boundaries, and on every side the Cherokee frontiers were contested by rival claimants. In Virginia, there is reason to believe, the tribe was held in check in early days by the Powhatan and the Monacan. On the east and southeast the Tuscarora and Catawba were their invet- erate enemies, with hardly even a momentary truce within the historic period; and evidence goes to show that the Sara or Cheraw were fully as hostile. On the south there was hereditary war with the Creeks,, who claimed nearly the whole of upper Georgia as theirs by original possession, but who were being gradually pressed down toward the Gulf until, through the mediation of the United States, a treaty was finally made fixing the boundary between the two tribes along a line running about due west from the mouth of Broad river on the Savan- nah. Toward the west, the Chickasaw on the lower Tennessee and the Shawano on the Cumberland repeatedly turned back the tide of Chero- kee invasion from the rich central valleys, while the powerful Iroquois in the far north set up an almost unchallenged claim of paramount lordship from the Ottawa river of Canada southward at least to the Kentucky river. 14
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MOONEY] TRIBAL NAMES 15
On the other hand, by their defeat of. the Creeks and expulsion of the Shawano, the Cherokee made good the claim which they asserted to all the lands from^ upper Greorgia, to the Ohio river, including the rich hunting grounds of Kentucky. Holding as they did the great mountain barrier between the English settlements on the coast and the French or Spanish garrisons along the Mississippi and the Ohio, their geographic position, no less than their superior number, would have given them the balance of power in the South but for a looseness of tribal organization in striking contrast to the compactness of the Iro- quois league, by which for more than a century the French power was held in check in the north. The English, indeed, found it con- venient to recognize certain chiefs as supreme in the tribe, but the only real attempt to weld the whole Cherokee Nation into a political unit was that made by the French agent, Priber, about 1736, which failed from its premature discovery by the English. We frequently find their kingdom divided against itself, their very number preventing unity of action, while still giving them an importance above that of neighboring tribes.
The proper name by which the Cherokee call themselves (1)^ is Yun'wiya', or Ani'-Yun'wiya' in the third person, signifying "real people," or " principal people," a word closely related to Ofiwe-honwe, the name by which the cognate Iroquois know themselves. The word properly denotes "Indians," as distinguished from people of other races, but in usage it is restricted to mean members of the Cherokee tribe, those of other tribes being designated as Creek, Catawba, etc., as the case may be. On ceremonial occasions they frequently speak of themselves as Ani'-Kitu'hwagi, or "people of Kitu'hwa," an ancient settlement on Tuckasegee river and apparently the original nucleus of the tribe. Among the western Cherokee this name has been adopted by a secret society recruited from the full-blood element and pledged to resist the advances of the white man's civilization. Under the various forms of Cuttawa, Gattochwa, Kittuwa, etc. , as spelled by dif- ferent authors, it was also used by several northern Algonquian tribes as a synonym for Cherokee.
Cherokee, the name by which they are commonly known, has no meaning in their own language, and iseems to be of foreign origin. As used among themselves the form is Tsa'lagi' or Tsa'ragi'. It first appears as Chalaque in the Portuguese narrative of De Soto's expedi- tion, published originally in 1557, while we find Cheraqui in a French document of 1699, and Cherokee as an English form as early, at least, as 1708. The name has thus an authentic history of 360 years. There is evidence that it is derived from the Choctaw word choluk or chiluk, signifying a pit or cave, and comes to us through the so-called Mobilian trade language, a corrupted Choctaw jargon formerly used as the
1 See the notes to the historical sketch.
16 MYTHS OF THE CHEROKEE [eth.ank.19
medium of communication among all the tribes of the Gulf states, as far north as the mouth of the Ohio (2). Within this area many of the tribes were commonly known uftder Choctaw names, even though of widely differing linguistic stocks, and if such a name existed for the Cherokee it must undoubtedly have been communicated to the first Spanish explorers by De Soto's interpreters. This theory is borne out by their Iroquois (Mohawk) name, Oyata'ge'ronon', as given by Hewitt, signifying "inhabitants of the cave country," the Allegheny region being peculiarly a cave country, in which "rock shelters," con- taining numerous traces of Indian occupancy, are of frequent occur- rence. Their Catawba name also, Manteran, as given by Gatschet, signifying "coming out of the ground," seems to contain the same reference. Adair's attempt to connect the name Cherokee with their word for fire, atsila, is an error founded upon imperfect knowledge of the language.
Among other synonyms for the tribe are Rickahockan, or Recna- hecrian, the ancient Powhatan name, and Tallige', or Tallige'wi, the ancient name used in the Walam Olum chronicle of the Lenape'. Con- cerning both the application and the etymology of this last name there has been much dispute, but there seems no reasonable doubt as to the identity of the people.
Linguistically the Cherokee belong to the Iroquoian stock, the relationship having been suspected by Barton over a century ago, and by Gallatin and Hale at a later period, and definitely established by Hewitt in 1887.' While there can now be no question of the connec- tion, the marked lexical and grammatical differences indicate that the separation must have occurred at a very early period. As is usually the case with a large tribe occupying an extensive territory, the lan- guage is spoken in several dialects, the principal of which may, for want of other names, be conveniently designated as the Eastern, Middle, and Western. Adair's classification into " Ayrate" {i^laM), or low, and "Ottare" (d'taU), or mountainous, must be rejected as imperfect.
The Eastern dialect, formerly often called the Lower Cherokee dialect, was originally spoken in all the towns upon the waters of the Keowee and Tugaloo, head-streams of Savannah river, in South Caro- lina and the adjacent portion of Georgia. Its chief peculiarity is a rolling r, which takes the place of the I of the other dialects. In this dialect the tribal name is Tsa'ragi', which the English settlers of Carolina corrupted to Cherokee, while the Spaniards, advancing from the south, became better familiar with the other form, which they wrote as Chalaque. Owing to their exposed frontier- position, adjoin- ing the white settlements of Carolina, the Cherokee of this division
' Barton, Benj. S., New Views on the Origin o£ the Tribes and Nations ol America, p. xlv, passim; Phila., 1797; Gallatin, Albert, Synopsis of Indian Tribes, Trans. American Antiquarian Society, ii, p. 91; Cambridge, 1836; Hewitt, J. N. B., The Cherokee an Iroquoian Language, Washington, 1887 (MS in the archives of the Bureau oX American Ethnology).
MOONEYl DIALECTS BELATED TRIBES 17
were the first to feel the shock of war in the campaigns of 1760 and 1776, with the result that before the close of the Revolution they had been completely extirpated from their original territory and scattered as refugees among the more western towns of the tribe. The con- sequence was that they lost their distinctive dialect, which is now practically extinct. In 1888 it was spoken by but one man on the reservation in North Carolina.
The Middle dialect, which might properly be designated the Kituhwa dialect, was originally spoken in the towns on the Tuckasegee and the headwaters of the Little Tennessee, in the very heart of the Cherokee country, and is still spoken by the great majority of those now living on the Qualla reservation. In some of its phonetic forms it agrees with the Eastern dialect, but resembles the Western in having the I sound.
The Western dialect was spoken in most of the towns of east Ten- nessee and upper Georgia and upon Hiwassee and Cheowa rivers in North Carolina. It is the softest and most musical of all the dialects of this musical language, having a frequent liquid I and eliding many of the harsher consonants found in the other forms. It ia also the literarj'^ dialect, and is spoken by most of those now constituting the Cherokee Nation in the West.
Scattered among the other Cherokee are individuals whose pronun- ciation and occasional peculiar terms for familiar objects give indica- tion of a fourth and perhaps a fifth dialect, which can not now be localized. It is possible that these differences may come from for- eign admixture, as of Natchez, Taskigi, or Shawano blood. There is some reason for believing that the people living on Nantahala river differed dialectically from their neighbors on either side (3).
The Iroquoian stock, to which the Cherokee belong, had its chief home in the north, its tribes occupying a compact territory which comprised portions of Ontario, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, and extended down the Susquehanna and Chesapeake bay almost to the latitude of Washington. Another body, including the Tuscarora, Nottoway, and perhaps also the Meherrin, occupied territory in north- eastern North Carolina and the adjacent portion of Virginia. The Cherokee themselves constituted the third and southernmost body. It is evident that tribes of common stock must at one time have occupied contiguous territories, and such we find to be the case in this instance. The Tuscarora and Meherrin, and presumably also the Nottoway, are known to have come from the north, while traditional and historical evidence concur in assigning to the Cherokee as their early home the region about the headwaters of the Ohio, immediately to the south- ward of their kinsmen, but bitter enemies, the Iroquois. The theory which brings the Cherokee from northern Iowa and the Iroquois from Manitoba is unworthy of serious consideration. (4)
The most ancient tradition concerning the Cherokee appears to be
19 ETH— 01 2
18 MYTHS OF THE CHEROKEE [eth.ann.19
the Delaware tradition of the expulsion of the Talligewi from the north, as first noted by the missionary Heckewelder in 1819, and published more fully by Brinton in the Walam Olum in 1886. According to the first account, the Delawares, advancing from the west, found their further progress opposed by a powerful people called Alligewi or Tal- ligewi, occupying the country upon a river which Heckewelder thinks identical with the Mississippi, but which the sequel shows was more probably the upper Ohio. They were said to have regularly built earthen fortifications, in which they defended themselves so well that at last the Delawares were obliged to seek the assistance of the "Mengwe," or Iroquois, with the result that after a warfare extending over many j^ears the Alligewi finallj"^ received a crushing defeat, the survivor.s fleeing down the river and abandoning the country to the invaders, who thereupon parceled it out amongst themselves, the "Mengwe" choosing the portion about the Great lakes while the Dela- wares took possession of that to the south and east. The missionary adds that the Allegheny (and Ohio) river was still called by the Dela- wares the Alligewi Sipu, or river of the Alligewi. This would seem to indicate it as the true river of the tradition. He speaks also of remarkable earthworks seen by him in 1789 in the neighborhood of Lake Erie, which were said by the Indians to have been built by the extirpated tribe as defensive fortifications in the course of this war. Near two of these, in the vicinity of Sandusky, he was shown mounds under which it was said some hundreds of the slain Talligewi were buried.^ As is usual in such traditions, the Alligewi were said to have been of giant stature, far exceeding their conquerors in size.
In the Walam Olum, which is, it is asserted, a metrical translation of an ancient hieroglyphic bark record discovered in 1820, the main tra- dition is given in practically the same way, with an appendix which follows the fortunes of the defeated tribe up to the beginning of the historic period, thus completing the chain of evidence. (5)
In the Walam Olum also we find the Delawares advancing from the west or northwest until they come to "Fish river" — the same which Heckewelder makes the Mississippi (6). On the other side, we are told, "The Talligewi possessed the East." The Delaware chief "desired the eastern land," and some of his people go on, but are killed by the Talligewi. The Delawares decide upon war and call in the help of their northern friends, the "Talamatan," i. e., the Wyan- dot and other allied Iroquoian tribes. A war ensues which continues through the terras of four successive chief s, when victory declares for the invaders, and " all the Talega go south." The country is then divided, the Talamatan taking thq northern portion, while the Delawares " stay south of the lakes." The chronicle proceeds to tell how, after eleven more chiefs have ruled, the Nanticoke and Shawano separate from the
1 Heckewelder, John, Indian Nations of Pennsylvania, pp. 47-49, ed. 1876.
MOONEY] DELAWARE TRADITIONS — THE NAME TALLIGEWI 19
pai'ent tribe and remove to the south. Six other chiefs follow in suc- cession until we come to the seventh, who " went to the Talega moun- "tains." By this time the Dela wares have reached the ocean. Other chiefs succeed, after whom "the Easterners and the Wolves" — prob- ably the Mahican or Wappinger and the Munsee — move off to the northeast. At last, after six more chiefs, "the whites came on the eastern sea," by which is probably meant the landing of the Dutch on Manhattan in 1609 (7). We may consider this a tally date, approxi- mating the beginning of the seventeenth century. Two more chiefs rule, and of the second we are told that "He fought at the south; he fought in the land of the Talega and Koweta," and again the fourth chief after the coming of the whites "went to the Talega." We have thus a traditional record of a war of conquest carried on against the Talligewi by four successive chiefs, and a succession of about twenty- five chiefs between the final expulsion of that tribe and the appearance of the whites, in which interval the Nanticoke, Shawano, Mahican, and Munsee branched off from the parent tribe of the Delawares. Without venturing to entangle ourselves in the devious maze of Indian chronology, it is sufficient to note that all this implies a very long period of time — so long, in fact, that during it several new tribes, each of which in time developed a distinct dialect, branch off from the main Lenape' stem. It is distinctly stated that all the Talega went south after their final defeat; and from later references we find that they took refuge in the mountain country in the neighborhood of the Koweta (the Creeks), and that Delaware war parties were still making raids upon both these tribes long after the first appearance of the whites.
Although at first glance it might be thought that the name Tallige-wi is but a corruption of Tsalagi, a closer study leads to the opinion that it is a true Delaware word, in all probability connected with waloh or walok, signifying a cave or hole (Zeisberger), whence we find in the Walam Olum the word oligonunh rendered as "at the place of caves." It would thus be an exact Delaware rendering of the same name, "people of the cave countr}'," by which, as we have seen, the Chero- kee were commonly known among the tribes. Whatever may be the origin of the name itself, there can be no reasonable doubt as to its application. "Name, location, and legends combine to identify the Cherokees or Tsalaki with the Tallike; and this is as much evidence as we can expect to produce in such researches.""^
The Wyandot confirm the Delaware story and fix the identification of the expelled tribe. According to their tradition, as narrated in 1802, the ancient fortifications in the Ohio valley had been erected in the course of a long war between themselves and the Cherokee, which resulted finally in the defeat of the latter.^
The traditions of the Cherokee, so far as they have been preserved,
iBrinton, D.G., Walam Olum, p. 231; Phila., 1886. -Schoolcraft, H. E., Notes on the Iroquois, p. 162; Albany.1847.
20 MYTHS OF THE CHEROKEE [ETH.ANtf.l9
supplement and corroborate those of the northern tribes, thus bring- ing the story down to their final settlement upon the headwaters of the Tennessee in the rich valleys of the southern AUeghenies. Owing to tte Cherokee predilection for new gods, contrasting strongly with the conservatism of the Iroquois, their ritual forms and national epics had fallen into decay even before the Revolution, as we learn from Adair. Some vestiges of their migration legend still existed in Hay- wood's time, but it is now completely forgotten both in the East and in the West.
According to Haywood, who wrote in 1823 on information obtained directly from leading members of the tribe long before the Removal, the Cherokee formerly had a long migration legend, which was already lost, but which, within the memory of the mother of one informant — sa}"^ about 1750 — was still recited by chosen orators on the occasion of the annual green-corn dance. This migration legend appears to have resembled that of the Delawares and the Creeks in beginning with genesis and the period of animal monsters, and thence following the shifting fortune of the chosen band to the historic period. The tradi- tion recited that they had originated in a land toward the rising sun, where they had been placed by the command of "the four councils sent from above." In this pristine home were great snakes and water monsters, for which reason it was supposed to have been near the sea- coast, although the assumption is not a necessary corollary, as these are a feature of the mythology of all the eastern tribes. After this genesis period there began a slow migration, during which "towns of people in many nights' encampment removed," but no details are given. From Heckewelder it appears that the expression, "a night's encamp- ment," which occurs also in the Delaware migration legend, is an Indian figure of speech for a halt of one year at a place. ^
In another place Haywood says, although apparently confusing the chronologic order of events: "One tradition which they have amongst them says they came from the west and exterminated the former inhabitants; and then says they came from the upper parts of the Ohio, where they erected the mounds on Grave creek, and that they removed thither from the country where Monticello (near Charlottes- ville, Virginia) is situated."^ The first reference is to the celebrated mounds on the Ohio near Moundsville, below Wheeling, West Virginia; the other is doubtless to a noted burial mound described by Jefferson in 1781 as then existing near his home, on the low grounds of Rivanna river opposite the site of an ancient Indian town. He himself had opened it and found it to contain perhaps a thousand disjointed skeletons of both adults and children, the bones piled in successive layers, those near the top being least decayed. They showed no signs
1 Heckewelder, Indian Nations, p. 47, ed. 1876.
2 Haywood, John, Natural and Aboriginal History of Tennessee, pp. 225-226; Nashville, 1823.
MOONEY] EARLY DWELLING-PLACES 21
of violence, but were evidently the accumulation pt long years from the neighboring Indian town. The distinguished writer adds: "But on whatever occasion they may have been made, they are of consider- able notoriety among the Indians: for a party passing, about thirty years ago [i. e., about 1750], through the part of the country where this barrow is, went through the woods directly to it without any instructions or enquiry, and having staid about it some time, with expressions which were construed to be those of sorrow, they returned to the high road, which they had left about half a dozen miles to pay this visit, and pursued their journey.'" Although the tribe is not named, the Indians were probably Cherokee, as no other southern Indians were then accustomed to range in that section. As serving to corroborate this opinion we have the statement of a prominent Cher- okee chief, given to Schoolcraft in 1846, that acccording to their tradi- tion his people had formerly lived at the Peaks of Otter, in Virginia, a noted landmark of the Blue ridge, near the point where Staunton river breaks through the mountains.^
From a careful sifting of the evidence Haywood concludes that the authors of the most ancient remains in Tennessee had spread over that region from the south and southwest at a very early period, but that the later occupants, the Cherokee, had entered it from the north and northeast in comparatively recent times, overrunning and exterminat- ing the aborigines. He declares that the historical fact seems to be established that the Cherokee entered the country from Virginia, mak- ing temporary settlements upon New river and the upper Holston, until, under the continued hostile pressure from the north, they were again forced to remove farther to the south, fixing themselves upon the Little Tennessee, in what afterward became known as the middle towns. By a leading mixed blood of the tribe he was informed that they had made their first settlements within their modern home territory upon Nolichucky river, and that, hdving lived there for a long period, they could give no definite account of an earlier location. Echota, their capital and peace town, " claimed to be the eldest brother in the nation," and the claim was generallj' acknowledged.^ In confirmation of the statement as to an earlj' occupancy of the upper Holston region, it may be noted that "Watauga Old Fields," now Elizabethtown, were so called from the fact that when the first white settlement within the present state of Tennessee was begun there, so early as 1769, the bottom lands were found to contain graves and other numerous ancient remains of a former Indian town which tradition ascribed to the Cherokee, whose nearest settlements were then many miles to the southward.
While the Cherokee claimed to have built the mounds on the upper
1 Jefferson, Thomas, Notes on Virginia, pp. 136-137; ed. Boston, 1802.
2 Schoolcraft, Notes on the Iroquois, p. 163, 1847.
! Haywood, Natural and Aboriginal History of Tennessee, pp. 233, 236, 269, 1823.
22 MYTHS OF THE CHEROKEE [eth.ann.19
Ohio, they yet, according to Haywood, expressly disclaimed the author- ship of the very numerous mounds and petroglyphs in their later home territory, asserting that these ancient works had exhibited the same appearance when they themselves had first occupied the region.' This accords with Bartram's statement that the Cherokee, although some- times utilizing the mounds as sites for their own town houses, were as ignorant as the whites of their origin or purpose, having only a gen- eral tradition that their forefathers had found them in much the same condition on first coming into the country.^
Although, as has been noted, Haywood expresses the opinion that the invading Cherokee had overrun and exterminated the earlier inhabitants, he says in another place, on halfbreed authority, that the newcomers found no Indians upon the waters of the Tennessee, with the exception of some Creeks living upon that river, near the mouth of the Hiwassee, the main body of that tribe being established upon and claiming all the streams to the southward.' There is considerable evidence that the Creeks preceded the Cherokee, and within the last century they still claimed the Tennessee, or at least the Tennessee watershed, for their northern boundary.
There is a dim but persistent tradition of a strange white race pre- ceding the Cherokee, some of the stories even going so far as to locate their former settlements and to identify them as the authors of the ancient works found in the country. The earliest reference appears to be that of Barton in 1797, on the statement of a gentleman whom he quotes as a valuable authority upon the southern tribes. "The Cheerake tell us, that when they first arrived in the country which they inhabit, they found it possessed by certain 'moon-eyed people,' who could not see in the day-time. These wretches they expelled." He seems to consider them an albino race.* Haywood, twentj'-six years later, says that the invading Cherokee found "white people" near the head of the Little Tennessee, with forts extending thence down the Tennessee as far as Chickamauga creek. He gives the location of three of these forts. The Cherokee made war against them and drove them to the mouth of Big Chickamauga creek, where they entered into a treaty and agreed to remove if permitted to depart in peace. Permission being granted, they abandoned the country. Else- where he speaks of this extirpated white race as having extended into Ilentucky and probably also into western Tennessee, according to the concurrent traditions of different tribes. He describes their houses, on what authority is not stated, as having been small circular structures
1 Haywood, Nat. and Aborig. Hist. Tennessee, pp. 226, 234, 1823.
2 Bartram, Wm, , Travels, p. 365; reprint, London, 1792. » Haywood, op. oit., pp. 234-237.
* Barton, New Views, p. xliv, 1797.
BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY
NINETEENTH ANNUAL REPORT PL. Ill
JULIUS D;E?I tJ CO. LlTH
MooNEY] THE DE SOTO EXPEDITION 1540 23
of upright logs, covered with earth which had been dug out from the inside.'
Harry Smith, a halfbreed born about 1815, father of the late chief of the East Cherokee, informed the author that when a boy he had been told by an old woman a tradition of a race of very small people, perfectly white, who once came and lived for some time on the site of the ancient mound on the northerji side of Hiwassee, at the mouth of Peachtree creek, a few miles above the present Murphy, North Caro- lina. They afterward removed to the West. Colonel Thomas, the white chief of the East Cherokee, born about the beginning of the century, had also heard a tradition of another race of people, who lived on Hiwassee, opposite the present Murphy, and warned the Cherokee that they must not attempt to cross over to the south side of the river or the great leech in the water would swallow theiu.^ They finally went west, "long before the whites came." The two stories are plainly the same, although told independently and many miles apart.
The Pebiod of Spanish Expi,oeation — 1640- ?
The definite history of the Cherokee begins with the year 1540, at which date we find them already established, where they were always afterward known, in the mountains of Carolina and Georgia. The earliest Spanish adventurers failed to penetrate so far into the interior, and the first entry into their country was made by De Soto, advancing up the Savannah on his fruitless quest for gold, in May of that 3'ear.
While at Cofitachiqui, an important Indian town on the lower Savannah governed by a "queen," the Spaniards had found hatchets and other objects of copper, some of which was of finer color and appeared to be mixed with gold, although they had no means of testing it. ' On inquiry they were told that the metal had come from an interior mountain province called Chisca, but the country was represented as thinly peopled and the way as impassable for horses. Some time before, while advancing through eastern Georgia, they had heard also of a rich and plentiful province called Copa, toward the northwest, and by the people of Cofitachiqui they were now told that Chiaha, the nearest town of Coga province, was twelve days inland. As both men and animals were already nearly exhausted from hunger and hard travel, and the Indians either could not or would not furnish sufficient pro- vision for their needs, De Soto determined not to attempt the passage of the mountains then, but to push on at once to Copa, there to rest and recuperate before undertaking further exploration. In the mean-
1 Haywood, Nat. and Aborig. Hist. Tennessee, pp. 166, 234-236, 287-289, 1823.
^See story, "The Great Leech ot Tlanusi'yl, " p. 328.
3 Garcilaso de la Vega, La Florida del Inca, pp. 129, 133-134; Madrid, 1723.
24 MYTHS OF THE CHEBOKEE [eth.ann.19
time he hoped also to obtain more definite information concerning the mines. As the chief purpose of the expedition was the discovery of the mines, many of the officers regarded this change of plan as a mistake, and ifavored staying where they were until the new crop should be ripened, then to go directly into the mountains, but as the general was "a stern man and of few words," none ventured to oppose his resolution/ The province of Copa was the territory of the Creek Indians, called Ani'-Kusa by the Cherokee, from Kusa, or Coosa, their ancient capital, while Chiaha was identical with Chehaw, one of the principal Creek towns on Chattahoochee river. Cofitachiqui may have been the capital of the Uchee Indians.
The outrageous conduct of the Spaniards ,had so angered the Indian queen that she now refused to furnish guides and carriers, whereupon De Soto made her a prisoner, with the design of compelling her to act as guide herself, and at the same time to use her as a hostage to com- mand the obedience of her subjects. Instead, however, of conducting the Spaniards by the direct trail toward the west, she led them far out of their course until she, finally managed to make her escape, leaving them to find their way out of the mountains as best they could.
Departing from Cofitachiqui, thej' turned first toward the north, passing through several towns subject to the queen, to whom, although a prisoner, the Indians everywhere showed great respect and obe- dience, furnishing whatever assistance the Spaniards compelled her to demand for their own purposes. In a few daj's they came to "a province called Chalaque," the territory of the Cherokee Indians, probably upon the waters of Keowee river, the eastern head-stream of the Savannah. It is described as the poorest country for corn that they had yet seen, the inhabitants subsisting on wild roots and herbs and on game which they killed with bows and arrows. They were naked, lean, and unwarlike. The country abounded in wild turkeys ("gallinas"), which the people gave very freely to the strangers, one town presenting them with seven hundred. A chief also gave De Soto two deerskins as a great present.^ Garcilaso, writ- ing on the authority of an old soldier nearly fifty years afterward, says that the ." Chalaques " deserted their towns on the approach of the white men and fled to the mountains, leaving behind only old men and women and some who were nearly blind.' Although it was too early for the new crop, the poverty of the people may have been more apparent than real, due to their unwillingness to give any part of their stored-up provision to the unwelcome strangers. As the Spaniards were greatly in need of corn for themselves and their horses, they made no stay, but hurried on. In a few days they arrived
^ Gentleman of Elvas, Publicationa of the Hakluyt Society, ix, pp. 52, 58, 64; London, 1851.
2 Ibid., p. 60.
"Garcilaso, La Florida del Inca, p. 136, ed. 1723.
MOONEY] THE DE SOTO EXPEDITION 1540 25
at Guaquili, which is mentioned onl}^ by Ranjel, who does not specify whether it was a town or a province^i. e., a tribal territory. It was probably a small town. Here they were welcomed in a friendly man- ner, the Indians giving them a little corn and many wild tui'keys, together with some dogs of a peculiar small species, which were bred for eating purposes and did not bark. ' They were also supplied with men to help carrj^ the baggage. The name Guaquili has a Cherokee sound and may be connected with wa'guU\ " whippoorwill," uwd'g'iU, "foam,"or^t7«, "dog."
Traveling still toward the north, they arrived a day or two later in the province of Xuala, in which we recognize the territory of the Suwali, Sara, or Cheraw Indians, in the piedmont region about the head of Broad river in North Carolina. Garcilaso, who did not see it, represents it as a rich countrj^ while the Elvas narrative and Biedma agree that it was a rough, broken country, thinly inhabited and poor in provision. According to Garcilaso, it was under the rule of the queen of Cofitachiqui, although a distinct province in itself.^ The principal town was beside a small rapid stream, close under a moun- tain. The chief received them in friendlj? fashion, giving them corn, dogs of the small breed already mentioned, carrying baskets, and bur- den bearers. The country roundabout showed greater indications of gold mines than anj^ they had yet seen.^
Here De Soto turned to the west, crossing a very high mountain range, which appears to have been the Blue ridge, and descending on the other side to a stream flowing in the opposite direction, which was probably one of the upper tributaries of the French Broad.' Although it was late in May, they found it very cold in the moun- tains.* After several days of suck travel they arrived, about the end of the, month, at the town of Guasili, or Guaxule. The chief and principal men came out some distance to welcome them, dressed in fine robes of skins, with feather head-dresses, after the fashion of the country. Before reaching this point the qiieen had managed to make her escape, together with three slaves of the Spaniards, and the last that was heard of her was that she was on her way back to her own country with one of the runaways as her husband. What grieved De Soto most in the matter was that she took with her a small box of pearls, which he had intended to take from her before releasing her, but had left with her for the present in order "not to discontent her altogether. " ^
Guaxule is described as a very large town surrounded by a number of small mountain streams which united to form the large river down which the Spaniards proceeded after leaving the place." Here, as
1 Ranjel, in Oyiedo, Historia General y Natural de las Indias, i, p. 562; Madrid, 1851. ^Garcilaso, La Florida del Inca,p.l37, 1723, •'Ranjel, op. cit., i, p. 562. ssee note 8, De Soto's route. * Elvas, Hakluyt Society, ix, p. 61, 1851.
» Garcilaso, op. cit. , p. 139.
26 MYTHS OF THE CHEROKEE [eth.ann.19
elsewhere, the Indians received the white men with kindness and hos- pitality— so much so that the name of Guaxule became to the army a synonym for good fortune.^ Among other things they gave the Span- iards 300 dogs for food, although, according to the Elvas narrative, the Indians themselves did not eat them.' The principal officers of the expedition were lodged in the "chief's house," by which we are to understand the townhouse, which was upon a high hill with a roadway to the top.^ From a close study of the narrative it appears that this "hill" was no other than the great Nacoochee mound, in White county, Georgia, a few miles northwest of the present Clarkesville.* It was within the Cherokee territory, and the town was pi'obably a settlement of that tribe. From here De Soto sent runners ahead to notify the chief of Chiaha of his approach, in order that sufficient corn might be ready on his arrival.
Leaving Guaxule, they proceeded down the river, which we identify with the Chattahoochee, and in two days arrived at Canasoga, or Cana- sagua, a frontier town of the Cherokee. As they neared the town they were met by the Indians, bearing baskets of " mulberries,'" more probably the delicious service-berry of the southern mountains, which ripens in early summer, while the mulberry matures later.
From here they continued down the river, which grew cpnstantly larger, through an uninhabited country which formed the disputed territory between the Cherokee and the Creeks. About five days after leaving Canasagua they were met by messengers, who escorted them to Chiaha, the first town of the province of Cofa. De Soto had crossed the state of Georgia, leaving the Cherokee country behind him, and was now among the Lower Creeks, in the neighborhood of the present Columbus, Georgia." With his subsequent wanderings after crossing the Chattahoochee into Alabama and beyond we need not concern ourselves (8).
While resting at Chiaha De Soto met with a chief who confirmed what the Spaniards had heard before concerning mines in the province of Chisca, saying that there was there "a melting of copper" and of another metal of about the same color, but softer, and therefore not so much used.^ The province was northward from Chiaha, somewhere in upper Georgia or the adjacent part of Alabama or Tennessee, through all of which mountain region native copper is found. The other mineral, which the Spaniards understood to be gold, may have been iron pyrites, although there is some evidence that the Indians occa- sionally found and shaped gold nuggets."
iRanjeljln Oviedo, Historia, i, p. 563, 1861.
2Elvas, Biedma, and Ranjel all make special reference to the dogs given them at this place; they seem to have been of the same .small breed ("perrillos") which Ranjel says the Indians used for food. sGarcllaso, La Florida dellnca, p. 139, 1723. * See note 8, De Soto's route.
6 See Elvas, Hakluyt Society, ix, p. 61, 1851; and Ranjel, op. cit., p. 563. " See note 8, De Soto's route. ' Elvas, op.cit., p. 64.
MOONEY] PAKDO'S EXPEDITIONS 1566-67 27
Accordingly two soldiers were sent on foot with Indian guides to find Chisca and learn the truth of the stories. They rejoined the army some time after the march had been resumed, and reported , according to the Elvas chronicler, that their guides had taken them through a country so poor in corn, so rough, and over so high mountains that it would be impossible for the army to follow, wherefore, as the way grew long and lingering, they had turned back after reaching a little poor town where they saw nothing that was of any profit. They brought back with them a dressed buffalo skin which the Indians there bad given them, the first ever obtained by white men, and described in the quaint old chronicle as "an ox hide as thin as a calf's skin, and the hair like a soft wool between the coarse and fine wool of sheep."'
Garcilaso's glowing narrative gives a somewhat different impression. According to this author the scouts returned full of enthusiasm for the fertility of the country, and reported that the mines were of a fine species of copper, and had indications also of gold and silver, while their progress from one town to another had been a continual series of f eastings and Indian hospitalities.* However that may have been, De Soto made no further effort to reach the Cherokee mines, but con- tinued his course westward through the Creek country, having spent altogether a month in the mountain region.
There is no record of any second attempt to penetrate the Cherokee country for twenty-six years (9). In 1561 the Spaniards took formal possession of the bay of Santa Elena, now Saint Helena, near Port Royal, on the coast of South Carolina. The next year the French made an unsuccessful attempt at settlement at the same place, and in 1566 Menendez made the Spanish occupancy sure by establishing there a fort which he called San Felipe.^ In November of that year Captain Juan Pardo was sent with a party from the fort to explore the interior. Accompanied by the chief of " Juada" (which from Vandera's narra- tive we find should be"Joara," i.e., the Sara Indians already men- tioned in the De Soto chronicle), he proceeded as far as the territory of that tribe, where he built a fort, but on account of the snow in the mountains did not think it advisable to go farther, and returned, leaving a sergeant with thirty soldiers to garrison the post. Soon after his return he received a letter from the sergeant stating that the chief of Chisca — the rich mining country of which De Soto had heard — was very hostile to the Spaniards, and that in a recent battle the latter had killed a thousand of his Indians and burned fifty houses with almost no damage to themselves. Either the sergeant or his chronicler must have been an unconscionable liar, as it was asserted that all this was done with only fifteen men. Immediately afterward, according to the same story, the sergeant marched with twenty men about a day's
1 Elvas, Hakluyt Society, ix, p. 66, 1851. = Garcilaso, La Florida del Inca, p. 141, ed, 1723.
8 Shea, J. G., in Winsor, Justin, Narrative and Critical History of America, ii, pp. 260, 278; Boston, 1886.
28 MYTHS OV THE CHEROKEE [eth.ann.19
distance in the mountains against another hostile chief , whom he found in a strongly palisaded town, which, after a hard fight, he and his men stormed and burned, killing fifteen hundred Indians without losing a single man themselves. Under instructions from his superior officer, the sergeant with his small party then proceeded to explore what lay beyond, and, taking a road which they were told led to the territory of a great chief, after four days of hard marching they came to his town, called Chiaha (Chicha, by mistake in the manuscript transla- tion), the same where De Soto had rested. It is described at this time as palisaded and strongly fortified, with a deep river on each side, and defended by over three thousand fighting men, there being no women or children among them. It is possible that in view of their former • experience with the Spaniards, the Indians had sent their families awaj' from the town, while at the same time they may have summoned warriors from the neighboring Creek towns in order to be prepared for anj' emergency. However, as before, they received the white men with the greatest kindness, and the Spaniards continued for twelve days through the territories of the same tribe until they arrived at the principal town (Kusa?), where, by the invitation of the chief, they built a small fort and awaited the coming of Pardo, who was expected to follow with a larger force from Santa Elena, as he did in the summer of 1567, being met on his arrival with every show of hospitality from the Creek chiefs. This second fort was said to be one hundred and forty leagues distant from that in the Sara country, which latter was called one hundred and twent}'^ leagues from Santa Elena. ^
In the summer of 1567, according to previous agreement. Captain Pardo left the fort at Santa Elena with a sma,ll detachment of troops, and after a week's travel, sleeping each night at a different Indian town, arrived at " Canos, which the Indians call Canosi, and by another name, Cofetapque" (the Cofitachiqui of the De Soto chronicle), which is described as situated in a favorable location for a large city, fifty leagues from Santa Elena, to which the easiest road was by a river (the Savannah) which flowed by the town, or by another which they had passed ten leagues farther back. Proceeding, they passed Jagaya, Gueza, and Arauchi, and arrived at Otariyatiqui, or Otari, in which we have perhaps the Cherokee d'Mri or d'tdli, '' mountain". It may have been a frontier Cherokee settlement, and, according to the old chronicler, its chief and language ruled much good country. From here a trail went northward to Guatari, Sauxpa, and Usi, i. e., the Wateree, Waxhaw (or Sissipahaw ?), and Ushery or Catawba.-
Leaving Otariyatiqui, they went on to Quinahaqui, and then, turn- ing to the left, to Issa, where they found mines of crystal (mica^). They came next to Aguaquiri (the Guaquili of the De Soto chronicle), and then to Joara, "near to the mountain, where Juan Pardo arrived
1 Narrative of Pardo's expedition by Martinez, about 1568, Brooks manuscripts.
MOONEY] SPANISH MINING OPEBATIONS 29
with his sergeant on his first trip." This, as has been noted, was the Xuala of the De Soto chronicle, the territory of the Sara Indians, in the foothills of the Blue ridge, southeast from the present Asheville, North Carolina. Vandera makes it one hundred leagues from Santa Elena, while Martinez, already quoted, makes the distance one hundred and twenty leagues. The difference is not impoVtant, as both state- ments were only estimates. From there they followed "along the mountains" to Tooax (Toxaway?), Cauchi (Nacoochee?), and Tanas- qui — apparently Cherokee towns, although the forms can not be iden- tified— and after resting three days at the last-named place went on "to Solameco, otherwise called Chiaha," where the ^ergeant met them. The combined forces afterward went on, through Cossa (Kusa), Tas- quiqui (Taskigi), and other Creek towiiS, as' far as Tascaluza, in the Alabama country, and returned thence to Santa Elena, having appar- ently met with a friendly reception everywhere along the route. From Cofitachiqui to Tascaluza they went over about the same road traversed by De Soto in 1540.'
We come now to a great gap of nearly a century. Shea has a notice of a Spanish mission founded among the Cherokee in 1643 and still flourishing when visited by an English ti-aveler ten years later, ^ but as his information is derived entirely from the fraudulent work of Davies, and as no such mission is mentioned by Barcia in any of these years, we may regard the story as spurious (10). The first mission work in the tribe appears to haVe been that of Priber, almost a hundred years later. Long before the end of the sixteenth century, however, the existence of mines of gold and other metals in the Cherokee country was a matter of common knowledge among the Spaniards at St. Augus- <tine and Santa Elena, and more than one expedition had been fitted out to explore the interior.^ Numerous traces of ancient mining opera- tions, with remains of old shafts and fortifications, evidently of Euro- pean origin, show that these discoveries were followed up, although the policy of Spain concealed the fact from the outside world. How much permanent impression this early Spanish intercourse made on the Cherokee it is impossible to^estimate, but it must have been considerable (11).
The Colonial and Revolutionaey Period — 1654-1784
It was not until 1654 that the English first came into contact with the Cherokee, called in the records of the period Rechahecrians, a cor- ruption of Rickahockan, apparently the name by which they were known to the Powhataji tribes. In that year the Virginia colony, which had only recently concluded a long and exterminating war with the Powhatan, was thrown into alarm by the news that a great body of
1 Vandera narrative, 1669, in Frencii, B. F,, Hist. Colls, ol La., new series, pp. 2S9-292; New York, 1875.
2 Shea, J. G., Catholic Missions, p. 72; New York, 1855.
3 See Brooks manuscripts, in the archives o£ the Bureau of American Ethnology.
30 MYTHS OF THE CHEROKEE [eth.ann.19
six or seven hundred Rechahecrian Indians — by which is probably meant that number of warriors^-from the mountains had invaded the lower country and established themselves at the falls of James river, where now is the city of Richmond. The assembly at once passed resolutions "that these new come Indians be in no sort suffered to seat themselves there, or any place near us, it having cost so much blood to expel and extirpate those perfidious and treacherous Indians which were there formerly." It was therefore ordered that a force of at least 100 white men be at once sent against them, to be joined by the war- riors of all the neighboring subject tribes, according to treaty obliga-. tion. The Pamunkey chief, with a hundred of his men, responded to the summons, and the combined force marched against the invaders. The result was a bloody battle, with disastrous outcome to the Vir- ginians, the Pamunkey chief with most of his men being killed, while the whites were forced to make such terms of peace with the Recha- hecrians that the assembly cashiered the commander of the expedition and compelled him to pay the whole cost of the treaty from his own estate.' Owing to the imperfection of the Virginia records we have no means of knowing the causes of the sudden invasion or how long the invaders retained their position at the falls. In all probability it was only the last of a long series of otherwise unrecorded irruptions by the mountaineers on the more peaceful dwellers in the lowlands. From a remark in Lederer it is probable that the Cherokee were assisted also by some of the piedmont tribes hostile to the Powhatan. The Peaks of Otter, near which the Cherokee claim to have once lived, as has been already noted, are only about one hundred miles in a straight line from Richmond, while the burial mound and town site near Charlottesville, mentioned by Jefferson, are but half that distance.
In 1655 a Virginia expedition sent out from the falls of James river (Richmond) crossed over the mountains to the large streams flowing into the Mississippi. No details are given and the route is uncertain, but whether or not they met Indians, they must have passed through Cherokee territory.^
In 1670 the German traveler, John Lederer, went from the falls of James river to the Catawba country in South Carolina, following for most of the distance the path used by the Virginia traders, who already had regular dealings with the southern tribes, including probably the Cherokee. He speaks in several places of the Rickahockan, which seems to be a more correct form than Rechahecrian, and his narrative and the accompanying map put them in the mountains of North Caro- lina, back of the Catawba and the Sara and southward from the head of Roanoke river. They were apparently on hostile terms with the tribes to the eastward, and while the traveler was stopping at an Indian
1 Burk, John, History oJ Virginia, ii, pp. 104-107; Petersburg, 1805.
2 Ramsey, J. G.M., Annals of Tennessee, p. 37; Cliarleaton, 1853 (quoting Martin, North Carolina, i, p. 115, 1853).
MOONEY] FIRST TREATY WITH SOUTH CAROLINA 1684 31
village on Dan river, about the present Clarksville, Virginia, a delega- tion of Rickahockan, which had come on tribal business, was barba- roush' murdered at a dance prepared on the night of their arrival by their treacherous hosts. On reaching the Catawba country he heard of white men to the southward, and incidentally mentions that the neighboring mountains were called the Suala mountains by the Span- iards.' In the next year, 1671, a party from Virginia under Thomas Batts explored the northern branch of Roanoke river and crossed over the Blue ridge to the headwaters of New river, where they found traces of occupancy, but no Indians. By this time all the tribes of this section, east of the mountains, were in possession of firearms.^
The first permanent English settlement in South Carolina was estab- lished in 1670. In 1690 James Moore, secretary of the colony, made an exploring expedition into the mountains and reached a point at which, according to his Indian guides, he was within twenty miles of where the Spaniards were engaged in mining and smelting with bel- lows and furnaces, but on account of some misunderstanding he returned without visiting the place, although he procured specimens of ores, which he sent to England for assay.' It may have been in the neighborhood of the present Lincolnton, North Carolina, where a dam of cut stone and other remains of former civilized occupancy have recently been discovered (11). In this year, also, Cornelius Dougherty, an Irishman from Virginia, established himself as the first trader among the Cherokee, with whom he spent the rest of his life.* Some of his descendants still occupy honored positions in the tribe.
Among the manuscript archives of South Carolina there was said to be, some fifty years ago, a treaty or agreement made with the govern- ment of that colony by the Cherokee in 1684, and signed with the hieroglyphics of eight chiefs of the lower towns, viz, Corani, the Raven (K^'lanu); Sinnawa, the Hawk (Tla'nuwa); Nellawgitehi, Gor- haleke, and Owasta, all of Toxawa; and Canacaught, the great Con- juror, Gohoma, and Caunasaita, of Keowa. If still in existence, this is probably the oldest Cherokee treaty on record.^
What seems to be the next mention of the Cherokee in the South Carolina records occurs in 1691, when we find an inquiry ordered in regard to a report that some of the colonists "have, without any proc- lamation of war, fallen upon and murdered" several of that tribe."
In 1693 some Cherokee chiefs went to Charleston with presents for the governor and offers of friendship, to ask the protection of South Carolina against their enemies, theEsaw (Catawba), Savanna (Shawano),
iLederer, John, Discoveries, pp. 15, 26, 27,- 29, 33, and map; reprint, Cliarleston, 1891; Mooney, Siouan Tribes of tlie East (bulletin of Bureau of Ethnology), pp. 63-54, 1894. 2 Mooney, op. cit., pp. 34^35.
^Document of 1699, quoted in South Carolina Hist. Soc. Colls., i, p. 209; Charleston, 1857. < Haywood, Nat. and Aborig. Hist. Tennessee, p. 233, 1823. 6 Noted in Cherokee Advocate, Tahlequah, Indian Territory, January 30, 1845. ^Document of 1691, South Carolina Hist. Soc. Colls., i, p. 126.
32 MYTHS OF THE CHEROKEE [eth.ann.19
and Congaree, all of that colony, who had made war upon them and sold a number of their tribesmen into slavery. They were told that their kinsmen could not now be recovered, but that the English desired friendship with their tribe, and that the Government would see that there would be no future ground for such complaint.^ The promise was apparently not kept, for in 1705 we find a bitter accusation brought against Governor Moore, of South Carolina, that he had granted com- missions to a number of persons "to set upon, assault, kill, destroj', and take captive as many Indians as they possible [sic] could," the prisoners being sold into slavery for his and their private profit. By this course, it was asserted, he had "already almost utterly ruined the trade for skins and furs, whereby we held our chief correspondence with England, and turned it into a trade of Indians or slave making, whereby the Indians to the south and west of us are already involved in blood and confusion." The arraignment concludes with a warning that such conditions would in all probability draw down upon the colony an Indian war with all its dreadful consequences." In view of what happened a few years later this reads like a prophecy.
About the year 1700 the first guns were introduced among the Cher- okee, the event being fixed traditionally as having occurred in the girl- hood of an old woman of the tribe who died about 1775.' In 1708 we find them described as a numerous people, living in the mountains northwest from the Charleston settlements and having sixty towns, but of small importance in the Indian trade, being "but ordinary hunters and less warriors."*
In the war with the Tuscarora in 1711-1713, which resulted in the expulsion of that tribe from North Carolina, more than a thousand southern Indians reenforced the South Carolina volunteers, among them being over two hundred Cherokee, hereditary enemies of the Tuscarora. Although these Indian allies did their work well in the actual encounters, their assistance was of doubtful advantage, as they helped themselves freely to whatever they wanted along the way, so that the settlers had reason to fear them almost as much as the hostile Tuscarora. After torturing a large number of their prisoners in the usual savage fashion, they returned with the remainder, whom they afterward sold as slaves to South Carolina.'
Having wiped out old scores with the Tuscarora, the late allies of the English proceeded to discuss their own grievances, which, as we have seen,' were sufficiently galling. The result was a combination
1 Hewat, South Carolina and Georgia, i, p. 127, 1778.
2 Documents of 1705, in North Carolina Colonial Records, ii, p. 904; Raleigh, 1886.
'Haywood, Nat. and Aborig. Tenn., p. 237,1823; with the usual idea that Indians live to extreme old age, Haywood makes her 110 years old at her death, putting back the introduction of firearms to 1677.
* Letter of 1708, in Rivers, South Carolina, p. 238, 1866.
s Eoyce, Cherokee Nation, Fifth Ann. Rep. Bureau of Ethnology, p. 140, 1888; Hewat, op. cit.,p. 216 et passim.
MOONEY] MOORE's expedition 1715-16 33
against the whites, embracing all the tribes from Cape Fear to the Chattahoochee, including the Cherokee, who thus for the first time raised their hand against the English. The war opened with a terrible massacre by the Yamassee in April, 1715, followed by assaults along the whole frontier, until for a time it was seriously feared that the colony of South Carolina would be wiped out of existence. In a contest between savagery and civilization, however, the final result is inevitable. The settlers at last rallied their whole force under Gov- ernor Craven and administered such a crushing blow to the Yamassee that the remnant abandoned their country and took refuge with the Spaniards in Florida or among the Lower Creeks. The English then made short work with the smaller tribes along the coast, while those in the interior were soon glad to sue for peace. ^
A number of Cherokee chiefs having come down to Charleston in company with a trader to express their desire for peace, a force of several hundred white troops and a number of negroes under Colonel Maurice Moore went up the Savannah in the winter of 1715-16 and made headquarters among the Lower Cherokee, where they were met by the chiefs of the Lower and some of the western towns, who reaffirmed their desire for a lasting peace with the English, but refused to fight -against the Yamassee, although willing to proceed against some other tribes. They laid the blame for most of the trouble upon the traders, who "had been very abuseful to them of late." A. detachment under Colonel George Chicken, sent to the Upper Cherokee, penetrated to "Quoneashee" (Tlanusi'yi, on Hiwassee, about the present Murphy) where they found the chiefs more defiant, resolved to continue the war against the Creeks, with whom the Eng- lish were then trying to make peace, and demanding large supplies of guns and ammunition, saying that if they made a peace with the other tribes they would have no means of getting slaves with which to buy ammunition for themselves. At this time they claimed 2,370 war- riors, of whom half were believed to have guns. As the strength of the whole Nation was much greater, this estimate may have been for the Upper and Middle Cherokee only. After "abundance of per- suading" by the officers, they finally "told us they would trust us once again," and an arrangement was made to furnish them two hun- dred guns with a supply of ammunition, together with fifty white soldiers, to assist them against the tribes with which the English were still at war. In March, 1716, this force was increased by one hundred men. The detachment under Colonel Chicken returned by way of the towns on the upper part of the Little Tennessee, thus penetrating the heart of the Cherokee country.^
1 Hewat, South Carolina and Georgia, i, p. 216 et passim, 1778.
2 See Journal of Colonel George Chicken, 1715-16, with notes, in Charleston Yearbook, pp. 313-354, 1894.
19 ETH— 01 3
34 MYTHS OF THE CHEROKEE [eth.ann.19
Steps were now taken to secure peace by inaugurating a satisfactory trade system, for which purpose a large quantity of suitable goods was purchased at the public expense of South Carolina, and a corre- spondingly large party was equipped for the initial trip.^ In 1721, in order still more to systematize Indian affairs. Governor Nicholson of South Carolina invited the chiefs of the Cherokee to a conference, at which thirtj^-seven towns were represented. A treaty was made by which trading methods were regulated, a boundary line between their territory and the English settlements was agreed upon, and an agent was appointed to superintend their affairs. At the governoi-'s suggestion, one chief, called Wrosetasatow ( ?) ^ was formally commis- sioned as supreme head of the Nation, with authority to punish all offenses, including murder, and to represent all Cherokee claims to the colonial government. Thus were the Cherokee reduced from their former condition of a free people, ranging where their pleasure led, to that of dependent vassals with bounds fixed by a colonial governor. The negotiations were accompanied by a cession of land, the first in the history of the tribe. In little more than a century thereafter they had signed away their whole original territory.'
The document of 1716 already quoted puts the strength of the Chero- kee at that time at 2,370 warriors, but in this estimate the Lower Cherokee seem not to have been included. In 1715, according to a trade census compiled by Governor Johnson of South Carolina, the tribe had thirty towns, with 4,000 warriors and a total population of 11,210.* Another census in 1721 gives them fifty-three towns with 3,510 warriors and a total of 10,379^^ while the report of the board of trade for the same year gives them 3,800 warriors," equivalent, by the same proportion, to nearly 12,000 total. Adair, a good authority on such matters, estimates, about the year 1735, when the country was better known, that they had "sixty -four towns and villages, populous and full of children," with more than 6,000 fighting men,' equivalent on the same basis of computation to between 16,000 and 17,000 souls. From what we know of them in later times, it is probable that this last estimate is very nearly correct.
By this time the colonial government had become alarmed at the advance of the French, who had made their first permanent establish- ment in the- Gulf states at Biloxi bay, Mississippi, in 1699, and in 1714 had built Fort Toulouse, known to the English as "the fort at
' Journal of South Carolina Assembly, in North Carolina Colonial Records, ir, pp. 225-227 1886 2 For notice, see the glossary.
sHevvat, South Carolina and Georgia, i, pp. 297-298, 1778; Boyce, Cherokee Nation, in Fifth Ann. Rep. Bureau of Ethnology, p. 144 and map, 1888. ■iKoyee, op., cit., p. 142.
6 Document of 1724, in Fernow, Berthold, Ohio Valley in Colonial Days, pp. 273-275; Albany, 1890. « Report of Board of Trade, 1721, in North Carolina Colonial Records, ii, p. 422, 1886. ' Adair, James, American Indians, p. 227; London, 1775.
MooNEY] Cuming's treaty — 1730 35
the Alabamas," on Coosa river, a few miles above the present Mont- gomery, Alabama. From this central vantage point thej' had rapidly extended their influence among all the neighboring tribes until in 1721 it was estimated that 3,400 warriors who had formerly traded with Carolina had been "entirely debauched to the French interest," while 2,000 more were wavering, and only the Cherokee could still be considered friendly to the English.' From this time until the final withdrawal of the French in 1763 the explanation of our Indian wars is to be found in the struggle between the two nations for territorial and commercial supremacy, the Indian being simply the cat's-paw of one or the other. For reasons of their own, the Chickasaw, whose territory lay within the recognized limits of Louisiana, soon beOame the uncompromising enemies of the French,, and as their position enabled them in a measure to control the approach from the Mississippi, the Carolina government saw to it that they were kept well supplied with guns and ammunition. British traders were in all their towns, and on one occasion a French force, advancing against a Chickasaw palisaded village, found it garrisoned by Englishmen fljdng the British flag.^ The Cherokee, although nominally allies of the English, were strongly disposed to favor the French, and it required every effort of the Carolina government to hold them to their allegiance.
In 1730, to further fix the Cherokee in the English interest, Sir Alexander Cuming was dispatched on a secret mission to that tribe, which was again smarting under grievances and almost ready to join with the Creeks in an alliance with the French. Proceeding to the ancient town of Nequassee (Nikwasf, at the present Franklin, North Carolina), he so impressed the chiefs by his bold bearing that they conceded without question all his demands, submitting themselves and their people for t;he second time to the English dominion and designating Moytoy,' of Tellico, to act as their "emperor" and to represent the Nation in all transactions with the whites. Seven chiefs were selected to visit England, where, in the palace at Whitehall, they solemnly renewed the treaty, acknowledging the sovereignty of England and binding themselves to have no trade or alliance with any other nation, not to allow any other white people to settle among them, and to deliver up any fugitive slaves who might seek refuge with them. To confirm their words they delivered a "crown", five eagle-tails, and four scalps, which they had brought with them. In return they received the usual glittering promises of love and per- petual friendship, together with a substantial quantity of guns, ammu- nition, and red paint. The treatjr being concluded in September,
1 Board of Trade report, 1721, North Carolina Colonial Records, ii, p. 422, 1886.
2 Pickett, H. A., History o£ Alabama, pp. 234, 280, 288; reprint, Sheffield, 1896. s For notice, see the glossary.
36 MYTHS OF THE CHEROKEE [eth.ann.19
they took ship for Carolina, where they arrived, as we are told by the governor, "in good health and mightily well satisfied with His Majesty's bounty to them.'"
In the next year some action was taken to use the Cherokee and Catawba to subdue the refractory remnant of the Tuscarora in North Carolina, but when it was found that this was liable to bring down the wrath of the Iroquois upon the Carolina settlements, more peaceable methods were used instead.*
In 1738 or 1739 the smallpox, brought to Carolina by slave ships, broke out among the Cherokee with such terrible effect that, according to Adair, nearly half the tribe was swept away within a year. The awful mortality was due largely to the fact that as it was a new and strange disease to the Indians they had no proper remedies against it, and therefore resorted to the universal Indian panacea for "strong" sickness of almost any kind, viz, cold plunge baths in the running stream, the worst treatment that could possibly be devised. As the pestilence spread unchecked from town to town, despair fell upon the nation. The priests, believing the visitation a penalty for violation of the ancient ordinances, threw away their sacred paraphernalia as things which had lost their protecting power. Hundreds of the warriors committed suicide on beholding their frightful disfigurement. "Some shot themselves, others cut their throats, some stabbed themselves with knives and others with sharp-pointed canes; many threw them- selves with sullen madness into the fire and there slowly expired, as if they had been utterly divested of the native power of feeling pain.'" Another authority estimates their loss at a thousand warriors, partly from smallpox and partly from rum brought in by the traders.*
About the year 1740 a trading path for horsemen was marked out by the Cherokee from the new settlement of Augusta, in Georgia, to their towns on the headwaters of Savannah river and thence on to the west. This road. Which went up the south side of the river, soon became much frequented.' Previous to this time most of the trading goods had been transported on the backs of Indians. In the same year a party of Cherokee under the war chief Ka'lanu. "The Raven," took part in Oglethorpe's expedition against the Spaniards of Saint Augustine.*
In 1736 Christian Priber, said to be a Jesuit acting in the French interest, had come among the Cherokee, and, by the facility with which he learned the language and adapted himself to the native dress and
>Hewat, South Carolina and Georgia, ii, pp. 3-11, 1779; treaty documents of 1730, North Carolina Colonial Records, in, pp. 128-133, 1886; Jenkinson, Collection of Treaties, ii, pp. 815-318; Drake, S.G.. Early History of Georgia: Cuming's Embassy; Boston, 1872; letter of Governor Johnson, December 27, 1730, noted in South Carolina Hist. Soc. Colls., i, p. 246, 1867.
2 Documents of 1731 and 1732, North Carolina Colonial Records.iii.pp. 153,202,345,369,393, 1886.
3 Adair, American Indians, pp. 232-234, 1775.
4 Meadows (?), State of the Province of Georgia, p. 7. 1742, in Force Tracts, i, 1836. 'Jones, CO., History of Georgia, i, pp. ;i-'7,32S; Boston, 1883.
MOONEY] PKIBEE's work 1736-41 37
mode of life, had quickly acquired a leading influence among them. He drew up for their adoption a scheme of government modeled after the European plan, with the capital at Great Tellico, in Tennessee, the principal medicine man as emperor, and himself as the emperor's secretary. Under this title he corrbsponded with the South Carolina government until it began to be feared that he would ultimately win over the whole tribe to the French side. A commissioner was sent to arrest him, but the Cherokee refused to give him up, and the deputj'- was obliged to return under safe-conduct of an escort furnished by Priber. Five years after the inauguration of his work, however, he was seized by some English traders while on his way to Fort Toulouse, and brought as a prisoner to Frederica, in Georgia, where he soon afterward died while under confinement. Although his enemies had represented him as a monster, inciting the Indians to the grossest immoralities, he proved to be a gentleman of polished address, exten- sive learning, and rare courage, as was shown later on the occasion of an explosion in the barracks magazine. Besides Greek, Latin, French, German, Spanish, and fluent English, he spoke also the Cherokee, and among his papers which were seized was found a manuscript dictionary of the language, which he had prepared for publication — the first, and even yet, perhaps, the most important studj'^ of the lan- guage ever made. Says Adair: "As he was learned and possesse.d of a very sagacious penetrating judgment, and had every qualification that was requisite for his bold and difficult enterprise, it was not to be doubted that, as he wrote a Cheerake dictionary, designed to be published at Paris, he likewise set down a great deal that would have been very acceptable to the curious and serviceable to the representa- tives of South Carolina and Georgia, which may be readity found in Frederica if the manuscripts have had the good fortune to escape the despoiling hands of military power." He claimed to be a Jesuit, acting under orders of his superior, to introduce habits of steady industry, civilized arts, and a regular form of government-among the southern ti-ibes, with a view to the ultimate founding of an independent Indian state. From all that can be gathered of him, even though it comes from his enemies, there can be little doubt that he was a worthy member of that illustrious order whose name has been a synonym for scholarship, devotion, and courage from the days of Jogues and Mar- quette down to De Smet and Mengarini.^
Up to this time no civilizing or mission work had been undertaken by either of the Carolina governments among any of the tribes within their borders. As one writer of the period quaintly puts it, "The gospel spirit is not yet so gloriousl}'^ arisen as to seek them more than theirs," while another in stronger terms affirms, "To the shame of
1 Adair, American Indians, pp. 240-243, 1775; Stevens, W. B., History o£ Georgia, i, pp. 104-107; Phila., 1847.
38 MYTHS OF THE CHEKOKEE [eth.ann'.19
the Christian name, no pains have ever been taken to convert them to Christianity; on the contrary, their morals are perverted and cor- rupted by the sad example they daily have of its depraved professors residing in their towns. " ^ Readers of Lawson and other narratives of the period will feel the force of the rebuke.
Throughout the eighteenth century the Cherokee were engaged in chronic warfare with their Indian neighbors. As these quarrels con- cerned the whites but little, however momentous they may have been to the principals, we have but few details. The war with the Tusca- rora continued until the outbreak of the latter tribe against Carolina in 1711 gave opportunity to the Cherokee to cooperate in striking the blow which drove the Tuscarora from their ancient homes to seek refuge in the north. The Cherokee then turned their attention to the Shawano on the Cumberland, and with the aid of the Chickasaw finally expelled them from that region about the year 1715. Inroads upon the Catawba were probably kept up until the latter had become so far reduced by war and disease as to be mere dependent pensioners upon the whites. The former friendship with the Chickasaw was at last broken through the overbearing conduct of the Cherokee, and a war followed of which we find incidental notice in 1767,^ and which termi- nated in a decisive victory for the Chickasaw about 1768. The bitter war with the Iroquois of the far north continued, in spite of all the efl'orts of the colonial governments, until a formal treaty of peace was brought about by the efforts of Sir William Johnson (12) in the same year.
The hereditary war with the Creeks for possession of upper Georgia continued, with brief intervals of peace, or even alliance, until the United States finally interfered as mediator between the rival claimants. In 1718 we find notice of a large Cherokee war party moving against the Creek town of Coweta, on the lower Chattahoochee, but dispersing on learning of the presence there of some French and Spanish officers, as well as some English traders, all bent on arranging an alliance with the Creeks. The Creeks themselves had declared their willingness to be at peace with the English, while still determined to keep the bloody hatchet uplifted against the Cherokee." The most important incident of the struggle between the two tribes was probably the battle of Tali'wa about the year 1755.*
By this time the weaker coast tribes had become practically extinct, and the more powerful tribes of the interior were beginning to take the alarm, as they saw the restless borderers pushing every year farther into the Indian country. As early as 1748 Dr Thbmas Walker, with a company of hunters and woodsmen from Virginia, crossed the moun-
1 Anonymous writer in Carroll, Hist. Colls, of South Carolina, ii, pp. 97-98, 517, 1836.
2 Buckle, Journal, 1757, in Rivers, South Carojina, p. 57, 1866.
SBarcia, A.G., Ensayo Chronologico para la Historia General de la Florida, pp. 335,330 .Madrid 1723. • • ■ - .
* For more iu regard to these intertribal wars see the historical traditions.
MOONEY] FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR 1754-61 39
tains to the southwest, discovering and naming the celebrated Cumber- land gap and passing on to the headwaters of, Cumberland river. Two years later he made a second exploration and penetrated to Ken- tucky river, but on account of the Indian troubles no permanent settlement was then attempted/ This invasion of their territory awakened a natural resentment of the native owners, and we find proof also in the Virginia records that the irresponsible borderers seldom let pass an opportunity to kill and plunder any stray Indian found in their neighborhood.
In 1755 the Cherokee were officially reported to number 2,590 wai'- riors, as against probably twice that number previous to the great smallpox epidemic sixteen years before. Their neighbors and ancient enemies, the Catawba, had dwindled to 240 men.^
Although war was not formally declared by England until 1756, hostilities in the seven year's struggle between France and England, commonly known in America as the " French and Indian war," began in April, 1754, when the French seized a small post which the English had begun at the present site of Pittsburg, and which was afterward finished by the French under the name of Fort Du Quesne. Strenuous efforts were made by the English to secure the Cherokee to their interest against the French and their Indian allies, and treaties were negotiated by which they promised assistance.' As these treaties, however, carried the usual cessions of territory, and stipulated for the building of several forts in the heart of the Cherokee countrj^ it is to be feared that the Indians were not duly impressed by thi„ disin- terested character of the proceeding. Their preference for the French was but thinly veiled, and only immediate policj' prevented them from throwing their whole force into the scale on that side. The reasons for this preference are given by Timberlake, the young Virginian officer who visited the tribe on an embassy of conciliation a few years later:
I found the nation much attached to the French, who have the prudence, by famiUar politeness — which costs but little and often does a great deal — and conform- ing themselves to their ways and temper, to conciliate the ijaclinations of almost all the Indians they are acquainted with, while the pride of our officers often disgusts them. Nay, they did not scruple to own to me that it was the trade alone that^ induced them to make peace with us, and not any preference to the French, whom they loved a great deal better. . . . The English are now so nigh, and encroached daily so far upon them, that they not only felt the bad effects of it in their hunting grounds, which were spoiled, but had all the reason in the world to apprehend being swallowed up by so potent neighbors or driven from the country inhabited by their fathers, in which they were born and brought up, in fine, their native soil, for which all men have a particular tenderness and affection.
1 Walker, Thomas, Journal of an Exploration, etc., pp. 8, 35-37; Boston, 1888; Monette (Valley of the Miss, i, pi 317; New York, 1848) erroneously makes the second date 1758.
2 Lettei- of Governor Dobbs, 1755, in North Carolina Colonial Eecords, v. pp. 320, 321, 1887. SEamsey, Tennessee, pp. 50-62, 1853; Eoyce, Cherokee Nation, in Fifth Ann. Rep. Bur. of Eth- nology, p. 145, 1888.
40 MYTHS OF THE CHEROKEE [eth.ann.19
He adds that only dire necessity had induced them to make peace with the English in 1761.'
In accordance with the treatj^ stipulations Fort Prince George was built in 1756 adjoining the important Cherokee town of Keowee, on the headwaters of the Savannah, and Fort Loudon near the junction of Tellico river with the Little Tennessee, in the center of the Cherokee towns beyond the mountains.- By special arrangement with the influential chief, Ata-kuUakulla (Ata'-gul'^kalu'),^ Fort Dobbs was also built in the same year about 20 miles west of the present Salis- bury, North Carolina.*
The Cherokee had agreed to furnish four hundred warriors to cooperate against the French in the north, but before Fort Loudon had been completed it was very evident that they had repented of their promise, as their great council at Echota ordered the work stopped and the garrison on the way to turn back, plainly telling the officer in charge that they did not want so many white people among them. Ata-kullakulla, hitherto supposed to be one of the stanchest friends of the English, was now one of the most determined in the oppo- sition. It was in evidence also that they were in constant communi- cation with the French. By much tact and argument their objec- tions were at last overcome for a time, and they very unwillingly set about raising the promised force of warriors. Major Andrew Lewis, who superintended the building of the fort, became convinced that the Cherokee were really friendly to the French, and that all their professions of friendship and assistance were ' ' only to put a gloss on their knavery. " The fort was finalh' completed, and, on his suggestion, was garrisoned with a strong force of two hundred men under Captain Demer^.^ There was strong ground for believing that some depreda- tions committed about this time on the heads of Catawba and Broad rivers, in North Carolina, were the joint work of Cherokee and northern Indians." Notwithstanding all this, a considerable body of Cherokee joined the British forces on the Virginia frontier.'
Fort Du Quesne was taken by the American provincials under Wash- ington, November 25, 1758. Quebec was taken September 13, 1759, and by the final treaty of peace in 1763 the war ended with the transfer of Canada and the Ohio valley to the crown of England. Louisiana had already been ceded by France to Spain.
Although France was thus eliminated from the Indian problem, the
1 Timberlake, Henry, Memairs, pp. 78, 74; London, 1765.
" Kamsey, Tennessee, p. 51, 1853; Royce, Cherokee Nation, in Fif tli Ann. Kept. Bnr. o£ Ethnology, p. 145, 1888.
3 For notice .see Ata'-gCll''kaitl', in the glossary.
■I Ramsey, op. cit., p. 60.
5 Letters of Major Andrew Lewis and Governor Dinwiddie, 1756, in North Carolina Colonial Records V, pp. 585, 612-614, 635, 637, 1887; Ramsey, op. cit, pp. 51, 52.
» Letter of Governor Dobbs, 1756, in North Carolina Colonial Records, v, p. 604, 1887.
'Dinwiddie letter, 1757, ibid., p. 765.
MooNEY] LEWIS EXPEDITION 1756 41
Indians themselves were not ready to accept the settlement. In the north the confederated tribes under Pontiac continued to war on their own account until 1765. In the South the very Cherokee who had acted as allies of the British against Fort DuQuesne, and had \'olun- tarily offered to guard the frontier south of the Potomac, returned to rouse their tribe to resistance.
The immediate exciting cause of the trouble was an unfortunate expe- dition undertaken against the hostile Shawano in February , 1756, by Major Andrew Lewis (the same who had built Fort Loudon) with some two hundred Virginia troops assisted b\' about one hundred Cherokee. After six weeks of fruitless tramping through the woods, with the ground covered with snow and the streams so swollen by rains that they lost their provisions and ammunition in crossing, they were obliged to return to the settlements in a starving condition, having killed their horses on the way. The Indian contingent had from the first- been disgusted at the contempt and neglect experienced from those whom they had come to assist. The Tuscarora and others had already gone home, and the Cherokee now started to return on foot to their own country. Finding some horses running loose on the range, they appropriated them, on the theory that as they had lost their own animals, to say nothing of having risked their lives, in the service of the colonists, it was only a fair exchange. The frontiersmen took another view of the question however, attacked the returning Cherokee, and killed a 'number of them, variously stated at from twelve to forty, including several of their prominent inen. Accord- ing to Adair they also scalped and mutilated the bodies in the savage fashion to which they had become accustomed in the border wars, and brought the scalps into the settlements, where they were represented as those of French Indians and sold at the regular price then estab- lished by law. The young warriors at once prepared to take revenge, but were restrained by the chiefs until satisfaction could be demanded in the ordinary way, according to the treaties arranged with the colonial governments. Application was made in turn to Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina, but without success. While the women were still wailing night and morning for their slain kindred, and the Creeks were taunting the warriors for their cowardice in thus quietly submitting to the injury, some lawless officers of Fort Prince George committed an unpardonable outrage at the neighboring Indian town while most of the men were away hunting.^ The warriors could no longer be restrained. Soon there was news of attacks upon the back settlements of Carolina, while on the other side of the mountains two soldiers of the Fort Loudon garrison were killed. War seemed at hand.
1 Adair, American Indians, 245-246, 1775; North Carolina Colonial Records, v, p. xlviii, 1887; Hewat, quoted in Ramsey, Tennessee, p. 54, 1853.
42 MYTHS OF THE CHEROKEE [eth.ann.19
At this juncture, in November, 1758, a party of influential chiefs, having first ordered back a war party just about to set out from the western towns against the Carolina settlements, came down to Charles- ton and succeeded in arranging the difficulty upon a friendlj' basis. The assembly had officially declared peace with the Cherokee, when, in May of 1759, Governor Lyttleton unexpectedly came forward with a demand for the surrender for execution of every Indian who had killed a white man in the recent skirmishes, among these being the chiefs of Citico and Tellico. At the same time the commander at Fort Loudon, forgetful of the fact that he had but a small garrison in the midst of several thousands of restless savages, made a demand for twenty-four other chiefs whom he suspected of unfriendly action. To compel their surrender orders were given to stop all trading supplies intended for the upper Cherokee.
This roused the whole Nation, and a delegation representing every town came down to Charleston, protesting the desire of the Indians for peace and friendship, but declaring their inability to surrender their own chiefs. The governor replied by declaring war in November, 1759, at once calling out troops and sending messengers to secure the aid of all the surrounding tribes against the Cherokee. In the meantime a second delegation of thirty-two of the most prominent men, led by the young war chief' Oconostota (Agan-stata),^ arrived to make a further effort for peace, but the governor, refusing to listen to them, seized the whole party and confined them as prisoners at Fort Prince' George, in a room large enough for only six soldiers, while at the same time he set fourteen hundred troops in motion to invade the Cherokee countrj'. On further representation by Ata-kuUakulla (Ata'-giir'kalu'), the civil chief of the Nation and well known as a friend of the English, the gov- ernor released Oconostota and two others after compelling some half dozen of the delegation to sign a paper by which they pretended to agree for their tribe to kill or seize any Frenchmen entering their country, and consented to the imprisonment of the party until all the warriors demanded had been surrendered for execution or otherwise. At this stage of affairs the smallpox broke out in the Cherokee towns, rendering a further, stay in their neighborhood unsafe, and thinking the whole matter now settled on his owm basis, Lyttleton returned to Charleston.
The event soon proved how little he knew of Indian temper. Ocono- stota at once laid siege to Fort Prince George, completely cutting off communication at a time when, as it was now winter, no help could well be expected from below. In February, 1760, after having kept the fort thus closely invested for some weeks, he sent word one day by an Indian woman that he wished to speak to the commander, Lieut- enant Coytmore. As the lieutenant stepped out from the stockade
1 For notices see the glossary.
MOONEY] MONTGOMERY S EXPEDITION 1760 43
to see what was wanted, Oconostota, standing on the opposite yide of the i-iver, swung a bridle above his head as a signal to his warriors concealed in the bushes, and the officer was at once shot down. The soldiers immediately broke into the room where the hostages wore confined, every one being a chief of prominence in the tribe and butchered them to the last man.
It was now war to the end. Led by Oconostota, the Cherokee descended upon the frontier settlements of Carolina, while the warriors across the mountains laid close siege to Fort Loudon. In June, 1760, a strong force of over 1,600 men, under Colonel Montgomery, started to reduce the Cherokee towns and relieve the beleaguered garrison. Crossing the Indian frontier, Montgomery quickly drove the enemy from about Fort Prince George and then, rapidly advancing, surprised Little Keowee, killing every man of the defenders, and destroyed in succession every one of the Lower Cherokee towns, burning them to the ground, cutting down the cornfields and orchards, killing and taking more than a hundred of their men, and driving the whole popu- lation into the mountains before him. His own loss was very slight. He then sent messengers to the Middle and Upper towns, summoning them to surrender on penalty of the like fate, but, receiving no reply, he led his men across the divide to the waters of the Little Tennessee and continued down that stream without opposition until he came in the vicinity of Echoee (Itse'yi), a few miles above the sacred town of Nikwasi', the present Franklin, North Cfirolina. Here the Cherokee had collected their full force to resist his progress, and the result was a desperate engagement on June 27, 1760, by which Montgomery was compelled to retire to Fort Prince George, after losing nearly one hundred men in killed and wounded. The Indian loss is unknown.
His retreat sealed the fate of Fort Loudon. The garrison, though hard pressed and reduced to the necessity of eating horses and dogs, had been enabled to hold out through the kindness of the Indian women, many of whom, having found sweethearts among the soldiers, brought them supplies of food daily. When threatened by the chiefs the women boldly replied that the soldiers were their husbands and it was their duty to help them, and that if any harm -came to themselves for their devotion their English relatives would avenge them.^ The end was only delayed, however, and on August 8, 1760, the garrison of about two hundred men, under Captain Demere, surrendered to Oconostota on promise that they should be allowed to retire unmo- lested with their arms and sufficient ammunition for the march, on condition of delivering up all the remaining warlike stores.
The troops marched out and proceeded far enough to camp for the night, while the Indians swarmed into the fort to see what plunder they might find. "By accident a discovery was made of ten bags of
' ■ 1 Timberlake, Memoirs, p. 65, 1766.
44 MYTHS OP THE CHEROKEE [eth.ann.19
powder and a large quantity of ball that had been secretly buried in the fort, to prevent their falling into the enemy's hands" (Hewat). It is said also that cannon, small arms, and ammunition had been thrown into the river with the same intention (Haywood). Enraged at this breach of the capitulation the Cherokee attacked the soldiers next morning at daylight, killing Deme'r^ and twenty-nine others at the first fire. The rest were taken and held as prisoners until ran- somed some time after. The second ofiicer. Captain Stuart (13), for whom the Indians had a high regard, was claimed by Ata-kullakulla, who soon after took him into the woods, ostensibly on a hunting excursion, and conducted him for nine days through the wilderness until he delivered him safely into the hands of friends in Virginia. The chief's kindness was well rewarded, and it was largely through his influence that peace was finally brought about.
It was now too late, and the settlements were too much exhausted, for another expedition, so the fall and winter were employed by the English in preparations for an active campaign the next year in force to crush out all resistance. In June 1761, Colonel Grant with an army of 2,600 men, including a number of Chickasaw and almost every remaining warrior of the Catawba,' set out from Fort Prince George. Refusing a request from Ata-kullakulla for a f riendh' accom- modation, he crossed Rabun gap and advanced rapidly down the Little Tennessee along the same trail taken by the expedition of the previous year. On June 10, when within two miles of Montgomery's battlefield, he encountered the Cherokee, whom he defeated, although with considerable loss to himself, after a stubborn engagement lasting several hours. Having repulsed the Indians, he proceeded on his way, sending out detachments to the outlying settlements, until in the course of a month he had destroyed every one of the Middle towns, 15 in all, with all their granaries and cornfields, driven the inhabitants into the mountains, and "pushed the frontier seventy miles farther to the west."
The Cherokee were now reduced to the greatest extremity. With some of their best towns in ashes, their fields and orchards wasted for two successive years, their ammunition nearly exhausted, manv of their bravest warriors dead, their people fugitives in the mountains, hiding in caves and living like beasts upon roots or killing their horses for food, with the terrible scourge of smallpox adding to the miseries of starvation, and withal torn by factional differences which had existed from the very beginning of the war— it was impossible for even brave men to resist longer. In September Ata-kullakulla who had all along done everything in his power to stay the disaffec- tion, came down to Charleston, a treaty of peace was made, and the
1 Catawba reference from Milligan, 1763, in Carroll, South Carolina Historical Collections n p 519, 1836. ' ' "
MOONEY] AUGUSTA TREATY ADVANCE OF SETTLEMENTS 45
war was ended. From an estimated population of at least 5,000 war- riors some years before, the Cherokee had now been reduced to about 2,300 men.'
In the meantime a force of Virginians under Colonel Stephen had advanced as far as the Great island of the Holston — now Kingsport, Tennessee — where they were met by a large delegation of Cherokee, who sued for peace, which was concluded with them by Colonel Stephen on November 19, 1761, independently of what was being done in South Carolina. On the urgent request of the chief that an officer might visit their people for a short time to cement the new friendship, Lieutenant Henry Timberlake, a young Virginian who had already dis- tinguished himself in active service, volunteered to return with them to their towns, where he spent several months. He afterward conducted a delegation of chiefs to England, where, as they had come without authority from the Government, they met such an unpleasant recep- tion that they returned disgusted. ^
On the conclusion of peace between England and France in 1763, by which the whole western territory was ceded to England, a great council was held at Augusta, which was attended by the chiefs and principal men of all the southern Indians, at which Captain John Stuart, superintendent for the southern tribes, together with the colo- nial governors 6i Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Geor- gia, explained fully to the Indians the new condition of affairs, and a treaty of mutual peace and friendship was concluded on November 10 of that year. '
Under several leaders, as Walker, Wallen, Smith, and Boon, the tide of emigration now surged across the mountains in spite of every effort to restrain it,* and the period between the end of the Cherokee war and the opening of the Revolution is principally notable for a number of treaty cessions bj' the Indians, each in fruitless endeavor to fix a permanent barrier between themselves and the advancing wave of white settlement. Chief among these was the famous Henderson pur- chase in 1775, which included the whole tract between the Kentucky and Cumberland rivers, embracing the greater part of the present state of Kentuck3\ By these treaties the Cherokee were shorn of practically all their ancient territorial claims north of the present Tennessee line and east of the Blue ridge and the Savannah, including much of their best hunting range; their home settlements were, how- ever, left still in their possession.^
1 Figures from Adair, American Indians, p. 227, 1775. When not otherwise noted this sketch of the Cherokee war of 1760-61 is compiled chiefly from the contemporary dispatches in the Gentleman's Magazine, supplemented from Hewat's Historical account of South Carolina and Georgia, 1778; with additional details from Adair, American Indians; Ramsey, Tennessee; Royce, Cherokee Nation; North Carolina Colonial Records, v, documents and introduction; etc.
2 Timberlake, Memoirs, p. 9 et passim, 176B.
s Stevens, Georgia, ii, pp. 26-29, 1859. ■'Ramsey, Tennessee, pp. 65-70, 1853.
5 Royce, Cherokee Nation, in Fifth Ann. Rep. Bur. of Ethnology, pp. 146-149, 1888.
46 MYTHS OF THE CHEBOKEE [eth.ann.19
As one consequence of the late Cherokee war, a royal proclamation had been issued in 1763, with a view of checking future encroachments by the whites, which prohibited any private land purchases from the Indians, or any granting of warrants for lands west of the sources of the streams flowing into the, Atlantic' In 1768, on the appeal of the Indians themselves, the British superintendent for the southern tribes, Captain John Stuart, had negotiated a treaty at Hard Labor in South Carolina by which Kanawha and New rivers, along their whole course downward from the North Carolina line, were fixed as the boundary between the Cherokee and the whites in that direction. In two years, however, so many borderers had crossed into the Indian country, where they were evidently determined to remain, that it was found necessary to substitute another treaty, by which the line was made to run due south from the mouth of the Kanawha to the Holston, thus cutting off from the Cherokee almost the whole of their hunting grounds in Virginia -and West Virginia. Two years later, in 1772, the Virginians demanded a further cession, by which everything east of Kentucky river was surrendered; and finally, on March 17, 1775, the great Henderson purchase was consummated, including the whole tract between the Kentucky and Cumberland rivers. By this last cession the Cherokee were at last cut off from Ohio river and all their rich Kentucky hunting grounds.^
While these transactions were called treaties, they were really forced upon the native proprietors, who resisted each in turn and finally signed only under protest and on most solemn assurances that no further demands would be made. Even before the purchases were made, intruders in large numbers had settled upon each of the tracts in question, and they refused to withdraw across the boundaries now established, but remained on one pretext or another to await a new adjustment. This was particularly the case on Watauga and upper Holston rivers in northeastern Tennessee, where the settlers, finding themselves still within the Indian boundary and being resoh'ed to remain, effected a temporary lease from the Cherokee in 1772. As was expected and intended, the lease became a permanent occupancy, the nucleus settlement of the future State of Tennessee.^
Just before the (outbreak of the Eevolution, the botanist, William Bartram, made an extended tour of the Cherokee country, and has left us a pleasant account of the hospitable character and friendly dispo- sition of the Indians at that time. He gives a list of forty -three towns then inhabited by the tribe.*
The opening of the great Revolutionary struggle in 1776 found the Indian tribes almost to a man ranged on the British side against the
iRoyoe, Cherokee Nation, op. oit.,p. 149; Ramsey, Tennessee, p. 71, 1853. SRameey, op. elt.,pp. 93-122; Royee, op. cit. pp. 146-149. 'Ramsey, op.cit.,pp. 109-122; Eoyoe, op. cit. p. 146 et passim. 'Bartram, Travels, pp. 366-372, 1792.
MOONEY] BEGINNING OF THE REVOLUTION 47
Americans. There was good reason for this. Since the fall of the French power the British government had stood to them as the sole representative of authority, and the guardian and protector of their rights against constant encroachments by the American borderers. Licensed British traders were resident in every tribe and many had intermarried and raised families among them, while the border man looked upon the Indian Onlj^ as a cumberer of the earth. The British superintendents, Sir William Johnson in the north and Captain John Stuart in the south, they knew as generous friends, while hardly a warrior of them all was without some old cause of resentment against their backwoods neighbors. They felt that the only barrier between themselves and national extinction was in the strength of the British government, and when the final severence came they threw their whole . power into the British scale. They were encouraged in this resolution by presents of clothing and other goods, with promises of plunder f rom^ the settlements and hopes of recovering a portion of their lost territories. The British government having determined, as early as June, 1775, to call in the Indians against the Americans, supplies of hatchets, guns, and ammunition were issued to the warriors of all the tribes from the lakes to the gulf, and bounties were offered for American scalps brought in to the commanding officer at Detroit or Oswego.^ Even the Six Nations, who had agreed in solemn treaty to remain neutral, were won over by these persuasions. In August, 1775, an Indian "talk" was intercepted in which the Cherokee assured Cam- eron, the resident agent, that their warriors, enlisted in the service of the king, were ready at a signal to fall upon the back settlements of Carolina and Georgia.' Circular letters were sent out to all those persons in the back country supposed to be of royalist sympathies, directing them to repair to Cameron's headquarters in the Cherokee country to join the Indians in the invasion of the settlements.'
In June, 1776, a British fleet under command of Sir Peter Parker, with a large naval and military force, attacked Charleston, South Caro- lina, both by land and sea, and simultaneously a body of Cherokee, led by Tories in Indian disguise, came down from the mountains and ravaged the exposed frontier of South Carolina, killing and burning as they went. After a gallant defense by the garrison at Charleston the British were repulsed, whereupon their Indian and Tory allies withdrew.*
About the same time the warning came from Nancy Ward (14), a noted friendly Indian woman of great authority in the Cherokee Nation, that seven hundred Cherokee warriors were advancing in tw6 divisions against the Watauga and Holston settlements, with the design of
1 Ramsey, Tennessee, pp. 143-150, 1853; Monette, Valley of the Mississippi, i, pp. 400, 401, 431, 432, and II, pp. 33, 34, 1846; Roosevelt, Winning of the West, i, pp. 276-281, and ii, pp. 1-6, 1889.
2 Ramsey, op. oit., p. 143. .
'Quoted from Stedman, in Ramsey, op. cit., p. 162. < Ramsey, op. cit., p. 162.
48 MYTHS OF THE OHEKOKEE [eth.ann.19
destroying everything as far up as New river. The Holston men from both sides of the Virginia line hastily collected under Captain Thompson and marched against the Indians, whom they met and defeated with signal loss after a hard-fought battle near the Long island in the Holston (Kingsport, Tennessee), on August 20. The next daj"^ the second division of the Cherokee attacked the fort at Watauga, garrisoned by only forty men under Captain James Robert- son (15), but was repulsed without loss to the defenders, the Indians withdrawing on news of the result at the Long island. A Mrs. Bean and a boy named Moore were captured on this occasion and carried to one of the Cherokee towns in the neighborhood of Tellico, where the boj^ was burned, but the woman, after she had been condemned to death and everything was in readiness for the tragedy, was rescued by the interposition of Nancy Ward. Two other Cherokee detachments moved against the upper settlements at the same time. One of these, finding all the inhabitants securely shut up in forts, returned without doing much damage. The other ravaged the country on Clinch river almost to its head, and killed a man and wounded others at Black's station, now Abingdon, Virginia.^
At the same time that one part of the Cherokee were raiding the Tennessee settlements others came down upon the frontiers of Caro- lina and Georgia. On the upper Catawba they killed many people, but the whites took refuge in the stockade stations, where they defended themselves until General Rutherford (16) came to their relief. In Georgia an attempt had been made by a small party of Americans to seize Cameron, who lived in one of the Cherokee towns with his Indian wife, but, as was to have been expected, the Indians interfered, killing several of the party and capturing others, who were afterward tortured to death. The Cherokee of the Upper and Middle towns, with some Creeks and Tories of the vicinity, led by Cameron himself, at once began ravaging the South Carolina border, burning houses, driving oflf cattle, and killing men, women, and children without distinction, until the whole country was in a wild panic, the people abandoning their farms to seek safety in the garrisoned forts. On one occasion an attack by two hundred of the enemy, half of them being Tories, stripped and painted like Indians, was repulsed by the timely arrival of a body of Americans, who succeeded in capturing thirteen of the Tories. The invasion extended into Georgia, where also property was destroyed and the inhabitants were driven from their homes. ^
Realizing their common danger, the border states determined to strike such a concerted blow at the Cherokee as should render them passive while the struggle with England continued. In accord with this plan of cooperation the frontier forces were quickly mobilized and
1 Ramsey, Tennessee, pp. 150-159, 1«53.
^Koosevelt, Winning ol tlie West, i, pp. 293-297, 1889.
MOONEY] KUTHEBFORD AND WILLIAMSON EXPEDITIONS 1776 49
in the summer of 1776 four expeditions were equipped from Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, to enter the Cherokee territory simultaneously from as many different directions.
In August of that year the army of North Carolina, 2,400 strong, under General Griffith Rutherford, crossed the Blue ridge at Swan- nanoa gap, and following the main trail almost along the present line of the railroad, struck the first Indian town, StikS'yi, or Stecoee, on the Tuckasegee, near the present Whittier. The inhabitants having fled, the soldiers burned the town, together with an unfinished town- house ready for the roof, cut down the standing corn, killed one or two straggling Indians, and then proceeded on their mission of destruc- tion. Every town upon Oconaluftee, Tuckasegee, and the upper part of Little Tennessee, and on Hiwassee to below the junction of Valley river — thirty-six towns in all — was destroyed in turn, the corn cut down or trampled under the hoofs of the stock driven into the fields for that purpose, and the stock itself killed or carried off. Before such an overwhelming force, supplemented as it was by three others simultaneously advancing from other directions, the Cherokee made but poor resistance, and fled with their women and children into the fastnesses of the Great Smoky mountains, leaving their desolated fields and smoking towns behind them. As was usual in Indian wars, the actual number killed or taken was small, but the destruction of pro- perty was beyond calculation. At Sugartown (Kulsetsi'yi, east of the present Franklin) one detachment, sent to destroy it, was surprised, and escaped only through the aid of another force sent to its rescue. Rutherford himself, while proceeding to the destruction of the Hiwas- see towns, encountered the Indians drawn up to oppose his progress in the Waya gap of the Nantahala mountains, and one of the hardest fights of the campaign resulted, the soldiers losing over forty killed and wounded, although the Cherokee were finally repulsed (17). One of the Indians killed on this occasion was afterward discovered to be a woman, painted and armed like a warrior.^
. On September 26 the South Carolina army, 1,860 strong, under Colonel Andrew Williamson, and including a number of Catawba Indians, effected a junction with Rutherford's forces on Hiwassee river, near the present Murphy, North Carolina. It had been expected that Williamson would join the northern army at Cowee, on the Little Tennessee, when they would proceed together against the western towns, but he had been delayed, and the work of destruction in that direction was already completed, so that after a short rest each army returned home along the route by which it had come.
The South Carolina men had centered by different detachments in
'Seeno.llO, "Incidents of Personal Heroism." For Rutherford's expedition, see Moore, Rutherford's Expedition, In North Carolina University Magazine, February, 1888; Swain, Sketch of the Indian War in 1776, ibid.. May, 1852, reprinted in Historical Magazine, November, 1867; Ramsey, Tennessee, p. 164, 1853; Roosevelt, Winning of the West, i, pp. 294-302, 1889, etc.
19 ETH 01 4
50 MYTHS OF THE CHEROKEE [eth.ann.19
the lower Cherokee towns about the head of Savannah river, burning one town after another, cutting down the peach trees and ripened corn, and having an occasional brush with the Cherokee, who hung con- stantly upon their flanks. At the town of Seneca, near which they encountered Cameron with his Indians and Tories, they had destroyed six thousand bushels of corn, besides other food stores, after burning all the houses, the Indians having retreated after a stout resistiance. The most serious encounter had taken place at Tomassee, where several whites and sixteen Cherokee were killed, the latter being all scalped afterward. Having completed the ruin of the Lower towns, Wil- liamson had crossed over Rabun gap and descended into the valley of the Little Tennessee to cooperate with Rutherford in the destruction of the Middle and Valley towns. As' the army advanced every house in every settlement met was burned — ninety houses in one settlement alone — and detachments were sent into the fields to destroy the corn, of which the smallest town was estimated to have two hundred aci'es, besides pota- toes, beans, and orchards of peach trees. The stores of dressed deer- skins and other valuables were carried off. Everything was swept clean, and the Indians who were not killed or taken were driven, homeless refugees, into the dark recesses of Nantahala or painfully made their way across to the Overhill towns in Tennessee, which were already menaced by another invasion from the north. ^
In July, while Williamson was engaged on the the upper Savannah, a force of two hundred Georgians, under Colonel Samuel Jack, had marched in the same direction and succeeded in burning two towns on the heads of Chattahoochee and Tugaloo rivers, destroying the corn and driving off the cattle, without the loss of a man, the Cherokee having apparently fallen back to concentrate for resistance in the mountains.^
The Virginia army, about two thousand strong, under Colonel William Christian (18), rend,ezvoused in August at the Long island of the Holston, the regular gathering place on the Tennessee side of the mountains. Among them were several hundred men from North Carolina, _ with all who could be spared from the garrisons on the Tennessee side. Paying but little attention to small bodies of Indi- ans, who tried to divert attention or to delay progress by flank attacks, they advanced steadily, but cautiously, along the great Indian wax-- path (19) toward the crossing of the French Broad, where a strong force of Cherokee was reported to 'be in waiting to dispute their pas- sage. Just before reaching the river the Indians sent a Tory trader
1 For Williamson's expedition, see Ross Journal, with Rockwell's notes, in Historical Magazine, October, 1876; Swain, Sketch of the Indian War in 1776, in North Carolina University Magazine for May, 1852, reprinted in Historical Magazine, November, 1867; Jones, Georgia, ii, p. 246 et passim, 1883; Ramsey, Tennessee, 163-164, 18B3; Roosevelt, Winning of the West, i, pp. 296-303, 1889.
2Jones, op.cit.,p. 246; Ramsey, op.cit., p. 163; Roosevelt, op. cit.,p. 295.
-MooNEY] christian's expedition 1776 51
with a flag of truce to discuss terms. Knowing that his own strength was overwhelming, Christian allowed the envoy to go through the whole camp and then sent him back with the message that there could be no terms until the Cherokee towns had been destroyed. Arriving at the ford, he kindled fires and made all preparations as if intending to camp there for several days. As soon as night fell, however, he secretly drew off half his force and crossed the river lower down, to come upon the Indians in their rear. This was a work of great diiE- culty; as the water was so deep that it came up almost to the shoulders of the men, while the current was so rapid that they were obliged to support each other four abreast to prevent being swept off their feet. However, they kept their guns add powder dry. On reaching the other side they were surprised to find no enemy. Disheartened at the strength of the invasion, the Indians had fled without even a show of resistance. It is probable that nearly all their men and resources had been drawn off to oppose the Carolina forces on their eastern border, and the few who remained felt themselves unequal to the contest.
Advancing without opposition. Christian reached the towns on Little Tennessee early in November, and, finding them deserted, pro- ceeded to destroy them, one after another, with their outlying fields. The few lingering warriors discovered were all killed. In the mean- time messages had been sent out to the farther towns, in response to which several of their head men came into Christian's camp to treat for peace. On their agreement to surrender all the prisoners and captured stock in their hands and to cede to the whites all the disputed territory occupied by the Tennessee settlements, as soon as represent- atives of the whole tribe could be assembled in the spring. Christian consented to suspend hostilities and retire without doing further injury. An exception was made against Tuskegee and another town, which had been concerned in the burning of the boy taken from Watauga, already noted, and these two were reduced to ashes. The sacred "peace town," Echota (20), had not been molested. Most of the troops were disbanded on their return to the Long island, but a part remained and built Fort Patrick Henry, where they went into winter quarters.^
From incidental notices in narratives written by some of the partici- pants, we obtain interesting side-lights on the merciless character of this old border warfare. In addition to the ordinary destruction of war — the burning of towns, the wasting of fruitful fields, and the killing of the defenders — we find that every Indian warrior killed was scalped, when opportunity permitted^ women, as well as men, were shot down and afterward "helped to their end"; and prisoners taken were put up at auction as slaves when not killed on the spot. Near Tomassee a small
1 For tlie Virginia-Tennessee expedition see Roosevelt, Winning of tlie West, i, pp. 303-305, 1889; Ramsey, Tennessee, pp. 166-170, 1853.
52 MYTHS OF THE CHEROKEE [eth.ann.W
party of Indians was surrounded and entirely cut off. "Sixteen were found dead in the valley when the battle ended. These our men scalped." In a personal encounter "a stout Indian engaged a sturdy young white man, who was a good bruiser and expert at gouging. After breaking their guns on each other they laid hold of one another, when the cracker had his thumbs instantly in the fellow's eyes, who roared and cried ' c(m.aly'— enough, in English. 'Damn you,'^ays the white man, 'you can never have enough while you are alive.' He then threw him down, set his foot upon his head, and scalped him alive; then took up one of the^ broken guns and knocked out his brains. It would have been fun if he had let the latter action alone and sent him home without his nightcap, to tell his countrymen how he had been treated." Later on some of the same detachment (Williamson's) seeing a woman ahead, fired on her and brought her down with two serious wounds, but yet able to speak. After getting what informa- tion she could give them, through a half-breed interpreter, "the informer being unable to travel, some of our men favored her so far that they killed her there, to put her out of pain." A few days later "a party of Colonel Thomas's regiment, being on a hunt of plunder, or some such thing, found an Indian squaw and took her prisoner, she being lame, was unable to go with her friends. She was so sullen that she would, as an old saying is, neither lead nor drive, and by their account she died in their hands; but I suppose they helped her to her end." At this place — on the Hiwassee — they found a large town, having "upwards of ninety houses, and large quantities of corn," and "we encamped among the corn, where we had a great plenty of corn, peas, beans, potatoes, and hogs," and on the next day "we were ordered to assemble in companies to spread through the town to destroy, cut down, and burn all the vegetables belonging to our heathen enemies, which was no small undertaking, they being so plentifully supplied." Continuing to another town, "we engaged in our former labor, that is, cutting and destroying all things that might be of advantage to our enemies. Finding here curious buildings, great apple trees, and white-man-like improvements, these we destroyed." '
While crossing over the mountains Rutherford's men approached a house belonging to a trader, when one of his negro slaves ran out and "was shot by the Reverend James Hall, the chaplain, as he ran, mis- taking him for an Indian. '"^ Soon after they captured two women and a boy. It was proposed to auction them off at once to the highest bidder, and when one of the officers protested that the matter should be left to the disposition of Congress, "the greater part swore bloodily that if they were not sold for slaves upon the spot they would kill and
1 Ross Journal, in Historical Magazine, October, 1867.
2 Swain, Sketch of the Indian War of 1776, in Historical Magazine, November, 1867.
MOONBY] TREATIES OF DE WITTS CORNEKS AND LONG ISLAND 53"
scalp them immediately." The prisoners were accordinglj'- sold for about twelve hundred dollars/
At the Wolf Hills settlement, now Abingdon, Virginia, a party sent out from the fort returned with the scalps of eleven warriors. Having recovered the books which their minister had left behind in his cabin, they held a service of prayer for their success, after which the fresh scalps were hung upon a pole above the gate of the fort. The barba- rous custom of scalping to which the border men had become habitu- ated in the earlier wars was practiced upon every occasion when opportunity presented, at least upon the bodies of warriors, and the South Carolina legislature offered a bounty of seventy -five pounds for every warrior's scalp, a higher reward, however, being offered for prisoners.^ In spite of all the bitterness which the war aroused there seems to be no record of any scalping of Tories or other whites by the Americans (21).
The effect upon the Cherokee of this irruption of more than six thousand armed enemies into their territory was well nigh paralyzing. More than fifty of their towns had been burned, their orchards cut down, their fields wasted, their cattle and horses killed or driven off, their stores of buckskin and other personal property plundered. Hundreds of -their people had been killed or had died of starvation and exposure, others were prisoners in the hands of the Americans, and some had been sold into slavery. Those who had escaped were fugitives in the mountains,, living upon acorns, chestnuts, and wild game, or were refugees with the British.' From the Virginia line to the Chattahoochee the chain of destruction was complete. For the present, at least any further resistance was hopeless, and they were compelled to sue for peace.
By a treaty concluded at De Witts Corners in South Carolina on May 20, 1777, the first ever made with the new states, the Lower Cherokee surrendered to the conqueror all of their remaining territory in South Ci|-rolina, excepting a narrow strip along the western boundary. Just two months later, on July 20, by treaty at the Long island, as had been arranged by Christian in the preceding fall, the Middle and Upper Cherokee ceded everything east of the Blue ridge, together with all the disputed territory on the Watauga, Nolichucky, upper Holston, and New rivers. By this second treaty also Captain James Robertson was appointed agent for the Cherokee, to reside at Echota, to watch their movements, recover any captured property, and prevent their correspondence with persons unfriendly to the American cause. As the Federal government was not yet in perfect operation these treaties
1 Moore's narrative, in North Carolina University Magazine, February, 1888.
SEoosevelt, Winning of the West, I, pp. 285, 290, 303, 1889.
s About five hundred sought refuge with Stuart, the British Indian superintendent in Florida, where they were fed for some time at the expense of the British government (Jones, Georgia, ii, p. 246, 1883).
54 MYTHS OF THE CHEROKEE [eth.ann.19
were negotiated by commissioners from the four states adjoining the Cherokee countrj', the territory thus acquired being parceled out to South Carolina, North Carolina, and Tennessee.^
While the Cherokee Nation had thus been compelled to a treaty of peace, a very considerable portion of the tribe was irreconcilably hos- tile to the Americans and refused to be a party to the late cessions, especiallj^ on the Tennessee side. Although Ata-kuUakuUa sent word that he was ready with five hundred young warriors to fight for the Americans against the English or Indian enemy whenever called upon, Dragging-canoe (Tsiyu-gunsi'ni), who had led the opposition against the Watauga settlements, declared that he would hold fast to Cameron's talk and continue to make war upon those who had taken his hunting grounds. Under his leadership some hundreds of the most warlike and implacable warriors of the tribe, with their families, drew out from the Upper and Middle towns and moved far down upon Tennes- see river, where they established new settlements on Chickamauga creek, in the neighborhood of the present Chattanooga. The locality appears to have been already a rendezvous for a sort of Indian ban- ditti, who sometimes plundered boats disabled in the rapids at this point while descending the river. Under the name "Chickamaugas" they soon became noted for their uncompromising and never-ceasing hostility. In 1782, in consequence of the destruction of their towns by Sevier and Campbell, they abandoned this location and moved farther down the river, where they built what were afterwards known as the "five lower towns," viz, Running Water, Nickajack, Long Island, Crow town, and Lookout Mountain town. These were all on the extreme western Cherokee frontier, near where Tennessee river crosses the state line, the first three being within the present limits of Tennessee, while Lookout Mountain town and Crow town were respectively in the adjacent corners of Georgia and Alabama. Their popi:flation was recruited from Creeks, Shawano, and white Tories, until they were estimated at a thousand warriors. Here they remained, a constant thorn in the side of Tennessee, until their towns were destroyed in 1794.'
The expatriated Lower Cherokee also removed to the farthest west- tern border of their tribal territory, where they might hope to be secure from encroachment for a time at least, and built new towns for themselves on the upper waters of the Coosa. Twenty years after-
1 Eoyce, Cherokee Nation, in Fifth Ann. Rep. Bureau of Ethnology, p. 160 and map, 1888; Ramsey, Tennessee, pp. 172-174, 1853; Stevens, Georgia, ii, p. 144, 1859; Roosevelt, Winning of the West, i, p! 306,1889.
2 Ramsey, op. cit., pp. 171-177, 185-186, 610 et pasalm; Royce, op. cit., p. 150; Campbell letter, 1782, and other documents in Virginia State Papers, Iii, pp. 271, 571, S99, 1883, and iv, pp. 118, 286 1884- Blount letter, January 14, 1793, American Sta.te Papers; Indian Affairs, i, p. 431, 1832. Campbell says they abandoned their first location on account of the invasion from Tennessee. Governor Blount says they left on account of witches.
MOONEY] DESTRUCTION OF CHICKAMAUGA T0WK8 1779 55
ward Hawkins found the population of Willstown, in extreme western Georgia, entirely made up of refugees from the Savannah, and the children so familiar from their parents with stories of Williamson's invasion that they ran screaming from the face of a white man (22).'
In April, 1777, the legislature of North Carolina, of which Tennes- see was still a part, authorized bounties of land in the new territory to all able-bodied men who should volunteer against the remaining hostile Cherokee. Under this act companies of rangers were kept along the exposed border to cut off raiding parties of Indians and to protect the steady advance of the pioneers, with the result that the Tennessee set- tlements enjoyed a brief respite and were even able to send some assist- ance to their brethren in Kentucky, who were sorely press'ed by the Shawano and other northern tribes.^
The war between England and the colonies still continued, however, and the British government was unremitting in its effort to secure the active assistance of the Indians. With the Creeks raiding the Georgia and South Carolina frontier, and with a British agent. Colonel Brown, and a number of Tory refugees regularly domiciled at Chickamauga," it was impossible for the Cherokee long to remain quiet. In the spring of 1779 the warning came from Robertson, stationed at Echota, that three hundred warriors from Chickamauga had started against the back -settlements of North Carolina. Without a day's delay the states of North Carolina (including Tennessee) and Virginia united to send a strong force of volunteers against them under command of Colonels Shelby and Montgomery. Descending the Holston in April in a fleet of canoes built for the occasion, they took the Chickamauga towns so completely by surprise that the few warriors remaining fled to the mountains without attempting to give battle. Several were killed, Chickamauga and the outlying villages were burned, twenty thousand bushels of corn were destroyed and large numbers of horses and cattle captured, together with a great quantity of goods sent by the British Governor Hamilton at Detroit for distribution to the Indians. The success of this expedition frustrated the execution of a project by Hamilton for uniting all the northern and southern Indians, to be assisted by British regulars, in a concerted attack along the whole American frontier. On learning, through runners, of the blow that had befallen them, the Chickamauga warriors gave up all idea of invading the settlements, and returned to their wasted villages. ' They, as well as the Creeks, however, kept in constant communication with
1 Hawkins, manuscript journal, 1796, with Georgia Historical Society.
2 Ramsey, Tennessee, pp. 174-178, 1853.
3 Campbell letter, 1782, Virginia State Papers, ill, p. 271, 1883.
^Ramsey, op. cit, pp. 186-188; Roosevelt, Winning of the West, ii, pp. 236-238, 1889. Ramsey's state- ments, chiefly on Haywood's authority, of the strength of the expedition, the number of warriors killed, etc., are so evidently overdrawn that they are here omitted.
56 MYTHS OV THE CHEROKEE [eth.ann.19
the British commander in Savannah. In this year also a delegation of Cherokee visited the Ohio towns to offer condolences on the death of the noted Delaware chief, White-eyes.'
In the early spring of 1780 a large company of emigrants under Colonel John Donelson descended the Holston and the Tennessee to the Ohio, whence they ascended the Cumberland, effected a junction with another party under Captain James Robertson, which had just arrived by a toilsome overland route, and made the first settlement on the present site of Nashville. In passing the Chickamauga towns they had run the gauntlet of the hostile Cherokee, who pursued them for a considerable distance Iseyond the whirlpool known as the Suck, where the river breaks through the mountain. The family of a man named Stuart being infected with the smallpox, his boat dropped behind, and all on board, twenty-eight in number, were killed or taken by the Indians, their cries being distinctly heard by their friends ahead who wei-e unable to help them. Another boat having run upon the rocks, the three women in it, one of whom had become a mother the night before, threw the cargo into the river, and then, jumping into the water, succeeded in pushing the boat into the current while the hus- band of one of them kept the Indians at bay with his rifle. The infant was killed in the confusion. Three cowards attempted to escape, without thought of their companions. One was drowned in the river; the other two were captured and carried to Chickamauga, where one was burned and the other was ransomed by a trader. The rest went on their way to found the capital of a new commonwealth.^ As if in retributive justice, the smallpox broke out in the Chickamauga band in consequence of the capture of Stuart's familj*^, causing the death of a great number.'
The British having reconquered Georgia and South Carolina and destroyed all resistance in the south, early in 1780 Cornwallis, with his subordinates, Ferguson and the merciless Tarleton, prepared to invade North Carolina and sweep the country northward to Virginia. The Creeks under McGillivray (23), and a number of the Cherokee under various local chiefs, together with the Tories, at once joined his standard.
While the Tennessee backwoodsmen were gathered at a barbecue to contest for a shooting prize, a paroled prisoner brought a demand from Ferguson for their submission; wit|i the threat, if they refused, that he would cross the mountains, hang their leaders, kill every man found in arms and burn every settlement. Up to this time the moun- tain men had confined their effort to holding in check the Indian enemy, but now, with the fate of the Revolution at stake, they felt
1 Heckewelder, Indian Nations, p. 827, reprint o£ 1876.
sDonelson'e Journal, etc., in Ramsey, Tennessee, pp. 197-203, 1853; Roosevelt, Winning of the West II, pp. 324-340, 1889. 3Ibid., 11, p. 337.
MooNEY] THE BOEDER FIGHTERS 57
that the time for wider action had come. They resolved not to await the attack, but to anticipate it. Without or4,er or authority from Congress, without tents, commissary, or supplies, the Indian fighters of Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee quickly assembled at the Sycamore shoals of the Watauga to the number of about one thousand men under Campbell of Virginia, Sevier (24) and Shelby of Tennessee, and McDowell of North Carolina. Crossing the mountains, they met Ferguson at Kings mountain in South Carolina on October 7, 1780, and gained the decisive victory that turned the tide of the Revolution in the South.'
It is in place here, to quote a description of these men in buckskin, white by blood and tradition, but half Indian in habit and instinct, who, in half a century of continuous conflict, drove back Creeks, Cherokee, and Shawano, and with one hand on the plow and the other on the rifle redeemed a wilderness and carried civilization and free government to the banks of the Mississippi.
"They were led by leaders they trusted, they were wonted to Indian warfare, they were skilled as horsemen and marksmen, they knew how to face every kind of danger, hardship, and privation. Their fringed and tasseled hunting shirts were girded by bead-worked belts, and the trappings of their horses were stained red and yellow. On their heads they wore caps of coon skin or mink skin, with the tails hanging down, or else felt hats, in each of which was thrust a buck tail or a sprig of evergreen. Every man carried a small-bore rifle, a toma- hawk, and a scalping knife. A very few of the officers had swords, and there was not a bayonet nor a tent in the army.'"
To strike the blow at Kings mountain the border men had been forced to leave their own homes unprotected. Even before they could cross the mountains on their return the news came that the Cherokee were again out in force for the destruction of the upper settlements, and their numerous small bands were killing, burning, and plundering in the usual Indian fashion. Without loss of time the Holston settle- ments of Virginia and Tennessee at once raised seven hundred mounted riflemen to march against the enemy,. the command being assigned to Colonel Arthur Campbell of Virginia and Colonel John Sevier of Tennessee.
Sevier started first with nearly three hundred men, going south along the great Indian war trail and driving small parties of the Cherokee before him, until he crossed the French Broad and came upon seventy of them on Boyds creek, not far from the present Sevier- ville, on December 16, 1780. Ordering his men to spread out into a half circle, he sent ahead some scouts, who, by an attack and feigned retreat, managed to draw the Indians into the trap thus prepared,
1 Roosevelt, Winning of the West, ii, pp. 241-294, 1889; Eamsey, Tennessee, pp. 208-249, 1853. 'EooseTBlt, op. oit., p. 266.
58 MYTHS OF THE CHEROKEE [eth.ann.19
with the result that they left thirteen dead and all their plunder, while not one of the whites was even wounded/
A few days later Sevier was joined by Campbell with the remainder of the force. Advancing to the Little Tennessee with but slight resistance, they crossed three miles below Echota while the Indians were watching for them at the ford above. Then dividing into two bodies, they proceeded to destroy the towns along the river. The chiefs sent peace talks through Nancy. Ward, the Cherokee woman who had so befriended the whites in 1776, but to these overtures Campbell returned an evasive answer until he could first destroy the towns on lower Hiwassee, whose warriors had been particularly hostile. Continuing southward, the troops destroyed these towns, Hiwassee and Chestuee, with all their stores of provisions, finishing the work on the last day of the year. The Indians had fled before them, keeping spies out to watch their movements. One of these, while giving signals from a ridge by beating a drum, was shot by the whites. The soldiers lost only one man, who was buried in an Indian cabin which was then burned down to conceal the trace of the inter- ment. The return march was begun on New Year's day. Ten prin- cipal towns, including Echota, the capital, had been destroyed, besides several smaller villages, containing in the aggregate over one thousand houses, and not less than fifty thousand bushels of corn and large stores of other provision. Everything not needed on the return march was committed to the flames or otherwise wasted. Of all the towns west of the mountains only Talassee, and one or two about Chicka- mauga or on the headwaters of the Coosa, escaped. The whites had lost only one man killed and two wounded. Before the return a proclamation was sent to the Cherokee chiefs, warning them to make peace on penalty of a worse visitation. '^
Some Cherokee who met them at Echota, on the return march, to talk of peace, brought in and surrendered several white prisoners." One reason for the slight resistance made by the Indians was prob- ably the fact that at the very time of the invasion many of their warriors were away, raiding on the Upper Holston and in the neigh- borhood of Cumberland gap.*
Although the Upper or Overhill Cherokee were thus humbled, those of the middle towns, on the head waters of Little Tennessee, still continued to send out parties against the back settlements. Sevier
1 Roosevelt, Winning of the West, ii, pp. 29&-300, 1889; Ramsey, Tennessee, pp. 261-264, 1853. There is great discrepancy in the various accounts of this fight, from the attempts of interested historians to magnify the size of the victory. One writer gives the Indians 1,000 warriors. Here, as elsewhere, Roosevelt is a more reliable guide, his statements being usually from oflioial documents.
' Roosevelt, op. oit., pp. 300-304; Ramsey, op. cit., pp. 265-268; Campbell, report, January 15, 1781, in Virginia State Papers, I, p. 436. Haywood and others after him make the expedition go as far as Chickamauga and Coosa river, but Campbell's report expressly denies this.
8 Ramsey, op. cit., p. 266.
1 Roosevelt, op. cit, p. 302.
'KooNEY] TREATY OF LONG- ISLAND 1781 59
determined to make a sudden stroke upon them, and early in March of the same year, 1781, with 150 picked horsemen, he started to cross the Great Smoky mountains over trails never before attempted by white men, and so rough in places that it was hardly possible to lead horses. Falling unexpectedly upon Tuckasegee, near the present Webster, North Carolina, he took the town completely by surprise, killing several warriors and capturing a number of women and chil- dren. Two other principal towns and three smaller settlements were taken in the same way, with a quantity of provision and about 200 horses, the Indians being entirely off their guard and unprepared to make any effective resistance. Having spread destruction through the middle towns, with the loss to himself of only one man killed and another wounded, he was off again as suddenly as he had come, moving so rapidly that he was well on his homeward way before the Cherokee could gather for pursuit.' At the same time a smaller Tennessee expe- dition went out to disperse the Indians who had been making head- quarters in the mountains about Cumberland gap and harassing travelers along the road to Kentucky.^ Numerous indications of Indians were found, but none were met, although the country was scoured for a con- siderable distance.' In summer the Cherokee made another incursion, this time upon the new settlements on the French Broad, near the present Newport, Tennessee. With a hundred horsemen Sevier fell suddenly upon their camp on Indian creek, killed a dozen warriors, and scat- tered the rest.* By these successive bloWs the Cherokee were so worn out and dispirited that they were forced to sue for peace, and in mid- summer of 1781 a treaty of peace — doubtful though it might be — was negotiated at the Long island of the Holston.^ The respite came just in time to allow the Tennesseeans to send a detachment against Corn- wallis.
Although there was truce in Tennessee, there was none in the South. In November of this year the Cherokee made a sudden inroad upon the Georgia settlements, destroying everything in their way. In retaliation a force under General Pickens marched into their country, destroying their towns as far as Valley river. Finding further prog- ress blocked by heavy snows and learning through a prisoner that the Indians, who had retired before him, were collecting to oppose him in the mountains, he withdrew, as he says, "through absolute necessitj'^," having accomplished very little of the result expected. Shortly after- ward the Cherokee, together with some Creeks, again invaded Georgia,
1 Campbell, letter, March 28, 1781, in Virginia State Papers, i, p. 602, 1876; Martin, letter, March 31, 1781, Ibid., p. Sl3; Ramsey, Tennessee, p. 268, 1853; Roosevelt, Winning of the West, ii, pp. 305-307, 1889.
2 Campbell, letter, March 28, 1781, in Virginia State Papers, i, p. 602, 1875. sRamsey, op. cit., p. 269.
<Ibid.; Roosevelt, op. cit., p. 307.
^Ibid.; Ramsey, op. cit., pp. 267, 268. The latter anthority seems to make it 1782, which is evidently a mistake.
60 MYTHS OF THE CHEEOKEE [eth.ann.19
but were met on Oconee river and driven back by a detachment of American troops.'
The Overhill Cherokee, on lower Little Tennessee, seem to have been trying in good faith to hold to the peace established at the Long island. Early in 1781 the government land office had been closed to further entries, not to be Opened again until peace had been declared with England, but the borderers paid little attention to the law in such matters, and the rage for speculation in Tennessee lands grew stronger daily.' In the fall of 1782 the chief, Old Tassel of Echota, on behalf of all the friendly chiefs and towns, sent a pathetic talk to the governors of Virginia and North Carolina, complaining that in spite of all their efforts to remain quiet the settlers were constantly encroaching upon them, and had built houses within a day's walk of the Cherokee towns. They asked that all those whites who had settled beyond the boundary last established should be removed." As was to have been expected, this was never done.
The Chickamauga band, however, and those farther to the south, were still bent on war, being actively encouraged in that disposition by the British agents and refugee loyalists living among them. They continued to raid both north and south, and in September, 1782, Sevier, with 200 mounted men, again made a descent upon their towns, destroying several of their settlements about Chickamauga creek, and penetrating as far as the important town of Ustana'li, on the head- waters of Coosa river, near the present Calhoun, Georgia. This also he destroyed. Every warrior found was killed, together with a white man found in one of the towns, whose papers showed that he had been active in inciting the Indians to war. On the return the expedition halted at Echota, where new assurances were received from the friendly element.* In the meantime a Georgia expedition of over 400 men, under General Pickens, had been ravaging the Cherokee towns in the same quarter, with such effect that the Cherokee were forced to purchase peace by a further surrender of territoiy on the head of Broad river in Georgia." This cession was concluded at a treaty of peace held with the Georgia commissioners at Augusta in the next year, and was confirmed later by the Creeks, who claimed an interest in the same lands, but was never accepted by either as the voluntary act of their tribe as a whole."
By the preliminary treaty of Paris, November 30, 1782, the long Revolutionary struggle for independence was brought to a close, and the Cherokee, as well as the other tribes, seeing the hopelessness of con-
1 Stevens, Georgia, Ii, pp. 282-285, 1859| Jones, Georgia, II, p. 503, 1883.
^Eoosevelt, Winning of tlie West, ii, p. 311, 1889.
"Old Tassel's talli, in Ramsey, Tennessee, p. 271, 1853, and In Roosevelt, op. clt.,p. 815.
^Ramsey, op. oit., p. 272; Roosevelt, op.clt., p. 317 et passim.
'Stevens, op.clt., pp. 411-415.
«Royee, Cherokee Nation, in Fifth Ann. Rep. Bureau of Ethnology, p. 151, 1888. '
MooNEY] ' TREATY OF HOPEWELL 1185 61
tinning tiie contest alone, began to sue for peace. By seven years of constant warfare they had been reduced to the lowest depth of misery, almost indeed to the verge of extinction. Over and over again their towns had been laid in ashes and their fields wasted. Their best war- riors had been killed and their women and children had sickened and starved in the mountains. Their great war chief, Oconostota, who had led them to victory in 1780, was now a broken old man, and in this year, at Echota, formally resigned his oflSce in favor of his son. The Terrapin. To complete their brimming cup of misery the small- pox again broke out among them in 1783.^ Deprived of the assistance of their former white allies they were left to their own cruel fate, the last feeble resistance of the mountain warriors to the advancing tide of settlement came to an end with the burning of Cowee town,^ and the way was left open to an arrangement. In the same year the North Carolina legislature appointed an agent for the Cherokee and made regulations for the government of traders among them.*
Relations with the United States
FKOM THE first TREATY TO THE REMOVAL 1785-1838
Passing over several unsatisfactory and generally abortive negotia- tions conducted by the various state governments in 1783-84, includ- ing the treaty of Augusta already noted,* we come to the turning point in the history of the Cherokee, their first treaty with the new government of the United States for peace and boundary delimitation, concluded at Hopewell (25) in South Carolina on November 28, 1785. Nearly one thousand Cherokee attended, the commissioners for the United States being Colonel Benjamin Hawkins (26), of North Caro- lina; General Andrew Pickens, of South Carolina; Cherokee Agent Joseph Martin, of Tennessee, and Colonel Lachlan Mcintosh, of Georgia. The instrument was signed by thirty-seven chiefs and prin- cipal men, representing nearly as many different towns. The negotia- tions occupied ten days, being complicated by a protest on the part of North Carolina and Georgia against the action of the government com- missioners in confirming to the Indians some lands which had already been appropriated as bounty lands for state troops without the consent of the Cherokee. On the other hand the Cherokee complained that 3,000 white settlers were at that moment in occupancy of unceded land between the Holston and the French Broad. In spite of their protest these intruders were allowed to remain, although the territory was not acquired by treaiy until some years later. As finally arranged the treaty left the Middle and Upper towns, and those in the vicinity
' See documents in Virginia State Papers, ill, pp. 234, 398, 527, 1883.
2 Ramsey, Tennessee, p. 280, 1853. ^ Ibid., p. 27S.
*See Royce, Cherolcee Nation, op.cit., pp. 151, 152; Ramsey, op. cit., p. 299 et passim.
62 MYTHS OF THE CHEROKEE [eth.ann.19
of Coosa river, undisturbed, while the whole country east of the Blue ridge, with the Watauga and Cumberland settlements, was given over to the whites. The general boundary followed the dividing ridge between Cumberland river and the more southern waters of the Ten- nessee eastward to the junction of the two forks of Holston, near the present Kingsport, Tennessee, thence southward to the Blue ridge and southwestward to a point not far from the present Atlanta, Georgia, thence westward to the Coosa river and northwestward to a creek running into Tennessee river at the western line of Alabama, thence northward with the Tennessee river to the beginning. The lands south and west of these lines were recognized as belonging to the Creeks and Chickasaw. Hostilities were to cease and the Cherokee were taken under the protection of the United States. The proceed- ings ended with the distribution of a few presents.'
While the Hopewell treaty defined the relations of the Cherokee to the general government and furnished a safe basis for future negotia- tion, it yet failed to bring complete peace and security. Thousands of intruders were still settled on Indian lands, and minor aggressions and reprisals were continually occurring. The Creeks and the north- ern tribes were still hostile and remained so for some years later, and their warriors, cooperating with those of the implacable Chickamauga towns, continued to annoy the exposed settlements, particularly on the Cumberland. The British had withdrawn from the South, but the Spaniards and French, who claimed the lower Mississippi and the Gulf region and had their trading posts in west Tennessee, took every opportunity to encourage the spirit of hostility to the Americans.^ But the spirit of the Cherokee nation was broken and the Holston settlements were now too surely established to be destroyed.
The Cumberland settlements founded by Robertson and Donelson in the winter of 1779-80 had had but short respite. Early in spring the Indians — Cherokee, Creeks, Chickasaw, and northern Indians — had begun a series of attacks with the design of driving these intruders from their lands, and thenceforth for years no man's life was safe out- side the stockade. The long list of settlers shot down at work or while hunting in the woods, of stock stolen and property destroyed, while of sorrowful interest to those most nearly concerned, is too tedious for recital here, and only leading events need be chronicled. Detailed notice may be found in the works of local historians.
On the night of January 15, 1781, a band of Indians stealthily approached Freeland's station and had even succeeded in unfastening
1 Indian Treaties, p. 8 et passim, 1837. For a full discussion of the Hopewell treaty, from official docu- ments, see Eoyce, Cherokee Nation, in Fifth Ann. Rep. Bureau of Ethnology, pp. 152-158, 1888, with map; Treaty Journal, etc., American State Papers; Indian Affairs, i, pp. 38-44, 1832; also Stevens, Georgia, 11, pp. 417-429,1859; Ramsey, Tennessee, pp. 336, 337, 1853; see also the map accompanying this work.
2Ramsey, op. cit., pp. 459-461; Agent Martin and Hopewell commissioners, ibid,, pp. 318-386; Bledsoe and Robertson letter, ibid., p. 465; Roosevelt, Winning of the West, ii, p. 368, 1899.
MOONEY] HOSTILITY OF HIWASSEE AND CHIOKAMAUGA TOWKS 63
the strongly barred gate when Robertson, being awake inside, heard the noise and sprang up just in time to rouse the garrison and beat off the assailants, who continued to fire through the loopholes after they had been driven out of the fort. Only two Americans were killed, although the escape was a narrow one.^
About three months later, on April 2, a large body of Cherokee approached the fort at Nashville (then called Nashborough, or simply "the Bluff"), and by sending a decoy ahead succeeded in drawing a large part of the garrison into an ambush. It seemed that they would be cut off, as the Indians were between them and the fort, when those inside loosed the dogs, which rushed so furiously upon the Indians that the latter founds work enough to defend themselves, and were finally forced to retire, carrying with them, however, five American scalps.^
The attacks continued throughout this and the next year to such an extent that it seemed at one time as if the Cumberland settlements must be abandoned, but in June, 1783, commissioners from Virginia and North Carolina arranged a treaty near Nashville (Nashborough) with chiefs of the Chickasaw, Cherokee, and Creeks. Tnis treaty, although it did not completely stop the Indian inroads, at least greatly diminished them. Thereafter the Chickasaw remained friendly, and only the Cherokee and Creeks continued to make trouble.^
The valley towns on Hiwassee, as well as those of Chickamauga, seem to have continued hostile. In 1786 a large body of their warriors, led by the mixed-blood chief, John Watts, raided the new settlements in the vicinity of the present Knoxville, Tennessee. In retaliation Sevier again marched his volunteers across the mountain to the valley towns and destroyed three of them, killing a number of warriors; but he retired on learning that the Indians were gathering to give him battle.* In the spring of this year Agent Martin, stationed at Echota, had made a tour of inspection of the Cherokee towns and reported that they were generally friendly and anxious for peace, with the exception of the Chickamauga band, under Draggihg-canoe, who, acting with the hostile Creeks and encouraged by the French and Spaniards, were making preparations to destroy the Cumberland settlements. Not- withstanding the friendly professions of the others, a party sent out to obtain satisfaction for the murder of four Cherokee by the Tennes- seeans had come back with fifteen white scalps, and sent word to Sevier that they wanted peace, but if the whites wanted war they would get it.^ With lawless men on both sides it is evident that peace was in jeopardy. In August, in consequence of further killing and reprisals, commissioners of the new "state of Franklin," as Tennessee was now
1 Roosevelt, Winning of the West, ii, p. 353, 1889.
2 Ibid., p. 355, 1889; Ramsey, Tennessee, pp. 452^54, 1853.
3 Ibid., pp. 358-366, 1889. * Ibid., p. 341, 1853. SMartin letter of May 11, 1786, ibid., p. 342.
64 MYTHS OF THE CHEROKEE [eth.ann.19
called,, concluded a negotiation, locally known as. the "treaty of Coyatee," with the chiefs of the Overhill towns. In spite of references to peace, love, and brotherly friendship, it is very doubtful if the era of good will was in any wise hastened by the so-called treaty, as the Tennesseeans, who had just burned another Indian town in reprisal for the killing of a white man, announced, without mincing words, that they had been given by North Carolina — against which state, by the way, they were then in organized rebellion — the whole country north of the Tennessee river as far west as the Cumberland mountain, and that they intended to take it "by the sword, which is the best right to all countries." As the whole of this country was within the limits of the territory solemnly guaranteed to the Cherokee by the Hopewell treatj' only the year before, the chiefs simply replied that Congress had said nothing to them on the subject, and so the matter rested." The theory of state's rights was too complicated for the Indian under- standing.
While this conflict between state and federal authority continued, with the Cherokee lands as the prize, there could be no peace. In March, 1787, a letter from Echota, apparently written by Agent Martin, speaks of a recent expedition against the Cherokee towns, and the confusion and alarm among them in consequence of the daily encroachments of the " Franklinites " or Tennesseeans, who had pro- ceeded to make good their promise by opening a land office for the sale of all the lands southward to Tennessee river, including even a part of the beloved town of Echota. At the same time messengers were coming to the Cherokee from traders in the foreign interest, telling them that England, France, and Spain had combined against the Americans and urging them with promises of guns and ammunition to join in the war.*" As a result each further advance of the Tennessee settlements, in defiance" as it was of any recognized treaty, was stubbornly con- tested by the Indian owners of the land. The record of these encoun- ters, extending over a period of several years, is too tedious for recital. "Could a diagram be drawn, accurately designating every spot sig- nalized by an Indian massacree, surprise, or depredation, or courageous attack, defense, pursuit, or victory by the whites, or station or fort or battlefield, or personal encounter, the whole of that section of country would be studded over with delineations of such incidents. Every spring, every ford, every path, every farm, every trail, every house nearly, in its first settlement, was once the scene of danger, exposure, attack, exploit, achievement, death.'" The end was the winning of Tennessee.
In the meantime the inroads of the Creeks and their Chickamauga
1 Reports of Tennessee commissioners and replies by Cherokee chiefs, etc., 1786, in Bamsey, Tennes- see, pp. 343-346, 1863. ^Martin (?) letter of March 25, 1787, ibid., p. 359. "Ibid., p. 370.
MOOKEY] DEFEAT OF GENERAL MAKTIN 1788 65
allies upon the Georgia frontier and the Cumberland settlements around Nashville became so threatening that measures were taken for a joint campaign by the combined forces of Georgia and Tennessee ("Franklin"). The enterprise came to naught through the interfer- ence of the federal authorities.' All through the year 1788 we hear of attacks and reprisals along the Tennessee border, although the agent for the Cherokee declared in his official report that, with the exception of the Chickamauga band, the Indians wished to be at peace if the whites would let them. In March two expeditions under Sevier and Kennedy set out against the towns in the direction of the French Broad. In May several persons of a family named Kirk were murdered a few miles south of Knoxville. In retaliation Sevier raised a large party and marching against a town on Hiwassee river — one of those which had been destroyed some years before and rebuilt — ■ and burned it, killing a number of the inhabitants in the river while they were trying to escape. He then turned, and proceeding to the towns on Little Tennessee burned several of them also, killing a num- ber of Indians. Here a small party of Indians, including Abraham and Tassel, two well-known friendly chiefs, was brutally massacred by one of the Kirks, no one interfering, after they had voluntarilv come in on request of one of the officers. This occurred during the temporary absence of Sevier. Another expedition under Captain Fayne was drawn into an ambuscade at Citico town and lost several in killed and wounded. The Indians pursued the survivors almost to Knoxville, attacking a small station near the present Maryville by the way. They were driven off by Sevier and others, who in turn invaded the Indian settlements, crossing the mountains and penetra- ting as far as the valley towns on Hiwassee, hastily retiring as they found the Indians gathering in their front.* In the same summer another expedition was organized against the Chickamauga towns. The chief command was given to General Martin, who left White's fort, now Knoxville, with four hundred and fifty men and made a rapid march to the neighborhood of the present Chattanooga, where the main force encamped on the site of an old Indian settlement. A detachment sent ahead to surprise a town a few miles farther down the river was fired upon and driven back, and a general engagement took place in the harrow pass between the bluff and the river, with such disastrous results that three captains were killed and the men so badly demoralized that they refused to advance. Martin was compelled to turn back, after burying the dead officers in a large townhouse, which was then burned down to conceal the grave.''
In October a large party of Cherokee and Creeks attacked Gilles- pie's station, south of tho present Knoxville. The small garrison was
lEamsey, Tennessee, pp. 393-399, 1853. 2 ibid., pp. 417-423, 1853.
^Ibid., pp. 517-519, and Brown's narrative, ibid., p. 515.
19 ETH— 01 5
66 MYTHS OP THE CHEROKEE [eth.ann.19
overpowered after a short resistance, and twenty-eight persons, includ- ing several women and children, were killed. The Indians left behind a letter signed by four chiefs, including John Watts, expressing regret for what they called the accidental killing of the women and children, reminding the whites of their own treachery in killing Abraham and the Tassel, and defiantly concluding, "When you move off the land, then we will make peace." Other exposed stations were attacked, until at last Sevier again mustered a force, cleared the enemy from the frontier, and pursued the Indians as far as their towns on the head waters of Coosa river, in such vigorous fashion that they were compelled to ask for terms of peace and agree to a surrender of prisoners, which was accomplished at Coosawatee town, in upper Georgia, in the following April.'
Among the captives thus restored to their friends were Joseph Brown, a boy of sixteen, with his two younger sisters, who, with several others, had been taken at Nickajack town while descending the Tennessee in a flatboat neai'ly a year before. His father and the other men of the party, about ten in all, had been killed at the time, while the mother and several other children were carried to various Indian towns, some of them going to the Creeks, who had aided the Cherokee in the capture. Young Brown, whose short and simple narrative is of vivid interest, was at first condemned to death, but was rescued by a white man living in the town and was afterward adopted into the family of the chief, in spite of the warning of an old Indian woman that if allowed to live he would one day guide an army to destroy them. The warning was strangely prophetic, for it was Brown himself who guided the expedition that finally rooted out the Chickamauga towns a few years later. When rescued at Coosawatee he was in Indian costume, with shirt, breechcloth, scalp lock, and holes bored in his ears. His little sister, five years old, had become so attached to the Indian woman who had adopted her, that she refused to go to her own mother and had to be pulled along by force. *" The mother and another of the daughters, who had been taken by the Creeks, were afterwards ransomed by McGrillivray, head chief of the Creek Nation, who restoi-ed them to their friends, generously refusing any compensation for his kindness.
An arrangement had been made with the Chickasaw, in 1783, by which they surrendered to the Cumberland settlement their own claim to the lands from the Cumberland river south to the dividing ridge of Duck river.' It was not, however, until the treaty of Hopewell, two years later, that the Cherokee surrendered their claim to the same region, and even then the Chickamauga warriors, with their allies, the
1 Ramsey, Tennessee, pp. 515, 519.
» Brown's narrative, etc., Ibid., pp. 508-516.
8 Ibid., pp. 459, 489.
MooNEY] DBSTKUCTION OF OOLDWATER — 1787 67
hostile Creeks and Shawano, refused to acknowledge the cession and continued their attacks, with the avowed purpose of destroying the new settlements. Until the final running of the boundary line, in 1797, Spain claimed all the territory west of the mountains and south of Cumberland I'iver, and her agents were accused of stirring up the Indians against the Americans, even to the extent of offering rewards for American scalps.^ One of these raiding parties, which had killed the brother of Captain Robertson, was tracked to Coldwater, a small mixed town of Cherokee and Creeks, on the south side of Tennessee river, about the present Tuscumbia, Alabama. Robertson determined to destroy it, and taking a force of volunteers, with a couple of Chick- asaw guides, crossed the Tennessee without being discovered and surprised and burnt the town. The Indians, who numbered less than fifty men, attempted to escape to the river, but were surrounded and over twenty of them killed, with a loss of but one man to the Tennes- seeans. In the town were found also several French traders. Three of these, who refused to surrender, were killed, together with a white woman who was accidentallv shot in one of the boats. The others were afterward released, their large stock of trading goods having been taken and sold for the benefit of the troops. The affair took place about the end of June, 1787. Through this action, and an effort made by Robertson about the same time to come to an understanding with the Chickamauga band, there was a temporary cessation of hostile inroads upon the Cumberland, but long before the end of the year the attacks were renewed to such an extent that it was found necessary to ' keep out a force of rangers with brders to scour the country and kill every Indian found east of the Chickasaw boundary.^ The Creeks seeming now to be nearly as much concerned in these raids as the Cherokee, a remonstrance was addressed to McGillivray, their principal chief, who replied that, although the Creeks, like the other southern tribes, had adhered to the British interest during the Revolution, they had accepted proposals of friendship, but while negotiations were pending six of their people had been killed in the affair at Coldwater, which had led to a renewal of hostile feeling. He promised, however, to use his best efforts to bring about peace, and seems to have kept his word, although the raids continued through this and the next year^ with the usual sequel of pursuit and reprisal. In one of these skirmishes a company under Captain Murray followed some Indian raiders from near Nashville to their camp on Tennessee river and succeeded in killing the whole party of eleven warriors.'' A treaty of peace was signed with the Creeks in 1790, but, owing to the intrigues of the Spaniards, it had little practical effect,* and not
> Bledsoe and Robertson letter of June 12, 1787, in Ramsey, Tennessee, p. 465, 1853.
2 Ibid., with Robertson letter, pp. 465-476.
8 Ibid., pp. 479-486.
* Monette, Valley of the Mississippi, i, p. 505, 1846.
68 MYTHS OF THE CHEEOKEE [eth.anx.19
until Wayne's decisive victory over the confederated northern tribes in 1794 and the final destruction of the Nickajack towns in the same year did real peace came to the frontier.
By deed of cession of February 25, 1790, Tennessee ceased to be a part of North Carolina and was organized under federal laws as ' ' The Territory of the United States south of the Ohio river," preliminary to taking full rank as a state six years later. William Blount (27) was appointed first territorial governor and also superintendent for the southern Indians, with a deputy resident with each of the four prin- cipal tribes.' Pensacola, Mobile, St. Louis, and other southern posts were still held by the Spaniards, who claimed the whole country south of the Cumberland, while the British garrisons had not yet been with- drawn from the north. The resentment of the Indians at the occupanciy of their reserved and guaranteed lands by the whites was sedulously encouraged from both quarters, and raids along the Tennessee fron- tier werp of common occurrence. At this time, according to the official report of President Washington, over five hundred families of intruders were settled upon lands belonging rightly to the Cherokee, in addition to those between the French Broad and the Holston.^ More than a year before the Secretary of War had stated that "the disgraceful violation of the treaty of Hopewell with the (Jherokee requires the serious consideration of Congress. If so direct and man- ifest contempt of the authority of the United States be suffered with impunity, it will be in vain to attempt to extend the arm of govern- ment to the frontiers. The Indian tribes can have no faith in such imbecile promises, and the lawless whites will ridicule a government which shall on paper only make Indian treaties and regulate Indian boundaries."' To prevent any increase of the dissatisfaction, the general government issued a proclamation forbidding smy further encroachment upon the Indian lands on Tennessee river; notwith- standing which, early in 1791, a party of men descended the river in boats, and, landing on an island at the Muscle shoals, near the present Tuscumbia, Alabama, erected a blockhouse and other defensive works. Immediately afterward the Cherokee chief, Glass, with about sixtj' warriors, appeared and quietly informed them that if they did not at once withdraw he would kill them. After some parley the intruders retired to their boats, when the Indians set fire to the buildings and reduced them to ashes.*
To forestall more serious difficulty it was necessary to negotiate a new treaty with a view to purchasing the disputed territory. Accord- ingly, through the efl'orts of Governor Blount, a convention was held with the principal men of the Cherokee at White's fort, now Knox-
1 Ramsey, Tennessee, pp. 522, 541, 561, 1863.
2 Washington to the Senate, August 11, 1790, American State Papers: Inaian Affairs, I, p. 83, 1832. ^Secretary Knox to President Washington, July 7, 1789, ibid., p. 53.
* Ramsey, op. oit., pp. 560, 551.
MOONEY] TREATY OF HOLSTON 1191 69
ville, Tennessee, in the summer of 1791. With much difficulty the Chei'okee were finally brought to consent to a cession of a triangular section in Tennessee and North Carolina extending from Clinch river almost to the Blue ridge, and including nearly the whole of the French Broad and the lower Holston, with the sites of the present Knoxville, Greenville, and Asheville. The whole of this area, with a considerable territory adjacent, was already fully occupied by the whites. Permission was also given for a road from the eastern settlements to those on the Cumberland, with the free navigation of Tennessee river. Prisoners on both sides were to be restored and perpetual peace was guaranteed. In consideration of the lands sur- rendered the Cherokee were to receive an annuity of one thousand dollars with some extra goods and some assistance on the road to civilization. A treaty was signed by forty-one principal men of the tribe and was concluded July 2, 1791. It is officially described as being held "on the bank of the Holston, near the mouth of the French Broad," and is commonly spoken of as the "treaty of Holston."
The Cherokee, however, were dissatisfied with the arrangement, and before the end of the year a delegation of six principal chiefs appeared at Philadelphia, then the seat of government, without any previous announcement of their coming, declaring that when they had been summoned by Governor Blount to a conference they were not aware that it was to persuade them to sell lands; that they had resisted the proposition for days, and only yielded when compelled by the persistent and threatening demands of the governor; that the consideration was entirely too small; and that they had no faith that the whites would respect the new boundary, as they were in fact already settling beyond it. Finally, as the treaty had been signed, they asked that these intruders be removed. As their presentation of the case seemed a just one and it was desirable that they should carry home with them a favorable impression of the government's attitude toward them, a supplementary article was added, increasing the annuity to eight thousand five hundred dollars. On account of renewed Indian hostilities in Ohio vallej^ and the desire of the government to keep the good will of the Cherokee long enough to obtain their help against the northern tribes, the new line was not surveyed until 1797.^
As illustrating Indian custom it may be noted that one of the prin- cipal signers of the original treaty was among the protesting delegates, but having in the meantime changed his name, it appears on the supplementary paragraph as "Iskagua, or Clear Sky, formerly Nenetooyah, or Bloody Fellow."^ As he had been one of the prin-
1 Indian Treaties, pp. 34-38, 1837; Secretary of War, report, January 5, 1798, in American State Papers, i, pp. 628-631, 1832; Ramsey, Tennessee, pp. 554-560, 1853; Royce, Cheroliee Nation, Filtli Ann. Rep. Bureau of Ethnology, pp. 158-170. with full discussion and map, 1888. '
2 Indian Treaties, pp. 37, 38, 1837.
70 MYTHS OF THE CHEROKEE [eth.ann.19
cipal raiders on the Tennessee frontier, the new name may have been symbolic of his change of heart at the prospect of a return of peace.
The treaty seems to have had little effect in preventing Indian hos- tilities, probably because the intruders still remained upon the Indian lands, and raiding still continued. The Creeks were known to be responsible for some of the mischief, and the hostile Chickamaugas were supposed to be the chief authors of the rest.^ Even while the Cherokee delegates were negotiating the treaty in Philadelphia a boat which had accidentally run aground on the Muscle shoals was attacked by a party of Indians under the pretense of offering assistance, one man being killed and another severely wounded with a hatchet.''
While these negotiations had been pending at Philadelphia a young man named Leonard D. Shaw, a student at Princeton college, had expressed to the Secretary of War an earnest desire for a commission which would enable him to accompany the returning Cherokee dele- gates to their southern home, there to study Indian life and charac- teristics. As the purpose seemed a useful one, and he appeared well qualified for such a work, he was accordingly commissioned as deputy agent to reside among the Cherokee to observe and report upon their movements, to aid in the annuity distributions, and to render other assistance to Governor Blount, superintendent for the southern tribes, to study their language and home life, and to collect materials for an Indian history. An extract from the official instructions under which this first United States ethnologist began his work will be of interest. After defining his executive duties in connection with the annuity distributions, the keeping of accounts and the compiling of official reports, Secretary Knox continues —
A due performance of your duty will probably require the exercise of all your patience and fortitude and all your knowledge of the human character. The school will be a severe but interesting one. If you should succeed in acquiring the affections and a knowledge of the characters of the southern Indians, you may be at once use- ful to the United States and advance your own interest.
You will endeavor to learn their languages; this is essential to your communica- tions. You will collect materials for a history of all the southern tribes and all things thereunto belonging. You will endeavor to ascertain their respective limits, make a vocabulary of their respective languages, teach them agriculture and such useful arts as you may know or can acquire. You will correspond regularly with Governor Blount, who is superintendent for Indian affairs, and inform him of all occurrences. You will also cultivate a correspondence with Brigadier-General McGillivray [the Creek chief], and you will also keep a journal of your proceedings and transmit them to the War Office. . . . You are to exhibit to Governor Blount the Cherokee book and all the writings therein, the messages to the several tribes of Indians, and these instructions.
Your route will be hence to Reading; thence Harris's ferry [Harrisburg, Penn- sylvania] to Carlisle; to ferry on the Potomac; to Winchester; to Staunton; to
1 Eamsey, Tennessee, p. 557, 1863.
2 Abel deposition, April 16, 1792, American State Papers: Indian Affairs, i, p. 274, 1832.
MOONEY] RENEWAL OF WAK 1792 7l
and to Holston. I should hope that you would travel upwards of twenty
miles each day, and that you would reach Holston in about thirty days.'
The journey, which seemed then so long, was to be made by wagons from Philadelphia to the head of navigation on Holston river, thence by boats to the Cherokee towns. Shaw seems to have taken up his resi- dence at Ustanali, which had superseded Echota as the Cherokee capital. We hear of him as present at a council there in June of the same year, with no evidence of unfriendliness at his presence.^ The friendly feel- ing was of short continuance, however, for a few months later we find him writing from Ustanali to Governor Blount that on account of the aggressive hostility of the Creeks, whose avowed intention was to kill every white man they met, he was not safe 50 yards from the house. Soon afterwards the Chickamauga towns again declared war, on which account, together with renewed threats by the Creeks, he was advised by the Cherokee to leave Ustanali, which he did early in September, 1792, proceeding to the home of General Pickens, near Seneca, South Carolina,, escorted by a guard of friendly Cherokee. In the follow- ing winter he was dismissed from the service on serious charges, and his mission appears to have been a failure.'
To prevent an alliance of the Cherokee, Creeks, and other south- ern Indians with the confederated hostile northern tribes, the govern- ment had endeavored to persuade the former to furnish a contingent of warriors to act with the army against the northern Indians, and special instruction had been given to Shaw to use his efforts for this result. Nothing, however, came of the attempt. St Clair's defeat turned the scale against the United States, and in September, 1792, the Chickamauga towns formally declared war.'
In November of this year the governor of Georgia officially reported that a party of lawless Georgians had gone into the Cherokee Nation, and had there burned a town and barbarously killed three Indians, while about the same time two other Cherokee had been killed within the settlements. Fearing retaliation, he ordered out a patrol of troops to guard the frontier in that direction, and sent a conciliatory letter to the chiefs, expressing his regret for what had happened. No answer was returned to the message, but a few days later an entire family was found murdered — four women, three children, and a young man — all scalped and mangled and with arrows sticking in the bodies, while, according to old Indian war custom, two war clubs were left upon
1 Henry Knox, Secretary of War, Instructions to Leonard Shaw, temporary agent to the Cherokee Nation of Indians, February 17, 1792, in American State Papers: Indian Affairs, i, 247, 1832; also Knox, letters to Governor Blount, January 31 and February 16, 1792, ibid., pp. 245, 246.
^Estanaula conference report, June 26, 1792, ibid., p. 271; Deraque, deposition, September 15, 1792, ibid., p. 292; Pickens, letter, September 12, 1792, ibid., p. 317.
sSee letters of Shaw, Casey, Pickens, and Blount, 1792-93, ibid., pp. 277, 278, 317, 436, 437, 440.
<Knox, instructions to Shaw, February 17, 1792, ibid., p. 247; Blount, letter, March 20, 1792, ibid., p. 263; Knox, letters, October 9, 1792, ibid., pp. 261, 262.
72 MYTHS OF THE CHEROKEE [eth.ann.19
the ground to show by whom the deed was done. So swift was savage vengeance.'
Early in 1792 a messenger who had been sent on business for Gov- ernor Blount to the Chickamauga towns I'eturned with the report that a party had just come in with prisoners and some fresh scalps, over which the chiefs and warriors of two towns were then dancing; that the Shawano were urging the Cherokee to join them against the Ameri- cans; that a strong body of Creeks was on its way against the Cum- berland settlements, and that the Creek chief, McGillivray, was tr^dng to form a general confederacy of all the Indian tribes against the whites. To understand this properly it must be remembered that at this time all the tribes northwest of the Ohio and as far as the heads of the Mississippi were banded together in a grand alliance, headed by the warlike Shawano, for the purpose of holding the Ohio river as the Indian boundary against the advancing tide of white settlement. They had just cut to pieces one of the finest armies ever sent into the West, under the veteran General St Clair (28), and it seemed for the moment as if the American advance would be driven back behind the Alleghenies.
In the emergency the Secretary of War directed Governor Blount to hold a conference with the chiefs of the Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Cherokee at Nashville in June to enlist their warriors, if possible, in active service aga'inst the northern tribes. The conference was held as proposed, in August, but nothing seems to have come of it, although the chiefs seemed to be sincere in their assurances of friendship. Very few of the Choctaw or Cherokee were in attendance. At the annuity distribution of the Cherokee, shortly before, the chiefs had also been profuse in declarations of their desire for peace. ^ Notwith- standing all this the attacks along the Tennessee frontier continued to such an extent that the blockhouses were again put in order and gar- risoned. Soon afterwards the governor reported to the Secretary of War that the five lower Cherokee towns on the Tennessee (the Chicka- mauga), headed by John Watts, had finally declared war against the United States, and that from three to six hundred warriors, including a hundred Creeks, had started against the settlements. The militia was at once called out, both in eastern Tennessee and on the Cumber- land. On the Cumberland side it was directed that no pursuit should be continued beyond the Cherokee boundary, the ridge between the waters of Cumberland and Duck rivers. The order issued by Colonel White, of Knox county, to each of his captains shows how great was the alarm:
1 Governor Telfair's letters of November 14 and December 5, with Inclosure, 1792, American State Papers: Indian Aflalrs, I, pp. 332, 336, 337, 1832. 8 Ramsey, Tennessee, pp. 562-663, 598, 1863.
MOONEY] ATTACK ON BUCHANAN's STATION — 1792 73
Knoxville, Septemht'r 11, 179S. Sir: You are hereby commanded to repair with your company to Knoxville, equipped, to protect the frontiers; there is imminent danger. Bring with you two days' provisions, if possible; but you are not to delay an hour on that head.
I am, sir, yours,
James White.'
About midnight on the 30th of September, 1792, the Indian force, consisting of several hundred Chickamaugas and other Cherokee, .Creeks, and Shawano, attaclced Buchanan's station, a few miles south of Nashville. Although numbers of families had collected inside the stockade for safety, there were less than twenty able-bodied men among them. The approach of the enemy alarmed the cattle, by which the garrison had warning just in time to close the gate when the Indians were already within a few yards of the entrance. The assault was furious and determined, the Indians rushing up to the stockade, attempting to set fire to it, and aiming their guns through the port holes. One Indian succeeded in climbing upon the roof with a lighted torch, but was shot and fell to the ground, holding his torch against the logs as he drew his last breath. It was learned afterward that he was a half blood, the stepson of the old white tl-ader who had once rescued the boy Joseph Brown at Mckajack. He was a desperate warrior and when only twenty -two years of age had already taken six white scalps. The attack was repulsed at every point, and the assail- ants finally drew off, with considerable loss, carrying their dead and wounded with them, and leaving a number of hatchets, pipes, and other spoils upon the ground. Among the wounded was the chief John Watts. Not one of those in the fort was injured. It has been well said that the defense of Buchanan's station by such a handful of men against an attacking force estimated all the way at from three to seven hundred Indians is a feat of bravery which has scarcely been surpassed in the annals of border warfare. The effect upon the Indians must have been thoroughly disheartening.^
In the same month arrangements were made for protecting the fron- tier along the French Broad by means of a series of garrisoned block- houses, with scouts to patrol regularly from one to another. North Carolina cooperating on her side of the line. The hostile inroads still continued in this section, the Creeks acting with the hostile Cherokee. One raiding party of Creeks having been traced toward ChUhowee town on Little Tennessee, the whites were about to burn that and a neighboring Cherokee town when Sevier interposed and prevented.' There is no reason to suppose that the people of these towns were directly concerned in the depredations along the frontier at this period,
1 Ramsey, Tennessee, pp. 562-565, 1853.
2 Blount, letter, October 2, 1792, in American State Papers: Indian Affairs, i, p. 294, 1832; Blount, letter, etc., in Ilamsey,op.oit., pp. 566, 567, 599-601; see also Brown's narrative, ibid., 511, 512; Eoyce, Cherokee Nation, Fifth Ann. Rep. Bureau of Ethnology , p. 170, 1888.
8 Ramsey, op. eit., 569-571.
74 MYTHS OF THE CHEROKEE [eth.ann.19
the mischief being done by those farther to the south, in conjunction with the Creeks.
Toward the close of this year, 1792, Captain Samuel Handley, while leading a small party of men to reenforce the Cumberland settlement, was attacked by a mixed force of Cherokee, Creeks, and Shawano, near the Crab Orchard, west of the present Kingston, Tennessee. Becoming separated from his men he encountered a warrior who had lifted his hatchet to strike when Handley seized the weapon, ciying out "Canaly" (for hig'kia'M), "friend," to which the Cherokee responded with the same word, at once lowering his arm. Handley was carried to Willstown, in Alabama, where he was adopted into the Wolf clan (29) and remained until the next spring. After having made use of his services in writing a peace letter to Governor Blount the Cherokee finally sent him home in safety to his friends under a protecting escort of eight warriors, without any demand for ransom. He afterward resided near Tellico blockhouse, near Loudon, where, after the wars were over, his Indian friends frequently came to visit and stop with him.^
The year 1793 began with a series of attacks all along the Tennes- see frontier. As before, most of the depredation was by Chicka- maugas and Creeks, with some stray Shawano from the north. The Cherokee from the towns on Little Tennessee remained peaceable, but their temper was sorely tried by a regrettable circumstance which occurred in June. While a number of friendly chiefs were assembled for a conference at Echota, on the express request of the President, a party of men under command of a Captain John Beard sud- denly attacked them, killing about fifteen Indians, including several chiefs and two women, one of them being the wife of Hanging-maw (UshwS'li-guta), principal chief of the Nation, who was himself wounded. The murderers then fled, leaving others to suffer the conse- quences. Two hundred warriors at once took up arms to revenge their loss, and only the most earnest appeal from the deputy governor could restrain them from swift retaliation. While the chief, whose wife was thus murdered and himself wounded, forebore to revenge himself, in order not to bring war upon his people, the Secretary of War was obliged to report, "to my great pain, I find to punish Beard by law just now is out of the question." Beard was in fact arrested, but the trial was a farce and he was acquitted.''
Believing that the Cherokee Nation, with the exception of the Chickamaugas, was honestly trying to preserve peace, the territorial government, while making provision for the safety of the exposed settlements, had strictly prohibited any invasion of the Indian country. The frontier people were of a different opinion, and in spite of the prohibition a company of nearly two hundred mounted men under
1 Ramsey, Tennessee, pp. 571-673, 1853. 2 Ibid., pp. 574-578, mw.
MOONEY] MASSACRE AT CAVITTS STATION 1793 75
Colonels Doherty and McFarland crossed over the mountains in the summer of this year and destroyed six of the middle towns, returning with fifteen scalps and as man}^ prisoners/
Late in September a strong force estimated at one thousand war- riors— seven hundred Creeks and three hundred Cherokee — under John Watts and Doublehead, crossed the Tennessee and advanced in the direction of Knoxville, where the public stores were then deposited. In their eagerness to reach Knoxville they passed quietly by one or two smaller settlements until within a short distance of the town, when, at daybreak of the 25th, they heard the garrison fire the sunrise gun and imagined that they were discovered. Differences had already broken out among the leaders, and without venturing to advance farther they contented themselves with an attack upon a small block- house a few miles to the west, known as Cavitts station, in which at the time were only three men with thirteen women and children. After defending themselves bravely for some time these surrendered on promise that they should be held for exchange, but as soon as they came out Doublehead's warriors fell upon them and put them all to death with the exception of a boy, who was saved by John Watts. This bloody deed was entirely the work of Doublehead, the other chiefs having done their best to prevent it.^
A force of seven hundred men under General Sevier was at once put upon their track, with orders this time to push the pursuit into the heart of the Indian nation. Crossing Little Tennessee and Hiwassee they penetrated to Ustanali town, near the present Calhoun, Georgia. Finding it deserted, although well filled with provision, they rested there a few days, the Indians in the meantime attempting a night attack without success. After burning the town, Sevier con- tinued down the river to Etowah town, near the present site of Rome. Here the Indians — Cherokee and Creeks — had dug intrenchments and prepared to make a stand, but, being outflanked, were defeated with loss and compelled to retreat. This town, with several others in the neighborhood belonging to both Cherokee and Creeks, was destroyed, with all the provision of the Indians, including three hundred cattle, after which the army took up the homeward march. The Americans had lost but three men. This was the last military service of Sevier.'
During the absence of Sevier's force in the south the Indians made a sudden inroad on the "French Broad, near the present Dandridge, killing and scalping a woman and a boy. While their friends were accompanying the remains to a neighboring burial ground for inter- ment, two men who had incautiously gone ahead were fired upon. One
1 Ramsey, Tennessee, p. 579.
2Ibid., pp. 580-583, 1853; Smith, letter, September 27, 1793, American State Papers: Indian Affairs, I, p. 468, 1882. Ramsey gives the Indian force 1,000 warriors; Smith says that in many places they marched in files Qf 28 abreast, each file being supposed to number 40 men.
'Ramsey, op. eit., pp. 584-588.
76 MYTHS OF THE CHEROKEE [eth.ann.19
of them escaped, but the other one was found killed and scalped when the rest of the company came up, and was buried with the first victims. Sevier's success brought temporary respite to the Cumberland settle- ments. During the early part of the year the Indian attacks by small raiding parties had been so frequent and annoying that a force of men had been kept out on patrol service under officers who adopted with some success the policy of hunting the Indians in their camping places in the thickets, rather than waiting for them to come into the settlements.'
In February, 1794, the Territorial assembly of Tennessee met at Knoxville and, among other business transacted, addressed a strong memorial to Congress calling for more efficient protection for the frontier and demanding a declaration of war against the Creeks and Cherokee. The memorial states that since the treaty of Holston'(July, 1791), these two tribes had killed in a most barbarous and inhuman manner more than two hundred citizens of Tennessee, of both sexes, had carried others into captivity, destroyed their stock, burned their houses, and laid waste their plantations, had robbed the citizens of their slaves and stolen at least two thousand horses. Special atten- tion was directed to the two great invasions in September, 1792, and September, 1793, and the memorialists declare that there was scarcely a man of the assembly but could tell of "a dear wife or child, an aged parent or near relation, besides friends, massacred by the hands of these bloodthirsty nations in their house or fields."^
In the meantinie the raids continued and every scattered cabin was a target for attack. In April a party of twenty warriors surrounded the house of a man named Casteel on the French Broad about nine miles above Knoxville and massacred father, mother, and four children in most brutal fashion. One child only was left alive, a girl of ten years, who was found scalped and bleeding from six tottiahawk gashes, yet survived. The others were buried in one grave. The massacre roused such a storm of excitement that it required all the effort of the governor and the local officials to prevent an invasion in force of the Indian country. It was learned that Doublehead, of the Chicka- mauga towns, was trying to get the support of the valley towns, which, however, continued to maintain an attitude of peace. The friendly Cherokee also declared that the Spaniards were constantly instigating the lower towns to hostilities, although John Watts, one of their prin- cipal chiefs, advocated peace.'
In June a boat under command of William Scott, laden with pots, hardware, and other property, and containing six white men, three women, four children, and twenty negroes, left Knoxville to descend
' Ramsey, Tennessee, pp. 590, 60!i-605, 1853.
2 Haywood, Civil and Political History of Tennessee, pp. 300-302; Knoxville, 1823. 'Ibid., pp. .303-308, 1823; Ramsey, op.eit., pp.591-594. Haywood'shlstory of this period is little more than a continuous record of killings and petty encounters.
MOONEY] CONFLICTS WITH CREEKS 1794 77
Tennessee river to Natchez. As it passed tlie Cliickamauga towns it was fired upon from Running Water and Long island without damage. The whites returned the fire, wounding two Indians. A large party of Cherokee, headed by White-man-killer (Une'ga-dihi'), then started in pursuit of the boat, which they overtook at Muscle shoals, where they killed all the white people in it, made prisoners of the negroes, and plundered the goods. Three Indians were killed and one was wounded in the action.' It is said that the Indian actors in this massacre fled across the Mississippi into Spanish territory and became the nucleus of the Cherokee Nation of the West, as will be noted elsewhere.
On June 26, 1794, another treaty, intended to be supplementary to that of Holston in 1791, was negotiated at Philadelphia, being signed by the Secretary of War and by thirteen principal men of the Chero- kee. An arrangement was made for the proper marking of the boundary then established, and the annuity was increased to five thousand dollars, with a proviso that fifty dollars were to be deducted for every horse stolen by the Cherokee and not restored within three months.^
In July a man named John Ish was shot down while plowing in his field eighteen miles below Knoxville. By order of Hanging-maw, the friendly chief of Echota, a party of Cherokee took the trail and cap- tured the murderer, who proved to be a Creek, whom they brought in to the agent at Tellico blockhouse, where he was formallj' tried and hanged. When asked the usual question he said that his people were at war with the whites, that he had left home to kill or be killed, that he had killed the white man and would have escaped but for the Cherokee, and that there were enough of his nation to avenge his death. A few days later a party of one htjndred Creek warriors crossed Tennessee river against the settlements. The alarm was given by Hanging-maw, and fifty-three Cherokee with a few federal troops started in pursuit. On the 10th of August they came up with the Creeks, killing one and wounding another, one Cherokee being slightly • wounded. The Creeks retreated and the victors returned to the Cherokee towns, where their return was announced bj- the death song and the firing of guns. "The night was spent in dancing the scalp dance, according to the custom of warriors after a victory over their enemies, in which the white and red people heartily joined. The Upper Cherokee had now stepped too far to go back, and their pro- fessions of friendship were now no longer to be questioned." In the same month there was an engagement between a detachment of about
' Haywood, Civil and Political History of Tennessee, p. 308,1823; Eamsey, Tennessee, p. 594. 1853; see also memorial in Putnam, Middle Tennessee, p. 502, 1859. Haywood calls the leader Unacala, which should be Une'ga-dlhl', "White-man-killer." Compare Haywood's statement with that of Wash- burn, on page 100.
2 Indian Treaties, pp. 39, 40, 1837; Eoyce, Cherokee Nation, Fifth Ann. Rep. Bureau of Ethnology, pp. 171, 172, 1888; Documents of 1797-98, American State Papers: Indian Affairs, i, pp. 628-631, 1832. The treaty is not mentioned by the Tennessee historians.
78 MYTHS OF THE CHEROKEE [eth.ann.19
I
forty soldiers and a large body of Creeks near Crab Orchard, in which
several of each were killed/ It is evident that much of the damage
on both sides of the Cumberland range was due to the Creeks.
In the meantime Governor Blount was trying to negotiate peace with the whole Cherokee Nation, but with little success. The Cher- okee claimed to be anxious for permanent peace, but said that it was impossible to restore the property taken by them, as it had been taken in war, and they had themselves been equal losers from the whites. They said also that they could not prevent the hostile Creeks from passing through their territory. About the end of July it was learned that a strong body of Creeks had started north against the settlements. The militia was at once ordered out along the Tennessee frontier, and the friendly Cherokees offered their services, while measures were taken to protect their women and children from the enemy. The Creeks advanced as far as "Willstown, when the news came of the com- plete defeat of the confederated northern tribes by General Wayne (30), and fearing the same fate for themselves, they turned back and scattered to their towns. ^
The Tennesseeans, especially those on the Cumberland, had long ago come to the conclusion that peace could be brought about only through the destruction of the Chickamauga towns. Anticipating some action of this kind, which the general government did not think necessary or advisable, orders against any such attempt had been issued by the Secretary of War to Governor Blount. The frontier people went about their preparations, however, and it is evident from the result that the local military authorities were in connivance with the under- taking. General Robertson was the chief organizer of the volunteers about Nashville, who were reenforced by a company of Kentuckians under Colonel Whitley. Major Ore had been sent by Governor Blount with a detachment of troops to protect the Cumberland settle- ments, and on arriving at Nashville entered as heartily into the project as if no counter orders had ever been issued, and was given chief com- mand of the expedition, which for this reason is commonly known as "Ore's expedition."
On September 7, 1794, the army of five hundred and fift}' mounted men left Nashville, and five days later crossed the Tennessee near the mouth of the Sequatchee river, their guide being the same Joseph Brown of whom the old Indian woman had said that he would one day bring the soldiei's to destroy them. Having left their horses on the other side of the river, they moved up along the south bank just after daybreak of the 13th and surprised the town of Nickajack, killing several warriors and taking a number of prisoners. Some who attempted to escape in canoes were shot in the water. The warriors
1 Haywood, Civil and Political History of Tennessee, pp. 309-311, 1823; Ramsey, Tennessee, pp. 594, 695, 1853.
2 Haywood, op. cit.,pp. 314-316; Ramsey, op. cit., p. 596.
MOONEY] END OF OHEBOKEE WAE 1'794 79
in Running Water town, four miles above, heard the firing and came at once to the assistance of their friends, but were driven back after attempting to hold their ground, and the second town shared the fate of the first. More than fifty Indians had been killed, a number were prisoners, both towns and all their contents had been destroyed, with a loss to the assailants of only three men wounded. The Breath, the chief of Running Water, was among those killed. Two fresh scalps with a large quantity of plunder from the settlements were found in the towns, together with a supply of ammunition said to have been furnished by the Spaniards.'
Soon after the return of the expedition Robertson sent a message to John Watts, the principal leader of the hostile Cherokee, threatening a second visitation if the Indians did not very soon surrender their prisoners and give assurances of peace. ^ The destruction of their towns on Tennessee and Coosa and the utter defeat of the northern confederates had now broken the courage of the Cherokee, and on their own request Governor Blount held a conference with them at Tellico blockhouse, November Y and 8, 1794, at which Hanging-maw, head chief of the Nation, and Colonel John Watt, principal chief of the hos- tile towns, with about four hundred of their warriors, attended. The result was satisfactory; all differences were arranged on a friendly basis and the long Cherokee war came to an end.'
Owing to the continued devastation of their towns during the Rev- olutionary struggle, a number of Cherokee, principally of the Chicka- mauga band, had removed across the Ohio about 1782 and settled on Paint creek, a branch of the Scioto river, in the vicinity of their friends and allies, the Shawano. In 1787 they were reported to num- ber about seventy warriors. They took an active part in the hostili- ties along the Ohio frontier and were present in the great battle at the Maumee rapids, by which the power of the confederated northern tribes was effectually broken. As they had failed to attend the treaty con- ference held at Greenville in August, 1795, General Wayne sent them a special message, through their chief Long-hair, that if they refused to come in and make terms as the others had done they would be con- sidered outside the protection of the government. Upon this a part of them came in and promised that as soon as they could gather their crops the whole band would leave Ohio forever and return to their people in the south.*
1 Haywood, Political and Civil History of Tennessee, pp. 392-396, 1823; Ramsey, Tennessee (with Major Ore's report) , pp. 608-618, 1853; Royce, Cherokee Nation, Fifth Ann. Rep. Bureau Ethnology, p. 171, 1888; Ore, Robertson, and Blount, reports, American State Papers: Indian Affairs, i, pp. 632-634, 1832.
2 Ramsey, op. cit., p. 618.
3 Tellico conference, November 7-8, 1794, American State Papers: Indian Affairs, i, pp. 536-538, 1832, Royce, op. Cit. , p. 173; Ramsey, op. cit. , p. 596.
'Beaver's talk, 1784, Virginia State Papers, in, p. 571, 1883; McDowell, report, 1786, ibid., iv, p. 118, 1884; McDowell, report, 1787, ibid., p. 286; Todd, letter, 1787, ibid., p. 277; Tellico conference, Novem- ber 7, 1794, American State Papers: Indian Affairs, I, p. 538, 1832; Greenville treaty conference,