what we are told of the camelion, that seems to the spectator to change
its colour, by every different position he may view it in; which
proceeds from the piercing rays of light that blaze from their
foreheads, so as to dazzle the eyes, from whatever quarter they post
themselves—for in each of their heads, there is a large carbuncle, which
not only repels, but they affirm, sullies the meridian beams of the sun.
They reckon it so dangerous to disturb those creatures, that no
temptation can induce them to betray their secret recess to the
prophane. They call them and all of the rattle-snake kind, kings, or
chieftains of the snakes; and they allow one such to every different
species of the brute creation. An old trader of Cheeowhee told me, that
for the reward of two pieces of stroud-cloth, he engaged a couple of
young warriors to shew him the place of their resort; but the head-men
would not by any means allow it, on account of a superstitious
tradition—for they fancy the killing of them would expose them to the
danger of being bit by the other inferior species of that serpentine
tribe, who love their chieftains, and know by instinct those who
maliciously killed them, as they fight only in their own defence, and
that of their young ones, never biting those who do not disturb them.
Although they esteem those rattle snakes as chieftains of that species,
yet they do not deify them, as the Egyptians did all the serpentine
kind, and likewise Ibis, that preyed upon them; however, it seems to
have sprung from the same origin, for I once saw the Chikkasah
Archi-magus to chew some snake-root, blow it on his hands, and then take
up a rattle snake without damage—soon afterwards he laid it down
carefully, in a hollow tree, lest I should have killed it. Once on the
Chikkasah trading war-path, a little above the country of the Muskohge,
as I was returning to camp from hunting, I found in a large cane swamp,
a fellow-traveller, an old Indian trader, inebriated and naked, except
his Indian breeches and maccaseenes; in that habit he sat, {238} holding
a great rattle-snake round the neck, with his left hand besmeared with
proper roots, and with the other, applying the roots to the teeth, in
order to repel the poison, before he drew them out; which having
effected, he laid it down tenderly at a distance. I then killed it, to
his great dislike, as he was afraid it would occasion misfortunes to
himself and me. I told him, as he had taken away its teeth, common pity
should induce one to put it out of misery, and that a charitable action
could never bring ill on any one; but his education prevented his fears
from subsiding. On a Christmas-day, at the trading house of that
harmless, brave, but unfortunate man, I took the foot of a guinea-deer
out of his shot-pouch—and another from my own partner, which they had
very safely sewed in the corner of each of their otter-skin-pouches, to
enable them, according to the Indian creed, to kill deer, bear,
buffaloe, beaver, and other wild beasts, in plenty: but they were so
infatuated with the Indian superstitious belief of the power of that
charm, that all endeavours of reconciling them to reason were
ineffectual: I therefore returned them, for as they were Nimrods, or
hunters of men, as well as of wild beasts, I imagined, I should be
answerable to myself for every accident that might befal them, by
depriving them of what they depended upon as their chief good, in that
wild sphere of life. No wonder that the long-desolate savages of the far
extending desarts of America, should entertain the former superstitious
notions of ill luck by that, and good fortune by this; as those of an
early Christian education, are so soon imprest with the like opinions.
The latter was killed on the old Chikkasah, or American-Flanders
path,[125] in company with another expert brave man, in the year 1745,
by twenty Choktah savages, set on by the Christian French of Tumbikpe
garrison; in consequence of which, I staid by myself the following
summer-season, in the Chikkasah country, and when the rest of the
trading people and all our horses were gone down to the English
settlements, I persuaded the Choktah to take up the bloody tomohawk
against those perfidious French, in revenge of a long train of crying
blood: and had it not been for the self-interested policy of a certain
governor, those numerous savages, with the war-like Chikkasah, would
have destroyed the Missisippi settlements, root and branch, except those
who kept themselves closely confined in garrison. When I treat of the
Choktah country, I shall more particularly relate that very material
affair. {239}
The superior policy of the French so highly intoxicated the light heads
of the Cheerake, that they were plodding mischief for twenty years
before we forced them to commit hostilities. The illustration of this
may divert the reader, and shew our southern colonies what they may
still expect from the masterly abilities of the French Louisianians,
whenever they can make it suit their interest to exert their talents
among the Indian nations, while our watch-men are only employed in
treating on paper, in our far-distant capital seats of government.
In the year 1736, the French sent into South-Carolina, one Priber[126] a
gentleman of a curious and speculative temper. He was to transmit them a
full account of that country, and proceed to the Cheerake nation, in
order to seduce them from the British to the French interest. He went,
and though he was adorned with every qualification that constitutes the
gentleman, soon after he arrived at the upper towns of this mountainous
country, he exchanged his clothes and every thing he brought with him,
and by that means, made friends with the head warriors of great Telliko,
which stood on a branch of the Missisippi. More effectually to answer
the design of his commission, he ate, drank, slept, danced, dressed, and
painted himself, with the Indians, so that it was not easy to
distinguish him from the natives,—he married also with them, and being
endued with a strong understanding and retentive memory, he soon learned
their dialect, and by gradual advances, impressed them with a very ill
opinion of the English, representing them as a fraudulent, avaritious,
and encroaching people: he at the same time, inflated the artless
savages, with a prodigious high opinion of their own importance in the
American scale of power, on account of the situation of their country,
their martial disposition, and the great number of their warriors, which
would baffle all the efforts of the ambitious, and ill-designing British
colonists. Having thus infected them by his smooth deluding art, he
easily formed them into a nominal republican government—crowned their
old Archi-magus, emperor, after a pleasing new savage form, and invented
a variety of high-sounding titles for all the members of his imperial
majesty’s red court, and the great officers of state; which the emperor
conferred upon them, in a manner according to their merit. He himself
received the honourable title of his imperial majesty’s principal
secretary of state, and as such he subscribed himself, in all the
letters he wrote to our government, and lived in open defiance {240} of
them. This seemed to be of so dangerous a tendency, as to induce
South-Carolina to send up a commissioner, Col. F—x,[127] to demand him
as an enemy to the public repose—who took him into custody, in the great
square of their statehouse: when he had almost concluded his oration on
the occasion, one of the head warriors rose up, and bade him forbear, as
the man he entended to enslave, was made a great beloved man, and become
one of their own people. Though it was reckoned, our agent’s strength
was far greater in his arms than his head, he readily desisted—for as it
is too hard to struggle with the pope in Rome, a stranger could not miss
to find it equally difficult to enter abruptly into a new emperor’s
court, and there seize his prime minister, by a foreign authority;
especially when he could not support any charge of guilt against him.
The warrior told him, that the red people well knew the honesty of the
secretary’s heart would never allow him to tell a lie; and the secretary
urged that he was a foreigner, without owing any allegiance to Great
Britain,—that he only travelled through some places of their country, in
a peaceable manner, paying for every thing he had of them; that in
compliance with the request of the kindly French, as well as from his
own tender feelings for the poverty and insecure state of the Cheerake,
he came a great way, and lived among them as a brother, only to preserve
their liberties, by opening a water communication between them and New
Orleans; that the distance of the two places from each other, proved his
motive to be the love of doing good, especially as he was to go there,
and bring up a sufficient number of Frenchmen of proper skill to
instruct them in the art of making gun-powder, the materials of which,
he affirmed their lands abounded with.—He concluded his artful speech,
by urging that the tyrannical design of the English commissioner toward
him, appeared plainly to be levelled against them, because, as he was
not accused of having done any ill to the English, before he came to the
Cheerake, his crime must consist in loving the Cheerake.—And as that was
reckoned so heinous a transgression in the eye of the English, as to
send one of their angry beloved men to enslave him, it confirmed all
those honest speeches he had often spoken to the present great
war-chieftains, old beloved men, and warriors of each class.
An old war-leader repeated to the commissioner, the essential part of
the speech, and added more of his own similar thereto. He bade him to
inform {241} his superiors, that the Cheerake were as desirous as the
English to continue a friendly union with each other, as “freemen and
equals.” That they hoped to receive no farther uneasiness from them, for
consulting their own interests, as their reason dictated.—And they
earnestly requested them to send no more of those bad papers to their
country, on any account; nor to reckon them so base, as to allow any of
their honest friends to be taken out of their arms, and carried into
slavery. The English beloved man had the honour of receiving his leave
of absence, and a sufficient passport of safe conduct, from the imperial
red court, by a verbal order of the secretary of state,—who was so
polite as to wish him well home, and ordered a convoy of his own
life-guards, who conducted him a considerable way, and he got home in
safety.
From the above, it is evident, that the monopolizing spirit of the
French had planned their dangerous lines of circumvallation, respecting
our envied colonies, as early as the before-mentioned period. Their
choice of the man, bespeaks also their judgment.—Though the philosophic
secretary was an utter stranger to the wild and mountainous Cheerake
country, as well as to their language, yet his sagacity readily directed
him to chuse a proper place, and an old favourite religious man, for the
new red empire; which he formed by slow, but sure degrees, to the great
danger of our southern colonies. But the empire received a very great
shock, in an accident that befel the secretary, when it was on the point
of rising into a far greater state of puissance, by the acquisition of
the Muskohge, Choktah, and the western Missisippi Indians. In the fifth
year of that red imperial æra, he set off for Mobille, accompanied by a
few Cheerake. He proceeded by land, as far as a navigable part of the
western great river of the Muskohge; there he went into a canoe prepared
for the joyful occasion, and proceeded within a day’s journey of
Alebahma garrison—conjecturing the adjacent towns were under the
influence of the French, he landed at Tallapoose town, and lodged there
all night. The traders of the neighbouring towns soon went there,
convinced the inhabitants of the dangerous tendency of his unwearied
labours among the Cheerake, and of his present journey, and then took
him into custody, with a large bundle of manuscripts, and sent him down
to Frederica in Georgia; the governor committed him to a place of
confinement, though not with common felons, as he was a foreigner, and
was said to have held a place of considerable rank in {242} the army
with great honour. Soon after, the magazine took fire, which was not far
from where he was confined, and though the centinels bade him make off
to a place of safety, as all the people were running to avoid danger
from the explosion of the powder and shells, yet he squatted on his
belly upon the floor, and continued in that position, without the least
hurt: several blamed his rashness, but he told them, that experience had
convinced him, it was the most probable means to avoid imminent danger.
This incident displayed the philosopher and soldier, and after bearing
his misfortunes a considerable time with great constancy, happily for
us, he died in confinement,—though he deserved a much better fate. In
the first year of his secretaryship I maintained a correspondence with
him; but the Indians becoming very inquisitive to know the contents of
our marked large papers, and he suspecting his memory might fail him in
telling those cunning sisters of truth, a plausible story, and of being
able to repeat it often to them, without any variation,—he took the
shortest and safest method, by telling them that, in the very same
manner as he was their great secretary, I was the devil’s clerk, or an
accursed one who marked on paper the bad speech of the evil ones of
darkness. Accordingly, they forbad him writing any more to such an
accursed one, or receiving any of his evil-marked papers, and our
correspondence ceased. As he was learned, and possessed of a very
sagacious penetrating judgment, and had every qualification that was
requisite for his bold and difficult enterprize, it is 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
representatives of South-Carolina and Georgia; which may be readily
found in Frederica, if the manuscripts have had the good fortune to
escape the despoiling hands of military power.
When the western Cheerake towns lost the chief support of their imperial
court, they artfully agreed to inform the English traders, that each of
them had opened their eyes, and rejected the French plan as a wild
scheme, inconsistent with their interests; except great Telliko,[128]
the metropolis of their late empire, which they said was firmly resolved
to adhere to the French proposals, as the surest means of promoting
their welfare and happiness. Though the inhabitants of this town were
only dupes to the rest, yet for {243} the sake of the imagined general
good of the country, their constancy enabled them to use that disguise a
long time, in contempt of the English, till habit changed into a real
hatred of the object, what before was only fictitious. They corresponded
with the French in the name of those seven towns, which are the most
warlike part of the nation: and they were so strongly prepossessed with
the notions their beloved secretary had infused into their heads, in
that early weak state of Louisiana, that they had resolved to remove,
and settle so low down their river, as the French boats could readily
bring them a supply. But the hot war they fell into with the northern
Indians, made them postpone the execution of that favourite design; and
the settling of Fort Loudon, quieted them a little, as they expected to
get presents, and spirituous liquors there, according to the manner of
the French promises, of which they had great plenty.
The French, to draw off the western towns, had given them repeated
assurances of settling a strong garrison on the north side of their
river, as high up as their large pettiaugres could be brought with
safety, where there was a large tract of rich lands abounding with game
and fowl, and the river with fish.—They at the same time promised to
procure a firm peace between the Cheerake and all the Indian nations
depending on the French; and to bestow on them powder, bullets, flints,
knives, scissars, combs, shirts, looking glasses, and red paint,—beside
favourite trifles to the fair sex: in the same brotherly manner the
Alebahma French extended their kindly hands to their Muskohge brethren.
By their assiduous endeavours, that artful plan was well supported, and
though the situation of our affairs, in the remote, and leading Cheerake
towns, had been in a ticklish situation, from the time their project of
an empire was formed; and though several other towns became uneasy and
discontented on sundry pretexts, for the space of two years before the
unlucky occasion of the succeeding war happened—yet his excellency our
governor[129] neglected the proper measures to reconcile the wavering
savages, till the gentleman[130] who was appointed to succeed him, had
just reached the American coast: then, indeed, he set off, with a
considerable number of gentlemen, in flourishing parade, and went as far
as Ninety-six[LV] settlement; from whence, as most probably he expected,
he was fortunately recalled, and joyfully superseded. I saw him on his
way up, and plainly observed he was unprovided for the journey; it must
unavoidably have proved abortive {244} before he could have proceeded
through the Cheerake country,—gratifying the inquisitive disposition of
the people, as he went, and quieting the jealous minds of the
inhabitants of those towns, who are settled among the Apalahche
mountains, and those seven towns, in particular, that lie beyond them.
He neither sent before, nor carried with him, any presents wherewith to
soothe the natives; and his kind promises, and smooth speeches, would
have weighed exceedingly light in the Indian scale.
Footnote LV:
So called from its distance of miles from the Cheerake. (A). Adair
makes a slight slip here. Ninety-Six was the name applied as early as
1730 to the point ninety-six miles _from Charles Town_. Salley,
_George Hunter’s Map of 1730_, p. 3. (W)
Having shewn the bad state of our affairs among the remotest parts of
the Cheerake country, and the causes.—I shall now relate their plea, for
commencing war against the British colonies; and the great danger we
were exposed to by the incessant intrigues of the half-savage French
garrisons, in those hot times, when all our northern barriers were so
prodigiously harrassed. Several companies of the Cheerake,[131] who
joined our forces under General Stanwix at the unfortunate Ohio,
affirmed that their alienation from us, was—because they were confined
to our martial arrangement, by unjust suspicion of them—were very much
contemned,—and half-starved at the main camp: their hearts told them
therefore to return home, as freemen and injured allies, though without
a supply of provisions. This they did, and pinching hunger forced them
to take as much as barely supported nature, when returning to their own
country. In their journey, the German inhabitants, without any
provocation, killed in cool blood about forty of their warriors, in
different places—though each party was under the command of a British
subject.[132] They scalped all, and butchered several, after a most
shocking manner, in imitation of the barbarous war-custom of the
savages; some who escaped the carnage, returned at night, to see their
kindred and war companions, and reported their fate. Among those who
were thus treated, some were leading men, which had a dangerous tendency
to disturb the public quiet. We were repeatedly informed, by public
account, that those murderers were so audacious as to impose the scalps
on the government for those of French Indians; and that they actually
obtained the premium allowed at that time by law in such a case.
Although the vindictive disposition of Indians in general, impetuously
forces them on in quest of equal revenge for blood, without the least
thought of consequences; yet as a misunderstanding had subsisted some
time, between several distant towns, and those who chanced to lose their
people in Virginia, the chiefs of those families being afraid of a civil
war, {245} in case of a rupture with us, dissuaded the furious young
warriors from commencing hostilities against us, till they had demanded
satisfaction, agreeable to the treaty of friendship between them and our
colonies; which if denied, they would fully take of their own accord, as
became a free, warlike, and injured people. In this state, the affair
lay, for the best part of a year, without our using any proper
conciliating measures, to prevent the threatening impending storm from
destroying us: during that interval, they earnestly applied to Virginia
for satisfaction, without receiving any; in like manner to
North-Carolina; and afterwards to South-Carolina, with the same bad
success. And there was another incident at Fort Prince-George, which set
fire to the fuel, and kindled it into a raging flame: three
light-headed, disorderly young officers of that garrison, forcibly
violated some of their wives, and in the most shameless manner, at their
own houses, while the husbands were making their winter hunt in the
woods—and which infamous conduct they madly repeated, but a few months
before the commencement of the war: in other respects, through a haughty
over-bearing spirit, they took pleasure in insulting and abusing the
natives, when they paid a friendly visit to the garrison. No wonder that
such a behaviour, caused their revengeful tempers to burst forth into
action. When the Indians find no redress of grievances, they never fail
to redress themselves, either sooner or later. But when they begin, they
do not know where to end. Their thirst for the blood of their reputed
enemies, is not to be quenched with a few drops.—The more they drink,
the more it inflames their thirst. When they dip their fingers in human
blood, they are restless till they plunge themselves in it.
Contrary to the wise conduct of the French garrisons in securing the
affection of the natives where they are settled—our sons of Mars
imbittered the hearts of those Cheerake, that lie next to South-Carolina
and Georgia colonies, against us, with the mid settlements and the
western towns on the streams of the Missisippi: who were so incensed as
continually to upbraid the traders with our unkind treatment of their
people in the camp at Monongahela,—and for our having committed such
hostilities against our good friends, who were peaceably returning home
through our settlements, and often under pinching wants. The lying over
their dead, and the wailing of the women in their various towns, and
tribes, for their deceased relations, at the dawn of day, and in the
dusk of the evening, proved another strong provocative to them to
retaliate blood for blood. The Muskohge {246} also at that time having a
friendly intercourse with the Cheerake, through the channel of the
governor of South-Carolina, were, at the instance of the watchful
French, often ridiculing them for their cowardice in not revenging the
crying blood of their beloved kinsmen and warriors. At the same time,
they promised to assist them against us,[133] and in the name of the
Alebahma French, assured them of a supply of ammunition, to enable them
to avenge their injuries, and maintain their lives and liberties against
the mischievous and bloody English colonists; who, they said, were
naturally in a bitter state of war against all the red people, and
studied only how to steal their lands, on a quite opposite principle to
the open steady conduct of the generous French, who assist their poor
red brothers, a great way from their own settlements, where they can
have no view, but that of doing good. Notwithstanding the repeated
provocations we had given to the Cheerake,—and the artful insinuations
of the French, inculcated with proper address; yet their old chiefs not
wholly depending on the sincerity of their smooth tongues and painted
faces, nor on the assistance, or even neutrality of the remote northern
towns of their own country, on mature deliberation, concluded that, as
all hopes of a friendly redress for the blood of their relations now
depended on their own hands, they ought to take revenge in that equal
and just manner, which became good warriors. They accordingly sent out a
large company of warriors, against those Germans, (or Tied-arse people,
as they term them) to bring in an equal number of their scalps, to those
of their own murdered relations.—Or if they found their safety did not
permit, they were to proceed as near to that settlement, as they
conveniently could, where having taken sufficient satisfaction, they
were to bury the bloody tomohawk they took with them. They set off, but
advancing pretty far into the high settlements of North-Carolina,[134]
the ambitious young leaders separated into small companies, and killed
as many of our people, as unfortunately fell into their power, contrary
to the wise orders of their seniors, and the number far exceeded that of
their own slain. Soon after they returned home, they killed a reprobate
old trader; and two soldiers also were cut off near Fort Loudon. For
these acts of hostility, the government of South-Carolina demanded
satisfaction, without receiving any; the hearts of their young warriors
were so exceedingly enraged, as to render their ears quite deaf to any
remonstrance of their seniors, respecting an amicable accommodation; for
as they expected to be exposed to very little danger, on our remote,
dispersed, and {247} very extensive barrier settlements, nothing but
war-songs and war-dances could please them, during this flattering
period of becoming great warriors, “by killing swarms of white dung-hill
fowls, in the corn-fields, and asleep,” according to their war-phrase.