OCCONEECHEE
THE MAID OF THE MYSTIC LAKE
BY
ROBERT FRANK JARRETT
Author of "Back Home and Other Poems"
THE SHAKESPEARE PRESS
410 E. 32d Street
New York
1916
Copyrighted, 1916
By R. F. Jarrett
PREFACE.
Realizing that the memory of a nation is best kept aglow by its
songs and the writings of its poets, I have been inspired to write
OCCONEECHEE, in order that the once powerful nation known as the
Cherokee may be preserved in mind, and that their myths, their legends
and their traditions may linger and be transmitted to the nations
yet to come.
Trusting that a generous people may hail with delight the advent
of this new work, I now dedicate its pages to all lovers of music,
poetry and fine art.
When you've read its pages give or lend
This volume to some good old friend.
The Author.
BRIEF BIOGRAPHY OF THE AUTHOR.
Robert Frank Jarrett was born in Asheville, N. C., on July 21st, 1864,
and while having resided in other states and cities and visited many of
the most important sections of the South, yet has made his principal
home within the shadows of the rugged mountain peaks of his native
and picturesque home land, the Old North State.
He was educated in the field and forest, by rippling stream and
rolling rill, studied in the open book of Nature and recited to the
Master of Destinies where the shadows of the everlasting hills lock
hands with the sunshine of the valley.
He is a reader and student of the ancient writers and poets of all
ages, singer of the old songs, lover of the new;
Servant in official capacity for many years of National, State and
Civic governments; humble worker with the busy toilers, and writer
of prose and verse from earliest childhood;
Author of "Back Home and Other Poems," published in 1911, and many
other manuscripts not yet published.
Married to Sallie C. Wild, of Franklin, N. C., on Dec. 25th, 1892. For
twenty years a resident of Dillsboro, N. C., where orchard and field
and dense deep forests have inspired and impelled him on.
CONTENTS
Page
Part I. The Cherokee, 7
Part II. Occoneechee, 21
Part III. Myths of the Cherokee, 127
Part IV. Glossary of Cherokee Words, 197
ILLUSTRATIONS
Portrait of Robert Frank Jarrett, Frontispiece
Tuckaseigee Falls, above Dillsboro, 9
Along Scott's Creek, below Balsam, 21
Sunset from Mt. Junaluska, 26
Lake Junaluska, near Waynesville, 26
A Glimpse of the Craggies, 37
From Top of Chimney Rock, 37
Graybeard Mountain, 37
Chimney Top, 37
Upper Catawba Falls, Esmeralda, 43
Occoneechee Falls, Jackson County, 43
In the Cherokee Country, 43
Whitewater Falls, 43
The Balsam Mountains in Jackson Co., 51
North from Sunset Rock, Tryon Mt., 51
Balsam Mountains, 67
From Bald Rock, 67
Lower Cullasaja Falls, 73
Mount Pisgah, 77
Indian Mound, Franklin, N. C., 77
Tallulah Falls, Ga., 81
Whiteside Mountain, 91
Tennessee River, above Franklin, 99
Lake Toxaway, 99
Tomb of Junaluska, Robbinsville, 107
Where the Serpent Coiled, 107
Harvesting at Cullowhee, N. C., 117
Craggy Mountains from near Asheville, 117
Sequoya, 129
John Ax, the Great Story Teller, 129
Everglades of Florida, 129
Tuckaseigee River, 139
Kanuga Lake, 153
Lake Fairfield, 153
Pacolet River, Hendersonville, 153
A Cherokee Indian Ball Team, 171
The Pools, Chimney Rock, 171
French Broad River, 185
Broad River, 185
From the Toxaway, 191
Chimney Top Gap, 191
Chimney Rock, 197
Occonestee Falls, 237
Linville Falls, 237
Triple Falls, Buck Forest, 237
High Falls, Buck Forest, 284
Melrose Falls, Tryon, N. C., 284
PART I
THE CHEROKEE
"I know not how the truth may be,
I tell the tale as 'twas told to me."
THE CHEROKEE.
A brief history of the Cherokee Nation or tribe.
This history has been gleaned from the works of Ethnology by James
Mooney and from word of mouth, as related to the author during the
past thirty years.
In the beginning of historical events, we hear of man in his
paradisaical home, located somewhere within the boundaries known
as ancient Egypt or Chaldea. His home was far away and his former
history shrouded in the darkness of countless centuries of the past,
and when we contemplate the remoteness of his ancestry, we become
lost in the midst of our own research.
When historical light began to flash from the Orient, we find man
emerging with some degree of civilization from a barbaric state into
the advanced degrees of civilized and enlightened tribes.
When the maritime navigator, full of visions and dreams, dared to sail
for those hitherto undiscovered shores, now known as America, there
lived within the realm a wandering, happy, yet untutored, race of men
whom we afterwards called Indians, who dwelt in great numbers along the
whole distance from Penobscot Bay south to the everglades of Florida.
Among the more noted tribes were the Abnaki, Mohawk, Mohican, Huron,
Iroquois, Munsi, Erie, Seneca, Susquehanna, Mamrahoac, Powhatan,
Monacan, Nollaway, Tuscarora, Pamlico, Catawba, Santee, Uchee, Yamasee,
Creek, Choctaw, Seminole, Showano and Cherokee, but of all of these
it is left for us to speak alone of the valiant Cherokee, the most
noble of all Red Men, who inhabited that picturesque country in
the Appalachian chain of mountains in East Tennessee, Western North
Carolina, Northern Georgia, South Carolina and Alabama, and part of
Virginia, Kentucky and West Virginia.
These are the people of whom little has been said and less written
than most of the children of men. Yet of all of the native Americans
the Cherokee tribe was the most noble, humane and intelligent.
Somewhere in the annals of the Aborigines of America, the Cherokee
separated from the great Northern tribe, the Iroquois, and by
preference inhabited the hills of the Appalachian range, and here
we find them early in the dawn of American history, occupying a
country which affords ample environment for the artist, the poet
and the painter. Had Homer seen and Michelangelo traveled among the
towering hills of the happiest land of earth, the song and the chisel,
instead of being draped with the vail of blood, would have inspired
the world to look forward to the time when there will be no death
serenely sitting upon the throne of war.
At one time the Cherokee tribe was the largest and most learned in
art and literature of any tribe in the United States, having perhaps
as many as twenty-five thousand people, and attained, under Sequoya,
whose photograph is herein reproduced, that degree of learning, that
many of the tribe became quite familiar with letters and literature,
printed from the alphabet invented by this noted man, inventor and
devout preacher of the Christian gospel.
Sequoya was himself an untutored half-breed, yet to him are we indebted
for an alphabet of 76 characters which stands third among the alphabets
which have been invented among men, and by which a Cherokee child
learns to read as fluently in six months of study as does the average
English child in three years of study under our system.
The name Cherokee, so far as research reveals, has no meaning or the
meaning has been lost or perhaps Anglicized, but we have authority
for its use, for the past 375 years.
When De Soto's expedition was made through the Appalachian mountains,
in 1540, he encountered this great and friendly nation living
peacefully in their paradise among the hills and mountains, who
received him as they were wont to receive a friendly tribe; so did
they ever receive and treat the white neighbor until treaty after
treaty had been broken and their homes had been destroyed and every
compact violated.
Hostilities were in most cases caused by encroaching whites and broken
promises and intrigues of the foreigners, who were gradually drawing
the cordon around the diminishing tribe.
The battle of Horseshoe Bend, which took place in the Tallapoosa
river, in Alabama, on the 27th day of March, 1814, was one of the
notable events in Cherokee history, where Junaluska, in conjunction
with General Jackson, slaughtered or massacred nearly one thousand
Creeks, which ended the Creek war and brought much honor to Junaluska
and his valiant Cherokee army of more than 500 men.
For the terrors which followed the battle of Horseshoe Bend, we
have only to refer to history to be able to ascertain the facts
concerning the bloody atrocities which were perpetrated upon an
oppressed people. Then came the end, which occurred in the year 1838,
which culminated in the removal of the band to the Indian Territory,
which is now called Oklahoma, (a Choctaw word meaning red people,
Okla, people; homa, red).
This removal was the most luckless and recreant of all the abuses
that had been heaped upon the brave but helpless band of Cherokee.
Junaluska, who witnessed the removal, but was permitted to remain with
the residue, remarked that had he known that General Jackson (who
became President), would have removed the Cherokee in such a brutal
manner, he would have killed him at the battle of Horseshoe Bend.
The history of the removal of the Cherokee, as told by James Mooney
of the Department of American Ethnology, gleaned by him from eye
witnesses and actors in the tragedy, may well exceed in weight of
grief and pathos any other act in American history. Even the much
sung song of the exile of the Arcadians falls far behind it in the
sum of death and misery.
Under General Winfield Scott, an army of 5,000 volunteers and regular
troops were concentrated in the Cherokee country, and by instruction
from Washington, D. C., he was directed and gave orders to soldiers to
gather all Indians to the various stockades, which had been previously
prepared for their reception. From these posts, squads of soldiers
were sent to search out, with rifle and bayonet, every small cabin
which could be found within the ramifications and deep recesses of the
great Appalachian range of mountains, and bring to the forts every man,
woman and child to be found within the gates of the granite hills.
Families, while sitting peacefully at the noon-day meal; others
while performing the matutinal ablution, were suddenly startled by
the gleam of bayonets and with blows, curses and oaths from the men
called soldiers, the Indians were driven like cattle from their humble
homes down the rugged mountain paths, and their houses in many cases
were burned and their small possessions destroyed, as the brave but
defenceless Cherokee people looked on with that wonderful stoicism
which no other race of men ever possessed.
Men were seized in the fields, women torn from the wheel and the
distaff, and children frightened from the pleasures of play. The
vandals who followed in the wake of the soldiery, looting and
pillaging, burning and destroying, yet calling themselves civilized
Christians, were such a band of outlaws as is seldom seen even among
the most savage and barbaric races.
Even Indian graves were robbed of the silver pendants and other
valuables which had been deposited with the dead. Women who were not
able to go, were actually forced at the point of a bayonet to march
with the same speed as men.
Upon one occasion the soldiers surrounded the house of an old Christian
patriot, who when informed as to what was to take place, called his
wife, children and grandchildren around him, kneeling down among them
offered a last prayer in the sanctuary of his home, in his native
tongue, while the soldiers stood astonished, looking on in silence.
When his devotions were finished, he arose, bade the household follow
him, and he led them into exile, with that becoming Christian fortitude
which is seldom witnessed among men.
One woman, on finding the house surrounded, went to the door and called
up the chickens, fed them for the last time, bade them farewell,
then taking her baby upon her back, she extended her hands to her
other two small children, then followed her husband into exile,
from whence she never returned.
A Georgia volunteer, who afterwards became a Colonel in the Confederate
service, said, "I have fought through the Civil War and have seen
men shot to pieces and slaughtered by the thousands, but the Cherokee
removal was the most cruel work I ever witnessed."
All were not thus so submissive. One old man named Tsali, "Charlie,"
was seized, with his wife, his brother, his three sons and their
families; exasperated at the brutality accorded his wife, who being
unable to travel fast, was prodded with the bayonets to hasten her
steps, he urged the other men to join him in a dash for liberty, and
as he spoke in Cherokee, the soldiers, although they heard, understood
nothing until each warrior suddenly sprang upon the soldier nearest
and endeavored to wrench his gun from him. The attack was so sudden
and unexpected that one soldier was killed and the rest fled, while
the Indians escaped to the mountains. Hundreds of others, some of
them from the various stockades, managed also to escape to the hills
and mountains from time to time, where those who did not die from
starvation subsisted on roots and wild berries until the hunt was over.
Finding that it was impossible to secure these fugitives, General Scott
finally tendered them a proposition, through Colonel W. H. Thomas,
known as Wil-Usdi in Cherokee, their trusted friend and chief, that
if they would bring Charlie and his party for punishment, the rest
would be allowed to remain until their case could be adjusted by
the Government.
On hearing of the proposition, Charlie voluntarily came in with his
sons, offering himself as a sacrifice for his people.
By command of General Scott, Charlie, his brother and the two elder
sons were shot, near the mouth of Tuckaseigee river, a detachment
of Cherokee prisoners being compelled to do the shooting in order to
impress upon the Indians the fact of their utter helplessness.
From those fugitives thus permitted to remain, originated the present
eastern band of Cherokee.
When nearly 17,000 Cherokee had been gathered into the stockades,
the removal began.
Early in June several parties, aggregating about five thousand persons,
were brought down by the troops to the old agency on Hiwassee river,
at the present Calhoun, Tenn., and to Ross landing (now Chattanooga,
Tenn.) and to Gunter's landing (now Guntersville, Ala.) lower down on
the Tennessee, where they were put upon steamers and transported down
the Tennessee and Ohio to the farther side of the Mississippi, whence
their journey was continued by land to Indian Territory (now Oklahoma).
The removal in the the hottest part of the year was attended with so
great sickness and mortality that, by resolution of the Cherokee
National Council, John Ross and the other chiefs submitted to
General Scott a proposition that the Cherokee be allowed to remove
themselves in the fall, after the sickly season ended. This was
granted on condition that all should have started by the 20th of
October, except the sick and aged, who might not be able to move so
rapidly. Accordingly, officers were appointed by the Cherokee council
to take charge of the emigration; the Indians being organized into
detachments averaging one thousand each, with two leaders in charge
of each department, and a sufficient number of wagons and horses for
the purpose.
In this way the remainder, enrolled at about 13,000, (including
a few negro slaves), started on the long march overland late in
the fall. Those who thus emigrated under the management of their
own officers, assembled at Rattlesnake Springs, near the present
Charleston, Tenn., where a final council was held, in which it was
decided to continue their old constitution and laws in their new
home. Then, in October, 1838, the long procession of exiles was
set in motion. A few went by the river route, but nearly all went
overland. Crossing, to the north side of the Hiwassee river, at a
ferry above Gunter's Creek, they proceeded down along the river,
the sick, aged and children, together with their belongings, being
hauled in wagons, the rest on foot or on horses.
It was like an army, 645 wagons, regiment after regiment, the wagons
in the center, the officers along the line, and the horsemen on the
flank and at the rear.
Tennessee river was crossed at Tucker's ferry, a short distance
above Jolly's Island, at the mouth of Hiwassee; thence the route
lay south of Pikeville, through McMinnville, and on to Nashville,
where the Cumberland was crossed.
They then went on to Hopkinsville, where the noted chief White Path, in
charge of a detachment, sickened and died. His people buried him by the
roadside, with a box over the grave and poles with streamers around it,
that the others coming on behind might note the spot and remember him.
Somewhere along that march of death--for the exiles died by tens and
twenties every day of the journey--the devoted wife of the noted chief,
John Ross, sank down and died, leaving him to go on with bitter pain
of bereavement added to the heartbreak at the ruin and desolation of
his nation.
The Ohio was crossed at a ferry near the mouth of the Cumberland,
and the army passed on through southern Illinois until the great
Mississippi was reached, opposite Cape Girardean, Missouri. It
was now the middle of winter, with the river running full of ice,
so that several detachments were obliged to wait some time on the
eastern bank for the channel to become clear.
Information furnished by old men at Tahlequah after the lapse of
fifty years showed that time had not sufficed to wipe out the memory
of the miseries of that halt beside the frozen river, with hundreds
of sick and dying penned up in wagons or stretched upon the ground,
with only a blanket overhead to keep out the January blast.
The crossing was at last made, in two divisions, at Cape Girardean and
Green's ferry, a short distance below, whence the march was continued
on through Missouri to Indian Territory, the later detachment making
a northerly circuit by Springfield, because those who had gone before
had killed off all the game along the direct route.
They had started in October, 1838, and it was now March, 1839, the
journey having occupied nearly six months of the hardest part of
the year.
It is difficult to state positively as to the mortality and loss by
reason of the removal of this once happy nation, but as near as can
be ascertained, more than four thousand persons perished along the
great highway of death.
On the arrival in Indian Territory, the exiles at once set about
building houses and planting crops, the government having agreed under
treaty to furnish them rations for one year after arrival. They were
welcomed by their kindred, the "Old Settlers," who held the country
under previous treaties of 1828 and 1833. These, however, being
already regularly organized under a government and chiefs of their
own, were by no means disposed to be swallowed by the governmental
authority of the newcomers.
Jealousies developed, in which the minority or treaty party of the
emigrants, headed by Major Ridge, took sides with the old settlers
against John Ross of the National party, which outnumbered the others
nearly three to one.
While these differences were at their height, the Nation was thrown
into a fever of excitement by the news that Major Ridge, his son,
John Ridge, and Elias Boudinot--all leaders of the treaty party--had
been killed by adherents of the National party, immediately after
the adjournment of a general council, which had adjourned after
nearly two weeks of debate without having been able to bring about
harmonious action. Major Ridge was waylaid and shot near the Arkansas
line, his son was taken from bed and cut to pieces with hatchets,
while Boudinot was treacherously killed at his home at Park Hill,
Indian Territory, all three being killed upon the same day, June 22,
1839, which date marks the decline and fall of a once great and happy
people. For fifty years which followed this luckless day in June,
Indian Territory became a veritable theater of crime and disorder.
From the South meridian of the sunflower state, to the cypress
banks of the Red river, and from Fort Smith to the shifting sands of
the great plains, for half a century sheltered a coterie of actors
that would have made Robin Hood or Kit Carson blush with envy. The
soil of the five tribes has been moistened with human blood when
there was none to answer the cry for vengeance; when no sound save
the deadly snap of the Winchester and the pit-pat of the bronchos'
hoofs were there to bear testimony. Now, those who incited intrigue
and murder are gone, the desperado is a thing of the past, the brave
men who enlisted in the hazardous governmental service to give them
battle have disappeared, and the sound of the firing Winchester used
in deadly conflict, has been replaced by the reaper and the mower,
and toilers in the field of commerce and industry.
The Indian tribe has been supplanted by the American Government;
and the school and church have taken the place of the chase and the
feud. Where the wild flowers nodded far out on the lonely plain,
vast fields of wheat and corn whisper the great name of Oklahoma.
At this writing the eastern band of Cherokee is about to be dissolved,
their lands allotted, and in a few more decades the Cherokee will
have passed, and the name will be presented only in old records and
in the hearts of their descendants.