(21) Scalping by whites (p. 53): To the student, aware how easily the

civilized man reverts to his original savagery when brought in close

contact with its conditions, it will be no surprise to learn that

every barbarous practice of Indian warfare was quickly adopted by the

white pioneer and soldier and frequently legalized and encouraged by

local authority. Scalping, while the most common, was probably the

least savage and cruel of them all, being usually performed after

the victim was already dead, with the primary purpose of securing

a trophy of the victory. The tortures, mutilations, and nameless

deviltries inflicted upon Indians by their white conquerors in the

early days could hardly be paralleled even in civilized Europe, when

burning at the stake was the punishment for holding original opinions

and sawing into two pieces the penalty for desertion. Actual torture

of Indians by legal sanction was rare within the English colonies,

but mutilation was common and scalping was the rule down to the end

of the war of 1812, and has been practiced more or less in almost

every Indian war down to the latest. Captain Church, who commanded

in King Philip's war in 1676, states that his men received thirty

shillings a head for every Indian killed or taken, and Philip's head,

after it was cut off, "went at the same price." When the chief was

killed one of his hands was cut off and given to his Indian slayer,

"to show to such gentlemen as would bestow gratuities upon him, and

accordingly he got many a penny by it." His other hand was chopped off

and sent to Boston for exhibition, his head was sent to Plymouth and

exposed upon a scaffold there for twenty years, while the rest of his

body was quartered and the pieces left hanging upon four trees. Fifty

years later Massachusetts offered a bounty of one hundred pounds for

every Indian scalp, and scalp hunting thus became a regular and usually

a profitable business. On one occasion a certain Lovewell, having

recruited a company of forty men for this purpose, discovered ten

Indians lying asleep by their fire and killed the whole party. After

scalping them they stretched the scalps upon hoops and marched thus

into Boston, where the scalps were paraded and the bounty of one

thousand pounds paid for them. By a few other scalps sold from time

to time at the regular market rate, Lovewell was gradually acquiring a

competency when in May, 1725, his company met disaster. He discovered

and shot a solitary hunter, who was afterward scalped by the chaplain

of the party, but the Indian managed to kill Lovewell before being

overpowered, on which the whites withdrew, but were pursued by the

tribesmen of the slain hunter, with the result that but sixteen of

them got home alive. A famous old ballad of the time tells how

"Our worthy Captain Lovewell among them there did die.

They killed Lieutenant Robbins and wounded good young Frye,

Who was our English chaplain; he many Indians slew,

And some of them he scalped when bullets round him flew."

When the mission village of Norridgewock was attacked by the New

England men about the same time, women and children were made to

suffer the fate of the warriors. The scholarly missionary, Rasles,

author of the Abnaki Dictionary, was shot down at the foot of the

cross, where he was afterward found with his body riddled with balls,

his skull crushed and scalped, his mouth and eyes filled with earth,

his limbs broken, and all his members mutilated--and this by white

men. The border men of the Revolutionary period and later invariably

scalped slain Indians as often as opportunity permitted, and, as has

already been shown, both British and American officials encouraged the

practice by offers of bounties and rewards, even, in the case of the

former, when the scalps were those of white people. Our difficulties

with the Apache date from a treacherous massacre of them in 1836

by a party of American scalp hunters in the pay of the governor of

Sonora. The bounty offered was one ounce of gold per scalp. In 1864

the Colorado militia under Colonel Chivington attacked a party of

Cheyennes camped under the protection of the United States flag,

and killed, mutilated, and scalped 170 men, women, and children,

bringing the scalps into Denver, where they were paraded in a public

hall. One Lieutenant Richmond killed and scalped three women and

five children. Scalps were taken by American troops in the Modoc

war of 1873, and there is now living in the Comanche tribe a woman

who was scalped, though not mortally wounded, by white soldiers in

one of the later Indian encounters in Texas. Authorities: Drake,

Indians (for New England wars); Roosevelt, Virginia State Papers,

etc. (Revolution, etc.); Bancroft, Pacific States (Apache); Official

Report on the Condition of the Indian Tribes, 1867 (for Chivington

episode); author's personal information.

(22) Lower Cherokee refugees (p. 55): "In every hut I have visited I

find the children exceedingly alarmed at the sight of white men, and

here [at Willstown] a little boy of eight years old was excessively

alarmed and could not be kept from screaming out until he got out

of the door, and then he ran and hid himself; but as soon as I can

converse with them and they are informed who I am they execute any

order I give them with eagerness. I inquired particularly of the

mothers what could be the reason for this. They said, this town was

the remains of several towns who [sic] formerly resided on Tugalo and

Keowee, and had been much harassed by the whites; that the old people

remembered their former situation and suffering, and frequently spoke

of them; that these tales were listened to by the children, and made

an impression which showed itself in the manner I had observed. The

women told me, who I saw gathering nuts, that they had sensations

upon my coming to the camp, in the highest degree alarming to them,

and when I lit from my horse, took them by the hand, and spoke to

them, they at first could not reply, although one of them understood

and spoke English very well."--Hawkins, manuscript journal, 1796,

in library of Georgia Historical Society.

(23) General Alexander McGillivray (p. 56): This famous Creek

chieftain, like so many distinguished men of the southern tribes, was

of mixed blood, being the son of a Scotch trader, Lachlan McGillivray,

by a halfbreed woman of influential family, whose father was a French

officer of Fort Toulouse. The future chief was born in the Creek Nation

about 1740, and died at Pensacola, Florida, in 1793. He was educated

at Charleston, studying Latin in addition to the ordinary branches,

and after leaving school was placed by his father with a mercantile

firm in Savannah. He remained but a short time, when he returned to

the Creek country, where he soon began to attract attention, becoming

a partner in the firm of Panton, Forbes & Leslie, of Pensacola,

which had almost a monopoly of the Creek trade. He succeeded to the

chieftainship on the death of his mother, who came of ruling stock,

but refused to accept the position until called to it by a formal

council, when he assumed the title of emperor of the Creek Nation. His

paternal estates having been confiscated by Georgia at the outbreak of

the Revolution, he joined the British side with all his warriors, and

continued to be a leading instigator in the border hostilities until

1790, when he visited New York with a large retinue and made a treaty

of peace with the United States on behalf of his people. President

Washington's instructions to the treaty commissioners, in anticipation

of this visit, state that he was said to possess great abilities

and an unlimited influence over the Creeks and part of the Cherokee,

and that it was an object worthy of considerable effort to attach him

warmly to the United States. In pursuance of this policy the Creek

chiefs were entertained by the Tammany society, all the members being

in full Indian dress, at which the visitors were much delighted and

responded with an Indian dance, while McGillivray was induced to resign

his commission as colonel in the Spanish service for a commission of

higher grade in the service of the United States. Soon afterward, on

account of some opposition, excited by Bowles, a renegade white man,

he absented himself from his tribe for a time, but was soon recalled,

and continued to rule over the Nation until his death.

McGillivray appears to have had a curious mixture of Scotch shrewdness,

French love of display, and Indian secretiveness. He fixed his

residence at Little Talassee, on the Coosa, a few miles above the

present Wetumpka, Alabama, where he lived in a handsome house with

extensive quarters for his negro slaves, so that his place had

the appearance of a small town. He entertained with magnificence

and traveled always in state, as became one who styled himself

emperor. Throughout the Indian wars he strove, so far as possible,

to prevent unnecessary cruelties, being noted for his kindness

to captives; and his last years were spent in an effort to bring

teachers among his people. On the other hand, he conformed much to

the Indian customs; and he managed his negotiations with England,

Spain, and the United States with such adroitness that he was able

to play off one against the other, holding commissions by turn in the

service of all three. Woodward, who knew of him by later reputation,

asserts positively that McGillivray's mother was of pure Indian

blood and that he himself was without education, his letters having

been written for him by Leslie, of the trading firm with which he

was connected. The balance of testimony, however, seems to leave

no doubt that he was an educated as well as an able man, whatever

may have been his origin. Authorities: Drake, American Indians;

documents in American State Papers, Indian Affairs, I, 1832; Pickett,

Alabama, 1896; Appleton's Cyclopædia of American Biography; Woodward,

Reminiscences, p. 59 et passim, 1859.

(24) Governor John Sevier (p. 57): This noted leader and statesman

in the pioneer history of Tennessee was born in Rockingham county,

Virginia, in 1745, and died at the Creek town of Tukabatchee, in

Alabama, in 1815. His father was a French immigrant of good birth

and education, the original name of the family being Xavier. The son

received a good education, and being naturally remarkably handsome

and of polished manner, fine courage, and generous temperament,

soon acquired a remarkable influence over the rough border men with

whom his lot was cast and among whom he was afterward affectionately

known as "Chucky Jack." To the Cherokee he was known as Tsan-usdi',

"Little John." After some service against the Indians on the Virginia

frontier he removed to the new Watauga settlement in Tennessee, in

1772, and at once became prominently identified with its affairs. He

took part in Dunmore's war in 1774 and, afterward, from the opening

of the Revolution in 1775 until the close of the Indian wars in

Tennessee--a period extending over nearly twenty years--was the

acknowledged leader or organizer in every important Indian campaign

along the Tennessee border. His services in this connection have been

already noted. He also commanded one wing of the American forces

at the battle of King's mountain in 1780, and in 1783 led a body

of mountain men to the assistance of the patriots under Marion. At

one time during the Revolution a Tory plot to assassinate him was

revealed by the wife of the principal conspirator. In 1779 he had been

commissioned as commander of the militia of Washington county, North

Carolina--the nucleus of the present state of Tennessee--a position

which he had already held by common consent. Shortly after the close of

the Revolution he held for a short time the office of governor of the

seceding "state of Franklin," for which he was arrested and brought

to trial by the government of North Carolina, but made his escape,

when the matter was allowed to drop. The question of jurisdiction

was finally settled in 1790, when North Carolina ceded the disputed

territory to the general government. Before this Sevier had been

commissioned as brigadier-general. When Tennessee was admitted as a

state in 1796 he was elected its first (state) governor, serving three

terms, or six years. In 1803 he was again reelected, serving three more

terms. In 1811 he was elected to Congress, where he served two terms

and was reelected to a third, but died before he could take his seat,

having contracted a fever while on duty as a boundary commissioner

among the Creeks, being then in his seventy-first year. For more than

forty years he had been continuously in the service of his country,

and no man of his state was ever more loved and respected. In the

prime of his manhood he was reputed the handsomest man and the best

Indian fighter in Tennessee.

(25) Hopewell, South Carolina (p. 61): This place, designated in

early treaties and also in Hawkins's manuscript journal as "Hopewell

on the Keowee," was the plantation seat of General Andrew Pickens,

who resided there from the close of the Revolution until his death

in 1817. It was situated on the northern edge of the present Anderson

county, on the east side of Keowee river, opposite and a short distance

below the entrance of Little river, and about three miles from the

present Pendleton. In sight of it, on the opposite side of Keowee,

was the old Cherokee town of Seneca, destroyed by the Americans in

1776. Important treaties were made here with the Cherokee in 1785,

and with the Chickasaw in 1786.

(26) Colonel Benjamin Hawkins (p. 61): This distinguished soldier,

statesman, and author, was born in Warren county, North Carolina,

in 1754, and died at Hawkinsville, Georgia, in 1816. His father,

Colonel Philemon Hawkins, organized and commanded a regiment in the

Revolutionary war, and was a member of the convention that ratified

the national constitution. At the outbreak of the Revolution young

Hawkins was a student at Princeton, but offered his services to the

American cause, and on account of his knowledge of French and other

modern languages was appointed by Washington his staff interpreter for

communicating with the French officers cooperating with the American

army. He took part in several engagements and was afterward appointed

commissioner for procuring war supplies abroad. After the close

of the war he was elected to Congress, and in 1785 was appointed

on the commission which negotiated at Hopewell the first federal

treaty with the Cherokee. He served a second term in the House and

another in the Senate, and in 1796 was appointed superintendent for

all the Indians south of the Ohio. He thereupon removed to the Creek

country and established himself in the wilderness at what is now

Hawkinsville, Georgia, where he remained in the continuance of his

office until his death. As Senator he signed the deed by which North

Carolina ceded Tennessee to the United States in 1790, and as Indian

superintendent helped to negotiate seven different treaties with

the southern tribes. He had an extensive knowledge of the customs

and language of the Creeks, and his "Sketch of the Creek Country,"

written in 1799 and published by the Historical Society of Georgia

in 1848, remains a standard. His journal and other manuscripts

are in possession of the same society, while a manuscript Cherokee

vocabulary is in possession of the American Philosophical Society

in Philadelphia. Authorities: Hawkins's manuscripts, with Georgia

Historical Society; Indian Treaties, 1837; American State Papers:

Indian Affairs, I, 1832; II, 1834; Gatschet, Creek Migration Legend;

Appleton, Cyclopædia of American Biography.

(27) Governor William Blount (p. 68): William Blount, territorial

governor of Tennessee, was born in North Carolina in 1744 and died

at Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1800. He held several important offices

in his native state, including two terms in the assembly and two

others as delegate to the old congress, in which latter capacity

he was one of the signers of the Federal constitution in 1787. On

the organization of a territorial government for Tennessee in 1790,

he was appointed territorial governor and also superintendent for

the southern tribes, fixing his headquarters at Knoxville. In 1791

he negotiated an important treaty with the Cherokee, and had much

to do with directing the operations against the Indians until the

close of the Indian war. He was president of the convention which

organized the state of Tennessee in 1796, and was elected to the

national senate, but was expelled on the charge of having entered

into a treasonable conspiracy to assist the British in conquering

Louisiana from Spain. A United States officer was sent to arrest

him, but returned without executing his mission on being warned by

Blount's friends that they would not allow him to be taken from the

state. The impeachment proceedings against him were afterward dismissed

on technical grounds. In the meantime the people of his own state had

shown their confidence in him by electing him to the state senate, of

which he was chosen president. He died at the early age of fifty-three,

the most popular man in the state next to Sevier. His younger brother,

Willie Blount, who had been his secretary, was afterward governor of

Tennessee, 1809-1815.

(28) St Clair's defeat, 1791 (p. 72): Early in 1791 Major-General

Arthur St Clair, a veteran officer in two wars and governor of the

Northwestern Territory, was appointed to the chief command of the

army operating against the Ohio tribes. On November 4 of that year,

while advancing upon the Miami villages with an army of 1,400 men,

he was surprised by an Indian force of about the same number under

Little-turtle, the Miami chief, in what is now southwestern Mercer

county, Ohio, adjoining the Indiana line. Because of the cowardly

conduct of the militia he was totally defeated, with the loss of

632 officers and men killed and missing, and 263 wounded, many of

whom afterward died. The artillery was abandoned, not a horse being

left alive to draw it off, and so great was the panic that the men

threw away their arms and fled for miles, even after the pursuit had

ceased. It was afterward learned that the Indians lost 150 killed,

besides many wounded. Two years later General Wayne built Fort Recovery

upon the same spot. The detachment sent to do the work found within

a space of 350 yards 500 skulls, while for several miles along the

line of pursuit the woods were strewn with skeletons and muskets. The

two cannon lost were found in the adjacent stream. Authorities: St

Clair's report and related documents, 1791; American State Papers,

Indian Affairs, I, 1832; Drake, Indians 570, 571, 1880; Appleton's

Cyclopædia of American Biography.

(29) Cherokee clans, (p. 74): The Cherokee have seven clans, viz:

Ani'-Wa'`ya, Wolf; Ani'-Kawi', Deer; Ani'-Tsi'skwa, Bird; Ani'-Wâ'di,

Paint; Ani'-Sahâ'ni; Ani'-Ga'tâge'wi; Ani'-Gilâ'hi. The names of the

last three can not be translated with certainty. The Wolf clan is

the largest and most important in the tribe. It is probable that,

in accordance with the general system in other tribes, each clan

had formerly certain hereditary duties and privileges, but no trace

of these now remains. Children belong to the clan of the mother,

and the law forbidding marriage between persons of the same clan is

still enforced among the conservative full-bloods. The "seven clans"

are frequently mentioned in the sacred formulas, and even in some of

the tribal laws promulgated within the century. There is evidence that

originally there were fourteen, which by extinction or absorption have

been reduced to seven; thus, the ancient Turtle-dove and Raven clans

now constitute a single Bird clan. The subject will be discussed more

fully in a future Cherokee paper.

(30) Wayne's victory, 1794 (p. 78): After the successive failures

of Harmar and St Clair in their efforts against the Ohio tribes the

chief command was assigned, in 1793, to Major-General Anthony Wayne,

who had already distinguished himself by his fighting qualities during

the Revolution. Having built Fort Recovery on the site of St Clair's

defeat, he made that post his headquarters through the winter of

1793-94. In the summer of 1794 he advanced down the Maumee with an

army of 3,000 men, two-thirds of whom were regulars. On August 20 he

encountered the confederated Indian forces near the head of the Maumee

rapids at a point known as the Fallen Timbers and defeated them with

great slaughter, the pursuit being followed up by the cavalry until

the Indians took refuge under the guns of the British garrison at

Fort Miami, just below the rapids. His own loss was only 33 killed

and 100 wounded, of whom 11 afterward died of their wounds. The loss

of the Indians and their white auxiliaries was believed to be more

than double this. The Indian force was supposed to number 2,000,

while, on account of the impetuosity of Wayne's charge, the number

of his troops actually engaged did not exceed 900. On account of this

defeat and the subsequent devastation of their towns and fields by the

victorious army the Indians were compelled to sue for peace, which

was granted by the treaty concluded at Greenville, Ohio, August 3,

1795, by which the tribes represented ceded away nearly their whole

territory in Ohio. Authorities: Wayne's report and related documents,

1794, American State Papers: Indian Affairs, I, 1832; Drake, Indians,

571-577, 1880; Greenville treaty, in Indian Treaties, 1837; Appleton's

Cyclopædia of American Biography.

(31) First things of civilization (p. 83): We usually find that

the first things adopted by the Indian from his white neighbor are

improved weapons and cutting tools, with trinkets and articles of

personal adornment. After a regular trade has been established certain

traders marry Indian wives, and, taking up their permanent residence

in the Indian country, engage in farming and stock raising according

to civilized methods, thus, even without intention, constituting

themselves industrial teachers for the tribe.

From data furnished by Haywood, guns appear to have been first

introduced among the Cherokee about the year 1700 or 1710, although

he himself puts the date much earlier. Horses were probably not owned

in any great number before the marking out of the horse-path for

traders from Augusta about 1740. The Cherokee, however, took kindly

to the animal, and before the beginning of the war of 1760 had a

"prodigious number." In spite of their great losses at that time they

had so far recovered in 1775 that almost every man then had from two

to a dozen (Adair, p. 231). In the border wars following the Revolution

companies of hundreds of mounted Cherokee and Creeks sometimes invaded

the settlements. The cow is called wa'ka by the Cherokee and waga by

the Creeks, indicating that their first knowledge of it came through

the Spaniards. Nuttall states that it was first introduced among the

Cherokee by the celebrated Nancy Ward (Travels, p. 130). It was not

in such favor as the horse, being valuable chiefly for food, of which

at that time there was an abundant supply from the wild game. A potent

reason for its avoidance was the Indian belief that the eating of the

flesh of a slow-moving animal breeds a corresponding sluggishness in

the eater. The same argument applied even more strongly to the hog,

and to this day a few of the old conservatives among the East Cherokee

will have nothing to do with beef, pork, milk, or butter. Nevertheless,

Bartram tells of a trader in the Cherokee country as early as 1775

who had a stock of cattle, and whose Indian wife had learned to

make butter and cheese (Travels, p. 347). In 1796 Hawkins mentions

meeting two Cherokee women driving ten very fat cattle to market in

the white settlements (manuscript journal, 1796). Bees, if not native,

as the Indians claim, were introduced at so early a period that the

Indians have forgotten their foreign origin. The De Soto narrative

mentions the finding of a pot of honey in an Indian village in Georgia

in 1540. The peach was cultivated in orchards a century before the

Revolution, and one variety, known as early as 1700 as the Indian

peach, the Indians claimed as their own, asserting that they had

had it before the whites came to America (Lawson, Carolina, p. 182,

ed. 1860). Potatoes were introduced early and were so much esteemed

that, according to one old informant, the Indians in Georgia, before

the Removal, "lived on them." Coffee came later, and the same informant

remembered when the full-bloods still considered it poison, in spite

of the efforts of the chief, Charles Hicks, to introduce it among them.

Spinning wheels and looms were introduced shortly before the

Revolution. According to the Wahnenauhi manuscript the first among

the Cherokee were brought over from England by an Englishman named

Edward Graves, who taught his Cherokee wife to spin and weave. The

anonymous writer may have confounded this early civilizer with a young

Englishman who was employed by Agent Hawkins in 1801 to make wheels

and looms for the Creeks (Hawkins, 1801, in American State Papers:

Indian Affairs, I, p. 647). Wafford, in his boyhood, say about 1815,

knew an old man named Tsi'nawi on Young-cane creek of Nottely river, in

upper Georgia, who was known as a wheelwright and was reputed to have

made the first spinning wheel and loom ever made among the mountain

Cherokee, or perhaps in the Nation, long before Wafford's time, or

"about the time the Cherokee began to drop their silver ornaments

and go to work." In 1785 the commissioners for the Hopewell treaty

reported that some of the Cherokee women had lately learned to spin,

and many were very desirous of instruction in the raising, spinning,

and weaving of flax, cotton, and wool (Hopewell Commissioners'

Report, 1785, American State Papers: Indian Affairs, I, p. 39). In

accordance with their recommendation the next treaty made with the

tribe, in 1791, contained a provision for supplying the Cherokee with

farming tools (Holston treaty, 1791, Indian Treaties, p. 36, 1837),

and this civilizing policy was continued and broadened until, in 1801,

their agent reported that at the Cherokee agency the wheel, the loom,

and the plow were in pretty general use, and farming, manufacturing,

and stock raising were the principal topics of conversation among

men and women (Hawkins manuscripts, Treaty Commission of 1801).

(32) Colonel Return J. Meigs (p. 84): Return Jonathan Meigs was born

in Middletown, Connecticut, December 17, 1734, and died at the Cherokee

agency in Tennessee, January 28, 1823. He was the first-born son of his

parents, who gave him the somewhat peculiar name of Return Jonathan

to commemorate a romantic incident in their own courtship, when his

mother, a young Quakeress, called back her lover as he was mounting

his horse to leave the house forever after what he had supposed was a

final refusal. The name has been handed down through five generations,

every one of which has produced some man distinguished in the public

service. The subject of this sketch volunteered immediately after the

opening engagement of the Revolution at Lexington, and was assigned

to duty under Arnold, with rank of major. He accompanied Arnold in

the disastrous march through the wilderness against Quebec, and was

captured in the assault upon the citadel and held until exchanged

the next year. In 1777 he raised a regiment and was promoted to the

rank of colonel. For a gallant and successful attack upon the enemy

at Sag harbor, Long island, he received a sword and a vote of thanks

from Congress, and by his conduct at the head of his regiment at Stony

point won the favorable notice of Washington. After the close of the

Revolution he removed to Ohio, where, as a member of the territorial

legislature, he drew up the earliest code of regulations for the

pioneer settlers. In 1801 he was appointed agent for the Cherokee

and took up his residence at the agency at Tellico blockhouse,

opposite the mouth of Tellico river, in Tennessee, continuing to

serve in that capacity until his death. He was succeeded as agent by

Governor McMinn, of Tennessee. In the course of twenty-two years he

negotiated several treaties with the Cherokee and did much to further

the work of civilization among them and to defend them against unjust

aggression. He also wrote a journal of the expedition to Quebec. His

grandson of the same name was special agent for the Cherokee and Creeks

in 1834, afterward achieving a reputation in the legal profession both

in Tennessee and in the District of Columbia. Authorities: Appleton,

Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1894; Royce, Cherokee Nation, in

Fifth Annual Report Bureau of Ethnology, 1888; documents in American

State Papers, Indian Affairs, I and II.

(33) Tecumtha (p. 87): This great chief of the Shawano and commander

of the allied northern tribes in the British service was born near

the present Chillicothe, in western Ohio, about 1770, and fell in the

battle of the Thames, in Ontario, October 5, 1813. His name signifies

a "flying panther"--i. e., a meteor. He came of fighting stock good

even in a tribe distinguished for its warlike qualities, his father

and elder brother having been killed in battle with the whites. His

mother is said to have died among the Cherokee. Tecumtha is first

heard of as taking part in an engagement with the Kentuckians when

about twenty years old, and in a few years he had secured recognition

as the ablest leader among the allied tribes. It is said that he

took part in every important engagement with the Americans from the

time of Harmar's defeat in 1790 until the battle in which he lost his

life. When about thirty years of age he conceived the idea of uniting

the tribes northwest of the Ohio, as Pontiac had united them before,

in a great confederacy to resist the further advance of the Americans,

taking the stand that the whole territory between the Ohio and the

Mississippi belonged to all these tribes in common and that no one

tribe had the right to sell any portion of it without the consent

of the others. The refusal of the government to admit this principle

led him to take active steps to unite the tribes upon that basis, in

which he was seconded by his brother, the Prophet, who supplemented

Tecumtha's eloquence with his own claims to supernatural revelation. In

the summer of 1810 Tecumtha held a conference with Governor Harrison

at Vincennes to protest against a recent treaty cession, and finding

after exhausting his arguments that the effort was fruitless, he

closed the debate with the words: "The President is far off and

may sit in his town and drink his wine, but you and I will have to

fight it out." Both sides at once prepared for war, Tecumtha going

south to enlist the aid of the Creek, Choctaw, and other southern

tribes, while Harrison took advantage of his absence to force the

issue by marching against the Prophet's town on the Tippecanoe river,

where the hostile warriors from a dozen tribes had gathered. A battle

fought before daybreak of November 6, 1811, resulted in the defeat of

the Indians and the scattering of their forces. Tecumtha returned to

find his plans brought to naught for the time, but the opening of the

war between the United States and England a few months later enabled

him to rally the confederated tribes once more to the support of the

British against the Americans. As a commissioned brigadier-general in

the British service he commanded 2,000 warriors in the war of 1812,

distinguishing himself no less by his bravery than by his humanity in

preventing outrages and protecting prisoners from massacre, at one time

saving the lives of four hundred American prisoners who had been taken

in ambush near Fort Meigs and were unable to make longer resistance. He

was wounded at Maguagua, where nearly four hundred were killed and

wounded on both sides. He covered the British retreat after the battle

of Lake Erie, and, refusing to retreat farther, compelled the British

General Proctor to make a stand at the Thames river. Almost the whole

force of the American attack fell on Tecumtha's division. Early in

the engagement he was shot through the arm, but continued to fight

desperately until he received a bullet in the head and fell dead,

surrounded by the bodies of 120 of his slain warriors. The services

of Tecumtha and his Indians to the British cause have been recognized

by an English historian, who says, "but for them it is probable we

should not now have a Canada." Authorities: Drake, Indians, ed. 1880;

Appleton's Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1894; Eggleston, Tecumseh

and the Shawnee Prophet.

(34) Fort Mims Massacre, 1813 (p. 89): Fort Mims, so called from an

old Indian trader on whose lands it was built, was a stockade fort

erected in the summer of 1813 for the protection of the settlers in

what was known as the Tensaw district, and was situated on Tensaw

lake, Alabama, one mile east of Alabama river and about forty miles

above Mobile. It was garrisoned by about 200 volunteer troops under

Major Daniel Beasley, with refugees from the neighboring settlement,

making a total at the time of its destruction of 553 men, women, and

children. Being carelessly guarded, it was surprised on the morning of

August 30 by about 1,000 Creek warriors led by the mixed-blood chief,

William Weatherford, who rushed in at the open gate, and, after a stout

but hopeless resistance by the garrison, massacred all within, with

the exception of the few negroes and halfbreeds, whom they spared, and

about a dozen whites who made their escape. The Indian loss is unknown,

but was very heavy, as the fight continued at close quarters until the

buildings were fired over the heads of the defenders. The unfortunate

tragedy was due entirely to the carelessness of the commanding officer,

who had been repeatedly warned that the Indians were about, and at the

very moment of the attack a negro was tied up waiting to be flogged for

reporting that he had the day before seen a number of painted warriors

lurking a short distance outside the stockade. Authorities: Pickett,

Alabama, ed. 1896; Hamilton and Owen, note, p. 170, in Transactions

Alabama Historical Society, II, 1898; Agent Hawkins's report, 1813,

American State Papers: Indian Affairs, I, p. 853; Drake, Indians,

ed. 1880. The figures given are those of Pickett, which in this

instance seem most correct, while Drake's are evidently exaggerated.

(35) General William McIntosh (p. 98): This noted halfbreed chief

of the Lower Creeks was the son of a Scotch officer in the British

army by an Indian mother, and was born at the Creek town of Coweta

in Alabama, on the lower Chattahoochee, nearly opposite the present

city of Columbus, Georgia, and killed at the same place by order

of the Creek national council on April 30, 1825. Having sufficient

education to keep up an official correspondence, he brought himself

to public notice and came to be regarded as the principal chief of

the Lower Creeks. In the Creek war of 1813-14 he led his warriors to

the support of the Americans against his brethren of the Upper towns,

and acted a leading part in the terrible slaughters at Autossee and the

Horseshoe bend. In 1817 he again headed his warriors on the government

side against the Seminole and was commissioned as major. His common

title of general belonged to him only by courtesy. In 1821 he was

the principal supporter of the treaty of Indian springs, by which a

large tract between the Flint and Chattahoochee rivers was ceded. The

treaty was repudiated by the Creek Nation as being the act of a small

faction. Two other attempts were made to carry through the treaty,

in which the interested motives of McIntosh became so apparent that

he was branded as a traitor to his Nation and condemned to death,

together with his principal underlings, in accordance with a Creek

law making death the penalty for undertaking to sell lands without the

consent of the national council. About the same time he was publicly

exposed and denounced in the Cherokee council for an attempt to bribe

John Ross and other chiefs of the Cherokee in the same fashion. At

daylight of April 30, 1825, a hundred or more warriors sent by the

Creek national council surrounded his house and, after allowing the

women and children to come out, set fire to it and shot McIntosh

and another chief as they tried to escape. He left three wives,

one of whom was a Cherokee. Authorities: Drake, Indians, ed. 1880;

Letters from McIntosh's son and widows, 1825, in American State Papers:

Indian Affairs, II, pp. 764 and 768.

(36) William Weatherford (p. 89): This leader of the hostiles in

the Creek war was the son of a white father and a halfbreed woman

of Tuskegee town whose father had been a Scotchman. Weatherford

was born in the Creek Nation about 1780 and died on Little river,

in Monroe county, Alabama, in 1826. He came first into prominence by

leading the attack upon Fort Mims, August 30, 1813, which resulted

in the destruction of the fort and the massacre of over five hundred

inmates. It is maintained, with apparent truth, that he did his

best to prevent the excesses which followed the victory, and left

the scene rather than witness the atrocities when he found that he

could not restrain his followers. The fact that Jackson allowed him

to go home unmolested after the final surrender is evidence that he

believed Weatherford guiltless. At the battle of the Holy Ground,

in the following December, he was defeated and narrowly escaped

capture by the troops under General Claiborne. When the last hope

of the Creeks had been destroyed and their power of resistance

broken by the bloody battle of the Horseshoe bend, March 27, 1814,

Weatherford voluntarily walked into General Jackson's headquarters

and surrendered, creating such an impression by his straightforward

and fearless manner that the general, after a friendly interview,

allowed him to go back alone to gather up his people preliminary to

arranging terms of peace. After the treaty he retired to a plantation

in Monroe county, where he lived in comfort and was greatly respected

by his white neighbors until his death. As an illustration of his

courage it is told how he once, single-handed, arrested two murderers

immediately after the crime, when the local justice and a large crowd

of bystanders were afraid to approach them. Jackson declared him to

be as high toned and fearless as any man he had ever met. In person

he was tall, straight, and well proportioned, with features indicating

intelligence, bravery, and enterprise. Authorities: Pickett, Alabama,

ed. 1896; Drake, Indians, ed. 1880; Woodward, Reminiscences, 1859.

(37) Reverend David Brainerd (p. 104): The pioneer American missionary

from whom the noted Cherokee mission took its name was born at Haddam,

Connecticut, April 20, 1718, and died at Northampton, Massachusetts,

October 9, 1747. He entered Yale college in 1739, but was expelled

on account of his religious opinions. In 1742 he was licensed as a

preacher and the next year began work as missionary to the Mahican

Indians of the village of Kaunameek, twenty miles from Stockbridge,

Massachusetts. He persuaded them to remove to Stockbridge, where

he put them in charge of a resident minister, after which he took

up work with good result among the Delaware and other tribes on

the Delaware and Susquehanna rivers. In 1747 his health failed and

he was forced to retire to Northampton, where he died a few months

later. He wrote a journal and an account of his missionary labors at

Kaunameek. His later mission work was taken up and continued by his

brother. Authority: Appleton's Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1894.

(38) Reverend Samuel Austin Worcester (p. 105): This noted missionary

and philologist, the son of a Congregational minister who was

also a printer, was born at Worcester, Massachusetts, January 19,

1798, and died at Park Hill, in the Cherokee Nation west, April 20,

1859. Having removed to Vermont with his father while still a child,

he graduated with the honors of his class at the state university at

Burlington in 1819, and after finishing a course at the theological

seminary at Andover was ordained to the ministry in 1825. A week

later, with his newly wedded bride, he left Boston to begin mission

work among the Cherokee, and arrived in October at the mission of

the American board, at Brainerd, Tennessee, where he remained until

the end of 1827. He then, with his wife, removed to New Echota,

in Georgia, the capital of the Cherokee Nation, where he was the

principal worker in the establishment of the Cherokee Phoenix, the

first newspaper printed in the Cherokee language and alphabet. In

this labor his inherited printer's instinct came into play, for he

himself supervised the casting of the new types and the systematic

arrangement of them in the case. In March, 1831, he was arrested by the

Georgia authorities for refusing to take a special oath of allegiance

to the state. He was released, but was rearrested soon afterward,

confined in the state penitentiary, and forced to wear prison garb,

until January, 1833, notwithstanding a decision by the Supreme Court

of the United States, nearly a year before, that his imprisonment

was a violation of the law of the land. The Cherokee Phoenix having

been suspended and the Cherokee Nation brought into disorder by the

extension over it of the state laws, he then returned to Brainerd,

which was beyond the limits of Georgia. In 1835 he removed to the

Indian Territory, whither the Arkansas Cherokee had already gone, and

after short sojourns at Dwight and Union missions took up his final

residence at Park Hill in December, 1836. He had already set up his

mission press at Union, printing both in the Cherokee and the Creek

languages, and on establishing himself at Park Hill he began a regular

series of publications in the Cherokee language. In 1843 he states

that "at Park Hill, besides the preaching of the gospel, a leading

object of attention is the preparation and publication of books in the

Cherokee language" (Letter in Report of Indian Commissioner, p. 356,

1843). The list of his Cherokee publications (first editions) under

his own name in Pilling's Bibliography comprises about twenty titles,

including the Bible, hymn books, tracts, and almanacs in addition

to the Phoenix and large number of anonymous works. Says Pilling:

"It is very probable that he was the translator of a number of books

for which he is not given credit here, especially those portions of

the Scripture which are herein not assigned to any name. Indeed it

is safe to say that during the thirty-four years of his connection

with the Cherokee but little was done in the way of translating in

which he had not a share." He also began a Cherokee geography and

had both a grammar and a dictionary of the language under way when

his work was interrupted by his arrest. The manuscripts, with all

his personal effects, afterward went down with a sinking steamer

on the Arkansas. His daughter, Mrs A. E. W. Robertson, became a

missionary among the Creeks and has published a number of works in

their language. Authorities: Pilling, Bibliography of the Iroquoian

languages (articles Worcester, Cherokee Phoenix, etc.), 1888; Drake,

Indians, ed. 1880: Report of Indian Commissioner, 1843 (Worcester

letter).

(39) Death penalty for selling lands (p. 107): In 1820 the Cherokee

Nation enacted a law making it treason punishable with death to enter

into any negotiation for the sale of tribal lands without the consent

of the national council. A similar law was enacted by the Creeks at

about the same time. It was for violating these laws that McIntosh

and Ridge suffered death in their respective tribes. The principal

parts of the Cherokee law, as reenacted by the united Nation in the

West in 1842, appear as follows in the compilation authorized in 1866:

"An act against sale of land, etc.: Whereas, The peace and prosperity

of Indian nations are frequently sacrificed or placed in jeopardy

by the unrestrained cupidity of their own individual citizens;

and whereas, we ourselves are liable to suffer from the same cause,

and be subjected to future removal and disturbances: Therefore, ...

"Be it further enacted, That any person or persons who shall, contrary

to the will and consent of the legislative council of this nation, in

general council convened, enter into a treaty with any commissioner

or commissioners of the United States, or any officer or officers

instructed for the purpose, and agree to cede, exchange, or dispose

in any way any part or portion of the lands belonging to or claimed

by the Cherokees, west of the Mississippi, he or they so offending,

upon conviction before any judge of the circuit or supreme courts,

shall suffer death, and any of the aforesaid judges are authorized to

call a court for the trial of any person or persons so transgressing.

"Be it further enacted, That any person or persons who shall violate

the provisions of the second section of this act, and shall resist or

refuse to appear at the place designated for trial, or abscond, are

hereby declared to be outlaws; and any person or persons, citizens

of this nation, may kill him or them so offending at any time and

in any manner most convenient, within the limits of this nation,

and shall not be held accountable to the laws for the same....

"Be it further enacted, That no treaty shall be binding upon this

nation which shall not be ratified by the general council, and approved

by the principal chief of the nation. December 2, 1842."--Laws of

the Cherokee Nation, 1868.

(40) The Cherokee syllabary (p. 110): In the various schemes of

symbolic thought representation, from the simple pictograph of the

primitive man to the finished alphabet of the civilized nations,

our own system, although not yet perfect, stands at the head of the

list, the result of three thousand years of development by Egyptian,

Phoenician, and Greek. Sequoya's syllabary, the unaided work of an

uneducated Indian reared amid semisavage surroundings, stands second.

Twelve years of his life are said to have been given to his great

work. Being entirely without instruction and having no knowledge of

the philosophy of language, being not even acquainted with English,

his first attempts were naturally enough in the direction of the crude

Indian pictograph. He set out to devise a symbol for each word of

the language, and after several years of experiment, finding this an

utterly hopeless task, he threw aside the thousands of characters which

he had carved or scratched upon pieces of bark, and started in anew to

study the construction of the language itself. By attentive observation

for another long period he finally discovered that the sounds in the

words used by the Cherokee in their daily conversation and their public

speeches could be analyzed and classified, and that the thousands of

possible words were all formed from varying combinations of hardly

more than a hundred distinct syllables. Having thoroughly tested his

discovery until satisfied of its correctness, he next proceeded to

formulate a symbol for each syllable. For this purpose he made use of

a number of characters which he found in an old English spelling book,

picking out capitals, lower-case, italics, and figures, and placing

them right side up or upside down, without any idea of their sound or

significance as used in English (see plate v). Having thus utilized

some thirty-five ready-made characters, to which must be added a dozen

or more produced by modification of the same originals, he designed

from his own imagination as many more as were necessary to his purpose,

making eighty-five in all. The complete syllabary, as first elaborated,

would have required some one hundred and fifteen characters, but after

much hard study over the hissing sound in its various combinations,

he hit upon the expedient of representing the sound by means of a

distinct character--the exact equivalent of our letter s--whenever

it formed the initial of a syllable. Says Gallatin, "It wanted but

one step more, and to have also given a distinct character to each

consonant, to reduce the whole number to sixteen, and to have had an

alphabet similar to ours. In practice, however, and as applied to

his own language, the superiority of Guess's alphabet is manifest,

and has been fully proved by experience. You must indeed learn and

remember eighty-five characters instead of twenty-five [sic]. But

this once accomplished, the education of the pupil is completed;

he can read and he is perfect in his orthography without making

it the subject of a distinct study. The boy learns in a few weeks

that which occupies two years of the time of ours." Says Phillips:

"In my own observation Indian children will take one or two, at times

several, years to master the English printed and written language,

but in a few days can read and write in Cherokee. They do the latter,

in fact, as soon as they learn to shape letters. As soon as they

master the alphabet they have got rid of all the perplexing questions

in orthography that puzzle the brains of our children. It is not too

much to say that a child will learn in a month, by the same effort,

as thoroughly in the language of Sequoyah, that which in ours consumes

the time of our children for at least two years."

Although in theory the written Cherokee word has one letter for

each syllable, the rule does not always hold good in practice,

owing to the frequent elision of vowel sounds. Thus the word for

"soul" is written with four letters as a-da-nûñ-ta, but pronounced

in three syllables, adanta. In the same way tsâ-lûñ-i-yu-sti ("like

tobacco," the cardinal flower) is pronounced tsâliyusti. There are

also, as in other languages, a number of minute sound variations not

indicated in the written word, so that it is necessary to have heard

the language spoken in order to read with correct pronunciation. The

old Upper dialect is the standard to which the alphabet has been

adapted. There is no provision for the r of the Lower or the sh of the

Middle dialect, each speaker usually making his own dialectic change in

the reading. The letters of a word are not connected, and there is no

difference between the written and the printed character. Authorities:

Gallatin, Synopsis of the Indian Tribes, in Trans. Am. Antiq. Soc,

II, 1836; Phillips, Sequoyah, in Harper's Magazine, September, 1870;

Pilling, Bibliography of Iroquoian Languages (article on Guess and

plate of syllabary), 1888; author's personal information.

(41) Southern gold fields (p. 116): Almost every valuable mineral

and crystal known to the manufacturer or the lapidary is found in

the southern Alleghenies, although, so far as present knowledge goes,

but few of these occur in paying quantities. It is probable, however,

that this estimate may change with improved methods and enlarged

railroad facilities. Leaving out of account the earlier operations

by the Spanish, French, and English adventurers, of which mention has

already been made, the first authentic account of gold finding in any

of the states south of Mason and Dixon's line within what maybe called

the American period appears to be that given by Jefferson, writing

in 1781, of a lump of ore found in Virginia, which yielded seventeen

pennyweights of gold. This was probably not the earliest, however,

as we find doubtful references to gold discoveries in both Carolinas

before the Revolution. The first mint returns of gold were made from

North Carolina in 1793, and from South Carolina in 1829, although gold

is certainly known to have been found in the latter state some years

earlier. The earliest gold records for the other southern states are,

approximately, Georgia (near Dahlonega), 1815-1820; Alabama, 1830;

Tennessee (Coco creek, Monroe county), 1831; Maryland (Montgomery

county), 1849. Systematic tracing of gold belts southward from

North Carolina began in 1829, and speedily resulted in the forcible

eviction of the Cherokee from the gold-bearing region. Most of the

precious metal was procured from placers or alluvial deposits by

a simple process of digging and washing. Very little quartz mining

has yet been attempted, and that usually by the crudest methods. In

fact, for a long period gold working was followed as a sort of side

issue to farming between crop seasons. In North Carolina prospectors

obtained permission from the owners of the land to wash or dig on

shares, varying from one-fourth to one-half, and the proprietor was

accustomed to put his slaves to work in the same way along the creek

bottoms after the crops had been safely gathered. "The dust became

a considerable medium of circulation, and miners were accustomed

to carry about with them quills filled with gold, and a pair of

small hand scales, on which they weighed out gold at regular rates;

for instance, 3-1/2 grains of gold was the customary equivalent of a

pint of whisky." For a number of years, about 1830 and later, a man

named Bechtler coined gold on his own account in North Carolina, and

these coins, with Mexican silver, are said to have constituted the

chief currency over a large region. A regular mint was established

at Dahlonega in 1838 and maintained for some years. From 1804 to 1827

all the gold produced in the United States came from North Carolina,

although the total amounted to but $110,000. The discovery of the

rich deposits in California checked mining operations in the south,

and the civil war brought about an almost complete suspension, from

which there is hardly yet a revival. According to the best official

estimates the gold production of the southern Allegheny region for

the century from 1799 to 1898, inclusive, has been something over

$46,000,000, distributed as follows:

North Carolina $21,926,376

Georgia 16,658,630

South Carolina 3,961,863

Virginia, slightly in excess of 3,216,343

Alabama, slightly in excess of 437,927

Tennessee, slightly in excess of 167,405

Maryland 47,068

----------

Total, slightly in excess of 46,415,612

Authorities: Becker, Gold Fields of the Southern Appalachians, in the

Sixteenth Annual Report United States Geological Survey, 1895; Day,

Mineral Resources of the United States, Seventeenth Annual Report

United States Geological Survey, part 3, 1896; Nitze, Gold Mining

and Metallurgy in the Southern States, in North Carolina Geological

Survey Report, republished in Mineral Resources of the United States,

Twentieth Annual Report United States Geological Survey, part 6,

1899; Lanman, Letters from the Alleghany Mountains, 1849.

(42) Extension of Georgia laws, 1830 (p. 117): "It is hereby ordained

that all the laws of Georgia are extended over the Cherokee country;

that after the first day of June, 1830, all Indians then and at that

time residing in said territory, shall be liable and subject to such

laws and regulations as the legislature may hereafter prescribe;

that all laws, usages, and customs made and established and enforced

in the said territory, by the said Cherokee Indians, be, and the same

are hereby, on and after the 1st day of June, 1830, declared null and

void; and no Indian, or descendant of an Indian, residing within the

Creek or Cherokee nations of Indians, shall be deemed a competent

witness or party to any suit in any court where a white man is a

defendant."--Extract from the act passed by the Georgia legislature

on December 20, 1828, "to add the territory within this state and

occupied by the Cherokee Indians to the counties of DeKalb et al.,

and to extend the laws of this state over the same." Authorities:

Drake, Indians, p. 439, ed. 1880; Royce, Cherokee Nation of Indians,

in Fifth Ann. Rep. Bureau of Ethnology, p. 260, 1888.

(43) Removal forts, 1838 (p. 130): For collecting the Cherokee

preparatory to the Removal, the following stockade forts were built:

In North Carolina, Fort Lindsay, on the south side of the Tennessee

river at the junction of Nantahala, in Swain county; Fort Scott, at

Aquone, farther up Nantahala river, in Macon county; Fort Montgomery,

at Robbinsville, in Graham county; Fort Hembrie, at Hayesville, in

Clay county; Fort Delaney, at Valleytown, in Cherokee county; Fort

Butler, at Murphy, in the same county. In Georgia, Fort Scudder, on

Frogtown creek, north of Dahlonega, in Lumpkin county; Fort Gilmer,

near Ellijay, in Gilmer county; Fort Coosawatee, in Murray county;

Fort Talking-rock, near Jasper, in Pickens county; Fort Buffington,

near Canton, in Cherokee county. In Tennessee, Fort Cass, at Calhoun,

on Hiwassee river, in McMinn county. In Alabama, Fort Turkeytown,

on Coosa river, at Center, in Cherokee county. Authority: Author's

personal information.

(44) McNair's grave, (p. 132): Just inside the Tennessee line, where

the Conasauga river bends again into Georgia, is a stone-walled grave,

with a slab, on which is an epitaph which tells its own story of the

Removal heartbreak. McNair was a white man, prominent in the Cherokee

Nation, whose wife was a daughter of the chief, Vann, who welcomed

the Moravian missionaries and gave his own house for their use. The

date shows that she died while the Removal was in progress, possibly

while waiting in the stockade camp. The inscription, with details, is

given from information kindly furnished by Mr D. K. Dunn of Conasauga,

Tennessee, in a letter dated August 16, 1890:

"Sacred to the memory of David and Delilah A. McNair, who departed this

life, the former on the 15th of August, 1836, and the latter on the

30th of November, 1838. Their children, being members of the Cherokee

Nation and having to go with their people to the West, do leave this

monument, not only to show their regard for their parents, but to guard

their sacred ashes against the unhallowed intrusion of the white man."

(45) President Samuel Houston, (p. 145): This remarkable man was born

in Rockbridge county, Virginia, March 2, 1793, and died at Huntsville,

Texas, July 25, 1863. Of strangely versatile, but forceful, character,

he occupies a unique position in American history, combining in

a wonderful degree the rough manhood of the pioneer, the eccentric

vanity of the Indian, the stern dignity of the soldier, the genius of

the statesman, and withal the high chivalry of a knight of the olden

time. His erratic career has been the subject of much cheap romancing,

but the simple facts are of sufficient interest in themselves without

the aid of fictitious embellishment. To the Cherokee, whom he loved

so well, he was known as Kâ'lanû, "The Raven," an old war title in

the tribe.

His father having died when the boy was nine years old, his widowed

mother removed with him to Tennessee, opposite the territory of the

Cherokee, whose boundary was then the Tennessee river. Here he worked

on the farm, attending school at intervals; but, being of adventurous

disposition, he left home when sixteen years old, and, crossing over

the river, joined the Cherokee, among whom he soon became a great

favorite, being adopted into the family of Chief Jolly, from whom the

island at the mouth of Hiwassee takes its name. After three years of

this life, during which time he wore the Indian dress and learned the

Indian language, he returned to civilization and enlisted as a private

soldier under Jackson in the Creek war. He soon attracted favorable

notice and was promoted to the rank of ensign. By striking bravery at

the bloody battle of Horseshoe bend, where he scaled the breastworks

with an arrow in his thigh and led his men into the thick of the enemy,

he won the lasting friendship of Jackson, who made him a lieutenant,

although he was then barely twenty-one. He continued in the army after

the war, serving for a time as subagent for the Cherokee at Jackson's

request, until the summer of 1818, when he resigned on account of some

criticism by Calhoun, then Secretary of War. An official investigation,

held at his demand, resulted in his exoneration.

Removing to Nashville, he began the study of law, and, being shortly

afterward admitted to the bar, set up in practice at Lebanon. Within

five years he was successively district attorney and adjutant-general

and major-general of state troops. In 1823 he was elected to

Congress, serving two terms, at the end of which, in 1827, he was

elected governor of Tennessee by an overwhelming majority, being then

thirty-four years of age. Shortly before this time he had fought and

wounded General White in a duel. In January, 1829, he married a young

lady residing near Nashville, but two months later, without a word of

explanation to any outsider, he left her, resigned his governorship

and other official dignities, and left the state forever, to rejoin

his old friends, the Cherokee, in the West. For years the reason for

this strange conduct was a secret, and Houston himself always refused

to talk of it, but it is now understood to have been due to the fact

that his wife admitted to him that she loved another and had only

been induced to marry him by the over-persuasions of her parents.

From Tennessee he went to Indian Territory, whither a large part of

the Cherokee had already removed, and once more took up his residence

near Chief Jolly, who was now the principal chief of the western

Cherokee. The great disappointment which seemed to have blighted

his life at its brightest was heavy at his heart, and he sought

forgetfulness in drink to such an extent that for a time his manhood

seemed to have departed, notwithstanding which, such was his force

of character and his past reputation, he retained his hold upon the

affections of the Cherokee and his standing with the officers and

their families at the neighboring posts of Fort Smith, Fort Gibson,

and Fort Coffee. In the meantime his former wife in Tennessee had

obtained a divorce, and Houston being thus free once more soon after

married Talihina, the youngest daughter of a prominent mixed-blood

Cherokee named Rogers, who resided near Fort Gibson. She was the niece

of Houston's adopted father, Chief Jolly, and he had known her when

a boy in the old Nation. Being a beautiful girl, and educated above

her surroundings, she became a welcome guest wherever her husband was

received. He started a trading store near Webbers Falls, but continued

in his dissipated habits until recalled to his senses by the outcome

of a drunken affray in which he assaulted his adopted father, the

old chief, and was himself felled to the ground unconscious. Upon

recovery from his injuries he made a public apology for his conduct

and thenceforward led a sober life.

In 1832 he visited Washington in the interest of the western Cherokee,

calling in Indian costume upon President Jackson, who received him

with old-time friendship. Being accused while there of connection

with a fraudulent Indian contract, he administered a severe beating

to his accuser, a member of Congress. For this he was fined $500

and reprimanded by the bar of the House, but Jackson remitted the

fine. Soon after his return to the West he removed to Texas to take

part in the agitation just started against Mexican rule. He was a

member of the convention which adopted a separate constitution for

Texas in 1833, and two years later aided in forming a provisional

government, and was elected commander-in-chief to organize the new

militia. In 1836 he was a member of the convention which declared the

independence of Texas. At the battle of San Jacinto in April of that

year he defeated with 750 men Santa Ana's army of 1,800, inflicting

upon the Mexicans the terrible loss of 630 killed and 730 prisoners,

among whom was Santa Ana himself. Houston received a severe wound in

the engagement. In the autumn of the same year he was elected first

president of the republic of Texas, receiving more than four-fifths

of the votes cast. He served two years and retired at the end of

his term, leaving the country on good terms with both Mexico and the

Indian tribes, and with its notes at par. He was immediately elected

to the Texas congress and served in that capacity until 1841, when

he was reelected president. It was during these years that he made

his steadfast fight in behalf of the Texas Cherokee, as is narrated

elsewhere, supporting their cause without wavering, at the risk of his

own popularity and position. He frequently declared that no treaty made

and carried out in good faith had ever been violated by Indians. His

Cherokee wife having died some time before, he was again married

in 1840, this time to a lady from Alabama, who exercised over him a

restraining and ennobling influence through the stormy vicissitudes of

his eventful life. In June, 1842, he vetoed a bill making him dictator

for the purpose of resisting a threatened invasion from Mexico.

On December 29, 1845, Texas was admitted to the Union, and in the

following March Houston was elected to the Senate, where he served

continuously until 1859, when he resigned to take his seat as governor,

to which position he had just been elected. From 1852 to 1860 his name

was three times presented before national presidential nominating

conventions, the last time receiving 57 votes. He had taken issue

with the Democratic majority throughout his term in the Senate, and

when Texas passed the secession ordinance in February, 1861, being an

uncompromising Union man, he refused to take the oath of allegiance

to the Confederacy and was accordingly deposed from the office of

governor, declining the proffered aid of federal troops to keep him

in his seat. Unwilling either to fight against the Union or to take

sides against his friends, he held aloof from the great struggle, and

remained in silent retirement until his death, two years later. No

other man in American history has left such a record of continuous

election to high office while steadily holding to his own convictions

in the face of strong popular opposition. Authorities: Appleton's

Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1894; Bonnell, Texas, 1840; Thrall,

Texas, 1876; Lossing, Field Book of the War of 1812, 1869; author's

personal information; various periodical and newspaper articles.

(46) Chief John Ross (p. 151): This great chief of the Cherokee, whose

name is inseparable from their history, was himself but one-eighth

of Indian blood and showed little of the Indian features, his father,

Daniel Ross, having emigrated from Scotland before the Revolution and

married a quarter-blood Cherokee woman whose father, John McDonald,

was also from Scotland. He was born at or near the family residence

at Rossville, Georgia, just across the line from Chattanooga,

Tennessee. As a boy, he was known among the Cherokee as Tsan-usdi',

"Little John," but after arriving at manhood was called Guwi'sguwi',

the name of a rare migratory bird, of large size and white or grayish

plumage, said to have appeared formerly at long intervals in the old

Cherokee country. It may have been the egret or the swan. He was

educated at Kingston, Tennessee, and began his public career when

barely nineteen years of age. His first wife, a full-blood Cherokee

woman, died in consequence of the hardships of the Removal while on

the western march and was buried at Little Rock, Arkansas. Some years

later he married again, this time to a Miss Stapler of Wilmington,

Delaware, the marriage taking place in Philadelphia (author's personal

information from Mr Allen Ross, son of John Ross; see also Meredith,

"The Cherokees," in the Five Civilized Tribes, Extra Bulletin Eleventh

Census, 1894.) Cooweescoowee district of the Cherokee Nation west has

been named in his honor. The following biographic facts are taken

from the panegyric in his honor, passed by the national council of

the Cherokee, on hearing of his death, "as feebly expressive of the

loss they have sustained."

John Ross was born October 3, 1790, and died in the city of Washington,

August 1, 1866, in the seventy-sixth year of his age. His official

career began in 1809, when he was intrusted by Agent Return Meigs

with an important mission to the Arkansas Cherokee. From that time

until the close of his life, with the exception of two or three years

in the earlier part, he was in the constant service of his people,

"furnishing an instance of confidence on their part and fidelity on his

which has never been surpassed in the annals of history." In the war

of 1813-14 against the Creeks he was adjutant of the Cherokee regiment

which cooperated with General Jackson, and was present at the battle of

the Horseshoe, where the Cherokee, under Colonel Morgan, of Tennessee,

rendered distinguished service. In 1817 he was elected a member of the

national committee of the Cherokee council. The first duty assigned

him was to prepare a reply to the United States commissioners who were

present for the purpose of negotiating with the Cherokee for their

lands east of the Mississippi, in firm resistance to which he was

destined, a few years later, to test the power of truth and to attain

a reputation of no ordinary character. In 1819, October 26, his name

first appears on the statute book of the Cherokee Nation as president

of the national committee, and is attached to an ordinance which

looked to the improvement of the Cherokee people, providing for the

introduction into the Nation of schoolmasters, blacksmiths, mechanics,

and others. He continued to occupy that position till 1826. In 1827 he

was associate chief with William Hicks, and president of the convention

which adopted the constitution of that year. That constitution, it is

believed, is the first effort at a regular government, with distinct

branches and powers defined, ever made and carried into effect by any

of the Indians of North America. From 1828 until the removal west,

he was principal chief of the eastern Cherokee, and from 1839 to the

time of his death, principal chief of the united Cherokee Nation.

In regard to the long contest which culminated in the Removal, the

resolutions declare that "The Cherokees, with John Ross at their head,

alone with their treaties, achieved a recognition of their rights,

but they were powerless to enforce them. They were compelled to yield,

but not until the struggle had developed the highest qualities of

patience, fortitude, and tenacity of right and purpose on their part,

as well as that of their chief. The same may be said of their course

after their removal to this country, and which resulted in the reunion

of the eastern and western Cherokees as one people and in the adoption

of the present constitution."

Concerning the events of the civil war and the official attempt to

depose Ross from his authority, they state that these occurrences,

with many others in their trying history as a people, are confidently

committed to the future page of the historian. "It is enough to

know that the treaty negotiated at Washington in 1866 bore the full

and just recognition of John Ross' name as principal chief of the

Cherokee nation."

The summing up of the panegyric is a splendid tribute to a splendid

manhood:

"Blessed with a fine constitution and a vigorous mind, John Ross had

the physical ability to follow the path of duty wherever it led. No

danger appalled him. He never faltered in supporting what he believed

to be right, but clung to it with a steadiness of purpose which alone

could have sprung from the clearest convictions of rectitude. He never

sacrificed the interests of his nation to expediency. He never lost

sight of the welfare of the people. For them he labored daily for a

long life, and upon them he bestowed his last expressed thoughts. A

friend of law, he obeyed it; a friend of education, he faithfully

encouraged schools throughout the country, and spent liberally his

means in conferring it upon others. Given to hospitality, none ever

hungered around his door. A professor of the Christian religion, he

practiced its precepts. His works are inseparable from the history of

the Cherokee people for nearly half a century, while his example in

the daily walks of life will linger in the future and whisper words

of hope, temperance, and charity in the years of posterity."

Resolutions were also passed for bringing his body from Washington

at the expense of the Cherokee Nation and providing for suitable

obsequies, in order "that his remains should rest among those he

so long served" (Resolutions in honor of John Ross, in Laws of the

Cherokee Nation, 1869).

(47) The Ketoowah Society (p. 156): This Cherokee secret society, which

has recently achieved some newspaper prominence by its championship of

Cherokee autonomy, derives its name--properly Kitu'hwa, but commonly

spelled Ketoowah in English print--from the ancient town in the old

Nation which formed the nucleus of the most conservative element

of the tribe and sometimes gave a name to the Nation itself (see

Kitu'hwagi, under Tribal Synonyms). A strong band of comradeship,

if not a regular society organization, appears to have existed

among the warriors and leading men of the various settlements of

the Kituhwa district from a remote period, so that the name is even

now used in councils as indicative of genuine Cherokee feeling in

its highest patriotic form. When, some years ago, delegates from

the western Nation visited the East Cherokee to invite them to join

their more prosperous brethren beyond the Mississippi, the speaker for

the delegates expressed their fraternal feeling for their separated

kinsmen by saying in his opening speech, "We are all Kituhwa people"

(Ani'-Kitu'hwagi). The Ketoowah society in the Cherokee Nation west

was organized shortly before the civil war by John B. Jones, son of

the missionary, Evan Jones, and an adopted citizen of the Nation,

as a secret society for the ostensible purpose of cultivating

a national feeling among the full-bloods, in opposition to the

innovating tendencies of the mixed-blood element. The real purpose

was to counteract the influence of the "Blue Lodge" and other secret

secessionist organizations among the wealthier slave-holding classes,

made up chiefly of mixed-bloods and whites. It extended to the Creeks,

and its members in both tribes rendered good service to the Union

cause throughout the war. They were frequently known as "Pin Indians,"

for a reason explained below. Since the close of the great struggle

the society has distinguished itself by its determined opposition to

every scheme looking to the curtailment or destruction of Cherokee

national self-government.

The following account of the society was written shortly after the

close of the civil war:

"Those Cherokees who were loyal to the Union combined in a secret

organization for self-protection, assuming the designation of the

Ketoowha society, which name was soon merged in that of "Pins." The

Pins were so styled because of a peculiar manner they adopted of

wearing a pin. The symbol was discovered by their enemies, who

applied the term in derision; but it was accepted by this loyal

league, and has almost superseded the designation which its members

first assumed. The Pin organization originated among the members

of the Baptist congregation at Peavine, Going-snake district, in

the Cherokee nation. In a short time the society counted nearly

three thousand members, and had commenced proselytizing the Creeks,

when the rebellion, against which it was arming, preventing its

further extension, the poor Creeks having been driven into Kansas by

the rebels of the Golden Circle. During the war the Pins rendered

services to the Union cause in many bloody encounters, as has been

acknowledged by our generals. It was distinctly an anti-slavery

organization. The slave-holding Cherokees, who constituted the wealthy

and more intelligent class, naturally allied themselves with the South,

while loyal Cherokees became more and more opposed to slavery. This

was shown very clearly when the loyalists first met in convention,

in February, 1863. They not only abolished slavery unconditionally and

forever, before any slave state made a movement toward emancipation,

but made any attempts at enslaving a grave misdemeanor.

The secret signs of the Pins were a peculiar way of touching the hat as

a salutation, particularly when they were too far apart for recognition

in other ways. They had a peculiar mode of taking hold of the lapel

of the coat, first drawing it away from the body, and then giving it a

motion as though wrapping it around the heart. During the war a portion

of them were forced into the rebellion, but quickly rebelled against

General Cooper, who was placed over them, and when they fought against

that general, at Bird Creek, they wore a bit of corn-husk, split into

strips, tied in their hair. In the night when two Pins met, and one

asked the other, 'Who are you?' the reply or pass was, 'Tahlequah--who

are you?' The response was, 'I am Ketoowha's son.'"--Dr D. J. MacGowan,

Indian Secret Societies, in Historical Magazine, X, 1866.

(48) Farewell address of Lloyd Welch (p. 175): In the sad and eventful

history of the Cherokee their gifted leaders, frequently of white

ancestry, have oftentimes spoken to the world with eloquent words of

appeal, of protest, or of acknowledgment, but never more eloquently

than in the last farewell of Chief Lloyd Welch to the eastern band,

as he felt the end draw near (leaflet, MacGowan, Chattanooga [n. d.,

1880]):

"To the Chairman and Council of the Eastern Band of Cherokees:

"My Brothers: It becomes my imperative duty to bid you an

affectionate farewell, and resign into your hands the trust

you so generously confided to my keeping, principal chief of

the Eastern Band. It is with great solicitude and anxiety for

your welfare that I am constrained to take this course. But the

inexorable laws of nature, and the rapid decline of my health,

admonish me that soon, very soon, I will have passed from earth, my

body consigned to the tomb, my spirit to God who gave it, in that

happy home in the beyond, where there is no sickness, no sorrow,

no pain, no death, but one eternal joy and happiness forever more.

"The only regret that I feel for thus being so soon called from

among you, at the meridian of manhood, when hope is sweet, is

the great anxiety I have to serve and benefit my race. For this

I have studied and labored for the past ten years of my life,

to secure to my brothers equal justice from their brothers of

the west and the United States, and that you would no longer

be hewers of wood and drawers of water, but assume that proud

position among the civilized nations of the earth intended by

the Creator that we should occupy, and which in the near future

you will take or be exterminated. When you become educated, as

a natural consequence you will become more intelligent, sober,

industrious, and prosperous.

"It has been the aim of my life, the chief object, to serve my

race faithfully, honestly, and to the best of my ability. How well

I have succeeded I will leave to history and your magnanimity to

decide, trusting an all-wise and just God to guide and protect

you in the future, as He will do all things well. We may fail

when on earth to see the goodness and wisdom of God in removing

from us our best and most useful men, but when we have crossed

over on the other shore to our happy and eternal home in the far

beyond then our eyes will be opened and we will be enabled to see

and realize the goodness and mercy of God in thus afflicting us

while here on earth, and will be enabled more fully to praise God,

from whom all blessings come.

"I hope that when you come to select one from among you to take

the responsible position of principal chief of your band you will

lay aside all personal considerations and select one in every

respect competent, without stain on his fair fame, a pure, noble,

honest, man--one who loves God and all that is pure--with intellect

sufficient to know your rights, independence and nerve to defend

them. Should you be thus fortunate in making your choice, all will

be well. It has been truthfully said that 'when the righteous rule

the people rejoice, but when the wicked rule the people mourn.'

"I am satisfied that you have among you many who are fully

competent of the task. If I was satisfied it was your wish

and for the good of my brothers I might mention some of them,

but think it best to leave you in the hands of an all-wise God,

who does all things right, to guide and direct you aright.

"And now, my brothers, in taking perhaps my last farewell on earth

I do pray God that you may so conduct yourselves while here on

earth that when the last sad rite is performed by loved friends

we may compose one unbroken family above in that celestial city

from whose bourne no traveler has ever returned to describe the

beauty, grandeur, and happiness of the heaven prepared for the

faithful by God himself beyond the sky. And again, my brothers,

permit me to bid you a fond, but perhaps a last, farewell on earth,

until we meet again where parting is never known and friends meet

to part no more forever.

"L. R. Welch,

"Principal Chief Eastern Band Cherokee Indians.

"Witness:

"Samuel W. Davidson.

"B. B. Merony."

(49) Status of eastern band (p. 180): For some reason all authorities

who have hitherto discussed the status of the eastern band of

Cherokee seem to have been entirely unaware of the enactment of the

supplementary articles to the treaty of New Echota, by which all

preemption and reservation rights granted under the twelfth article

were canceled. Thus, in the Cherokee case of "The United States

et al against D. T. Boyd et al," we find the United States circuit

judge quoting the twelfth article in its original form as a basis for

argument, while his associate judge says: "Their forefathers availed

themselves of a provision in the treaty of New Echota and remained

in the state of North Carolina," etc. (Report of Indian Commissioner

for 1895, pp. 633-635, 1896). The truth is that the treaty as ratified

with its supplementary articles canceled the residence right of every

Cherokee east of the Mississippi, and it was not until thirty years

afterwards that North Carolina finally gave assurance that the eastern

band would be permitted to remain within her borders.

The twelfth article of the new Echota treaty of December 29, 1835,

provides for a pro rata apportionment to such Cherokee as desire to

remain in the East, and continues: "Such heads of Cherokee families

as are desirous to reside within the states of North Carolina,

Tennessee, and Alabama, subject to the laws of the same, and who are

qualified or calculated to become useful citizens, shall be entitled,

on the certificate of the commissioners, to a preemption right to

one hundred and sixty acres of land, or one quarter section, at the

minimum Congress price, so as to include the present buildings or

improvements of those who now reside there; and such as do not live

there at present shall be permitted to locate within two years any

lands not already occupied by persons entitled to preemption privilege

under this treaty," etc. Article 13 defines terms with reference to

individual reservations granted under former treaties. The preamble

to the supplementary articles agreed upon on March 1, 1836, recites

that, "Whereas the President of the United States has expressed

his determination not to allow any preemptions or reservations, his

desire being that the whole Cherokee people should remove together

and establish themselves in the country provided for them west of

the Mississippi river (article 1): It is therefore agreed that all

preemption rights and reservations provided for in articles 12 and 13

shall be, and are hereby, relinquished and declared void." The treaty,

in this shape, was ratified on May 23, 1836 (see Indian Treaties,

pp. 633-648, 1837).