Cherokee Mythology (Illustrated Edition) - James Mooney

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passing through their country during the Creek war.241

      At the last treaty the Cherokee had resisted every effort to induce them to cede more land on either side of the Tennessee, the Government being especially desirous to extinguish their claim north of that river within the limits of the state of Tennessee. Failing in this, pressure was at once begun to bring about a cession in Alabama, with the result that on September 14 of the same year a treaty was concluded at the Chickasaw council-house, and afterward ratified in general council at Turkeytown on the Coosa, by which the Cherokee ceded all their claims in that state south of Tennessee river and west of an irregular line running from Chickasaw island in that stream, below the entrance of Flint river, to the junction of Wills creek with the Coosa, at the present Gadsden. For this cession, embracing an area of nearly three thousand five hundred square miles, they were to receive sixty thousand dollars in ten annual payments, together with five thousand dollars for the improvements abandoned.242

      We turn aside now for a time from the direct narrative to note the development of events which culminated in the forced expatriation of the Cherokee from their ancestral homes and their removal to the far western wilderness.

      With a few notable exceptions the relations between the French and Spanish colonists and the native tribes, after the first occupation of the country, had been friendly and agreeable. Under the rule of France or Spain there was never any Indian boundary. Pioneer and Indian built their cabins and tilled their fields side by side, ranged the woods together, knelt before the same altar and frequently intermarried on terms of equality, so far as race was concerned. The result is seen to-day in the mixed-blood communities of Canada, and in Mexico, where a nation has been built upon an Indian foundation. Within the area of English colonization it was otherwise. From the first settlement to the recent inauguration of the allotment system it never occurred to the man of Teutonic blood that he could have for a neighbor anyone not of his own stock and color. While the English colonists recognized the native proprietorship so far as to make treaties with the Indians, it was chiefly for the purpose of fixing limits beyond which the Indian should never come after he had once parted with his title for a consideration of goods and trinkets. In an early Virginia treaty it was even stipulated that friendly Indians crossing the line should suffer death. The Indian was regarded as an incumbrance to be cleared off, like the trees and the wolves, before white men could live in the country. Intermarriages were practically unknown, and the children of such union were usually compelled by race antipathy to cast their lot with the savage.

      Under such circumstances the tribes viewed the advance of the English and their successors, the Americans, with keen distrust, and as early as the close of the French and Indian war we find some of them removing from the neighborhood of the English settlements to a safer shelter in the more remote territories still held by Spain. Soon after the French withdrew from Fort Toulouse, in 1763, a part of the Alabama, an incorporated tribe of the Creek confederacy, left their villages on the Coosa, and crossing the Mississippi, where they halted for a time on its western bank, settled on the Sabine river under Spanish protection.243 They were followed some years later by a part of the Koasati, of the same confederacy,244 the two tribes subsequently drifting into Texas, where they now reside. The Hichitee and others of the Lower Creeks moved down into Spanish Florida, where the Yamassee exiles from South Carolina had long before preceded them, the two combining to form the modern Seminole tribe. When the Revolution brought about a new line of division, the native tribes, almost without exception, joined sides with England as against the Americans, with the result that about one-half the Iroquois fled to Canada, where they still reside upon lands granted by the British government. A short time before Wayne’s victory a part of the Shawano and Delawares, worn out by nearly twenty years of battle with the Americans, crossed the Mississippi and settled, by permission of the Spanish government, upon lands in the vicinity of Cape Girardeau, in what is now southeastern Missouri, for which they obtained a regular deed from that government in 1793.245 Driven out by the Americans some twenty years later, they removed to Kansas and thence to Indian territory, where they are now incorporated with their old friends, the Cherokee.

      When the first Cherokee crossed the Mississippi it is impossible to say, but there was probably never a time in the history of the tribe when their warriors and hunters were not accustomed to make excursions beyond the great river. According to an old tradition, the earliest emigration took place soon after the first treaty with Carolina, when a portion of the tribe, under the leadership of Yûñwĭ-usga′sĕʻtĭ, “Dangerous-man,” foreseeing the inevitable end of yielding to the demands of the colonists, refused to have any relations with the white man, and took up their long march for the unknown West. Communication was kept up with the home body until after crossing the Mississippi, when they were lost sight of and forgotten. Long years afterward a rumor came from the west that they were still living near the base of the Rocky mountains.246 In 1782 the Cherokee, who had fought faithfully on the British side throughout the long Revolutionary struggle, applied to the Spanish governor at New Orleans for permission to settle on the west side of the Mississippi, within Spanish territory. Permission was granted, and it is probable that some of them removed to the Arkansas country, although there seems to be no definite record of the matter.247 We learn incidentally, however, that about this period the hostile Cherokee, like the Shawano and other northern tribes, were in the habit of making friendly visits to the Spanish settlements in that quarter.

      According to Reverend Cephas Washburn, the pioneer missionary of the western Cherokee, the first permanent Cherokee settlement beyond the Mississippi was the direct result of the massacre, in 1794, of the Scott party at Muscle shoals, on Tennessee river, by the hostile warriors of the Chickamauga towns, in the summer. As told by the missionary, the story differs considerably from that given by Haywood and other Tennessee historians, narrated in another place.248 According to Washburn, the whites were the aggressors, having first made the Indians drunk and then swindled them out of the annuity money with which they were just returning from the agency at Tellico. When the Indians became sober enough to demand the return of their money the whites attacked and killed two of them, whereupon the others boarded the boat and killed every white man. They spared the women and children, however, with their negro slaves and all their personal belongings, and permitted them to continue on their way, the chief and his party personally escorting them down Tennessee, Ohio, and Mississippi rivers as far as the mouth of the St. Francis, whence the emigrants descended in safety to New Orleans, while their captors, under their chief, The Bowl, went up St. Francis river—then a part of Spanish territory—to await the outcome of the event. As soon as the news came to the Cherokee Nation the chiefs formally repudiated the action of the Bowl party and volunteered to assist in arresting those concerned. Bowl and his men were finally exonerated, but had conceived such bitterness at the conduct of their former friends, and, moreover, had found the soil so rich and the game so abundant where they were, that they refused to return to their tribe and decided to remain permanently in the West. Others joined them from time to time, attracted by the hunting prospect, until they were in sufficient number to obtain recognition from the Government.249

      While the missionary may be pardoned for making the best showing possible for his friends, his statement contains several evident errors, and it is probable that Haywood’s account is more correct in the main. As the Cherokee annuity at that time amounted to but fifteen hundred dollars for the whole tribe, or somewhat less than ten cents per head, they could hardly have had enough money from that source to pay such extravagant prices as sixteen dollars apiece for pocket-mirrors, which it is alleged the boatmen obtained. Moreover, as the Chickamauga warriors had refused to sign any treaties and were notoriously hostile, they were not as yet entitled to receive payments. Haywood’s statement that the emigrant party was first attacked while passing the Chickamauga towns and then pursued to the Muscle shoals and there massacred is probably near the truth, although it is quite possible that the whites may have provoked the attack in some such way as is indicated by the missionary. As Washburn got his account from one of the women of the party, living long afterward in New Orleans, it is certain that some at least were spared by the Indians, and it is probable that, as he states, only the men were killed.

      The Bowl emigration may not have been the first, or even the most important removal to the western country, as the period was one of Indian unrest. Small bands were constantly crossing the Mississippi into Spanish territory to avoid the advancing Americans, only to

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