USA > Georgia > Georgia's landmarks, memorials and legends, Volume I > Part 14
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"Those who thus migrated under the management of native officers, assembled at Rattle Snake Springs, about two miles south of Hiawassee river, near Charleston, Tenn., where a final council was held, at which it was decided to continue the old constitution and laws in the new home. Then the long procession of exiles was set in motion. Some went by the river route, but most over land. Crossing to the north side by a ferry, they pro- ceeded down the river, the sick, the old, and the infants, with the blankets, cooking pots, etc., the rest on foot or on horse. The number of wagons was 645.
"It was like the march of an army, regiment after regiment, the wagons in the center, the officers along the line, and the horsemen on the flank and at the rear. After crossing the Tennessee river, at Tucker's Ferry, they moved toward Nashville, where the Cumberland was crossed. Thence to Hopkinsville, Ky., where the noted chief, White Path, who was in charge of one of the de- tachments, sickened and died. His people buried him by the roadside, with a box over the grave, and streamers around it, so that the others, coming on, might note the spot and remember him. Somewhere further along this march of death-for the exiles died by tens and twenties each day-the devoted wife of John Ross sank down, leaving him to go on with the bitter pang of bereavement added to heart-break at the ruin of his nation. The Ohio was reached at a ferry near the mouth of the Cum- berland and the army passed through Southern. Illinois, until the great Mississippi was reached, opposite Cape Girardeau, Mo. It was now the middle of winter, with the river running full of ice, so that several detachments were obliged to wait some time on the eastern bank for the channel to clear.
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"In talking with old men and women at Tallequah, the author found that the lapse of over half a century had not sufficed to wipe out the memory of the miseries of this halt beside the frozen river, with hundreds of sick and dying penned up in wagons or stretched upon the ground, with only a blanket over head to keep out the January blast. The crossing was made at last in two divisions at Cape Girardeau and at Green's Ferry, a short distance below, when the march was through Missouri to Indian Territory, the later detachments making a circuit through Springfield, because those who had gone before had killed off all the game along the direct route. At last the destination was reached-the journey having occupied six months of the hardest part of the year.
"It is difficult to arrive at any accurate statement of the number of Cherokees who died as the result of the removal. According to official figures those who removed under the direction of Ross lost over 1,600 on the jour- ney. The proportionate mortality among those who pre- viously removed under military supervision was proba- bly greater. Hundreds died in the stockades and in the waiting camps, chiefly by reason of the rations furnished, which were of flour and other provisions to which they were not accustomed. Hundreds of others died on arri- val from sickness and exposure. Altogether, it is asser- ted, possibly with reason, that over 4,000 Cherokees died as the direct result of the removal. On reaching Indian Territory, the emigrants at once set about building houses and planting crops, the government having agreed under the treaty to furnish them with rations for one year after arrival. They were welcomed by the Arkansas Chero- kees, kinsmen who held the country under previous trea- ties. These, however, being regularly organized, were not disposed to be swallowed up by the governmental authority of the new comers. Jealousies developed in which the minority or treaty part of the emigrants, headed by Ridge took sides with the old settlers, against
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the Ross or national party which outnumbered the others nearly three to one; and then followed the tragic sequel."
On June 22, 1839, Major Ridge, his son, John Ridge, and Elias Boudinot, suffered the penalty of having advo- cated the removal of the Indians to the West. It was in the midst of great political excitement that the three-fold act of murder was perpetrated, but the evidence shows that the whole affair was deliberately planned. The report made by the Indian agent to the Secretary of War, two days after the occurrence, gives the following par- ticulars: "The murder of Boudinot was treacherous and cruel. He was assisting some workmen in building a new house. Three men called upon him and asked for medicine. He went off with them in the direction of Worcester's, the missionary who keeps medicine, about three hundred yards from Boudinot's. When they were about half way, two of the men seized Boudinot and the other stabbed him, after which the three cut him to pieces with knives and tomahawks. This murder having oc- curred within two miles of the residence of John Ross, his friends were apprehensive that it might be charged to his connivance, and at this moment there are 600 armed Cherokees around the dwelling of Ross assem- bled for his protection. The murderers of the two Ridges and Boudinot are certainly of the late Cherokee emi- grants and of course adherents of Ross but I cannot yet believe that Ross has encouraged the outrage. He is a man of too much good sense to embroil his nation at this critical time; and besides, his character, since I have known him, which is now twenty-five years, has been pacific. Boudinot's wife is a white woman, a native of New Jersey, as I understand. He has six children. The wife of John Ridge is a white woman, but from whence or what family I am not informed. Boudinot was in moderate circumstances. The Ridges both father and son, were rich."
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John Ross, the principal chief of the nation, does not seem to have been a party to the transaction, though it was doubtless in accordance with a law of the tribe, similar to the one under which the brave chief of the Creeks, General William McIntosh, suffered death. Moreover, the national council afterwards de- clared the murdered men to have been outlaws, and also pronounced null and void the treaty of New Echota. Jurisdiction over the Georgia lands was reasserted; but at this stage the United States government interfered. Chaotic conditions prevailed for several months. At last, however, the breech was healed. At a general con- vention in which both the Eastern and the Western Cherokees were represented, together with both the Ridge and the Ross factions, the whole tribal connection was declared to be one body politic under the name of the Cherokee nation. On behalf of the Eastern Cherokees, the compact of agreement was signed by John Ross, principal chief, George Lowrey, president of the council, and Going Snake, speaker of the council, with thirteen others. For the Western Cherokees it was signed by John Looney, acting principal chief, George Guess, presi- dent of the council and fifteen others. On September 6, 1839, Tallequah was made the capital of the nation. At the same time a new constitution was adopted by a convention composed chiefly of Eastern Cherokees, but it was finally ratified by the old settlers at Fort Gibson, on June 26, 1840, an act which completed the re-union of the nation .*
*For the facts contained in this article the writer is indebted in the main to a work entitled: "Myths and Legends of the Cherokees," by James Mooney, of the Ethnological Bureau, Washington, D. C. The work is em. bodied in Vol. 118, House Documents.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
Harriet Gold: A Romance of New Echota
O N a knoll overlooking the site of New Echota there is still to be seen a lonely wayside grave around which cluster the incidents of a pathetic tale of the wilderness. When Elias Boudinot was attending the Moravian Mission, at Cornwall, Conn., he met and loved Harriet Gold. At the expiration of two years, they were married, much to the displeasure of her father and brother, who little relished the thought of her alliance to an Indian, even though of mixed blood. But she took the step with her mother's full permission. It was an affair of the heart which the latter could well understand, despite the separation from home and the life of isolation among an alien people which it necessarily involved. So the happy couple came to Georgia to live; and here in the course of time they were visited by Mrs. Gold, who found her daughter well provided with domestic comforts and little disposed to complain.
With true missionary zeal, the young bride soon be- came intent upon the task of bettering the conditions of life among the Indians. She founded, sometime in the early thirties, the first Sunday school in Gordon County; and to her husband who was editor of the Phoenix, she was both a companion and a helpmeet. She did much for the uplift of the tribe, and the life which she lived among them, though brief, was one of beautiful unselfishness. When John Howard Payne was imprisoned in the block- house, she frequently went to see him, making his bonds
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less burdensome by her sympathetic attentions. The story goes that he taught her to sing his famous air of "Home Sweet Home;" and however reconciled she may have been to her lot by reason of the one thing needful to make it rosy there were doubtless minor chords of love in her heart which sounded a sad response when her memory reverted to her old home in far away Connecticut.
But satisfied though she was with the man of her choice, the days of her joyful wedlock were numbered. Stealthily the fingers of disease began to clutch at the vital. cords. Perhaps she foresaw the bolt which was destined to descend upon the Cherokees. It was not difficult to read the future at this troublous hour. There was scarcely a moment when her husband's life was not in danger. The nation was divided into rival camps. The anxieties incident to this vexed period may have been too severe for an organism attuned to gentler sur- roundings. At any rate she faded day by day; and one afternoon in midsummer they bore her to the hillside, where a slab of marble, yellow with age, still marks the spot. It requires no great stretch of the imagination to picture the broken hearted man who survived her bending over the low mound, on the eve of his departure for the West, and reading, through tear-filled eyes, the following inscription*
"To the memory of Harriet Ruggles, the wife of Thomas Elias Boudinot. She was the daughter of Colonel Benjamin and Eleanor Gold, of Cornwall, Conn., where she was born June 1, 1805, and died at New Echota, Cherokee Nation, August 12, 1836. We seek a rest beyond the skies."
*The facts contained in this story were found in a newspaper article, but on the authority of old residents are trustworthy.
CHAPTER XXXIX
Dahlonega : Once the Center of Gold-Mining Activities in America
T HOUGH the first discovery of gold in Georgia, ac- cording to White, was made on Duke's ('reek, in Habersham County, in 1829, it is generally believed in Lumpkin County that the first discovery of gold in this State was made some time previous to the above date, on the Calhoun property, three miles to the south of Dah- lonega. Prof. S. W. MeCallie, Georgia's present State Geologist, makes this remark in connection with the claim. Says he :* "This early discovery is substantiated by living witnesses; but whether it antedates the find at Duke's Creek is an open question. It appears quite probable that the early discoveries followed each other, in such rapid succession, that it is now practically impossible to decide definitely the question of priority. However, at present, the best information seems to be in favor of Duke's Creek." If not the place where the yellow metal was first discovered in Georgia, it very soon became the center of the greatest mining operations in Georgia ; and the mines at Dahlonega contained the larges deposits of precious ore known to the United States.
It cannot be stated with any degree of precision when the Indian word "Dah-lon-e-ga," was first coined; but the meaning of it is "yellow money." Whether it was first applied by the Indians to the place, or whether it was used by them merely as an expression which caught
*Gold Deposits of Georgia, 1896, published by the State Geological De- partment, Bulletin 4-A, pp. 274-275, Atlanta, 1896.
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GEORGIA'S LANDMARKS, MEMORIALS AND LEGENDS
the fancy of the whites is equally problematical. The discovery of gold in North Georgia operated as a spur to hasten the departure of the Cherokees toward the West. It is created an eagerness on the part of the white popula- tion to possess themselves of the red man's home among the mountains, and they began to call upon the govern- ment, in the most imperious tones, to redeem the old agreement of 1802. The complications of the following years were only the malarial symptoms of this same gold fever; and while the final outcome was divinely ordered in furtherance of wise ends it was destined to leave a scar upon our history which time has not effaced.
As soon as the removal of the Indians was accomp- lished, the United States government, in 1838, established at Dahlonega a branch mint, which, continuing in opera- tion, until 1861, coined 1,381,748 pieces of gold valued ai $6,115,569.
Mr. Benjamin Parks by whom the yellow metal was first discovered on what afterwards became the property of the great John C. Calhoun, of South Carolina, was still living in the neighborhood of Dahlonega as late as 1894. During the summer of this year, Mr. P. J. Moran, the famous staff currespondent and editor of the Atlanta Constitution visited the gold fields of Lumpkin for the purpose of preparing an article for the press. Here he found Mr. Parks. The old man was ninety-four years of age, but his eyes still retained a glint of the old fire which lit them in his youthful days when he first discovered gold in the hills. The story which he gave Mr. Moran is sub- stantially reproduced from the newspaper files of 1894. Said the aged argonaut :
"It was just by accident that I came across it. I was deer hunting one day, when I kicked up something which
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caught my eye. I examined it and decided that it was gold. The place belonged to Rev. Mr. Obarr, who, though a preacher, was a hard man and very desperate. I went to the owner and told him that I thought I could find gold on his place, if he would give me a lease of it. He laughed, as though he did not believe me, and consented. So a lease for forty years was written out, the consideration of which was that I was to give him one fourth of the gold mined. I took into partnership a friend in whom I could confide. I went over to the spot with a pan, and, turning over some earth, it looked like the yellow of an egg. It was more than my eyes could believe.
"The news went abroad. Within a few days it seemed as if the whole world must have heard of it, for men came from every state. They came afoot, on horseback, and in wagons, acting more like crazy men than anything else. All the way, from where Dahlonega now stands to Nuck- lesville, there were men panning out of the branches and making holes in the hillsides. The saddest man in the country was preacher Obarr, from whom I had leased the land. He thought the lease was a joke; but he now learned that it was something serions. One day he came to me and said:
" 'Mr. Parks, I want your lease.'
" 'But I will not sell it to you.' I replied.
" 'Why not,' he asked.
" 'Well,' I answered, 'even if I were willing, it is now out of my power; for I have taken a partner, and I know he would never consent to it. I have given him my word and I intend to keep it.'
" 'You will suffer for this yet,' said Obarr menacingly, as he went away.
"Two weeks later, I saw a party of two women and two men, approaching. I knew it was Obarr's family, intent upon trouble. Knowing Obarr's fondness for liti- gation, I warned my men to be prepared for action, but to take no offensive step.
" 'Mr. Parks,' were Obarr's first words, 'I want the mine.'
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GEORGIA'S LANDMARKS, MEMORIALS AND LEGENDS
" 'If you were to offer me ten times its value,' I replied, 'I would not sell it to you.'
" 'Well, the longest pole will knock off the persim- mon,' said he with an implied threat.
"At the same moment, Mrs. Obarr broke the sluice- gate to let out the water. There was a laborer in the ditch, and the woman threw rocks in the water, in order to splash him. Failing to make the man aggressive, she burst into tears; whereupon her son advanced to attack him. I caught him by the collar and flung him back. Then the party went off, swore out warrants against us, and had us all arrested. This was all done for intimida- tion, but it failed to work. The next thing I heard was that Obarr had sold the place to Judge Underwood, who, in turn, sold it to Senator John C. Calhoun, of South Carolina. Then I lost my fortune. Senator Calhoun wanted to buy my lease, and I sold it for what I thought was a good price. The very month after the sale, he took out 24,000 pennyweights of gold, and then I was inclined to be as mad with him as Obarr was with me. But gold mining is like gambling-all luck."
According to the late Professor W. S. Yates, who was at one time State Geologist of Georgia, an expression which Mark Twain has made classic in two hemispheres originated at Dahlonega. Says Professor Yates: "One of the most active and enthusiastic spirits of the flush times was Dr. M. F. Stevenson, an amateur geologist and mineralogist, who was full of the belief that Georgia was one of the richest mineral States in the Union. When, in 1849, the miners around Dahlonega gathered to take action on the project of deserting the mines in Georgia and going in a body to the new fields of California, this earnest believer in Georgia's great mineral wealth mount- ed the court-house steps in Dahlonega, and, addressing a crowd of about 200 miners, plead with them not to be turned by the stories of the wondrous discoveries in Cali-
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fornia, but to stick to the Georgia fields, which were rich in possibilities. Pointing to Findley Ridge, which lay about half a mile to the south, he exclaimed : "Why go to California? In that ridge lies more gold than man ever dreamt of. There's millions in it." This last sentence was caught up by the miners and taken with them to California, where for years it was a by-word among them. It remained for Mark Twain, who heard it in common use, in one of the mining camps of California, to broad- cast it over creation by placing it in the mouth of his world-renowned character, Colonel Mulberry Sellers."*
*Gold Deposits of Georgia, Bulletin 4-A, pp. 274-275, Atlanta, 1896.
CHAPTER XL
Sequoya: The Modern Cadmus
S JEQUOYA, the noted Indian half-breed, who invented the Cherokee alphabet, lived at one time near the village of Alpine, in Chattooga County, not far from the present Alabama line. The first newspaper ever printed in Sequoyan characters was edited and published at New Echota, in Gordon County, at the confluence of the Coosawattee and the Connasauga Rivers. Sequoya's invention marked the rise of culture among the Chero- kees, the only tribe of Indians on the North American continent who possessed a written language and who boasted an organized national existence, founded upon Constitutional law. In the opinion of linguistic scholars, the invention of Sequoya is one of the greatest achieve- ments of the human intellect. The celebrated red-wood trees of California, the most colossal giants of the Ameri- can forest, have been christened the Sequoias, in honor of this gifted Indian's wonderful invention .* It is not an inappropriate tribute to the almost extinct race which produced the original occupants of the soil that the greatest of red-wood trees should commemorate the greatest of red men. Dr. H. A. Scomp, the author of the following article, was for years professor of Greek, in Emory College, at Oxford, Ga. He is at present engaged in preparing a comparative dictionary of the Muskogee languages, under the auspices of the Smith- sonian Institution of Washington, D. C. He is an emi-
*New International Encyclopedia, Vol. XVII. Article on the Sequoias.
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SEQUOYA
nent literary critic, and one of the foremost authorities of the day on the subject of Indian antiquities.
"Perhaps the most remarkable man who has ever lived on Georgia soil was neither a politician, nor a soldier, nor an ecclesiastic, nor a scholar-but was merely a Cherokee Indian, of mixed blood. And, strange to say, this Indian acquired permanent fame, neither expecting it nor seeking after it. He himself, never knew the full measure of his claim to a place in the temple of fame; never knew the full value of his work, nor the literary chasm which he had bridged; never knew that in his own little tribe he had solved a literary problem till then unsolved in all the realm of linguistic science.
"Sequoya, or Sikwayi-known to the whites as George Guest, Guess or Gist, was born at Taskigi, Tennessee, a Cherokee town, probably about 1760. He was the fruit of one of those illicit connections so common among the more civilized tribes. Sequoya's paternal ancestor has been variously surmised: by some he (Sequoya) was regarded as the son of a German-Indian trader; by others his father was thought to be an Irishman; while still others have held him to be the son of Nathaniel Gist, afterwards famous for his activity in the American Revo- lution.
"We are not well advised as to Sequoya's part in the struggle for independence, nor in the later troubles of the Cherokees with the whites. We have strong reasons for supposing that in his heart he bore in those days little good will to his pale-faced kinsmen. At all events he owed nothing to English letters and little to the arts of civilization.
"Sequoya spent his earlier years like most of his tribesmen in hunting and in peltry trading; until on one of his hunting trips he was by accident injured and was thereafter a cripple for life. Thus debarred from active work, he was still able to make various and distant ex- peditions in a search other than that for wild beasts.
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"Even as a hunter Sequoya was noted for his inven- tive genius and extraordinary mechanical skill. He was, too, a craftsman in silverwork and indeed a kind of Indian Tubal-Cain in the fashioning of metals. His maiming had caused the development of his reflective, undevelop- ed mentality. Although totally unacquainted with letters, his quick observing powers very early made him con- scious of the value of the art of writing and of the power of the printing press among the whites, although he had little love for the pale faces. What could the Cherokee do to appropriate to himself this wonderful power which Sequoya felt to be at the basis of the white man's civiliza- tion ?
"It would be a most interesting study to follow, if possible, the mental processes of this child of nature in his long quest of means to an end in working out his problem for his nation. He had no model for a guide, not even a blind Indian trace in the wilderness, for no predecessor had ever blazed a way which might serve even for suggestion. A real or a mythic Cadmus had an immortality covering at least thousands of years, for bringing to Greece an alphabet representing sixteen ele- mentary sounds-mere breathings or ejaculations, of the human voice, though severally representing nothing. But Sequoya had never heard of Cadmus, nor of his invention -if the first alphabet was really of Phoenician origin.
Hieroglyphs or hierograms-even had Sequoya ever dreamed of these-would not have answered his purpose. The ideograph, or idea-hierograph, could not work in Cherokee, for the Indian has never recognized the abstract. Mere picture writing was too complicated for the needs of ordinary life, and practicality was Sequoya's gospel. Nor did the symbolic hieroglyph offer anything better. Thousands of symbols would be necessary to furnish expression for even a limited language and how could these ever be committed to memory by the people
Cherokee Alphabet .
R.
1:1'
D.qui
Dsi
R
S
Casa
C
B
Sounds represented by Vowels.
" as a i fully ur short us a in pirut ", us un mu lan , or short ur bin nul casum hate of short ns g in my " us up in lind or short us is in pull ", as Is " bud unsalted
( us i in pique in short us i'm put
Consonant Sounds I marts as i hughsh , but approaching to k. I wroch as in Ruglish hat approaching lol. Wohlmuy Muy as an English. Syllables beginning with y except & have sometimes the meer ut k.J .SO' urp sometimes sounded to to tr andt Syllables written with It exceptti sometimes ruy mail.
SEQUOYA'S WONDERFUL INVENTION: THE CHEROKEE ALPHABET.
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SEQUOYA
and made of any practical utility. If Sequoya ever thought of symbolism for his system, he doubtless soon gave up the idea. Phonetics seemed to offer something better, and to this field the Indian genius soon devoted his exclusive attention.
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