USA > North Carolina > Western North Carolina; a history, 1730-1913 > Part 53
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MASSACRE AT FORT LOUDON. This retreat sealed the fate of the garrison at Fort Loudon, which had been reduced to the necessity of eating horses and dogs, though Indian women, who had found sweethearts among the soldiers, brought them what food they could. On August 8, Capt. Demere surren- dered his garrison of about 200 to Oconostota upon promise that they should be allowed to retire with sufficient arms and ammunition for the march. The garrison made a day's march up Tellico creek and camped, while the Cherokees plundered the fort. It was then that they discovered ten bags of powder and a large quantity of ball that the garrison had secretly buried in the fort before surrendering. Cannon and small arms also had been thrown into the river, which
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was a breach of the terms of the capitulation. Enraged at this duplicity the Indians attacked the retiring garrison at sun- rise the next morning, killing Demere and 25 others at the first fire, and taking the rest prisoners, to be ransomed some time later on. Capt. Stuart, second in command, was claimed by Ata-kullakulla, a Cherokee chief, who managed to conduct him, after nine days' march, to his friends in Virginia. A treaty was concluded at Augusta, November 10, 1763, by which the Cherokees lost all north of the present Tennessee line and east of the Blue Ridge and Savannah. A royal proclama- tion was issued this year barring the whites from occupying Indian lands west of the Blue Ridge; while in 1768 a treaty fixed the northern limit as downward along the New and Kanawha rivers from the North Carolina line. This treaty was made at Hard Labor, S. C .; while on March 17, 1775, a treaty cut off the Cherokees from the Ohio and their rich Kentucky hunting grounds.
THREE STATES COMBINE AGAINST THE CHEROKEES. But the constant encroachments of the whites upon the Indian territory resulted, in 1776, in an agreement between Virginia, North and South Carolina by which each sent a punitive expedition into the Cherokee country, and laid it waste for miles, killing men and even women, and driving many into the mountains for refuge. In August Gen. Griffith Ruther- ford, with 2,400 men, crossed Swannanoa gap, and after fol- lowing the present line of railroad to the French Broad, out Hominy creek and following up the Richland, struck the first Indian town at Stecoee, the present site of Whittier, on the Tuck- aseegee. This he burned, and then destroyed all towns on Oconaluftee, Tuckaseegee and the upper part of Little Ten- nessee; also those on the Hiwassee below the junction of Val- ley river, making 36 towns in all. He also destroyed all crops. The chaplain of this expedition was Rev. James Hall, D. D., a Presbyterian. At Sugartown (Kuletsiyi), east of the present Franklin, a detachment sent to destroy it was surprised by the Cherokees and escaped only through the aid of another force sent to its rescue. Rutherford himself encountered a force in Wayah gap of the Nantahalas, between Franklin and Aquone, where he lost forty killed and wounded, but finally repulsing the Indians. ' An Indian killed in this fight proved to have been a woman dressed as a man. An
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account of the route followed by Rutherford, with many other facts, can be found in the North Carolina Booklet, Vol. IV, No. 8, for December, 1904; from which it appears that William- son of South Carolina was to have joined Rutherford at Cowee, but as he did not appear, Rutherford, without a proper guide, crossed the Nantahalas at an unusual place, thus missing the Wayah gap, where 500 braves had assembled to oppose him and that two days later Williamson, hurrying up Car- toogachaye creek, crossed at the usual place, and fell into the ambush which had been prepared for Rutherford; and that Rutherford lost but three men in the entire expedition. This latter account is probably the true one. Williamson joined Rutherford on the Hiwassee. It was considered unnecessary to await the arrival of Col. Christian from Virginia, who was coming via the Holston river, as all the Cherokee towns had been destroyed. Col. Andrew Williamson's force of South Carolinians was 1,860 strong, including a number of Catawbas, and came through Rabun gap of the Blue Ridge." It was near Murphy that Rutherford and Williamson's forces joined September 26, 1776. Among Christian's men was a regiment from Surry county, N. C., under Colonels Joseph Williams and Love, and Major Winston. They had assembled on the Hol- ston and pressed cautiously along the great warpath to the crossing of the French Broad in Tennessee, and thence advanced without opposition to the Little Tennessee, where, early in No- vember, Christian was proceeding to destroy their towns, when the Indians sought peace. Col. Christian, hoping to draw trade from the South Carolina Indians, accepted the promise of the Cherokees to "surrender all their prisoners and to cede all the disputed territory in the Tennessee settlements," suspended hostilities and withdrew, but not till he had burned the town of Tuckaseegee because its in- habitants had been concerned in the burning of a white boy, named Moore, who had been captured with a Mrs. Bean; but he spared the peace town of Echota. But Col. Williams of Surry was not pleased with Christian's leniency, and on the 22d of November, 1776, wrote to the North Carolina Con- gress from Surry, enclosing documents which he claimed proved conclusively "that some of the Virginia gentlemen are desirious of having the Cherokees under their protection," which Williams did not think right as most of the territory
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was within North Carolina and should be under her pro- tection. In this warfare every Indian was scalped and even women were shot down and afterwards "helped to their end." Prisoners were "taken and put up at auction as slaves, when not killed on the spot."
HOLSTON AND HOPEWELL TREATIES. At Long Island of the Holston a treaty was concluded July 20, 1777, by which the Middle and Upper Cherokees ceded everything east of the Blue Ridge, and all disputed territory on the Watauga, Nollechucky, upper Holston and New rivers. This ended the treaties with the separate States. The first treaty made with the United States was at Hopewell, S. C., November 28, 1785, by which the whole country east of the Blue Ridge, with the Watauga and Cumberland settlements, was given to the whites, but leaving the whole of western North Carolina to the Cherokees.
TREATIES OF WHITE'S FORT AND TELLICO. In the summer of 1791 the Cherokees made a treaty at White's Fort, now Knoxville, by which they ceded a "triangular section of Ten- nessee and North Carolina extending from the Clinch river almost to the Blue Ridge, and including nearly the whole of the French Broad and lower Holston and the sites of the present Knoxville, and Greeneville, Tenn., and Asheville, N. C., most of which territory was already occupied by the whites. Permission was also given for a road from the eastern set- tlements to those of the Cumberland, with free navigation of the Tennessee river." This treaty was signed by 41 prin- cipal chiefs and was concluded July 2, 1791, and probably gave legal title to the whites to as far west of the Blue Ridge as the Pigeon river in Haywood county. There were four treaties of Tellico, the first having been signed October 2, 1798, by 39 chiefs, bywhich were ceded a tract between the Clinch river and the Cumberland ridge, another along the northern bank of the Little Tennessee, extending up to the Chilhowie moun- tains, and a third in North Carolina on the head of the French Broad and Pigeon rivers, and including what are now Waynes- ville and Hendersonville; thus making the Balsam mountains the western boundary. In 1804 and 1805, three additional treaties were concluded at Tellico by Return J. Meigs, by which the Cherokees were shorn of 8,000 square miles, not affecting the limits of North Carolina; but it was then that
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Meigs originated what he termed a "silent consideration," by which a smaller amount was named in the public treaty, to-wit: $2,000-while he had agreed that "one thousand dollars and some rifles" in addition should be given to some of the chiefs who signed it. This treaty however was con- cluded at Washington, D. C., January 7, 1806. In 1813 the Cherokees agreed that a company should lay off and build a free public road from the Tennessee river to the head of nav- igation of the Tuggaloo branch of the Savannah; and this road was completed within the next three years, and became the great highway from the coast to the Tennessee settle- ments. The road began where Toccoa creek enters the Sa- vannah, and passed through Clarksville and Hiwassee in Georgia, and Hayesville and Murphy, N. C., though those towns had not been established by the whites at that time. From Murphy it passed over the Unaka or White mountains into Tennessee to Echota, the capital town of the Cherokees. It was officially styled the Unicoi Turnpike, but was commonly known in North Carolina as the Wachese or Watsisa trail, because it passed near the home of a noted Indian who lived near the place at which it crossed Beaverdam creek-his name having been Watsisa-and because this portion of the road followed the old trail which already bore that name.
NANAKATAHKE AND JUNALUSKA. The former was a sister of Yonaguska, and the mother-in-law of Gid. F. Morris, a South Carolinian who came to Cherokee county about the same time that Betty Bly or Blythe, came there, according to the statement of the late Col. A. T. Davidson, who said that Nanakatahke told him that she was the mother of Wac- hesa, or Grass-hopper. Junaluska, spelled Tsunulahunski in Cherokee, is the best remembered of the Cherokee chiefs, of whom a full account will be found in Chapter XII, pp. 292-293.
THE REMOVAL TREATIES. On the 8th of July, 1817, at the Cherokee agency (now Calhoun, Tenn.), a treaty was made by which, in return for land in Georgia and Tennessee, the Chero- kees were to receive a tract within the present limits of Arkansas, and payment for any substantial improvements they had made on the ceded lands they would abandon by going to Arkansas. Each warrior who left no improvements behind was to be given for his abandoned field and hut a rifle, ammunition, a
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blanket, a kettle or a beaver trap. Boats and provisions for the journey were also to be furnished the Indians who might go. It was also provided that those who chose to remain might do so and become citizens, the amount of land occupied by such to be deducted from the total cession. But the majority of the Cherokees opposed removal bitterly, and only 31 of the principal men of the eastern band and 15 of the western signed for the tribe. A protest signed by 67 chiefs and headsmen was presented to the commissioners for the government; but it was ignored and the treaty ratified. In fact, the authorities for the United States did not even wait for the ratification, but at once took steps for the removal of all who desired to go west, and before 1819, six thousand had been removed, according to the estimate. This, how- ever, did not effect North Carolina territory; but on February 27, 1819, a treaty was made at Washington by which the Indians ceded to the United States, among other tracts in Alabama, Tennessee and Georgia, "nearly everything remain- ing to them" in North Carolina east of the Nantahala moun- tains; though individual reservations one mile square within the ceded area were allowed a number of families, who pre- ferred to remain and become citizens. In order to conform to the laws of civilization, those who were to remain adopted a regular republican form of government modeled after that of the United States, with New Echota, a few miles above the present Calhoun, Ga., as the capital. John Ross was the first Cherokee president. They passed laws for the col- lection of taxes, and debts, for repairs of roads, for the support of schools and for the regulation of the liquor traffic; to punish horse stealing and theft, and to compel all marriages between white men and Indian women to be celebrated according to regular legal or church form, and to discourage polygamy. By a special decree the right of Blood Revenge, or capital punishment, was taken from the seven clans and vested in the authorities of the Indian nation. Death was the pun- ishment to individual Indians who might sell lands to the whites without the consent of the Indian authorities. White men were not allowed to vote or hold office in the nation.
YONAGUSKA, THE BLOOD AVENGER. The late Col. Allen T. Davidson told the writer that John Welch, a half-breed Frenchman, killed Leech, a full-blooded Cherokee, near old
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Valleytown in Cherokee county, and as Yonaguska was Leech's next of kin, he was therefore his blood avenger, and not only entitled to kill Welch, but the custom of the tribe made it his duty to do so. He, therefore, followed Welch first to the Smoky mountains, and then to Paint Rock; thence to the New Found range west of Asheville, and to Pickens, S. C., where Welch stopped and rested. Here it was, though, that Welch became infatuated with a white girl named Betty Bly, and told Betty that he feared that Yonaguska, whom he had seen loitering near, was seeking a chance to kill him. She then sought out Yonaguska and persuaded him to let Welch off.
THE BAPTISTS ESTABLISH THE FIRST CHEROKEE MISSION. In 1820 the Baptists founded five principal missions, one of which was in Cherokee county, on the site of the old Nachez town on the north side of Hiwassee river, just above the mouth of Peachtree creek. It was established at the instance of Currahee Dick, a prominent mixed - blood chief, and was placed in charge of the Rev. Evan Jones, known as the trans- lator of the New Testament into the Cherokee language, with James D. Wafford, a mixed-blood pupil, who compiled a spelling book in the same language, as his assistant. The late Rev. Humphrey Posey afterwards became principal of this mission, and did a wonderful amount of work for the improvement and education of the Cherokees. The place is still known as "The Mission Farm," and is one of the most productive and desirable in the mountains. Worcester and Boudinot's translation of Matthew, first published at New Echota, Ga., in 1829, was introduced to the Kituwas Chero- kees, and in the absence of missionaries, was read from house to house, after which Rev. Ulrich Keener, a Methodist, began to preach at irregular intervals, and was soon followed by Baptists.
SEQUOYA AND HIS SYLLABARY. About this time (1821) Sikwayi (Sequoya) a half or quarter breed Cherokee, known among the whites as George Gist or Guest or Guess, invented the Cherokee syllabary or alphabet, which was "soon recog- nized as an invaluable invention for the elevation of the tribe, and within a few months thousands of hitherto illiterate Cherokees were able to read and write their own language, teaching each other in the cabins and along the roadside.
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. It had an immediate and wonderful effect on Chero- . kee development, and on account of the remarkable adaptation of the syllabary to the language, it was only necessary to learn the characters to be able to read at once. . . In the
fall of 1824 Atsi or John Arch, a young native convert, made a manuscript translation of a portion of St. John's gospel, in the syllabary, this being the first Bible translation ever given to the Cherokee." On the 21st of February, 1828, "the first number of the newspaper Taslagi Tsulehisanun, the Cherokee Phoenix, 'printed' in English and Cherokee, was pub- lished at New Echota from type cast for that purpose in Bos- ton under the supervision of the noted missionary, Worces- ter. Sequoya was born, probably about 1760 at Luck-a-See- gee town in Tennessee, just outside of old Fort Loudon, near where old Choto had stood." Here his mind dwelt also on the old tradition of a lost band of Cherokee living somewhere toward the western mountains. In 1841 and 1842, with a few Cherokee companions and with his provisions and papers loaded in an ox cart, he made several journeys into the west, and was received everywherewith kindness by even the wildest tribes. Disappointed in his philologic results, he started out in 1843 in quest of the lost Cherokees, who were believed to be some- where in northern Mexico, but, being now an old man and worn out by hardship, he sank under the effort and died alone and unattended, it is said, near the village of San Fernando, Mexico, in August of that year. The Cherokees had voted him a pension of three hundred dollars which was continued to his widow, "the only literary pension in the United States." The great trees of California (Sequoia gigantea) were named in his honor and preserve his memory.
OUTRAGES FOLLOW DAHLONEGA GOLD DISCOVERY. The discovery of gold in the Dahlonega district caused the Georgia legislature on the 20th of December, 1828, to annex that part of the Cherokee country to Georgia and to annul all Cherokee laws and customs therein. This act was to take effect June 1, 1830, the land was mapped into counties and divided into "land lots" of 160 acres and "gold lots" of 40 acres, which were to be distributed among the white citizens of Georgia by public lottery. Provision was made for the settlement of contested lottery claims among the white citizens, but no Indian could bring a suit or testify in court. "About the
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same time the Cherokees were forbidden to hold councils, or to assemble for any public purpose or to dig for gold upon their own lands." The outrages which followed are disgrace- ful to the white men of that section and time.
TREATY OF REMOVAL OF 1835. On the 29th of December, 1835, by the treaty of New Echota, "the Cherokee nation ceded to the United States its whole remaining territory east of the Mississippi for the sum of $5,000,000 and a common joint interest in the territory already occupied by the western Cherokees in what is now the Indian Territory, with an addi- tional smaller tract on the northeast in what is now Kansas. Improvements were to be paid for, and the Indians were to be removed at the expense of the United States, and sub- sisted for one year after their arrival in the new country. The removal was to take place within two years. . " It was also distinctly agreed that a limited number of Cherokees might remain behind and become citizens after they had been adjudged "qualified or calculated to become useful citizens," together with a few who held individual reservations under former treaties. But this provision was struck out by Presi- dent Jackson, who insisted that the "whole Cherokee people should remove together." The treaty was ratified by the senate May 23, 1836, the official census of 1835 having fixed the number of Cherokees in North Carolina at 3,644.
THE PATHETIC STORY OF THE REMOVAL. This story ex- ceeds in weight of grief and pathos any in American history; for notwithstanding that nearly 16,000 out of a total of 16,- 542 Indians in North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia and Ala- bama, had signed a protest against the treaty, Gen. Wool was sent to carry the treaty into effect; but so fixed was the determination of the Cherokees to remain that Gen. Win- field Scott was sent to remove them by force. He took com- mand, his forces amounting to 7,000 men-regulars, militia and volunteers, with New Echota as his headquarters, May 10, 1838, only 2,000 Cherokees having gone voluntarily. Old people tell of the harrowing scenes which accompanied the hunting down and removal of these brave people who clung to their homes with all the passion of the Swiss.
REMOVAL FORTS. The following forts or stockades were built for the collection of the unwilling Cherokees : Fort Lindsay, on the south side of the Little Tennessee at the
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junction of the Nantahala; Fort Scott, at Aquone, twenty miles further up the Nantahala; Fort Montgomery, at what is now Robbinsville; Fort Hembrie, at what is now Hayes- ville; Fort Delaney, at Old Valleytown, and Fort Butler, at Murphy.
WHY SOME WERE ALLOWED TO REMAIN. Old man Tsali, or Charley, with his wife, his brother and his three sons and their families, was seized and taken to a stockade near the junction of the Tuckaseegee and the Little Tennessee rivers, where they spent the night, during which their squaws con- cealed knives and tomahawks about their clothing. When this band, escorted by soldiers, reached the mouth of what is now called Paine's branch, opposite Tuskeegee creek, in the Little Tennessee, the squaws passed the knives and hatchets to the men, and they fell upon the soldiers and killed two of them upon the spot, and so mortally wounded a third, Geddings by name, that he died at Calhoun, Tenn. Still another soldier was struck on the back of his head with a tomahawk, and so hurt that although he retained his seat upon his horse, he died three miles below at what is now called Fairfax, on the right bank of the Little Tennessee. Two stones still mark his grave, while the two who were killed at Paine's branch were buried there. If the skirts of the coat of the lieutenant in charge had not torn away when he was seized on each side by an Indian, it is likely that he would have been dragged from his horse and killed, too. But he escaped, and the Indians went immediately to the Great Smoky mountains scarcely ten miles away, and their recapture by the heavy dragoons sent after them within a short time was impossible. These sol- diers camped just below where Burton Welch used to live, one and a half miles below Bushnel, and a mountain peak nearby on which they stationed sentinels, is still called Watch Mountain. In fact, these escaping Indians had spent the night at the house of Burton Welch's father when their squaws hid the weapons in their skirts. It is said that the late Col. W. H. Thomas had accompanied this party as far as the mouth of Noland's creek, where he left them for the purpose of getting another small party to join them the next day; and that if he had continued with Old Charley's party it is probable that no attempt would have been made to W. N. C .- 37
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escape, such was his influence over them. The names of the male Indians who escaped were Charley, Alonzo, Jake, George and a boy named Washington, but pronounced by the Cherokees Wasituna. Old Charley's squaw was named Nancy.
TERMS OF COMPROMISE. Mr. James Mooney's account in the Nineteenth Ethnological report states that after Gen. Scott became convinced that his soldiers could not recapture Old Charley and his band, he made an agreement with Col. Thomas to the effect that if he would cause the arrest of Old Charley and his adult sons he would use his influence at Wash- ington to get permission that all who had not yet been removed should remain. Also, that Col. Thomas went to the leader of those who had not been captured, Utsala or "Lichen, " by name, who had made his headquarters at the head of Ocona- luftee, and told him that if he assisted in bringing in Charley and his band, Utsali and his followers, 1,000 in number, would be allowed to remain. Utsali consented and Thomas returned and reported to Gen. Scott, who offered to furnish an escort for Thomas on a proposed visit to Charley, who was hiding in a cave of the Great Smoky mountains. But Thomas declined the escort and went alone to the cave and got Charley to consent to surrender voluntarily, which he did shortly afterwards, thus making a vicarious sacrifice for the rest of his people.
AN EYE WITNESSES' ACCOUNT. But Mr. and Mrs. Burton Welch used to tell an altogether different story. They were living there at the time, and presumably knew much more than those who got their information at second hand sixty years later. Their account is that Utsali and his followers ran Old Charley and his sons down and brought them to Gen. Scott's soldiers; but insisted on killing them themselves instead of having them shot by the soldiers. But they had not been captured together, Alonzo, Jake and George having been caught first at the head of Forney's creek, and shot at a point on the right bank of the Little Tennessee nearly opposite the mouth of Panther creek, and just below Burton Welch's home, where Jake gave a soldier ten cents to give to his squaw, that being all he had on earth to leave her. The three trees to which they were tied are now dead, but Burton Welch, who when a boy witnessed the execution, used to declare that
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these trees never grew any larger after having been made to serve as stakes for the shedding of human blood. These three Indians are buried in one grave near by, but there is now nothing to mark the spot.
OLD CHARLEY IS KILLED AND HIS SQUAW MOURNS. It was some time afterwards that Old Charley was caught in the Smokies, brought to within a short distance below what is now Bryson City and shot by Indians. Mrs. Welch, who was a first cousin of Captain James P. Sawyer of Asheville, saw Old Charley killed. This was before her marriage to Bur- ton Welch, and she remembers that Charley had a white cloth tied around his forehead, and that she saw it stain red before she heard the report of the guns of the firing squad. The fugitive squaws were never punished. But Charley's squaw came to Mrs. Welch's father's house, where she was shown Old Charley's grave. She sat down beside it and piled up the sand with her hands until she made a mound, and then rocked herself to and fro and cried. Mrs. Welch went shortly after- wards to Old Charley's former home, one mile from the mouth of the Nantahala river. She spoke of the deserted look of the place, the little cabin with its open door, and old Nancy's spinning-wheel, her loom and warping bars, while outside, in the chimney corner, was Old Charley's plough-stock and harness, the traces of which had been made of hickory bark.
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