USA > Virginia > Tazewell County > Tazewell County > History of Tazewell county and southwest Virginia, 1748-1920 > Part 6
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In 1910 the Eastern Shawnees numbered 107; the Absentee Shawnees 481; and those who became a part of the Cherokee Nation were about 800, making a total of about 1400 for the entire tribe in Oklahoma. The latest estimates given in the 1916 report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs show that the Eastern Shawnees numbered 152, of whom only 4 are full blood, 26 one-half blood or more, and 122 less than half blood. From this same report it is seen that the number of Absentee Shawnees is 569, of whom 472 are full blood, 80 are half blood, or more; and 17 less than half blood. The 800 Shawnees who were incorporated with the Chero- kees in 1869 seem to have lost their identity as a tribe, and from intermarriage or adoption are now regarded as Cherokees.
The latest Government estimate places the entire Shawnee popu-
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lation in Oklahoma at 3,752. Of these 2,746 speak the English language, 2,535 read and write the English language, 3,031 wear citizen's clothing, 3,053 are citizens of the United States, and 846 are voters. These things show that the once fierce wandering tribe is beginning to yield to the force of European civilization, and is gradually becoming absorbed by the American Nation. This happy result has come from proper treatment of the nomads by the Govern- ment, and is largely due to supplying them with schools.
VIRGINIA INDIANS -- THE PAMUNKEYS.
It may be said that too much space and effort have been given to the Aboriginal Period of a history that was intended primarily to be local in character. However, my work will be incomplete if no mention is made of the tribes that were living in Virginia east of the Blue Ridge when the English settlement was made at Jamestown.
Captain John Smith, who was undoubtedly the most important figure and character among the first settlers at Jamestown, is con- sidered by all historians very accurate in what he wrote about those portions of Virginia of which he had knowledge. He states that there were forty-three tribes in that part of the present Common- wealth that lies east of the Blue Ridge. Of these numerous tribes there are now only remnants of three left in the State, the Pamunkey, the Chickahominy, and the Mattapony; and none of the members of these tribes are of full blood.
The scholarly men who have investigated the origin and names of the various tribes of the American race say that the name Pamun- key is derived from pam, which means sloping, or slanting; and anki, which means hill, or rising upland. This refers to a tract of land in what is now King William County, Virginia, beginning at the junction of the Pamunkey and Mattapony rivers. There is a sloping hill or rising upland on this tract, and from this the Pamunkeys received their tribal name. Captain Smith said: "Where the river is divided the country is called Pamunke."
At the time the settlement was made at Jamestown, in 1607. the Pamunkey Indians were the leading tribe of the Powhatan Confed- eracy ; and they were then living about the junction of the Pamunkey and Mattapony rivers in the present King William County. Cap- tain Smith then estimated their number at nearly 300 warriors or a total of 1,000 persons. Their principal town, which was destroyed
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History of Tazewell County
by the English colonists in 1625. was near the present West Point. Virginia, at the junetion of the two rivers. In 1722 they numbered about two hundred, and in 1781, Thomas Jefferson estimated them at about sixty persons of tolerably pure blood.
They were very hostile to the English colonists after the death of Powhatan. until the death of their chief Opechancanough. and their frequent conflicts with the white men greatly redneed their numbers. But in 1654 they assisted the English in repelling an invasion made by the tribes from the mountains; and in this war lost their chief. Totopotomoi. and one hundred of their warriors. In 1675, their queen, who bore the title of "Queen Anne," widow of Totopotomoi, aided Governor Berkeley against the rebels in Bacon's rebellion. For this service the Indian queen received special recog- nition from the English Government. In 1722 they numbered only about 200, and by a treaty were put upon a reservation of three hundred acres in a bend of the Pamunkey River in King William County, opposite the historie place known as White House. They still occupy this same reservation and maintain their tribal organi- zation under State supervision. The population is entirely of mixed blood and numbers about one hundred and fifty of both sexes. They live chiefly by hunting and fishing. but engage in farming in a small way.
THE CHICKAHOMINY INDIANS.
The Chickahominy tribe was one of the strongest and most important in Virginia when the settlement was made at Jamestown in 1607. It was connected with the Powhatan Confederacy. but was not as much subject to the control of the so-called emperor as were the other tribes that recognized him as their ruler. They were living on the Chiekahominy River when the colony was planted at Jamestown, and the tribe then had about 250 warriors, or. perhaps. some nine hundred persons of all ages and sexes. As early as 1613 they formed an alliance with the English settlers and assumed the name of Tassantessus, or Englishmen. There is now a band of mixed blood, numbering about 225 persons, who are the descendants of the ancient tribe, but with no regular tribal organization. They live on a reservation on both sides of the Chickahominy River in the eoun- ties of New Kent and Charles City; and are intimately associated with the Pamunkey and Mattapony tribes. Their principal pursuits are hunting and fishing.
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THE MATTAPONY.
There was a small tribe living on the river which is now called Mattapony, in Virginia. This tribe had the same name as the river upon which they lived. Captain John Smith on his map gave the name "Mattapanient" to the town in which they lived, and it was located in the upper part of the present James City County. near the mouth of Chickahominy River. It was a very small tribe but a member of the Powhatan Confederacy. In 1608, the year after the settlement at Jamestown. the tribe had only thirty men, or a total of perhaps one hundred persons. In 1781, according to Jefferson, they numbered only fifteen or twenty and were largely of negro blood. According to the last eensus there were about fifty persons of mixed blood living on a small State reservation on the south side of the Mattapony River, in King William County. They are closely related to the Pamunkey tribe, whose reservation is only ten miles distant.
THE INDIANS IN TAZEWELL COUNTY.
In that Chapter of his history entitled "Introduction To Indian Wars of Tazewell." Bickley says:
"I have thought proper to trace the history of the Indians, who have, since 1539, inhabited Southwestern Virginia. These have been the Xualans, Shawnees, and Cherokees, the latter of whom will not be noticed at length. History, indeed. throws but little light on this interesting subject, yet, I imagine. more than is gen- erally supposed."
Dr. Biekley permitted his imagination to get away with him when he asserted that a mythical tribe called Xualans and the Shaw- nees, in succession, inhabited Southwest Virginia since 1539, until the coming here of the whites. He also drew largely on his imagin- ation by asserting that De Soto with his band of explorers visited the Upper Holston and Clinch Valley regions, that is, "the counties of Tazewell and Washington, Va., as early as 1540." The Bureau of American Ethnology, which, in the Handbook of American Indians, gives the names of the hundreds of tribes and thousands of subordinate tribes that inhabited the North American Continent during the many centuries preceding the coming of the white men to the continent, makes no mention of the Xualans. The Handbook
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History of Tazewell County
is compiled from the investigations made by numbers of the most learned and diligent ethnologists, archaeologists, and investigators of the Indian race, and none of these found any traces of the so-called Xualan tribe. Bancroft, the diligent researcher and America's greatest historian, says not one word about the Xualans. There is no existing reliable evidence to prove that a tribe called Xualans ever inhabited Southwest Virginia. Nor is there anything to show that any part of Tazewell County was occupied at any time by any portion of either the Cherokee or Shawnee tribes for other purposes than hunting grounds. The Cherokees were chiefly an agricultural people, and they built their permanent homes in a milder climate, where the land was easier cleared of the forests and the soil more easily tilled than in this section of Virginia. When the first settlers came to the Clinch Valley they found the whole region a dense forest, abounding in trees that were of five hundred or a thousand years' growth. No marks were discovered on the soil showing that it had ever been cultivated by the Indians, and no implements, even of the rudest kind, have been found here that were used by the aborigines for agricultural purposes.
To support his claim that an extinct tribe called the Xualans. once occupied the Clinch Valley, Bickley says: that traces of many forts and towns were to be scen in 1852 in Southwest Virginia. He says:
"These cannot be Cherokee forts, though they captured the Xualans, and hence became masters of the country, for they do not build forts in the same manner; beside, the trees growing on some of them, prove, beyond doubt, that they have been evacuated three hundred years. That they were towns as well as forts, is proven by the existence of many fragments of earthenware, etc., found on or around them, and from their shape and general location they were certainly forts."
"They were circular, varying in size from three hundred to six hundred feet in diameter. An embankment of earth was thrown up some five or six feet, and, perhaps, this mounted by palisades. A few of these towns or forts were built of stone and sometimes trenches surrounded them. A stone fort of great size, stood in Abb's Valley, in Tazewell County, Virginia, and has but lately been
removed. * ** * The remains of a remarkable fort are to be seen on the lands of Mr. Crockett, near Jeffersonville, having evident
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traces of trenches, and something like a drawbridge. This fort has been evacuated, judging from the timber on it, over two hundred years."
These forts or fortifications were either built by the Cherokees or some one of the tribes that contested with them the right to use the Clinch Valley as a hunting ground. More than two hundred years before the time Bickley was engaged in writing the history of Tazewell County, the Iroquois had driven the Cherokees from their hunting grounds in what is now known as Southwest Virginia ; and the Northern Indians held dominion over this territory for many years. In fact, they claimed it by right of conquest until they ceded it to Great Britain by the treaty of Fort Stanwix in 1768. Both the Cherokees and the Iroquois built just such fortifications as Bickley describes and of which there were remains seen in 1852. The Cherokees built similar forts in Ohio before they migrated to the South; and the Iroquois built them in New York. The prehistoric remains mentioned by Bickley were, no doubt, originally fortifica- tions constructed by hunting parties of one or the other of these tribes, while they were hunting here in the summer or fall season.
In the eighteenth century the Cherokees and Shawnees asserted very fiercely rival claims to the Clinch Valley; and, no doubt, had many bloody encounters over the question as to who should occupy it. The last encounter between these two tribes took place in 1768; and the battle was fought on the top of Rich Mountain just west of Plum Creek Gap, and about three miles southwest of the town of Tazewell. Tradition says that about two hundred Cherokee warriors participated in the battle, and the inference is that the Shawnees had a superior force, as they were the attacking party. On the occasion of this battle the Cherokees protected their position on the top of the mountain with a temporary breastwork or fort. Bickley says: "It consisted of a simple embankment, about three or four feet high, running east and west along the top of the moun- tain about eighty yards, and then turning off at right angles to the north or down the mountain side. The Shawanoes commenced the ascent of the mountain before night of the first day, but finding their enemies so strongly fortified. withdrew and posted themselves in a position to commence the attack early the following morning."
The emergency fort built by the Cherokees on the top of Rich Mountain was so similar in feature to the fort in Abb's Valley and
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History of Tazewell County
the one on Mr. Crockett's place near Jeffersonville, that it warrants the belief that these two were also emergency forts, that they were built by the Cherokees to protect themselves against a superior foe, and not for permanent occupation. This was the last battle between the Indians that took place in Tazewell, and the last in which the Cherokees and Shawnees were engaged as foes. Though the battle was fought one hundred and fifty years ago, traces of the breast- works, hastily erected by the Cherokees, are still plainly discern-
The above scene is a historic one. It is made from a photograph of Plum Creek Valley, as it now appears, where the first settlements were made in Tazewell County. The camera was placed a short distance north of the residence of the late T. E. George; and Thomas Witten, the first settler, built his eabin in 1767 about half a mile west of the hay rick shown in the picture. Looking southward, Rich Mountain is seen : and the little black cross marks "Battle Knob", where the Chero- kees and Shawnees fought their last battle in 1768. Some two miles west of Battle Knob can be seen "Morris' Knob", which has an elevation of 4,510 feet above sea level. The view from Morris' Knob is one of the grandest on the North American Continent.
ible. This strongly substantiates the theory that the forts mentioned by Biekley were built for emergency defence by either the Chero- kees or the Iroquois. who. ro doubt, engaged in frequent encounters for the possession of the splendid hunting grounds in the Clinch Valley region.
Biekley says: "Both parties were well armed and the contest nearly equal, the Shawanees having most men. while the Cherokees had the advantage of the breastworks. Through the long day the battle raged with unabated vigor. and when night closed in. both
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parties built fires and camped on the ground. During the night the Cherokees sent to Butler and Carr for powder and lead, which they furnished. When the sun rose the following morning the battle was renewed with the same spirit in which it had been fought the previous day. In a few hours, however, the Shawanees were com- pelled to retire. The loss on both sides was great, considering the numbers engaged. A large pit was opened and a common grave received those who had fallen in this last battle fought between red men in this seetion."
Dr. Biekley further states that he received an aeeount of the battle from a person who received it from Carr, an eye- witness. Dr. Bickley was misinformed as to who furnished powder and lead to the Cherokees after their ammunition became exhausted. Thomas Witten was then living with his family at the Crabapple Orchard; and he was the man who supplied the Indians with powder and lead. This statement is made from substantial traditions that have come down through three several branches of Thomas Witten's descendants. Samuel Cecil was a grandson of Thomas Witten, the pioneer settler, and was born in 1788 at a point within less than a mile of where his grandfather lived. He was told by his grandfather. and by his mother, who was Nancy Witten previous to her marriage with William Cecil, that Thomas Witten gave the powder to the Indians. Samuel Cecil was the grandfather of the author, and I received this information through him. Judge Samuel C. Graham's grandfather was William Witten, a grandson of Thomas Witten. and Judge Graham got a similar account through his grandfather. John S. Bottimore is a grandson of Thomas Witten 3rd, who was a grandson of Thomas Witten, the first settler; and Mr. Bottimore has received the same tradition from his grandfather. Carr was a professional hunter and trapper, still lingering in the Clineh Valley, and may, possibly, have witnessed the battle between the Indians.
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History of Tazewell County
CHAPTER III.
THE INDIANS, THEIR CIVILIZATION, GOVERNMENT, MANNERS AND RELIGION.
The civilization of the aboriginal inhabitants of the North American Continent was not only very crude but very diverse from that which was brought here by the Europeans. Man, wherever he has been found, even in the wildest forms of life, has disclosed a sociable nature, and a disposition to have a home somewhere, of some kind. This natural love of man for society and companionship caused the North American aborigines to have both families and communities. As a natural sequence, every Indian community had its social organization and a form of government. The Handbook of American Indians, issued by the Bureau of American Ethnology, has this to say about the social and other organizations of the aboriginal inhabitants :
"The known units of the social and political organization of the North American Indians are the family, the clan or gens, the phratry, the tribe, and the confederacy. Of these, the tribe and the confederation are the only units completely organized. The structures of only two or three confederations are known, and that of the Iroquois is the type example. The confederation of the tribes was not usual, because the union of several tribes brought together many conflicting interests which could not be adjusted without sacrifices that appeared to overbalance the benefits of per- manent confederation, and because statesmanship of the needed breadth and astuteness was usually wanting. Hence tribal govern- ment remains as the prevailing type of social organization in this area. In most tribes the military were carefully discriminated from the civil functions. The civil government was lodged in a chosen body of men usually called chiefs, of whom there were commonly several grades. Usually the chiefs were organized in a council exercising legislative. judicial, and executive functions in matters pertaining to the welfare of the tribe. The civil chief was not by virtue of his office a military leader. Among the Iroquois the civil chief in order to go to war had to resign his civil function dur- ing his absence on the warpath."
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Every structural unit which composed the tribal organization was invested with and exercised authority to hold councils for the consideration and determination of its own affairs. They had family councils, clan councils, tribal councils, and confederation councils, each of them exercising a separate and independent juris- diction. Sometimes the Indians held grand councils, at which ques- tions of vital interest to the tribe were considered and determined. A grand council was composed of the chiefs and sub-chiefs, the matrons, and the head-warriors of the tribe. With a very few exceptions the chiefs of the various tribes were merely the leaders and not the rulers. Most of the chiefs were elective and were chosen because of some particular qualification, such as courage and skill in war, oratorical powers, wisdom in council, and so forth.
The Indians had no written language, and, therefore, could and did not have any written code of laws. Their forms of government were the outgrowth of their instincts and wants as individuals and communities ; and were conducted with as little restraint upon personal liberty as possible. Savage opinion sanctioned no laws that restricted the exercise of their passions and restrained personal freedom. Their simple forms of government were established upon the basal concept "that freedom is the law of nature."
A historian has said: "The most striking characteristic of the race was a certain sense of personal independence, wilfulness of action, freedom from restraint." Consequently slavery was unknown among the aboriginal tribes who occupied the regions east of the Mississippi. A mild form of bondage, however, did exist with the primitive tribes that inhabited the region that bordered on the Upper Pacific Coast. With the exception of this arca, no traces of real slavery have been found among the Indians who lived north of Mexico. The early French and Spanish historians fell into the error of using the terms "slave" and "prisoner" interchangeably, thereby leaving the impression that certain of the tribes of whom they were writing did make slaves of their enemies, those who were made prisoners in the inter-tribal wars. It is true that the men, women, and children who were made captives were always con- sidered spoils of war, but they were not enslaved. They were either killed or adopted into an Indian family, the institution of adoption being very general among the numerous tribes. "When a sufficient number of prisoners had been tortured and killed to glut the savage passions of the conquerors, the rest of the captives were
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History of Tazewell County
adopted, after certain preliminaries, into the several gentes, each newly adopted member taking the place of a lost husband, wife, son, or daughter, and being invested with the latter's rights, privileges. and duties."
The chief motive of the red men for the exercise of the custom of adoption was to replace the losses their tribes suffered in men killed in battle, and women and children who were killed or captured by their enemies. This was done to keep the tribes from dwindling away, as did most of the Virginia tribes that the white men found east of the Blue Ridge. The custom was also used by the Indians toward their white captives. John Salling, who was made a prisoner in 1726 by a Cherokee hunting party, at or near the Lick where the city of Roanoke is now located, was afterwards captured from the Cherokees by the Illinois Indians, and adopted by a squaw of that tribe, to take the place of her son who had been killed in battle. Thomas Ingles, who was captured when a small boy at the Draper's Meadows massacre in 1755, was adopted into a Shawnee family in Ohio. He lived with the Indian family for thirteen years, and became so attached to his Indian father, mother. sisters. brothers. and little squaw sweethearts that he refused to leave them when his white father sent a man by the name of Baker to Ohio to ransom and bring him home.
James and Polly Moore, and Martha Evans, who are known in history as the "Captives of Abb's Valley," after they were taken to the Shawnee towns in Ohio were similarly adopted. They were so kindly treated by those who made them members of their families that they always spoke in affectionate terms of the Indians after their return from captivity. Bickley says: When Martha Evans and Polly Moore were among the French, they fared much worse than among the Indians. The French had plenty, but were miserly and seemed to care little for their wants. The Indians had little, but would divide that little to the last partiele."
INDIAN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS.
After stating that the Indians had no written language and no code of laws, it may seem paradoxical to say that they had systems of education. Yet they did educate their young with as much care along certain lines as any civilized nation gives to the training of its children. The Indian children were instructed in vocational or economic pursuits, such as hunting, fishing, handicraft. agriculture
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and household work. And in some of the tribes they were taught oratory, art, customs, etiquette, social obligations, and tribal lore.
The red men had a system that in modern parlance would be called kindergarten. At a very tender age the children were put to work at serious business, the girls to household duties and the boys to learn the most important pursuits followed by the men. The children were supplied with appropriate toys or models, which they were required to use as patterns for fashioning similar articles ; and. unconsciously. they would develop into basket-makers, weavers. potters, water-carriers, cooks, archers, stone-workers, and agricul- turists. The range of instruction was regulated by the pursuits and customs of the tribe to which the children belonged.
When the aborigines came into intimate contact with the white men, the Spaniards, the French, the English, the Dutch, and the Swedes, a new era of secular and industrial education was intro- duced among the Indians. Christian missionaries commenced their work in Florida, in Canada, in the Mississippi Valley, in Virginia. in New England, in New York, and in New Jersey. The main pur- pose of the missionaries was to convert the heathen natives to Christianity. Though they failed to accomplish much in that direc- tion, they did succeed in infusing into the Indians many of the industrial processes of the Europeans. From the colonists of the different nationalities that made settlements in North America the red men obtained and learned how to use firearms, metal tools. and domestic animals -- horses, sheep, cattle, goats, hogs, and poultry. Possession of these caused a gradual change to take place in the Indian system of education. One of the objects in colonizing Vir- ginia, mentioned in the charter of 1606 and repeated in that of 1621. was "to bring the infidels and savages to human civility and a settled and quiet government."
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