Cherokee of the Smoky Mountains
An in depth look into the history and origin of the Cherokees of the
Smoky Mountains. From the Papers of
Horace Kephart.
In
the southwestern corner of North Carolina is a band of Cherokee
Indians. By a strange streak of fate, they alone, of a once powerful
tribe, have been left in possession of a fragment of their ancient
realm. They hold what is known as the Qualla boundary, about ninety
square miles of rough country on the southerly slope of the Great
Smoky Mountains. From time immemorial this natural fastness has been
a refuge of their people in case of disaster.
The
Cherokees are of Iroquoian stock or affinity, and apparently of
northern origin. At some remote period they migrated southwestward
along a route long afterward followed by the first white settlers of
western Virginia and Carolina. With the high Appalachians as a center
and stronghold, they spread over the adjoining lowlands in seven of
our present States.
The
original nucleus of the tribe, in the South, seems to have been the
Kituhwa settlement, near the lower edge of what is now the Qualla
boundary, adjoining the site of Bryson City, North Carolina. Their
national capitol was Echota, just above the mouth of Tellico River,
in southwestern Tennessee.
It
was a quest for gold that first led white men into the Cherokee
country, and nearly three centuries later it was another gold fever
of the whites that wrought the Cherokees’ undoing.
In
1540 the Spanish explorer, Do Soto, came to an Indian town on the
lower Savannah that was governed by a woman chief or "queen."
here he was shown implements of copper that appeared to be mixed with
precious metal. These, he was told, came from a mountain province on
the north.
De
Soto seized the Indian queen as a prisoner and compelled her to go
with him as a guide. She, however, led him astray over mazy courses
and finally made her escape, leaving him in a bare wilderness with
his men and horses fairly worn out with hunger
De
Soto turned westward crossing "very rough and high ridges,"
to the upper waters of the French Broad, thence southerly until he
reached some Cherokee settlements, where he was hospitably received.
Still no gold was found, and the only treasure that he carried back
was a dressed buffalo skin, the first ever seen by white men.
Long
before their discovery by Europeans, the Cherokees had developed for
themselves the rudiments if civilization. They were not roving
hunters but dwelt in villages of log huts and cultivated the soil.
They raised corn, beans, potatoes, (probably some variety of sweet
potato) squashes and fruits: also practiced various simple
industries. Their tribal organization, though looser than the
confederacy of the Iroquois, was yet coherent enough for the whites
to recognize as the "Cherokee Nation."
Scotch
and Irish traders began to traffic with the Cherokees about the
middle of the 17th century. Some of them remained and intermarried
with the Indians, gaining much influence over them. Yet whatever
tendency such mingling may have had toward bringing the Cherokees
into friendly relations with the British was neutralized by the
haughty bearing and ruthless policy of the border settlers and
provincial governments.
It
is a commonplace of history that our own colonists, wherever they
encountered Indians, stirred up bad blood and then proceeded to spill
it. The French, for the most part only traders, and relatively few in
number, were content to let the Indians live their own life in their
own way. For this reason the French had little trouble with the
natives. The English, on the contrary, came in swarms, with greed of
land and a fixed purpose to seize and hold. So it resulted that when
war broke out between the French and English (in America), most of
the native tribes sided with the New France.
In
this crisis the Cherokees found themselves in a pinch between
conflicting interests. Their heads really were with the French, but
they were constrained to ally themselves with the English for
protection against their hereditary foes, the neighboring Indian
tribes, who had promptly gone over to the French side.
They
were destined to rue the bargain, for they fell out with the English
long before the war was over. They were attacked by them and overrun,
half their warriors were killed, and the survivors were brought to
such extremity by smallpox and starvation that they had to sue for
peace on any terms. This involved, of course, large cessions of
land.
In spite of this experience the Cherokees again joined
sides with England when the struggle came between Colonies and Crown.
Their reason was that American frontiersmen had already begun surging
westward and taking everything they could hold by force of arms.
Tennessee and Kentucky were partly occupied by them. The Cherokees
found themselves almost surrounded by whites of a class that regarded
red men simply as vermin to be exterminated. Against this
encompassing death, England offered them protection.
In the
summer of 1776, the Americans quickly mobilized their riflemen and
struck at once, in overwhelming force, from four different
directions. They destroyed nearly all the Cherokee towns, granaries,
orchards, and growing crops; killed or drove off the cattle and
horses; slaughtered all Indians who resisted; and scattered the
wretched remainder into the wildest recesses of the mountains. Here
there was no sustenance but roots, chestnuts, acorns, and such few
animals as harbor in those dreary roughs.
It is not nice to
recall, but it is naked truth, that our backwoodsmen, regarding the
Indians as mere heathen and cumberers of the earth, displayed the
same ferocity in fighting them as is shown by savages and by whites
gone wild with fanaticism. They slew without regard for age or sex.
They scalped the victims, and collected bounties for those scalps
from their own governments. They did not consign captives to death by
torture, after the Indian fashion, but they coolly murdered the
feeble and carried away the strong to be sold into lifelong
slavery.
In Col. William Christian’s army of Virginians was
a man named Ross, who left a journal of their expedition against the
Cherokee towns in western Carolina. In describing a personal
encounter during one of the battles, he said
"A stout
Indian engaged a sturdy young white man who was a good bruiser and
expert at gouging. After breaking their guns on each other they laid
hold of one another, when the Cracker had his thumbs instantly in the
fellow’s eyes, who roared and cried ‘canaly’—enough, in
English. ‘Damn you,’ says the white man, ‘you can never have
enough while you are alive.’ He then threw him down, set his foot
upon his head, and scalped him alive; then took up one of the broken
guns and knocked out his brains. It would have been fun if he had let
the latter action alone and sent him home without his nightcap to
tell his countrymen how he had been treated."
‘1 hat a
white savage should do such a thing to a red savage is not so
strange, but that a fairly educated man of some standing should be
capable of such comment is hideously illuminating to those who seek
true pictures of the 18th century border life.
Some of the
Cherokees continued to fight the colonies until the close of the
Revolution, but the main body succumbed after the first disaster and
surrendered to the adjoining States a great part of their
territory.
The first treaty with the new government of the
United States was concluded in 1785. All of the Cherokee lands east
of the Blue Ridge, and much of the northern boundary, were ceded to
the whites. But the ink was hardly dry on the parchment before there
began a conflict between State and Federal authority as to the
remaining Indian land. Intruders swarmed into it. The Indians
protested in vain. Bloody forays and reprisals were followed by open
war in 1792.
Six years later another peace treaty was
concluded, with more cessions of land, and with the usual guarantee
on the part of the United States that thereafter the Cherokees should
be left in possession of their country forever.
The retirement
of the British to Canada, and the abandonment by Spain of claims east
of the Mississippi, left both the northern and the southern tribes
without any foreign backing; but the second war with Great Britain
gave them a fresh opportunity. The Shawnee chief, Tecumseh, whose
confederacy had been shattered at Tippecanoe, now rallied his forces
and made common cause with England in the north. The Creeks in the
south took to the warpath in 1813.
In this contest the
Cherokees sided with the Americans. It was largely due to their help
that General Andrew Jackson won a final victory over the Creeks at
the Horseshoe Bend
(Tohopeka),
as a result of which most of the Creek territory passed over to the
United States. How Jackson requited their aid will be seen in the
sequel.
At the opening of the 19th century, the Cherokees had
recovered from the ravages of war and were making rapid progress in
the arts of peace. Their number had increased to about 20,000. Their
fields and orchards were well cared for and prolific. Nearly every
Indian had two or more horses, some of them owned cattle, and there
was an abundance of hogs and poultry. The Federal government was
encouraging industry by introducing plows and spinning wheels and
looms.
There were some able men in the Nation, educated and
quite as fit to lead or represent their people as the officers or
politicians of the neighboring whites. Many were of mixed blood,
descended in part from resident traders of the pre-Revolutionary
period. These were not shiftless adventurers of "squaw-man"
type but more like the Hudson Bay factors, men of good stock and
character, who married regularly into the tribe and sent their
children away to be educated or brought in private teachers from
outside.
Such were the Daugherrys and the Adairs, the Rosses
and the Woffords. Nancy Ward, a woman of great influence who was
friendly to the Americans, was the daughter of a British officer by
the sister of Atakullakulla, principal chief of the Cherokee Nation.
General Samuel Houston, it may be remembered, took for his second
wife the daughter of a Cherokee chief.
The Cherokees still
remained in recognized possession of a region as large as Ohio, about
half of it being within the present limits of Tennessee, and the rest
in Georgia, Alabama, and the southwest corner of North Carolina. This
is marked on the old maps "Cherokee Country" or "Cherokee
Nation," the United States claiming no jurisdiction over it.
If
the Indians had nothing but the Federal government to deal with they
might perhaps have secured just treatment. President Jefferson
acknowledged their title and sovereignty within the limits fixed by
treaty. It was a region very desirable for the future expansion of
the whites, and coveted by them, but to which they had neither legal
nor moral right. t had been guaranteed to the Indians in perpetuity
by the Government.
But our own Union in those days was loosely
knit. The boundaries of those States bordering on the Cherokee
country had been run without regard for Indian claims. Georgia, which
then included all of what are now Alabama and Mississippi, claimed
everything within its chartered limits, under the doctrine of State
sovereignty, regardless of treaties negotiated by the Federal
government.
Among the Cherokees themselves there was a
disturbing element—a conservative, irreconcilable group that
disdained civilization and dreamed of a free hunting ground far away
where they should never be molested by the whites.
Taking
advantage of this split between Indian factions, our Government then
sought to compromise by proposing that the conservative Cherokees
cede their proportionate share of land in return for a tract in the
West, where they could enjoy the unfettered life of hunters and
follow their primitive ancient ways. A treaty was negotiated, not
with the Cherokee Nation but with a few chiefs of these malcontents,
whereby considerable areas in Georgia and Tennessee were given in
exchange for a western reservation, to which some of the Indians
emigrated.
The main body of the Cherokees bitterly protested
that this treaty had been effected by improper means and influences,
without authority of their Nation, and could only be regarded as
another move toward driving them from the land of their fathers. They
pointed to the evidences of their own progress in civilization and
begged that they be not forced to abandon this hard-won status and
exiled to a wild land where stress of environment, and the hostility
of native western tribes, would tend to make them revert to
savagery.
Their pleas fell on deaf ears. Still another treaty
was virtually thrust upon them by which they lost more than
one-fourth of their territory, and this was declared to be a "final
adjustment" of all claims and differences.
In the face of
such discouragements, or perhaps stimulated by them, the Cherokees
now made extraordinary efforts to win recognition as a civilized and
independent people. In 1820, at the suggestion of Thomas Jefferson,
they formed a
republican
government modeled after that of the United States, and seven years
later they adopted a constitution.
This was an assumption of
distinct nationality, and their sovereignty was recognized by the
United States. They passed laws for the collection of taxes, for
repairs on roads, for the support of schools, for the suppression of
intemperance and polygamy, and for preventing the sale of lands to
the whites without the consent of the national council.
And
now occurred among these Indians, from within, an astounding
development of culture which for originality and swiftness of
accomplishment has no precedent nor parallel in the history of the
human race.
There was a Cherokee of mixed blood named Sequoya
(Se-quah-yah) who through an accident in hunting had become a cripple
for life. Being unable to follow the chase, he took to sedentary
occupations and developed considerable mechanical skill, especially
in silver-working. He never learned to speak English, and of course
could neither read nor write.
Sequoya had observed that the
whites had a way of "talking on paper" whereby messages
were sent and records were preserved. It set him to brooding over a
project for devising a similar system for his own people. Being an
old-fashioned Indian true to his own religion, he did not seek help
from the missionaries, and they in turn discouraged him. But by
himself he pondered long and earnestly over the mystery of the
talking paper.
Like every other inventor of writing he began
by trying to make a separate symbol for every word or idea. This
proved an utterly hopeless scheme. In Cherokee there were thousands
and tens of thousands of words. Even if so many symbols were
designed, yet no man could remember half of them.
After years
of hard study, in the face of ridicule and repeated failures, Sequoya
finally began analyzing his language into its component sounds. He
had no conception of vowels and consonants, but he picked out the
distinct syllables of his mother tongue and found there were only one
hundred and fifteen.
Then came the brilliant solution of his
problem; he would assign a separate character to each syllable, and
any word in he Cherokee language could be written. For example,
kalanu (raven) would be expressed by three symbols standing
respectively for ka, Ia, and nu.
From an old spelling book he
took the English alphabet and numerals, without the least idea of
their sound or significance, and finding there were not enough
characters for his purpose he devised others of his own. Most of the
double consonants in Cherokee being formed with the hissing sound of
s, he made a separate mark for it (when used as the initial of a
syllable) and so reduced his syllabary to eighty-five characters. The
mark for s and the one for the nasal u (like the un in hung) are the
only actual letters in his system, as the vowel characters are used
only when they form separate syllables.
The effect of this
invention was amazing. Any one who could speak Cherokee, having once
learned the sight and sound of these eighty-five marks, could at once
read and write the language with precision. There was no arbitrary
spelling to learn. Any Indian could pick up in a few weeks what it
takes our own children at least two years of hard work to acquire. A
bright child or adult could master the art of reading and writing in
a few days.
As if by magic the education of the Cherokees
became an accomplished fact. Through this invention of an illiterate,
thousands of them became literate, without one school being
established or one teacher hired.
Although Sequoya himself was
a pagan, and remained so to the end of his days, the first literary
fruit of his writing system was a translation of a part of St. John’s
gospel, made by a native convert.
In 1827, the Cherokee
Council resolved to establish a national newspaper in their own
language. Types for that purpose were cast in Boston. The press,
types, and paper were laboriously transported to the capital at New
Echota. The type cases and other furniture were made on the spot, an
office was set up in a log hut and thus began publication of the
Cherokee Phoenix, under the editorship of Elias Boudinot, a young
Indian who had been educated in Connecticut by the American Board of
Commissioners for Foreign Missions.
Meantime the formation by
the Cherokees of a nation government caused a rupture between the
Federal and State authorities. President Monroe approved the
suggestion of the Indian agent that the Cherokee lands be allotted,
the surplus sold for their benefit, and the Indians invested with
full rights of citizenship in the States where they resided. But
Tennessee, North Carolina, and Georgia refused to allow any Indians
to live within their boundaries on any pretext whatever. Georgia
further demanded cession of all Indian lands within the limits of her
charter.
Naturally the Cherokees protested that their limits
were defined by treaties with the United States, and they declared
that "It is the fixed and unalterable determination of this
Nation never again to cede one foot more of land."
The
Governor of Georgia in reply blamed the missionaries for the refusal
of the Indians to "move on," and informed the Federal
government that if it backed up the Indians and resisted occupancy of
their lands by Georgians it would have a fratricidal war on its
hands.
The thread of Indian tenure thus strained was soon
snapped by an unexpected turn of affairs. Gold was discovered in the
Cherokee country, and the white man’s greed burst all bonds of law
or morality. At the same time Andrew Jackson, an out-and-out Indian
hater, became President of the United States. From that moment the
doom of the Cherokees was sealed.
How the Cherokee Nation was
then driven at the point of the bayonet .to the far West, and by what
strange means a few hundred of their people, starving in the gulfs of
the Great Smoky Mountains, but still indomitable, were at last
permitted to retain a fragment of their ancient birthright, is one of
the most dramatic episodes in American history.
The existence
of gold in the Cherokee country was well known to Spanish adventurers
who followed after De Soto in the last half of the sixteenth century.
There is evidence that they carried on some mining operations in that
region. But they kept their knowledge secret, and it perished when
they left the country. Then a century went by before the English
appeared on the scene, and another century before any gold finds were
reported in the South.
In North Carolina the first mint
returns appeared in 1793. Six years later a 17-pound nugget was
discovered on the Reed plantation in Cabarrus County, and in 1823 one
was found that weighed 28 pounds. here and in adjoining districts the
placer ground was vigorously worked, and much nugget gold was taken
out.
From 1804 to 1827, all the gold produced in the United
States came from North Carolina. It was from the Piedmont region,
east of the mountains, and not within the Cherokee country.
In
1828, gold was discovered in the mountains of Burke County, North
Carolina, and the auriferous belt was at once traced southward along
the edge of the Indian territory. About the same time some of the
precious metal was found near the present Dahlonega, within the
boundary of the Cherokee Nation, but in the part claimed by Georgia.
Then the Georgians went wild.
In December, 1828, one month
after Andrew Jackson’s election to the presidency of the United
States, the Georgia legislature passed an act annexing that part of
the ‘Cherokee country within her chartered limits. It was further
ordained that after the first day of June, 1830, all laws, usages and
customs of the Cherokee Indians should be null and void within that
region; that all Indians remaining within it should be subject to
such laws as Georgia might enact; and that no Indian, or descendent
of an Indian, should be deemed a competent witness or a party to any
suit in any court where a white man was a defendent.
The
confiscated territory was then mapped out by state surveyors into
"land lots" of 160 acres each, and "gold lots" of
40 acres, which were put up at public lottery, each white citizen of
Georgia being given a ticket.
A caustic but truthful writer of
the time remarked that "intrusive mining ceased then and there,
and swindling mining commenced." So far as gold was concerned,
most of the supposed mineral veins proved to be barren; but the land
lottery was a different matter.
By laws passed later, every
Cherokee head of a family was nominally granted an allotment of 160
acres. This was a barren gift as other laws enacted made it
impossible for the Indian owner to defend his right in any court, or
to prevent the seizure of his homestead, or even of his own dwelling
house, by any white who saw fit to oust him. if he resisted he was
subject to imprisonment.
Any contract between a white man and
an Indian was declared invalid unless established by the testimony of
two white witnesses. This virtually cancelled all debts due from
white men to Indians. An Indian was forbidden to dig for gold on his
own land. Armed bands of Georgians now swept over the country,
seizing or destroying Indian property and assaulting any of the
owners who resisted.
There were among the Cherokees some white
teachers, missionaries and printers, who had been sent there by
permission of the President of the United States. In order to get rid
of them, or at least shut their mouths about the spoliation, Georgia
demanded that they take a special oath of allegiance to the State.
Those who refused were sent to the penitentiary.
In 1832, the
Supreme Court of the United States, of which John Marshall was
Chief-justice, decided that the Cherokees formed a distinct community
in which the laws of Georgia had no force, declared the act of
Georgia in seizing their lands to be void, and ordered the release of
the missionaries.
With regard to Georgia’s claim that the
land in question was within her chartered limits, the Supreme Court
ruled that a charter granted by the King of Great Britain to one of
her colonies merely regulated the rights of the discoverers among
themselves, hut could not affect the rights of those already in
possession as aboriginal occupants. It simply conferred the exclusive
right of purchasing such lands as the natives were willing to sell.
The treaties with the Cherokees bound them as a dependent ally of the
United States claiming and receiving the protection of a powerful
friend and neighbor, but without involving a surrender of their
national character.
It is said that when the action of the
court was announced, President Jackson remarked, "John Marshall
has made his decision, now let him enforce it." The Governor of
Georgia had defied the summons, with threat of rebellion. He now
ignored the Supreme Court’s decision and kept the imprisoned
missionaries at hard labor among felons for more than a year.
The
Cherokees were staring ruin in the face. As a last resort they
submitted to Washington a memorial proposing to satisfy Georgia by
ceding to her a part of their lands, they to be protected in
possession of the remainder for a definite period to be fixed by the
United States, after which, having disposed of their surplus lands,
they should become citizens of the various States within which they
resided.
Their plea might as well have been addressed to the
North Star. Bluntly they were told that the only way out of their
troubles was for them to give up the land of their fathers and
emigrate in a body to the far West.
It would be to the honor
of the Government if then and there an end had been made to
subterfuge and the bayonets of the ejectors frankly bared. No doubt
that would have been Jackson’s way if he had been dictator. But
some pretext of bargaining with the Indians had to be found to give
color of legality to their banishment. And now a sly politician, in
the garb of a Christian minister, steps into the plot.
Among
the Cherokees there was a small faction that favored the idea of
emigrating. With the leaders of this faction a commissioner, in the
person of Reverend J. F. Schermerhorn, drew up the terms of a treaty
binding the Cherokee Nation to surrender their whole territory and
move west, in consideration of a sum of money and a new territory
beyond the Mississippi. The deal, however, could not be concluded
until ratified by the Nation in full council assembled. Schermerhorn
then visited the Cherokee country and tried for six months to induce
the national council to approve this treaty; but he completely
failed. The reverend emissary then suggested to the Secretary of War
two alternative propositions:
(1) to get the signatures of
influential Cherokees by buying up their personal improvements at
their own valuation, if any degree reasonable; or (2) to make a
treaty with a part of the Cherokees and compel the rest to accept
it.
Jackson, although ruthless himself in dealing with the
Indians could not stomach this. He replied pointedly that the treaty,
if concluded at all, must be procured on fair and open terms, with no
special inducement to any individual, high or low, to win his aid or
influence, and without sacrificing the interest of the whole to the
cupidity of a few.
In October, 1835, the national council of
the Cherokees, led by their great chief John Ross, unanimously
rejected the treaty framed by Schermerhorn, even the original signers
repudiating it. The commissioner concealed his chagrin by reporting,
"I have pressed Ross so hard by the course I have adopted that
although he got the general council to pass a resolution declaring
that they would not treat on the basis of the five million dollars,
yet he has been forced to bring the Nation to agree to a treaty, here
or in Washington. They have used every effort to get by me and get to
Washington again this winter. They dare not yet do it."
He
explained the defection of the minority leaders by intimating that
they feared for their personal safety. "But," he piously
added, "the Lord is able to overrule all things for good."
The
reason for heading the Indians away from Washington was that Ross was
a man of such high character, ability, and impressive personality
that his influence was feared if he could get in touch with Congress,
and there was already a powerful opposition to the administration’s
Indian policy.
At the October meeting of the council, notice
was served on the Cherokee Nation to meet Schermerhorn and the
Governor of Tennessee, as commissioners, at New Echota in the
following December, for the purpose of negotiating a treaty, and it
was declared that all who failed to attend would be counted as
assenting to whatever treaty might be made.
But these
commissioners were not empowered to deal on any other basis than the
one that the Cherokees had already rejected. Therefore Ross
determined to carry their case direct to Washington. lie had moved
his home to Tennessee, to escape persecution by the Georgia
authorities; but they, hearing of his intended visit to Washington,
sent a body of Georgia militia across the line into Tennessee,
arrested Ross, confiscated all his private papers and the proceedings
of the council, and carried him into Georgia, where he was held for a
time without charge.
The poet, John Howard Payne, author of
Home, Sweet, Home, was stopping with Ross at the time, collecting
scientific data relating to the Indians. He likewise was seized, and
his manuscripts taken from him. At the same time the national
newspaper, The Cherokee Phoenix, was suppressed.
JOHN ROSS (GU’WISGUWI’)
(from McKenney and Hall’s copy
of the original painting of about 1835)
By
such acts as these, in plain defiance of the law of the land, the
Cherokees, at the most critical time in their history, were deprived
of their teacher, their national press, and the one spokesman whose
voice at the seat of government might have won them a hearing.
When
the time came for the assembling at New Echota, not over 300
Cherokees, men, women, and children, were present, out of a
population of over 17,000. The Governor of Tennessee was absent.
Schermerhorn, on the one side, and a dozen Indians as committeemen,
on the other, negotiated a treaty that sealed the doom of the whole
Cherokee Nation.
This instrument provided that the Cherokees
cede to the United States all of their remaining territory east of
the Mississippi for the sum of five million dollars and a common
joint interest in the region already occupied by those Cherokees who
had gone west at an earlier date. This region was situated within
what are now Oklahoma and Kansas. Improvements on the eastern lands
were to he paid for, and the Indians removed at the expense of the
Government and subsisted for one year after their arrival in the
West.
Soon after this farce had been enacted, the War
Department sent into the Cherokee country a confidential agent, Major
W. M. Davis. He reported as follows:—
"Sir, that paper,
. . . called a treaty, is no treaty at all, because not sanctioned by
the great body of the Cherokees, and made without their participation
or assent. I solemnly declare to you that upon its reference to the
Cherokee people it would be instantly rejected by nine-tenths of them
and I believe by nineteen-twentieths of them. There were not present
at the conclusion of the treaty more than one hundred Cherokee
voters. . . .The most cunning and artful means were resorted to
conceal the paucity of numbers present at the treaty. No enumeration
of them was made by Schermerhorn. The business of making the treaty
was transacted with a committee appointed by the Indians present, so
as not to expose their numbers. The power of attorney under which the
committee acted was signed only by the president and secretary of the
meeting, so as not to disclose their weakness...Mr. Schermerhorn’s
apparent design was to conceal the real number present and to impose
upon the public and the Govern-ment upon this point. ... I now warn
you and the President that if this paper of Schermerhorn’s called a
treaty is sent to the Senate and ratified you will bring trouble upon
the Government and eventually destroy the Cherokee Nation. The
Cherokees are a peaceable, harmless people, but you may drive them to
desperation, and this treaty cannot be carried into effect except by
the strong arm of force."
Chief Ross and a body of
national delegates sent protests to Washington with signatures
representing nearly 16,000 Cherokees. Resolutions denouncing the
treaty were presented to General Wool, commanding United States
troops who had been sent into the Cherokee country "to look down
opposition," and he forwarded them to Washington. The General
received for his pains a stinging reprimand from President Jackson,
who declared that no communication whatever would be held with Ross,
and that no council would be permitted even to discuss the
treaty.
The outrageous injustice suffered by the Cherokees,
without one retaliatory act on their part, excited the sympathy of
decent people everywhere. And yet the "treaty," so
infamously concocted and so brazenly sustained by the administration,
passed the Senate by the margin of one vote, and was proclaimed by
the President on the 23rd of May, 1836. The Indians were given two
years from this date in which to abandon the land of their fathers
and move a thousand miles to the western wilderness.
Some of
the ablest leaders in Congress, northern and southern, were bitterly
opposed to the treaty. It was denounced by Daniel Webster, Edward
Everett, Henry Wise and Henry Clay. A few years earlier Jackson’s
Indian policy had been scathingly rebuked by sturdy old Davy
Crockett, who cried shame upon it as unjust, dishonest, cruel and
shortsighted. "I had considered a treaty," said he, "as
a sovereign law of the land, and now I hear it considered as a matter
of expedience."
Crockett’s own constituents were
immediately interested in the removal of the Indians. He had been
elected to Congress from Tennessee as a Jacksonian Democrat, and he
had been threatened that if he did not advocate the forcible the
removal of the Cherokees his public career would be summarily cut
off; but he declared on the floor of the House that he could not
permit himself to please his constituents and his colleagues at the
expense of his honor and his conscience. Jackson never forgave him;
and the threat to eject Crockett from politics was carried
out.
False reports were now circulated that Chief Ross and
other leaders were seeking to excite the Cherokees to war, and the
militia of the surrounding states were put in the field to prevent or
suppress it. General R. E. Dunlap, commanding the East Tennessee
volunteers, found on the contrary that it was the Indians, and not
the whites, that needed protection. In a speech to his brigade at
their disbandment he said
"My course has excited the
hatred of a few of the lawless rabble in Georgia, who have long
played the part of unfeeling petty tyrants, and that to the disgrace
of the proud character of gallant soldiers and good citizens. I had
determined that I would never dishonor the Tennessee arms in a
servile service by aiding to carry into execution at the point of the
bayonet a treaty made by a lean minority against the will and
authority of the Cherokee People... . I soon discovered that the
Indians had not the most distant thought of war with the United
States, notwithstanding the common rights of humanity and justice had
been denied them."
General Wool was ordered to disarm the
Cherokees and overawe them by a display of force. While going about
this work he was manifestly disgusted with the role and sick at
heart. In one of his letters he declared
"If I could (and
I could not do them a greater kindness) I would remove every Indian
to-morrow beyond the reach of the white men, who, like vultures, are
watching, ready to pounce upon their prey and strip them of
everything they have or expect from the Government of the United
States. Yes, sir, nineteen-twentieths, if not ninety-nine out of
every hundred, will go penniless to the West."
Nemesis
fell heavily upon the very men who signed the treaty at New Echota as
Indian committeemen. Their leader, Major John Ridge, who had
negotiated the first treaty with Schermerhorn, was obliged to appeal
to President Jackson for protection against the harpies who beset him
and his neighbors: "They have got our lands and now they are
preparing to fleece us of the money accruing from the treaty. We
found our plantations taken either in whole or in part by the
Georgians—suits instituted against us for back rents for our farms.
These suits are commenced in the inferior courts, with the evident
design that , when we are ready to remove, to arrest our people, and
on these vile claims to induce us to compromise for our own release,
to travel with our families. Thus our funds will be filched from our
people, and we shall be compelled to leave our country as beggars and
in want.
"Even the Georgia laws, which deny us our oaths,
are thrown aside. . .. The lowest classes of the white people are
flogging the Cherokees with cowhides, hickories and clubs. We are not
safe in our houses—our people are assailed by day and night by the
rabble. Even justices of the peace and constables are concerned in
this business. This barbarous treatment is not confined to men, but
women are stripped also and whipped without law or mercy... Send
regular troops to protect us... If it is not done we shall carry off
nothing but the scars of the lash upon our backs, and our oppressors
will get all the money. We talk plainly, as chiefs having property
and life in danger."
A few of the Indians accepted
outfits and moved voluntarily to the West, but the main body sternly
refused to go. It took all of Ross’s influence to preserve the
peace, and military officers on the spot reported that he alone stood
between the whites and bloodshed. In February, 1837, General Wool
called the Cherokees together and made them a speech counciling
prudence and submission to the inevitable. The result he reported to
the Adjutant-General at Washington
"It is, however, vain
to talk to a people almost universally opposed to the treaty and who
maintain that they never made such a treaty. So determined are they
in their opposition that not one of all those who were present and
voted at the council held but a day or two since, however poor and
destitute, would receive either rations or clothing from the United
States lest they might compromise themselves in regard to the treaty.
These same people, as well as those in the mountains of North
Carolina, during the past summer preferred living upon the roots and
sap of trees rather than receive provisions from the United States,
and thousands, as I have been informed, had no other food for
weeks."
Soon after making this report, General Wool was
relieved from command at his own request.
Meantime Jackson had
been succeeded in the presidency by Martin Van Buren. Word having
reached Washington that the mass of the Cherokees did not intend to
move to the West, Van Buren ordered General Winfield Scott to assume
command of the troops already in the Cherokee country and to add to
them a regiment of infantry, a regiment of artillery, and six
companies of dragoons. Scott was further authorized, at his
discretion, to call upon the governors of the four neighboring states
for militia and volunteers, not exceeding four thousand in number, to
aid in moving the Indians.
But public feeling was now so
deeply stirred in sympathy with the Indians that Van Buren sought a
compromise by proposing to allow them two years further time in which
to move. To this suggestion Governor Gilmer, of Georgia,
responded:
"It is necessary that I should know whether
the President intends by the instruction to General Scott to require
that the Indians shall be maintained in their occupancy by an armed
force in opposition to the rights of the owners of the soil. If such
be the intention, a direct collision between the authorities of the
State and the General Government must ensue. My duty will require
that I shall prevent any interference whatever by the troops with the
rights of the State and its citizens. I shall not fail to perform
it."
Van Buren hastily explained that no such action was
contemplated, and he proceeded to carry out the original
schedule.
On the 10th of May, 1838, General Scott issued a
proclamation to the Cherokees in which he announced that
"The
President of the United States has sent me with a powerful army to
cause you, in obedience to the treaty of 1835, to join that part of
your people who are already established in prosperity on the other
side of the Mississippi. Unhappily the two years. . . allowed for
that purpose you have suffered to pass away.., without making any
preparation to follow, and now.., the emigration must be commenced in
haste... The full moon of May is already on the wane, and before
another shall have passed away every Cherokee, man, woman, and
child.., must be in motion to join their brethren in the far West...
I have come to carry out that determination. My troops already occupy
many positions. . . and thousands and thousands are approaching from
every quarter to render resistance and escape alike hopeless... Will
you then by resistance compel us to resort to arms?… Or will you by
flight seek to hide yourselves in mountains and forests and thus
oblige us to hunt you down? Remember that in pursuit it may be
impossible to avoid conflicts. The blood of the white man or the
blood of the red man may be spilt, and if spilt, however
accidentally, it may be impossible for the discreet and humane among
us, to prevent a general war and carnage."
Let us now
briefly summarize the situation :-
The Cherokees of the South,
by a census taken in 1835, numbered 16,542, exclusive of 1,592 negro
slaves, and 201 whites intermarried with the Indians. They were
entirely self-supporting. They grew bountiful crops of corn, wheat,
oats, cotton, potatoes, indigo and tobacco. Their apple and peach
orchards were prolific. Much attention was given to gardening. They
had plenty of cattle, horses, sheep, goats and swine. Many families
made butter and cheese.
Cotton and woolen cloths and blankets
were manufactured by the women. Considerable trade was carried on
with the neighboring States. In boats of their own, the Cherokees
exported much cotton to New Orleans. The Nation had no debt, and the
revenue was sufficient for public purposes. The roads were in good
condition, and at convenient distances along the routes, inns were
kept by natives.
Nearly all Cherokees could read and write
their own language. Schools were increasing every year. There was a
national press (or had been until the Georgians destroyed it). Some
of the leading men of the Nation were highly educated, according to
the standard of the time, and could hold their own in discussion with
statesmen anywhere.
The Cherokees were the mountaineers of the
South. Like all highlanders, of whatever race, they were passionately
attached to the rugged but healthful and picturesque land that gave
them birth. The promise of a far away wilderness, encompassed and
disputed by savages, in exchange for their ancient villages and
cultivated fields, held no allurements for a people that was
prosperous in the arts of peace and asked nothing better than to be
let alone.
They had been at peace with the United States for
forty years. The last war in which they had been engaged was when
they fought shoulder to shoulder with the Americans against the
Indian allies of Great Britain. If it had not been for their charge
against the enemy’s rear at the battle of the Horseshoe Bend it is
probable that General Jackson would have been obliged to retire,
instead of winning that decisive victory.
The nationality of
the Cherokees, and their clear title to the soil they occupied, had
been confirmed by the Supreme Court, which ruled that the sea-to-sea
charters of the British gave the States that had succeeded to them
merely exclusive rights to buy land from the Indians, but no right to
force such sales. The territory of the Cherokees was separated from
that of any other state within whose chartered limits they might
reside by a boundary line established by treaties, and within that
boundary the Indians possessed rights with which no State could
interfere. The Federal Government had guaranteed the Cherokees by
treaty that their territory should remain inviolate forever.
And
yet President Jackson, with a frontiersman’s contempt for Indians,
and an arrogance that brooked no opposition from any quarter,
disputed the ruling of the Supreme Court and forthwith proceeded to
violate it. His weak-kneed successor, seeking to temporize, was
shaken back into direct action by the threatening hand of a State
executive. And now came a force of 7,000 troops, with artillery, to
round up and drive out the Cherokees, who if they had wanted to fight
and had possessed arms with which to fight, could not have mustered
more than half as many men, to say nothing of the myriads that were
at the call of the President if reinforcements for Scott’s army had
been needed.
One can feel today the sting in the words of old
chief Junaluska; "If I had known that Jackson would drive us
from our homes, I would have killed him that day at the
Horseshoe."
The Cherokees preserved to the end an
unwavering devotion to their great chief Ross and a pathetic trust in
his ability to persuade Congress to let them remain in their old
home. He did all that a wise and brave leader could do to preserve
the peace and rescue for his people at least a moiety of what was by
right and in honor due them.
On the advice of Ross, the
Indians had given up their arms to General Wool, so that no suspicion
of ill intent could be harbored against them. They did this even
though it left them defenseless against the rabble who harried and
robbed them behind the backs of the Federal troops.
Despite
repeated rebuffs at Washington, and threats against his person and
property at home, Ross once more sent to Congress a protest and
memorial in the name of the Cherokee Nation. This was delivered in
March, 1838. At the same time a memorial from citizens of New York
was submitted calling for an inquiry into the validity of the treaty
of 1835.
The ensuing debate in both houses of Congress was
"characterized by a depth and bitterness of feeling such as had
never been exceeded even on the slavery question." Henry A.
Wise, who was a member of the House of Representatives from Virginia,
declared "without fear of contradiction" that there was not
one man in that House or out of it, who had read the proceedings of
the case, who would say that there had ever been any assent given to
that treaty by the Cherokee Nation." In replying to Mr. Halsey
of Georgia he told him that an ex-governor of Halsey’s own State,
who had declared that Georgia must and would have the Cherokee lands,
would not gain greatly by comparison, either in civilization or
morals, with the Cherokee chief. John Ross.
This chief Ross,
by the way, was only one-eighth of Indian blood. His father and
maternal grandfather were born in Scotland, and his mother was only a
quarter-blood Cherokee. From 1809 until his death, in 1866, he was in
the constant service of his people. He was adjutant of the Cherokee
regiment that turned the tide of battle for General Jackson at the
Horseshoe Bend. He was a member, and then president, of the national
committee of the Cherokee council.
In 1827, he was president
of the convention that framed and adopted the constitution of the
Cherokee Nation, "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." In the following
year he was elected principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, and he
held this office continuously until his death.
After a hard
fight in Congress both the Ross memorial and the one from New York
were tabled. In May, President Van Buren made his belated proffer of
a stay of proceedings, but then immediately backed down before the
bristling Governor of Georgia. John Ross then submitted another
project for the negotiation of a new treaty as a substitute for that
of 1835, but the last day of grace for the voluntary emigration of
the Cherokees was only one day off, and the Government declared that
it could not consider any further negotiations.
Meantime
General Scott had built a number of stockade forts throughout the
Cherokee country and had disposed his troops in them. There were six
of these forts in southwestern North Carolina, five in northern
Georgia, one in northern Alabama, and one in southeastern Tennessee.
When the last hour had struck he began the round-up.
There
seems to be only one reliable and full account of the Cherokee
removal. It is by Mr. James Mooney, of the United States Bureau of
Ethnology, who was a master of the Cherokee language and a competent
historian. The facts were collected by him directly from men, white
and red, who were themselves participants in this tragic affair. A
few paragraphs from Mr. Mooney’s narrative are as
follows:-
"Squads of troops were sent to search out with
rifle and bayonet every small cabin hidden away in coves or by the
sides of mountain streams, to seize and bring in as prisoners all the
occupants, however or wherever they might be found. Families at
dinner were startled by the sudden gleam of bayonets in the doorway,
and rose up to be driven with blows and oaths along the weary miles
of trail that led to the stockade.
"Men were seized in
their fields or going along the road, women were taken from their
wheels and children from their play. In many cases, in turning for
one last look as they crossed the ridge, they saw their homes in
flames, fired by the lawless rabble that followed on the heels of the
soldiers to loot and pillage. So keen were these outlaws on the scent
that in some instances they were driving off the cattle and other
stock of the Indians almost before the soldiers had fairly started
their owners in the other direction.
"Systematic hunts
were made by the same men for Indian graves, to rob them of the
silver pendants and other valuables deposited with the dead. A
Georgian volunteer, afterward a colonel in the Confederate service
said: ‘I fought through the Civil War and have seen men shot to
pieces and slaughtered by thousands, but the Cherokee removal was the
cruelest work I ever knew.’
In this manner, within a few
weeks, nearly 17,000 of the Indians were corralled in the various
stockades. The rest, about a thousand, mostly natives of the high
mountains of southwestern North Carolina, fled and hid out in the
trackless wilds of the Great Smoky divide.
Early in June the
work of removal began. Several parties, aggregating about 5,000, were
dispatched under direction of officers of the Army to landings on the
Tennessee River, where they were put aboard steam-boats, sent down
the Tennessee and the Ohio, to the further bank of the Mississippi,
and then marched afoot across Arkansas to the recently established
Indian Territory (now Oklahoma).
This removal, in the hottest
part of the year, of a mountain-bred people unaccustomed to the
scorching low-lands, unused to the kind of food given them, nauseated
by the warm drinking water, and crowded together like sheep on the
steamboats, was attended by much sickness and mortality. The Cherokee
national council pleaded that they be allowed to remove the rest of
their people overland, in parties led by their own chiefs, after the
summer heat and sickly season had passed. This was permitted, and the
remaining 13,000 started on their long trek, from their assembly
place at Rattlesnake Springs, Tennessee, in October, 1838.
"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
flanks and at the rear.. .The route lay south of Pikeville, through
McMinnville and on to Nashville, where the Cumberland was crossed.
Then they went on to Hopkinsville, Kentucky, where the noted chief
White-path, in charge of a detachment, sickened and died. His people
buried him by the roadside, with a box over the grave and poles with
streamers around it, that the others coming on behind might note the
spot and remember him.
"Somewhere also along that march
of death—for the exiles died by tens and twenties every day of the
journey—the devoted wife of John Ross sank down, leaving him to go
on with the bitter pain of bereavement added to heartbreak at the
ruin of his nation. The Ohio was crossed at a ferry near the mouth of
the Cumberland, and the army passed on through southern Illinois
until the great Mississippi was reached opposite Cape Girardeau,
Missouri.
"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 become
clear. In talking with old men and women at Tahlequah (Mr. Mooney)
found that the lapse of over half a century had not sufficed to wipe
out the memory of the miseries of that halt beside the frozen river,
with hundreds of sick and dying penned up in wagons or stretched upon
the ground, with only a blanket overhead to keep out the January
blast."
At last the crossing was made, and the sad
procession passed on through southern Missouri. In March, 1839, they
reached their destination in Indian Territory, after nearly six
months’ travel and agonizing hardships. It is estimated that over
4,000 Cherokees perished as a direct result of the removal, or nearly
one-fourth of all those who were driven into exile. A war with an
enemy of anything like their own number would not have taken so heavy
a toll.
The struggles and trials of the Cherokees in their new
western home do not concern the present topic. Let us go back now to
the scattered and desperate refugees, those pitiful few hundreds who
were left outlawed in the forests of their native mountains.
It
has already been mentioned that the original nucleus of the Cherokees
was the Kituwha settlement on the Tuckaseegee River, near the mouth
of the Okona-lufty, in the present Swain County, North Carolina. The
Indians of this and the neighboring settlements on Lufty and Soco
were the purest blooded and most conservative of the Cherokee Nation.
Their chief, Yonaguska ("Drowning Bear"), was a man of fine
presence, six feet three inches in height and of powerful build. He
was a noted orator. His people revered him not only as a leader but
as a prophet.
Yonaguska counseled peace and friendship with
the white man, but he was immovably opposed to a western migration.
He declared that his people were safer from aggression in their steep
and rocky mountains than they would ever be in a fertile land that
would sooner or later be coveted by the westward-moving whites. He
was a firm upholder of ancient customs and of the aboriginal
religion. The white missionaries he regarded with suspicion.
When
a Cherokee translation of St. Matthew was published at New Echota,
and a copy was brought to the Kituwha country, Yonaguska would not
allow it to be circulated until it had first been read to himself.
After listening to a few chapters the old chief dryly remarked,
"Well, it seems to be a good book—strange that the white
people are no better, after having had it so long."
When
Scott’s soldiers began to seize the Indians and drive them to the
stockades, most of Yonaguska’s band fled in advance and secreted
themselves in the high mountains. Here they were joined by others who
had escaped from Calhoun and other collecting stations, until upwards
of a thousand Indians were hiding in the roughs. About half of them
were under command of a leader named Utsala ("Lichen"), who
disposed them along the head waters between Clingman Dome and Mount
Guyot of the Great Smoky range.
Anyone acquainted with that
region and knowing whites and Indians descended from those who were
there at the time of the man-hunt, can visualize the situation in
which the fugitives were placed.
Although lumbermen at one
time began to invade it, it remains a wild country. Nearly all of it
is very rough and rugged. Most of the divide (which forms the State
line between North Carolina and Tennessee) is over 5,500 feet above
sea level, and the abutting ridges for several miles each way are but
little lower. The sides of the mountains have steep slopes that begin
at the very banks of the streams.
There are extensive areas
strewn with great fragments of rock, although there is a heavy forest
mantle everywhere. Cliffs and precipitous bank s are so frequent that
the only thoroughfares are a few carefully chosen trails. For several
miles east of the Porter Gap the crest of the Smoky divide is almost
knife-edged, so that footing is precarious, the rocks being covered
with slippery moss or by dense, low, iron-like bushes that are very
hard for a man to push through. A misstep might send one hurtling and
sliding five hundred feet or more into North Carolina on one side or
Tennessee on the other, unless some tree-top caught and held him.
On
the slopes of the mountains there is a heavy stand of hardwood and
chestnut and hemlock; on the upper reaches there is dense spruce and
balsam. Labyrinths of laurel keep many of the water-courses in
perpetual gloom. On some slopes and ridges, particularly on the
Tennessee side, are great tracts of stunted rhododendron over which a
man can only flounder. Dogs cannot go through such a thicket at
all.
So far, then, as configuration and natural cover are
concerned, this region is almost ideal for men hiding out, and to
this day it is a refuge for moonshiners, deserters, and outlaws. But
the problem of getting food in such a country is serious, unless the
fugitive has clandestine help from outside.
There is little
animal life in the upper zones, other than small brook trout,
chipmunks, red squirrels, and a few birds. Bears harbor there, but
they are wily and almost impossible to find without a pack of dogs.
Formerly there were deer, and at that time a small party of hunters
might be able to feed themselves for a week or two on products of the
chase. But when a thousand fugitive Indians swarmed up into the
roughs of the mountains, all game animals must have fled before them,
leaving an empty solitude.
It was summer time; so there were
no nuts nor acorns. Edible roots are seldom to be found in such a
high land. There was little sustenance but toads, snakes, insects,
berries, and the inner bark of trees. Many of the Indians starved to
death. And yet the survivors stayed on, defying every effort of the
troops to capture them.
General Scott found himself confronted
by a problem similar, on a small scale, to the one that was giving so
much trouble to our army operating against the Seminoles in the
Everglades of Florida. To dig the Cherokees out of their warrens
would require a large force operating simultaneously from both the
Tennessee and the Carolina sides, and heating through a country so
difficult that the "drive" might last all summer. At this
juncture there occurred an incident that gave him an opportunity for
compromise.
Among the Indians who had been seized was an old
man named Tsali (Cherokee pronunciation of Charley). He was taken
with his wife, his brother, his three Sons and their families. His
wife being unable to travel fast, the soldiers prod-(led her along
with bayonets. Charley, boiling with rage at this brutality, gave the
word to the other men, in Cherokee, to strike down the guard and make
a dash for liberty. They sprang upon the unsuspecting soldiers,
killed one of them, stampeded the others, and made their escape to
the mountains.
Scott sent for the white man, Thomas, who was
the Indians’ most trusted friend, and authorized him to seek out
the leader, Utsala, and propose to him that if he would seize Charley
and the others concerned in the "murder," and deliver them
to headquarters for punishment, the General would call off the
pursuit, secure a respite for the main body of refugees, and use his
influence in Washington to get a special dispensation permitting the
band to remain unmolested in their hills.
Thomas accepted the
commission. With one or two Indian guides he made his way over secret
paths to Utsala’s hiding place. Here he stated .his mission, and
agreed with the chief that if the chief Tsala and his few companions
were delivered to justice there was good hope that the Government
would make an exception in favor of the band of Lufty and allow them
to remain in their own country.
Utsala’s heart was bitter,
for his wife and little son had starved to death on the mountain
side. "But he thought of the thousands who were already on their
long march into exile, and then he looked around upon his little band
of followers. If only they might stay, even though a few must be
sacrificed, it was better than that all should die—for they had
sworn never to leave their country. He consented, and Thomas returned
to report to General Scott."
There are various and
conflicting tales about the Charley episode, some of them mere
legends, evidently colored by prejudice, and others the recollections
of very old people who were not actors in the event. On the other
hand Mr. Mooney got the story directly from Colonel Thomas himself,
and from Wasituna, Charley’s youngest son, who alone was spared by
General Scott on account of his youth. His relation can be accepted
as historic fact.
"It was known that Charley and his
party were hiding in a cave of the Great Smokies, at the head of Deep
Creek." (There is no real cave in that region, but there are
shelving rocks sufficient to shelter a few men, and that is what is
evidently meant). "But it was not thought likely that he could
be taken without bloodshed and a further delay which might prejudice
the whole undertaking. Thomas determined to go to him and try to
persuade him to come in and surrender.
"Declining Scott’s
offer of an escort, he went alone to the cave, and, getting between
the Indians and their guns as they were sitting around the fire near
the entrance, he walked up to Chancy and announced his message. The
old man listened in silence and then said simply, ‘I will come in.
I don’t want to be hunted down by my own people.’"
"By
command of General Scott, Chancy, his brother, and the two elder sons
were shot near the mouth of Tuckaseegee, a detachment of Cherokee
prisoners being compelled to do the shooting in order to impress upon
the prisoners the fact of their utter helplessness."
A
year later (September 12, 1839) the Commissioner of Indian Affairs
reported that the Indians scattered through the mountains of North
Carolina and Tennessee numbered 1,046. They were in a distressing
condition, mere landless aliens, staying under respite that might be
cancelled any moment, and kept alive mostly by the white settlers out
of pity or in return for labor they performed. If they had been left
to their own devices it is more than probable that they would have
been gradually gathered up and sent to join their brethren in the
West. In fact a commissioner was appointed in the Spring of 1840 to
enroll them for such removal.
But Colonel Thomas went to
Washington, and stayed there continuously for three years, working
with all the energy of a devoted friend to induce the Government to
let the Eastern band remain in its old home and to secure for them
their fair share of moneys due for reservations and improvements
confiscated. And he succeeded.
In
1846, the Eastern Cherokees were admitted to participation in the
benefits of the treaty of 1835, and Thomas was authorized at various
times to buy back from the whites enough land in western North
Carolina to serve as a permanent home for the Band. This he did: but
since the State of North Carolina persisted in refusing to recognize
Indians as landowners, until 1866, Thomas held the deeds in his own
name, as their authorized agent under the Government. The Indian
title was finally adjudicated by the United States during the period
from 1875 to 1894.
The present legal status of the Eastern
Band of Cherokees is indeterminate and anomalous. It has been ruled
by the courts that they are citizens of the United States, and again
that they were wards of the Government. They are under discipline of
a resident Indian agent, but never have been reservation Indians.
They are citizens of North Carolina, and at the same time a body
corporate and politic. They have a tribal constitution, and are
governed in tribal matters by chiefs and councillors elected by
themselves.
Their lands were purchased by themselves, or by
the Government from funds due them, but they cannot make free
contracts nor alienate the lands that they hold in severalty. They
pay taxes, except poll tax, perform road service, and are amenable to
the local courts, save in land matters. Male Cherokees of voting age
who can read and write English are allowed to vote—sometimes, and
sometimes not.
There are about 18,000 of these Indians in the
QualIa boundary, and about 500 more scattered in other parts of North
Carolina. More than half of them are fullbloods, a much larger
percentage than among their kinsmen in Oklahoma.
Nearly all of
the men, and many of the women, can read and write their own
language. About half of them can use enough English for ordinary
intercourse. The Government training school at Cherokee postoffice
affords an excellent education to the boys and girls, and, under the
present Superintendent, is doing fine work among the adults by
demonstrating modern methods of farming and stock raising.
The
prompt and generous response of the Eastern Cherokees to our
Government’s calls for subscriptions to liberty bonds and war
savings stamps was surprising and delightful. In proportion to their
ability they more than equalled the whites. Their young men went into
the war willingly and fought gallantly. Only one slacker was reported
in the whole tribe, and he was immediately brought to book by his own
people. The Indian children in the Cherokee school are supporting a
war orphan in France.
The sacrifice of poor old Tsali and his
kinsmen was not made in vain.
