John Ross and the Cherokee Indians

Foreword

There is no more tragic history than that of the Cherokee Indians. The steady growth and development of this group of aborigines living among the mountains of Georgia, North C;irolina and Tennessee is interesting as showing their capacity for building a culture of their own. Landowners, masters of negro slaves, inventors of an alphabet of their own and organizers of an adequate civil government, they offered from the close of the American revolution to the advent of Andrew Jackson, a unique example of Indian life. And what is more important to tlie student of the politics of the United States the Cherokecs proposed to form a state of their own after the manner of the other states of the Union. This bold proposition raised many problems : What would the people of Georgia do if the United States refused to guarantee the integrity of her boundaries.'' What would the Federal Supreme Court answ^er to a petition under the treaties with the national government for local authority and self-government inside the bounds of one of the original thirteen states.'' And if the Georgians and the Indians came to blows what would be the effect of Federal intervention .''

Thus we see that the history of the Cherokee Nation offers a good opportunity to any student who has sympathy for the natives and a proper sense for the realities of the American national development. Mrs. Eaton in her Life of John Ross, about whose career centers most of the story of the Cherokee exploitation and sorrowful removal to Oklahoma, has touched upon or answered most of these questions, and her story is presented clearly and in most interesting manner. The book ought to find many readers.

William E. Dodd University of Chicago,

September 30, 1914.

Preface

In the written records of America the place accorded the aboriginal peoples who once ruled over the whole western world can scarcely be considered a reputable one. The very name Indian is a misnomer due to a geographical error of the fifteenth century which enlightened knowledge has failed to correct.

On the pages of United States history the Indian usually appears seated at the council fire grimly plotting the destruction of his enemy, or formidable in feathers and war paint, tomahawk in hand, he lurks darkly on the outskirts of civilization awaiting an opportunity to fall upon defenseless pioneers whose scalp he can display as proof of his prowess. That he has ever cherished any but sinister sentiments for those who dispossessed him of his birthright or that he has exercised any but destructive influences upon the history of the country has been too often ignored. It is even denied that he is capable of Anglo-Saxon civilization.

Nevertheless it true that some of the most eminent physicians, eloquent preachers, prominent authors, astute financiers and constructive statesmen in America today are of this same aboriginal stock.

The aim of this historical sketch is to trace the evolution from barbarism to civilization of one of the most progressive tribes of North American Indians; to give a sympathetic interpretation of their struggle to maintain their tribal identity and ancestral domains against the overwhelming tide of economic development advancing from the Atlantic seaboard westward; to relate the story of their forcible removal to the western wilderness where in the midst of hard-won prosperity they were plunged into the horrors of the Civil War. John Ross by reason of his chieftainship of nearly four decades, was the most interesting of several able men of this tribe.

In the preparation of the book abundant use has been made of the manuscripts placed at my disposal by the Sequoyah Historical Society of Claremore, Oklahoma, of the Payne Manuscripts in the Ayer Collection of the Newberry Library, Chicago, and of the manuscript letters and records in the United States Indian Office.

I am also deeply indebted to Mr. Leon C. Ross and Mr. Robert L. Ross of Tahlequah, Oklahoma, for the free use of their rare collections of letters and documents : to Mr. A. S. Wyley for information on Cherokee education, and to Mr. Andrew Cunningham and Colonel J. C. Harris for access to the Cherokee National records at Tahlequah.

To Professor Edward M. Sheppard of Drury College, who first encouraged me to take up the study of Indian history, I owe sincere thanks. To Professor William E. Dodd, of the University of Chicago without whose helpful suggestions and unfailing interest the book would never have been completed, I desire to express my special gratitude. For a critical reading of the manuscript I am under obligations to Professors A. C. Mc- Laughlin, Frances W. Shepardson and Frederick Starr of the University of Chicago.

In addition to those mentioned there are others whom I wish to thank for assistance rendered and encouragement given. Among these is Mrs. Frances J. Moseby, my late colleague at the Industrial Institute and College of Mississippi.

Lastly, if the background of the story adds anything to the merit of the book the credit is due to Mrs. Lucy Ward Williams, one of the last of the fireside historians of her race, whose vital interest in her people constrained her to repeat their story in season and out of season until it was rooted and grounded in my memory from earliest childhood.

CHAPTER I Thk Youth axd Early Training of John Ross

Few men of aboriginal American stock have figured more conspicuously in United States history or have been tlie subject of more diverse opinions than has John Ross, who, for nearly forty years, was chief of the Cherokee Indians.

Beginning his political career when Georgia was commencing to assert her extreme views in regard to the Indian question, he was considered by Georgia statesman and border politician as "a silent and a sordid man,"^ dangerous and obnoxious, to be feared for his influence over the Indians and hated because he was absolutely incorruptible. To the majority of the Cherokees he was a Solomon in the council and a David in the defense of their rights. (Between these extreme opinions were those of such men as Clay, Webster, and jMar shall, who considered him a cultured and an honest gentleman, the peer of many who sat in the legislative halls at Washington^ Even his bitterest enemies conceded that he possessed ability of no mean order

His qualities of leadership early forced him into the forefront of the conflict which, for almost two decades, waged so bitterly in Georgia and on the borders of Tennesssee and Alabama, and which finally terminated in the expatriation of the Cherokees. In the new nation which they organized beyond the Mississippi he was again at the head of government, which position he held until his death, just after the close of the Civil War.

Tracing the lineage of John Ross, we find that he inherited his white blood from sturdy and eminently reputable Scotch stock, while his Indian ancestors were prominent clansmen of the Cherokees, this most progressive tribe of North American aborigines. His maternal grandfather was John McDonald, born at Inverness, Scotland, in Jr^^?-. As a youth of nineteen McDonald visited London, and there falling in with another young Scotchman who had just engaged passage to America, he decided to go with him and try his fortunes in the New

World. They landed in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1766. McDonald soon made his way to Savannah where he secured a clerkship in a mercantile establishment which carried on a thriving trade among the Indians. His business judgment and steady habits inspired his employers with such confidence that they sent him to Fort Loudon on the Tennessee near Kingston,^ to open up and superintend trade among the Cherokees. It was not long until he set up in business for himself and married Ann Shorey, a half-blood Cherokee woman.

In the early days of colonization, when a white man married an Indian woman, it was the custom among the Indians to adopt him into the tribe if he was deemed worthy of such honor; thereafter he cast his lot among his adopted people, adapting himself to their customs and becoming identified with their interests. So John McDonald, to all intents and purposes, became a Cherokee of the Cherokees, and when a band of them encroached upon by the white settlers and out of sympathy with the garrison at Fort Loudon, left their homes and pushed out into the wilderness of northwest Georgia, he went with them and settled near Lookout Mountain. It was here he met, under most romantic circumstances, Daniel Ross, another Scotchman, who was destined to play a larger part than his countryman in the affairs of the Cherokees.

Daniel Ross was originally from Sutherlandshire, Scotland. In his childhood he had gone with his parents to America in the latter half of the eighteenth century. They settled in Baltimore where Daniel was left an orphan at the close of the American Revolution. Like many another young man of the time the West so appealed to him that he accompanied a Mr. Mayberry to Hawkins County, Tennessee, where they built a flatboat, filled it with merchandise and started down the Tennessee to the Chickasaw country to trade in furs. Their route led them through the most hostile part of the land of the Cherokees, and when the party reached the town of Sitico on the Tennessee River near Lookout Mountain, their appearance caused considerable excitement among the natives. The whole community turned out at once eager to know the design of the

" Tennessee.

The Youth and Early Training of John Ross 3

strangers. Upon investigation it was found that, in addition to valuable merchandise, the party had on board a hostile chief named Mountain Leader. Bloody Fellow, a Cherokee chief, counseled the massacre of the whole party and a confiscation of their property. A division of opinion having arisen concerning this course, John McDonald, who lived fifteen miles away, was summoned to give his advice on the subject. Arriving on the scene of excitement he investigated the nature of the party and, finding its object a legitimate one, urged that no harm be done the strangers. He also warned Bloody Fellow that any injury done the white men would be considered a personal affront to him. Not only were the traders released, but they were invited to remain and establish a trading post in that country, and the invitation was accepted."

Daniel Ross soon afterwards married Mollie McDonald, daughter of John McDonald, a woman said to possess rare beauty of face and charm of manner. During the next twenty years he travelled in different parts of the Cherokee Nation, establishing trading posts and conducting successful business enterprises. He was a man of irreproachable character and sturdy honesty, with the same code of ethics for red man and white, and gradually he came to wield a considerable influence among the Cherokees.

Of the nine children of Mollie and Daniel Ross, John, the third son, was born at Tahnoovayah, on the Coosa River, in 1790. He grew up for the most part like any other little Indian boy of the time in the free, outdoor life of the tribe in the beautiful hills and valleys of the Cherokee Nation, enjoying all the sports and undergoing all the hardships of Indian life.

When he was about seven years of age he accompanied his parents to Hillstown to attend the Green Corn Festival, an annual thanksgiving feast held in the spring when Indian corn was in the roasting ear. For several days the clans gathered from the hills and valleys of all parts of the nation and gave themselves up to feasting and ball playing, religious ceremonies, and social intercourse. John Ross's mother on this occasion

^McKenney and Hall, Indian Tribes of North America, Vol. Ill, p. 293.

had dressed him in his first suit of nankeen brand new made after the white man's style, and he sauntered out to meet his playmates with all the self-consciousness of one wearing, for the first time, his new spring suit. But if he expected to be surrounded immediately by admiring and envious playmates he was doomed to disappointment. Shouts of derision and taunts of "Unaka !"'* greeted him on all sides ; even his most intimate friends held aloof. Although the day was a most unhappy one he stood staunchly by his new suit until bedtime. But while being dresssed by his grandmother the next morning he burst into tears and after much coaxing told her of his humiliation of the day before. She comforted him as grandmothers are wont to do the world over. Promptly the nankeen suit came off, the hunting shirt, leggins and moccasins went on, and the small boy ran shouting to his play happy and "at home" again, as he termed it, warmly welcomed by his dusky clansmen who had "boycotted" him the day before.

About the time of this incident the problem of educating his children began seriously to concern Daniel Ross. There were no schools in the Cherokee Nation and, because of hostility between the Indians and backsettlers, there was great hesitancy on the part of conservative chiefs to adopt any European customs. A few of the more progressive members of the tribe, however, were beginning to realize that in order to cope successfully with the white man they must understand his language, customs and laws. The broader policy prevailed in the great council to which Ross presented a request to establish a school on his own premises,^ and import a schoolmaster. The request was granted. John Barber Davis was employed as teacher, and the school, started about the end of the eighteenth century, was the beginning of a new era in the history of the tribe. It Avas in this school and under this schoolmaster that John Ross laid the foundation for good English, both oral and written, which in his later life often astonished statesmen, baffled politicians, and served him well in his long career in Cherokee national affairs.

* White man. , •'

* Daniel Ross was now living at Maryville, Tennessee, about six hundred miles from his former residence.

The Youth and Early Trainixg of John Ross 5

When John and his brother, Lewis, were old enough they were sent to Kingston" to attend a popular acadeni}' at that place. While here they lived in the family of a merchant, a friend of tlieir father, and helped him in the store out of school hours, Kingston was a busy and enterprising town on the great emigrant road from Virginia and Maryland through Ciunberland Gap to Nashville. At the beginning of the nineteenth century a constant stream of emigrants was pouring over this highway seeking homes in the rich valleys of Tennessee and Kentucky. Here the two Scotch Cherokee lads, coming in contact with the busy, bustling life about them, had their minds aroused to such activity that progress in their school work went b}^ leaps and bounds, and they proved to be among the brightest scholars of the institution. They also received practical training as clerks in the store, learning methods of business and accommodation to circumstances which proved to great advantage to them when they were ready to go into business for themselves.^

After spending two or three years at Kingston they were called home by the death of their mother to whom both the boys were particularly devoted. She was a woman of strong character and unusual intelligence, and her influence upon her children was one of the dominant factors of their lives. Herself intensely loyal to the traditions of her ancestors, she lost no opportunity of instilling these sentiments in the minds of her children. For her son John, who was the pride of her heart, she had cherished the greatest love and ambition. He was heartbroken and almost prostrated with grief at her loss and never, throughout his long life, ceased to cherish her memory.

When the brothers, John and Lewis, grew to manhood they set up in business for themselves at Ross's^ Landing in company with John Meigs. ^ Their business prospered and the young men enjoyed the reputation for sobriety and honesty, which their father had established before them.

" Tennessee.

'McKenney and Hall, p. 296.

^ Now Chattanooga, where he finally located.

'Son of R. G. Meigs, Indian agent for the Cherokees.

John developed into an especially attractive young man of medium height and slender, supple figure. His eyes were blue and his hair was brown. He is said to have looked like a typical Scotchman, though he manifested man}^ Indian traits of character. He possessed a quiet, reserved manner and a personality which inspired everyone with confidence and respect.

When still a youth he took an active interest in the aifaira of the tribe, and the older men discussed with him freely the problems which were interesting and puzzling them at this time. He thus began at an early age not only to be interested in the development of the Cherokees into the greatest nation of civilized Indians, but to have a vital part in that development.

In order to have a better understanding and appreciation of his character it is necessary at this point to take at least a rapid survey of the history of the Cherokee Indians up to this time.

Chapter II

^t the beginning of the nineteenth century the Cherokees were the most powerful and the most civilized of all the North American Indians./ Their possessions, which at one time extended from the eastern slope of the Blue Ridge Mountains almost to the Mississippi and from northern Kentucky to central Alabama and Georgia, though greatly diminished, still covered a territory of fifty-three thousand square miles, almost half of which lay in Tennessee, a small area in southwestern North Carolina, the rest being about equally divided between Alabama and Georgia. They were the mountaineers of the south holding the mountain barriers between the English settlements on the Atlantic Seacoast and the French and Spanish garrisons in the Mississippi Valley and on the Gulf Coast. They called themselves Yun-wi-yah, meaning principal people. The name Cherokee, or Cheraqui has been given more than one interpretation. According to one version it is a contraction of two words meaning "He takes fire."^ It was believed by the Spaniards to signify rock-dwellers, and was probably given them by neighboring tribes as descriptive of their mountain country," which according to Bancroft, was the most picturesque and salubrious region east of the Mississippi. "Their homes are encircled by blue hills rising beyond blue hills of which the lofty peaks would kindle with the early light and the overshadowing night envelop the valleys like a cloud."^ David Brown, a Cherokee youth educated at Cornwall, Connecticut, writing in 1822, describes it as a well-watered and fertile region ; "Abundant springs of pure water are to be found everywhere," he says. "A range of lofty and majectic mountains stretch themselves across the nation, the northern part of which

^This probably originated in the belief that at the Creation the Great Spirit gave the tribe a sacred fire which was to be kept perpetually burning.

"^ Mooney, Myths of the Cherokees. 19th. Rep. Bureau of Ethnology, Vol. I, p. 15.

« Bancroft, History of the United States, Vol. II, p. 95.

8 John Ross and the Cherokke Indians

is hilly wliile in the southern and western parts are extensive and fertile plains, covered partly with tall trees through which beautiful streams of water glide. The climate is delightful and iiealthy ; the winters are mild and the spring clothes the ground with richest verdure. Cherokee flowers of exquisite beauty and variegated hues meet and fascinate the eye in every direction."*

Cradled in such surroundings it is not strange that the Cherokees were instinctively artistic and responsive to every form of natural beauty. The song of bird and the delicate fragrance of wild flower delighted, while the massive grandeur of mountain and forest filled with awe and admiration these clnldren of the wilderness, often inspiring their minds to lofty flights of fancy which sometimes found expression in metaphors of exceeding subtlety and beauty.

Attachment to their ancestral homes was strong and sincere and had its root deep in the past of their domestic and religious institutions. As is always the case when a primitive people has dwelt for a long time in the same region their legends had become localized and were associated Avith mountain peak and prominent rock and tree, with spring and cave and deep riverbend.

The English traveller Bartram describes the people of this tribe as of larger stature and fairer complexion than their southern neighbors. "In their manner and disposition they are grave and steady; dignified and circumspect in their deportment ; rather slow and reserved in their conversation, yet frank, cheerful and humane; tenacious of the liberties and natural rights of man ; secret, deliberate and determined in their councils; honest, just and liberal, and ready always to sacrifice every pleasure and gratification, even their blood and life itself, to defend their territory and maintain their rights."^ The men are described as tall, erect and moderately robust; their feaures regular and their countenances open, dignified and placid, exhibiting an air of magnanimity, superiority and rude independence ; The women as tall, slender, erect and of delicate frame; their features formed with perfect symmetry; their

* American State Papers, II, p. 651.

^Bartram, Travels through North and South Carolina and Georgia, etc., pp. 366-368 (1792).

^'countenance cheerful and friendly ; they move with a becoming grace and dignity.'"'

They were a religious people: but "never in their most savage state did they worship the work of their own hands, neither fire nor water."' They believed in a Great First Cause, in a spirit of Good, and a spirit of Evil in constant warfare with each other, the Good finally prevailing. Heaven, an open forest of shade and fruit trees, was adorned with fragrant fioAvers and mossy banks beside cool sparkling streams ; game abounded and there were enough feasts and dances to satisfy but not to cloy the appetite for pleasure. This happy and immortal region reserved for beautiful women, prepared and adorned by the Great Spirit, and men distinguished for valor, wisdom and hospitality, lay just across the way from the land of Evil Spirits, where the w^-etched who had failed on earth were compelled to live in hunger, hostility and darkness, hearing and seeing the rejoicings of the happy Avithout the hope of even reaching the delectable shores.

Witches and wizards were abroad in the land, who professed supernatural powers and were supposed to have intercourse with evil spirits and to have the power of transforming themselves into beasts and birds in which forms they took nocturnal excursions in pursuit of human prey, usually, though not always, those stricken with disease. The croak of a frog or the hoot of an owl in the twilight was enough to strike terror to the heart of the bravest Indian child who verily believed that the witches "would get him if he didn't watch out."®

Adair, who for forty years was a trader among the southern Indians and travelled extensively through their country between 1785 and 1775 describes the Cherokees as living in villages situated beside "cool, sparkling streams,"® in which they bathed frequently, either as a religious rite or for the purpose of "seasoning" the body and rendering it indifferent to exposure.

« Ibid.

■John Ridge to Albert Gallatin, 1826. Payne Mss. 8.

'John Ridge to Albert Gallatin. Payne Mss. 8.

'Adair, J., History of the American Indians, pp. 224-226.

10 John Ross and thk Cherokee Indians

"They are almost as impenetrable to cold as a bar of steel," he declares.^"

— - Their villages lay in four main groups :^^ the Lower Settlements lying upon the head streams of the Savannah; the Middle Settlements on the Tennessee and its southern tributaries ; the Valley Towns west of them between two ranges of the Blue Ridge Mountains; and the Overhill Settlements on the Little Tennessee between the Blue Ridge and Holston. Besides these main groups were scattered towns situated in different parts of the Cherokee country. It was estimated in 1735 that there were sixty-four towns and villages, "populous and full of women and children,'"'" with about sixteen or seventeen thousand souls all told, over six thousand of whom were warriors. Each village had its council house and its outlying fields of maize, beans and squashes, the common property of the community. The head man of the village, together with certain warriors distinguished for prowess, not only managed local' affairs but represented the village at the General Council of the Nation usually held^' at Chota^* on the Tellico River. A certain loose tribal unity was maintained by a principal chief and by certain laws or regulations by which every member of the tribe was bound.

To summarize, the Cherokees, by virtue of their location had developed an artistic temperament, certain physical and mental characteristics and a form of religious belief in keeping with and influenced by their surroundings. Because of this intimate relation their attachment to their country was exceedingly strong, a fact important in the explanation of their later actions, but often either overlooked or disregarded by the ever encroaching whites.

Contact of the Cherokees with Europeans dates back to the middle of the sixteenth century Avhen the daring and adventurous De Soto marching northward from Tampa Bay and

'^ Each village having its own peculiar dialect.

" The Ancient peace town or "City of Refuge."

passing over "rough and high hills" arrived in the land of the Cheraqui. The Spaniards described the Indians as a naked, lean and unwarlike people given to hospitality to strangers. To the travellers they presented baskets of berries and presents of corn, wild turkeys and an edible species of small dog which latter the Cherokees themselves did not eat, according to the Gentleman of Elvas.^"

From time to time the Cherokees met Spanish explorers and English and French settlers from whom they gradually adopted such civilized arts as appealed to them. That they so longremained conservative to European ideas and appeared to disdain anything alien was due to the fact that there was so little in civilization that appealed to people in the barbarous stage, and not to their lack of intellectual vigor. Their own tools and implements were so admirably suited to their purposes that they did not feel the need of better ones. Fire arms proved an exception. The Indian learned their use readily for by them he was enabled to supply the growing demand of furs, the chief article of trade with Europeans, and to hold his own with 'his enemies. By 1715 about twelve hundred Cherokee warriors were supplied with guns, and a few years later the governor of South Carolina furnished two hundred more with guns and ammunition on condition that they would help him in a war upon a neighboring tribe. ^"^

Before the end of the seventeenth century Virginia and South Carolina traders began dealing with the Cherokees. In 1690 Cornelius Daugherty, a Virginia Irishman, established himself among the tribe with whom he spent the remainder of his life. He was followed by other traders, some of whom were not on the very best terms with the aborigines, due chiefly to their custom of purchasing or capturing Indians to be sold in the settlements or to the West Indies, and to their general conduct toward the natives which was described as sometimes "very abuseful."^' Complaints of these abuses coming from

^' The Gentleman of Elvas. Publication of the Hakluyt Society IX, pp. 53, 58, 64.

"Haywood, Natural and Aboriginal Tennessee, p. 227. Fire arms were first introduced among them about 1700.

" Hewat, A., Historical Account of the Rise and Progress of the Colonies of South Carolina and Georgia, Vol. I, pp. 297, 298.

the Cherokecs to Governor Nicholson, coupled with the jealousy of French encroachments upon English trade with the Indians, caused him to arrange for a conference of chiefs to be held at Charleston in 1721. A treaty establishing a boundary between the Cherokees and the settlement was agreed upon; a chief was designated as the head of the nation to represent it in all dealings with the Colonial Government; a commissioner was appointed to superintend the relation of the colony with the Cherokees and a small cession of land was made,^^ the first in the long list that was to follow.

Nine years later we find North Carolina commissioning Sir Alexander Cummings to arrange a treaty of alliance with the tribe. After a preliminary meeting with the chiefs on the Hiwassee in the Cherokee country he conveyed a committee of six of them, bearing the crown of the nation, to England where after a visit of several weeks they signed the treaty of Dover. The treaty provided that the Cherokees trade with no other country than England, and that none but Englishmen be allowed to build forts or cabins, or plant corn among them.^*^ In return for these' concessions the chiefs carried home a generous supply of paint, a feAV pounds of beads and some other equally worthless articles. Flattered by the courteous treatment which they received in England they did not at first realize the disproportionateness of the bargain.

These two treaties were but the beginning of land cessions by which, year after year, from this time on, under one pretext or another, the aborigines were shorn of their ancestral domains and found themselves powerless to prevent it.

In 1755, a treaty and purchase of land were again negotiated by South Carolina. ''* In 1756 North Carolina commissioned Hugh Waddel to conclude a treaty of alliance and cession which was followed up the same year by Governor Glenn's

I'Ibid; Royce, Cherokee Nation. 5th Report of Bureau of Ethnologj% p. 144.

"Hewat, A., Historical Account of the Rise and Progress of the Colonies of South Carolina and Georgia, Vol. II, pp. 3, 9, 11. The crown of the nation consisted of five eagle tails and four scalps. It is otherwise known as the "War Bonnet."