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A
HISTOBY
OF THE
UPPEE COUNTRY
OP
SOUTH CAROLINA.

PROM THE

EAELIEST PERIODS

CLOSE OF THE ATAR OF INDEPENDENCE.

JOHN H. LOGAN, A. M.

VOL. I.
— -**  A.iASi j /'

PUBLISHED BY
S. G. COURTENAY & CO., CHARLESTON,
P. B. GLASS, COLUMBIA.
1859.

a. 5

i -j

WALKER, EVANS * CO., PRINTERS, CHARLESTON.

TO THE
PEOPLE OF UPPER CAROLINA,
AND THE
CITIZENS OE CHARLESTON,
INTIMATELY ASSOCIATEO, AND CLOSELY UNITED BY TIES OF TRADE, AND OF
COMMON STRUGGLES, AND SUFFERINGS, FROM THE EARLIEST PERIODS
OF THEIR OOTEMPORANEOUS HISTORY; AND NOW CONSTITU
TING, AFTF.R THE LAPSE OF MORE THAN ONE HUNDRED
YEARS, THE NORTH AND SOUTH POLES
OP OUR POLITICAL MAGNET,
THIS WORK IS MOST RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED
BT
THE AUTHOR.

PREFACE.

A few words will be sufficient to introduce to an
indulgent public my first effort of literary labor. Em
ployed, as I have been, ever since leaving my Alma
Mater, in the arduous business of instructing youth, I
felt, with many others of like employment, the want
of a popular, well-written School History of South
Carolina ; one whose perspicuity combined with that
simplicity of style, and lively detail of personal and
local history, so attractive to the yoitng, would render
it both useful and interesting to that important class
of readers.
Having some leisure and inclination, without any
boasted fitness for such an enterprise, I conceiA-ed the
design of preparing a brief juvenile history, for the
use of my own pupils, and of as many others as might
be pleased to adopt it. A specimen of this work,
accompanied by a beautiful map of Abbeville District,
executed by Miss E. C N., of my Senior Class, was
exhibited at the State Agricultural Fair of 1857.
Unfortunately, however — myself being judge — for
this conception of a school history, I had been, for
several years previous, but with no very definite ob
ject, busy collecting, from various sources, original

Vlll. PREFACE.

matter relating to the unpublished and traditionary
history of the upper-country ; and, unable to free my
self from this fascinating crotchet, I was insensibly led
by it to a stand-point, from which I was astonished to
discover, stretching far back of any cultivated ground,
a field rich in native historic lore yet unexplored, and
wholly unknown beyond the circle of a privileged few.
The temptation to expatiate here, and cull all that
is interesting, was too strong to be resisted ; and the
humble design of a juvenile book has swollen to the
proportions of an imposing volume of history. My
aims and views enlarged with my increased labors
and widened field, and I came, at last, to write for the
pleasure and information of the people. From them,
if it is meet, must come my reward ; and if I have
written anything, or brought anything to light that
will lead them to a better knowledge of the history of
their fathers, and a juster appreciation of their noble
institutions and State, the main object of my enter
prise is accomplished.
It may be well to add that I wrote in the country,
cut off, in great part, from the public and private
libraries in which is deposited much information es
sential to the integrity of my work ; and a large por
tion of its composition was performed in the short
daily recesses from labor in the Academy.
Greenwood, S. O, Nov. 24th, 1859.

CONTENTS,

CHAPTER I. — Page 1.
Early appearance of the Upper-Country — Uncultivated and imabused
by the Indians — The Upper-Country defined — The origin of its pe
culiar features and Soil— The richness and magnificence of its
scenery — Primitive beauties of the territory of Fairfield — Opinion
of Lord Cornwallis — Wild Buffaloes, &c.
CHAPTER II .— P abb 2 2.
The Deer of Primitive Times — Their great abundance — Associated
wilh many animals of prey, whose screams and howls at Night
made the Forests hideous — The A'illages of Greenwood and Cokes-
bury — An Old Hunter — John Duncan, of Duncan's Creek — Ancient
Buffalo and Deer Licks — -The Meriwethers, Wardlaws, Moores,
Browns, McAlasters, and Logans, of Little Wilson's Creek — Idle
and Disorderly Persons begin, just after the Revolution, to wander
over lhe country, lo the great annoyance of the peaceable resi
dents — Legislative enactments in regard to them — The Indian
method of dressing a Deer-skin — The famous Bezoar stones of the
Cherokees — Elks, &c.
CHAPTER III .— P age 5 :, .
The Panther — Wild Cat — Andenture of Sally Wliitaker in lhe present
territory of York — The last Panther seen on Long-Cane — Old John
Ravelin and Capt. John Sanders — The Catamount — Adventure on
Indian Creek — The AVolf— Adventure of Robert Long on Duncan's
Creek — Old James Mosely near Grindal's Shoals, &c.

Vlll. CONTENTS.
CHAPTER IV.— Page 7 5.
Fish exceedingly abundant in the Upper-Country— Ancient shoals of
Herrings— Old Legislative enactment for the protection of Shad
Fisheries in Broad, Saluda, Ennoree, Tiger and Pacolet Rivers,
and Stevens' Creek, of Edgefield— The Fish Sluice Law violently
enforced— Incidental Lorick's Mill, on the Saluda— The Historian
Adair and Indians harpooning Sturgeon in Savannah River, &c.

CHAPTER V .— P age 87.
The Rattlesnake — Its powers of fascination — An object of veneration
to all the tribes of the Continent — This curious fact probably con
nected in some way with their origin as a people — Cosmogony of
the Cherokees or Iheir notions of the world's creation — Great
Rattlesnakes seen by Bernal Diaz in Mexico — Beautiful tradition
ofthe Algonquins, wilh whom the Cherokees were allied by blood —
Curious account of the Horn-Snake, &c.
CHAPTER VI. — Page 122.
Conjectures in relation to vast mineral wealth in Upper-Carolina —
Old French and Spanish miners — The gold mania of thai treasure-
seeking age — The restless energy born of the love of money more
etlicieut for good than money — Treasures not essential either lo the
support or the progress of truth, &c.
CHAPTER VII.— Page 149.
The primitive Hunter, Cow-Driver and Indian Trader of Upper-
Carolina — Patrick and AVilliam Calhoun — The Business of Stock-
raising— Cow-pens— The thorough-bred Horses of Colonial times
—The Statute of 1700 relating to Horses— The Wild Horses of
Carolina — Old Jesse Gladden, &c.
CHAPTER VIII.—Page 167.
The Indian Trader— Old Anthony Park— Dougherty the first trader
among the Cherokees— Peltries and Pack-horses— First legislative
Act in relation to the trade — The character of the traders  The
Governor of Carolina interested in lhe traffic— Alexander Came
ron — The first Board of Commissioners, &c.

CONTENTS. IX.
CHAPTER IX.— Page 204.
The sites of ancient Cherokee towns abounding in Upper-Carolina —
The original limits of the Nation defined — The divisions of Ayratc
and Otarre, Upper and Lower Cherokee — Statistics of the Nation,
extracted from an original paper copied in London — Catalogue of
towns with the names of a few of their chiefs — Seneca, Tugaloo,
ICeowee, Mudlick, Coronaka and Johnson's Creeks, &c.
CHAPTER X.— Page 241.
First Packs of Goods sent up by the Board to the Cherokee Towns —
Col. James Moore and Charite Hayge, the Great Conjurer of Tu
galoo — They agree upon a Commercial Treaty — A Trading Post
and Fort to be erected at the Congarees — John Sharp and Sam
Muckleroy — Incursions ofthe Yamassees from Florida, &c.
CHAPTER XI.— Page 2 80.
Unprincipled white men the originators of most of the disturbances
that afflicted the trade — No class more safe in the Nation than
horse-thieves and pilferers — The declaration, in regard to these
abuses, of Anthony Dean, a Trader singularly learned and saga
cious — The Traders become too numerous — They compete with
one another as pedlers and skulking hucksters of trifles and in
toxicating liquors — The office of Agent either discontinued or of no
practical efficiency — Blakeney, Chicken, Hastings and Charles-
worth Glover — Punch-houses are set up on the border — The In
dians become more and more idle and depraved— The profits of
the trade fall off, &c.
CHAPTER XII.— Page 311.
The Pack-horsemen employed in the Trade — The Great Chickasaw
Trading-path — Hostile Incursions of the Creeks into the Territory
of the Cherokees and Catawbas — Description of a Caravan of
Pack-horses — Old Fort Charlotte — George Whitfield, nephew of
the celebrated Rev. George Whitfield — John Lewis Gervais —
The Wedding at White Hall — Andrew Williamson — The Chicka
saw Path between Charleston and Savannah Town — Peter St.
Julien — The Old Savannah Trail connecting the Cherokee Towns
with Savannah Town and Augusta — The Founding of Augusta,
1736 — Bartram visits it in 1776 — His Description of the ruins of
Fort Moore, ~&c.

X. CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XIII— Page 3 3 2.
The Abuses already detailed, not the only source of Disorder and
Disaffection in the Nation— France fiercely competes with England
for the Sovereignty ofthe West— The advantageous position ofthe
former firmly established in Canada and in the Mississippi Valley—
Her magnificent Schemes, Finesse, and indomitable Energy— The
English to be circumscribed, harassed, and, if possible, driven from
the Continent— Upper Carolina exposed to French Emissaries, and
menaced by encroaching French Settlements. &c.
CHAPTER XIV.— Page 345.
James Adair, the Trader and Historian— His valuable History of the
Southern Indians— Charleston Library— Colonel John Galphin— A
narrative of adventures and hair-breadth escapes in the life ol
Adair. CHAPTER XV .— P age 372.
French Policy and Intrigues continued— The Mountain Barriers of
Upper Carolina the key to the Province— Cherokee's account
of the fir>l appearance among lhem of' French Emissaries— Francis
Nicholson— The English strangely indifferent to the dangerous
encroachments of the French — The wonders and extent of the
Groat Valley, little apprehended by the settlers on the Atlantic-
Gov. Nicholson meets the Cherokees in Council, iVc.
CHAPTER XVI.— Page 3 01.
The results of Gov. Nicholson's Treaty — They are soon rendered
valueless by the successful Intrigues of the French — The English
begin to be sensible of their danger — Active Emissaries once more
at work among the Cherokees — Gov. Middleton dispatches Col.
Chicken lo the Nation, to counteract their influence — Adair's des
cription of Herbert's Spring, near the Tugaloo— The Over-hill
Towns encourage the French.
CHAPTER XVII.— Page 417.
Traders from Virginia continued— A Deputation from lhe Over-hills,
headed, it appears, by the famous Ataculaculla, goes to Williams
burg— The Gov. of Virginia gives them an encouraging Answer—
A hostile spirit towards Carolina manifest in ihe Nation  The
Board culs oil' their supplies of ammunition — Tlie Over-hills in
direct correspondence wilh the French, &c.

CONTENTS. XI.
CHAPTER XVIII.— Page 440.
The bank of John's Creek the probable sile of Fairchild's Stockade
_ Fort — The facts in the case — Description ofthe remains, discovered
on the plantation, of P. D. Klugh, Esq.— Old John Youngblood and
Wm. Buchanan — A search for hidden treasures; the excavation
still visible on the ancient site of the fort — The old John's Creek
settlement, &c.
CHAPTER XIX.— Page 46 0.
Gov. Glen's Great Council wilh the Cherokee Chiefs, in Charleston —
Attaculaculla makes the first speech — The Governor replies — Long
Jack and other Chiefs follow — Certain Savannah Indians in the
town-jail become the subject of an angry debate — The Chiefs de
part for their Towns — Incident on the Path near Saluda Old
Town, &c.
CHAPTER XX. — Page 485.
The favorite object of Governor Glen accomplished — The Obligations
ofthe public man and private citizen prompt — Vigorous Resistance
to Wrong — Little Carpenter begins to rise in importance — His
character — Supplants Old Hop as Great Beloved Head-man of the
Nation — The responsibilities, and timid, temporizing policy of Gov.
Glen wonderfully suggestive of present political troubles and ob
ligations — Many new and interesting revelations from the old MS.
Records in Columbia, &c.

CHAPTER I .
Early appearance ofthe Upper-Country — Uncultivated andunabused
by the Indians — The Upper-Country defined — The origin of its
peculiar features and soil— The richness and magnificence of its
scenery — Primitive beauties ofthe territory of Fairfield — Opinion
of Lord Cornwallis — Wild Buffaloes, &c.
At this day the upper-country of South Carolina
presents a very different aspect from that ofthe same
territory in the middle of the eighteenth century. It
was then new and beautiful, and as remarkable for
the luxuriant richness of its landscape as it is still
for the striking features of its rolling hills and tower
ing mountains; but under the iron tread of what is
called a progressive civilization, its ancient glories of
forest, and flora, and fertile soil have been well nigh
wasted and ruined.
When in the possession ofthe Indian hunter, it is
true that its natural, productive energies were left
uncultivated and undirected, except so far as satisfied
the simple wants of his savage nature. He built no
palaces, reared no cities, set in motion no time-saving
machinery, and whitened no sea with the floating
canvas ofa wide-spread commerce; but then, while
he used, to the full extent of his capabilities, the
talent confided to his care, he never abused it; that
sin cannot be laid at the door of the poor Indian.
1

a HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
He never wantonly took the life even of the least
useful of the animals of his forest. His landed pa
trimony was given him from the hands of God a
magnificent country, and a magnificent country
still, he yielded it up to the more vigorous race
which supplanted him.
In mapping out, for our purpose, that portion of
the State, which may be styled the upper-country,
we shall be guided not so much by its geographical
limits, as by its revolutionary and primitive relations.
The territory embraced in the modern Districts of
Abbeville, Anderson, Edgefield, Greenville, Pickens,
Newberry, Laurens, Union, Spartanburg, Fairfield,
Chester, Lancaster, York and Richland, is the classic
ground of the American Eevolution. It abounds in
associations of the " evil time," richer in romance,
and the stern trials of the patriot's heart, than even
the boasted fields of the section that would arrogate
to itself all that is worth recounting in the past and
present history of the country. It is hallowed too
by associations connected with events long prior to
the Revolution; and these, in their proper place, it
shall be our business and pleasure to develope first.
The natural characteristics of this region present
just such features of climate, surface, soil, and vege
table growth, as would attract and fix upon its
valleys and hills, the energetic race, which, we shall
see, by-and-by, were the first to clear away its
forests and appropriate its vast agricultural resources.
A country, whose landscape was neither wholly
rugged with mountains, nor monotonously tame

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 3
with unbroken plains, but a scene of mingled ele
vated ranges, undulating hills, and flowery vales,
formed a glorious analogue ofthe true Scotch-Irish
man's heart and nature.
Rising abruptly from the sandy barrier that ex
tends some sixty or a hundred miles into the in
terior, first in gentle undulations, then in higher,
wave-like hills, bristling here and there with huge
piles of granite, and last, in towering mountain
heaps, whose blue tops stand like giant embattle-
ments against the northern skies, it imparts, at a
glance, the lesson taught by the geologist, that at a
distant period in the past, some revolutionary con
vulsion of nature upturned the country, breaking its
surface into a thousand hills and higher elevations,
and driving the incumbent waters far to the south
to occupy their present bed.
These subterranean forces, however, and the vast
denudations which followed, were limited in their
sway; the upheaved surface, like some agitated mol
ten matter suddenly congealed, assumed a permanent
form, and soon the tree and plant, after their kinds,
whose indestructible germs lay locked up in its soil
from the beginning, were developed into the shady
woods and grassy plains, which rendered it a fit
habitation for men and animals. When and how
these, first found their way here, we shall leave to
the speculative philosophers to determine, only re
serving to ourself the right of deciding upon the truth
or absurdity of their opinions.
It is sufficient to remark, that when our fathers

4 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
first penetrated this region, it was mostly covered
with a wild, luxuriant vegetation, and possessed by
a race of people totally different from themselves, in
complexion, manners, customs, and religion. They
were scarcely less struck, however, with its fertility
and magnificent scenery, than with the remarkable
race which inhabited it.
Ancient hunters and journalists spoke of these
with rapturous enthusiasm. An old trader,* de
scribing his impressions of the Blue Ridge in Caro
lina, says: "From the historical descriptions of the
Alps, and a personal view of the Cherokee moun
tains, I conclude the Alps are much inferior to several
of those mountains, both in height and rockiness ; the
last are also of a prodigeous extent, and frequently
impassable by an enemy."
One of the earlier and most intelligent Governors
of Carolina,! wrote a description of this section of
the province, in connection with a larger territory,
which we found still in manuscript in the office of
Secretary of State : "The country lying between the
Atlantic Ocean and the Mississippi River, is about a
thousand miles in depth from east to west ; it is in
tersected by a ridge of mountains running from
north to south, called in Virginia the Blue Moun
tains or AUeghany, and in this province the Chero
kee or Appalanthian Mountains. The rivers that
flow from the east side of them have an easterly
course, verging towards the south, a-nd after running

* James Adair. t James Glen.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 5
four hundred miles, fall into the sea, as those from
the west side, after a much larger course westward,
fall into the Mississippi. Some of the most sensible
and credible of the Cherokee Indians, who have
often traversed every part of the country, both in
going to war and hunting, describe it to me as the
most delightful, as well as the most fertile in the
world; abounding in large, extensive plains and
savannahs, swarming with deer and buffalo. 1 should
be afraid to indulge myself- with the liberty of copy
ing, lest I should bethought to be drawing a picture
or painting a landscape.
Numbers of rivulets water it; but it is the bed
principally, of three great rivers. I have not rested
satisfied with a verbal description of the country
from the Indians, but have often made them trace
the lines on the floor with chalk, and also on paper,
and it is surprising how near they approach to our
best maps.
It would not be difficult to demonstrate the bene
fits that must accrue to Great Britain by peopling
and settling this country of which I am speaking;
but all I plead for is, that we may, with the good
will of the Indians, take, and keep, possession of it
by means of forts."*
This last remark will be of great importance in
the decision of an interesting question, discussed in
a future chapter.
The beauty and fertility of this region, however,
# 5th Vol. of Indian Books, in Sec. of St. Off., Columbia.

O HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
were not confined to the mountains; the valleys and
ridges that lay along the rivers and creeks of the
eastern slope, to the utmost limits of the Cherokee
country on the south, abounded in forests, fertile
lands, prairies, and every species of American game.
This was the favorite hunting-ground of the lower
Cherokees, whose principal settlements were situated
on the head waters of the Savannah.
Pearson, in his manuscript history of Fairfield,
described the region of country embraced in the
present Districts of Richland, Fairfield, Chester, and
York, as peculiarly noted in primitive times, for
the great abundance of its game. Farther back than
any aboriginal history runneth — perhaps for centu
ries — it had been an uninhabited waste. When the
English came, they found this beautiful peninsular
a dividing, and common hunting-ground between
the Cherokees and Catawbas. The tradition rela
ted by the same writer, to account for this singular
fact, is exceedingly interesting. It will be given in
its proper place.
In the cane brakes of the Saluda,* Long-cane,
Ennoree, Broad River, Buffalo of York, and numer
ous other streams, and on the extensive prairie ridges,
the early pioneers and hunters found large herds of
buffaloes and elks; while in the higher woodland
country, deer abounded in vast numbers. Even
here, though the blue tops of the mountains were
only here and there dimly seen in the distance,

* Corrupted from Saluta.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 7
the country exhibited many pleasant and romantic
scenes. The face of this region of romance, interspersed
with forests, and prairies, and vast brakes of cane —
the latter often stretching in unbroken lines of ever
green for hundreds of miles, from the alluvial coun
try on the south, to the interior sources of the
streams,* was not surpassed in picturesque beauty
and grandeur, by the best portions of Texas of the
present day; and its virgin soil was not then infe
rior to that of the same boasted State.
As late as 1775, the woodlands, carpeted with
grass, and the wild pea-vine, growing as high as a
horse's back, and wild flowers of every hue, were
the constant admiration of the traveler and adven
turous pioneer. The forests of those early times
were far more imposing than any now remaining in
this portion of the ancient Cherokee Nation. The
trees were generally larger, and stood so wide apart
that a deer or a buffalo could be easily seen at a long
distance — there being nothing to obstruct the view
but the rolling surface. On the elevated hill-tops the
strolling hunter often took his stand, to sweep, at a
single view, a large extent of country. The pea-
vine and grasses occupied the place of the bushes
and young forest growth that render the woods of
the present time so gloomy and intricate.
The partizan soldiers of the Revolution, in Upper
Carolina, frequently spoke of this striking feature of
* Adair's Hist. N. Am. Indians.

8 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
the country. It sometimes favored their enterprises,
but as often proved the cause of premature detection
and defeat.
Pearson's description of the primitive territory, now
known as Fairfield, is quite a glowing picture; but,
no doubt, in the main, truthful to nature. The
natural scenery, composed of forests and rivers, roll
ing hills, undulating plains, and gushing springs, was
grand as well as beautiful. It caught the eye of
Lord Cornwallis, while encamped with his army at
Winsboro', in the winter of 1780.
In that season of ice and snow, he pronounced it
a paradise. Conversing, on one occasion, with
Walter Roberson, he observed: "I cam conceive of
no finer region, taking into consideration its fertile
soil, mild climate, its long-drawn beautiful valleys,
and glorious highlands." The force of this remark
will be somewhat heightened, when it is recollected
that Cornwallis was, at that time, in no very favorable
situation for being attracted by the beauties of nature.
The indomitable Scotch-Irish Presbyterian hornets
of Mecklenburg, and Upper Carolina, had allowed
him little opportunity for the exercise of the poetic
inspiration. The same chronicler adds : " His lordship was
right. Whoever remembers woodland Fairfield, has
in his mind's eye, a vision of nature's best finish
and kindest prodigality."*
The wild pea grew chiefly on the highlands, while

* Manuscript papers.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 9
the cane flourished best in the valleys, and filled the
lower grounds of all the streams.* Upper Carolina
was then not inferior to any portion of the Great
West, as a grazing country. On certain rich soils,
however, the cane was frequently found by the
earlier settlers, growing luxuriantly on the tops of
the highest hills.
That fertile section of the Old Ninety-six District,
which was afterwards known as the Flat-woods of
Abbeville, presented to the view of the hunters, and
pioneer settlers, the magnificent prospect of the hills
and valleys of an extended tract of prairie country,
waving under a rich growth of cane, from five to
thirty feet in height. Patrick and William Calhoun
who, with several others, built the first Scotch-Irish
cabins ever erected in this section ofthe present dis
trict, often affirmed, that when they settled it, it was
one vast brake of canes— not a tree or a bush appeared
to break the view ofthe astonished beholder, f
This was, no doubt, the primitive condition of
most, if not all, the lands of the ancient Long-canes,
of Duncan's Creek, in the present territory of Lau
rens, and numerous other streams of the upper-
country; nota few of them have treasured up in
their names, lasting memorials of these facts in
their primitive history. Besides its Long-cane, Ab
beville has a Reedy Branch ;. Laurens its Reedy
* Both the pea-vine and maiden cane are still found in the up-
country, but only in situations where they are shut in from hogs and
cattle. -j- Conversation of Col. John A. Calhoun and others.

10 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
Fork, and Reedy River; and Union, Spartanburg,
Pickens, Lancaster, and Richland, their Cane Creeks.
When the first house was erected on the present
site of Abbeville Village, it was designed to place it
on the highest point of the hill; but afterwards,
when the tall cane which covered the whole spot was
cut away, an error of more than fifty yards was dis
covered. This house was built by Captain Andrew
Hamilton, subsequent to the Revolution, and is still
known as the Old Red House. One of the little
shed-rooms ofthe same building, the same in which
is still kept the village post-office, has become hal
lowed by a far more interesting association than that
which connects it with the primitive scenery of the
spot. It is the room which Mr. Calhoun used se
his law-office, soon after commencing the practice of
law in his native district. On the side-walk, imme
diately in front of this room, he was often seen stand
ing, bareheaded, holding, in troublous times, with
groups of his fellow-citizens, those inimitable conver
sations, for which he is still so fondly and gratefully
remembered by hundreds, who were so fortunate as
to be his auditors on such occasions. The Old Red
House should be preserved as long as corroding time
will suffer its perishable timbers to lie one upon
another.* The cane growth of the country soon became the
standard by which the early settlers estimated the
value of lands. If it grew no higher than five feet,

*It is built of logs.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 11
or the height of a man's head, the soil was deemed
ordinary; but a growth of twenty or thirty feet indi
cated the highest degree of fertility.* Hence, all the
early settlements of the upper-country were planted
on, or near, the rich hill-sides of the rivers and
creeks. There was little danger to be apprehended
then, from any billious diseases in such situations;
even the old-fashion chill and fever were almost
unknown, and the cabins, and premises of the
pioneers, were far too recent to generate the miasm
of the loathsome typhus.
Many wonderful accounts have been given of the
prairies of the Great West. At the period when the
hunters and cow-drivers first penetrated the upper-
country, there were considerable portions of it, as
before intimated, as destitute of trees, and as luxuri
ant in grass and flowers, as any prairie of modern
times. The ordinary observer may discover that
much of the forest of the present day is of compar
atively recent growth; the greater number of the
trees have sprung up in the memory of living men ;
few are so old as a hundred and sixty years, and
only here and there, at immense intervals, towers a
patriarchal pine or oak, whose germination dates
back to the beginning of the sixteenth century. f
* Conversation of Joseph Duncan, of Duncan's Creek, one of the
oldest residents of Laurens District.
fThe concentric rings, easily counted in the trunk of a newly cut
tree, indicate its age with mathematical precision. A pine was re
cently felled in the village of Greenwood, that began its growth in
1588.

12 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
It is well known that in the primitive history of
the country, there were numerous prairies in the cor
responding parts of Virginia and North Carolina. A
judicious writer observes : " Emigration was encour
aged and directed very much in the earliest periods,
by the vast prairies, with pea-vine grass and cane
brakes, which stretched across the States of Virginia
and North Carolina. There are large forests now, in
those two States, where, a hundred years ago, not a
tree, and scarce a shrub, could he seen.'"*
It would be an interesting, as well as curious, sub
ject of investigation, to inquire into the physical
causes that have wrought so effectually in rearing
noble forests of oak and pine on lands that were
once flowered prairies. A reasonable solution of
the question, would, no doubt, set at rest another, no
less important: Why it is that lands once encum
bered with heavy forests, have, on being cultivated
a number of years, but not exhausted, and turned
out, become as perfect prairies as any seen in Ala
bama or Texas. This is the present state of much
of the land around old Ninety-six.
What remains of the oak forests of the Flat-
woods, resembles, very much, the open woods of
primitive times, and of many portions of the West,
at the present day; and it is a fact not often observed
in any Atlantic State, that so strongly is the soil'
impregnated with its own lime, that in a little while
after the leaves have fallen from the trees in autumn,

* Foot's Sketches of North Carolina.

ANCIENT TERRITORY' OF THE CHEROKEES. 13
scarcely a shred of them can be seen upon the
ground.* These lands, it appears, were originally quite
boggY) particularly in winter, and so full of ponds
of water, inclosed in curious depressions of the sur
face, that many pioneers and land speculators, not
well versed in the nature of these new soils, passed
them by as inferior for agricultural purposes. Of
one, especially, a wealthy speculator from Charleston,
it is related, that having rode over, perhaps, the en
tire body of these lands, with the privilege of seve
ral fine selections, he rejected them all, aud found
himself better pleased with a section near the present
site of Mt. Carmel.
A body of lands of the same formation, with those
of the reedy flats of the Long-canes, and lying
equally as well, but in their virgin state not quite so
attractive to the emigrant and experienced farmer,
were discovered extending several miles in a circuit
around the future site of Ninety-six.
It does not appear from any records, or even from
tradition, that this was, in old times, like the former,
a prairie region. Its forest growth was quite simi
lar to that of the country generally, while the luxu
riant canes covered its whole surface, from the
valleys to the tops of the highest hills. If it was
ever, at any remote period, a prairie, it contrasted
then no more singularly with the surrounding coun-

# Neither old leaves, nor ticks, nor stumps are ever seen in the
Flat-woods.

14 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
try, than the larger portion of it does at this moment;
for it is again, as before remaiked, a natural prairie;
and in spring and summer, scarcely less picturesque
than when trod by the stealthy Cherokee, and rov
ing herds of buffalo.
The fact is a curious one, and doubtless not yet
accounted for, that since the oak and hickory have
been cut from these lands, scarcely a solitary pine,
and little of any other vegetable growth than a rich
sward of grass, havj sprung up to occupy their
place. And this has not resulted from the sterility
of exhaustion ; for it is well known that if timber
was convenient to enclose them, or a fence law in
existence, the old Cambridge lands would, at once,
command the highest market prices of the district.
We found among the records in Columbia, an old
letter to Gov. Glen, from which may be learned sev
eral interesting particulars in regard to these lands,
and many more of the upper-country, at the earliest
period of its settlement. The following extract is
sufficient for our present purpose : " The neighbor
hood begs leave humbly to propose to your Excellen
cy, that one of the companies, at least, may be ap
pointed to range these woods back of the settlements
on the north side of the river;* for it is only there
that the enemy can do us damage, there being no
livers as yet at Ninety-Six, to receive any. The lands

* The writer refers here, to companies of rangers, just then organ
ized for the protection ofthe traders and back-settlers, who were ex
posed to the incursions of the French, or northern Indians from the
Ohio.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 15
on and about Ninety-Six, are well known to be rich
and good, but they are also known to be very thirsty,
excepting what lies near the river Savannah. But
those that lie to the north of us are of a kinder soil,
generally, and far better watered with beautiful rivers
and creeks, as far as the Catawba, and stand a fair
chance to be sooner settled." This was written from
Tugaloo, in the summer of 1751. We shall have oc
casion to refer to it in another place.
While upper Carolina thus abounded in attractions
for the farmer and stock-raiser, it was no less invit
ing to the sportsman and hunter. Farther back than
history or any tradition runneth, it had been the hunt
ing-ground ofthe Cherokees.
In the swamps and low-grounds of the water
courses, the forest was often intricate and gloomy.
The deep alluvial soil of those places nourished the
largest trees and densest brakes. These afforded cov
ert and food for wild animals of many kinds, and as
numerous as those that lurk on the Trinity or Yellow-
Stone ; and with the natural pastures of the up-lands,
rendered the country first the blest home of the In
dian, aud at a later period, the paradise of the Anglo-
American hunter.
The buffalo, now to be met with only on the most
distant plains of the great West, roamed in large
herds through the open woods and prairies, and
found both pasture and concealment in the cane-
thickets ofthe rivers and creeks. At the earliest period
of emigration into the upper-country, an old pioneer
from Virginia often counted a hundred buffaloes

1G HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
grazing on a single acre of ground, in the present
territory of Abbeville and Edgefield.*
When the first settlers of Duncan's Creek arrived
from Pennsylvania, and began to erect their cabins
on that fertile stream, they found its valleys and hills
abounding in buffaloes. Their deep-worn trails,
leading to favorite ranges and licks, marked the
country in every direction, and long after the strug
gling settlement had become a flourishing commu
nity, and not a buffalo remained in those parts, these
paths could still be traced along the creek and its
tributaries.! The old hunters killed great numbers of them,
every year, solely for their skins and tongues ; deer and
wild turkeys were too abundant to make them an
object of pursuit for the sake of their flesh. Attacked
on all sides in a wooded country, and by hunters
armed with the deadly rifle, the buffalo was quickly
exterminated, or driven away into the deeper wilds
of the west. They were the first, of all the original
game of upper Carolina, except the timid elk, to dis
appear, and hence the little traditionary information
now lingering among the people in relation to this
remarkable animal.
In the old manuscript records of our collonial his-
* Henry Foster, father of the late Joseph Fox Foster, who died re
cently near Greenwood, at an advanced age. He settled first on the
Saluda, in Edgefield, and afterwards on the place owned by his son at
his death.
•(-Conversation of JosephDuncan ; as-erted also by old Robert Long,
one of the earliest settlers on the same creek, in evidence given in
the trial ofa case, many years ago. at Laurensville.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 17
tory, reference is not unfrequently made to the wild
animals of this region. The first mention, of any
sort; that we discovered of the buffalo, is in the follow
ing note: "It is ordered by the Council for Indian
Affairs, August, 1718, that the store-keeper in Charles
ton deliver Robert Blakeney, one buffalo skin from
the public peltries, for his care in bringing down a
periago* of skins and furs from Savannah Town.''f
Bartram, in the narrative of his passage from this
same ancient trading post, in 1773, by old Fort
Charlotte to the Cherokee towns at the head of the
Savannah, describes a spot, not far from the latter
place, where he found large quantities of moss-cov
ered bones, of both men and buffaloes, lying scattered
indiscriminately over the ground.
The Cherokee Indians called the buffalo yanasa
the very great bull, or the Bull of God ; and this,
says Adair, was the universal name among all. the
tribes of North America, for this animal — a presump
tive proof of their common origin. The women fab
ricated from its thick, shaggy hair, a kind of cloth of
great use among them for its warmth and durability.
The gay young warriors often wore locks or rolls of
this fur, drawn through their long slitted ears ; and
on great festive or military occasions, mounted upon
their brows, already sufficiently hideous from paint,
* A periago was a kind of boat, used in the peltry trade ; it is writ
ten in the Statutes of South Carolina, pettiauger. It was derived
from the Spaniards.
f Savannah Town stood just below the present site of Hamburg.
We will have much more to say of it.
2

IK HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
a pair of buffalo horns, with the appendage of the
tail, also, in its proper place.
The skins of the buffalo and the bear, formed the
chief coverings for their beds ; and like the white
hunters, they destroyed great numbers of the former
animal simply for their skins and tongues.* In the
year 1760, a Mr. Graves, an old man, crossed the
Wateree at Grave's Ford, and formed a settlement in
the present territory of Fairfield. When his people
had kindled their camp fires, soon after passing the
river, he looked into the larder, and announced to
the company that their meal and meat were both en
tirely exhausted ; " but," said he, " as we crossed the
river, I saw tracks in the paths, leading up from it
into the woods, which must be those of the buffalo.
Let the young men take their guns and waylay the
trails, and they will, no doubt, soon take us a fresh
supply of meat."
Reuben Harrison, who was one of the party, im
mediately formed a hunting band, and going out, as
directed, was not long in killing three fat buffaloes,
which they succeeded in bringing into the encamp
ment. After cutting from their carcasses what they
needed for their present necessities, the rest was di
vided into small pieces, and spread upon a log, to
cool, during the night. The wolves, however, of the
neighboring swamps, having got scent of it, surroun
ded the camp, with the most hideous bowlings, and
when day-light came, scarcely half of the game could
* Adair.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 19
he found.* "But," adds our chronicler, "the loss
was easily supplied."
The venerable Busby, who lived to the advanced
age of one hundred and ten years, related, that he
had often seen, at one time, three thousand buffaloes
on the Long Meadows of Little River, in the same
territory.^ In the time ofthe old hunters, or as late as when
the early settlers were building their cabins on Buffalo
Creek, on lands now embraced in York District,
that stream was famous for its herds of the animal
from which it derives its name. The valleys of this
stream are exceedingly fertile, and their cane pas
tures afforded inexhaustible pasturage. The hunters,
we are told, sought the buffalo here, more frequently
than in any other of their haunts in that region.
They not only found them in great numbers, but
secured them as game with greater ease ; for, after
being shot, they seldom escaped by plunging into
the water, as they often did on, Broad River.J
When closely pursued, and "brought to bay, the
buffalo was not surpassed in fierceness by any other
animal of these wilds ; and it is said by those who
knew well his habits, that, heavy and awkward as
he was, with his huge head, ponderous shoulders,
and projecting hump, he was swifter than either the
# Pearson's MS.
f Pearson's MS. History of Fairfield.
\ Conversation of the Hon. Wm. C. Black, of York District.

20 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
i
deer or elk. His great strength enabling him to plunge
rapidly along over rolling hills as well as level
plains. Far back, in primitive times, the Cherokee Indians
hunted the buffalo solely with the bow and spear,
and on foot ; and from its habit, so often witnessed
at the present day, on the prairies of the West, of
marching from one pasture to another, in a solid,
compact body, the stealthy savages easily entered a
herd, and singling out their victims, brought them
down, at close quarters, with their flint-pointed ar
rows. At a later period, however, they were accus
tomed to hunt them on horseback, and armed with
the rifle.
They occasionally resorted to the well-known
method of driving them, when moving in large
herds, over steep precipices. It was not often, how
ever, they found them in a situation to allow of this
advantage ; and still less frequent were their neces
sities so great as to require this wholesale destruction
of so noble an animal.
Adair, writing ofthe buffaloes iu this region, about
the commencement of the Revolution, tells us that
they had then become scarce, as the thoughtless,
wasteful Indians used to kill great numbers of them
solely for their tongues and marrow-bones, leaving
the rest of the carcass to the wild beasts.
The precise period when the last buffalo was seen
in Upper Carolina, was, doubtless, never ascertained ;
they were abundant in Middle Tennessee in 1775

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 21
and it was probably about that time that the last
body of them disappeared from the country east of
the Blue Ridge.
Long ago they ceased to graze on the rich valleys
of Tennessee, and are now only to be found in the
astonishing numbers of their primitive strength, on
the most distant plains of the Great West; yet their
range is still confined, it appears, to the region east
ofthe Rocky Mountains. One of the officers of the
United States Exploring Expedition on the Pacific,
observes: "It will perhaps excite some surprise that
I include the buffalo in the fawna of our Pacific
States, as it is a common opinion that the buffalo is,
and has always been, confined to the Atlantic slope
of the Rocky Mountains. This is not true. The
range ofthe buffalo does not now extend beyond the
Rocky Mountains ; but there are many Indian hunt
ers, who have killed them in great numbers, to the
west of the Mountains, on the head waters of Sal
mon River. Great numbers of their skulls were
found on the prairie there."*
This monarch of the American forest and prairie,
was formerly found throughout the entire Eastern
portion of the United States, to the Atlantic Ocean,
and as far south as Florida. To the south-west, it
extended over the whole of the Mississippi Valley
through Texas, and into Mexico, f
* United States Exploring Expedition.
t Ibid.

CHAPTER II.
The Deer of Primitive Times— Their great abundance— Associated
with many animals of prey, whose screams and howls at Night
made the Forests hideous— The Villages of Greenwood and Cokes-
bury — An Old Hunter — John Duncan, of Duncan's Creek — Ancient
Buffalo and Deer Licks— The Meriwelhers, Wardlaws, Moores,
Browns, McAlasters, and Logans, of Little Wilson's Creek— Idle
and Disorderly Persons begin, just after the Revolution, to wander
over the country, to the great annoyance of the peaceable resi
dents — Legislative enactments in regard to them — The Indian
method of dressing a Deer-skin — The famous Bezoar stones ofthe
Cherokees — Elks, &c.
Deer were so numerous, at this period, in the up
per-country, that large herds of them were scarcely
ever out of sight ofthe pioneer, even while standing
in his cabin-door. They were more numerous than
hares are at present, while panthers, wolves, bears,
catamounts, and wild cats, prowled in incredible
numbers in the swamps and thickets, making night
hideous with their cries.
When reading the accounts given by travelers in
Africa, of ihis fearful concomitant of the gloom and
savageness of its woodland solitudes, few would re
alize the fact, that similar startling noises were the
familiar serenades with which our emigrant fathers
were nightly greeted in their cabins, in Upper Caro
lina. Lawson describes the cries and how!in°-s of the

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 23
wild animals at night, in the swamps of the Santee,
even after that part of the province had been for
some time in the possession of a European popula
tion, as terrific, beyond measure.
On the beautiful ridge, the water shed between the
Savannah and Saluda, and on which are situated,
within eight miles of each other, the rural villages of
Greenwood and Cokesbury, it was no uncommon
occurrence in old times, to meet with herds of deer
of sixty or seventy head. Deer Branch, that takes its
rise in the former, just back of the residence of James
Creswell, Esq., is a memorial of this fact, in its pri
mitive history, not likely soon to perish. An old
hunter is yet alive, though doubtless the very last
survivor of his vigorous generation, who, in his
youth, shot deer in great numbers, by means of
blinds near their watering-places on the streams,
that have their sources near those villages.*
It required of the hunter but a short walk, and or
dinary skill with the rifle, to supply himself and
family plentifully with venison and the flesh of the
wild turkey. Old Anthony Park, who settled on
lands now embraced in the District of Newberry,
used to assert that a man could, at that time, stand
in his own door, and kill more game than would be
sufficient for the support of two families.f
When John Duncan built his house in a cane-
brake, on the creek, which bears his name, he opened

# Old Isaac Logan, now a resident of Greene County, Alabama.
f Pearson's MS.

21 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
a path, some fifteen paces long, through the cane to
the stream, for the convenience of getting water. In
after years he related to his children, that there was
scarcely a minute in the day that he could not see
some wild animal moving stealthily up or down the
creek across that path.''
Sitting, one evening at d«sk, in his door, with his
foot against the frame, a bear slily approached the
the house, and threw him for a moment into a great
fright, by springing suddenly over his leg into the
cabin. Recovering himself, he seized his gun, and
before the bold intruder could effect his escape, shot
him dead upon the hearth.
After a while, however, as the English hunters be
came more numerous and aggressive, the deer grew
wilder and scarcer ; and they were now more fre
quently taken by being ambuscaded at their water
ing places and licks. These last were, many of
them, famous spots, and well known to all the
hunters for miles around. The indestructible marks
of some of them still remain.
On a plantation,* a few miles south-east of the
village of Greenwood, the traces of one are yet re
markable. When the buffalo and deer first fre
quented this spot, the lick was evidently on the edge
of a small branch, under a sloping hill; in the
course of years, however— perhaps of an age— they
wore away, by the incessant application of their
tongues, a large portion of the slope ; and when the

' Near the residence of James Pert, Sen.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 25
last of them visited it, the steep excavated sides of
the hill had gradually extended some thirty or forty
paces from the rivulet.
Around this lick the last of the Revolutionary
hunters of Little Wilson's Creek had their deer
blinds; here the Meriwethers, Wardlaws, Moors,
Browns, Bakers, McAlasters and Logans often met
at nightfall, to kill deer, and recount, with a social
sympathy that only those old people felt and knew
how to manifest, the news of the day and their last
htmting adventure.
At a spot, about the same distance north-east from
Greenwood, in a deep ravine, where the bases of
several hills come together, there was, in the earliest
periods, a celebrated lick, at which, it is probable
that, far back in the traditionary history of the In
dians, it was a place of resort for buffalo and deer,
and perhaps for other animals now extinct.*
These licks abounded, however, in the upper
country, from the Savannah to the Catawba. The
early settlers and hunters easily discovered them, by
following up the deep narrow paths that led to them
from every direction.
Deer were so abundant in the woods around the
site of old Ninety-six, even at the close of the eight
eenth century, that the carcass ofa buck brought no
more than half a dollar in the streets of Cambridge.
Now, not one of the species is to be found in all
that region between the Savannah and Saluda.
# Near Chalk Level, on Dr. C. R. Mosely's plantation.
3

26 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
Of all the animals indigenous to this portion of
the Cherokee country, the fallow deer was the most
numerous and the most important; its flesh was the
chief food of the Indians, and its skin one of the
necessaries and luxuries of their domestic life. It
was the material from which they constructed their
mocassins, leggings and a hundred other things no
less useful; while its strong, slender sinews served
all the purposes of the most durable thread in their
manufacture. Next to success in war, the Indians honored the
skill and good fortune of the warrior who took, in
any season, the greatest number of deer. Success
here was one of their great standards of worth ; for,
as in war, they regarded it as a special mark of divine
favor, and of the moral purity of the hunter.
This was the taste of savages ; but is it not more
praiseworthy than that of a civilized Christian race,
who make the ability to acquire wealth the chief
standard of social excellence ?
The Cherokee name for deer was ahowive,i\uA awa-
tahawwe, a very common term among them, meant
"the great deer-killer of God for the people.'' Says
Adair: "since my time, this title was very honorable
among them. Every town solemnly appointed one —
him whom they saw that God had at sundry times
blessed with better success than his brethren, in sup
plying them with a holy banquet, that they might
eat and rejoice before the Divine Essence. But
now it seems, by reason of their great intercourse
with foreigners, they have left off that old social

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 27
religious custom, and even their former noted hospi
tality.'' They always sewed their moccasins, with deers'
sinews, though of a sharp, cutting quality, for they
reckon them more fortunate than the wild hemp ;
but to eat such, they imagine would breed worms
and other ailments, in proportion to the number
they eat. And I have been assured by a gentleman
of character, who is now an inhabitant of South
Carolina, and well acquainted with the customs of
the Northern Indians, that they also cut a piece out
of the thigh of every deer they kill, and throw it
away; and reckon it such a dangerous pollution to
eat it, as to occasion sickness and other misfortunes,
especially by spoiling their guns from shooting with
proper force and direction.
It is also to be observed, that although they made
constant use of the bears' oil, and even applied it to
religious purposes, they had no such title as the bear
killer of Ood: not regarding that animal so clean
and sacred as the deer, and therefore not to be eaten
in their religious feasts, in which they ate, sang and
danced in the presence of Yohewah. Before dress
ing their fresh-killed venison, they always passed it
through the smoke and flame of fire, as a sacrificial
offering; and the first buck that fell before the hand
of the hunter, either in his summer or winter chase,
was often sacrificed entire, but most frequently
merely the melt, or a piece of the fat, was so dis
posed of.
" In the woods, they cut a small piece out of the

28 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
lower part of the thighs of the deer they had killed,
lengthways, and pretty deep. Among the great
number of venison-hams they brought to the Eng
lish trading-houses, not one was observed to be
without this mark."
When in pursuit of deer, it was their habit to
range over a large extent of country, often traveling
more than thirty miles before they returned loaded
to the camp.
Previous to their acquaintance with the English,
in these enterprises, as in the chase of the buffalo, the
bow-and-arrow was their chief weapon ; and even
after they had learned from the whites the use of the
rifle, they never went on a hunt or a war expedition,
without arming themselves as well with the bow and
quiver. Just before the Revolution, a large class of roving
vagabonds, of whom we shall have more to say, spent
their whole time sauntering alone through the woods,
visiting their Indian mistresses, and shooting deer at
all seasons, both the young and full grown, for the
sake of their skins, to the great destruction of that
useful animal, and detriment of the growing up-
country settlements. The people, anxious at length,
to preserve their deer, and to get rid ofthe vagrants,
laid the matter before the Executive Council, and
procured the enactment ofa statute whose preamble
well explains the grounds of the people's complaints.
" Whereas, many idle, loose, and disorderly per
sons, as well residents as non-residents in this pro
vince, have made, and do make, a constant practice

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEfcOKfcES. 29
of wandering up and down the same and of killing
the deer merely for the sake ofthe skins, leaving the
flesh to rot, whereby wolves, and other beasts of prey,
are brought among the stocks of cattle, hogs and
sheep, to the great annoyance and damage of the
owners thereof; and whereas, the dangerous practice
of hunting and killing of deer in the night-time, by
carrying of lighted torches through the woods, is now
become very common, by means whereof, several
persons have been killed, and great numbers of all
sorts of cattle are frequently destroyed, to the mani
fest injury of the owners of the same; for remedy
thereof, and in order to prevent as much as may be,
the like mischiefs in future, we humbly pray his
most sacred Majesty that it may be enacted," &c.
Accordingly it was provided that no doe or fawn
should be killed between the first day of January and
the last of July, in any year ever after ; nor any buck
between the first day of September and the last Fri
day of October, and between the first day of March
and the last of April. Two pounds of proclamation
money, recoverable before any Justice of the Peace,
was the penalty for the violation of this statute; and
five pounds for the violation of the further provision ;
that no persons, whatever, (the Indians excepted,)
should, in the night, hunt or kill deer, in any other
place than their own grounds or enclosures.
It was finally enacted that no one should range the
woods in search of game at a greater distance from
his own residence than seven, miles.* This Act was
# Statutes of South .Carolina, Volume Fourth.

30 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
passed in August, 1769, the same year that by an or
der from the same authorities the first Court in the
upper country was established at old Ninety-Six.
Two years after the Revolution, this interesting
animal again became an object of legislative discus
sion and enactment. The people, it appears, were
no longer annoyed by the offensive carcasses of deer
slain around their plantations by the sauntering
hunters ; but a nuisance of greater magnitude had
taken its place. Just as the manly tournament of
the middle ages has degenerated into the effeminate,
kid-glove exercise at arms of the present age, so the
race of the old hero-hunters of Carolina had well
nigh disappeared, and given place to a generation,
not of hunters in the primitive sense of the term, but
of night-walkers, whose chief skill in the art of taking
deer, consisted in the ability to carry a pan, on which
a bright lightwood torch blazed, to attract the eyes of
their unsuspecting victims. This being effected, the
magnanimous sportsman took deliberate aim, at his
leisure, and as his musket, or great English shot-gun,
carried a hand-full of buckshot, and the game was
usually near at hand, he seldom missed his object
This method of killing deer was sufficiently objection
able, if only for the reason that it was greatly and
wantonly destructive to them. But unfortunately
for the peace and safety of these doughty pan-carriers,
there were few of them who possessed the practical
skill to distinguish, at night, between the eyes of a
deer and those of a horse, or any other domestic ani
mals; and many, it was strongly suspected at the

ANCIEXT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 31
time, were not very anxious to acquire a skill so dis
criminating. The indignation of the people was at
last thoroughly aroused, and resulted in an enact
ment ofthe Legislature, October, 17S5, the preamble
of which reads as follows:
"Whereas, many idle aud disorderly persons do
make a practice of hunting with fire in the night
time, whereby great numbers of deer are unnecessa
rily destroyed, and the cattle and other stock of the
good citizens of this State frequently injured; for
remedy whereof, it was ordained, that any person
who should thereafter hunt with fire, or kill any
deer, or horse, or cattle, or stock of other kind, in the
night-time, should pay the sum of twenty pounds
sterling." *
This, we believe, was the last Act of the State Le
gislature in favor of the poor deer; but no statute
passed there, or remonstrance from the better sort of
people, availed to preserve them long after the coun
try became more thickly settled, and the race of fire-
hunters had once got a taste of their easy slaughter.
Like the hapless red men, for whose subsistence a
munificent Providence first provided it, the deer is
now nearly extinct in the upper country. In the
swamps of the Savannah, on the more northern tri
butaries of the Broad and Saluda rivers, near the foot
of the mountains, and in the vast solitudes of the
pine lands of Edgefield, a few may yet linger; but
soon not a representative of the race will be found

*Statutes at Large, Volume 4, page 719.

32 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
east of the Blue Ridge, and another link be broken
forever that connects the present with the stirring age
of Carolina's romance.
Lawson declares that the Indians were frequently
in the habit of eating the deer cooked entire with its
stomach and intestines, and their contents. But their
daintiest dish consisted of a pair of young fawns
boiled as they lay in the water and womb ofthe mother.
The method which they used to dress the skins of
the deer, and of other animals, so as to impart to
them the exquisite softness and flexibility that ren
dered them so valuable in commerce, was exceed
ingly simple, and appears to be the same still in use
in the upper-country for a similar purpose.
The skins were first soaked in water, and the hair
curried off with an instrument made from a deer's
shank bone or rib. This rude implement was dis
placed after a while by an English currying-knife of
iron; the Indians used to say, however, that they
could curry a skin with the bone, with more dispatch
than with the sharp iron of the English. ,
After the removal of the hair, the skins were
soaked for some time in a solution of deers' brains
and water; the brains had been previously made into
a cake and baked in the ashes. They remained in
this mixture till all the water had been absorbed; they
were then taken out and constantly rubbed or scraped
with an oyster-shell or muscle, till perfectly dry;
they were now sufficiently soft and pliant for all pur
poses when not exposed to water. To secure them
from being hardened by moisture, it was necessary

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 33
as at present, to tan them with bark. The Indians
often used, in the first part of the process, the soft
grains of their roasting-ears beaten to a pulp, instead
of the deers' brains.
The same author observes that the famous bezoar
stone, so much prized for its wonderful powers in
medicine, was found chiefly in the deer that range
near the mountains. The Indians valued it very
highly ; they were accustomed to reduce it to powder
and carry it with them, in leathern pouches, on their
expeditions. Lawson thus describes, in his journal,
an interview which he had with a party of Indians,
who were, no doubt, Cherokees, though he gives them
a different name :
"This evening came down some Torteros — tall,
likely men — havinggreat plenty of buffaloes, elks, and
bears, with other sort of deer amongst them, which
strong food makes large, robust bodies. Inquiring
of them if they never got any of the bezoar stone,
and giving them a description how it was found, the
Indians told me they had great plenty of it, and
asked me what use I could make of it ? I answered
them that the white men used it in physic, and that
I would buy some of them if they would get it against
I came that way again. Thereupon one of them
pulled out a leather pouch wherein was some of it in
powder; he was a notable hunter, and affirmed to
me that that powder blown into the eyes strengthened
the sight and brain exceedingly- — that being the most
common use they made of it."*
Lawson's Caio!ina, page 4S.

34 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
It appears from this that the many strange stories
related of the bezoars' never failing to extract the
venom of the most poisonous reptiles, are unsus-
tained by the experience and practice ofthe Indians.
They were known to trust to other agents for the
cure of the rattle-snake's bite, and that of other ser
pents nearly as deadly. The bezoar stone, it is now
well ascertained, is nothing more than a calcareous
formation in the deer and many other animals, like
that which produces the painful disease of gravel in
man. Many wonderful stories are told of its curative
powers. The bite of the most venemous serpent was
harmless if a bezoar was at hand to absorb the poison
from the wound ; and here and there an old woman
is still to be found in the upper-country whose child
like faith in all the virtues claimed for it is not sur
passed by her belief in the creed or the gospel of St.
John. It is not, perhaps, generally known that the swift-
footed, majestic elk was once an inhabitant of Upper
Carolina. This animal "is a highly valued species
ofthe deer, now only found in considerable herds in
the wilds of the west, and north-west, to about the
50th degree of north latitude. The great forests were
their favorite haunts, where were plenty of buds, and
tender twigs ; on those wide prairies, and plains,
where man is seldom seen, but nature is^ bountiful in
her supplies of verdant food."*

* Thatcher.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 35
The elk is a large stately animal, and beautifully
proportioned in all his parts. The towering antlers
of the male are several feet in length, and have long
been the admiration of the naturalist, as well as the
hunter. His fleetness was incredible. When first
aroused by the hunter, he disdained to fly at once,
but bounded along a few paces only, as if trying his
strength for flight. He stops to turn half round, and
gaze again at his pursuer; then throwing back his
branching horns upon his neck, and projecting his
taper nose forward, he springs onward at a rate,
which soon leaves the hunter far in the back
ground.* When wounded,. and at bay, he was no less fierce,
and dangerous than the buffalo or panther ; the wary
hunter knew better than to approach him, without
great caution, under these circumstances. The name
given him by the Indians was hissooba ; they great
ly prized his carcass, not so much for the sake of the
flesh — for, like that ofthe buffalo, it was coarser, and
not so sweet as venison — but for the horns and skin.
The former, in their soft state, they esteemed excel
lent food; and when hard, and fully developed, they
formed from them the best bows of which they were
possessed. The latter they used in the manufacture
of a great variety of domestic articles.
This exceedingly timid aninial, was the first to dis
appear from the ancient hunting grounds of the
upper-country, at the approach of the strange hunt-
# Thatcher.

36 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
ers and settlers, with their echoing axes, and louder
pealing rifles. Its only genial home was the deep
solitudes of uncultivated tracts. Scarcely a tradition
lingers among the people to cast a gleam of light
upon the early history of the elk in Upper Carolina.
Its memorials passed away with the last generation
ofthe Indians, and English hunters, who pursued it
in its native wilds, ere it disappeared forever beyond
the Alleghany range.
We are informed, however, in Pearson's manu
script, that the last of the species, which was seen in
the famous neutral hunting-ground between the
Broad and Catawba Rivers, already described, was
killed near Winn's Bridge in the present District of
Fairfield. He thus relates the incident : " For a short
time after the settlers began to clear their lands, the
elk was frequently met with ; but the strange sounds
which now began to invade his haunts, soon drove
him off into the uninhabited wilderness. The last
one that remained was shot near Winn's Bridge, by
Robert Newton. One ofthe hams, and the magnifi
cent antlers of the slain animal, were presented to
Capt. John Pearson, who, like a true Englishman,
ate the ham, and sent the antlers to a museum in
England. At that period no such institution as a
museum was known in the upper-country ; neither
did the people possess the taste or the inclination, to
collect, and preserve its curiosities — their mission
then, was to clear, to plant and to build."
" The elk was once perhaps more widely distributed
over the North American Continent than any other

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 37
quadruped ; it existed throughout the entire territory
lying between the northern provinces of Mexico and
Hudson's Bay, and between the Atlantic and Paci
fic Oceans. Within the United States, east of the
Mississippi, very few are left, except in the region
bordering Lake Superior. On the western tributaries
of the Mississippi it is still very common, and per
haps equally so in California and Oregon. West of
the Rocky Mountains, it was formerly most abund
ant, in California, where it is still far from rare. In
the rich pasture lands of the San Joaquin and
Sacramento, the old residents tell us, it formerly was
to be seen in immense droves, and with the antelope,
the black tailed deer, the wild cattle and mustangs,
covered those plains with herds rivalling those ofthe
buffalo east of the mountains, or of the antelope in
South Africa."
The favorite haunts of the elk in California, are
the wide stretches of " tule " bordering the rivers and
lakes I have mention. It is said that unlike most
large quadrupeds, the elk can never be " bogged,"
and he traverses these marshy districts with a facili
ty possessed by no other animal.
During the rutting season, when the bucks are
rushing through the tule in search of the females, a
common mode of hunting them is to mount a horse,
and riding along the edge of the marshes to call the
buck by an imitation of the cry. of the doe. He
comes plunging on his course, marked for a long dis
tance by the trembling rushes, till, led on by the
fatal signal, he bursts out of the cover with stream-

38 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
ing sides, and, tossing his antlers, looks around to
find the object of his search. This is the moment
improved by the hunter to plant in his shaggy breast
the fatal bullet.
The elk of the western coast, differs in nothing, so
far as I could see from that of the Eastern States.
Near Humboldt Bay, I am assured by intelligent men,
that eight hundred, and even one thousand pounds,
is not an unusual weight, and that individuals have
been killed there, which are said to have weighed
twelve hundred pounds. We saw the tracks of elks
in the Cascade Mountains which were scarcely less
in size than those of a bullock."*
Nothing gives us so vivid an idea of the vastness
and fertility of the ancient natural pastures of this
region, as these great herds of buffalo, deer, and elk,
that in primitive times roamed over its hills and val
leys. Our people are apt to forget, in view of their
well-nigh exhausted and denuded soil, that at the
period when this country bore to the inhabited and
cultivated north-east the same relation that the un
appropriated parts of Texas and Arkansas do at pre
sent to it, it was scarcely inferior to them in strength
of soil or any natural production. And since its
climate remains the same, and the stamina of its en
ergies are not yet completely exhausted, a sure basis
is afforded for the hope of its future resuscitation, and
a progressive improvement, that shall ultimately as

? Explorations of Lieut. R. S. Williamson on the western slope of
the Rocky Mountains.— Vol vi. p. GO of Explorations, Surveys, &c.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 39
far surpass its present productiveness or the wildest
luxuriance of. its primitive vigor, as the genius of the
civilized man surpasses that of the improvident, un
tutored savage.
Bears were so numerous, at this period, in the
upper-country, wherever they could find the covert
of rocks, hollow trees, and cane-brakes, that a hunter
of ordinary skill could kill, in a single season, enough
to make him some three thousand pounds of bacon.*
This animal, coarse as he was, was hardly less
useful to the Indians than the deer or the buffalo.
From his skin were formed their warmest and most
substantial winter shoes, and their most comfortable
clothing for the same season. The oil extracted from
his fat, was one of the essentials of their domestic
and religious life.
The Cherokee priests and prophets were inducted
into office by the unction of bears' oil. "All the In
dian Americans," says Adair, "especially the female
sex, reckon their bears' oil or grease very valuable,
and use it after the same manner as the Asiatics did
their fine essences and sweet perfumes. The young
warriors and women are uneasy unless their hair is
always shining with it; which is probably the reason
that none of their heads are bald."
It is related that they were sometimes reduced to
great straits from the difficulty of procuring this oil,
both for their domestic and sacred uses, after the beat-
began to be less abundant in the woods, or the hunt-
*Dr. Ramsay.

40 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
ers more indolent and less skillful than they had
been previous to their intercourse with the whites.
The flesh ofthe bear was esteemed to be excellent
food, and the traders and hunters from the English
settlements soon learned to relish it as much as the
Cherokees. "The industrious old traders have still
a plenty of hogs, which they raise in folds, mostly
on the weeds ofthe fields during the whole time the
crops are in the ground; likewise some hundreds of
fowls at once — plenty of venison — the dried flesh of
bears and buffaloes — wild turkeys, ducks, geese, and
pigeons, during the proper season of their being fat
and plenty; for the former sort of fowls are lean in
the summer, and the others are in these moderate
climates only during the winter, for they return north
ward with the sun. The traders commonly make
bacon of the bears in winter; but the Indians mostly
flay off a thick tier of fat which lies over the flesh,
and the latter they cut up into small pieces and thrust
them on reeds or suckers of sweet tasted hickory or
sassafras, which they barbacue over a slow fire. The
fat they fry into clear, well-tasted oil, mixing plenty
of sassafras and wild cinnamon with it over the fire,
which keeps sweet from one winter to another, in
large earthen jars covered in the ground. It is of a
light digestion, and nutritive to hair. All who are
acquainted with its qualities prefer it to any oil for
any use whatever ; smooth Florence is not to be com
pared in this respect with rough America.
"I have known gentlemen of the nicest taste, who,
on the beginning of their first trip into the Indian

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 41
country, were so greatly prejudiced against eating
bears' flesh, that they vehemently protested they
would as soon eat part of a barbecued rib of a wolf,
or any other beast of prey, as a spare-rib of a young
bear; but by the help ofa good appetite, which their
exercise and change of air procured, they ventured
to taste a little; and presently they fed on it more
plentifully than others, to make up the loss they had
sustained by their former squeamishness and neglect.
In the spring of the year, bear bacon is a favorite
dish with the traders, along with herbs that the woods
afford in plenty; especially with the young tops of
poke. And this method they pursue year by year as
a physical regimen in order to purge their blood.
Though most of the traders who go to the remote
Indian countries, have tame stock, as already de
scribed, and are very expert at fire-arms, and ranging
the woods a hunting; yet every servant that each of
them fits out for the winter's hunt, brings home to
his master a large heap of fat barbacued briskets,
rumps, and tongues of buffalo and deer, as well as
plenty of bears' ribs, which are piled on large racks;
these are laid up and used, not for necessity, but for
the sake of variety."*
The Indians regarded all animals that subsisted on
flesh or disgusting food — as hogs, wolves, panthers,
foxes, and cats, as unfit to be eaten — they were for
bidden as polluted. The only animal which may be
ranked among beasts of prey, that they exempted
from this proscription, was the bear.
* Adair.

42 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
The male bear invariably made his den in the
ground, under the upturned root of some fallen tree,
or the cavity of some precipitous hill-side, to which
he generally retired for winter quarters, at the first
fall of snow. The female sought a safer retreat in
the highest parts of hollow trees, and here bore her
young, and nourished them till sufficiently large to
take care of themselves.
"About Christmas the he and she bears always
separate. The former usually snaps offa great many
branches of trees, with which he makes the bottom
of his winter's bed, and carefully raises it to a pro
per height with the green tops of large canes ; he
choses such solitary thickets as are impenetrable by
the sunbeams. The she bear takes an old, large, hol
low tree, for her yeaning winter house, and chooses
to have the door above, to protect her young ones
from danger. When anything disturbs them,
they gallop up a tree, champing their teeth and
bristling their hair in a frightful manner; and
when they are wounded, it is surprising from what
a height they will pitch on the ground, with their
weighty bodies, and bow soon they get up and run
off. When they take up their winter quarters, they
continue the greater part of two months in almost an
entire state of inactivity. During that time, their
tracks reach no farther than to the next water, of
which they seldom drink, as they frequently suck
their paws in their lonely recess, and impoverish
their bodies to nourish them.
While they are thus employed, they cannot con-

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 43
tain themselves in silence, but are so well pleased
with their repast, that they continue singing " hum-
um-um ; and as their pipes are none of the weakest,
the Indians, by this means, often are led to them
from a considerable distance, and they are then
easily knocked on the head. But the hunters are
forced to cut a hole near the root of the tree, wherein
the she bear and her cubs are lodged, in order to
drive them out by the force of fire and suffocating
smoke ; and as the tree is partly rotten, and the inside
dry, it soon takes fire. In this case they become very
fierce, and would fight any kind of an enemy ; but
commonly at the first shot they are either killed or
mortally wounded. If the hunter, however, chance
to miss his aim he speedily makes off to a sappling,
which the bear, by overclasping, cannot climb; the
crafty hunting dogs then act their part, by biting be
hind and gnawing its hams till it takes up a tree. I
have been often assured, both by Indians and others
who get their bread by hunting in the woods, that
the she bear always endeavors to keep apart from the
male during the helpless state of her young ones;
otherwise he would endeavor to kill them; and that
they had frequently seen the she bear kill the male
on the spot, after a desperate engagement, in defence
of her young ones." *
Lawson during his travels and residence in Caro
lina, became well acquainted with this animal, and,
from his account of it, it was scarcely less useful to
the Indians than the deer. Its flesh was not inferior
* Adair.

44 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
to the best pork, and that of the cubs, a dish to tempt
the palate of the most fastidious epicure. The fat
was as white as snow, and a melted quart of it taken
upon the stomach would not rise in acidity. Fish,
and other meats prepared in it, as the English use
the fat of the hog, were peculiarly excellent.
When in its season, the berry of the black gum
tree was the favorite diet of the bear; but then its
flesh was good for nothing, on account ofa nauseous
taste imparted to it by this food; and the same effect
was produced in those that ranged so low down on
the rivers as to prey periodically on the shoals of
herrings which ran up from the sea. They devoured
great quantities of acorns, and while in search of
these, they occasionally, in times of scarcity, seized
upon and made prey of as many hogs as came in
their way.
The corn-palches of the Indians were frequently
invaded by them, and in a short time completely de
stroyed, if the voracious intruders were not quickly
driven off; for they broke down and trampled under
their feet more than they could eat. The bear was
particularly fond ofthe sweet potato, and when once
a patch of them was so unlucky as to receive a visit
from him, it was usually swept clean of its contents.
He was often detected in the act of fishing for her
rings and other fish, by watching his opportunity on
the bank of some stream, to dash them on shore by
a sudden stroke of his paw. His cousin, the raccoon,
it is often related, had a similar habit of catching
crabs with the end of his tail.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 45
The same chronicler informs us of a very curious
fact in the history of the Carolina bear. No man,
whether Christian or savage, was ever known to kill
a she bear big with young. It was accounted for by
supposing that as soon as the females had conceived,
they retired to some impenetrable fastness, where
they lay concealed, till past the season of pregnancy.
Yet it appears unaccountable that in no instance they
should have been discovered by the Indians, who
time immemorial had hunted in every covert of the
woods with the sagacity of dogs.
A few years before Lawson's arrival in Carolina,
there were killed in two counties of Virginia, during
a single winter, as many as five hundred bears, and
among them all there were but two females, and
neither of them pregnant. We leave the solution of
this curious problem in natural history to the phi
losophy of the reader.
The English hunters pursued the bear as often for
the sake of the rare sport his chase and capture af
forded, as for his skin and flesh. They hunted him
with dogs, well trained for the purpose, and when
once fairly in pursuit of their game, they did not
cease to press him till he was forced to take a tree,
whence the unerring rifle soon brought him to the
ground. Two or three shots were always reserved,
however, by the hunters, to be used in case he should
come down merely stunned by the balls already fired
at him ; for, though not naturally ferocious, the bear
when wounded becomes exceedingly fierce and dan

46 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
gerous. The dogs sometimes brought him to bay on
the ground, and in these close quarters the hunters
used their pistols, which they always carried in their
girdles. " If a dog," says the old chronicler, " is apt
to fasten upon, and run into a bear, he is not good,
for the best dog in Europe is nothing in their paws;
but if ever they get him in their clutches they blow
his skin from his flesh like a bladder, and often kill
him ; or if he recovers it he is never good for any
thing after."
As the hump of the buffalo was regarded as the
most delicious portion of his body, so the paws of the
bear were eaten with most avidity by the Indians
and old hunters. The head was thrown away as
good for nothing.
In preparing the oil to be used for anointing their
hair and persons, and the bodies of their dead, the
Indians mixed with ita root known to the whites as
the " blood root," which they gathered near the
mountains. When this could not be procured, they
used paccoon root, or sanguinaria ; either of which
gave it a strong medicinal, and anteceptic power, as
well as beautiful color. This unguent was regarded
as a sovereign remedy for strains, aches and old
pains. The Indians endeavored always to take this animal
in its winter's den, for il was then exceedingly fat;
they used to say, that for a short time even, after it
had emerged again in the spring, it was still found to
be in good condition. The bear is now extinct in

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 47
the upper-country, probably not one of the species
can be found east of the Blue Ridge.*
The beaver, so deeply interesting for its wonderful
sagacity, and for so long a time invaluable for its
thick, strong fur, to the commerce of the world, and
now onlv found in the remote regions of the west,
was once abundant on all the creeks and rivulets
of the upper-country. The wafers of Fair-forest,
Longcanes, Coronaka, and numerous other streams,
were as famous for their beavers, as they were for
their rich cane-brake bottoms.
A hunter has been known to take as many as
twenty beavers in one season on the Fair-forestf of
Union and Spartanburg, a large number, considering
the value of their skins, and the difficulty of trapping
this sagacious animal. It was exceedingly wary of
any device of man to entangle it; and if way laid,
and shot, unless killed dead on the spot, it most al
ways managed to plunge into the water and dive into
its burrow, before the hunter could secure it.
There is a history ofthe beaver, and of other ani
mals that made their homes, in olden times, on the
streams of the upper-couutry, far more truthful, and
enduring than the records of the historian. Scarce
ly a neighborhood of its modern divisions, is with
out its " beaver " or " beaver dam " creek. And the
*In all the minute records, in the Secretary of State's office, Colum
bia, of the peltry trade between the Cherokees and Carolina, I found
the skin ofthe bear not once mentioned ; those ofthe deer and beaver
seemed to be chiefly in demand.
fDr. Ramsay's South Carolina.

-18 HISTORY OK UPPER CAROLINA,
creeks ofthe bear, the wolf, the wild-cat, buffalo, and
panther are no less numerous. York District, in one
of its finest tributaries of Broad River, has a lasting
memorial ofits ancientherds of buffaloes. In thesame
district, three "beaver dams," a wolf, and turkey creek,
are similar mementoes of the animals whose names
they bear. Abbeville has its "Deerbranch," its Turkey
and Buffalo creeks. Greenville records the history of
its beavers, wild-cats, and panthers, in a "beaver
dam" and "wild-cat" creek, and the "panther's
fork." The wild turkey has also its commemorative
stream in Edgefield and Chester, and the beaver its
constant memorial. Like Abbeville and York, New
berry cannot forget its buffaloes of primitive times,
while its most south-eastern water course bears its
tributary currents to the Saluda.
The upper-country is full of monuments like these
— a rich, unobtrusive history ofthe past. "It might
at first sight appear as if language apart, that is, from
literature, and books, and where these did not exist,
was the frailest, the most untrustworthy of all the
vehicles of knowledge, and that most likely to be
tray its charge : yet is it in fact the great, often times,
the only connecting link between the present and
the remotest past, an ark riding above the water-floods
that have swept away every other landmark and
memorial of ages and generations."*
Adair remarks of the southern Indians, " They
rank all amphibious animals in the class of those
* French on the Study of Words.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 49
prohibited for food. Our old traders remember when
they first began the custom of eating beavers; and
to this day none eat of them except those who kill
them ; though the flesh is very wholesome, on ac
count ofthe bark of trees they live upon."
A curious tradition, however, has been discovered
that would seem to prove that religious scruples of
a different kind from those that feared contact with
polluted things, caused this reluctance ofthe Indians
to pursue the beaver as an object of food. It is too
interesting to be omitted in its proper place.
Notwithstanding the great abundance of this ani
mal at the opening of the Indian trade,so rapid was
its destruction with the improved methods of trap
ping and hunting introduced by the whites, that it
soon became very scarce, and, it is probable, wholly
extinct before the end of the eighteenth century.
The last one seen on the Coronaka, is said to have
been taken by an old hunter living near that stream,
in the last year of that period.
Few, if any, traditions relating to it are now to be
found among the descendants of the early settlers
and hunters ofthe upper-country.
The Indians named the beaver keenta ; and by
combining that word with ooka, water, and heenna, a
path, formed the very expressive appellative, keen-
tookheenna, a beaver dam, or the beaver's path over
the water.*
" The beaver once inhabited all portions of the
? Adair.

50 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
globe lying in (be northern temperate zone; yet from
England, continental Europe, China, and all the east
ern portions of the United States, it has been entire
ly exterminated, and a warjso universal and relent
less, has been waged upon this defenseless animal;
his great intelligence has been so generally opposed
by the intelligence of man, that it has seemed cer
tain, unless some kind Providence should interpose,
it must soon be found only in a fossil state. Hap
pily, that Providence did interpose, through a certain
ingenious somebody, who first suggested the use of
silk in place of fur for the covering of hats. The
beavers are not yet exterminated from Western Amer
ica ; and now since theyare not '• worththekilling,"
in those inhospitable regions where there is no en
couragement to American enterprise or cupidity, we
may hope that they will always there retain existence
in a home exclusively their own.
In the streams flowing from the Rocky, the Blue
and Cascade Mountains — the old stamping ground
of Bill Williams, and that host of Black-foot-hating,*
death-defying "mountain men,'' whose adventures
and escapes, half fiction, and half fact, cover so broad
a page of modern story — the sagacious beavers are
still numerous; but it was in the fastnesses of the
Cascades, one hundred and fifty miles south of
Columbia, in the clear, cold streams which, trickling
down from the eternal snows, flow, now bright and
sparkling, now deep and still, through mountain
* Blackfeet Indians.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 51
meadows, green as emerald, and daisy-decked, in a
region never before profaned by the foot of a white
man, and unoccupied by savages, that we found the
beaver in numbers, of which, when applied to
beavers, I had no conception. The sides of these
streams were literally lined with their habitations,
though we never saw their houses, and seldom a dam
made by them, but usually their burrows pierced the
sides of the stream, a sufficiently large and long
excavation being made to form warm, roomy and
comfortable quarters. From the point where these
burrows terminate in the water, trails lead off to
thickets of pine or willow, where the beavers find
their food. These thickets exhibit the most surpris
ing proofs of the power and industry of these ani
mals; whole groves of young pine trees cut down
within a few inches of the ground and carried off
bodily. So well was the work done that one could
hardly resist the conviction that the woodman's axe
had not there been plied vigorously and well. These
trees, when felled, are cut into convenient lengths
and carried to the burrows, there to be stripped of
their bark, and then thrown into the stream. We
often saw trees of considerable size cut down by the
beavers ; the largest which I noticed was a spruce
pine twelve inches in diameter.
In California the beaver is quite common, though
less so than in Oregon. On Cotton-wood Creek, near
Fort Reading, they abound, and have cut the cotton-
wood trees, which line the banks of the stream, ofa
diameter from fifteen to eighteen inches. To any

52 HISTORY OK UPPER CAROLINA.
one who has never seen the beaver in his native
haunts the accounts of his mechanical skill and gen
eral intelligence, as exhibited in his dams, and
"clearings," must seem almost fabulous; and when
he has seen these with his own eyes, he cannot fail
to feel that the profound respect entertained by the
Indians and trappers for this sagacious animal is in
a great degree deserved.
The value of beaver skins has so much depreciat
ed that they were offered to some of our party, by
the bale, at twenty-five cents each."*

* Lieut. R. S. Williamson, corps of Topographical Engineers.
Explorations on the Pacific.

CHAPTER III.
The Panther — Wild Cat — Adventure of Sally Whitaker in the present
territory of York — The last Panther seen on Long-Cane — Old John
Ravelin and Capt. John Sanders — The Catamount — Adventure on
Indian Creek — The Wolf— Adventure of Robert Long on Duncan's
Creek — Old James Mosely near Grindal's Shoals, &c.
After the Indians, the most troublesome enemies
with which the early settlers had to contend were
the panther, wolf, and wild cat. They prowled
around their houses at night, and so frequent were
their onslaughts on the folds and poultry yards, that
it was difficult for them to keep any domestic ani
mals at all.
The panther, although by nature cowardly, and
always ready to flee at the sight of a human being,
yet when wounded or pressed by hunger, became
exceedingly bold and ferocious. While hunting its
prey it was not unfrequently known to leap fearless
ly into the very midst of the pioneer's households.
We were shown near the Ennoree, on a part of the
very scene, where in after years the gallant Williams
and Clark charged with fearful energy upon far dif
ferent prey, the site of a ruined cabin, through the
door of which a panther, one night, leaped over the
shoulders of one Mrs. Ford.

54 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
This animal, when thoroughly aroused, was un
doubtedly more formidable than any other in all this
portion of the American Continent. The Indians
called it the cat of God, and selected it as one of
their great religious emblems. Their male children
were made to sleep upon its skin, from infancy to
manhood, that they might imbibe from it some por
tion of the cunning, strength, and prodigious spring
of the animal to which it belonged. On the same
principle their female offspring were reared on the
soft skins of fawns and buffalo calves, that they
might become gentle and obedient.
The panther has borne different names among
the white settlers who took possession of his soli
tudes. He has been called the American lion, the
tiger, and cougar; and his claims to be ranked with
the king of beasts, or the great tiger of India, will
hardly be disputed on the score of deficiency of size
and strength, when it is related that individuals have
been killed, in the woods of Carolina, measuring
three feet in height, and eight feet from the tip of the
nose to the root of the tail. Andubon fixes his
average weight at one hundred aud fifty pounds.
His body was larger than the common sheep, aud
when seen in the forest appeared precisely of the
same color with the Virginia deer."*
The usual cry of the panther when prowling in
the woods, was exceeding melancholy, and so near
ly resembling the distressed wail of an infant, as to
* The jaguar of South America is the nearest relative ofthe panther

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 55
be sometimes mistaken for that ofa child lost in the
forest, even by those accustomed to his habits.
It is related of a Miss Sally Whitaker, of whose
heroism and romantic wanderings on the singular
mountain, in York District, that still bears her name,
we found some traditious, that on one occasion when
strolling alone ou the mountain, she caught, as she
imagined, the sound ofa child's cry iu the distance;
all her sympathies were instantly aroused, aud quick
ening her pace in the direction whence it came, she
found it grew rapidly more and more distinct, till, at
last, it seemed to proceed from a covert near at hand ;
she pressed forward with increased eagerness, and
drawing aside the intervening grass and bushes, dis
covered — not a child — but face to face with her, a
large American lion. It is not related how she ex
tricated herself from the dilemma ; but the assertion
may be ventured that the panther scampered off as
fast as his legs could carry him, while Sally Whitaker
neither fainted on the spot nor rau off in the opposite
direction. The Cherokees used to affirm that they had often
come upon the panther, in the woods, lying at rest
between two deer that he had just taken and killed.
And they invidiously compared him, when thus sit
uated, to the white man, who, they said, instead of
being satisfied, like the Indian, wilh enough for his
present necessities, and no more, was covetously
eager, as the cougar, to pile around him far more
property and substance than it was possible for him
to consume upon himself.

56 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
It was about the year 1797 that old John Ravelin
and Capt. John Sanders killed the last panther on
Long-Cane Creek. The incident is related as follows
by an old man yet living :* " When a small boy,
I went up, on one occasion, from the vicinity of
old Cambridge to visit an aunt, Mrs. Archy McCoy,
who lived on the place now occupied by Mrs. John
Kellar. Her house stood about eighty yards from
the road, on the side opposite to the present build
ings. Late the following night, I was awaked from
a sound sleep by dismal screams, which seemed to
come at regular intervals from the direction of Long-
Cane Creek. Much frightened, for I had never be
fore heard so strange a cry, I aroused my aunt, and
asked her what it meant? After listening a moment.
she told me to go to sleep again, that it was only the
scream of the panther in the swamp. Very early
next morning word was sent to John Ravelin and
Capt. Sanders, that a panther had been heard in the
swamp the previous night. These men were fam
ous hunters at that period, and lived but a short dis
tance from my aunt's."f Nothing pleased them bet
ter than the excitement of an ordinary hunt, but the
prospect of a rare adventure with a panther kindled
• all the enthusiasm of their youth.
With their dogs and rifles they were soon on the
ground, and almost as soon in hot pursuit of the
game. It gave them a chase of several miles ; but,

* J. Pert, Senr.
f Sanders lived at Westley Cromer's place. Ravelin lower down
the creek.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 57
at length was forced by the dogs to take a tree, from
which it was brought to the ground by a few well
directed shots, when the dogs rushing upon it, quick
ly finishing the work. This was probably the last
panther that lingered in the swamps of Long-Cane.
This creek, we learned from old men, was celebrated
in early times both for its panthers and wild cats.
During the day, these animals were accustomed,
like their kind, to keep themselves close in their
dens of the cane-brakes, and under the rocks of the
granite ridges; but at night, crept stealthily out in
quest of food, and often rendered their neighbor
hood dismal with melancholy cries.
The chief food of the panther in primitive times,
was the flesh of deer; to which, after the founding
of the English settlements, he added the easier prey
of the sluggish hog, and other domestic animals.
Of all the beasts of Carolina, he was the most de
structive to the interests of the pioneers, and most
dreaded for his strength and fierceness when encoun
tered in the woods. Like the cat, he was particular
ly clean and nice in his habits; whatever was left,
after gorging himself from the victims of a night's
hunt, he covered up carefully in the leaves, for an
other repast; but if, in the mean time, any other
animal disturbed it, he would eat no more of it. In
his moments of fondness, he purred precisely like
the cat; but if taken when young, no care nor train
ing could ever win him from his savage nature and
habits. When first encountered in the forest by the

58 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
hunter, he was exceedingly cowardly, the least dog
could hurry him into a tree; the wary woodsman
knew well, however, the importance of giving him
a fatal shot at the first fire ; for if he came to the
ground only slightly wounded and enraged, the bat
tle upon him was terrible. When wounded he is
said to have hallooed like a man.
The flesh of this animal had a tempting appear
ance, and many, in old times, were in the habit of
eating it with as much relish as that of the bear.
The Indians made from his skin their best gloves,
and shoes for their women.
Adair says, that no savages were equal to the
Choctaws in killing bears, panthers, and wild cats,
which resort in thick cane swamps, that are some
times two or three miles wide, and a hundred in
length, without any break on either side of the
stream. The American panther, though no longer found in
this region, is still abundant from the 60th degree of
north latitude to the»extreme southern point of South
America — being more widely distributed than any
other species of his numerous family.
The wild cat was once exceedingly numerous and
destructive, and when wounded no mean antagonist
for the hunter. It is now well nigh extinct; an oc
casional straggler may sometimes still be chased iu-
to the deepest solitudes of the large river swamps,
but not one in ten thousand of the present inhabit
ants of the upper-country, ever saw a native speci-

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 59
men of the race. In 1856, however, it was adver
tised by an amateur huntsman* on the Savannah,
that he had just killed in a swamp of that stream,
after a hard struggle, a large wild cat.
A larger, and once well known species of the wild
cat, the active catamount, or cat of the mountain,
has almost become a creature of fable ; yet the first
settlers on the streams of the upper-country often
suffered severely by his fierceness and rapacity.
A few years ago, a man, while passing through a
forest on Indian creek, of Newberry District, was
startled by seeing a strange animal run into a tree
not far from him ; but he could give it no name ;
he had never before beheld such a creature. Others
attracted by his calls soon came to the spot ; and
presently half the sober neighborhood had collected
around the tree to witness the extraordinary sight.
They, at length, dispatched it with their rifles and
dogs, and having submitted the carcass to competent
authority, it was pronounced a catamount, and was
no doubt the last representative of its kind in all that
region. The wild cat might have been called the Ameri
can leopard ; for he was often quite spotted, though
not so beautiful as that animal. Like all his kind,
he was a beast of prey, and, next to the panther, the
most blood-thirsty, fierce and destructive in the woods
of Carolina. A great leaper, and little swift of foot,
he took his prey by stealth and cunning. It was his
* J. W. Jones. Esq., published that year, in the Abbeville Banner,
that he had killed a wild cat on the Savannah.

60 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
habit, as well as the panther's, to conceal himself in
the thick brush of some overhanging tree or bush,
and spring suddenly upon any animal passing in
his reach, with which he could safely contend. The
Indians declared it was no unusual sight, in their
woods, to see a wild cat clinging to the back of a
hapless deer, running at the top of its speed, upon
which he had just sprung from his ambush ; and
though the frightened animal plunged madly through
brakes and brambles, in its efforts to throw off its
deadly foe, he would never relinquish his hold, but
continue to suck the hot blood of his victim till it
fell from sheer weakness and exhaustion ; after which
he devoured, at his leisure, as much of the carcass
as he could gorge, and left the rest to other animals
less nice than himself. The thick, warm fur of this
animal was in great repute among the Indians.
Of all the wild animals, however, which the old
settlers found in these woods, none proved more
troublesome or destructive than the wolf. It was
exceedingly numerous, abounding in the coverts of
both the uplands and swamps. Stealthy, sagacious,
swift of foot, and insatiably rapacious, only its utter
extermination relieved the pioneer from its ravages.
Rendered savage and desperate by famine, which
was not unfrequently the case in the long cold win
ters of primitive times, the belated settler or traveler
knew well the danger of encountering a pack of them
when alone on the path. Many instances are still
related of men passing alone through the forests,
who, hearing the distant yelp of hungry wolves in

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 61
hot pursuit of them, quickly divested themselves of
every incumbrance, and ran for their lives to the
nearest settlement.
Robert Long, one of the first settlers of Duncan's
Creek, in the vicinity of the Old Church, was, one win
ter's night, returning home through the swamp, with
several carpenter's tools upon his shoulder, when he
heard behind him the familiar howl of a pack of
wolves hunting in a body for their prey ; apprehend
ing his danger he quickly threw down his load, and
setting off, did not cease to run till he found himself
safe within the door of his house.
An old pioneer of the Pacolet, near Grindal's
Shoals, James Mosely, who was famous as a hunter
and woodsman, and at a later day as an intrepid
whig scout, was late one evening returning from a
hunt in which he had taken a small deer, that he
carried on his shoulder. The wolves got a scent of
the game, and were soon howling on the trail of the
hunter. He heard them, and knew that an effort
must be made to save both himself and his deer.
Turning a little from the path he hastily stink the
carcass in a creek, and running some distance
further, just had time to climb with his rifle into the
branches of a post oak tree, as the pack came up in
full cry. It was now too dark for him to use his rifle
with effect, and he silently watched them as they
circled, incessantly yelping and barking around him.
They bayed him in this manner all night. At the
approach of day, however, their circle began to grow
larger ; and as soon as he could see through his

62 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
sights he singled out the leader of the troop and shot
him ; the rest instantly ran off to their dens. Mose
ly was afterwards asked why he did not fire among
them sooner? He replied that he was perfectly safe
in the tree, but felt a sort of pride in waiting till day
light that he might pick off the leader and the largest
of the gang.
The venerable tree connected with this story is
still a living witness of the occurrence, and known
to all the surrounding country as Mosely's Oak; no
sacrilegious hand would dare approach it with an
axe. It stands immediately on the road leading to
Grindal's Shoals, and a short distance from the house
of Garland Meng, Esq.
It appears that two distinct species of the wolf
were anciently found in Carolina, as well as in Geor
gia and Florida, the black and the gray. The In
dians greatly prized the skin of the former, either
on account of its beautiful color, or for some supe
rior quality of its fur.
The gray was the fiercer, and more hardy — better
adapted' to the long, cold winters ofa primitive conn-
try. It is now found in great numbers in the high
latitudes of Oregon and Washington territories;
while the black species is still common in Florida.
The wolf delighted to make his den under large
rocks, especially on the elevated sides of craggy pre
cipices and hills, iu which places natural cavities
were most frequently found. There is scarcely a
hollow granite rock in the upper country, or cavern
ous steep, that did not, when deep buried in its primi-

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 63
five woods, give shelter to some of these prowling
pests. No sooner did the colonists at the mouth ofthe
Ashley and Cooper, begin to extend their settlements,
and lay ont farms a little way from Charleston to
wards the interior, than the panther, bear, and wild
cat, with the voracious wolf at their head, made such
terrible havoc in their poultry yards and folds, as to
become a serious obstacle to the further growth and
prosperity of the province. Hence among the first
statutes of the Assembly, we find stringent laws for
the destruction and extirpation of those animals.
The first was enacted in March 1695, and is entitled
an Act for destroying beasts of prey. The quaint
expression, and ancient orthography of these old
statutes, are no less historical than the facts to which
they relate.
The first reads as follows :
" Be it enacted by his Excellency, William Earl
of Craven, Pallatine, and the rest ofthe true and ab
solute Lords and Proprietors of the Province of
Carolina, by and with the advice, and consent of the
rest of the members of the General Assembly now
met at Charlestowne for the south-west part of this
Province. That every Indian bowman, capable to
kill deere as aforesaid, of the several nations of In
dians before named, shall sometime before the twen
ty-fifth day of November, one thousand six hundred
and ninety-six, and soe yearly for ever, bring in to
such person as shall be appoynted by the Governor

64 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
for the tyme one woolfe's skinn, or one tiger's skinn,
or one beare skinn, or two catt skinns. And if any
Indian as aforesaid, shall not bring in to the receiver,
one wolfes skinn, or one tigers skinn, or two catt
skinns, the casique or cheife of every nation, together
with assistance of his captains, and those men which
have before delivered to the receiver as before ap
poynted, is hereby required, the Indian or Indians
soe neglecting, to bring to Charlestowne some time
before the twenty-fifth day of December one thousand
eight hundred and ninety six, and soe yearly forever,
and the same there upon his bare back, severely
whipp in sight of the inhabitants of said towne,
which whipping shall be instead of that skinn,
which otherwise the saide Indian ought to have given
to the receiver. And all and every of the several
nations of Indians before named, which shall neg
lect or refuse to bring skinns as appoynted, or in lieu
thereof to punish by whipping every severall neg
lecting Indian of their respective nations, shall be,
and declared to be out of the protection of this Gov
ernment, and shall not designedly receive any bene
fit thereby."
Surely nothing short ofa pressing necessity could
have urged the enactment of a law so stringent and
unjust as this towards the Indians.
The next legislation on the same subject followed
in 1700; and in this statute may be observed a
marked improvement, not only in orthography, but
also in justice and practical wisdom. Instead of

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 65
compulsion under the penalty ofthe whipping-post,
the Indian hunters are to receive a pecuniary reward
for their useful services:
" And be it enacted that whatsoever white man
shall destroy and kill, wolf, tyger, wild catt, or bear,
shall have ten shillings for each, bringing the head
thereof to the next justice as above exprest ; and
every Indian for killing every wolf, tyger or wild catt,
shall have for each five shillings, to be paid by the
justice, and be reimbursed by the receiver; and the
heads of the said beasts are presently to be burnt or
their ears cut off, in the presence of them that brings
the same."*
Three years after, nearly the same statute was re-
enacted; it differed from the last only in the fact, that
but half the premium of ten shillings was now of
fered for the head of a wild cat. This animal had,
perhaps, already become scarce in the vicinity of
Charleston, or less aggressive in his habits.
But the settlements of Carolina were gradually
extending towards the interior, and thence to the
wild, unoccupied haunts of the upper-country; and
in process of time, the homesteads and farms on the
Saluda, Broad, Tyger, and Ennoree Rivers, and Fish
ing, Fair- Forest, and Long-Cane creeks, required the
same fostering care of the Legislative authorities to
protect them from the destructive encroachments of
the same animals of prey.
We find among the statutes, therefore, acts similar
to the above, frequently repeated, and continued in
* Statutes of South Carolina. Vol. 2d.
6

66 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
force for a limited period. The last that was prob
ably enacted is before us, passed by the State Legis
lature in March 17S6, and entitled an Act to encour
age the destroying of beasts of prey :
"Whereas it is found necessary to give some en
couragement to the destroying of beasts of prey,
which, of late, have been very mischievous to some
of the iuterior parts of the State; it is therefore or
dained, that every person, who shall hereafter kill, in
this -r tate, any of the beasts of prey herein mention
ed, shall have the following rewards: for a panther
or tiger ten shillings; for a wolf ten shillings; for a
wild cat five shillings. He shall carry the scalp and
two ears of such beasts to any justice of the peace,
and receive from him, on proof of (he same, a certifi
cate gratis."*
It is not a little surprising that notwithstanding
these strong measures so long enforced, and the rapid
increase of the population, who laid bare the coun
try, and found exciting sport, as well as profit, in
an incessant war upon these obnoxious animals, they
continued for so many years to subsist in many parts
of it. It was probably some time after the com
mencement of the nineteenth century, ere the last
panther ceased to range the forest of the upper-coun
try in search of his wonted prey. The wolf disap
peared at a still later period ; and the wild cat is not
yet extinct.
The Indians were accustomed to take the wolf by
means of the dead fall of logs and stones, baited
* Statutes of South Carolina. Vol. 4th, p. 72H.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 67
with a piece of deer or buffalo's flesh. The pioneers
and hunters improving on this, introduced for his
especial benefit a large sort of steel trap, which did
such good execution in ridding the country of his
presence, that the name, " wolf-trap," has ever since
distinguished that instrument from all others of the
kind, and is likely to remain an enduring memorial
of those early times.
It appears, however, from the following incident,
that the white men did not always follow the exam
ple of the Indians in baiting their traps with the
flesh of wild beasls.
In the midst of that darkest period in the history
ofthe upper-country, when, at the first hostile move
ment of the Revolution in the South, the Cherokees
burst from their mountains in vengeful fury upon
the defenceless Whigs. Col. Pickens, at the head of a
trusty band, having chased a large party of them from
the settlements, pressed them so closely in their re
treat towards the Nation, as to force them to take
refuge' in au old deserted house in the neighborhood
of Little River in the present territory of Abbeville.
And when — it is to be hoped — he could not succeed
in dislodging them by a less cruel means, he set fire
to the building. The greater number of lhe wretches
perished without an effort or a murmur in the flames,
while a few were shot by the riflemen, as they rush
ed from the burning house in the vain hope of
escape.* Late the following night, Capt. Wm. Black was
* We will say more of this in its proper place.

68 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
riding by the spot on his way home from Miller's
Block House on Little River, when his attention was
arrested by the rattling of chains, a short distance
from the path he was pursuing. Reining up to as
certain the source of a noise so singular in that place,
he discovered a fellow of the neighborhood, whom
he well knew, coolly in the act of baiting his wolf-
trap with a piece of one of the dead Indians; the
human carcasses had already attracted large numbers
of that animal to the spot, aud the unscrupulous
trapper was making the best of his opportunity.
In both ancient and modern history, the wolf is
famous as being the scavenger of battle fields ; he
tore the slain on the plains of Cannse, and Pharsalia,
and fatened on the dead and dying in the great re
treat from Moscow.
It is the tradition in the vicinity of King's Moun
tain, that long after the great battle fought there, no
spot in the upper-couutry was so much frequented
for the purpose of hunting and trapping wolves.
The domesticated wolf was the dog of the Indian ;
and never were dog and master more alike. They,
or a cross upon them, however, appear to have been
very sagacious. Bartram, in his travels in Florida,
observed in one place: "A remarkable occurrence
here, was a troop of horses, under the care aud con
trol of a single black dog, which seemed to differ in
no respect from the black wolf of Florida, except
his being able to bark as a common dog. He was
very industrious iu keeping them together ; and if
any one strolled from the rest at too great a distauce,
the dog would spring up, head him, and bring him

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 69
back to the company. The owner of these horse;
is an Indian, who, out of humor and experiment
trained his dog up from a puppy to this businesss
he follows his master's horses only, keeping them
in a separate company, where theyrange ; and when
he is hungry or wants to see his master, in the even
ing, he returns to town, but never stays at home at
night." The wolf made prey of the deer, and usually
united in large droves to hunt them at night. It was
nothing uuusual, however, to see a single one run
down a deer. In times when game was scarce with
them, they became so lank and poor, as to be hard
ly able to run ; and they then .resorted to the mis
erable shift of filling their stomachs with swamp
mud. But when iu this condition, if they should
chance to take any game, they instantly disgorged
the mud, and devoured the prey. While hunting
in troops in the dead hours of night, their noise was
exceedingly annoying, and sometimes terrific.
A wounded buffalo or elk was the sure prey of
this insatiable prowler; and the Indians and earliest
English hunters frequently, in their wanderings, came
upon packs of them when just in the act of pulling
down the largest bull of some scattered herd, that
had long retained sufficient strength in his last ex
tremity to keep them at bay.
This animal was once extremely abundant on
Hardlabor and Cuffytown Creeks. The last
of the famous hunters of that region were the
Hendersons — William and James. It is said that

70 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
Old Jimmy — the name by which the latter was better
known — killed in their den, under a pile of rocks,
near the present site of Scotch Cross, the last wolves
probably that lingered iu Abbeville District.
lt would appear from the following incident, re
lated by the same author, quoted above, in his History
of Carolina, that the young wolves, the whole litter,
as soon as they were strong enough, ventured to
ramble alone through the woods:
" We had not proceeded far — in an excursion
through Alabama — before our people roused a litter
of young wolves, to which, giving chase, we soon
caught one of them, it being entangled in high grass.
One of the men caught it by the hind legs, aud an
other heat out its brains with the but of his gun.
This creature was about the size ofa small cur dog,
and quite black."
Bartram also remarks that the wolf was frequent
ly met with, variegated with spots of white and
black The fox is more familiar to the people than any of
the native animals of the upper-country, whose his
tory has been detailed in our previous pages. Yet
there are some curious facts in his history that are
not perhaps generally known. When the first set
tlers built their cabins in this region, the gray fox was
the only variety that then inhabited the woods, and
he was exceedingly abundant; his sprightly bark
was one of the familiar sounds of the country, and
it was as usual to see him stealing from covert to
covert, as the hare at present. It was only as au oc-

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 71
casional pilferer of the roost that he was noticed at
all by the pioneers. His ears were then, and long
after, unaccustomed to the bay of the hound, and
the stirring echoes of the huntsman's horn. A peo
ple who had before them the work of erecting houses
for their families, and clearing away the obstructions
ofa new forest-covered country, could spare no lei
sure to be devoted to the mere pleasures of the chase.
His home was in the thick grass and brush of the
woods, he was never seen in the open fields or prairies ;
and as the forest fell before the encroachments ofthe
axeman and farmer, the gray fox like the whip-poor-
will, receded towards the west, aud soon became
rare, if at all seen, iu the best cultivated por
tions of the country. But, as our hunters well know,
his place was not suffered to remain vacant; the same
cause, the general denudation ofthe land, that drove
away the gray, attracted from the east the smaller,
but hardier, swifter and more intelligent red fox.
The gray fox made his den deep in the forest, under
the brush-wood and rocks; the red fox finds a retreat
equally comfortable and far more safe in the deep
intricate burrows which his ingenuity enables him
to construct in the open sedge fields.
This sagacious pest of the farm, has become, of
late years, so numerous in many parts of the upper-
country as to make it impossible, without great care,
to keep up a stock of hogs — a litter of young pigs is
its favorite food. This is particularly the case at pre-
seut around the mountain in Abbeville District. The
female is exceedingly prolific; the hunters frequently

72 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
take them when in a fair way of adding as many as
nine at a single birth, to the numbers already teem
ing iu the country.
But the den formed by this animal is the most
curious part of its history ; it is perhaps the most re
markable object, connected at this time, with all the
natural history of the upper-country. When ready
to perform this important work, it is usual for two or
three of them to unite, and having selected a spot
that pleases them — which is generally at the edge of
an old field, and as convenient to water as possible —
they set to work with all their force tunneling out
the earth, and shaping their course as they go clown
at a considerable angle to the horizon. The dirt, as
they push it out, is heaped up at the mouth of the
hole, and becomes, after a while, quite a mound,
sometimes several feet in height.
A^ter they have delved in this manner, usually for
more than thirty-five or forty feet, sometimes ninety
or a hundred, they cease to tunnel, and begin the
less laborious work of constructing their dormitories
or sleeping-rooms. These they arrange with singu
lar art, excavating them in receding galleries; so that,
if we were to view the bottom of the burrow, even
from the front, it would appear, at first sight, to be
entirely empty.
The apartment destined for that one of the com
pany whose lot it is to occupy the basement story, is
elevated like a step some distance above tne main
floor, and on this his bed of leaves and straw is care
fully prepared. At the same distance above this, and

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 73
directly back of it, the second room is constructed,
on which the second fox fixes his bed; and if there
is still another in the company a third dormitory is
excavated in the same manner, in relation to the se
cond, and a similar bed made upon it.
It is obvious that several important advantages are
gained by this ingenious arrangement It affords
them at all times, a dry, warm berth ; it enables them,
on any emergency requiring it, to run all out together
with the. greatest ease to themselves, through their
long narrow tunnel ; but chiefly, in case of sudden
invasion from an enemy, their galleries serve as so
many admirably constructed citadels, into which
they can retreat in succession, with a powerful ad
vantage, at the narrow entrance to each, over the
boldest and most dangerous intruder.*
That security, when pressed by their enemies, is
the principal aim, in planning their burrows after
this fashion, is confirmed by the fact that they not
unfrequently, after boring the first tunnel, and form
ing their bed-rooms, construct a second one from the
back of the last dormitory an equal distance to the
surface of the ground with the first; thus securing, in
the last extremity, a safe retreat in, at least, one direc
tion. In this case, the whole den extends through
some sixty or a hundred feet. Where can the lover
of nature find a more beautiful illustration of the in
telligence and sagacity of brute animals ?
# A den, similar to the one just described, was recently laid open on
the bank of Long-Cane, by several hunters on that stream. It cost
them a hard day's work.
7

74 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA.
The quadrupeds whose history we have en-.
deavored to present, as intimately connected with
that of primitive Upper-Carolina, are all that properly
belong to her historical fauna. What remains worthy
of notice still exist more or less abundantly in the
country, such as the otter, raccoon, opossum, musk-
rat, and squirrel. These animals, however, are every
year diminishing, as the population grows denser,
and.the aiva of open, cultivated country is enlarged.
The otter especially, has already become extinct in
many streams where, in old times, he abounded. It
may be observed, too, of another animal not before
mentioned, the foetid pole-cat, that it has now nearly,
if not wholly disappeared from a large portion ofthe
upper-country. The skin of this animal is exceed
ingly beautiful, and nothing prevenied its extensive
use, even for the most delicate fabrics, but its intoler
able and indestructable odor.
The opossum has long enjoyed an enviable scien
tific notoriety; he is still, we believe, a sort of pons
assinorum, of naturalists. Their patient investiga
tions, however, have enabled them to arrive at a
much more accurate knowledge of his nature and
habits than had been attained in the time of an old
author, who published a book in London, on Caro
lina, in 1741, in which he describes the opossum as
"a rat having a bag iindtr its throat wherein it con
veys its young when forced to fly." This animal
ranges from the Hudson to the Rocky Mountains.
The Cherokees gave it the name of sesqua ; their
names for the pole-cat and fox were ookoonne and
choochola, or chicora.

CHAPTER IV.
Fish exceedingly abundant in the Upper-Country — Ancient shoals of
Herrings — Old Legislative enactment for the protection of Shad
Fisheries in Broad, Saluda, Ennoree, Tiger and Pacolet Rivers,
and Stevens' Creek, of Edgefield — The Fish Sluice Law violently
enforced — Incident at Lorick's Mill, on the Saluda — The Historian
Adair and Indians harpooning Sturgeon in Savannah River, &c.
At the period to which our history relates, and
even in later times, the rivers and smaller streams of
the upper-country abounded in fish. The Catawba,
Savannah, Saluda, and Broad, were not surpassed in
this respect by the most prolific streams of the teem
ing south-west. Besides the numerous well-known
varieties that live constantly in the fresh waters, vast
numbers of shad came up every spring, and filled
not only the rivers, and their larger tributaries, but
the smaller creeks and rivulets; the waters of Bul
lock's and Stevens' Creek, of the Long-Cane, and
Seneca, and Sandy Rivers, were famous with the early
sportsmen and settlers for their shad fisheries. In
the earliest periods, even shoals of herring were an
nually expected by the Indians to come a great way
up into the fresh waters of the upper-country. Their
time of running was in March and April.
Lawson says, that the savages took vast quantities
of them at those seasons in crails and artificial ponds

76 HISTORY7 OF UPPER CAROLINA,
into which the fish were directed by means of hedges.
It is not generally known, at least in the upper-
country, that the shores of Carolina are the utmost
southern limit of the migrations of those vast shoals
of herring, which, for ages, have annually rolled from
within the arctic circle to the warmer seas of the
south, for the purpose of depositing their spawn. Why
they so early discontinued their visits up the rivers
and fresh water streamlets of the country, described
by Lawson, we are unable to give any information.
The herring is the most valuable fish yet discovered.*
Just previous to the Revolution, or immediately
after, the gradual increase of population, and the con
sequent erection of dams and mills on the streams,
so obstructed the ancient passages through which the
shad were accustomed to run up to the numerous
fisheries, famous from the time ofthe earliest settlers
for their productiveness, and manly sport, that the
communities, which were interested, complained
loudly of tne failure of their annual supplies offish.
This was particularly the case on the Broad, Saluda,
Ennoree, Tiger, and Pacolet Rivers, and Stevens'
Creek, in the present territory of Edgefield. The
matter became a subject of Legislative investigation,
and resulted, in March, 1784, in the following enact
ment, entitled an Act " to prevent the damming up
of Broad, Saluda, Ennoree, Tiger, and Pacolet
Rivers, and Stevens' Creek, or otherwise obstructing
the fish from passing up the said rivers, and to oblige
*Encycki. Amer.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 77
such persons as had already dammed them, to re
move the obstructions, so that the fish could pass up."
Such, however, was the value of good mills, and
the necessity of stopping- every passage at the river
falls, in order to have them, that the "fish sluice
statute" proved gradually, from the beginning, a dead
letter. And the people, though greatly regretting the
loss of their time-honored luxury and sport of spring
fish and fishing, aware that the sacrifice must be
made to greater interests that had sprung up in the
rapid development of their section of the State, at
length silently acquiesced, and nothing more was
heard of fish sluices, or of shad catching, at the old
fisheries, except at certain points on the Broad and
Savannah Rivers.
The last two or three generations of the upper-
country population have scarcely heard, from tradi
tion, of those ancient migrations from the ocean, as
far up even as the little streams and brooks that lie
above the dashing shoals which stretch across the
entire width of the State, in a magnificent series of
foaming cataracts — an imperishable granite break
water of God's building that separates the lands of
oaks, and hickory, and luxuriant grain, from the
sombre pines and alluvial sands of the middle and
lower country.
It must not be supposed, however, that these im
portant fishing privileges of the upper-country were
yielded without a struggle. The innate selfishness of
even enlightened men blinds them often to the legiti-

78 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
mate results of the very progress which they them
selves love, and are earnestly striving to promote.
In 1824, a company of twenty men, living near the
Saluda, in the Districts of Abbeville and Laurens,
assembled at the old Swansey's Ferry, with a boat in
readiness to proceed down the river, according to a
previous agreement, for the purpose of cutting
through a dam that had effectually prevented the
passage of shad to the long-established fishery at that
point. At the head of the party were Dr. John  ,
of Abbeville, and Captain Robert  , of Laurens,
and among them Nimrod Overby, Thomas Harris,
Harrison Long, and  Jolly.
Their point of destination was Lorick's Mill, some
forty miles lower down, between the Districts of
Newberry and Edgefield. The dam at this place had
been built with public funds, under the auspices of
Colonel A. Blanding, and in connection with his
splendid folly of river and canal navigation- of the
Saluda.* A strong frame-work, supported by pens
of rock, formed the material of the dam in which,
with a semblance of respect to the statute, a small
gap had been left, but not so deep as to afford, in the
spirit of the Act, a sluice for the passage of fish.
The ardor of the party abated somewhat, on a close
view of the work before them ; they were not men,
however, to be driven from a purpose once deliber
ately formed, and went resolutely to the task of
throwing out the rip-rapped stone, and cutting away
• We shtll speak of this fully in its proper place.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 79
the timbers with their axes. Numerous spectators
collected, in the meantime, on both banks of the river
to witness the process of demolition ; but no opposi
tion was offered. Thus they toiled for three days,
and in that time succeeded in opening a deeper pas
sage not more than some six feet wide; but thinking
this sufficient for their purpose, the party desisted, and
returned home. A short time after the breach in the
obnoxious dam was more effectually closed than be
fore, and not a shad perhaps since that day has ex
tended its migrations in the Saluda as far as Swansey's
Ferry. This was doubtless the last attempt made in
the up-country to enforce the fish sluice statute of
1784. The gigantic rock fish — a delicacy for the table of
a king — lurked especially in the deep waters of the
Broad, while the sturgeon, trout, sucker, and perch,
the fierce pike aud voracious cat, were yet more nu
merous in that river, and the others that have been
mentioned. Says an old writer: "Those Indians
who are unacquainted with the use of barbed iron are
very expert in striking large fish out of their canoes,
with long, sharp-pointed green canes, which are well
bearded, and hardened iu the fire. In Savannah
River, I have often accompanied them in killing
sturgeons, with those green swamp harpoons, and
which they did with much pleasure and ease; for
when w>e discovered the fish, we soon thrust into
their bodies one of the harpoons. As the fish would
immediately strike deep, and rush away to the bot-

80 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
torn very rapidly, their strength was soon exhausted
by their violent struggles against the buoyant force
of the green darts; as soon as the top-end of them
appeared again on the surface of the water, we made
up to them, renewed the attack, and in like manner
continued it, till we secured our game.''*
Fish was one of the staple articles of food with
the Cherokees and other Indians in this region.
When they were unable, by their simple methods,
to take the usual supply of game from the woods,
they seldom failed to procure, at all seasons, an
abundance of fish in the rivers and creeks.
And it was chiefly for this reason that all their
towns and settlements were situated on the banks of
considerable streams. And these were then clear
and beautiful — as limpid as transparent crystal; the
clay and loosened soil, from a thousand wasting
fields and plantations, had not yet imparted to them
their modern turbidness. In such waters the simple
spear and net served all the purposes of a complete
fishing tackle.
No where in the up-country are the remains of a
single Indian town found in a spot remote from a
creek or river; and two historical facts maybe safe-
.y inferred for every such locality: it was once
abundantly supplied with fish, and possessed a soil
admirably adapted to the production of corn.
" There is a favorite method among them'of fish
ing with hand nets. The nets are about three feet
* Adair.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 81
deep, and ofthe same diameter at the opening, made
of the wild hemp, and knotted after the usual man
ner of our nets. On each' side of the mouth, they
tie, very securely, a strong elastic green cane, to
which the ends are fastened. Prepared with these,
the warriors abreast jump in at the end of a long
pond, swimming under water with their net stretch
ed open with both hands, and the canes in a horizon
tal position. In this manner they will continue,
either till their breath is expended by want of respi
ration, or till the net is so ponderous as to force them
to empty it ashore or in a basket, fixed in a proper
place for that purpose; by removing one band the
canes instantly spring together. I have been engag
ed half a day at a time, and half drowned with this
diversion. When any of us was so unfortunate as
to catch water-snakes in our sweep, and emptied
them ashore, we had the ranting voice ofthe whole
company whooping against us, till another party was
so unlucky as to meet with the like misfortune. Dur
ing this exercise the women are fishing ashore with
coarse baskets, to catch the fish that escape our nets.
At the end of our friendly diversion, we cheer
fully return home, and in an innocent friendly
manner eat together, studiously diverting each other
on the incidents of the day, and make a cheerful
night." There was another primitive method of taking fish,
so much like one still in vogue with the whites, that
there is no doubt, it was originally borrowed from the
¦Indians, who were accustomed to use it in the iden-

82 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
tical places in the streams of the upper-country,
where our people use it at the present day.
It consisted in laying long, tapering baskets, pre
cisely similar, it seems, to those now called " fish
baskets," but much larger, and constructed chiefly of
canes, in the middle ofa shoal or slight waterfall, at
a point where two sloping rows of stones, running,
one from each bank, are made to meet. The fish,
following the natural swift current of the stream,
would pass into the baskets, and, in those prolific
times, soon fill them up. When a larger number
than usual was wanted, as on the occasion of a vil
lage feast, the Indians used to expedite the process
by what may be called a drive of the fish. They
stretched a grape-vine across the stream, above the
baskets, which they contrived to sink by hanging
stones to it, that dragged the bottom ; thus prepared,
they sometimes swam a mile, plunging and whoop
ing, and driving the fish before them into the baskets.
In this way they frequently succeeded in taking in
credible numbers, of which, according to Adair, they
sometimes made a feast of love — every one in the vil
lage partaking of it in the most friendly manner —
and afterwards they dance together, singing halelu-
jah, and the rest of their usual praises to God for his
bountiful gifts to the beloved people.
Another method not unfrequently practiced by the
Cherokees in the art of taking fish, is somewhat cu
rious, and illustrates not only their ingenuity, but
that acute observation of the nature and properties
of plants for which they have ever been celebrated.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 83
It is thus described : "Ina dry summer season,
they gather horse-chestnuts, and different sorts of
roots, which, having pounded pretty fine, and steep
ed awhile in a trough, they scatter over the surface
of a middle-sized pond, and stir it about with poles,
till the water is sufficiently impregnated with the in
toxicating bitter. The fish are all soon drunk, and
make to the surface of the water with their bellies
uppermost. They are then gathered in baskets, and
the largest barbacued — being carefully covered over
at night to preserve them from the supposed putrify-
ing influence of the moon. It seems that the fish
caught in this manner, are not poisoned,* but
only stupified ; for they prove very wholesome
food. By experiments, when they are speedily
moved into good water, they revive in a few mi
nutes."! With these facts before us, it is no difficult task for
the imagination to reanimate a thousand scenes in
as many spots on the streams of the upper-country,
that were the realities ofthe period, when it was yet
the possession of its aboriginal people, and long be
fore the restless foot of the white man had desecrated
the soil. Those whose dispositions are sufficiently
antiquarian to find delight in the study of the past —
in deciphering through its associations with the
present, a language and a history, too subtle for types
*The horse-chestnut is better known as the common " buck eye"
of our woods — the Aesculus glabra ofthe botanists.
f Adair.

84 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
or even for the comprehension of less curious minds —
may here enjoy a feast peculiarly their own. They
may sit and muse by the Fairforest, the Tiger, the
Ennoree, and the beautiful Savannah, and fancy
they hear mingling, with the dashing roar or gentle
murmur of their waters, the joyous shouts of the
red men once more at their sports, or gladsome toil
in the element they loved so well.
To complete this picture of luxuriant animal pro
duction, the usual varieties of wild foul were not
wanting to the woods and waters. The rivers and
their tributaries abounded with duck and wild geese;
but not only did the former bird swarm in those
streams, it was also found in great numbers in every
woodland lake. In the vicinity of Greenwood, and
Cokesbury, in the Flatwoods, and many other locali
ties of the entire country, there were found in old
times innumerable ponds or lakes, long since dried
up, in which they collected in such quantities as to
attract the attention of the early, and even more re
cent hunters. Possibly none may now live ; but we
are assured, that there were men, who shot duck on
the elevated ridges of Greenwood and Cokesbury.
The noise, and denudations of civilized life, have
affected this game, as they did the buffalo and elk,
have driven it away forever from its ancient haunts.
To see, at the present day, a flock of wild geese quiet
ly feeding upon the ground or gamboling in the
waters of the upper-country, would be an event sur
prising enough, while the peculiar whistle, and
splashing roar of the great duck, gathering by

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 85
thousands at night-fall in the creeks and woodland
lakes, are heard no more.
The incredible numbers of wild turkeys that once
existed in this region, is sufficiently attested both by
tradition, and the fact that, although they are exceed
ingly shy, and the forests, their natural coverts, are
well nigh Cut away, they are still in many places
quite numerous, and are likely to continue to subsist
in the country as long as any portion of secluded
woods is suffered to stand. Lawson declares, in his
History of Carolina, published as early as 1718, that
he had seen in the forest as many as five hundred
wild turkeys in a single flock; indeed, they seemed
to be seldom out of his sight, as he traversed the
country from Charleston towards North Carolina. Bar
tram, the botonist and traveler, also mentions the
astonishing numbers he encountered, of this bird,
while traversing Carolina and East Florida. "Hav
ing rested very well during the night, I was awaken
ed in the morning early, by the cheering converse of
the wild turkey-cocks, saluting one another from the
sun brightened tops of the lofty cypresses. They
begin at early dawn, and continue till sun-rise, from
March to the last of April. The high forests ring
with the noise, like the crowing ofthe domestic cock,
of these social sentinels ; the watchword being
caught and repeated from one to another, for hun
dreds of miles around ; in so much that the whole
country is, for an hour or more, in an universal shout.
A little after sun-rise they quit the trees, and alight
ing on the earth, strut and dance around the coy

86 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA.
female, while the deep forests seem to tremble with
their shrill noise."*
In the methods of taking this splendid fowl, the
Anglo-American hunters made no improvements on
those practiced by the Indians in the earliest periods.
No artificial contrivance, and no other human mouth,
could surpass their imitations of the natural call of
both the male and female. It was then, too, far less
shy than after it had become frightened into a habit
ual wariness by the constant report of the pioneer's
rifle. The Indians were also accustomed to entrap
it in what are still known as " turkey pens," which
they baited with maize.
The dried breast of the wild turkey, is said to
have been frequently used, by the early settlers, as a
substitute for bread.
The history of the partridge is similar to that of
the bee and red fox, it rather followed than preceded
the footsteps of the pioneers. When these western
wilds were first penetrated by the whites, it was sel
dom, if ever seen; even in luxuriant Kentucky,")-.
it was not till after the forest had been partially clear
ed away, and waving fields of golden grain had taken
its place, that flocks of this, now familiar bird, began
to gather around the cabins and farms ofthe settlers.
The cry of " bob white," and the buz of the bee, be
came warning notes to the Indians of coming white
men, and civilization.
# Bartram's Carolina, p. SI. f Hall's Sketches of the West.

CHAPTER V .
The Rattlesnake — Its powers of fascination — An object of veneration
to all the tribes of the Continent — This curious fact probably con
nected in some way with their origin as a people — Cosmogony of
the Cherokees or their notions of the world's creation — Great
Rattlesnakes seen by Bernal Diaz in Mexico — Beautiful tradition of
the Algonquins with whom the Cherokees were allied by blood —
Curious account ofthe Horn-Snake, &c.
In the primitive history of Carolina, besides its
quadrupeds and birds, there were a few reptiles,
whose remarkable natural qualities, and singular as
sociation with the Indians and early white settlers,
render them worthy here, of a notice of some length.
The most important of these was the rattlesnake.
This interesting, but dangerous creature, occupies
in the reptile kingdom the same position that the
African lion does among beasts. He may be styled
the king of snakes. Not that he was physically
stronger than all others of his kind — for there were
serpents that mastered him in strength and cunning,
as there are quadrupeds which find no great difficul
ty in mastering the lion. But they resemble each
other in the greatness of their absolute power, and
in the generosity and nobility of their natures.
The vigor of the rattlesnake, however, did not
consist so much in strength of muscles and hugeness

88 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
of proportions — though the largest serpent in Ameri
ca — as in the wonderful fascination of his eye, and
deadly energy of his venom, whenever hunger
prompted the one, and the encroachments of an
enemy elicited the other.
It was partly on account of these qualities, there
can he no doubt, that the Indians regarded it with
so much veneration, if not as an object of worship.
The most striking feature, perhaps, in the Indian
character, was the great respect which they enter
tained for the virtues of generosity, independence
and courage ; a brave, generous enemy never failed
to win their sympathy and admiration.
Veneration for the rattlesnake was not peculiar to
the Cherokees, or any other southern tribe ; it was
known to exist among all the natives of the Conti
nent. Thatcher mentions it as an object of wor
ship, even among the more northern tribes, under
the name of manito-kinibic. From Central Ameri
ca to the Great Lakes, it enjoyed the religious regard
and affection of the aborigines; they were accus
tomed to address it as their grandfather, and the king
of serpents. On no account would they destroy it
themselves, even when struck by its deadly fangs,
while wandering in the woods, nor suffer a white
man to do it, if it was in their power to prevent it.
But while this curious respect for the ratllesnake
was not peculiar to any one tribe, neither was it con
ferred exclusively upon that serpent; all the snakes
of the country enjoyed a share of it, though in a less
degree. The Indians suffered them all to live un-

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 89
molested. Some other cause, therefore, must be
sought than the dangerous power aud generosity of
the rattlesnake, to account for these singular facts.
It becomes an interesting subject of inquiry. Philo
sophers have written much to account for the origin of
the aborigines ; but we do not recollect to have seen
this serpent-worship used among their speculations as
an argument iu favor of their having come from the
East. It is. certainly, in someway connected with
the story of the temptation and fall in the garden by
the waters of the Euphrates.
It is impossible to read the curious cosmogony of
the Cherokees, or their notion of the world's creation,
without being forcibly reminded of the Scriptural
account of the origin of evil aud death. They be
lieved that a number of beings were engaged in the
work of creation. The sun was created first. The
intention of the creators was that men should live
always; but the sun, when he passed over, told them
that there was not land enough, and that people had
better die. At length the daughter of the sun, who
was with them, was bitten by a serpent and died.
The sun, on his return, inquired for her,, and was told
that she was dead. He then consented that human
beings might live always; and told them to take a
box, and go where the spirit of his daughter had
tied, and bring it back to her body, charging them at
the same time, that when they had obtained her
spirit, they should not look into the box, until they
had returned with it to the place where her body had
been left. Impelled however by curiosity, they dis-
8

90 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
obeyed the sun's injunctions, and opened the box,
upon which the spirit escaped, and the fate of all
men was decided — they were doomed to die.*
The Cherokees.t as their name imports, were wor
shippers of fire, and they extended their adoration to
the serpent, because they believed it to be the fire's
messenger. Bernal Diaz, in his account of the march of Cortez
to the city of Mexico, says: " We to-day arrived at a
place called Terraguco, which we named the town of
the serpents, on account of the enormous figures of
those reptiles, which we found in their temples, and
which they worship as gods." Living rattlesnakes
were kept in the great temple of Mexico as sacred ob
jects. " Moreover," he adds, " in that accursed house,
they kept vipers and venemons snakes, which had
something at their tails that sounded like morris-bells,
and these are the worst of vipers. They are kept in
cradles, and barrels, and in earthen vessels, upon
feathers; and there they layed their eggs and nursed
up their snakelings; and they were fed with the
bodies of the sacrificed,! ari^ with dogs' flesh.§
The Natchezs on the Mississippi, had the figure
of a rattlesnake, carved from wood, placed upon the
altar of their temple, and paid it peculiar honors.
The Linni Lenape held it in great respect, and like-
* Archaeological Researches. -f- Chera means fire.
J This is no more wonderful than many things stated by Mr. Pres
cott of the ancient Mexicans, on the same authorities.
I Squire's Archas. Researches.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 91
wise the Hurons. We are told of a Menominee In
dian who carried a rattlesnake constantly with him,
and called it his great father. Sculptures of this ser
pent have been repeatedly taken from the mounds of
the West.
There is a tradition of this remarkable reptile,
once current among all the Algonquin stock of the
aborigines, that is too interesting to be omitted in
this connection. It is known as the Algonquin tra
dition of the evil serpent. Manabozho, the famous
teacher of the Algonquins, was always regarded as
an enemy to a great serpent; and he is represented
as in constant conflict with his antagonist.
"One day, returning to his lodge, from a long jour
ney, Manabozho missed from it his young cousin,
who resided with him ; he called his name aloud but
received no answer. He looked around on the sand
for the tracks of his feet, and he there for the first
time discovered the trail of Meshekinibic, the great
rattlesnake. He then knew that his cousin had been
seized by his terrible enemy. He armed himself and
followed on his track ; he crossed the great river, and
passed mountains and valleys to the shores of the
deep and gloomy lake, now called Manitou Lake, or
the Lake of Devils. The trail of Meshekinibic led
to the edge of the water.
At the bottom of this lake was the dwelling of the
serpent, and it was filled with spirits, his attendants
and companions. Their forms were monstrous and
terrible,but most of them, like their master, bore the
semblance of serpents. In the centre of this horrible

92 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
assembly, was Meshekinibic himself, coiling his vol
umes around the hapless cousin of Manabozho. His
head was red, as with blood, and his eyes were fierce,
and glowed like coals of fire. His body was all over
armed with hard and glistening scales of every shade
and color.
Manabozho looked down upon the writhing spirits
of evil, and vowed a deep revenge. He directed the
clouds to disappear from the heavens, the winds to
be still, and the air to become stagnant over the lake
of the Manitous, and bade the sun to shine upon it
with his fierceness ; for thus he sought to drive his
enemy forth, to seek the cool shadows of the trees that
grew upon its banks, so that he might be able to take
vengeance upon him.
Meantime Manabozho seized his bow and arrows
and placed himself near the spot, where he deemed
the serpent would come to enjoy the shade. He then
changed himself into the broken stump of a withered
tree, so that they might not discover him.
The winds became still, the air stagnant, and the
sun shone hot upon the lake of the evil spirits. By-
and-by the waters became troubled, and bubbles rose
to the surface; for the rays of the sun penetrated to
the horrible brood within its depths. The commo
tion increased, and a serpent lifted its head high
above the centre of the lake, and gazed around the
shores. Directly another came to the surface, and
they listened for the footsteps of Manabozho; but
they heard him no where on the face of the earth,
and said one to another, " Manabozho sleeps." And

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 93
then they plunged again beneath the waters, which
seemed to hiss as they closed over them.
It was not long before the lake became more
troubled than before; it boiled from its very depths,
and the hot waves dashed wildly against the rocks
on its shores. The commotion increased, and soon
the great rattlesnake emerged slowly to the surface,
and moved towards the shore. His blood-red crest
glowed with a deeper hue, and the reflection from
his glancing scales was like the blinding glitter of a
sleet-covered forest in the morning sun of winter.
He was followed by all the evil spirits, and so great
was their number that they covered the shores ofthe
lake with their foul-trailing carcasses.
They saw the stump into which Manabozho had
changed himself, and suspecting it might be one of
his disguises, for they knew his cunning, one of them
approached, and wound his tail around it, and made
an effort to drag it down. But Manabozho stood
firm, though he could hardly refrain from crying
aloud ; for the tail ofthe monster tickled his sides.
The great serpent wound his tail among the trees
of the forest, and the rest also sought the shade,
while one was left to listen for the steps of Mana
bozho. When thev all slept, Manabozho silently drew an
arrow from his quiver, and placing it in his bow,
aimed it where he saw the heart beat against the
sides of the great serpent. He let it fly, and with a
howl that shook the mountains, and startled the wild
beasts in their caves, the monster awoke, and fol-

94 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
lowed by his frightened companions uttering min
gled sounds of rage and terror, plunged again into
the lake. Here they vented their fury upon the
helpless cousin of Manabozho, whose body they tore
into a thousand pieces; his mangled lungs rose to
the surface, and covered it with whiteness. And this
is the origin of the foam on the water.
When the serpent knew that he was mortally
wounded, both he and the evil spirits around him
were rendered ten-fold more terrible by their great
wrath, and they rose to overwhelm Manabozho. The
waters of the lake swelled upwards from their dark
depths, and with a sound like many thunders, it
rolled madly on his track, bearing the rocks and trees
before it with resistless fury. High on the crest of
the foremost wave, black as midnight, rode the
writhing form ofthe wounded Meshekinibic, and red
eyes glared around, and the hot breath of the mon
strous brood hissed fiercely above the retreating
Manabozho. Then thought Manabozho of his In
dian children, and he ran by their villages, and in a
voice of alarm, bade them flee to the mountains, for
the great serpent was deluging the earth in expiring
wrath, sparing no living thing. The Indians caught
up their children, and wildly sought safety '¦-'here he
bade them. But Manabozho continued his flight
along the base of the western hills, and finally took
refuge on a high mountain beyond Lake Superior
far towards the north. There he found many men
and animals that had fled from the flood, that al
ready covered the villages, and plains, and even the

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 95
highest hills. Still the waters continued to rise, and
soon all the mountains were overwhelmed, save that
on which stood Manabozho. Then he gathered to
gether timbers and made a raft, upon which the men,
and women, and the animals, that were with him,
all placed themselves. No sooner had they done so
than the rising floods closed over the mountain, and
they floated alone on the surface ofthe waters. And
thus they floated for many days; and some died, and
the rest became sorrowful and reproached Mana
bozho, that he did not disperse the waters, and re
new the earth, that they might live.
But though he knew that his great enemy was by
this time dead, yet could not Manabozho renew the
world, unless he had some earth in his hand where
with to begin the work. And this he explained to
them that were with him, and said, that were it ever
so little, even a few grains of earth, then could he
disperse the waters and renew the world. Then the
beaver volunteered to go to the bottom of the deep,
and get some earth, and they all applauded his de
sign. He plunged in; they waited long, and when
he returned he was dead ; they opened his hands
but there was no earth in them. Then said the
otter, ' will I seek the earth,' and the bold swim
mer dived from the raft. The otter was gone still
longer than the beaver, and when he returned to the
surface, he too was dead, and there was no earth in
his claws. ' Who shall find the earth,' exclaimed
all on the raft, « now that the beaver and otter are

96 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
dead ?' And they desponded more than before, cry
ing, ' who shall find the earth ?'
'That will I,'said the muskrat,and he quickly dis
appeared between the logs of the raft. The musk-
rat was gone very long, much longer than (he otter,
and it was thought he would never return, when he
suddenly rose near by ; but he was too weak to
speak, and swam slowly towards the raft. He had
hardly got upon it, when he too died from his great
exertion. They opened his little hands, and there
closely clasped between the fingers they fouud a few
grains of fresh earth.
These Manabozho carefully collected and dried
them in the sun, and then he rubbed them into fine
powder in his palms, and rising up blew them abroad
upon the waters. No sooner was this done than the
flood began to subside, and soon the trees on the
mountains were seen, and then the mountains and
hills emerged from the deep, and the plains and the
valleys came into view, and the waters disappeared
from the land, leaving no trace but a thick sediment
which was the dust that Manabozho had blown
abroad from tho raft.
Then it was found that Meshekinibic was dead,
and that the evil Manitous, his companions, had re
turned to the depths of the lake of spirits, from which.
for fear of Manabozho, they never more dared to
corne forth. And in gratitude to the beaver, the ot
ter and muskrat, these animals were ever after held
sacred by the Indians, and they became their breth-

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 97
ren, and they never killed nor molested them, until
the medicine of the stranger made them forget
their relations, and turned their hearts to ingrati
tude."* In this beautiful tradition, worthy of the deep,
poetic feeling of the red men, it requires no great
knowledge of the Bible to discover many of the
most striking points, though confused and jumbled,
in the pathetic story of man's redemption, and the
ancient account of the universal deluge.
The history of the aborigines furnishes no stronger
presumptive proof than this of their Asiatic origin,
and the error into which those intensely scientific
philosophers have probably fallen, who teach that
Noah's flood did not extend to the New World, and
that the Indians bear no blood relationship to the first
parents of the Anglo-Saxon and other races of men.
The latter inference is necessarily included as a co
rollary in the first; for if the Indian originated in
America, then the deluge could not have been uni
versal; unless it can be shown with certainty that
this Manabozho represents a real American Noah,
and the mountain spoken of far beyond Lake Supe
rior towards the North, an American Ararat ; which
would be a vastly more difficult feat than to prove
the absolute historical truthfulness of the whole story
of Manabozho and the serpent.
Arguments drawn from manners, customs, arts,
and even language, in order to establish an identity

?American Review.

98 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
of origin between two people,long widely separated,
are far less reliable than those derived from striking
analogies plainly traceable in their ancient traditions,
and cosmogonies.
This fable of IU anabozho and the serpent, or some
thing near akin to it, possibly entered into the relig
ious belief of tribes much farther south than those
living around Rainy Lake. Adair asserts that the
Southern Indians never ate of the otter and musk-
rat; and the Cherokees were closely related, through
the Powhattans, to the Algonquin race.*
" Our old traders remember when they first began
the custom of eating beavers ; and to this day, none
eat of them except those who kill them, though the
flesh is very wholesome on account of the bark of
trees they live upon. It must be-aeknowledged,they
are all degenerating apace."
But, whatever may have been the source of this
singular veneration with which the aborigines re
garded the rattlesnake, it was exceedingly favora
ble to its growth and increase in every part of the
country. The old traders and hunters met with
them in alarming numbers, and of proportions suffi
ciently large to excite the awe and respect of the
least devout of the natives; for though they had
many endearing names for them, and refused to kill
them, they knew well what a respectful distance was,
when they chanced to comeupon one in the woods,
drawn up in his defiant coil, and sounding his notes
of alarm. ? Pickett's History of Alabama.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 99
The following description of one of their famous
haunts in the Cherokee Nation, must be given in the
quaint style of the old trader who relates it:
" Between the heads ofthe northern branch of the
low'er Cherokee* River, and the heads of that of
Tuckasehchee, winding around in a long course by
the late Fort Loudon, and afterwards into the Missis
sippi, there is, both in its nature and circumstances, a
great phenomenon. Between two high mountains,f
nearly covered with old mossy rocks, lofty cedars
and pines, in the valleys of which the beams
of the sun reflects a powerful heat, there are,
as the Indians affirm, some bright old inhabitants,
or rattlesnakes, of a more enormous size than is men
tioned in history. They are so large and unwieldy
that they take a circle about as wide as their length
to crawl round in their shortest orbit; but bountiful
nature compensates the heavy motion of their bodies ;
for, as they say, no living creature moves within reach
of their sight, but they can draw it to them ; which is
agreeable to what we observe through- the whole
system of animated beings. Nature endues them
with proper capacities to sustain life ; as they can
not support themselves by their speed, or cunning,
* The Little Tennessee.
¦f If our author has reference here to the two head branches of the
Little Tennessee, the locality which he would describe, lies some
where among the mountains of the present Macon County in North
Carolina, a few miles south-east of the village of Franklin. Fort
Loudon stood on the same river in the territory of Tennessee, in the
fork between it and the Tellico.

100 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
to spring from an ambuscade, it is needful they
should have the bewitching craft of their eyes, and
forked tongues.
The descriptions the Indians give of their color is
as various as what we are told of the camelion ;
they seem to the spectator to change their color by
every different position he may view them in, which
proceeds from the piercing rays of light that blaze
from their foreheads, so as to dazzle the eyes; for
in each of their heads there is a large carbuncle,
which not only repels, but they affirm, sullies the
meridian beams of the sun.
They reckon it so dangerous to disturb these crea
tures that no temptation can induce them to betray
their secret recess to the profane. An old trader of
Cheeowhee told me that for the reward of two pieces
of stroud cloth he engaged a couple of young war
riors to show him the place of their resort ; but the
head men would not, by any means, allow it on ac
count ofa tradition, by which they fancy the killing
of them would expose them to the danger of being
bit by the other species ofthe serpentine tribe."*
Due allowance must be made in this singular nar
rative, for the superstition of the Indians; but there
can be little doubt, from what has just been stated,
that even more than one such horrible abode of those
venemous reptiles existed at that period, in the
gloomy recesses of the Blue Ridge, and granite hills
of the upper-country. Many such dens have been
* Adair.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 101
brought to light by the advancing settlements in the
far west.
Notwithstanding their religious regard for the rat
tlesnake, and their perfect knowledge of the fatal in
fluence of his venom, it does not appear that the
Indians feared to approach, and even to handle him,
when armed with their famous antidotes. " I once
saw," says Adair, " the high-priest of the Chickasaws
chew some snake-root, blow it on his hands,
and then take up a rattlesnake without damage
soon afterwards he laid it down in a hollow tree with
great care, lest I should have killed it. Once on their
trading war path, a little above the country of the
Creeks, as I was returning to camp from hunting, I
found in a large cane swamp, a fellow-traveler, an
old Indian trader, inebriated and naked except his
Indian breeches, and moccasins; in that habit he
sat holding a great rattlesnake round the neck, with
his left hand besmeared with the juice of proper roots;
and with the other applying the roots to the teeth of
the reptile, in order to repel the poison before he
drew them out ; and having effected this, he laid it
down tenderly at a little distance from him. I then
killed it, to his great mortification, as he was afraid
it would occasion misfortunes to himself and me..
And he did indeed perish, not long after, by the
hands ofthe Choctaws, under French influence, on
the Chickasaw path."
There once lived in Tomassee — a town situated a
few miles above the site of old Fort Prince George — a
great " divine man," a famous rain-prophet of the

102 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
lower Cherokees, who, we are told, possessed a car
buncle nearly as large as a hen's egg, which he was
reported to have found near where a great rattle
snake lay dead. It sparkled with such surprising
lustre as to illuminate his dark winter house; like
strong flashes of continued lightning its brightness
appeared, to the great terror of the weak, who were
afraid of being struck with sudden death, if they
should approach the place where it had been de
posited. On the death of this prophet, according to the In
dian custom, he was buried and the dreadful car
buncle with him, under the town-house of Tomas
see, which stood on the extreme western side of the
town. The remains of Tomassee can, no doubt, be
traced ; and it may be possible that this splendid
relic of an age of romance, and of the curious ser
pent-worship of the aborigines, can yet be found, if
diligently sought. It lies in the precise spot where
it was interred with the beloved prophet, unless some
rapacious white man discovered the secret of its
history. This is stated on the authority of Adair, who thus
concludes his account of it. * * * " They who
will run the risk of searching, may luckily find it;
but if any of the rattle snake family detect them in
disturbing the bones of their beloved relation, they
would resent it as the basest act of hostility."
Lawson, in his surveying expeditions through the
woods of Carolina, often met with the rattle snake ;
he gives a few curious particulars of its history. He

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 103
frequently stumbled over them, but was never once
bitten. On one occasion, when out in the forest, he
witnessed its remarkable powers of fascination in
the case of a squirrel, which ran directly into the
open jaws of one of them. When dead, and even
when alive, we will see farther on, the Indians made
great use of it in medicine. The cast-off skin was
a remedy in some diseases; the rattles were reduced
to powder, aud given to lying-in women, to expedite
their labor. The gall, made into pills with clay,
was regarded as so great a remedy in fevers and
small-pox, as to be regarded as one of the precious
secrets of nature. This nostrum was borrowed at
an early day from the Indians by the people of Con
necticut, aud it soon became famous under the
imposing name of the trochisa Connecticotiani. It
was deemed important that the rattle snakes should
be taken in the spring, when a little meal or chalk
mixed with their gall, and rolled into pills, formed
the celebrated trochisci. Connecticut has been pro
lific of nostrums and notions ever since. The troches
were anodyne.
The ancient surveyor must himself relate the in
stance in which the whole reptile, alive, was applied
in a notable case. A certain planter had been long
suffering under a lingering disease, which none of
the regular physicians in his reach were able to re
move, though with great patience he had tried them,
one after the olher, at the expense of all that he was
worth. At last, almost in despair, he threw himself

104 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
upon the skill of an Indian, well known in his neigh
borhood by the name of Jack.
"After the bargain was concluded, the Indian went
into the woods, and brought in both herbs and roots,
of which he made a decoction, and gave it to the man
to drink, and bade him go to bed, saying it should
not be long before he came again, which the patient
performed, as he had ordered ; and the portion he
had administered made him sweat after the most
violent manner that could be, whereby he smelled
very offensively. But in the evening, towards night,
Jack came with a great rattle snake in his hand,
alive, which frightened the people almost out of their
senses. And he told his patient that he must take
that to bed with him ; at which the man was in a
great consternation, and told the Indian he was re
solved to let no snake come into his bed, for he
might as well die of the distemper he had, as be
killed by the bite of that serpent; to which the In
dian replied, he could not bite him now, for he had
taken out his poison-teeth, and showed him that they
were gone. At last, with much persuasion, he ad
mitted the snake's company, which the Indian put
about his middle, and ordered nobody to take him
away upon any account ; which was strictly ob
served, although the snake girded him as hard, for
a great while, as if he had been drawn in by a belt,
which one pulled at with all his strength. At last,
the snake's twitches grew weaker and weaker, till,
by degrees, he felt him not; and, opening the bed,
he was found dead, and the man thought himself

ANCIF.NT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 105
better. The Indian came in the morning, and find
ing the snake dead, told the man that his distemper
was dead along with that snake, which proved so,
as he said; for the man speedily recovered his health,
and became perfectly well."*
Bartram, as late as 1775, frequently encountered
the rattlesnake in his adventurous travels through
Florida and- the Carolinas. In one place he relates :
"An occurrence happened this day, by which I had
an opportunity of observing the extraordinary vene
ration or dread the Indians have for the rattlesnake.
I was busy in my room in the council-house, draw
ing some curious flowers, when, on a sudden, my
attention was taken off by a tumult without, at the
Indian camp. I stepped to the door, where I met
my friend, the old interpreter, who informed me that
there was a very large rattlesnake in the Indian
camp, which had taken possession of it, having
driven the men, women and children out; and he
heard them saying they would send for Puc-puggy,
(that was the name they had given me, signifying
the flower-hunter,) to kill him or take him out of the
camp. I answered that I would have nothing to do
with him, apprehending some disagreeable conse
quences. My old friend turned about, to carry my
answer to the Indians, when I heard them approach
ing, calling for Puc-puggy. Starting up, to escape
from their sight by a back-door, a party consisting of
three young fellows, richly dressed and ornamented,

* Lawson's Carolina, page 219.

106 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
stepped in, and with noble simplicity and complais
ance, requested me to accompany them to their en
campment. I desired them to excuse me. They
entreated, however, that I should go, for none of them
had the courage to expel the rattlesnake from their
camp; and, understanding that it was my pleasure
to collect all their animals and other natural produc
tions, that I was welcome to him, if I would come
and take him away. I at length consented, and
went with them to the encampment, where I beheld
the Indians greatly disturbed indeed ; the men with
sticks and tomahawks, and the women and children
collected together iu affright and trepidation, while
the dreaded serpent leisurely traversed the camp,
visiting the fire-places, from one to another, picking
up fragments of their provisions, and licking their
platters. The men gathered round me, exciting me
to remove him. Arming myself with a light wood
knot, I approached the reptile, which instantly col
lected himself in a vast coil ; upon which, I cast
the knot at him, and luckily taking him on his head,
dispatched him instantly. I took out my knife, and
cut the head from his body, then, turning to the
Indians, they complimented me with every demon
stration of satisfaction for my heroism and friend
ship for them. I carried off the head ofthe serpent,
bleeding in my hand, as a trophy of victory, and,
taking out the mortal fangs, deposited them carefully
among my collections."* * Bartram, page 258.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 107
The amiable traveler's adventure with this serpent,
however, was not yet over; he had scarcely returned
to his drawing, before he was, a second time, aroused
by a tumult among the Indians. They had been
deliberating on the death of the rattlesnake, and
had come to the conclusion that his spirit must be
appeased by inflicting upon Puc-puggy their custom
ary punishment — he must be dry-scratched with the
teeth of rattlesnakes ; and they now approached ,
with their instruments ready for the execution.
Having surrounded him in his room, without the
least intimation of their design, they attempted to
lay hold of him. They now inforrried him that he
was too heroic and violent, and that it would be good
for him to lose some of his blood, to make him
milder and tamer; and had therefore come to scratch
him. Alarmed for the safety of his skin — for he
knew well what they meant by a dry-scratch— he
instinctively sprang to his feet, and stood on the de
fensive. At this point, when he seemed really in
danger of the fate of having his skin lacerated by a
process of the most exquisite and diabolical torture,
a young warrior interposed in his behalf, when in
stantly the whole troop changed their countenaces,
caught him by the hands, and proclaimed him a
brave warrior, and a sincere friend to the Indians.
They then returned to their camp, having, by this
farcical demonstration, appeased the manes of the
dead snake, and satisfied the superstitious prejudices
of their people.
The instrument for dry-scratching was a curious

108 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
specimen of savage ingenuity. It was made in the
following manner : A piece of split cane having
been first flattened and smoothed at one extremity, a
number of rattlesnakes' fangs were then inserted,
with their points all turned towards the handle, and
fastened securely, so that, when finished, it resembled
very much a miniature brush or comb. The head
men of every town or camp, it appears, were fur
nished with one or more of these implements, with
which, for certain offences against the decorum or
religion of the Nation, they were in the habit of in
flicting the severest tortures upon the offenders. It
will be seen in other places, that they not only
scratched their children and young people with this
horrible instrument, but even their most noted head
men and warriors.
Lawson found it also in great use among them as
a scarificator for drawing blood in disease, which
they did in a very expeditious manner with their
mouths, after the skin had been punctured with the
snakes' teeth. There were two degrees of this tor
ture when used as a punishment. If the culprit was
deemed worthy of its severest application, he was
instantly stripped, and the sharp penetrating fangs
applied to the dry unyielding surface. This was
termed dry-scratching. The milder form of it per
mitted the skin to be first softened and mollified with
warm water.
In the first settlement of Carolina and Georgia, it
is said that rattlesnakes were not unfrequently met
with, seven, eight, and even ten feet in length, and

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 109
from eighteen inches to more than two feet in
circumference. Some time before the period of the
Revolution, however, these monsters of a primitive
age, and pampered gods of the simple red men, had
disappeared forever from their ancient lurking places.
A race of men had invaded them who knew and
honored the true Manabozho, and, for his sake,
cherished undying enmity towards all the venemous
serpent tribes.
Bartram again relates, that on one occasion, in
Georgia, having wandered a little distance from the
spot where he had pitched his camp, his steps were
suddenly arrested by a huge rattlesnake that lay in
easy reach of him, already coiled for the fatal stroke.
He affirms, that the volume of this reptile, as he lay
in that position, formed a spiral mound half as high
as his knees. His generous forbearance in with
holding his blow when the botanist was fairly in his
power, made so great an impression upon him, that
he and his companions voted him his life and a
quiet retreat.
Some years after this, when, in company with his
father at Old Fort Picolata, on the St. John's River,
attending a congress between the authorities ot
Florida and the Creek Indians, they employed their
leisure hours in making botanical collections in the
woods around the fort. " The morning the treaty
commenced," he writes, " we had been rambling
in a swamp about a quarter of a mile from the camp,
I being a head a few paces, when my father sudden
ly bid me observe the rattlesnake just at my feet. I

110 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA, "
stopped, and saw the monster formed in a high spiral
coil, not half his length from me. Another step for
ward and I must have stumbled over him. The
fright I was thrown into at once excited resentment;
at that time I was insensible to gratitude or mercy.
I instantly cut off a little sapling and soon dispatched
him. This serpent was about six feet in length and as
thick as an ordinary man's leg. Having fastened a
vine to his neck, I dragged him after me, his scaly
body sounding over the ground ; and entering the
camp with him in triumph, was soon surrounded by
the amazed multitude, both Indians and my country
men. The adventure reaching the ears of the com
mander, he sent an officer to request that, if the
snake had not bit himself, he might have him served
up for his dinner. I readily delivered his body to
the cooks, and being that day invited to dine at the
governor's table, saw the snake served up in several
dishes, Governor Grant being very fond of the flesh
of the rattlesnake. I tasted of it, but could swallow
none of it down."
This Governor Grant of Florida, was the same
officer who, as Colonel Grant, in the spring of 1761,
had carried fire and sword among the Cherokees.
It is highly probable that he found leisure and
opportunity, while on that expedition, to rid some of
those gloomy lurking places in the Cherokee moun
tains of their ancient reptile denizens of the jeweled
heads, in the same easy, cheerful manner in which
he disposed of the snake killed by Bartram.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. Ill
It would appear, from an item which we find in a
schedule of government charges, published with the
statutes of South Carolina, that as late even as 1764,
the rattlesnake was still sufficiently numerous and
mischievous, to elicit from the legislative authorities
so decided a notice as a handsome appropriation to
secure, as far as possible, an abatement of the
nuisance. In that year, a negro fellow, named
Sampson, who claimed to have discovered an anti
dote for its venom, was voted an annuity of one
hundred and four pounds sterling for his valuable
service to the province.
There is no record of Sampson's famous recipe ;
it was, doubtless, nothing more than one of the
potent native herbs that had been used by the
Indians, for the same purpose, time immemorial.
During all his forty years' residence among them,
Adair asserts, that he never knew one to die from
the bite of the rattlesnake or any other venemous
reptile, although frequently struck by the most dan
gerous species. When going into the woods, or
upon an expedition, every Indian provided himself
a pouch of the best snake-root, such as the seneca
or fern snake-root, or the wild horehound, wild plan
tain, St, Andrew's cross, or some other of a variety
of plants equally efficacious and well known in the
forests of Carolina.
lt will not be out of place to describe and name
more particularly the most important of these primi
tive autidotes indigenous iu our woods, and once so
powerful in the hands of the savages who first dis-

112 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
covered them. The seneca snake-root — senega poly-
gala — is abundant throughout ail Upper Carolina.
It is said to have derived its name from the fancied re-
semblancebet ween its root and the rattle of the serpent,
with whose history it is so intimately associated. It
is more probable, however, that its English name
originated from its well-known use among the In-.
dians. They may have possibly been led first by
that resemblance to apply it as a remedy for the bite
of the rattlesnake. It grojvs in an erect, smooth
stem, with alternate lance-like leaves. Tlie flowers
are white, closely clustered on the top of a spike or
stem growing up" from the root, and in bloom most
of the summer. Given in moderate doses, the
seneca is a warming stimulant, imparting a general
glow to the system, and exciting profuse perspiration.
In larger doses it proves both emetic and cathartic.
The Virginia snake-root — aristolochia serpent-
aria — is a perennial plant, and, like the seneca,
abounds in the upper-country on dry ridges and up
lands. It is easily distinguished from the latter — its
leaves, stem and root are all totally different from
those of the seneca. The stem is hairy and zigzag,
like lhat of the wire-grass ; the leaves heart-shaped
and oblong; the white flowers expand themselves,
not on a single spike, but on several little stems or
peduncles rising from the root, and sometimes under
the surface of the ground. It grows from eight to
ten inches in height, and blooms through the sum
mer.* The root, however, is its greatest peculiarity,
being exceedingly fl brous ; it appears like a coljection

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 113
of a great number of orange-colored strings, all
branching out from the- same point.
Like the seneca, however, it is powerfully stimu
lant and sweat-producing, with the additional claim
of being both a tonic and preventive ot putrifaction.
Mr. Eberle, in his Therapeutics, remarks of these
plants, that they have been discovered to be utterly
useless as antidotes to the poison of venemous ser
pents. A moment's reflection, however, will reveal
the reason of this, and vindicate both the credibility
of their history and the good sense of the Indians,
who asked for no other remedy when struck by the
fangs of the deadly rattlesnake. The truth is, there
is not now, nor never was, any sure remedy for the
bite of that dangerous serpent, unless it was im
mediately at hand, to be applied the moment the
venom was injected into the blood. The Indians
knew this better than any learned writer on modern
materia-medica, and seldom ventured into the woods
without a safe supply of such remedies, as their ex
perience and observation had taught them to be per
fectly reliable when seasonably used.
In later times, however, after the god-rattlesnake
of the supplanted red men, began to bruise the
heels of the English, and Anglo-Americans, in the
greater number of instances, it was under circum
stances when no remedy could be applied at all,
before the poison had become completely in
corporated with the blood, and- then these ancient,
famous plants being prescribed, and necessarily
failing, were set down as utterly valueless. Be-
10

114 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
sides, the manner in which it was directed to ap
ply them — beaten into cataplasms, or infused in
water or spirits, was enough, even though ready at
hand, to insure the death of the patient, by the loss
of precious time. The Indians knew nothing of
this; the instant one of them felt himself struck by
a serpent, he sat down, took the root from his pouch,
chewed it as rapidly as possible, so as to swallow in
time the necessary quantity of juice, and then taking
it from his mouth applied it to the wound. In this
way he had already set up in his system a powerful
antagonism to the venom of the serpent, while the
man of the pharmacopseia would have been beat
ing up his poultice or preparing his infusion. The
Indians fought the venom of the rattlesnake as
Napoleon I. fought the Austrians ; the learned
faculty, as the Archduke of Austria fought Napo
leon. The analogy would be complete, if the former
had had the weakness to lay his defeat upon the
want of strength in the metal of his arms.
After swallowing his medicine, " for a short space
of time," says one who often witnessed its opera
tion, "there isa terrible conflict through all the body
of the Indian by the jarring qualities ofthe burning
poison, and the strong antidote; but the poison is
soon repelled through the same channel it entered,
and the patient is cured."
There were other antidotes, not less trustworthy
with the American savage, and scarcely less famous
than the snake-roots. The wild horehound, the
rattlesnake's master, or the rattlesnake's plantain, fre-

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 115
quently formed the only store of his indispensable
medicine pouch. These plants are quite common on
all the dry soils of the upper-country. On the high
ridge between the Savannah and Saluda Rivers, par
ticularly in the vicinity of the villages of Greenwood
and Cokesbury, few native plants are more abun
dant. The wild horehound is a eupatorium, and belongs
to the same natural family with the well-known
bone-set ; it grows, however, on highlands, while the
bone-set is chiefly found in wet marshy places. It
attains a height of two or three feet; the stem is
hairy, the leaves triangular in shape, coarsely notched
on their edges, and so arranged in pairs, as to cross
one another at right angles. During the months of
July and September, its white flowers are full blown,
and may be readily recognized by their resemblance
to those of the bone-set, clustered in a dense, flat
corymb at the top of the stem.
The rattlesnake's master — liatris squarrosa —
abounds on dry soils and shady woods. It can be
easily distinguished by its green grass-like leaves
and purple flowers, arranged on their spike, like those
of the hyacinth. They are in bloom through Sep
tember and October.
The rattlesnake's plantain — goodyera pubescens —
found in the same situations, belongs to the tuberous
root family. It grows from six to ten inches in
height, having a stem quite hairy towards the. top,
with egg-shaped leaves, and a spike of white flowers.
Besides the virtues of these plants, as reliable an-

116 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
tidotes for the poison of serpents, when applied in
time, they are invaluable as remedies in a variety of
diseases; for which the seneca and serpentaria, at
least, have been greatly extolled in the regular prac
tice. Dr. Bartholomew Parr, in his huge folio Diction
ary of Medicine, published in 1819, makes mention
of a specific remedy for the bite of the rattlesnake,
that had been discovered by a negro, which may
possibly be the same for which South Carolina so
generously paid the annuity recorded in the Statutes.
It is doubtless worthy of a resurrection from its
ponderous tomb ; for it consists wholly in the united
strength of two of the most potent of the antidotes
whose powers and natural history have just been de
tailed. " Take of the roots of plantain and horehound —
in summer the whole herb — a sufficient quantity ;
bruise them and squeeze out the juice, and give im
mediately a large spoonful. If the patient is swelled
pour it down his throat. If it does not relieve in
one hour, give a second dose, which never fails.
The roots, when dry, should be bruised in water."
Besides the rattlesnake, there was one other, in the
early periods, sometimes seen and felt in the woods
of the upper-country, that is worthy of a brief
notice. Around the history of the horned serpent,
there hangs an obscurity, which, perhaps, no research
will ever fully clear away. Some, indeed, have
wholly denied that such a reptile was found on the
Continent. Others admit its primitive existence and

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 117
describe it as a curious and harmless creature. There
are others, again, who, while they regard it as having
once belonged to the catalogue of our native serpents,
describe it as possessed of a venom, whose fatal
energy no antidote was ever known to master.
Bartram met with a reptile which he calls the horn-
snake in his travels in Carolina, and speaks of it as
follows :
" The pine or bull-snake is very large and inof
fensive, with respect to mankind, but devours squir
rels, birds, rabbits and every other creature it can
take as food. They are the largest snake yet known
in North America, except the rattlesnake, and per
haps exceed him in length; they are pied black and
white. They utter a terrible loud, hissing noise,
sounding very hollow, and like distant thunder, when
irritated, or at the time of incubation, when the
males contend with one another for the desired fe
male. These serpents are also called horn-snakes,
from their tail terminating with a hard, horny spur,
which they vibrate very quick when disturbed, but
they never attempt to strike with it. They have
dens in the earth, whither they retreat precipitately
when apprehensive of danger."*
Lawson, who traversed the same region about
seventy years earlier than the botonist, describes an
other under the name of the horn-snake serpent, of
a totally different character. " Ofthe horn-snakes,"
he says, " I never saw but two, that I remember.
* Bartram, p. 272.

118 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
They are like the rattlesnake in colort but rather
lighter. They hiss exactly like a goose, when any
thing approaches them. They strike at their enemy
with their tail, and kill whatsoever they wound with
it, which is armed at the end with a horny substance
like a cock's spur. This is their weapon. I have
heard it credibly reported, by those who said they
were eye witnesses, that a small locust-tree, about the
thickness of a man's arm, being struck by one of
these snakes at ten o'clock in the morning, then ver
dant and flourishing, at foil'- in the afternoon was
dead, and the leaves red and withered. Doubtless,
be it how it will, they are very venomous. I
think, the Indians do not pretend to cure their
wound." This singular statement of the old surveyor, in re
lation to the locust-tree, could scarcely have ever come
to the knowledge of the good, but plain people living
on Coronaka and Wilson's Creeks ; yet there is still
extant in that region, a tradition, in which it is re
lated, that many years ago, a man in the lower part
of the district or in Edgefield, being closely pursued
by a horn-snake, took refuge behind a tree, when
the enraged serpent, rolling swiftly after him, like a
trundled hoop, plunged its horny sting deep into
its trunk, where it was made fast, and so diffused
its venom into the circulating sap, as to destroy
completely, in a few hours, the vitality of the
tree. Bartram, with all his acuteness and enthusiasm as
a naturalist, has certainly confounded the names of

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 119
two distinct native serpents of Carolina. The bull-
snake, as he describes it, was well known in the
upper-country at the period of his visit, and long
after; but the old people had seen, and talked much
of the horn-snake as well, whose sting they dreaded
as the visitation of death. Hewit informs us, that
the horn-snake was found in Carolina, and owed its
name, not to a horny excrescence growing upon its
head, as some have supposed, but to the horn-like
sting at the extremity of its tail, with which it de
fended itself, striking it with great force into every
aggressor. It was also deemed exceedingly vene
mous; and the Indians, when stung by it, did not
resort to their usual antidotes, but instantly cut out
the wounded part, as the only safe preventive of the
deadly poison's being infused through the system.*
Mills, in his Statistics, enumerates, among the indi
genous reptiles of Carolina, both the horn and bull-
snake. The former must, however, have been ex
ceedingly rare; for, at a comparatively early period, it
had already become a creature of curious tradition.
Lawson, it has been observed, saw but two of them
as early as 1718, notwithstanding no white man of
his day enjoyed better opportunities for making such
discoveries in Carolina. Among the innumerable
facts that may be gathered from natural history illus
trative of God's goodness, there are few more deserv
ing of notice than this rareness of a reptile so fierce,
? Carroll's His. Col. p. 82.

120 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
and deadly as the horn-snake must unquestionably
have been. Had it been as abundant, as the other
venemous species, the Indians even, though fur
nished with their potent antidotes, could hardly have
inhabited the country. The imagination is taxed to
conceive of an object more repulsive or truly terrible.
It possessed scarcely a single redeeming feature;
there was nothing of the admirable craft ofthe eye —
nothing of the beautiful changing colors or charac
teristic magnanimity of the rattlesnake — but with
dull eye, insensate skin, and vengeful spite, ready to
dart its dreadful sting into every approaching intru
der, it lay a horrible compound of all the hated quali
ties of its race — the incarnation of death.
On an afternoon, nearly forty years ago, a party of
gentlemen were riding from Abbeville Village to
wards the Calhoun settlement, and when approaching
the place now known as the Cabins, they passed a
dwelling near the wayside, just at the moment when
a little girl, whom they had seen to cross the road some
distance before them, gave a piercing shriek, and ran
back into the house in an agony of pain and fright
Perceiving that something serious had occurred, they
hastily alighted to ascertain the matter; and entering
the room, found the child stretched upon a bed, and
already a corpse. She had lived long enough, how
ever, to whisper to her mother that a snake had struck
her, while she was in the act of gathering fire-wood
on the road-side. The party instantly sought the
spot, and there discovered a large specimen of the

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 121
horn-snake which they dispatched. The skin of this
serpent was stuffed, and preserved by an intelligent
gentleman* ofthe neighborhood; and it was long an
object of great curiosity at his residence, and after
wards at Old Cambridge, where it was last seen.f
* Captain Thomas Parker.
¦j- Conversation of James Taggarl, Esq., and others.

11

CHAPTER VI.
Conjectures in relation to vast mineral wealth in Upper-Carolina —
Old French and Spanish miners — The gold mania of that treasure-
seeking age — The resile** euersy born of the love of money more
efficient for good than money — Treasures not essential either to the
support or the progress of truth, &c.
The wild animals of the upper-country, particu
larly those that supplied the Indians and hunters
with food, and the valuable peltries, which, it will be
presently seen, became the much-desired commodi
ties of a lucrative traffic, chiefly attracted the atten
tion of the first white men who penetrated these
north-western wilds. They were not, however, the
only objects of pursuit; the supposed vast mineral
wealth of the same region had, from a very early
period, excited the romantic speculations of adven
turers from all the leading colonizing nations of Eu
rope. The beetling crags, towering mountain knobs,
and quartz-bearing hills of the upper-country, were
peculiarly alluring to the gold-loving rapacity of
the French and Spaniards.
The treasure-seeking mania of this active age was
remarkable; but only because turned for a time in
to an extraordinary channel. The previous and

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 123
succeeding periods, with the one in which the present
generations are pushing their fortunes, are to be re
garded as not a whit less, but perhaps more calmly
sordid. It has often been a subject of serious re
gret that so small a portion of the acquired treasures
of the world are devoted to the cause of truth ; yet
many striking facts attending the gold mania of this
era, as well as that we have witnessed in our own,
clearly indicate that there is much less of efficacy
for good in gold itself, than in the unceasing, restless
activity and energy engendered by the depraved love
of it.
Those who express such regret either forget, or do
not perceive, that money is not only the representa
tive of the values created by the sweat and self-sa
crifice ofthe enslaved toiling million, but equally, in
a moral sense, of the depravity of the race. Wher
ever wealth inordinately accumulates, there very
soon are developed the most hideous forms of hu
man iniquity and misery. "Where the carcass is,
there the eagles gather together," and that carcass is
the laboring poor of Free-soil society.
Even in the South, where the institution of Afri
can slavery fosters the purest and healthiest social
organization the world has ever seen, men of wealth
may be almost daily met, stiff and stark with the
self-complacency that proclaims to others, "stand
aside, I am holier than thou." Yet so little is there
of essential potency in money to promote and sus
tain lhe true dignity of ffian, that it cannot be re
garded as an element even in the moral progress of

124 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
humanity. The glory and stay ofthe country is its
real Christianity, whose maintenance actually costs
it thousands less than its dogs and annual supply of
tobacco and strong drink. Indeed, the Church would
continue to live with vigorous efficiency, though
every cent were emptied from its coffers.
The Great Teacher, who needed not that any should
tell him what was in man, when organizing his visi
ble church on earth, evidently avoided the self-suf
ficient power of money. Two only of its represen
tatives were intimately associated with his humilia
tion : one of them sold him for thirty pieces of silver,
and the other, frightened in the last moment to his
duty by the awful manifestations of nature at the
crucifixion of his master, assumed his true charac
ter, and begging the body, put upon it the equivocal
honor of laying it in his own sumptuous tomb. The
worst deformity of modern society is not poverty and
its evils, but the inordinate love and accumulation of
barren money, the superciliousness of the purse-
proud, and the heartless selfishness of a large and
growing class, which mistake worldly prosperity for
the distinguishing favors of Heaven.
Like the numerous useful discoveries however that
resulted incidentally from the lonely studies of the
crazy alchymists of the middle ages, the gold fever
of this period achieved the exploration of large and
valuable tracts of country, that must have otherwise
lain a much longer time utterly unknown to civilized
men. It is quite probable that even before the com
mencement of the eighteenth century many adven-

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 125
turers landed in Charleston and St. Augustine, who,
after a brief rest, and the necessary inquiries, set off
, with gun and knapsack in search of the hidden treas
ures, which rumor had declared only awaited the
enterprise of the skillful explorer among the granite
hills and wild mountain ridges of the upper-country.
Indeed, the famous territory of Cofachiqui, so often
mentioned, and so minutely described by the chron
iclers of the celebrated gold-hunting expedition un
dertaken by Ferdinand De Soto, in 1538, through
the dreary wilderness, afterwards embraced in the
States of Florida, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi,
had its centre on the western limits of the present
territory of Upper Carolina. Its capital and chief
town stood upon the tongue of land between the
Broad River of Georgia, and the Savannah, just op
posite the modern District of Abbeville.
" Early in March, 1540, De Soto broke up his win
ter quarters, and set out for the north-east, in search
of the Province of Cofachiqui, which was supposed,
from Indian accounts, to be the rich country for
which he was in search. He had been informed by
the guides and other Indians, that it lay a long dis
tance off, towards the.north-east, and that it abounded
in gold, silver and pearls. From Anhayca they
passed northward, probably crossing the Flint River,
and pursuing their marsh in the valley on the west
side, for nearly twenty days, until they reached the
southern part of the Cherokee country, called Acha-
laque ; then they directed their route to the north
east, crossing, in the course of the next twenty days'

126 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
march, two large rivers, in all probability, the Oc-
mulgee and Oconee Rivers, in the vicinity of Macon
and MiUedgeviUe, in Georgia.
At length, after an entire march and sojourn of
more than two months, the Spanish army arrived
in the Province of Cofachiqui, about the middle of
May. This province was situated on, or near, the
head waters of the Savannah River, and the chief
town, probably, in the peninsula, at the juncture of
the Broad and Savannah Rivers. They found the
country ruled by a beautiful Indian queen, or fe
male Cacique, who entertained the Spanish governor
and his army with great ceremony." *
The generous hospitality of Xualla — for that was
the name of the Indian queen — was, however, ill
requited by the avaricious strangers. They soon
discovered that there were numerous mounds or
tombs in the vicinity of the town, filled with rich
treasures, that had been deposited with the bodies of
distinguished chiefs. These sacred relics were plun
dered for the jewels which they contained ; they
were the only riches found, and, although many
and valuable, were to be obtained in large quantities
only by plundering the vaults o"f the dead.
The old chroniclers severely test the faith of the
reader, in respect to these treasures. The Portu
guese narrator, the most reliable historian of DeSoto's
expedition, informs us that the amiable queen, tired
of the presence of the ungrateful Spaniards, offered
? Monette's History of Valley of the Mississippi.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 127.
them, if they would be gone, two hundred horse-
loads of pearls. They took, however, from the
mounds, or temples, only fourteen bushels, which
were sent to Havana, as a specimen of the natural
wealth of the country. Garcellasso, another histo
rian and eye-witness, affirms that in the country
surrounding the capital of Xualla, the Spaniards
calculated that a thousand bushels of pearls could
have been gathered.
These gems, though very pretty, were, doubtless,
not ofthe most valuable kind ; but the fact that they
were found in such incredible quantities, and the
product of the muscle, once so common on all the
streams of the upper-country, is sufficiently aston
ishing. None, we believe, have evei been discovered
in the same region since the lime of De Soto's ex
pedition ; aud even the muscles themselves are now
seldom met with.
Were the Indians in possession of a secret pro
cess, by which these gems were engendered in the
shells of the muscle, that was never revealed either
to Spaniards or English? But where are the mus
cles, which, in 15-10, were found in such vast num
bers around the Indian settlements on the Savannah
and in the country north-west of it? A living mus
cle is now seldom seen on the Coronaka, yet, in our
boyhood, we remember to have seen them there in
considerable quantities; and the minute fragments of
their shells mingled everywhere with the sand and
pebbles, indicate a great abundance of them in primi
tive times.

128 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
The Spaniards found, also, in the capital of the
Indian queen, hatchets lormed from an alloy of gold
and copper. These objects greatly excited their cu
pidity, and encouraged them in the belief that they
had at last discovered in Cofachiqui, a country
abounding in the precious deposits they had so long
sought. And so they indeed had, but it was neither
their good fortune nor their desert, to find out the
precise spot where they could be obtained. In less
than fifteen miles south-east of the town, on the op
posite side of the Savannah, lay one of the most
extraordinary gold deposits in the world.
It is true that the Cherokees knew nothing of ex
cavations on the present site of the Dorn Mine, or
on any of its rich branching veins; but they were
well acquainted with the locality, which is shown
by the numerous relics of their handy-work scat
tered around it; and there can be little doubt that
the massy nuggets of its out-cropping gold supplied
them abundantly with the finer metal of the alloy
that so attracted the eyes of the Spaniards. It is
well known to mineralogists that the out-croppings
of most gold and copper regions, are far richer than
their deep, but more permanently productive veins.
And, it is no less known to a few who have inquired
into the traditions of the aborigines, that the gold
and copper found in their possession, in the form of
solid masses and curious trinkets, by the first white
men who visited the country, were obtained from
those sources.
But by what method did they succeed in smelting

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 129
these metals ? It was one of the most remarkable
devices of savage ingenuity; in practical efficiency,
the famous blow-pipe of Dr. Hare was scarcely su
perior. Having first hollowed out a flat stone in the form
of a basin, they filled it with charcoal, and upon this
laid the nuggets of metal. A number of Indians
now seated themselves in a circle around the basin,
(and this circle was larger or smaller in proportion
to the size and number ofthe nuggets to be melted,)
each one having in his hand a long reed pierced
through its entire length, and armed at one end with
a clay tube or pipe. Everything being ready, fire
was applied to the charcoal, and the whole mass in
stantly blown into a powerful heat through the reeds,
the clay-extremities of which were inserted in the
basin, while the Indians blew through them upon
the charcoal with all their might, and with protracted
expiration. No ordinary lump of either gold or copper could
long maintain its solidity in such a crucible. With
this process the Indians could easily produce any
variety of ornament from those metals, using them
either alone or in alloy. This method was known
to have been in use among the Indians who lived
upon the gold-producing lands of North Carolina,
and the same process must have been known to the
Cherokees. It is quite probable that had the Spaniards con
ducted themselves properly while in the capital of
Cofachiqui, Xualla would have revealed to them the

130 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
precise spot whence the gold of the wonderful
hatchets was obtained — the renowned mineral trea
sury of Cofachiqui. But such was the deep disgust
and resentment with which the whole native popu
lation were inspired by their rudeness and inhuman
ity, that they would have preferred to die rather than
impart information so agreeable to their hated visi
tors. Every effort was used therefore to induce them to
leave the province; and none succeeded so well, as
the declarations of the queen, whom De Soto had
made his captive, and of her attendants, that the gold
deposits for which the Spaniards were searching lay
some distance off towards the north-west, among the
mountains. He had learned this too on the banks
of the Flint River, and now set off across the terri
tory of Georgia in search of the yellow stone quar
ries of Dahlonega."*
Some time after leaving Cofachiqui, two of his fol
lowers volunteering their services, were sent by De
Soto to explore the country in search of the mines
whence the gold was obtained he saw in the hatchets
on the Savannah. After several weeks of toilsome
wanderings among rolling hills and mountains of
stupendous rocks, they returned to him at one of his
camps in the territory of Alabama, having made no
discovery of any mineral, and bringing back with
them nothing more valuable than a buffalo's skin,
which they conjectured to have been taken from au
# Dahlonega in Cherokee means the place ofthe yellow stone.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 131
animal of huge size, and that partook of the nature
of the ox and the sheep.*
There is much confusion even in Monette, in re
gard to the Province of Cofachiqui and the country
of the Cherokees. He speaks of the Spaniards, when
marching up Flint River, as having reached, just as
they turned towards the north-east in search of
Cofachiqui, the southern boundary ofthe Cherokees,
whose country was called Achalaque. Yet after De
Soto has left the Savannah, and is marching north
westwardly towards the present site of Rome, in
Georgia, the same historian adds: "Through this
means — the captivity of Xualla — the Spaniards pro
cured a safe march through the territory of Cofa
chiqui to the country of the Cherokees, called the
Province of Chalaque.
The truth is, from the moment he reached the
southern boundary of the Cherokees on the Flint, till
he met the beautiful Queen of Cofachiqui ou the
banks of the Savannah, he had been marching over
Cherokee territory.
Xualla's capital, at the mouth of Broad River, was
no more the centre of Cofachiqui than it was of the
country of the Lower Cherokees.
The old map published by Adair with his History
of the North American Indians, represents the south
ern boundary of the Cherokees as running directly
eastward from the Flint to the Savannah, consider
ably south of the mouth of Broad River. At a later
# Pickett.

132 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
period, however, this line appears to have been ob
literated, and Broad River came to be the dividing
line between the lands of the Cherokees and Creeks.
It is so laid down by Mouzon and Cook. This
brought those warlike savages in close proximity with
the early settlers of Ninety-Six District, on the Sa
vannah ; and it was for their protection that Fort
Charlotte was built, and garrisoned a few years before
the breaking out of the Revolution. The father of
Robert Long, who settled on Duncan's Creek, in
1769, often assured his family, if we mistake not,
that not long after his arrival in Ninety-Six District,
he had taken from the government, and executed
the contract of building Fort Charlotte.*
We have in another place traced in this and other
portions of the upper-country, the scattered remains
of the towns and villages of a numerous people that
once lived upon its fertile valleys and streams. It is
highly probable that those settlements were the pro
vincial towns of Cofachiqui — the richest and most
flourishing district of the Lower Cherokees — lhat
they were yet standing and prosperous, at the period
of De Soto's visit, the events, whatever they were,
having subsequently transpired, which reduced them
to ruin and decay.
The ancient mounds and terraces that distin
guished the site of Xualla's capital, are seen at this
day, though much wasted, at the mouth of Broad
River. Many have been the speculations in regard
? Conversation of Miss Susan Long.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 133
to them, by the farmers of their vicinity, both in
Elbert County and Abbeville District.
The spot was visited by Bartram in 1776, and the
following description given of it in his rare book of
travels in Carolina: "After conferring with gentle
men in Augusta, conversant in Indian affairs, con
cerning my future travels in those distant, unex
plored regions, and obtaining letters to their agents
in the Indian territories, I set off, proceeding for
Fort James, Dartmouth, at the confluence of Broad
River with Savannah — the road leading me near the
banks of the river for the distance of near thirty
miles. Towards' evening 1 crossed Broad River at a
good ford, just above its confluence with the Savan
nah, and arrived at Fort James, which is a four
square stockade, with salient bastions at each angle,
mounted with a block-house, where are some swivel
guns, one story higher than the curtains, which are
pierced with loop-holes, breast-high, and defended
by small-arms.
"The fortification encloses about an acre of ground,
where is the governor's or commandant's house — a
good building, which is flanked on each side by
buildings for the officers and barracks of the garri
son, consisting of fifty rangers, including officers;
each having a good horse, well-equipped, a rifle, two
dragoon-pistols and a hanger, besides a powder-horn,
shot-pouch, and tomahawk.
"The fort stands on an eminence in the fork be
tween the Savannah and Broad Rivers, about one
mile above Fort Charlotte, which is situated near the

134 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
banks of the Savannah, on the Carolina side. Fort
James is situated nearly at an equal distance from
the banks of the two rivers, and from the extreme
point of land that separates them. The point or
peninsula between the two rivers, for the distance of
two miles back from the fort, is laid out for a town,
by the name of Dartmouth, in honor of the Earl of
Dartmouth, who, by his interest and influence in
the British councils, obtained from the king a grant
and powers in favor of the Indian Trading Company
of Georgia, to treat with the Creeks for the cession of
a quantity of land sufficient to discharge their debts
to the traders; for the security and defence of which
territory this fortress was established.
"I made a little excursion up the Savannah River,
four or five miles above the fort, with the surgeon of
the garrison, who was so polite as to attend me and to
show me some remarkable Indian monuments, which
are worthy of every traveler's notice. These won
derful labors of the ancients stand in a level plain,
very near the banks of the river, now twenty or
thirty yards from it.
" They consist of conical mounds of earth and four
square terraces. The great mound is in the form of
a cone, about forty or fifty feet high, and the circum
ference of its base two or tiiree hundred yards, en
tirely composed of the loamy rich earth of the low
grounds. The top or apex is flat; a spiral path or
track leading from the ground up to the top is still
visible, where now grows a large, beautiful red cedar.
There appear four niches excavated out of the side

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 135
of this hill, at different heights from the base, front
ing the four cardinal points; these niches are en
tered from the winding path, and seem to have been
meant for resting places or look-outs. The surround
ing level grounds are cleared, and planted with
Indian corn at present; and I think the proprietor of
these lands, who accompanied us to this place, said
that the mound itself yielded above one hundred
bushels in one season; the lands hereabouts are ex
ceedingly fertile, and productive.
" It is altogether unknown to us, what could have
induced the Indians to raise such a heap of earth in
this place, the ground for a great space around being
subject to inundations, at least once a year, from
which circumstance we may conclude they had no
town or settled habitations here. Some imagine
these tumuli were constructed for look-out towers.
It is reasonable to suppose, however, that they were
intended to serve some important purpose in ihose
days, as they were public works, and would have
required the united labors and attention of a whole
nation, circumstanced as they were, to have con
structed one of them almost in an age.
" There are several less ones round about the great
one, with some very large tetragon terraces on each
side, near one hundred yards in length, and their
surfaces, four, six, eight and ten feet above the
ground on which they stand.
" We may, however, hazard a conjecture, that as
there is a narrow space or ridge in these low lands,
immediately bordering on the river's bank, which is

136 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
eight or ten feet higher than the adjoining low
grounds that lie betwixt the stream, aud the heights
of the adjacent mainland, which, when the river
overflows its banks, are many feet under water, when
at the same time this ridge ou the river bank is above
water and dry, and, at such inundations, appears as
an island in the river these people might have had
a town on this ridge, and this mount raised for a
retreat and refuge in case of inundations, which are
unforeseen, and surprise them very suddenly every
spring and autumn."
Such, more than eighty years ago, were the ruins
of the great capital of Cofachiqui. From the period
of De Soto's expedition to the time of Bartram's
visit, nearly two hundred and fifty years had passed
away; and when two centuries more shall have im
printed their wasting footprints upon the same spot,
its unsculptured, unlettered tumuli will still tell the
passing stranger their simple story of the departed
red men.
De Soto, not long after leaving Cofachiqui, found a
magnificent though melancholy grave in the bosom
of the Mississippi ; but no treasure of the beautiful
yellow stone either from the mines of Dahlonega or
the more lightly covered deposits of Abbeville.
We are informed by Adair that shortly after the
settlement of Augusta a company of desperate adven
turers, of what nation we are not told, were found
working with success a silver mine, which they had
opened in one of the solitudes of the Blue Ridge,
probably not far from, if not on the very spot, where

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 137
a similar vein is now being wrought by a Charleston
company in Cheohee Old Fields, at tlie head of Lit
tle River, in Pickens District. This place is rich in
Indian remains. A few years ago an adventurous
miner threw out, from the depth cf some fifteen feet
below the surface, a curious cup of exquisite form
and color, which is still preserved by a lady residing
in Clarksville, Georgia.
They found the ore at the depth of some thirty
feet, and so rich did it prove, that they were soon
enabled to combine with their mining operations the
then lucrative business of coining large quantities of
counterfeit money which was conveyed to Augusta
in wagons. A heavy load of it was, on one occa
sion, detected by the public officers passing over the
usual route that had been destined for the purchase
of negroes in that town.
This mine, like many others in the same region,
has been utterly lost to the cupidity of succeeding
generations, unless it be really true that Kughtmann
has struck upon the identical vein in Cheohee Old
Fields. It is well to remember, however, that
even at this early period, a villainous class of arrant
counterfeiters found, in the shady recesses of the
mountains, and in the lawless society of the
border, a retreat sufficiently favorable to their nefa
rious occupation ; and they were not men whose
wits were so dull as not to perceive that the
popular belief in the existence of gold and silver in
this region gave them license to prosecute it with
the utmost boldness and energy. They spared no
12

138 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
pains, therefore, to extend and deepen this belief; and
hence the great number of legendary stories still to
be met with in the upper-country, of ancient gold
and silver mines, that were once well known and
worked with wonderous profit, but now lost.
There can be no doubt, however, that at this
period, the old English traders among the Chero
kees were confident in the opinion that their hills
and mountains were as rich in the precious metals
as any portion of Mexico or South America. One
affirms, that so thoroughly were the rocks and soil
impregnated with them and other valuable metallic
substances, that the mountains glistened in view of
the passing traveler; and even the blades of grass
were bright with their subtle exhalations. "On the
tops of those mountains I have seen tufts of grass
deeply tinctured with mineral exhalations. If skill
ful alchymists made experiments on these moun
tains, they could soon satisfy themselves as to the
value of their contents, and probably would find
their account in it."*
Lawson declares that the Indians, time immemorial,
were acquainted with valuable mines of gold and
silver in Upper Caroliua ; but that nothing could ever
induce them to discover their locality to Europeans.
Their reason for concealing them was, that they
knew the English and Spaniards greatly coveted the
precious metals, and if their mines were once known
to them, they would come up and settle near their
* Adair, p. 236.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 139
mountains, and bereave them of their hunting-
grounds.* Another chronicler, no less ancient and quaint,
tells us of a quicksilver mine, situated somewhere
in the same region of Carolina. He is exceedingly
vague as to its locality, but describes minutely the
method used by the Indians for extracting the metal
from the ore. They used it in preparing the colors
with which they painted their bodies in time of war
and great festivals.
The ore was broken into small pieces, and placed
in earthen pots, from which a strong heat sublimed
the quicksilver — that is, drove it off in the form of
vapor. The pots had long necks, and these being
inserted in others full of water, and half-buried in the
ground; the vapor was received by the water, and
condensed into the fluid metal.
Arranged in rows close to one another, three or
four men could attend to a thousand retorts, all
heating at oncef.
The traditions of the olden time, and some curious
facts that have come to light in more recent periods
do not appear to confine the deposits of silver, at
least, to the mountainous portions of the upper-
country. Many years ago, there were picked up on
the bank of Bush River, in Newberry District, sev
eral ancient Indian ornaments, consisting of pieces
of black marble, rudely set in silver. Dr. Flannagan,
who then lived on the Ennoree, and into whose pos-
? Page 205. f Cox's Carolina.

140 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
session these interesting relics came, conjectured
that both the silver and the marble were originally
procured in that portion of the Cherokee Nation
that lay beyond the mountains. As late as 1815,
he had ascertained that the Indians, who still resided
there, were secretly working a very rich silver mine
near a town named Shainrack, which they carefully
concealed from the whites. By artful persuasions,
he was on the eve of making its discovery, through
an Indian, who had already consented to lead him
to the spot, when his hopes were disappointed by the
interference of a mixed-blood, a prominent charac
ter among them, by the name of Johnson.*
Would it not be just as plausible, however, to con
jecture that the silver contained in those old memen
toes of Indian vanity, was originally found near the
spot where they were picked up — at least, nearer to
Bush River — than the country over the hills?
A tradition of an ancient silver mine that was
once known and worked on Coronaka Creek in the
present District of Abbeville, still lingers among the
people, who live around the old Rock Church. This
tradition is scarcely known to the rising generation,
but is cherished with deep interest by a few venera
ble men whose years link them with the age that
conversed with the emigrant fathers.
We shall relate it just as we received it from the
lips of one of them when a boy. Many years ago,
when the whole up-country was yet covered with its
?Mills's Statistics.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 141
primitive forest, and scarcely known even to English
adventurers, a party of enterprising Spaniards pen
etrated, in their search for gold and silver, into the
territory now embraced in this district; and on a spot
somewhere near the present site of the Old Rock
Church, observing signs of one of the precious metals,
applied their pick-axes, and brought to light a pro
mising vein of silver ore. Fixing themselves per
manently, they, in a short time, laid open a mine,
whose wealth surpassed belief.
Such was their avidity, however, says the tradition,
to acquire treasures, that they wholly neglected to
procure for themselves the necessary means of sub
sistence — finding it more convenient to obtain them
by force from the neighboring Indians, whose corn
patches lay on the fertile valleys of the Coronaka.
This, the generous Cherokees endured for a time;
but on its being frequently repeated, they became
exasperated, and attacking the Spaniards in their ex
cavation, massacred the whole party, except two, who
escaped and fled towards North Carolina. The In
dians then threw the entire mass of the accursed
metal they had raised and melted, back into the
mine, and so completely restored the spot to its
primitive aspect, that no vigilance or skill of civilized
men has since availed to recover the lost treasure.
The precious secret, doubtless, passed away forever
with the red men.
These Spaniards may possibly have been a party
of straggling deserters from De Soto's camp on the
Savannah. In process of time, however, the Cherokee

142 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA.
war of 1760 broke out, and brought up from Charles
ton into the back- woods an army, composed of sol
diers and volunteers drawn from many different
sources. On their return from the campaign in the
Nation, they formed an encampment, and rested sev
eral days at a ford of Little Wilson's Creek, on a
piece of ground afterwards embraced in a plantation
owned by Rev. Joel Townsend, a short distance south
of the Pointing Rock and the Old Rock Church.
The ancient Keowee trail, it will be more fully
shown, passed betvveen and near both of these con
spicuous spots.
The surrounding settlers were soon familiar in the
camp; indeed, some of them had served as volun
teers in the recent foray against the Cherokees, where,
among other things, they learned, from certain old
soldiers, this curious story of a silver mine of untold
value having been discovered and lost, in the man
ner described, not far from the very place on which
they were encamped.
They were moreover informed, that the Pointing
Rock, which stood close on the side of the old Keo
wee trail, had been noted by the escaped Spaniards
as a land-mark by which their treasure might be
once more found. It lay just two miles east of that
rock.* Such is the tradition of the lost mine of the Span
iards. It is now well nigh forgotten; hut in a for
mer age the influence which it exerted upon the sons
* Conversations with my father and wilh Joseph Fox Foster, who
recently died near the Rock Church, at an advanced age.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 143
ofthe old men ofthe Coronaka settlement, who had
served in Grant's army, and who can scarcely be
charged with being inordinately sentimental or ro
mantic, was near akin to that exercised by their
belief in the final perseverance of the saints.
Early in the present century, a company was
formed of several of the most- practical men of the
neighborhood for the purpose of making a thorough
search for the old Spanish mine. Among them, were
old Dr. Zachary Meriwether, Colonel John Logan,
Captain John Irwin, and Wm. Buchanan — all of
them Revolutionary soldiers, except Dr. Meriwether.
They began by carefully taking from the Pointing
Rock the traditionary bearing which led them to
quite a promising-looking spot on a hill-side, a short
distance above the east bank of Coronaka, and a
little way south of the site of old Captain Slunge,
John Calhoun's Revolutionary tub-mill, afterwards
Logan's. Here, with brilliant expectations, the com
pany broke ground, and sunk a shaft some sixty or
seventy feet in depth.
Often, in the hunting rambles of our boyhood,
while yet ignorant ofthe traditions of the old settle
ment, we wandered to the brink of this strange ex
cavation deep in the shadows of primitive woods,
and there mused, with far more imagination than
philosophy, on its probable cause. The land be
longed at the time the shaft was sunk, to Bucha
nan; and such was his faith in the ancient tra
dition, that even at this day it may be seen in the
conveyance by which it passed from his to other

144 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
hands, that one or more acres were reserved, in the
midst of which the excavation had been made.*
The work went bravely on, with a few interrup
tions, for several weeks; the adventurous miners
examining closely every bucket-load of earth and
stones as it came up, expecting each successive one
to disclose, at last, the identical silver that had been
smelted perhaps more than a century before by the
less fortunate Spaniards.
The precise spot ou which this delving was going
forward had been ascertained by Captain Irwin, who
professed, as well as most of his neighbors, unwaver
ing faith in his ability to discover veins or deposits
of the precious metals beneath the earth's surface.
He had in his possession a forked divining-rod, still
preserved by his descendants, which was never
known, in his hands, to fail to detect the hiding-
place of any noble metal, if it lay near enough the
surface to be within its influence.
On one occasion, soon after the Revolution, hav
ing been called down on the Saluda, to search with
his rod for the spot in which a well-known Tory had
concealed, it was reported, a considerable sum of
gold; he discovered with little difficulty that it lay
near the root of a tree, which leaned several feet
over the water of the river; for, on looking more
closely, after repeated trials of the rod, had fixed in
dubitably upon that spot, there, sure enough, an old
powder-horn was found hanging from one of the
? It is at present the property of Thomas Stuart.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 145
upper limbs, just over the very point where, in the
opinion of all concerned, the stupid fellow had con
signed his money to the faithless waters. After this
feat, the old soldier's brass rod was as potent over
men's minds as it was over hidden treasures.
Our grandfather was the first, at length, to suspect
the virtues of the magic rod ; though his faith con
tinued as firm as ever in the teachings of the old
tradition ; but keeping his doubts to himself, he re
solved to give it a private test that would infallibly
settle the question in his own mind.
Happening one day at the excavation, when a rock
was thrown out, whose almost spherical shape and
metalic appearance drew the attention of all present,
he placed it on the pummel of his saddle and car
ried it home with him, and throwing it down in the
yard, concealed under it four silver dollars, so as to
put the fairness of the test beyond doubt, and then
sent for Capt. Irwin to come with his rod, as he sus
pected the existence of silver near his house. The
enthusiastic old man was soon at the spot; but after
a thorough search, he pronounced confidently the
opinion, that the place was utterly destitute of any
deposit of the precious metals.
Nothing, of course, was said about the ruse ofthe
hidden coins ; but the operations at the shaft ceased
soon after, never more to be resumed. It was not
long, however, before another considerable excava
tion was made in the same bootless search, near the
head of the branch that runs into Coronaka through
the lands and close to the house owned at present by
13

146 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
Franklin Crawford. It was on the plantation, if we
mistake not, of the venerable Benjamin Puliam, so
well remembered, though long dead, for his unbound
ed hospitality and native goodness of heart. He lived
and died on this place, afterwards embraced in the
lands of the late Capt. T. B. Byrd.
The chief laborer employed in sinking the shaft
on the Coronaka was old Nick, the faithful and
well' known negro, who died in the possession of our
father at an advanced age in 1850. He had belong
ed, when a boy, to Capt. John Calhoun, and passed
with that intrepid partizan soldier through many of
the troublous scenes enacted on the Saluda and Cor
onaka during the Revolution. To the last day of
his life nothing gave him so much pleasure as to re
count the incidents to which he had been an eye
witness at that trying period ; especially the rough
handlings the Tories received at the hands of his old
master. With uncommon intelligence for a slave, he com
bined the admirable humility so characteristic of the
negroes of his times ; and even, in his old age, would
have gloried in shouldering his musket against Tory
or Abolitionist, in defence of his master and his
master's family. We are not ashamed to confess that
many happy moments of our boyhood were spent
in listening to his graphic stories of the olden time.
On one occasion, he was captured at his master's
house, during his absence, by a band of plundering
Tories, who carried him into North Carolina, and
concealed him, with several olher negroes taken in

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 147
the same manner, in the hollow ofa huge sycamore
that stood under a hill in a thick swamp. "We like
to have starved to death in this place," he related ;
"a man came only once or twice a day to the top of
the hill, and rolled down a few ash cakes, which
broke into a hundred fragments before reaching its
foot, and the strongest among us fared best in the
fierce struggle that followed for the scattered crumbs."
His master succeeded, after some time, in tracing
him to the neighborhood in which he was concealed,
and making a foray into it with several of his Whig
comrades, overtook and recovered him from the Tory
when in the act of conveying him farther away.
His joy, on seeing his master once more, he used to
relate, was too full for utterance; seizing his hand as
he rode up, he leaped behind him on his horse, and
together they dashed on in pursuit of the retreating
marauders. We shall have more to say of Captain
Calhoun in another place.
The old Spanish mine is yet undiscovered. It
may be, however, that when all is forgotten — when
the tradition itself has faded from the memory of
men, and the last witness of its influence upon the
minds and imaginations of our grandfather is no
more — some fortunate farmer, while enlarging with
enlightened judgment the operations of his agricul
tural improvements, deepening his furrows, and
lengthening his ditches, will one day, unexpectedly
lay open the lost mine and treasures of the Spaniards.
An old chronicler adds: "Metals or minerals, I
know not of any, yet it is supposed and generally

148 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA.
believed, that the Apalatean Mountains, which lie
far within the land, yield ore both of gold and sil
ver; that the Spaniards, in their running searches
of this country, saw it, but had not time to open
them, or at least for the present were unwilling to
make any farther discovery, till their mines of Peru
and Mexico were exhausted, or as others assert, that
they were politically fearful that, if the riches of the
country should be exposed, it would be an allure to
encourage a foreign invader. Poverty preserving
riches often times the cause that property is lost,
usurped, and invaded ; but whether it be this or that
reason, time will discover.'' *
There are reasons for believing that the knowledge
of valuable mineral deposits in the upper-country
was not confined to the Indians or Spanish adven
turers. An old Mrs. Moss, who died a few years
ago, in the north-west corner of York District, at an
advanced age, frequently affirmed that her husband,
during tbe Revolution, had obtained from a mine on
Dolittle Creek, all the lead from which he cast the
balls used in his rifle at that troublous period.
The whole family of that name — and there were
not a few of them — were famous hunters. Since
that time we are not aware that a particle of lead
in any form has been found on the same stream,
though it runs through a country rich in mineral
productions.

? Gent's Carolina, Carroll's Hist. Col.

CHAPTER VII.
The primitive Hunter, Cow-Driver and Indian Trader of Upper
Carolina— Patrick and William Calhoun— The Business of Stock-
raising — Cow-pens — The thorough-bred Horses of Colonial times
—The Statute of 1700 relating to Horses— The Wild Horses of
Carolina — Old Jesse Gladden, oec.
We have now presented most that is important in
the natural history of Upper-Carolina. A country
thus abounding in magnificent woods and prairies,
and so rich in its production of animal life, must have
offered, as similar regions of the west at the present
day, rare attractions to the hunter and stock-raiser ;
and if all other information on the subject had been
wholly lost, it would not be difficult to conjecture
what sort of men first ventured to penetrate its un
explored wilds.
There were three remarkable classes of men who
preceded,by several years, the regular settlers of north
western Carolina ; these were the hunters, cow-drivers
and Indian traders. The hunter, though no pio
neer — for he appropriated no lands, leveled no
forest, and cultivated but little soil — yet served by his
adventurous life many valuable purposes; he con
ciliated the jealous savages, impressed them, as In
dians were easily impressed, by his romantic courage
and unrivaled skill in the use of the rifle, with senti
ments of respect for the character and prowess of
white men; and in his wanderings over vast tracts
of wild territory, having a keen eye, as well for the
virtues of the soil and beauties of the country, as

150 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
for the immediate objects of his pursuit, brought
back to the border settlements glowing accounts of
Elysian spots he had seen in the wilderness, and thus
opened the way to the most eligible sections for suc
ceeding groups of advancing settlers.
Patrick and William Calhoun, the pioneers of
western Abbeville, were induced to visit the Long-
Canes, by such descriptions of the fertility and love
liness of the country there, which they had obtained
from a band of hunters at the Waxhaws.
No man now living east of the great western plains,
may claim to be the modern representative of the
ancient hunter of Upper-Carolina. He was the pe
culiar product of his age, and passed away forever
with the deer and buffalo, as they disappeared before
the aggressive axe of the pioneers. He was the Kitt
Carson of primitive times ; and, like Kitt Carson, was
an extraordinary man. Poor, but scorning the arts
and trammels of civilized society, with no companion
but his dog, he passed his solitary life in the depths
ofthe forest, undisturbed by the world's busy indus
try, and far out of reach of the dishonest strategy of
its respectable thrift. And when the line of advanc
ing settlements approached his haunt, and the sound
of the settlers' axe began to mingle with the sharp
echoes of his rifle, seizing the simple moveables of
his log shanty, he removed a corresponding distance
into the yet unappropriated wilderness.
A life like this, indolent and aimless as it may seem,
illured no ordinary men. His powers were just of
that kind, which in all ages, have elicited the warm
est admiration of mankind. Nothing daunted him ;

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 151
and to lion-like courage, strength and endurance, he
added the activity of the catamount and the vigilance
of the hawk — his eye was never at rest. Even when
he was on a temporary visit to the settlements, or in
Charleston procuring a fresh supply of ammunition
its ceaseless activity — scrutinizing every nook, and
sweeping every view — betrayed his habits and wild
haunts. Not far from the log-hut of the hunter stood that
of the cow-driver, a character likewise worthy of
note, but inferior to the hunter, in the attributes ofa
chivalrous manhood, iu just the proportion of his
greater sordidness.
Besides his association with the Indians, and their
gloomy wilds, there was little romance about him;
yet his life was one of self-reliance, hardship, and
active vigilance; and in it were trained, for eminent
usefulness, many of the backwoods soldiers of the
Revolution. General Andrew Williamson, of White
Hall, had been a cow-driver in his youth on the cane
pastures of the Hard-Labor.
The business of stock-raising, at this period, on the
frontiers, was scarcely less profitable than it is at pre
sent in similar regions of the west; and numbers of
enterprising men engaged in it, either personally or
through their agents. Having selected a tract, where
cane and pea- vine grass grew most luxuriantly, they
erected in the midst of it temporary cabins, and spa
cious pens. These were used as enclosures, in which
to collect the cattle at proper seasons, for the purpose
of counting and branding them; aud from many
such places in the upper-country, vast numbers of

152 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
beeves were annually driven to the distant markets
of Charleston, Philadelphia, and even to New York.
In 1740, Nightingale, the maternal grandfather of
the late Judge William Johnston, established a ranch
or cow-pen, six miles from the present site of Winns
boro', at a spot afterwards owned on Little Cedar
Creek by the lamented General Strother. A man by
the name of Howell, from the Congaree, soon after,
formed a similar establishment, at a place near
Winn's Bridge, on Little River. Several years after
the Revolution, General Andrew Pickens was engaged
in the business of stock-raising near his new resi
dence in old Pendleton, and drove beeves to the
market in New York.
At an earlier day, a cow-pen was quite an impor
tant institution. It was usually officered with a
superintendent,-and a corps of sub-agents — all active
men, experienced woodsmen, and unfailing shots at
long or short sight with the rifle. For these a ham
let of cabins were erected, besides the large enclosures
for the stock; all of which, with a considerable plat of
cleared land in the vicinity for the cultivation of corn,
made quite an opening in the woods; and when all
were at home, and the cattle in the pens, a very noisy,
civilized scene, in the midst of the savage wilder
ness. These rude establishments became afterwards,
wherever they were formed, the great centres of set
tlements founded by the cultivators of the soil, who
followed just behind the cow-drivers in their enter
prising search for unappropriated, productive lands.
They never failed to afford them abundant provisions,

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 153
some society, and a sure protection from the Indians
and not less terrible white marauders, who now be
gan to infest the border.*
The professional cow-drivers, however, did not
monopolize the business; few of the old settlers ne
glected the raisingof stock in a country so admirably
adapted to it, and generally came well provided for
the purpose. They brought with them, from Penn
sylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina, many ani
mals of superior blood, and from this race sprang the
famous chargers of the Revolutionary partizans, so
often celebrated in the thrilling stories of that period.
At no day since have there been so many thorough
bred riding-horses in Upper-Carolina — horses whose
mettle and prowess admirably adapted them to the
heroic service of the spirited men who bestrode them.
May it not be fairly regarded as by no means one of
the least significant signs of the present degeneracy,
that the splendid, thorough-bred saddle-horses of the
olden time have long ago ceased from the land, and
men and women are both alike content to loll lazily
in cushioned buggies and sumptuous carriages?
The generous emulation of that day, was, who
could appear on the finest and most spirited horse :
now the base struggle is, who can drive out with the
largest amount of glitter and glare upon his carriage
and harness. If giants were not in those days, men
there were, at least, who, like Alexander with Buce
phalus, prided themselves in being able to mount and
? Pearson's MS. History of Fairfield.

154 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
subdue steeds, whose mettle was worthy of kings and
warriors. Yet it would appear from an old statute, enacted
in 1700, but repealed seven years after, that not all
the horses brought at that early period into the pro
vince from Virginia, and other eastern colonies,
were of the most desirable either for their blood or
breeding. Its preamble runs as follows: " Whereas
great numbers of horses have of late been brought
from Virginia and other northern plantations into
this Colony, and daily more may be expected, which
hath, and will prove disadvantageous aud detrimen
tal to the inhabitants hereof; for the prevention of
which, and for the better encouragement of more
serviceable horses to be bred amongst us, be it
enacted," &c*
This statute, no doubt, acted as efficiently in Vir
ginia and Pennsylvania as iu Carolina " for the en
couragement of more serviceable horses to be bred,"
and greatly contributed to that improvement of their
breeds, by importations from Europe, which a half
century after, enabled the Scotch- Irish emigrants
from these colonies to bring with them into Upper-
Carolina a superior race of that noble animal. Many
fine horses were also brought directly from abroad
into Carolina, that likewise proved an important
source of spirii aud energy to the stock of the revo
lutionary period in every part ofthe province.
While on the subject of the horse, it will not be
? Statutes of South Carolina.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 155
uninteresting to many to say something of the wild
breed of Carolina and Southern America. Pearson,
in his unpublished History of Fairfield, labors through
several pages, and with considerable plausibility, to
prove that the horse was a native of the Continent,
and well known to the Indians long before the first
visits of the Europeans. Some of his statements
are at least novel.
At the period, he affirms, of the settlement of Car
olina by Sayle and his followers, in 1670, immense
droves of wild horses were found subsisting upon
the natural pastures of the country. The colonists
soon learned to take them in snares, and great num
bers of them, it is related by old settlers, were caught
in this way. Old Jessy Gladden, long since dead,
pointing on one occasion to a valley ou his estate near
the Wateree Creek, observed: "In my boyhood I
often saw large herds of wild horsee rushing along
that valley in a wild stampede; and so great were
their numbers that the ground on which our cabin
stood shook under their tread.''
The opinion that this noble quadruped is not a
native of America, seems to have originated chiefly
from a few casual remarks, found in the chronicles
of the first discoverers and explorers. It is a strik
ing incident related, and often repeated, of the cava
liers of Cortez, in his invasion of Mexico, that they
were taken by the simple natives, when first seen
approaching on horseback, to be so many monsters
composed partly of the body of the horse, and part
ly of that of a man. From this it was hastily con-

156 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
eluded that they had never before seen the horse,
while there is clearly an equal probability that their
astonishment did not arise from the sight of the
horses, but the novel complexion, strange costume,
and extraordinary pageantry of the stern cavaliers
who rode upon them ; and so great was the impres
sion made upon their imaginations, that it was easy
for them to fancy a natural connection between the
Spaniards and their steeds.
But neither the pageantry nor the wonderful race
of men thus presented to the view of the Mexicans,
was requisite to produce such an effect upon their
unsophisticated minds. It is well known that the
buffalo was originally found roaming over the whole
extent of the Southern Atlantic and Gulf States ; but
no Indian or Mexican had ever used them for pur
poses of draught or burden.* Suppose, therefore,
that instead of horses, the Spaniards had approached
the City of Mexico mounted upon the backs of do
mesticated buffaloes, would the astonishment of the
natives have been less or their imaginations less ac
tive? An incident is related in the primitive history of
Carolina, which precisely illustrates the point in
view. When the Catawba Indians first heard of the
arrival of Sayle on the coast, they instantly — so the
tradition runs — dispatched a war party to reconnoitre
the movements and appearance of the strangers.
* The Mexicans never used brute animals for draught or burden.
A hundred men of burden bore a present from Montezuma to Cortez.
— American History, vol. 1], p. 35.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 157
Proceeding to the banks of the Ashley, the party
concealed themselves in a glade in full view of the
sea, and there, for the first time, beheld the ships of
the white men, as they rode at anchor. " What
great birds!" they exclaimed to one another, and
very soon they saw the English themselves hurrying
to and fro, with strange notions and yet stranger
dress, both in the vessels and on land. But an ob
ject now appeared that astonished them almost as
much as the ships — a man leading out a horse with
a bell on his neck, which he proceeded to tether to
grass on the glade not far from their hiding place.
On their return to the Nation, this circumstance of
the horse was related as a subject of peculiar inter
est, yet the country, at that period, abounded in
wild horses; they must have seen hundreds of them
on the path, as they passed to and from the coast;
but a horse with a bell on, and tethered to grass, was
a sight sufficient to excite the wonder of any savage
on the Continent.
In this plausible manner, the amiable chronicler
of Fairfield ventures to lay claim to the American
nativity of the horse. The argument, however, is
more ingenious than historically truthful. It can
not be denied that the Spaniards introduced into the
country the original stock, from which the wild
breed of the prairie, both of that period and of the
present, are descended.* After much observation
* For the privilege of using the interesting historical papers left
by Mr. Pearson, of Fairfield, we are indebted to the kindness of
Major W. S. Lyles, of that district.

158 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
among the Southern Indians, Bartram informs us
that the horse was not originally found in their pos
session. Of the wild horses of the Seminoles, which
he met with in East Florida, he thus writes: — " They
are the most beautiful and sprightly species of that
noble creature, perhaps, anywhere to be seen, but
are ofa small breed, and as delicately formed as the
American roe-buck. The horse in the Creek tongue,
is echoclucco, the great deer. The Seminole horses
are said to have descended from the Andalusian
breed, brought here by the Spaniards, when they
first established the colony of East Florida. From
the forehead to their nose is a little arched or aqui
line, and so are the fine Choctaw horses among the
upper Creeks, which are said to have been brought
thither from New Mexico across the Mississippi, by
those nations of Indians who emigrated from the
West, beyond lhe river. These horses are every
where like the Seminole breed, only larger, and per
haps not so lively and capricious. It is a matter of
conjecture, whether or not the different soil and situa
tion of the country may have contributed, in some
measure, in forming the difference in size and other
qualities between them. I have observed the horses,
and other animals in the high, hilly country of Caro
lina, are of a much larger and stronger make than
those which are bred in the flat country next the
sea-coast. A buck-skin ofthe Cherokees, will weigh
twice as much as those bred in the low, flat country
of Carolina."
Lawson, though he gives us quite a curious and

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 159
minute journal of an excursion which he made
early in the beginning of the eighteenth century,
from Charleston, through portions ofthe middle and
upper-country, appears to have seen no wild horses,
unless he includes them in the general term cattle.
He speaks of " passing several large savannahs,
wherein are curious ranges for cattle."* In a de
scription which follows, however, of a grand town-
dance that he witnessed among the Waxhaws, in
the present territory of Lancaster, he speaks of the
women leading off in the joyous circle, having
hawks' bells about their necks, and great bells for
horses fastened to their legs.
On the luxuriant cane pastures of the Tugaloo
and Keowee Rivers, and, doubtless, at quite an early
period, on the richer savannahs of the Long-Cane and
Saluda, as well as beyond the mountains, the Che
rokees kept immense droves of horses that roamed
as wild and free as the deer of the same region.
These horses are said to have been of very superior
quality; the Cherokees were famous jockeys, and
exceedingly shrewd in their judgment of those ani
mals. In the famine, however, that followed in the Na
tion, the ruinous onslaught, made in 1761, upon
their towns by Col. Grant, of rattle-snake memory,
the discomfited Cherokees were reduced to the hard
necessity of shooting and eating most of their horses.
At the conclusion of the war, however, they soon
? Lawson's Carolina, p. 214.

160 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
replenished their herds from the English settlements
with a breed as excellent as that they had lost.*
The white traders who settled among the Chero
kees, encouraged by the many natural advantages
offered by a country abounding in grasses, turned
their attention to the raising of horses ; and some of
them laid claim to stocks of a hundred and fifty
head, running at large upon the common pastures.
They are described as being of good size, well made,
hard-hoofed, handsome, strong, and fit for the saddle
or draft. The old chronicler adds, however, "a per
son runs too great a risk to buy any to take them
out of the country, because every spring season most
of them make for their native range."
The Andalusian or Spanish horse, from which
sprung the wild horse of America, was itself de
rived from the Barbary stock, the nearest approach,
perhaps, in existence, to the pure Arabian blocd, de
scended direct from Mohammed's celebrated mare,
whose spotless genealogy is carefully preserved among
the archives of Mecca. The horse of Andalusia is still
much prized; it is small, but beautifully formed. Its
head is, however, rather large in proportion to the
body, the mane thick, the ears long, the eyes ani
mated, the breast full, the legs finely shaped, the
pastern large, and the hoof high."f This is closely
descriptive of the perfect horse, as drawn by an old
writer, Camerarius ; " he should have the breast
broad, the hips round and the mane long, the coun-
* Adair. -f- Encyclo. Amer.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 161
tenance fierce like a lion, a nose like a sheep, the
legs, head and skin ot a deer, the throat and neck
of a wolf, and the ear and tail of a fox."
The excellence and beauty of many of the wild
horses found at the present day on the plains of the
far West, is a striking proof of the indestructible
vigor and purity of original noble blood.
Lieut. R. S. Williamson, in the field notes of his
explorations on the great Pacific slope, makes the
following observation ofthe Klamath Lake Indians:
"They own many horses, some of which were val
uable animals. No offer would tempt them to sell
any of the latter, although they were eager to dispose
of a few miserable hacks, too worthless to purchase.
The idea which prevails in Oregon, that all Indian
horses are of inferior breed, doubtless arises from
the fact that such only are brought to the settlements
for sale. Near Klamath marsh, we saw a few ani
mals of a pie-bald color, whose graceful forms and
clear, piercing eyes, showed very superior blood. It
may be that their genealogy extends back to the
Barbary steeds, introduced by the Spaniards into
Mexico, and supposed to be the progenitors of the
wild horses of the prairies."*
It is a question not unworthy of consideration, how
it came to pass, that a people who must undoubt
edly have sprung from some slock of eastern origin,
were yet found to be destitute of the horse, and to-
? Explorations and Surveys from the Mississippi to the Pacific,
made and published under the direction of the U. S. Secretary of
War, Vol. vi. p. 70.
14

162 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
tally ignorant, even, of the use of any beasts of bur
den. The horse has been the useful friend, almost the
companion, of men in the Old World, from a period
up to which no history runneth. It is not known,
certainly, where he originated. He is mentioned in
the Pentateuch, and is the subject of description in
one of the most magnificent passages of Job. Why,
then, did he not accompany the ancient and first
pilgrims to the New World ? It may be urged forthe
Indians, in relation to animals of burden, that, find
ing themselves in the midst of a country abounding
in game, and a genial soil, they quickly fell into a
manner of life whose simplicity required no assist
ance from such animals. A curious fact of a philo
logical character, mentioned incidentally by Adair,
would appear to give force to the supposition. Iu
the dialect of one ofthe southern tribes the name of
a horse-rope, hissoobistarakshe, "is derived from
tarakshe, ' to tie,' and hissooba, an elk or horse that
carries a burden ; which suggests that they formerly
saw elks carry burdens, though not, perhaps, in the
northern provinces.''
The primitive Mexicans were, however, quite ad
vanced in civilization, which they must have de
rived either from their progenitors, or from some
partially enlightened colony ; for no savage people
can elevate themselves. They practiced gardening
and agriculture, built great public edifices, lived in
cities of no mean splendor, and, in practical astron
omy, surpassed even the enlightenment of the best
days of Greece; yet they knew nothing ofthe horse

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 163
or the ox, and, though surrounded by multitudes of
buffaloes, they had never learned the simple art of
turning their strength and docility to the useful pur
poses of draught.
To our mind, a stronger presumptive argument
for the western, local origin of the aborigines, may
be derived from this singular historical fact, than all
the chronological and ethnological deductions of the
sciolists. We shall make of it, however, a better
use. Is it not curiously, at least, suggestive of the
manner in which the primitive race came from the
Old World to America? If they found a pathway
by land, crossing from Northern Asia, where the
Aleutian Islands and the peninsula of Alaska yet in
great part lie, or from the southern portion of the
same continent, by Malacca, which, it is equally
probable was, at some time in the history of the
world, connected by an unbroken isthmus, along
the fifteenth degree of south latitude, with the west
ern shore of South America, would they not, un
questionably have brought the horse with them?
He would have been exceedingly useful to them in
so long a journey.
But two suppositions, therefore, remain, in regard
to the means by which they effected their great mi
gratory passage to the West. They were either a
small party — a single pair it may have been — blown
away in a frail bark of primitive times, from the
eastern shore of Asia and cast upon the western
coast of America, as it happened to a company of
unfortunate Japanese, in 1836, near the coast of

164 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
California, or, they voluntarily achieved the passage
of Bhering's Strait, in large numbers, and under
such circumstances as precluded the transportation
of the horse and every other animal of burden.
This is not presented as a demonstrative argument
on the subject ; it is, however, not a whit less
conclusive than the bulk of the speculations on the
same difficult problem by men of philosophy and
genius. Zimmerman believed they effected their migration
by the way of South-eastern Asia; Mr. Jefferson ar
gued that the aborigines knew no relationship to the
races of the Old World, having originated on the
soil ; while another, of less celebrity, urged the
claims of North-eastern Asia.
Dr. Livingston makes the same curious remark of
the tribes visited by him in Africa — that neither the
ox nor the horse were originally known to the abo
rigines of that continent. The horse and ox are,
however, not the only animals of burden for which
the New World is indebted to the European colonists.
It is generally believed that the present effort of
the United States Government to introduce the camel
into the South, and to naturalize it upon the great
prairies, is the first attempt of the kind that was
ever made. There is decided and venerable testi
mony to the contrary. Shortly after the Spaniards
had supplied A merica with horses, that active people>
then the most enterprising in Europe, imported from
Africa a number of camels to be used for purposes
of transportation on the plains of Mexico; aud some

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 165
of them were doubtless used on the very prairies to
which the more recent enterprise has consigned a
second importation of the same noble animal. The
old chronicler to whom we are indebted for this in
formation,* remarks that the strange climate seemed
to suit them well, and they promised to thrive and
answer all the purposes for which they had been in
troduced. The experiment must, however, in some
way have proved a total failure; the camels became
extinct early enough to escape the notice of living
generations, and we know of no other writer who
has recorded the fact that such an attempt was ever
made by any other than our own government.
There was a sandy plain on the bank of the En
noree, quite famous in old times, at which the set
tlers on that stream, and from Duncan's Creek, were
accustomed to assemble for the purpose of breaking
their young horses to the saddle. John Duncan,
the first settler of Laurens, drove with him from
Pennsylvania to that region of country a fine stud
of horses. It was not then necessary, however, to
strip the corn of its blades and ship hay from the
meadows of the North in order to sustain them ;
they kept rolling fat throughout the year on the na
tural grasses that abounded in the woods and val-
leys.f The small or maiden cane was especially valuable
? Cox's Carolina: published for Olive Payne, in Pope's Head Alley,
Corn Hill. 1741 South Carolina College Library.
f Conversation of Joseph Duncan, grandson of the pioneer, and
now in his 86th year.

166 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA.
for this purpose — it was exceedingly rich in nutritive
qualities. " When slehder it never grows higher
than from four to seven feet ; it shoots up in one
summer, but produces no seeds until the following
year. It is an evergreen, and is perhaps the most
nourishing food for cattle upon earth. No other milk
or butter has such flavor and richness as that which
is produced from cows which feed upon cane.
Horses that feed upon it work nearly as well as if
they were fed upon corn, provided care be taken to
give them, once in three or four days, a handful of
salt.* During the Revolution, this with the other grasses
of the soil, was the chief food ofthe cavalry of both
Whig and Tory in the campaigns of the upper-coun
try. In the deed of conveyance by which certain terri
tory was ceded to the Province of Carolina, prepara
tory to the building of old Fort Prince George, the
grass pastures lying between the Keowee and the
Long-Canes, are, among other lands, particularly
mentioned.! * Narrative of Capt. Imlay in his descriptions of Kentucky previous
to 1793.
¦)- Stale Records.

CHAPTER VIII.
The Indian Trader — Old Anthony Park — Daugherty the first trader
among the Cherokees — Peltries and Packhorses — First legislative
Act in relation to the trade— The character of the traders — The
Governor of Carolina interested in the traffic — Alexander Came
ron — The first Board of Commissioners, &c.
The Indian trader ofthe Cherokee Nation was afar
more interesting character than either the hunter or
cow-driver. Devoted as he was to the arts and wrangle
of gain, he nevertheless possessed not only a fearless
intrepidity, but a high order of intelligence ; and in
more than one instance education aiad extraordinary
learning. " He advanced without ceremony into the
heart of Indian settlements;" and for the sake of
pushing his lucrative business, was content to live,
in many instances, a long life-time, deprived of the
comforts and amenities of civilized society.
Speculative men have drawn comparisons be
tween savage and civilized life, highly colored in
favor of the former. Their theories have been acted
upon ever since the discovery of America by indi
viduals, who, turning their backs upon the society in
which they were reared, have voluntarily chosen a
residence among the Indians. Of this description
there were several, who, at an early day, had settled
among the Indians, at a great distance from the

168 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
white people. Anthony Park — of whom we have
already spoken — one of the first settlers of the back-
country, and who lived to a very advanced age in
Newberry District, traveled, in 1758, a few hundred
miles among the Indians to the west of the Alle
ghany Mountains. He found several white men,
chiefly Scotch or Irish, who said. that they had lived
among the Indians as traders twenty years, a few from
forty to fifty, and one sixty years. One of these said
that he had upwards of seventy children and grand
children in the Nation. If these accounts be correct,
the oldest of these traders must have taken up his
abode among the savages four hundred miles to the
west of Charleston before the close of the seven
teenth century, when the white population of Caro
lina scarcely extended twenty miles from the sea
coast.* In 1690, several years before the English settlers
on the Ashley knew that such a people as the Chero
kees existed, one Daugherty, a trader from Virginia,
ventured to take up his residence among them for
the purposes of traffic.f And from this time, nu
merous adventurers in search of trade and fortune,
began to frequent all the towns, and great war-paths
ofthe Nation. The business proved, for a consider
able time, exceedingly profitable; vast quantities of
peltry were purchased from the Indians, and being
conveyed on pack-horses, sometimes by water, to the
markets of Charleston, and other ports, were readily
? Dr. Ramsay, vol. 1. -f- Ramsey's Anls. of Tennessee.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 169
disposed of to merchants, who entered largely into
the traffic.
This system of exchange was exceedingly advan
tageous to the English adventurer; for a few trinkets,
looking-glasses, pieces of colored cloth, hatchets, and
guns of small value, he could procure, on the Savan
nah and Catawba, peltries which, in Charleston,
would command many times their original cost. And
unequal as it appears, it would have conferred real
benefits upon the Indians, as well, if it had been
possible thus to introduce among them many articles
of which, in their savage state, they stood in real need,
without introducing, at the same time, evils that first
corrupted arid afterwards ruined them.
The trade during this period, and until 1716, was
conducted solely under the auspices of individual
enterprise. But now partly for the sake of its enor
mous profits, and partly with the design of having
better control of the Indians, in view of the public
safety, the Provincial Government assumed the di
rection of all its affairs, and conducted them, ever
after, as a great public monopoly. And, like all
public monopolies, it was not long before it began
to exhibit a lack of the energy and life that had
previously made it the most lucrative business in
America. So true it is that commerce even with savages, as
all other institutions growing out of the natural
wants and activity of human society, has its laws,
that may not be violated with impunity. Even-
handed justice would have required, however, that
15

170 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
the evil results which followed should fall exclu
sively upon the offenders; it will be seen that they
fell heaviest upon the poor Indians.
As early as 1707, the exciting abuses of the trade,
the rapid profits of which, had allured into the Indian
nations many irresponsible men of the most despi
cable character, induced the passage of an Act by
the Assembly, by which a Board of Commissioners
was instituted to manage and direct everything re
lating to the traffic with the Indians; and all traders
were compelled, under heavy penalties, to take out a
license as their authority in the nation.
The same Act embodies all the principles, and
most of the regulations, by which the trade was
henceforth to be conducted, and contains, besides, no
little incidental history, in relation to the Indians and
the times:
" Whereas, the greater number of those persons
that trade among the Indians in amity with this
government, do generally lead loose, vicious lives, to
the scandal of the Christian religion, and do likewise
oppress the people among whom they live, by their
unjust and illegal actions, which, if not prevented,
may in time tend to the destruction of this province;
therefore, be it enacted, that after the first day of
October next, every trader that shall live and deal
with any Indians, except the Itawans, Sewees, San-
tees, Stonoes, Kiawas, Kussoes, Edistoes, and St.
Helenas, for the purpose of trading in furs, skins
slaves, or any other commodity, shall first have a
license under the hand and seal ofthe Commission-

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 171
ers hereafter to be named ; for which he shall pay
the public receiver the full sum of eight pounds cur
rent money. The license shall continue in force one
year and no longer, and he shall give a surety of one
hundred pounds currency. One of the conditions to
which he was bound under this surety was, never to
sell or give to the Indians, under any pretence what
ever, any rum or other spirituous liquors. We shall
have ample reason to observe with what conscien
tious strictness this obligation was discharged. No
ammunitioh was to be disposed of to hostile Indians,
under the penalty of being declared guilty of felony,
and deprived of the benefit of clergy.
The Commissioners were to frame general instruc
tions, to be given to every trader applying for a
license, and likewise particular instructions and
orders, according to the diversity of time, place, and
other circumstances. To these instructions the tra
ders were to give implicit obedience, under the
penalty of forfeiting their license. They were for
bidden, under heavy penalties, to seize the person of
any free Indian, and sell him as a slave; they were
not to extort from the Indians any skins or other
goods by means of threats and abuse. Previous to
this, it appears, that the Governors of the Province
had been greatly benefited, and perhaps too much
influenced by the numerous valuable presents made
them hy the various Indians in alliance with the
authorities in Charleston. It is now provided that
the public receiver, pay to the present Governor the
sum of one hundred pounds annually, in lieu of all

172 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
Indian presents whatsoever; and the same provision
shall effect his successors forever.
The Act fixes the equivalent for these Indian pre
sents at one hundred pounds ; it was in reality, how
ever, twice as large. In the manuscript Records of
Columbia, there has been ferreted out an old corres
pondence between Gov. Nath. Johnson and the As
sembly, " in which two hundred pounds were offered
as an equivalent for his Indian perquisites, and re
fused. In 1716 the annual compensation was two
hundred pounds."*
By the same statute was also appointed the first
General Indian Agent, whose duty it was to reside
during the entire year — excepting two months, al
lowed him for business in Charleston — among the
Indians, for the purpose of inquiring into and re
dressing their grievances, and deciding all disputes
between them and the traders. He was also to act
as a magistrate and justice of the peace, with power
to decide cases involving sums of one hundred and
fifty dollars — there being- the right of appeal to the
commissioners. Many will recollect that Alexander Cameron, the
deputy superintendent of the celebrated John Steu-
art, was a leading magistrate, at his residence of
Lochaber, in the present territory of Abbeville, at
the commencement of the Revolution. John Steuart
was one ofthe last general superintendents of South
ern Indians in alliance with Great Britain, as Thomas

?Prof. Wm. J. Rivers.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 173
Naime — appointed under the Act whose provisions
we are considering — was the first agent. Of both
Steuart and Cameron we shall have much to say in
another place.
The bond of the agent, or superintendent, was
fixed at two hundred pounds, and his salary at two
hundred aud fifty — equivalent to about twelve hun
dred and fifty dollars. There is a curious item in
this old statute, assigning a special duty to the
agent, which savors of the ancient belief that
something wonderful and enriching was yet to be
disclosed in the deep solitudes of the north-western
wild : " It is also ordered, that if the agent, or his
lawful successors, can procure any person residing
among the Indians, or who may hereafter go amongst
them, to undertake to make any new discovery, or
settle any new trade, such person shall be rewarded
by the House of Commons for such discovery as
they shall think fit."
It was finally enacted that nine commissioners
should be appointed, to direct, as before related, the
whole business of the trade. The first Board was
composed ofthe following gentlemen : Ralph Izard,
James Cochran, Robert Fenwick, Col. George Logan,
Lewis Pasquereau, Richard Beresford, John Ash,
John A. Motte, and Major John Fenwick.*
Such were the first public enactments, and pro
visions, for the management of the Indian trade.
All else, however, was free and untrammelled ; the
# Statutes of South Carolina, Vol. 11.

174 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
traders went and came, as they pleased ; trafficked,
as yet, in any part of the Nation ; bought their own
goods, and bartered them on terms sufficiently remu
nerative to the Indians for peltries and slaves, which
they disposed of in Charleston with equal freedom.
And the laudable designs of the government, with
no mean pecuniary advantages, would still, in great
part, have been secured, if the commissioners had
continued to adhere rigidly to the spirit of these
provisions. One ofthe principal grievances which they sought
to remove was the employment, in the Indian coun
try, of men of vicious practices, who brought dis
grace upon the English name, and endangered, by
their crimes, the safety of the province; yet, it was
not long before the temptations of the license fee, or
a want of foresight, induced them to proceed in such
a manner as to increase, rather than diminish, the
evil. Bad men were now licensed to do violence to
the poor Indian, and to the principles of justice and
humanity; and so great a number of traders of all
characters found authority to drive their fortunes in
the traffic, that a far worse state of things was soon
experienced than ever before.
The adventurous, wild life of the trader, as well
as the prospect of enormous profits, held out pecu
liar attractions to men who, anxious to acquire
wealth, cared nothing for the means by which they
attained their end. The Cherokee towns, as well as
those of the Creeks and Chickasaws, lay far beyond
the border; and though frequently visited by their

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 175
watchful agent, were yet well fitted for the residence
and operations of the lawless.
A large portion of the commissioners' time, at
each meeting of the Board, was consumed in hear
ing and considering abuses in the Nation, and on the
trading paths. Their records abound with the mi
nute particulars of these perplexing irregularities.
At one of their meetings, in 1710, Richard Edg-
h ill, P  G  , and Captain Musgrove, were
cited to answer for the alleged crime of having re
duced to slavery several free Indians. G  had
seized an Indian fellow named Ventusa, and his
wife; Musgrove, Masoony ; and Edghill, Diego.
They were required by the Board to prove these
Indians lawful subjects of slavery. Musgrove, it
appears, was exceedingly oppressive and troublesome
to the Indians. They brought another complaint
against him, to the effect, that in the spring of the
same year, he had gone to one of their towns and
ordered all the people to turn out and hoe his corn,
under penalty ofa severe flogging for every one that
refused. Capt. Musgrove is also mentioned as commandant
of a caravan of twenty-three pack-horses, which
was sent from Carolina to the factory among the
Creeks, in the winter of 18 L7; and he is, without
doubt, the same successful, though unscrupulous
trader whose history has been given, in good part,
by the historians of Georgia, under the name of
John Musgrove.
Oglethorpe, on his first ascent of the Savannah

176 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
River, found him established, with his famous half-
breed wife, Mary, on the same bluff where now
stands the chief city of Georgia. "This Indian,
Mary, was born in the year 1700, at the town of
Coweta, upon the Chattahooche, in Alabama. Her
Indian name was Consaponaheso, and, by maternal
descent, she was one ofthe Queens ofthe Muscogee
Nation, and the Iudians conceded to her the title of
Princess. When ten years of age, her father took
her to Ponpon, in South Carolina, where she was
baptized, educated, and instructed in the principles
of Christianity. Afterwards, she fled back to her
forest home, laid aside the civilization of the English,
and assumed the ease and freedom of the happy
Muscogee. In 1716, Col. John Musgrove was dis
patched to the Chattahooche, by the government of
Carolina, to form a treaty of alliance with the Creeks,
with whom that colony had been at war. It was
there stipulated that the Creeks were to remain the
free occupants of all the lands east, as far as the
Savannah River. The son of the British negotiator,
John Musgrove, had accompanied his father to Co
weta, and falling in love with the Princess Mary,
made her his wife. After remaining in the Nation
several years, and after the birth of their only child,
they removed to South Carolina. There residing
several years, in much happiness, they afterwards
established themselves upon Yamacraw Bluff, at the
head of an extensive trading house, where Ogle
thorpe found them. By his alliance with this re
markable woman, who was well versed in the Indian

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 177
and English languages, Musgrove obtained consid
erable influence over the natives, and became ex
ceedingly wealthy. Mary was afterwards the warm
friend of Oglethorpe, and several times saved the
early colonists of Georgia from savage butchery.*
On the death of Musgrove, she married Captain
Jacob Mathews; and, becoming the second time a
widow, was finally married to Thomas Bosomworth,
a clergyman of the Church of England, and of no
torious memory. We will not inflict upon our
readers the voluminous details of her subsequent
history; it fills, with that of her ambitious husband,
a large and inglorious part of the early annals of
Georgia and Carolina. After her death, the discon
solate Bosomworth married her chambermaid. f
They lie buried on St. Catharine's Island.
One Joss Crosley, a trader, having become jealous
of his Indian mistress, laid hold of a suspected
Indian and abused him in a most barbarous man
ner; and when Cocket, another trader, and who
acted as interpreter on this occasion before the Board,
interfered to save the fellow's life, Crosley turned
upon him, and beat him till the blood issued from
his mouth.
P  G  took an Indian girl, against her
will, to be his mistress, and when she objected to his
# Pickett's History of Alabama.
f Whoever is fond of investigating the truth of history under diffi
culties, can be amply gratified in the numerous closely-written man
uscript pages devoted to the Bosomworths in the Journals ofthe Se
cretary of State's Office, Columbia.

178 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
violence, he cruelly beat her. He also conceived a
jealousy, even, of the girl's own brother, because
he had accepted from her a trifling present of a few
beads, and beat him as he had done the sister.
These things, it is recorded, greatly grieved the In
dians. On another occasion, he made a girl drunk
with rum, and locking her in his room, threatened
to take the life of her mother if she did not go off,
and leave her daughter with him.
It was often the case, when the licenses of many
of the traders expired — which they did at the end
of one year — that they continued to traffic, neverthe
less, without renewing them according to law. In
1710, the following traders had their bonds put in
suit for this offence: Capt. John Jones, Matthew
Smallwood, Anthony Probat, James Lucas, Abram
Pierce, Joseph Crosley, Roger Hoskins, Alex. Clark,
William Smith, Theophilus Hastings, William Scar
lett, and John Jones. A few of these delinquents
were sufficiently refractory to tear to pieces, in
the presence of the agent, the warrants that had
been sent up for their arrest. James Lucas re
ported to the Board that Capt. Musgrove had un
justly detained two of his Indian slaves; and one
Capt. Fitch brought the complaint that the Appa-
lechian Indians had killed his ram, for which he
had seized two of their guns. A Captain Peterson
was also notorious for his abuses among the Indians.
From a letter addressed by the Board to their agent
in the Pocotalligo towns, we made the following
extract: " We will do all we can to assist you in

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 179
abating these abuses, particularly the settling of the
white men upon the Indian lands. We are but a
bare Board, and your complaints being of so high
and grievous a nature, as we with you believe, tend
to the utter ruin and desolation of the government,
if not timely prevented ; we thought fit to send yon
this in answer, and that we would have you proceed
with vigor in the defence of the province."
This same agent, one Wright, came down soon af
ter from the Yamassee towns and reported to the
Board the bonds of several traders who desired
licenses ; among them were, Even Lewis, James
Patterson, William Ford, Thomas Simonds, Alex.
Mackey,Nicholas Deas, Thomas Seabrook, and Capt.
John Cochran. He presented on the same occasion
several ofthe Yamassee chiefs, who had comedown
to make some inquiries in relation to certain abuses
of the traders. They were introduced with two in
terpreters, Bray and Cockct, and the conference be
gan by the Indians representing to the Board, that
an agent had been sent up to their towns to redress
their grievances, and to acquaint them that their
rum debts should be forgiven them. They added,
that they had come down, to learn, themselves, from
the Commissioners, if this was true. The president
assured them that such was the fact, and more : not
only were their rum debts not to be exacted of them,
but they should not be required to pay the debts con
tracted with the traders by the relations of any of
them, for whom they had not engaged to stand.
The traders were in the habit of selling goods

180 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
without scruple to the most worthless ofthe Indians,
with the expectation of persuading or of compelling,
if necessary, their more active and thrifty relatives
to discharge the debt. The president of the Board
finally remarked to the chiefs, that it was impossible
to prevent unprincipled traders from carrying up
rum to their country. They further complained of
several white men, who were encroaching upon their
hunting grounds ; these were Thomas Jones, John
Whitehead, Joseph Bryan, Robert Steel, John Pal
mer, and Barnaby Bull. The Board promised that
they should be removed.
The following year Capt. John Cochran was charg
ed with having sold a free Iudian as a slave ; and
one Cornelius McCarty, with the seizure of the wife
and child of a warrior, who was absent on a war
expedition against the enemy. The Board decided
that the woman and child should be sent for and
brought back from New York, where McCarty had
sold them as slaves.
This forcible reduction of free Indians to slavery,
became, at this time, so great an evil, that the
Board ordered, as something of a preventive of the
nuisance, that no trader should purchase an Iudian
as a slave, until he had been, at least, three days in
the town of the warrior who captured him. None
were subject to slavery but those taken fairly in war;
and so profitable was the traffic, even under this gen
eral restriction, that the traders in their scrambles for
the newly captured prisoners, in the possession of
friendly bands of Indians returning from war, that

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 181
they hastened to meet them even in the woods, and
at distant points on the war-paths — every one strug
gling to acquire for himself the largest profits from
the last spoils of the war.
The oppressive abuses, necessarily growing out of
such irregularities as these, called loudly for the in
terference of the public authorities.
The first introduction of the Cherokee Indians to
the people of Carolina, took place in Charleston in
1793, on an occasion similar to that which we have
just seen brought down the Yamassees, to complain
to the Governor and Council, that the Savannahs and
Congarees had attacked their extreme eastern settle
ments — now the territory of Chester aud Fairfield —
captured their people and sold them as slaves to cer
tain merchants of Charleston.*
In 1711, Stephen Beadon was summoned before
the Board, and asked what he knew of one John
Frazer's beating the King of Tomatly ? He answer
ed, the common report was, that Frazer was apt to
beat and abuse the Indians; he had forcibly made a
slave of one of the peopleof Cohassee, and had sold
an Indian boy into slavery, which he had been order
ed to hold, until it could be ascertained whether or
not he was a slave.
It was in the summer of the same year, that cir
cumstances arising from some of these abuses, oc
casioned the first notice in the State records of the
Waxhaw Indians, and the warlike Catawbas. The
? Pickett's History of Alahama.

182 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
superintendent, John Wright, was ordered by the
Board to proceed with all expedition to Savannah
Town — (of this more in another place) — and thence
send messengers to the Waxhaws, Esaws, and Cata-
bas, inviting their head men to meet him and the
chiefs of Savannah Town at the house of one Benja
min Clea, where he was to inquire strictly into all
the complaints recently made to the government by
those nations.
Notwithstanding this display of confidence on the
part of the Board towards this agent, he was not
long after charged with having forcibly taken pos
session of Ahela, a relative ofthe King of Tugaloo,
whom he sold into slavery, though she was declared
to be a free woman of the Cherokees. He was like
wise instrumental, it was asserted, in driving the Ala
bama Indians away from the Carolina trade to that
of Mobile, by seizing several slaves belonging to
a man of that nation, and giving them up to one
Gower, to whom the Indian owed nothing.
The first mention made of the Cherokees in the
old State records, occurs in 1713, in the following
entry : Two Cherokee women it was asserted before
the Board, were held in slavery by one Peter St.
Julian, a farmer, who lived in the country on the
road leading from Charleston to the Congarees. He
was ordered to appear before the Board and answer
the charge.
At this period, therefore, it is obvious, that many
of the traders engaged in the commerce with the In
dians, were much more intent on dealing iu slaves

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 183
or Indian captives, than on legitimate barter of goods
and peltries. And the greater portion of the testi
mony afforded by the ancient records of the trade,
in relation to its abuses and irregularities, are found
principally connected with the wrongs and oppres
sions of the authorized commerce in Indian slaves.
It came to be a custom with a few of the most hard
ened to keep a body of slaves around them in the
Nation, whom they sent out to war with the other
Indians, in order to add yet more largely and expe
ditiously to their profits arising from the sale of cap
tive enemies.
In 1711, the Board, fully aware of this inhuman
practice of some of its licensed traders, issued the
following order to them all : " You shall permit none
of your slaves to go to war on any account what
ever." Yet not long after this, the complaint, in one
instance, at least, was brought down, that a trader
had sent out a body of his slaves to war against the
enemy. We shall present, from the same source,* but one
more example on this head ; and it is one which
for cool, diabolical atrocity, was surely never sur
passed, even in the gloomy traditions of Guinea and
Dahomey. There lived at this time near the pre
sent Silver Bluff, in Barnwell District, a small de
tached tribe of Indians, known as the Euchees.f
?Records of Indian Affairs, in the Secretary of State's office, Co
lumbia. | Their lands extended from Brier Creek south, to the site of a
town afterwards built by the Georgians and named Ebenezer.

184 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
The name of their town was Chestowee. Two men
connected with the Indian trade, Alex. Long and
Eleazer Wiggon, had frequent dealings with these
people as well as with the more numerous Chero
kees, and their chief object, it appears, were the
gains arising from the sale of captive Indians. Be
that as it may, it happened, on a certain occasion,
that Long, and an Indian from Chestowee, had some
difficulty in their trafficking, and came to blows and
a struggle, in which the Euchee tore away from
Long's head a portion of his hair. Long, not less
vindictive than the savages around him, from that
moment vowed vengeance against the whole Euchee
race. But his desire to be avenged, though deep and
lasting, was not without a method and calculation
that looked to the main profits of his trade.
He resolved upon the destruction of Chestowee,
and the capture, from its ruins, of as many slaves
as he could get for his portion, among the several
accomplices necessary for the accomplishment of
such a scheme. His plan was soon arranged, and
no trader in the Nation, it appeared, was better ac
quainted with the men best fitted to assist him in
the work. Eleazer Wiggon, a kindred spirit, was
let into the secret, and was to share in the expenses
and profits ofthe venture. Crossing the mountains,
he paid a seeming business visit to some of his ac
quaintances among the Over-Hill Cherokees, and
was soon in close conference with three or four of
their head men— with the leading warrior of Eu-
chasee, and a Capt. Flint, and Caesar, and some three

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 185
others. Everything was settled to his satisfaction;
it was agreed that these Indians should pass steal
thily beyond the mountains, and make a clandestine
attack upon the unsuspecting and defenceless Eu-
chees. The pretext was, that the Euchees, some time
before, had murdered some of their people. Long,
in order to make sure of his game, exhibited to his
accomplices a forged order from the Governor, order
ing the destruction of the Euchee* town, for the
alleged offence against the Cherokees. He was to
supply the powder and ball necessary for the enter
prise, and the spoil was to be equally divided among
them. It was afterwards confessed, that the reason
they did not invite the lower Cherokees to join them
was, that there would have been too many to claim
shares in the anticipated spoil. Caesar and his com
panions set out, aud having crossed into the lower
settlements, passed silently through, and came at
night fall, like hungry panthers, in striking distance
of Chestowee. They then halted, and having coolly
painted aud decorated themselves for the diabolical
work, rushed, with a whoop upon the town, and
soon wrapped it in flames. The frightened Euchees,
completely surprised, made, it appears, little resist
ance, but suspecting the object of their enemies,
hastened to collect their wives and children in the
war-house of the town, and preferring to see them
dead rather than the slaves of their persecutors,
cut the throats of them all with their own hands.
Long afterwards testified before the Board, that he
and Wiggon had received, as their portion of the
16

186 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
spoil, but one woman and five children, which they
had claimed in lieu of a debt due them by the un
fortunate Euchees. It is only necessary to add, that
others swore, on the same occasion, that both Long
and Wiggon, had been heard to declare that if they
could bring about the destruction of Chestowee,
there would be a" fine parcel of slaves in the market."
After a patient hearing of the case — for it was
brought, at once, before the Board — it was resolved
that Long and Wiggon were guilty, their licenses
were taken from them, their bonds put in suit, and a
request made the Governor that he would proceed
with the utmost rigor against them in the Court of
Sessions. These practices were a disgrace to the people and
the times, and impartial truth requires this account
of them at our hands. It cannot be shown, how
ever, and no recreant Southerner or God-forsaken
agitator of another section needs assume it as true,
that South Carolina for one moment winked at these
abuses, in order to enhance the profits of a lucrative
traffic. Full and special instructions, on this head, were
repeatedly, and from the first public recognition of
the trade, enjoined upon all connected with it. " You
are," said the Board to its agents, "to acquaint all
persons trading among the Indians with the duty
incumbent upon them by this Act, which you are
hereby ordered to publish and read to them, and to
give them such other instructions as you shall think
good for the safety of the province and the trade.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 187
"You are to use your utmost endeavors to regulate
the lives of the traders, so that they give no offence
to the Indians, and bring no scandal against the
Christian religion; keep them, at least, within the
bounds of morality, and to this end rebuke all actions
that tend to the contrary. If any one so rebuked,
persist in his course, let us know him."
In the statute of 1707, already mentioned, a spe
cial clause was provided for this abuse, "That if any
person trading among the Indians, shall, by his own
confession or verdict of a jury in any Court of Ses
sion or gaol delivery, be convicted of selling any free
Indian for a slave, at any time after the ratification
of this Act, shall, for every such offence, forfeit the
sum of sixty pounds current money of this province ;
and for want of such payment shall receive such
corporal punishment as the Judges of the General
Sessions shall think fit, not extending to life or limb,
and upon conviction of such offender the Indian
slave so sold is hereby declared free.''
"It shall be your constant aim to promote peace
and good-will among all nations of Indians with
whom we trade, and to engage as many others as
possible, to embrace our friendship and amity."
This last clause, so far even from a legitimate pro
vision for the trade in captives, was the severest blow
that could have been given its prosperity; for it will
be recollected, that none but the prisoners of tribes
at war with Carolina, and her Indian allies, were
subject to slavery. In the proportion therefore, that
she extend her amity and trade to the surrounding

188 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
nations, in the same measure was the field lessened
for the operations of the Indian slave trade.
But one ofthe expressed designs ofthe Assembly,
in assuming some authority in the direction of the
lucrative commerce with the Indians, was to secure
the safety of the province by the abatement of its
abuses. The question, however, may be asked, should a
Christian people have tolerated such a practice under
any form, with or without its abuse?
The circumstances by which the colony was then
surrounded, clearly vindicate its humanity as well as
its discretion, in the measures enacted for the enslave
ment of even the poor Indians. As late as 1703, the
entire population of Carolina, did not exceed four
thousand souls; out of these, there could scarcely
have been mustered eight hundred fighting men; yet
they were surrounded ou every side, except that of
the sea, by countless hordes of warlike savages,
whose prowess in arms they had already too many
reasons to know was formidable; while still more
bitter and impressive had been their experience of
the remorseless cruelty with which they disposed of
their unfortunate captives — a calm, untortured death
at the stake even, being far too tame and unexciting
to gratify the devilish spirit of revenge, which it was
both their nature and glory to indulge.
It was impossible that the colonists could have
dealt with such enemies by the ordinary rules of
humanity and policy. When captured, as they often
were, in the conflicts which took .place on the border,

A.NCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 198
or far beyond it, between hostile tribes and friendly
nations in alliance with the English, it was absolutely
necessary to destroy them there — to shoot them in
cold blood in the streets of Charleston, imprison
them for life, or ship them to the West Indies as
slaves. A healthful sensibility will hasten to choose the
last alternative as the one most honorable, as well as
prudential, for an intelligent Christian people; and
this was just the course adopted by our fore
fathers. The famous traffic in African slaves had
already begun under the auspicies of the mother
land, and her slave ships were opportunely at hand,
provided with every necessary appliance for securing
similar cargoes on the coasts of Carolina, whence
they conveyed them to the West Indies or to the
more northern colonies.
This traffic began under the wise administration
of Gov. West, and was continued just so long as the
safety of the colony required that its numerous In
dian captives should be so disposed of, or massacred
in the province.
It would appear, however, from the following let
ter, written by a Catawba trader, one Matthew Toole,
to the Board, that this plea for its continuance was
protracted through many years. " The Catawbas held
a council yesterday in the king's house, and have
resolved to go with the English against the French.
They want me and my people to go with them, and
we are willing to do so, even without pay, on one
condition — that we be allowed to keep, as our own

190 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
property, whatever plunder in the way of Indian
slaves we may be able to capture." This transpired
as late as 1754, in the midst of Braddock's war, and
there are frequent intimations in the records, as we
approach this period, that Indian captives were used
as slaves, and not merely styled such from long pre
vious, but now obsolete usage. Their regular de
livery in Charleston, however, and exportation from
the province, had, doubtless, ceased long before this
period. Few of them were suffered to remain in
Charleston after being once disposed of in the mar
ket, and the owners of those few, it appears, were to
treat them as wards or apprentices. Col. Barnwell,
it is recorded, took an Indian boy, and stipulated
with the authorities to have him taught letters and
a useful trade.
He purchased him for the term of nineteen
years, paying down ten pounds, and entering into
bonds in the penal sum of five hundred pounds to
the Commissioners and their successors, for setting
free the said boy at the expiration of that time, and
that he shall not export him; and shall, further,
educate him in a Christian-like manner, and cause
him to be taught some useful trade.*
Those who are at all acquainted with the Indian
character, know that the mere fact of their being
almost constantly at war among themselves, formed
no just ground for the conclusion that either the

* Journal of Indian Affairs.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 191
English, or any other civilized people in contact
with them, instigated their hostilities. War was
their passion — the necessary excitement to their
otherwise indolent natures. Adair says, ofthe Che
rokees, that it was impossible for them to live with
out war.
The traffic in Indian slaves began about four years
after the first settlement of Charleston. The English
colonists had already made considerable openings in
the forest around their town, and were planting and
embellishing farms, and rearing on them in great
abundance the domestic animals and fowls, so neces
sary to the comfort, as well as beauty of an English
man's home, when the Stono Indians, whose hunt
ing grounds joined the plantations on the west, not
caring, or not being able, in their frequent hunting
rambles on the border, to discriminate very readily
between the tame geese, turkeys and stock of the
planters, and the wild birds and animals belonging
to the wilderness, freely made game of them to the
great injury ofthe English.
The latter vigorously resented these encroach
ments, and killed several of the savages while in
the act of depredating upon their property. An
Indian war was the consequence, iu which many of
the whites suffered death in return, with the usual
barbarities of the red man's vengeance. A strong
military force was called for. Those of tho colo
nists who were not immediately interested in de
fending the farms, or in retaliating upon the Indians
for the loss of relatives, manifested great reluctance

M92 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
to obey the summons. Indeed the treasury was low,
and men are not apt to turn out in the public de
fence without pay.
Gov. West, in this emergency, resorted to the plan
of fixing a price upon every savage that should be
taken and brought alive into Charleston.
Numerous adventurers now volunteered their
services, and the war, after a protracted struggle, was
brought to a close by the overthrow of the refractory
Stonoes, and the lucrative transportation of many of
them to the West Indies. The plan worked well.
It was applied to succeeding Indian wars — even to
those waged between hostile tribes and the red allies
of the English. Hundreds of dangerous savages
were thus disposed of in the most humane manner
possible under the circumstances, and with a pecu
niary reward to the struggling farmers, of which
they stood in much need ; for their lands, tilled as
yet by no efficient laborers, had returned them little
else than their bread. A new impulse was imparted
to every branch of business, and prepared the way,
in a great measure, for the speedy reciprocal intro
duction into the colony of savages of a darker hue
from Africa, whose magic touch converted the be
fore almost valueless plantations into mines of wealth.
Aud so long as this traffic was regularly and hon^
estly conducted, neither humanity nor good policy
had, perhaps, anything to regret. It was not purer,
however, than other wordly interests, whose profits
are sufficient to excite the rapacity of bad men, and
abuses followed apace. We have already shown

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 193
with what care and assiduity the authorities of Caro
lina labored to remove these, and to load her with
the odium of their existence, is as illogical as it is
historically unjust. As well may the whole body
of bank officials in the country be charged with
robbery, since several of their number proved dis
gracefully untrustworthy in the last financial panic.
As well may the whole population of the free-
soil States of the Union, be charged with the hor
rors of the middle passage, because so many of
their own citizens and seamen are the chief agents
in promoting the present contraband slave trade; or
the entire people of New England with evils, which
surpass, according to a truthful eye-witness, all the
calamities ofthe slave traffic itself, inflicted upon the
natives of Western Africa, by the annual importation
of her rum.*
As in the case of the African slave trade, evidently
ordered, despite the whining fanaticism of both North
and South, in the righteous providence of God, for a
blessing upon the negro race, infinitely nobler in its
magnitude and preciousness than any ever granted
from the same source to the perishing red man; the

* This is asserted by the Rev. Leighton Wilson, missionary to
Africa, in his recent interesting work on the tribes of Western Africa.
It is very probable that the saintly people of New England are not
aware of the fact, that while Southern slave-holders are oppressing
the poor negroes with the stupendous wrong of making them work
in their cotton and rice fields, they are murdering them by wholesale,
at long shot, with mean rum, in Africa ; for, Mr. Wilson being a South
erner, his book%as doubtless never reached the luminous regions
around Massachusetts Bay.
17

194 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
duty ofthe colonists was to guide, with a firm hand,
the passing course of events which they were ap
pointed to direct, mitigating, as far as possible, the
necessary abuses as they arose, and committing the
gracious results to the wisdom of Him who first de
signed them.
Seventeen years after the Stono war, so consider
able and lucrative had the peltry trade become, that
it was decreed by the Assembly, that an impost duty
laid upon its commodities, should supply a revenue
to be used in all such emergencies as had inaugur
ated the traffic in Indian captives. Their preamble
strongly sets forth the straitened and exposed condi
tion of the colony. " In the former several invasions
of this province, the want of a public treasure hath
occasioned such delays in the preparations, and in
providing such necessary provisions, men, arms, boats
and ammunition, as might easily — by God's bless
ing — have repelled and utterly defeated the enemy,
which, for want thereof, have inflicted and done
great depredations ou the persons of theire Majesties'
subjects and estates in this colony. And since the
several persons who employ themselves in trading
with the Indians, by reason ofthe distance, the most
convenient place for that trading lyes from the set
tled part of this colony, cannot possibly, upon like
occasions, if any such happens, (which God forbid,)
personally give their assistance in defence of this
colony ; it is, therefore, enacted, that a duty be laid
on all skins and furs exported from any part of this
province; for every deer skin not stamped or tanned,

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 195
three pence; for every pound avoirdupois of beaver,
seven pence half-penny; for every otter skin, three
pence; for every fox or calf skin, one penny; for
every boare* skin, six pence ; and for every raccoone
skin, one half-penny, and soe proportionably for a
greater or less quantity to be disposed of, as is here
after provided." f
In 1695, it was again enacted, for the same pur
pose, that every skin shipped from Charleston shoujd
pay a duty of one penny each. A little later, a spe
cific sum was raised from this impost to discharge
the debt incurred by the first expedition against St.
Augustine. Indeed, during these early calamitous
years ofthe colony's history, and until the introduc
tion of an efficient complement of laborers by the
welcome providence of the African slave trade, her
only source of regular revenue was the active peltry
traffic with the Indians. As late even as 1686, a
fund of three hundred poundswas raised, by assess
ment on all the people, to defray the expenses of the
public defence against the hostile incursions of the
Spaniard: for he had "several tymes made incur
sion into his Majestie's colony, robbing and burn
ing several ofthe inhabitants' houses, pillaging their
stores, and murtheriug and carrying away divers of
his Majestie's subjects."
It cannot be denied, that the government of South
Carolina instituted and sustained for years the traffic

#This must be a misprint for bear.
t Statutes of South Carolina, Vol. i

196 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
in Indian captives and slaves — just as she chooses
now to maintain the traffic in negroes — yet has nei
ther the increased enlightenment, nor the enlarged
humanity of her people, tended in the least to con
vince them that in so doing they have been guilty
of any great moral wrong. Indeed, thanks to the
abuse and opposition of their enemies, the fierce dis
cussions and patient investigations into which they
have been driven in defence of their rights and
safety involved in this momentous question, have
led them almost insensibly, but surely, to an elevated
stand-point, from which they decry, at one view, the
tottering, crazy systems of social reform that fanatics
would foist upon them, and the truthfulness, the
unspeakable superiority of their own well-tried insti
tutions. The full time has come when our people are to
light their torches of wisdom from purer fires than
those that burn on the altars of Northern fanaticism.
The slave trade is no more incompatible with the
genius of Christianity, than are the evils incident to
poverty and disease in the ordinary providence of
God. While the dispositions of mankind remain as
they are, certainly no greater calamity could befall
the race than that men should become universally
prosperous and healthful. In a like sense, has the
slave trade been indirectly productive of incalculable
moral good; to millions of benighted Africans, and
to millions more of native bondmen, it has been as a
rock in the heated desert, as a house of refuge from
the storm and tempest.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 197
The inexorable logic brought to bear upon this
question by numerous able writers of the South is
telling silently, but widely, upon the popular mind.
The chief obstacle in the way of a complete appre
hension of this view of the question appears to be
the laudable scruples of many who are yet unable to
reconcile the practical details of the traffic in slaves
with the right precepts of morality and religion.
Do they not, who thus hesitate, overlook the im
portant fact, that in the arrangements of divine Pro
vidence, however distasteful to men, or incongruous
with, their notions of morality, there are many things
that must be left without a word to the decrees of
the all-wise Governor of the world. Gamaliel was a
good philosopher as well as learned teacher, and his
famous argument in relation to a far nobler institu
tion than any that has since attracted the attention
of mankind, is not out of place here. If this thing
be of God, it will prosper, and the world be vastly
the better for it. If it is not, it will speedily come to
naught. It is unnecessary to relate, how that for more than
four hundred years, the African slave trade has con
tinued to subsist with various fortunes, but steadfast
energy; how the efforts that have been put forth by
the great powers of the earth to suppress it, have re
sulted chiefly in augmenting in a tenfold degree the
enormities of its abuses, and how at this moment,
the unscrupulous monarchies of Europe, bitterly
repentant of their egregious blunder of emancipa
tion, but not of their hatred to the cotton-producing

198 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
States of America, have already set about restoring
it to more than its pristine vigor, under the fraudu
lent device of the "apprentice system."
The practical relations of the traffic to the princi
ples and sentiments of a Christian civilization, may
be familiarly illustrated. The manufacture of brandy,
notwithstanding its lamentable abuse by many, yet
supplies the world with one ofthe necessaries of its do
mestic and mechanical uses. That was a day of fanat
icism and crude notions, which declared the manufac
ture, and all use of alcoholic liquors unnecessary, and
a foul blot upon the piety ofthe people. Who now,
will, so far, risk his reputation, as to persist openly in
such an opinion ? Yet it is not inconsistent to say,
that the Christian may not become a professed man
ufacturer or vender of strong drink, any more than
he should become a fanatical shrieker against all
who do make such employments their daily business.
The abuse of them, is the only legitimate object of
his reprobation and attack.
A Christian citizen of South Carolina may not en
gage in the Southern, domestic trade in negroes ;
but will he take the ground that nobody should do
it, because inconsistent with his character and pro
fession ? If he does, then, as a consistent, as well as
conscientious man, it becomes him to speak out bold
ly, and assert before the world the injustice and
atrocity of all Southern slavery. Let the question
be reviewed as it may, there is no neutral ground to
stand upon in a fair discussion of it It is either
right in the sight of God, and frought with bless-

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 199
ings.for both master and slave, or it is not, and de
serves the opprobrium and condemnation of every
good man. If the first view be the true one, then in
no sense, can negro trading be condemned any more,
at least, than the manufacture and legitimate veud-
' ing of alcoholic liquors can be.
Again, war is sometimes a necessary evil, and will
continue to be so, as long as sin and pride find a
resting-place in the human heart, despite all the un
speakably sublime and foolish morality of the Elihu
Burrett school. The manufacture and sale of bowie-
knives and Colt's revolvers, becomes, therefore, one
of the necessities of national progress and defence,
and even, under some circumstances, of individual
safety;* and while the intelligent Christian may not
resort, for a livelihood, to the manufacture and dis
semination of those deadly weapons, he cannot cry
down those who do, nor refuse, when duty and pa
triotism prompt the act, to buy and use them in his
own and country's defence with all the strength with
which God has endowed him. The opposite senti
ment is the prevailing morality of that section, where,
for a consideration, all the bowie-knives and revolv
ers used in the country are manufactured.
These illustrations afford, as we conceive, a strong
popular argument in favor of slavery as it exists in
the South ; for there are specific benefits inherent in
the institution, and the foreign slave trade, properly
* The habit, however, of carrying deadly weapons should stigma
tize every one guilty of it, as a coward and unfit for the society ofthe
decent and virtuous,

200 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
conducted, which surpass all the ordinary claims in
favor of the uses of alcoholic liquors, and weapons
of defence. The following remarks on this import
ant subject from the able and judicious pen of Bishop
Elliott, formerly ofthe South Carolina College, should
be read and studied deeply by the people of the up
per-country ; for the time is already upon them, when
manfully, they must contend, as they have never yet
contended, for the rights and institutions with which
a munificent God has entrusted them ; and a soldier
fights all the better, for having a clear view, and an
immovable appreciation of, the faith that is within
him :
" It is well for Christians and philanthropists to
consider whether, by their interference with this in
stitution, they may not be checking and imped
ing a work which is manifestly providential. For
nearly a hundred years the English and American
churches have been striving to civilize and Christian
ize Western Africa, and with what result? Around
Sierra Leone, and in the neighborhood of Cape Pal-
mas, a few natives have been made Christians, and
some nations have been partially civilized ; but what
a small number in comparison with the thousands,
nay, 1 may say millions, who have learned the way
to heaven, and, who have been made to know their
Saviour, through the means of African slavery! At
this very moment there are from three to four mil
lions of Africans educating for earth and for heaven
in the so vilified Southern States — educating a thou
sand ways of which the world knows nothing — edu-

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 201
eating in our nurseries, in our chambers, in our par
lors, in our workshops,iu our fields as well as in our
churches ; learning the very best lessons for a semi-
barbarous people — lessons of self-control, of obedi
ence, of perseverance, of adaption of means to ends ;
learning, above all, where their weakness lies, and
how they may acquire strength for the battle of
life. " These considerations satisfy me with their condi
tion, and assure me that it is the best relation they
can, for the present, be made to occupy. As a race,
they are steadily improving. So far from the insti
tution degrading the negro, and keeping him in de
gradation, it has elevated him in the scale of being
much above his nature and- race, and it is continu
ing to do so. Place an imported African — of whom
a few still remain — side by side with one of the third
or fourth generation, and the difference is so marked
that they look almost like distinct races — not only
in mind and knowledge, but in physical structure.
" That monkey face, the result of an excessively
obtuse facial angle, has become, without any admix
ture of blood, almost as human as that we are ac
customed to see in the white race; and it has a facial
angle, as distinctly a right angle as that which be
longs to the Caucasian family. The thick lips have
become thin ; the dull eye is beaming with cunuing,
if not with intelligence ; the understanding is acute
and ingenious. Their knowledge, when they have
been instructed by missionaries or by owners, is re-

202 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
spectable. A man has been made out of a barba
rian — an intelligent and useful laborer out of an
ignorant savage — a Christian and a child of God
out of a heathen: and this is called degrading the
African race, by holding them in slavery! Such
language is only ofa piece with miserably false sen-
timeutalism which is pervading the' world : such
sentimentalism as thinks it cruel that a child should
be disciplined or a criminal punished — which looks
so tenderly upon the means as quite to overlook the
great end those means may be working out. God's
ways are not discordant with this way of slavery.
He who sees everything in its true aspect — wilh
whom a thousand years is as one day — in whose
sight the light affliction of this life, which is but
for a moment, is far outweighed by the glory which
is to follow, cares very little for the present means
through which his will is working. What is it that
a man should be a slave, if through that means he
may become a Christian ? What is it that one, or
even ten generations should be slaves, if by that ar
rangement a race be training for future glory and
self-dependence? What are the sufferings — putting
them at the worst — which the inhumanity and self-
interest, and the restraints of law, can inflict for a
few generations, when compared with the blessings
which may thus be wrought ont for countless na
tions inhabiting a continent? What is to be the
course and what the end of this relation, God only
knows. My feeling just now is, that I would de-

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 203
fend it .against all interference, just as I should
defend my children from anyone who would tempt
them to an improper independence ; just as I should
defend any relation of life which man was attempt
ing to break or to violate, ere the purpose of God in
it had been worked out."

CHAPTER IX.
The sites of ancient Cherokee towns abounding in Upper-Carolina —
The original limits of the Nation defined — The divisions of Ayrate
and Otarre, Upper and Lower Cherokee — Statistics of the Nation,
extracted from an original paper copied in London — Catalogue of
towns with the names of a few of their chiefs — Seneca, Tugaloo,
Keowee, Mudlick, Coronaka and Johnson's Creeks, &c.
Thus far we have taken a general view of the
ancient Indian trade, especially so far as it related to
the traffic in slaves; we are, however, more particu
larly interested in that portion of it which belongs
to the history of the Cherokees. These were the
aboriginal possessors of the upper-country, and the
remains of their once populous towns, and the sites
of their rude homes, are still to be seen on our val
leys and verdant hills. Here the brave Cherokees
were intimately associated with the English during
all the gloomy years of their colonial history, some
times as friends and allies, at others as treacherous,
dangerous enemies.
The manners, customs and traditions of this once
noble people — the curious antiquities that lie scat
tered over every part of the upper-country, illustra
tive of their warlike and domestic life — the details
and thrilling incidents of the wars waged by them

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 205
upon the frontier settlements of Carolina, Georgia
and Virginia — their romantic conflicts on the border
with our Scotch-Irish forefathers — the midnight
alarms and horrid butcheries of helpless women and
children, and the terrible scenes of their more dread
ful tortures in captivity and at the stake, have not
yet received due notice at the hands of any chroni
cler. We resume, however, for the present, further de
tails ofthe ancient commercial relations that so long
bound together the old English adventurers and
Carolinians of Charleston, and the great Nation of
the Cherokees. It is important, however, to define,
first, as accurately as can now be done, the ancient
limits of the Nation, and to trace the names and sites
of its then flourishing settlements.
The first white men who penetrated the wilder
ness of north-western Carolina and northern Georgia,
found it in the possession of the Cherokees; and no
history relates when their settlements here were
formed. Mr. Pickett, in his History of Alabama,
informs us — but on what authority it is not stated —
that a powerful branch ofthe tribe at one time occu
pied lands much farther south than those now em
braced in the upper-country. "About the same
period," he says — 1 623 — " a large branch of the Chero
kees came from the territory of South Carolina, near
Charleston, and formed towns upon the main Ten
nessee, extending as far as the Muscle Shoals."*
#Page 154, Vol. i.

206 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
The Over-hill settlements, on the Tellico and
Little Tennessee, were established, according to the
same author, in 1623, by a branch ofthe Cherokees,
who had been driven from the Appomattox by the
first settlers of Virginia. Adair thus minutely de
scribes the boundaries of the Nation, as it existed at
the period of his sojourn among the southern Indians.
" The country lies in about thirty-four degrees of
north latitude, at the distance of three hundred com
puted miles to the north-west of Charleston, one
hundred and forty miles west south-west from the
Catawba Nation, and almost two. hundred miles to
the north of the Creek country. The Cherokees are
settled nearly in an east and west course, about one
hundred and forty miles in length, from the lower
towns, where Fort Prince George stands, to the late
unfortunate Fort Loudon. They make two divisions
of their country, which they term gyrate and Otarre,
the one signifying 'low,' and the other ' mountain
ous.' The former division is on the head branches
of the beautiful Savannah, and the latter on those of
the easternmost river of the great Mississippi."*
The earliest account that has been preserved of
the Cherokees, from which it is possible to glean any
reliable information in regard to their numbers, and
the extent of their settlements, is found iu a very in
teresting paper, taken from the records in London,
for Mr. Bancroft, a copy of which was presented by
him to Prof. Rivers. This document, prepared origi-
*Page 226 — History ol North American Indians.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 207
nally by the highest official authority in Carolina,
contains a minute statistical report of the strength
and locality, in relation to Charleston, of many In
dian tribes, in and around the province. It has
never before, if we mistake not, been published.*
Just before the Revolution of 1719, the proprietors
had made the request of Gov. Robert Johnson, to
furnish them with a full statement ofthe strength of
the.colony, and of the aboriginal tribes around the
English settlement. We select chiefly that portion of
the governor's report which relates to the Cherokees.
He says : " By the within accounts ofthe number of
Indians subject to the government of South Carolina,
in the year 1715, your lordships will find upwards
of eight and twenty thousand souls, of which there
were nine thousand men who traded with Carolina,
besides several small tribes, such as the Congarees,
Santees, Seawees, Pedees, Waxhaws, and some Cor-
saboys ; so that by war, pestilence and civil con
flicts among themselves, the Cherokees may be com
puted as reduced to about ten thousand souls, and
the Northern Indians to two thousand five hundred.
The Cherokee upper settlements contain 19 towns,
900 men, 480 women, 980 boys, 400 girls ; middle
settlements, 30 towns, 2,500 men, 900 women, 2,00Q
boys, 950 girls; lower settlements, 11 towns, 600
men, 480 women, 020 boys, 400 girls — total, 11,210.
It would be a very difficult task to extract from

* Professor Rivers, with his usual kindness and liberality, allowed
us the free use we have here made of this valuable record.

208 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
the records in Columbia, a complete list of the towns
embraced, at any period, in the two divisions of the
Cherokee Nation, so confused is the orthography of
the names there given, and so indefinite the informa
tion relating to their respective situations. In 1751,
the following entry was made in one of the Indian
books, from the report of a trader :
Keowee* — 29 warriors, 3 chiefs, viz., Skiagusta, or
the Old Warrior; Oruste, the Catawba king, and
the Chote king.
Estatowee. — 9 warriors, 1 chief, Clugoitosh, the
Good Warrior.
Tucksoie. — 7 warriors, 2 chiefs, Osquosoftoi and the
Raven.
Jommantoo. — 1 warrior, 1 chief, Scholloloskie.
Chewohee. — 7 warriors, 1 chief, Skiagusta.
Oussazlay. — 4 warriors, 1 chief, Johnny.
Kowee. — 1 warrior, 1 chief, Jaccutee.
Oustate. — 4 warriors, 1 chief, the Yellow Bird.
Stocowee. — 3 warriors, 1 chief, Tacitee.
Noquossee. — 4 warriors, 0 chief.
Jacasechno. — 5 warriors, 1 chief, Chuchachoo.
Inforshee. — 12 warriors, 3 chiefs, the Beaver, his son
Skiacow, and Tacitee, the Notched Warrior.
Little Tellico. — 7 warriors, 2 chiefs, Sananulohoo
and Onaloee.
Tommotly. — 7 warriors, 0 chief.
Jollohee. — 1 chief, the Prince.
Great Tellico. — 16 warriors, 2 chiefs, the Blind War
rior and Cassar. * Written Kewhohee.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 209
This is obviously an imperfect statement of the
strength ofthe Nation, at this period. The list pre
sents, however, a few names nowhere else found.
Some four years afterwards, in new-modeling the
trade, the whole Cherokee country was subdivided
into what were called hunting districts, from the
record of which we are enabled to extract the fol
lowing more complete catalogue of towns:

FIRST DISTRICT.
Over Hills. — iGreat Tellico, Chatnge; Tennessee,
Chote and Toqua ; Sittiquo and Tallasse.
Valley Towns. — Etiforsee, Conastee and Little Tel-
liquo; Cotocanahut, Uayowee, Tomatly, and
Chewohee,
Middle Towns. — Joree, Watoge, Nuckasee.
Keowee. — Keowee,Triceutee,Echoee,Torsee; Co wee,
Tarsalla, Coweeshee, and Elejoy.
Out Towns. — Tucarechee, Kittowa, Conontoroy ;
Steecoy, Oustanole, and Tuckasegee.
Lower Towns. — Tomassee, Oustestee ; Cheowie, Es-
tatoie, Tosawa ; Keowee, Oustenalle.
In the spring of 1776, the Cherokee Nation was
visited by Bartram, who supplies, in his interesting
journal, several additional names of towns then ex
isting, or just deserted.

18

210 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
Over-hills on the Tennessee and its branches. — Nu-
cassee, Ticoleasa, Conisca, Nowe, Noewe, Clen-
nuse, Ocunnolufte, Chewe, Quanuse, Tellowe,
Hiwassee, Chewase, Nuanha, Chelowe, Sette,
Joco, Tahasse, Tamahle, Tuskege, Nilaque,
Niowe.
Lower towns east of the mountains. — Seneca.
On the Keowee. — Keowee, Kulsage or Sngaw-Town.
On the Tugaloo. — Tugoola, Estotowe.
On Flint Eiver. — Qualatche, Chote.
On other rivers. — Great Estotowe, Allagac, Jore,
Nacooche. Mouzon's map, in Carroll's Collection, adds to the
lower Cherokees the following names of towns that
were standing as late as 1771, and whicb we have
seen nowhere else recorded.
On the Tugaloo and its branches. — Tururaw, Old
Estatohe, Noyowee, Tetohe, Chagee, Tussee,
Chicherohe, Echay, Takwashuaw.
On the Keowee. — New Keowee, Quacoretchie.
On the Seneca. — A con nee.
Adair observes, that several of their best towns on
the southern branch of the Savannah are now for
saken and destroyed: as Ishtatohe, Echia, Tugaloo,
and others, and they are brought into a narrower
compass. At the conclusion of the war of 1760, the
traders calculated the number of their warriors to
consist of about two thousand three hundred, which
is a great diminution in so short a space of time.
The Cherokee towns were generally built wide of

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 211
each other, owing to the scarcity of good situations
on the rivers and creeks; it being rare to find in that
mountainous region a tract of four hundred level
acres. In the rich valleys, however, of the Keowee,*
Seneca and Tugaloo, they were numerous and ex
ceedingly populous; not yet have the leveling opera
tions of Anglo-American progress completely effaced
here the deep traces of aboriginal art and life; but
when all else have been obliterated, when no wig
wam's site or tumbling sacrificial pillar shall remain,
the beautiful names ofthe Seneca, Tugaloo, Keowee
and Isundiga,f will continue to proclaim a history
of the once blest Cherokee, in accents as soft as the
murmur of their waters, and as enduring as their
granite falls.
The towns situated on the head waters of the Sa
vannah were not the only Cherokee settlements in
that portion of their beautiful Ayrate embraced in
the present territory of Upper Carolina. Straggling
villages and solitary wigwams were discovered to

*Isundiga was the Cherokee name for the ancient Keowee and
Savannah. The present name of Savannah was derived from the
Shawano or Savannah Indians; a warlike tribe that once lived on its
western bank, near the present site of Augusta. Some time after the
settlement of Carolina they removed beyond the Ohio. Adair declares
they were driven away by the foolish measures of the English. We
sball have much more to say of them.
f The name Isundiga, we believe, is now nowhere known in
the territory of Pickens District. It should be revived and preserved
in the name of some new village or educational institution.

212 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
have once stood on all the rivers and creeks whose
waters abounded in fish, from the Congarees to the
mountains. Several of these were, no doubt, stand
ing as late even as the period when the Scotch-Irish
began their settlements in Laurens, Newberry, and
other districts.
Eight miles from Dorn's Gold Mine, in a valley
of the Long-Cane, on lands belonging to Benjamin
McKittrick, is an ancient Iudian mound, nearly one
hundred yards in length by thirty in breadth. It
appears to have been once a lofty as well as capa
cious terrace, on which might have conveniently
stood several other buildings besides the usual great
town-house. This mound was evidently constructed of earth,
brought with vast labor from some other spot than
the one on which it was reared ; and notwithstand
ing the wastes of time, and the yet more ruinous
washings of centuries of floods in the creek, it still
rises some three or four feet above the general level
of the valley.
When John Duncan arrived upon Duncan's Creek,
quite a flourishing Iudian village stood upon a hill
in the plantation now owned by Major Wm. Young,
of that neighborhood in Laurens. The site is still
conspicuous for its monumental heaps and other
aboriginal remains.*
On the west bank ofthe Saluda, about a half-mile
?Conversation of Joseph Duncan.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 213
below the oid Swansey's Ferry, in Abbeville, is a
broad level area excavated from the hill-side, on
which stood, in the recollection of the early settlers,
an Indian town. A fertile promontory juts from the
east into the Coronaka, at the point of its juncture
with Black Rock Creek.* On this spot the Chero
kees, in primitive times, had a teeming settlement.
The ground has been in cultivation time out of
mind; yet to this day the instruments of their
husbandry and savage arts continue to be turned up
from the soil. The spring which supplied them
with water still issues from the foot of the hill.
The creeks afforded inexhaustible quantities of game
and fish. Long after the Cherokees had retired for
ever from the territory of Carolina, these streams
were famous for their fisheries. It is said, too, that
the Coronaka,f like the Saluda, was remarkable, in
the early periods, for its production of corn. During
the Revolution, if tradition is to be credited, many a
seasonable supply was gathered from its fertile
valleys. Ou the west bank of Johnson's Creek, in sight of
the Wards road, on the plantation now occupied by
Mrs. John Black, is another spot where also abound
* Now Rocky Creek.
f There is no clue to the meaning of the Indian name, Coronaka.
We are scarcely better informed of its correct orthography. In Dray
ton's Memoirs, it is written Cornacre; in Tarleton's Campaigns,
Coronacre ; in the old district land-plats, Coronacco, and sometimes
Coronaco; in the Indian books, Coronauay, and as often Coronaca.
In other records it is written Coronaka; and this method we have
adopted.

214 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
the unmistakable relics of an ancient Indian town
or settlement. They lie scattered over a cultivated
field, and among them are the fragments of a rude
pottery, which display some taste of design.
In a plantation on Cane Creek, of Pickens Dis
trict, well known as the Moultrie Tract — having been
originally granted by the State to that distinguished
officer of the Revolution, but now the property of
Major Robert Maxwell — is a famous spot still called
Black-bird's Hill, on which, in the memory of living
men, a flourishing Cherokee town once stood. Black
bird, the last of its chiefs, and a man of mark among
his people, bequeathed his name to the place, after it
had borne, perhaps for centuries, the more eupho
nious Indian name of Cananaska. Like all the
grounds in this region on which were found old
Indian settlements or their remains, the soil of
Black-bird's Hill and its vicinity is remarkably
fertile. In a field on Mudlick Creek, a part ofa plantation
belonging to Colonel John D. Williams, of Laurens,
are five mounds still rising several feet above the
level of the valley. These occupy the site of
an ancient Cherokee burying-ground, and mark a
spot near by on which once stood a flourishing town.
They have never been opened; but a sufficient ex
cavation would scarcely fail to disclose their usual
contents of human bones, fragments of vases, pipes,
and implements of war.
Deep in a forest, on lands attached to the old Col
cock Place, now the property of Dr. H. W. Leland,

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 215
and in sight nearly of the star-redoubt at Ninety-Six,
is a large mound, in which were deposited the bones
of generations, perhaps, of the inhabitants of an
Indian town, that evidently once existed in a waste
field of the same plantation, lying a short distance
north of the mound.. The usual relics of a once
populous Cherokee community are abundant every
where in its vicinity, as they are also on the hills
and valleys of the opposite bank of Ninety- six Creek,
in lands owned at present by Captain James Creswell
and others.
The Indians were no agriculturists, but they pos
sessed an instinctive appreciation of fertile soil ; and
hence, for ages, doubtless, before the rich, cane-
covered lands of old Ninety-Six greeted the covetous
eyes of English speculators and pioneers, they had
given sustenance to teeming settlements of the native
red men.
There is an interesting mound on the Tiger in
Union District, just opposite the battle field of Black-
stocks. It stands, if we mistake not, on lands be
longing to Dr. Winnsmith, of Spartanburg: it has
never been excavated. These curious burial places
of the aboriginese are the more interesting from the
fact that they were reared, most of them, long ante
rior to the landing of any white man in America,
and are the only notable monuments that now re
main in the upper-country, of its native races.
Adair informs us that, till the Cherokees fell under
the influence of the English, they were accustomed
to deposit, in the same grave with the dead, all the

216 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
implements and trinkets of which they had been
possessed before death. They soon learned, how
ever, from the traders, to preserve these things for the
use of surviving relatives and friends. The contents
of a mound must therefore often fix the time of its
construction, either nearly coeval with the coming of
the English, or at a period indefinitely anterior to
that event.
Besides these eartbern tumuli, found usually in the
fertile valleys of the streams, and near the ancient
habitations of the Indians, they frequently raised
monumental piles of loose stones on the tops of their
mountains, hills, and near famous passes. These
were in honor of departed chiefs, and other great
men. Sometimes the stones were collected and piled
on the very spot where a distinguished warrior had
fallen in battle; and though rough and unlettered,
these rude monuments have mocked, in their dura
bility, thousands of structures of marble and brass,
whose exquisite forms were carved and fashioned by
the hand of genius and civilization. Many of them
are standing at this day, nearly as entire as when the
last stone was placed upon their conical summits, at
a period in the fabulous past, up to which no history
runneth. But whether standing erect or scattered
promiscuously around their original sites, they are
equally monumental, and never fail to teach the
curious passer-by the simple story they contain of
aboriginal history.
An old chronicler* observes: " To perpetuate the
* Adair.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 217
memory of any remarkable warriors killed iu the
woods, I must here remark that every Indian tra
veler, as he passes that way, throws a stone on the
place, according as he likes or dislikes the occasion
or manner of the death of the deceased. In the
woods we often see innumerable heaps of small
stones in those places, where, according to tradition,
some of their distinguished people were either killed
or buried, aud their bones suffered to remain till they
could be gathered for regular sepulture at home. On
these piles they added Pelion to Ossa, still increasing
each heap, as a lasting monument and honor to them,
and an incentive to great actions."
Several of these Indian cairns were standing a few
years ago, on the romantic top of Gilkey's Knob
near Limestone Springs. They were built of white
quartz rocks, and looked, in the deep shade of the
huge chestnut oaks that surrounded them, like so
many motionless spectres on a visit from the blest
abodes of the ancient warriors in whose memory
they were reared.
We found on the summit of Whitaker Mountain,
in the north-west corner of York District, a group of
interesting cairns. This knob is itself worthy of a
visit, for the sake of its noble views. On one side is
seen, dotting a vast area, the farm-houses and culti
vated fields of North Carolina, fenced in the back
ground by the magnificent sierra of the Blue Ridge,
encircling nearly one quarter of the horizon. On
the east towers near by, in solitary grandeur, the
sharp pinnacle of the King's Mountain, supported on
19

218 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
the right by its spur of lesser knobs, and among
them the humble, but far more interesting summit,
on which Ferguson made his last stand against the
enemies of his king. Far away on the west, rising
from the banks of Broad River, are the wooded hills
and plantations of Spartanburg and Union, while the
ferlile valleys of that noble stream are traced by the
deeper green, and denser shade of their forest growth,
stretching many miles to the south. The greatest
warrior of a more refined race than the Cherokees,
might well be proud of a grave and a mausoleum on
such a spot.
There are too distinct piles on this mountain : one
on each extremity ofthe oblong top, extending more
than a mile from the north-east to the south-west.
They are remarkable for their peculiar arrangement.
Each monument consisted of a group of cones sev
eral feet in height, and placed in an exact circle,
some ten or fifteen feet in diameter; a low wall con
nected them all, presenting the figure of a miniature
fortification thickly set with towers. The stones
have, long ago, tumbled from their places, or were
pulled down by some one curious to discover any
treasure they might conceal, and now the whole
fabric exhibits a striking resemblance to Ptolemy's
ancient diagram of the epicycular motions of the
moon. A great variety of interesting relics of these abo
riginal people are found throughout the Valley of
Broad River; such as mounds, and the familiar
stone implements of their warlike and domestic arts.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 219
But among them some are occasionally brought to
view, so curiously and perfectly wrought, as to force
the conclusion that they came from the hands of a
people far more civilized and ingenious than the race
of mound-builders supplanted by our forefathers.
We saw in York District a stone, the exquisite car
ving of which attracted more attention than the sin
gularity of its shape, or the impenetrable mystery of
its use.
It had been wrought from the hardest material —
one of the yellow quartz pebbles found abundantly
in the shoals of the river. Having first trimmed it
to an exact cylinder, four or five inches in diameter,
and an inch in thickness, the skilful artist then neatly
rounded the sharp edges, and, on each of the flat
sides, described as perfect a circle as could be con
structed by the most improved mathematical instru
ments. These being described, with some other
implement he managed to excavate them to the
depth of a quarter of an inch or more into the solid
quartz, leaving the edges of the circumference at
bottom and top perfectly sharp and smooth. No
modern lapidary, with all the tools and appliances of
his difficult art, could have given it a better finish.
The traders inform us that the Cherokees — the most
skillful artists of all the native tribes — wrought very
slowly while carving in wood and stone. It was a
month's work for a warrior to fashion one of his or
namented pipes ; and they speak of seeing no such
fabrication as the above among them, in all their con
versations and reports.

220 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
In a letter recently received by the author from
Dr. Ramsey, of Tennessee, the accomplished writer
of the Annals of his State, and whose collection of
Indian antiquities, is perhaps unsurpassed in the
Union,* he observes of this remarkable stone, that it
is, without doubt, a relic of the ancient mound-build
ers, whose mysterious history has so long puzzled
the brains of philosophers.
The use they made of it can scarcely be conjec
tured ; from its elaborate finish, however, it would
appear to have belonged to some part of their cere
monial worship. This opinion is corroborated by the
fact that a few others, besides the one seen in York
District, have been discovered in places widely separ
ated ; yet they are all precisely alike, carved with the
same exactness, and from the same material — the
yellow rolled quartz of the river's bed. If they had
, been designed for one of their games of amusement,
or for some mechanical use, they would scarcely
have been wrought with so much elaborate care.
One of these stones is preserved in the valuable
museum recently presented by Dr. E. R. Calhoun of
Greenwood, to the Laurensville Female Academy.
It was originally contributed by Dr. Ramsey, of Ten
nessee. Theie is another in the extensive private
museum of the late Dr. John "Barret, of Abbeville;
and a third one is in the possession of a gentleman
of his vicinity, who procured it while acting as
engineer among the ancient sites of the Over-hill
Cherokees. *See Archeological Researches by Squire.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 221
One of the most singular remains ofthe primitive
inhabitants of the upper-country, was discovered a
few years ago in the thickest settled part of the vil
lage of Greenwood. The objects themselves are not
worthy of particular notice ; but the situation in
which they are found may well excite surprise, and
give rise to interesting conjecture. They consist of a
number of aboriginal graves, scattered at random
over an area of some one or two hundred yards
square. One of the mounds lies a few paces in the
rear of the Presbyterian Chapel, and is still shaded
by the woods. The rest were found south-eastward
of this point on the opposite side of the main street.
The question has been often asked by a few, who
are interested in such inquiries, when, and under
what circumstances were these ancient interments
made? Was this retired, densely- wooded spot, used
as a burying ground, in early times, by the Chero
kees, who had their settlements on the Coronaka and
other contiguous streams ? Or is it a primitive bat
tle-field on which their warriors met in deadly con
flict the more southern tribes, or the warlike Musco-
gees, in one of their hostile incursions from beyond
the Savannah.
With the view of investigating the subject, a few
years ago, several gentlemen opened one of the
graves, near the house occupied at present by Capt.
Wm. H. Griffin, lt was found to contain, besides
distinct fragments of human bones, the implements
that have been described as peculiar to the earliest
known sepulture of the Cherokees. A very curious

222 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
pipe, taken from this grave, was deposited, together
with the bones, among the collections of the Laurens
ville College Museum.
These mounds,unlike the tumuli, already describ
ed as forming the common burying place of a village,
contain, each of them, the remains of a single body.
But like the flint rock cairns, their construction was
evidently designed with great simplicity and skill, to
secure an imperishable durability. The bones of the
dead, with the articles to be interred with them, were
first placed upon the surface of the ground; they
were then covered, to the depth of several inches,
with a mixture of charcoal and ashes — the charcoal
being most abundant — and the burial completed by
a layer of clay brought from some other place, and
piled compactly on till a mound was formed several
feet in height.
This simple fabric obviously possessed a property
similar to that which constitutes the strength of the
arch; the storms of centuries only served to beat
more firmly together the mass of clay, and inde
structible carbon ; so that at this day, though em
bosomed in primitive woods, and covered with the
fallen leaves of an age of autumns, it is still percepti
ble, and not to be mistaken for any natural forma
tion. The stratum of clay passed through in the exca
vation, was a foot and a half in thickness, and, with
the ashes and charcoal, formed the only protection to
the contents of the mound. It would appear there
fore, that only the bones had been originally gather-

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 223
ed up and deposited in these graves ; for otherwise
the beasts of prey that then abounded in these wilds,
would scarcely have waited for the departure of
those who performed the rites of burial, to tear them
open and devour theircontents. This was a mode of
interment usual with most of the native tribes. It
must also be inferred that the mounds were raised
about the same time ; and the question presents itself,
why were so many formed at this spot ? No Cherokee
town or wigwam stood near it. The Indians never
planted their settlements on dry ridges ; and much
less were their cemeteries found in solitary places.
Neither, at the period when these graves were con
structed, was there any frequented path passing near
the spot. The great Keowee trail, of which we shall
speak more fully hereafter, that lead by Old Ninety-
Six to Charleston, ran some three miles to the east
of this point.
We conclude, therefore, that these mounds mark
the scene of an ancient battle ; a conflict most proba
bly between strolling war-parties of Cherokees and
Creeks.* These powerful nations were constantly
waging war upon each other; and abundant evi
dence will appear in future pages of the fact, that
the warriors of the latter frequently crossed the Sa
vannah to cut off the Cherokees, and lay waste their
settlements in this portion of their territory.
The signs of aboriginal settlements are no less
abundant on the Savannah and Congaree Rivers than
# The Muscogees and Creeks were the same people.

224 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
on the Broad. The last great floods in those streams
washed up from their valleys, und exposed to view
a variety of exceedingly curious and interesting re
mains; some of them belonging to the more modern
Cherokees,and others evidently to the ancient mound
builders.* These facts prove incontestably, that, at an early
period, though much later than the age of the myste
rious race which was supplanted or succeeded by the
Cherokees, the whole territory of the upper-country,
from the southern border of Richland to the foot ofthe
Blue Ridge, was alive with the flourishing settle
ments of that great nation. But about the time of
the English settlement on the Ashley, they had all
well nigh disappeared ; their towns were found clus
tered on the head waters of the Savannah, and in
the valleys beyond the mountains, leaving behind
them a vast and fertile territory, yielded once more
to the sway of wild beasts, and filled with the crum
bling remains of their former habitations and rude
barbarism. What vicissitudes of fortune, or hostile
invasion, produced this wide-spread depopulation
and ruin, we leave for those to determine who are
better versed in the lore of aboriginal history and
tradition. It was before remarked, that Bartram, the natural-
* Several of the most important of the relics from the Congaree
are preserved in the museum ofthe Presbyterian Theological Semin
ary at Columbia ; and for an interesting description of these and other
objects brought lo light by the floods in the same locality, see a paper
contributed by Dr. George Howe to Schoolcraft's great work on In
dian antiquities.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 225
ist aud traveler, made an excursion through the
Cherokee Nation, in 1776. His notes and observa
tions of this journey are valuable and interesting ; they
form the only account which we have from so reli
able a source, of the condition of the Cherokees at
that momentous period. He was in the midst of
their towns, pushing his investigations with the bold
ness and artless simplicity of the true philosopher,
only a few weeks before the famous battle of Fort
Moultrie, and the nearly simultaneous onslaught
made by the deluded warriors upon the frontier set
tlements ofthe old Ninety-six District.
On the 15th of May, he set out from Lochaber,
the residence of Mr. Deputy Cameron, in the present
territory of Abbeville, and arrived late in the evening,
after passing through an uninhabited wilderness,
at the town of Seneca. He found this to be a very
respectable settlement, situated on the east bank of
the Keowee River, though the greater number of In
dian habitations were on the opposite shore, where
likewise stood the council-house, in a level plain,
between the river and the range of beautiful hills,
which seemed to bend over it and its green meadows.
The house of the chief, and those of the traders, with
a few Indian dwellings, were seated on the ascent of
the heights, on the eastern bank, from which they
enjoyed a magnificent view.
Seneca was a new town, had been re-built since
the Cherokee war of 1760, when Gen. Middleton and
his Carolina auxiliaries broke up the lower and mid
dle settlements. The number of inhabitants was
now estimated to be above five hundred, with one

226 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
hundred warriors. Leaving Seneca the next day,
he rode sixteeu miles through a noble forest, cover
ing excellent lands, to old Fort Prince George.
Keowee was a most charming situation ; but its
scenery could not drive from the mind of the trav
eler painful thoughts of his lonely, exposed situa
tion — by himself in a wild Indian country, a thou
sand miles from his native laud, and a vast distance
from any settlements of white people. It was true,
there were a few of his own color, but they were
strangers ; ai\d though hospitable, their manners and
customs of living were so different from his, as to
afford him but little comfort. A long journey yet lay
before him; the savages were vindictive from ill-
treatment lately received by the frontier Virginians;
blood had been spilt, and the injury not yet wiped
away by treaty ; the Cherokees naturally jealous of
white people traveling about their country, especially
if they should be seen peeping among rocks or dig
ging up the earth.
The Vale of Keowee is seven or eight miles in
length ; it extended that distance from the little town
of Kulsage, situated a mile above Keowee, south
ward, to a narrow pass between the approaching
hills. After being detained three days at Keowee,
waiting for an Indian guide, who was out hunting,
he set out alone across the hills, passed the river at
a good ford, just below the fort, which he found to
be exactly one hundred yards wide, and riding two
miles through delightful plains covered with straw
berries, struck the rocky ridge ofthe rising hills.
Having gained a considerable elevation, a mag-

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 227
nificent view burst upon him; the town and valley
of Keowee appeared again, with the meandering
river speeding through the bright green plains.
Four miles farther, he came into another valley,
watered by a beautiful river fhat crossed the path.
On the left, he observed, at the base of a grassy ridge,
the remains of a town once occupied by the ancients,
and by the modern Cherokees, as amply appeared
from the great number of mounds, terraces, pillars,
and old peach and plum trees in view on the spot.
He passed, the same day, through the Oconee Val
ley, enriched with hills, and at the base of the Oco
nee Mountain, came upon the ruins of the town of
the same name. Thence climbing to an elevated
peak ofthe mountain, he beheld on all sides of him,
a scene inexpressively magnificient and comprehen
sive. Beyond this mountain, he entered a valley
surrounded with an amphitheatre of hills, on whose
turf-covered bases he found the ruins of another an
cient Indian town.
Early in the forenoon of the next day, after pass
ing over a plain red with fields of ripe strawberries,
he came upon a ridge of lofty hills, among which
were the remains ofthe famous town of Sticoe.
Here was also a vast Indian mound and terrace,
on which had stood the council-house; an embank
ment encircled it, and orchards of peach and plum,
many of the trees still quite flourishing, were grow
ing around.
He entered next the fertile Valley of Cowe, extend
ing some sixty miles in length, and watered by the

228 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
head branch of the Tenase. Strawberries were so
abundant in the meadows through which his path
led, as to dye the hoofs and ankles of his horse.
The swelling hills that bounded this valley were a
striking feature in its scenery. He observes of them,
and of those in the vicinity of all the fertile vales of
this region, that they appear to have been the con
stant situations of the towns and settlements of the
ancient mound-builders, and of the more recent
Cherokees. He soon after crossed the head branch
of the Tenase, and not quite a mile beyond, came
to the spot, where, as we shall see more fully in an
other place, General Middleton, at the head of the
Carolinians, met the flower of the Nation, in a deci
sive and bloody battle. He found the field covered
with the conical stone-heaps, in memory of the great
number of warriors who fell here. These. stood un
der the forest, on a spur of small hills that projected
into the River Valley. The following night he spent
in the cabin of a trader, who had married a Chero
kee woman, and settled in the midst of the valley,
some fifteen miles from its head, on the sources of
the Little Tennessee. He was here most hospitably
entertained with cream and strawberries, coffee,
bucanned venison, hot corn-cakes, and butter and
cheese. The fruit was brought in by a company of
Indian girls, who belonged to a village among the
hills, not far off.
Next morning, he set out again for Cowe, situated
fifteen miles lower down the valley, and after riding
four miles over lands of incredible fertility, he reached

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 229
the town of Echoe, populous, and consisting of many
good houses. Three miles farther, he came to Nu-
casse, and three more brought him to Whatoga.
This was a large town, and riding through it, the
road led him winding about through the little plan
tations of young corn, beans, and other vegetables,
up to the great council-house, which was a very
large dome or rotunda situated on the top of an an
cient mound. The road here terminated, and he
had a fine view of the scene, which consisted of in
numerable miniature plantations, green and flourish
ing, with their mingled crops of maize and veget
ables, and divided from one another by narrow bor
ders of grass. These marked the bounds of their
respective possessions, and every man's house stood
in the midst of his lot.
He was now at a loss where to proceed, when he
was discovered by the chief of the town, who led
him across a grassy ravine, through which ran a
beautiful rivulet, to his house on the top of a hill.
He describes this chief of Whatoga as a very fine
specimen of the physical man. He was about sixty
years of age ; but still u prigh t, tall and perfectly formed ;
his countenance cheerful and lofty, and at the same
time characteristic of the Indian — the brow being
ferocious, and the eye active, fiery and piercing as
the eagle's.
After being seated in the house ofthe chieftan,he
was entertained by the women with their usual
dishes of boiled venison and corn-cakes, to which
was added on this occasion the famous Indian dish

230

HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,

of boiled hominy, served with cool milk. Even his
horse was furnished with a good bait of corn, which
was an extraordinary favor ; for the Indians regarded
their maize, as given by God, to be used only as the
food of man.
Tobacco and pipes were next introduced ; the chief
filled one of them, whose stem, about four feet long,
was sheathed in a beautiful speckled snake skin, and
adorned with feathers, and strings of wampum, and
having lighted it, smoked a few whiffs, puffing the
smoke first towards the sun, then towards the four
cardinal points, and lastly over the breast of his
guest, after which he handed it to him, as ready for
his use. In the conversation that ensued, the In
dian inquired if he had come from Charleston, and
if he knew John Stewart?
He was greatly pleased with Bartram's answers and
manner, and assured him of both friendship and
protection in his country.* Setting out from Wha
toga, he was accompanied several miles by the
friendly chief, towards Cowe, where he arrived at
noon, having passed over much exceedingly rich
soil. The vale of Cowe exhibited one of the most
charming natural landscapes, perhaps, in the world;
ridges of hills rising, grand and sublime, one above
and beyond another; some boldly projecting into the

* It would appear from this hospitable reception of the botanist by
the valley towns, that at this criiical juncture, as were the Over-hills,
in the beginning ofthe War of 1760, they were le^s disposed than any
other portion of the Nation to break peace with the English or Caro
linians.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 231
verdant plain, their bases bathed with the silver
flood ofthe Tenasse ; while others, far distant, veiled
in blue mists, mounted aloft with yet greater majesty,
and ovelooked vast regions.
In Cowe, he was entertained at the house of Mr.
Galahan, an Irishman and a trader, who had been
many years among the Indians, and was greatly
esteemed by them, for his humanity and probity — a
character to which few white men in the same em
ployment could lay claim. He had often been pro
tected by the Cherokees, when all others around him
were broken up, their property seized, and them
selves either driven from the Nation, or killed in the
fury of the exasperated savages.
The next day he went with a trader a few miles
out upon the summits of the surrounding hills, to
view some remarkable scenes; and having reached
the highest point, enjoyed a magnificent prospect of
the enchanting Vale of Keowee, not less fertile or
beautiful, perhaps, than the famous fields of Phar-
salia or the Valley of Tempe ; the town itself, the
elevated peak of the Jore mountains, a distant pros
pect of the Jore village in a beautiful lawn, many
thousand feet above the position on which he stood;
and numerous other towns and settlements on the
sides of the mountains, at various distances and ele
vations. Descending again towards the town, he came sud
denly upon a scene that appears to have interested
him even more than the landscape he had just been
so rapturously admiring; a company of Cherokee

232 ' HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
girls sporting in all the freedom of their wild nature
in a shady vale of the hills. Some were gathering
the fruit of the strawberry; others, having already
filled their baskets, lay reclining under the shade, or
bathed their limbs in a brook, while a few more gay,
were wantonly chasing their companions over the
lawn. This was a sight, he declares, too enticing
for younger men than himself to behold. He arrived
safely, however, soon afterwards, at Cowe.
This town consisted of one hundred houses, built
near and on both sides ofthe Little Tennessee. The
Cherokees constructed their dwellings ou a plan dif
ferent from that of the Creeks; they formed an
oblong square building of one story, with notched
logs, stripped of their bark, and plastered the walls
both inside and out with clay, mixed with grass ;
the whole was roofed with the bark of the chestnut
or with oaken boards, and partitioned transversely
into three apartments, which opened into each other
by inside doors. Their manner of conducting this
work was curiously similar to that of the ancient
builders of Solomon's Temple; each log and piece
of timber was carefully notched and prepared in the
woods, and then brought on their shoulders and laid
in its proper place upon the building, till the entire
fabric was completed.
The council-house at Cowe was a large rotunda,
of sufficient capacity to hold conveniently several
hundred people. It stood on the summit of an an
cient mound ot earth that had been thrown up some
twenty feet in height ; and the building itself being

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES.

233

quite thirty more, its pinnacle reaches an elevation
of nearly sixty feet above the surface of the earth.
This was the usual form, and the artificial mound
the common site of the council-houses of all th
towns. The Cherokees themselves knew nothing ol
the origin or first design of those mounds. Their
forefathers found them in their present situations
when they came from the West and took possession
of tbe country, and the race they supplanted gave
no more satisfactory account of them. They were
probably used by their builders as sacrificial altars
in the public manifestations of their superstitious
belief. The council-house was an imposing fabric, and
was thus constructed. They first fixed in the ground
a circle of posts about six feet high, equally distant
from one another, and notched at the top, for the re
ception of wall plates. Inside of this was planted
another circle of very strong posts, more than twice
as high as the first, and likewise notched for a range
of beams or plates. Within this again a third circle
was ranged of yet larger, stronger and loftier pillars,
but fewer in number, and at a greater distance apart.
Lastly, in the centre rose the great pillar which
formed the pinnacle of the building, at whose top
were fastened the upper extremities of the rafters,
rising in a sharp pyramid from the last range of
plates. Laths, nailed across, secured the rafters aud
supported the roof, which was usually of bark. The
walls were also formed in the same manner. A sin
gle large door gave access to the interior, and sup-
20

234 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
plied all the light from without. The Indians har
angued and deliberated in their town meetings by
the light of their never-absent council-fires. Next
to the wall settees were ranged in several circles, one
above another, for the accommodation ofthe people,
who assembled in the town-house almost every
night in the year, to enjoy some festival or their
favorite dances and songs. The settees were covered
with mats, curiously woven, of thin splints of the
ash or oak.
From Cowe, he penetrated some distance into the
country of the Over-hills, but was deterred from
proceeding farther in that direction by the dangerous
ill-humor of the Indians in this section of the Na
tion, arising from recent conflicts between them and
the frontier settlers of Virginia. Most of the traders
had retired from the Over-hill towns. He returned
to Cowe, after having turned the summit ofthe Jore
Mountains; and, setting out next day for the low-
country, arrived, after two days' travel, again at Keo
wee. Renewing his explorations here, he observed in
the environs of the town, on the bases of the rocky
hills, ascending from the low grounds, a great num
ber of exceedingly curious remains and antiquities.
They appear to have been designed by the ancient
mound-builders either for tombs or sacrificial altars,
and were constructed in the following manner: Three
flat stories being set on edge together, were covered
by a fourth at top, forming a box-like enclosure,
open at one end, and some five feet in length, two in

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 235
height, and three in width. . They were, however, of
different dimensions. A trader who accompanied
him regarded them as ancient ovens. The Indians
themselves could give no other account of them than
that their fathers found them in the places where
they then stood.
There is scarcely, in all Upper Carolina, a lovelier
spot than this ancient valley of the Keowee — more
truthfully written Kewohee — or more interesting for
its historical associations. True, its cheerful, ani
mated scenes of aboriginal life are no more; not a
trace, save a large conical mound near the river's
brink, and a few broken relics scattered upon the
cultivated soil, and here and there an ancient shade-
tree remain to tell the passing stranger that two
great Cherokee towns and an English fortress once
occupied the spot.
The surpassingly fertile lands of the valley were
not its only attractions to a people keenly alive both
to agricultural advantages and the romantic combi
nations of Nature's loveliest forms. The first feature
that strikes the traveler approaching it, at the present
day, along the remains ofthe old Keowee trail, is the
same that must have first attracted the gaze of the
traders and English warriors, who frequented the
spot in primitive times — its magnificent mountain
scenery. Just after reaching the head o*f the ravine in Gab
Mountain — itself a historic spot, of which we shall
speak in another place — the beautiful valley bursts

236 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
suddenly upon the view in a grand vista of lofty
hills or knobs, ranged on each side of the river, and
terminating far away in the dim distance in the pic
turesque sierra of the Blue Ridge. These moun
tains are near enough to disclose to the eye their
abrupt precipices and naked rocks, and are yet so far
removed as to give the imagination full scope to
revel among their misty summits, and the deeper
gloom of their mysterious gorges.
That portion of the valley in which Keowee town
and Fort Prince George stood, appears to the eye,
a semi-circular area some four hundred yards in
breadth from the river towards the east, and twice
that distance from north to south. The Keowee,
which runs almost perfectly straight through the val
ley, forms the base of the semi-circle, while the
ranging hills stud the line of its circumference on
the east. These hills are yet covered, in great part,
with woods, and on their sides are still found the
fragments of the ancient Indian works mentioned
by Adair, now utterly demolished and scattered.
Nearly opposite the point. at which the Keowee trail
entered the valley, passing close to the present site of
Steel's house, was situated the ancient ford, just at
the head of a beautiful shoal, that connected Kul-
sarge, or Sugar-Town, with Keowee. A short dis
tance above this ford, on the west side, the hills
suddenly recede from the river, forming another val
ley of considerable extent, sufficient for the site of
Sugar-Town, and a little lower down, at an earlier

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 237
period, for that of Old Keowee. It was on the de
molition or desertion of this town, that New Keo
wee was built on the eastern bank, opposite to Kul-
sarge. The oldest Cherokee Indian now living east
of the Mississippi, and who spent most of his life
near the head branches of the Savannah, or in the
Valley of Cowe, informed us, that when Kewhohee
was first founded, it was called by that name, but on
the erection of a town-house it was changed to Tac-
ite — the meaning of which in English is Sugar-
Town. The old man's memory was, doubtless, at
fault in this; he probably referred to the town already
mentioned by that name, on the western side of the
river, and which is often spoken of in the Iudian
books, not as Tacite but Sugaw, of which Sugar-Town
is evidently an English corruption. Sugaw may
possibly have been first called Kewhohee, and the
name afterwards transferred to the more recent New
Kewhohee, when the former received the name of
Sugaw. Bartram gives the name of Kulsarge to the
town corresponding with Sugaw.
The same venerable Iudian, Oosqualooyaie, or the
Otter, whom we found living with some fifteen hun
dred Cherokees on the Tuckasege — a branch of the
Tennessee iu western North Carolina — informed us
further, that Kewhohee, or Keowee, means, in their
language, the river of mulberries ; just as the same
race, far back in immemorial time, named their
beautiful Ennoree, the river of muscadines. The
Ennoree is now a turbid stream, discolored by the
dissolving clay of a wasting soil; but whatever there

238 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
is of poetry or beauty in the name Kewhohee,* the
stream that bears it merits it all, and more; for we
venture nothing in the declaration, that the Kewho
hee is the most beautiful river in Carolina. Its
waters are still as pure and transparent as when they
bathed the limbs of the first boisterous group of
Cherokee youths, who lived upon its fertile banks;
and when viewed in relation to its numerous dash
ing shoals, picturesque valleys, and magnificent
mountain scenery, it is certainly not surpassed by
any stream of equal size and length in the South.
There are scenes of beauty on the banks ofthe Kew
hohee and Seneca which are yet destined to awaken
in song and architectural combinations the most
elaborate manifestations of genius and cultivated
taste. A few miles above Kewhohee, near the juncture
of the Toxawaw and Estatoe, is the ancient site of
Toxawaw, and on the latter stream, those of Qua-
coretchie and Estatoe. The latter stood wholly on
the west bank of the stream, while the former occu
pied, in part, both its right and left shores.
Some twenty miles from the juncture of the Se
neca with the Tugaloo, near the mouth of Chauga,
and in the vicinity of the present site of Bachelor's
Retreat, there once stood a cluster of Cherokee
towns. On the east side of the Tugaloo, close to
one another, were the towns of Old Estatoe, Noyo-
*The Otter is our authority for writing this name, Kewhohee, as
well as the various spelling of Keowee and Kewhohee, found in the
Indian books.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 239
wee, Tugaloo, Toogoola and Takwashaw. On the
west, those of Tehoe, Chagee, Tussee, and two others,
a few miles lower down the Tugaloo, whose names
are lost, if they are not identical with those men
tioned by Adair as having been destroyed by the
warlike Muscogees. They have been referred to in
another place.
The town of Seneca, which took its name from
an immigrant tribe, or the migratory remnant of a
tribe, from the province of New York, stood sixteen
miles south of Kewhohee, not far from the juncture
of the present Little River with the Kewhohee, on
the west side of the river. Previous to the coming
of the Senecas, it is said that the entire eastern
branch of the Savannah was known only as the
Keowee. In the old map of Mouzon, however,
neither the name Kewhohee nor Keowee, appears as
belonging to any stream in this region. It gives the
name of Keshwee to the present Keowee, from its
source to its juncture with the Seneca; and at this
point began the ancient Cherokee appellative for the
more modern Savannah, which it then bore through
out its entire course to the ocean — the Isundiga.
It would appear from this that the restless Sawan-
nos, like the Senecas. had the address, at a compara
tively recent period, to displace from one of the finest
rivers of the South, the beautiful name it had, doubt
less, borne for immemorial ages, and impress upon
its fleeting waters their own forever.
From Keowee he proceeded to Seneca, in which
town he again met Alexander Cameron, holding a

240 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
talk with the lower chiefs on the important question
at that time agitating the entire Nation. The Indians
were undetermined what course to pursue, and a
general council was appointed to assemble as soon
as possible iu one of the Over-Hill towns. It was
from this talk that they rushed, tomahawk in hand,
July 1st, 1776, upon the defenceless settlements of
the old Ninety-Six District,

CHAPTER X.
First Packs of Goods sent up by the Board to the Cherokee Towns —
Col. James Moore and Charite Hayge, the Great Conjurer of Tu
galoo — They agree upon -» Commercial Treaty — A Trading Post
and Fort to be erected at the Congarees — John Sharp and Sam.
Muckleroy — Incursions ofthe Yamassees from Florida, &c.
No direct mention is made in the State records of
a traffic with the Cherokees, previous to the assump
tion of the management of the peltry trade by the
public authorities of the province in 1716. In that
year it is stated that goods had been sent up by order
of the -Assembly for their use. This was done in
compliance with a sort of commercial treaty, formed
at this period, with the Cherokees through the diplo
macy, on the one side, of Col. James Moore, and of
Charite Hayge, a distinguished conjurer and friend
of the English, on the other. It was stipulated that
there should be a regular exchange of goods and
peltries between Charleston and the Nation. The
goods were to be transported from the former place
by water or by pack-horse trains as far as Savannah
Town,* where the Indians had promised to bring

? Savannah Town or Fort Moore. It stood a short distance below
the present site of Hamburg.
21

242 HISTORY OT UPPER CAROLINA,
their peltries and furs, and thence convey the goods
back to their settlements.
It was also agreed that a trading house and fort
should be built the approaching fall, at a place known
as the Congarees, the Conjurer promising to repair
thither, at that time, with eighty warriors — one half of
whom were to assist in cutting logs for the fort, and
the other to carry the goods, expected to be brought
up by the English that far, the remainder ofthe dis
tance to the Cherokee towns.
According to the present value of the pound ster
ling in our currency, ten thousand dollars' worth of
goods were sent up to Savannah Town as soon after
the conclusion of this treaty as pack-horses could be
procured to convey them ; and it is perhaps worth
relating, that a pair of white horses, kept by Robert
Daniel, the then presiding Governor, for his carriage,
were among those that formed the first great pack-
train that went up from Charleston, under provincial
authority, to a Cherokee trading post. They had
strayed away from their stalls in town, and having
been taken up in the country by those who were
out in search on the common range for horses to be
used in the pack-train, were pressed into that ser
vice, the Governor being indemnified from the public
funds. The first chief agent who is mentioned as having
been placed by the commissioners over the factory at
Savannah Town, was Capt. Theopholus Hastings,
assisted by John Sharp and Sam Muckleroy. Has
tings appears to have been a competent and relia-

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 243
ble officer, enjoying the full confidence ofthe Board.
At a later period, in some important emergency re
lating to the Chickasaws, he was sent to reside among
that people. Previous to this change, however, he
had presided for some time over the Cherokee trade
at the town of Tugaloo.
Major Wm. Blackeney succeeded him at Savan
nah Town with the assistance of Capt. Charlesworth
Glover. The colony was suffering greatly at this juncture
from the terrible effects of the general Indian war,
that had broken out the year before. It continued
to be harrassed by vengeful attacks of the Yamas
sees, who, though driven into Florida from their
ancient seats in Carolina, frequently came up in
stealthy scalping parties, and fell upon the defence
less families living on the outskirts of the settle
ments. Pressed by these dangers, the public author
ities had erected on the frontiers two small forts, and
besides their garrisons, kept in the same region of
country a body of mounted rangers. Capt. James
Moore, it appears, commanded these, and was dis
charging the duties of that position when he ne
gotiated the treaty of commerce and amity with
Charite Hayge.
Of the forts thus built, one was placed in Apala-
chia, the present territory of Georgia, and the other
at Savannah Town, about a mile below the modern
town of Hamburg in Edgefield, destined to become
a great centre of trade with the Cherokees, who were
now at peace with the English. It received the name

244 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
of Fort Moore, in honor of James Moore, the father
of the Colonel of Rangers, who, a short time before,
had been governor of the province; and in the latter
part of his term had led a triumphant foray against
the Apalachian Indians. Col. James Moore, the son,
became, afterwards, no less distinguished than his
father, by finishing the work begun by Col. Barnwell
against the Tuscaroras and other Indians of North
Carolina, whom he completely subdued.
Though Fort Moore, and the one beyond the Savan
nah, were built in 1716, that at the Congarees, con
trary to the agreement with Charite Hayge, was not
erected till two years later. The reason assigned by
the Board for deferring the work was, that the trad
ing house and garrison at Savannah Town were suf-
ficentfor the trade until the Cherokees had concluded
the war they were at that time waging with a branch
of the Muscogees.
Hewit remarks of this fort that with the others it was
erected for the special purpose of defence and against
the same dangers. If the records must he credited,
however, it would appear that the Cherokees them
selves requested that it should be built in view of
their increasing traffic with the English ; and it was
in compliance with that request, and the enlarged
demands of the trade, that in the summer of 1718
a body of men was sent up from Charleston to be
employed in its construction.
In August of that year, Capt. Charles Russell, who,
at the recommendation of the Board, had been ap
pointed by the governor the first commandant of the

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 245
fort, was ordered to proceed to the country, and there
enlist the men who were to constitute its garrison as
soon as it should be completed. Among those who
were thus enlisted for this service, were Ralph Day
ton, John Evans, and Edward Darlsley, the first
soldiers who ever did duty in the old fort at the
Congarees. We have before us an extract from the instructions
given by the Board to one Dauge, an assistant agent
among the Cherokees, in relation to the public work
at Congarees :
"You are to proceed at once to the Cherokee Na
tion, and, on your arrival, inform the Conjurer and
other head-men that, in a month or six weeks, we
shall have a settlement at the Congarees, to which
place they may resort, and procure whatever goods
they may need ; that we would have built the fort
earlier than this, if some of our people had not run
away with the boat which had been prepared to
carry up the men and implements necessary for its
construction. Inform the Conjurer also, that we ex
pect him to hasten down in order to meet at the
Congarees with a supply of provisions, the train of
pack horses, which is now on its way with the men
and tools to be employed on the fort, and with a
quantity of ammunition for the Cherokees."
In the fall of the previous year, 1717, the Board
had said to a trader just setting off for the Nation:
"Acquaint Charite Hayge that our new Governor
Johnson has arrived, and we will speedily fix a gar
rison and factory at the Congarees, whence the

246 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
Cherokees may be supplied with arms and ammuni
tion.* Samuel Kinsman was the head carpenter, who ex
ecuted the work, and was paid nine pounds per
month for his services. As this fortress was designed
simply as a safeguard for the goods and other pro
perty belonging to the trade, accumulated here, it
was of no more formidable construction than a com
mon stockade inclosure.
The name was derived from the Congaree Indians,
in whose settlement it had been built. It stood on
or near the site occupied, in after-years, by old Fort
St. John's, a short distance above the mouth of Con
garee Creek, near the present City of Columbia. Here
was once the great centre of trade for the Catawbas,
and Middle and Lower Cherokees. The Over-hills
traded chiefly at Savannah Town.
Lawson visited this spot in his explorations ' in
Carolina, long before it became of any importance to
the English, and while yet in the possession of its
native population. His description of the surround
ing country Avill be readily recognized as a truthful
picture by all who have once seen its modern aspect.
" The next morning Santee Jack told us we should
reach the Indian (Congarees) settlement betimes that
day. About noon we passed by several fair savan
nas, very rich and dry, seeing great copses of many
acres that bore nothing but bushes about the bigness
of box trees, which, in their season, afford great
? State Journals in Secretary of State Office.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 247
quantities of small black-berries, very pleasant fruit,
and much like to our blue huckleberries that grow
on heaths in England. Hard-by the savannas we
found the town, where we halted. There was not
above one man left with the women, the rest being
gone a hunting, for a feast. The women were very
busily engaged in gaming. The names or grounds
of it I could not learn, though I looked on above two
hours. They kept count with a heap of Iudian
grains. "When the play was ended the king's wife invited
us into her cabin. The Indian kings always enter
tain travelers, either English or Indian, taking it as a
great affront if they pass by their cabins. The town
consists of not above a dozen houses — they having
other straggling plantations up and down the coun
try, and are seated upon a small branch of Santee
River. Their place hath curious, dry marshes, and
savannas adjoining to it, and would prove an exceed
ing fine range for cattle and hogs, if the English
were seated thereon.
" These Indians are a small people, having lost
much of their former numbers by intestine broils;
but most by the small-pox. We found here good
store of chinkapin-nuts, which they gather in winter,
great quantities of, drying them, and keeping them
in great baskets. Likewise hickerie-nuts, which they
beat betwixt too great stones, then sift to thicken
their venison broth therewith ; the small shells pre
cipitating to the bottom of the pot whilst the kernels,
in form of flour, mixes with the liquor.

248 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
" The Congarees are kind and affable to the English ;
the queen being very kind — giving us what varieties
her cabiu afforded — loblolly made with Indian corn
and dryed peaches. These Congarees have abun
dance of storks and cranes in their savannas. They
take them before they can fly, and breed them as
tame as dung-hill fowls. They had a tame crane at
one of their cabins that was scarce less than six foot
in height, his head being round with a shining
crimson hue, which they all have.
" These are a very comely sort of Indians, there be
ing a strange difference in the proportion and beauty
of these heathen. The women here being as hand
some as most I have met withal, being several five-
fingered brunettos amongst them. These lasses
stick not upon hand long, for they marry when very
young, as at twelve or fourteen years of age.
" We saw at the king's cabin the strangest spectacle
of antiquity I ever knew — it being an old Indian
squaw, that, had I been to have guessed her age by
her aspect, old Parr's head, the Welch Methusalem,
was a face in swadling clouts to hers. Her skin
hung in reaves like a bag of tripe; by a fair compu
tation, one might have justly thought it would have
contained three such carcasses as hers then was.
From what I could gather she was considerably
above one hundred years old, yet she smoked to
bacco, and eat her victuals, to all appearances, as
heartily as one of eighteen. At night we were laid
in the king's cabiu, where the queen and the old
squaw pigged in with us.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 249
"In the morning we rose before day, having hired
a guide the over night to conduct us on our way.
The queen got us a good breakfast before we left
her; she had a young child which was much afflicted
with the colic, for which she infused a root in
water, held in a gourd; this she took in her mouth,
and spurted it into the mouth of the infant, which
gave it ease. After we had eaten, we set out for the
Wateree Indians."
Savannah Town received its name in the same
manner as the Congarees, from the Sawannos or
Savannah Indians, who once lived on the banks of
the Savannah, and who, Adair tells us, were driven
thence by the mismanagement of Carolina officials.
It is certain, that, in the days of Gov. Glen, as we
shall presently see, they became exceedingly trou
blesome to the northern settlements of the colony,
from their new seats on the Ohio.
The ancient site of Fort Moore can now be scarcely
traced, even by the most diligent antiquary. An old
writer, who probably visited the spot at the com
mencement ofthe present century, thus describes it:
" A little below Hamburg, Edgefield District, is the
bluff on. which formerly sto'od Fort Moore, so cele
brated in the early history of this State. The site is
precipitous, perhaps ninety or a hundred feet high.
In the early settlement of the province, a frontier
garrison was kept at this place, 1o protect its inhabi
tants against the Muscogee, or Creek Nation, and
other Indians.
On one occasion, previous to the emigration ofthe

250 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
Savannahs, but after the erection of the fort, there was
exhibited here, by a famous Muscogee warrior, a
feat of cool, daring intrepidity, the relation of which
will serve to impress upon the memories of our
youthful readers, the history of this once interesting
spot. This warrior had been taken prisoner by the
Savannah Indians, and having been bastinadoed in
the usual manner, he was condemned to be burnt.
They bound him To a stake, where he underwent a
great deal of torture without showing the least con
cern ; his countenance and behavior were, as if he
suffered nothing from the glowing hot irons applied
by his enraged enemies to his naked body. He told
them, in a manly voice, that he was a very noted
warrior, and had acquired most of his martial hon
ors at the expense of their people; and that now, in
the act of dying, he was anxious to show them that
he was still as much their superior as when he led
against them his gallant war parties. That although
he had fallen into their hands, by forfeiting the pro
tection of the Divine Power through some impurity
or other, when carrying the holy ark of war against
his devoted enemies, yet he still had virtue enough
remaining to enable him to punish himself more
exquisitely than all their despicable ignorant crowd
could possibly do, if they would but give him liberty
by untying him, and hand him one of the red-hot
gun barrels from the fire.
The proposal and manner of address appeared so
exceedingly bold and unusual, that his request was
granted. Whereupon, seizing suddenly one end of

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 251
the red barrel, and brandishing it from side to side,
he forced his way through the armed and aston
ished multitude, leaped down a prodigiously steep
and high bank, into a branch of the river, dived
through it, ran over a small island, and crossed the
other branch, amidst a shower of bullets from the
commanding ground, where Fort Moore, or New
Windsor garrison, stood. And though numbers of
his indignant enemies were in close pursuit of him,
he took shelter in a bramble swamp, and in that
naked, mangled condition, reached his own country
without further injury.*
At this period, Savannah Town and the Conga
rees often presented scenes more boisterous and busy
than many a commercial town of the present, with
far more pretension in situation and trade. On their
outskirts are encamped numerous caravans of pack-
trains, with their roistering drivers, who are mostly
mischievous boys. The smoke from a hundred
camp-fires curl above the thick tops of the trees,
and the woods resound with the neighing of horses,
and the barking and howling of hungry Indian dogs.
A large supply of goods has arrived from Charleston,
and every pack-saddle came down from the Nation
loaded with skins and furs, and these being now dis
played to the best advantage, the work of barter
begins. In the open air and in the trading-house are con
gregated a motley assembly of pack-horsemen, tra-
# Mills' Statistics.

252 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
ders, hunters, squaws, children, soldiers, and stately
Indian warriors — some silent and grave, seemingly
uninterested in the scene ; but the greater number
loudly huxtering, and obstinately contending over
their respective commodities in trade, in many bar
barous tongues.
The hunters from distant wilds want a supply of
powder and ball, each squaw fancies some bright-
colored fabric for a new petticoat or dress, while the
warriors and old men eagerly demand guns, ammu
nition and blankets.
The clamor begins, however, presently to subside,
and at length the last bargain has been struck, and
the goods and peltries have alike changed hands.
The packs are once more made up ; the goods for the
Indian towns, and the skins for the market on the
seaboard, and everything is again ready for the trail.
The boys crack their whips, and with shouts and
halloos that make the forests ring, the trains enter
the narrow paths, and are soon far on their way, leav
ing the garrisons and agents of the posts to the dull
monotony of the wilderness till their next visit.
The duties of the agents at these posts were simply,
yet highly responsible. They were to take charge of
all goods, wares and merchandise, sent up by the
Board, and barter the same to the Indians in amity
with the English, receiving in exchange skins, furs,
leather, slaves, and whatever else of a marketable
value they might offer.
No hostile Indians were to be supplied with
arms and ammunition, and none connected with the

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 253
trade were to be credited, even with the value of a
single skin. This excellent rule was, however, never
properly enforced; it soon fell into disuse, and many
evil consequences, both to the whites and Indians,
was the result. The principle ofthe cash system is
sound and just for all parties, and should be observ
ed under every condition in which commerce offers
her commodities to the necessities and wants of
mankind. The Board caused to be prepared in Charleston a
special brand, with which the skins and slaves of
the Cherokee traffic were all to be marked at the
trading posts; a similar one had also been sent up
to be used in the Catawba trade. The brand of the
former was | cut in iron, which impression was to
be burned into the skin of the slave by a heat
sufficient for the purpose. This practice, it must
be related, however, to the credit of the Board, was
discontinued as far as slaves were concerned be
fore the end of 1716. Instead of the brand of iron,
the Board enjoined the use of gunpowder and oil,
which was pricked into the skin of the slave, in the
same manner as the Indians frequently tattooed
themselves. As late, however, as the summer of that year, we
find it recorded, that one John Ballantine, a merchant
of Charleston, was paid, by order of the Board, a
pound and ten shillings for three iron brand marks,
to be sent up for the use of the factors in marking
the public skins and slaves.
To what part of the body these brands were ap-

254 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
plied we are not precisely informed. The Spaniards,
who enjoy the honor of having first used this instru
ment in America, branded their Indian slaves upon
the back of the shoulder, where the mark would be
conspicuous, and not easily obliterated by the slave
himself. The following record was made February 1717:
the public store-keeper, in Charleston, in the employ
ment of the Board, informs them that he had bought
six slaves from neighboring Indians. It is ordered
that the slaves be sold next day at auction, with the
condition that they be exported within a month.
Further on it is again stated, that these captives had
been accordingly sold, and singly, except a woman
who had been put up with her child. Five others
were sold in the same month in like manner, and
brought one hundred and twenty-two pounds and
five shillings the entire gang.
The traders and agents were prohibited from pur
chasing any male slave older than fourteen years; in
a short time, this restriction was extended to thirty
years, so much had the business of the traffic in
creased. No agent was allowed to trade on his own
account, not even to receive a present from the In
dians, except in behalf of the public.
The following were the rates of barter agreed upon
by Col. Moore and the Conjurer: A gun was to be
equal in value to thirty-five skins ; one yard of
strouds cloth to eight skins; a white duffil blanket
to sixteen skins; a hatchet to three; a narrow hoe
to three; a broad hoe to five; thirty bullets to one;

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 255
a pair of scissors to one ; a knife and string of beads
to one each; twelve flints to one; a laced broad
cloth coat to thirty ; an axe to five; a pistol to twenty;
a sword to ten ; a shirt to five ; a piece of steel to
one ; a calico petticoat to fourteen ; and a red girdle
to two.
The first adventure, in trade, made by the Board
with the Cherokees was in March of 1716, and by
the following November, so greatly had the traffic
enlarged that Hastings requested of them to be allow
ed the services of five assistants instead of two. A
laced hat brought readily, at Savannah Town, eight
buck-skins ; a calico petticoat twelve ; and so great
was the demand for salt, gunpowder, tea-kettles and
looking-glasses, that the Commissioners fixed no price
upon them, leaving the traders to exact as much as
the savages were willing to pay for such things.
It was, no doubt, the abuse of this privilege that
led the Indians at this time to complain to the Board
of the high rates of barter agreed upon by Colonel
Moore and the Conjurer.
Of the five assistants granted at the request of
Hastings, one was placed at the town of Terrequa,
one at Quanassee, one at Chote, one at Tugaloo, and
one at a town towards the north.
The following articles, among others, were soon
after sent up by the Board to Hastings, to be used at
the branch of his agency situated in the town of
Tugaloo:. a lot of brands, bolts, locks and shackles.
The traffic in rum was so exceedingly profitable
that the Board found it impossible to restrain it with-

256 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
in proper bounds; but hoping, at least, to mitigate
its terrible effects upon the misguided Indians, it
was permitted the unscrupulous white men who en
gaged in it, to make a legal admixture of one-third
water and two of rum. The Indians, who were not
wanting in penetration, nor in taste, when strong
drink was in question, soon sent up the complaint,
that their rum was so nearly water as to be unfit for
use. The traders had taken advantage of the amia
ble concession of the Board, and reversed the stand
ard mixture to two-thirds water and one of rum.
Moved by these complaints, and the deplorable
inroads made by intemperance upon the Indian
population, Governor Daniel, in a council of all the
kings and head-men of the tribes in amity with
Carolina, stipulated, at the request of the chiefs
themselves, that no more rum should be carried up
to their country; and further decreed a heavy pen
alty for the violation of this article of the treaty at
that time solemnly ratified.*
He had just as well have treated, however, for the
cessation of the daily motion of the earth; neither
the traders nor the Indians observed it a moment
longer than the delay necessarily incurred in con
veying up a fresh supply of strong drink. The
young men ofthe several tribes soon after took occa
sion to declare, in a body, their utter disgust at this
article of the treaty, and threatened death to every
head-man concerned in making it, if it was not set
.* Lawson's Carolina, page 203.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 257
aside, so that they might buy rum freely when they
went to the houses of the English.
Lawson tells us, that the Indians themselves en
gaged in the business of bringing up and selling rum
to their people; as much, at least, as remained over
and above what they appropriated to their own use
on the trail between Charleston and their Nation;
for the same narrator adds: "Sometimes they can
not forbear breaking their cargo, but sit down in the
woods and drink it all up, and then halloo and shout
like so many Bedlamites. I accidentally once met
with one of these drunken crews, and was amazed
to see a parcel of drunken savages so far from any
Englishman's house ; but the Indians I had in com
pany informed me, that they were merchants, and
had drunk all their stock, as is very common for
them to do.
"But when they happen to carry it safe — which
is seldom, without drinking some part of it and fill
ing it up with water — and come to an Indian town;
those that buy rum of them have so many mouth-
fuls for a buck-skin — they never using any other
measure — and, for this purpose, the buyer always
makes choice of his man, which is one that has the
greatest mouth, whom he brings to the market with
a bowl to put the liquor in. The seller looks nar
rowly to the man's mouth that measures it, and if he
happens to swallow any down, either through wil
fulness or otherwise, the merchant, or some of his
party, does not scruple to knock the fellow down,
exclaiming against him for false measure. There-
22

258 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
upon the buyer finds another mouth-piece, so that
this trading is very agreeable to the spectators, to see
such a deal of quarreling and controversy as often
happens about it, and is very diverting."
The rates of barter agreed upon could not, in the
nature of the case, be long permanent; wild animals,
after a while, grew scarcer and more difficult to en
trap; the hunting range became much more exten
sive, and the business of pursuing them to their
haunts a toilsome labor. The Indians soon began,
therefore, to complain to the authorities that, with
the greatest efforts and the most assiduous industry,
they were unable to procure skins and furs in suffi
cient quantities to purchase for themselves, at the
existing rates, the necessaries of life.
As may be now well conjectured, however, the
greatest obstacle to the prosperity ofthe peltry trade,
at this period, was not so much the scarcity of game,
nor the increasing toil of taking it, as the rapid and
marked degeneracy of the Indians themselves in
native energy and manliness. The abuse of strong
drink, to which they appear to have had an irresis
tible constitutional tendency, and which, we have
seen, their agents and traders, with few exceptions,
encouraged without stint, made sad havoc of their
primitive strength and vigor. Aud no sooner did
they see that the chief management of their trade
had passed into the hands of the public authorities
from those of the old traders, who used to traffic
with them on their own account, and under circum
stances altogether favorable to the independence and

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 259
integrity of the Indian character, than they shrewd
ly conjectured, at a glance, the true cause of the
change — not so much the importance of the peltry
traffic as their own importance — a numerous war
like people on the mountain border of a growing
civilized community, and from that moment like,
all proteges and parasites of public patronage, re
laxed their ancient manliness, and in all exigencies
ceased to look so much to their own strength as
to that of their great father in England and his white
children of Carolina.
The visits of their head-men to Charleston became
more and more frequent; their palavers or talks with
the governors longer, and more insolent, and their
demands for presents unceasing and annoying. So
urgent indeed, oftentimes were their real wants, that
notwithstanding the chief difficulty lay in their own
indolence, they become objects, rather of our com-
misseration than contempt.
In order to maintain the trade at all, now that the
Indians had been taught to look to it for the supply
of all their wants, it was absolutely necessary for the
Board, having already, under frequent complaints,
greatly lowered the rates of traffic, to fix a point be
low which they must not go ; and even to withhold
goods, if the Indians were not prepared to comply
with it. Better, by far, for them, however, both
morally and physically, if they had never seen a
white man — had never been made acquainted with
the subtle arts of his civilized intercourse and com
merce, nor learned to admire the bright colors of his

260 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
fabrics and painted baubles ; but have retained their
old beloved manners and simplicity, though decked
only in the skins of wild beasts, and armed with no
other weapons than the rude club and bow and
arrow. They were then a happier, and in every
sense, a nobler people. Moral integrity and love of
the first Great Cause, even among heathens, have
their virtue and earthly rewards.
This state of things had a tendency, not only to
subvert the Indian character, but to depreciate, as
well that of the traders. The men of probity and
tone, who once figured in these exciting scenes, were
now well-nigh banished the nation ; with here and
there an honorable exception ; the traders became as
despicable as the barbarians among whom they
lived — many of them were mere vagabonds, wander
ing from place to place in the country, subsisting as
chance favored them — the objects of contempt even
to the savages themselves. Many of this class had
been attracted to the Nation by the easy opportuni
ties it afforded them to furnish valuable peltries to
other marts than Charleston, thus evading the pre
scribed duties, despite the authority of the Board,
and securing to themselves the profitable immunity
of under-selling the public agents of Carolina.
The colony of Virginia was most prolific of these
intruders, and gave the Governor and Board of Indian
Trade in Carolina much annoyance. They first re
monstrate through their agents with the offending
traders : " Say to the intruders from Virginia," it was
often charged them when setting out from Charles-

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 261
ton for the Nation, " that they have no right to traffic,
either with the Cherokees or Catawbas, without a
license from us; and that their peltries must be
brought down to Charleston to be disposed of; or, if
they choose to send them to other markets, they must
be required to come themselves to Charleston, and
pay on them the regular duties."
These independent traders, however, from Vir
ginia, and not a few from Carolina herself, knew that
while individual enterprise was forbidden, if they
preferred to smuggle, the game was in their own
hands, and hence paid little regard to such remon
strances. In 1718, Elieazer Wiggon, of Euchee me
mory, who was then trading with the Catawbas,
represented to the Board, that that nation was greatly
dissatisfied with the Charleston traffic: goods were
ill-supplied them by the authorities there, and the
few that came they were taxed to transport over the
trail from the Congarees, where their warriors were
frequently cut off by the lurking enemy. On the
contrary, the Virginia traders, they assured him,
brought them large quantities of goods on their own
pack-horses, with their own drivers, giving the In
dians no trouble whatever, which they sold at prices
considerably lower than those that had been fixed
by the Board in Charleston.
These complaints of the Indians were, therefore,
wholly excusable, and the dangers to the public mo
nopoly pressing. In a letter to Captain Hutton, of
Tugaloo, the Commissioners remark: "As to what
you say concerning the Virginian traders, we are

262 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
sensible of the great mischief they do us, in more
than one respect, by interfering with our Indian
trade, and still hope that the Assembly will consider
their case, and contrive some means of circumvent
ing them."*
During many years, the Indians themselves, under
the familiar name of " burdeners,'' carried on their
backs all the goods and peltries that made up the
staple of their trade with the English, except the
cargo of an occasional pettiaugeiyf that risked the
precarious water-route from Charleston to Savannah
Town. These voyages were quite frequent in the
early years of the trade ; for though exceedingly
dangerous, always detrimental to both peltries and
goods, from long exposure to dampness and salt
water, and much more protracted than a pack-horse
carriage by the direct trading path ; yet, in the fierce
predatory wars that then so frequently subsisted be
tween the Cherokees and Muscogees, the main cur
rent of the Savannah was a much safer place for
rich cargoes of peltries and goods, than the woods
and thickets where lurked stealthy bands of hostile
Indians, watching for an opportunity to take both the
goods and scalps ofthe carriers.
Now, towards the close of 1718, when all the
Southern Indians had learned, in great part, the im
portance and justice of respecting one another's trade
with the whites, partly from its growing lucrative-

# Journals iu Secretary of State's Office.
f Spanish name for a kind of boat.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 263
ness, but more from the ever-increasing wants and
necessities engendered by all legitimate commerce,
and peculiarly operative among a people just emerg
ing from the simplicity and negative comforts ofthe
savage state, we find in the Cherokee traffic that the
hazardous pettianger, and the oppressive custom of
carriage on the path, by Indian burdeners, were
abandoned for the safer and far more expeditious
conveyance on the backs of pack-horses.
The country abounded in wild horses, and the
sides of the trading path in luxuriant pastures of
cane and grass. "Tell the Cherokees,'' writes the
Board, to their agent at Tugaloo, " we shall hereafter
endeavor to ease them of the labor and trouble of
carrying burdens. Pack-horses are now being col
lected to take their places on the trail." In the sum
mer of 1717, Captain Hastings had written from the
same town, to General James Moore, the following
missive: " I send by these fellows four hundred and
seventy-three beaver-skins — fifteen packs and twenty-
three skins over — thirty to the pack. Give each man
for the carriage, one fourth yard of stroud-cloth, and
to those you load back, a pair of half-thicks each, or
cotton stockings."
A few months previous, the Conjurer, Charite
Hayge, had, with the assistance of ninety-one bur
deners, conveyed from Charleston to Tugaloo one
thousand four hundred and thirty seven pounds ster
ling worth of goods, for which service they each re
ceived two yards of duffil-cloth.
The Board likewise ordered, at this time^ a good

264 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
pasture ground to be prepared at the town of Tuga
loo, for the use ofthe horses, and provisions to be
collected at the same place for their pack-horsemen.
The urgent complaints ofthe Indians, when used
as burdeners iu the trade, were truly well-founded.
Their hardships were not alone confined to the toil
of conveying on their heads or backs, often in the
sultry heats of summer, heavy bales of skins and
goods, more than three hundred miles, but while
thus encumbered, they not unfrequently fell an easy
prey to treacherous enemies, who ambushed their
trails. In the fall of 1717, a party of burdeners on their
way from Keowee to Charleston, headed by a chief
of that town, and conveyed by an assistant trader
named John Sharp, was attacked on the path near
Saluda Old Town by a party of roving Cowetas.
Several of the burdeners were killed in the flight
that necessarily ensued, and among them a son of
the chief. Seven hundred and seventy skins were
the booty of the assailants. The record adds — " And
John Sharp was standing in front of the Keowee
party when the Cowetas fell upon them."*
Bartram met an aged Indian in one of their towns
of the Mississippi Valley, who could remember when
his tribe used no implements but those of native
manufacture; and he informed the naturalist that he
was the first man who brought the white people's
goods into his town, which he did on his back from
f, * Commissioners' Journal.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 265
Charleston, five hundred miles on foot, for they had
no horses then amongst them.
Notwithstanding the remonstrances of the Board,
and the interested opposition ofthe Carolina traders,
the intruders from Virginia continued, year after
year, to disturb the traffic and lessen its profits. Yet
among them there were several who conducted a
regular and honorable commerce with the Indians,
under licenses from the Board in Carolina. These
were, Nath. Evans, Richard Smith, George Smith,
David Crawly, John Evans, Richard Jones, Thomas
Edwards, Henry Tally and Wm. Dettipoole.*
These ancient traders penetrated to the towns of
the Over-hills by a famous war path that had been
known to the Cherokees, and the more northern
tribes, time immemorial. Passing down the North
Fork of the Holston, into the modern territory of
Tennessee, it crossed that stream near the present
site of Rogersville, thence diverging to the south
west till it reached the French Broad, it pursued the
northern bank of this river to within a short distance
of its mouth, crossed into the valleys lying between
it and the Little Tennessee, and thence across the
latter stream, at the mouth of the Tellico and the
Hiwassee, as far westward as the present town of
Chattanooga, f In the valleys of the Little Tennes
see and the Tellico, it branched in every direction
among the villages and settlements of the Over-
hills.

* Commissioners' Journal.
f Dr. Ramsay's History of Tennessee.
23

266 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
It is melancholy to relate, on authorities that can
not well be doubted, that one of the most serious
evils, both to the Indians and the whites, with which
the trade had to contend at this period, was the set
tling on the border of ignorant, dissolute clergymen,
who came, pretending to be missionaries ofthe Cross.
Adair does not hesitate to affirm that this, with the
general license system, lay at the bottom of all the
misrule and abuses that prevailed. The Indian
country was infested, the morals of the natives cor
rupted, and their civilization and improvement put
far out of reach of common means.
But these scandalous sins of commission in high
places, were not all the offence — would to God they
had been! From the beginning ofthe colonial set
tlement a deep wrong had been done the wild children
of the forest, in withholding from them not goods,
not powder, and lead, and guns from Charleston, but
the truth of the Gospel, whose whole tendency would
have been to remove their savage ferocity, to elevate
them as a people, and render them both more pro
fitable and less dangerous as neighbors. Yet at this
interesting period of their history was offered the
golden opportunity — the only opportunity that could
ever be presented for the hopeful operation of Chris
tian influences upon their savage minds and pas
sions, ere the canker of corruption had eaten too
deep. It was a season fraught with great results,
either of good or evil to the poor Cherokees. and it
passed quickly away.
Thisnieglect alone, under ordinary circumstances,
was sufficiently inviting to the rebukes of Heaven 5

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 267
but, in this particular case, fearfully so; and the rea
sons are not few or obscure, for believing that its
special visitations were, in more than one instance,
experienced in consequence.
It was in God's sight, and the sight of all good
men, a significant and important article in the char
ter granted by Charles Second to the lords-proprietors,
which declared to the world, that one of their chief
motives in undertaking the great enterprise of set
tling Carolina, was a profound Christian s.ympathy
for the poor native, heathen, who inhabited its wilds,
and an active zeal to propagate among them the
truths of the Gospel; yet it is the testimony of his
tory that just this much of their charter, and no more,
was sheer pretence and hypocrisy. During the
whole period in which they governed the province,
not one effort was made, in the exercise of their own
power, to disseminate the truths of Christianity,
either among the destitute colonists, whom their self-
interest had allured from Christian homes in Europe,
or among the benighted Indians of the surrounding
wilderness. " Until the Society for the Propagation ofthe Gos
pel in foreign parts, sent out a missionary to South
Carolina in 1701, that State had been entirely with
out a minister; and Oldmixion informs us, that the
only instruction which the Indians received prior to
that time, was from a French dancing-master, who
settled in Craven county, aud taught the natives to
dance and play upon the flute.*

* Note in Carroll's Collection

268 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
Samuel Thomas was the missionary sent to the
South. He began his labors among the Yamassees,
and is spoken of as a worthy, earnest man ; but he
did not long survive the heat and malaria of his new
field of toil. It will not be irrelevant to add here a
paragraph which appeared a few months ago in the
Register of Winnsboro': " Died at his plantation, in
Fairfield District, January l, 1859, John Peyere
Thomas, M.D., aged sixty-two years. Dr. Thomas
was born December 23, 1796, in St. Stephen's Parish,
South Carolina. He was a lineal descendant of Mr.
Samuel Thomas, who, in the year 1 702, was appointed
by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in
Foreign Parts,their first missionary to South Carolina;
and who, after having laid by his industry and devo
tion, a good foundation for his successors to carry on
the work he had begun, died much lamented for his
sound doctrine and exemplary life. Dr. Thomas
graduated in the South Carolina College in the class
of 1816. He afterwards graduated in Medicine in
the City of New York, having been a pupil of Valen
tine Mott, with whom he maintained a long friend
ship and correspondence."
The society soon sent out other missionaries, both
for the town and country, but we hear nothing of
their labors among the Cherokees and Catawbas,
either in their villages or on the border. At this time
the fierce controversy between the Dissenters and
Episcopalians, which had so long distracted the
colony, was still raging: the latter had, however, for
a moment triumphed — had become, not only the

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 269
dominant party of the province, but the established
church, in the same manner as the Episcopacy was
the established church in the mother-country.
The Dissenters were accustomed to say, however —
and it does not appear that they were moved alto
gether by prejudice or ill-will — that the clergy sent
over by the society, were far too intent upon making
proselytes to the Episcopal party, both among whites
and Indians, to be of any great service to the man
ners or souls of either.
A few years later occurred the dreadful massacre
of Pocatalligo, in the famous Indian war of 1715.
Cotton Mather, who then edited the Magnolia in the
colony of Massachusetts, wrote in a number of that
now invaluable record of colonial times, that such was
the vengeance of Heaven upon a>spirit among men,
which sought more to gain adherents to a creed than
converts to Christ.
These time-serving, ambitious efforts, were even
plied among the savages in their distant wilds. An
old trader tells us, in his own off-hand, original style,
of an incident, in point, which took place near the
border. He is sketching the character of a Cherokee
beauty, then well-known to the traders and to many
in Charleston. We will have occasion to refer, our
self, to her again. " The conversion of this rara
avis was in the following extraordinary manner:1
There was a gentleman who married her according
to the custom of the Cherokees, but observing that
marriages were commonly of short duration in that
wanton female government, he flattered himself that

270 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
he could better secure her affection by having her
confirmed, and baptized by a priest of the church,
and taught the duties of the conjugal relation by
virtue of a new Christian name and marriage. As
she was no stranger in the English settlements, he
soon persuaded her to go with him to the Congarees
to have the ceremony performed, and to get a supply
of fine things besides. The priest was one of those
sons of wisdom the church sent us in her maternal
benevolence, both to keep and draw us from dan
gerous errors, and, grasping at the opportunity of
making a valuable convert, he changed her from a
wild savage to a believing Christian in a trice.
He asked her a few articles of her creed, which
were soon answered by the bridegroom, as interpre
ter, after asking her a trifling question, relating to
other subjects than the matter before them. When
the priest proposed to her a religious question, the
bridegroom, by reason of her low ideas and peculiar
dialect, was obliged to mention some of the virtues,
and say he recommended to her a very strict chastity
in the married state. " Very well," said she, "that's
a good speech, and fit for every woman alike, unless
she is very old." The interpreter, after a short pause,
replied, that he was urging her to use a proper care
in domestic life. " You evil spirit," said she, " when
was I wasteful or careless at home ?" He replied,
" never." " Well, then," said she, " tell him his
speech is troublesome and light. But, where are
those fine things you promised me?" He bid her
be patient a little, and she should have plenty of

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 271
everything she liked best; at this she smiled. Now
the religious man was fully confirmed iu the hope
of her conversion; however, he asked her if slit un
derstood and believed the doctrine of the Trinity ?
The bridegroom swore heartily, that if he brought
out all the other articles of his old book, she both
knew and believed them, for she was a sensible
young woman.
The bridegroom had a very difficult part to act,
both to please the humor of his Venus, and to satis
fy' the inquisitive temper of our religious son of
Apoilo ; he behaved pretty well, however, till he was
desired to ask her belief of the uni-triuity, and tri
unity of the Deity, which the clergyman endeavored
to explain ; upon this he assured ihe priest that the
Indians did not mind what religion the women were
of, or whether they had any ; and that the bride
would take it very kindly if he shortened his dis
course, as nothing can disturb the Indian women so
much as long lectures.
The Dark-lantern (which was the name of the
bride) became very uneasy, both by the delay of
time, and the various passions she read in the bride
groom's face and speech, and she asked him sharply
the meaning of such a long discourse ? He instant
ly cried out that the whole affair was spoiled unless
it was brought to a speedy conclusion ; but the
clergyman insisted on fier belief of that article, before
he could proceed any farther. But, by way of comfort,
he assured him, it should be the very last question
he would propose, till he put the holy water ou her

272 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
face, and read over the marriage ceremony. The
bridegroom, revived at this good news, imme'diately
sent the bowl around with a cheerful countenance,
which the bride observing, she asked him the reason
of his sudden joyful looks. The answer he gave
her caused her to smile ; whereupon the priest im
agining her cheerful looks, proceeded from her swal
lowing his doctrine, immediately called for a bowl
of water to initiate his new convert. As the bride
groom could not mediate here, he persuaded her to
let the beloved man put some beloved water on her
face, and it would be a sure pledge of a lasting friend
ship between her and the English, and entitle her to
everything she liked best. She at last consented,
with this promise, and had the constancy, though so
ignorant a noviciate in our sacred mysteries, to go
through our catechism and the long marriage cere
mony. Her name was soon entered in capital letters
to grace the first title-page of the priest's church-book
of converts, which he often showed to his English
sheep, and, with much satisfaction, would inform
them, how, through his instrumentality, an Indian
Dark-lantern had been changed into a lamp of Chris
tian light. Afterwards, however, to his great grief,
he was obliged, on account of her adulteries, to erace
her name, and enter it anew on one of the crowded
pages of his female delinquents. The same author
adds: "I must here beg leave to be indulged iu a
few observations on our own American missionaries.
Many evils are produced by sending out ignorant,
and wicked persons as clergymen. Of the few 1

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 273
know, two of them dare not venture on repeating
but a few collects in the common-prayer. The very
rudiments of learning, not to say of religion, are
wanting in several of our missionary evangelists.
The best apology I have heard in their behalf is
that of an English nobleman, who asked a certain
bishop why he conferred holy orders ou such an ar
rant set of blockheads? He replied, because it was
better to have the ground plowed by asses than leave
it a waste, full of thistles. It seems very surprising
that those who are invested with a power of con
ferring ecclesiastical orders, should be so careless in
propagating the holy Gospel, and assiduous to pro
fane holy things, in appointing and ordaining illiter
ate, irreligious persons to the service. What is it
but saying, go teach the American fools? My bless
ing is enough. Cherish confidence, and depend
upon it they will not have the boldness to laugh at
you. Leave the remote and poor settlements to the
care of divine Providence, who is diffusive of his
rich gifts. The harvest is great elsewhere. Only
endeavor to episcopize the northern colonies ; it is
enough — there they are numerous, and able to pay
Peter's pence, as well as our old Jewish and new
parliamentary tithes ; and in time, your labors will be
crowned with success.
" What can we think at this distance, when we
see the number of blind guides our spiritual fathers
at home have sent us, to lead us clear of the wages
of error, but that they think of us with indifference,
and are studiously bent on their own temporal inter-

274 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
est, instead of our spiritual welfare. There are
thousands of the Americans, who, I believe, have not
heard six sermons in the space of above thirty years ;
and iu fact they have more knowledge than the
teachers who are sent to them, and too much religion
to associate wilh them.
" And even the blinder sort of the laity, not find
ing truth sufficiently supported by their blind guides,
grew proud of their own imaginary knowledge, and
some thereby proudly commenced teachers, by
which means they rend the church asunder; and, in
stead of peace and love, they plant envy, contempt,
hatred and revilings."*
In the several manuscript volumes relating to In
dian affairs, preserved in the Secretary of State's of
fice, we remember to have noticed but two or three
instances in which the mental or moral interest of
the Indians is at all mentioned or referred to. One
has already been related, of the little Indian boy,
who was apprenticed to Col. John Barnwell, on the
condition that he should be taught English and the
principles of Christianity. In a conference, to be
hereafter described, that was held between the Gov
ernor of Virginia and a self-appointed delegation from
the Over-hill Cherokees, — the former, among other
promises, assured the Indians that he would take
their children and have them educated in the college
just then established in that colony. This was Wil
liam and Mary's, recently burned to the ground with
its more precious treasure of old and rare books.
* Adair.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 275
In one of Gov. Glen's Indian talks in Charleston
he expressed the desire that an opportunity might
some day be offered of having all the Indians in
structed in the truths of Christianity. These fair
promises or good wishes were the nearest approxi
mation ever made, by either Church or State, to a
full conscientious discharge of its obligations to take
care of the religious and moral welfare of the sav
ages on the border. Yet at the period when they first
became acquainted with them, particularly the Chero
kees and Catawbas, there was doubtless no nobler or
more susceptible people to be found on the American
Continent. If, at that time, the same religious sympathy had
been manifested in their behalf, and the same prac
tical schemes set in operation for their instruction
and moral improvement, that have since been so
effectual in their new home beyond the Mississippi,
combined with free schools and the institution of
slavery, in elevating them from a condition of deep
degeneracy to their present superior position in the
scale of civilization, who can estimate the good that
must have accrued to them as a nation, by their
happy alliance with the conscientious English colo
nists? And how much ofthe suffering, how many
ofthe horrors and dark scenes of torture, of ruin and
of blood, would have been prevented on the border,
and long years of the reign of savage vengeance and
rapine ?
While on this subject, we must be allowed to an
ticipate for one moment: There is a curious and

276 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
very valuable old manuscript journal of a Rev. Hugh
McAdeu, which was snatched, as it were, from the
flames kindled by Lord Cornwallis in North Caro
lina, with the libraries and papers of Presbyterian
ministers, that sheds considerable light on the reli
gious condition of the upper-country in its early
periods. The reverend journalist, having traversed a large
portion of the settled backwoods of North Carolina,
crossed the Catawba, and penetrated some distance
into the almost primitive wilds ofthe more southern
colony, lt was in the fall of 1755: "On Monday,
20th of October, took my journey for Broad River —
sixty miles to the southward — in company with two
young men, who came this far to conduct me thither
— a place where never any of our missionaries had
been." Here, unfortunately, just at the point of the
expedition most interesting to us, several leaves are
missing from the journal. Twelve days, however,
after leaving Broad River, still moving towards the
south, the narrator resumes: "Monday, 2d of No
vember — preached to a number of those poor bap
tized infidels, many of whom, I was informed, had
never heard a sermon in all their lives before, and
yet several of them had families."
He here inserts an anecdote of an old man who,
he was told, had said to Governor Glen, when on a
visit in the upper-country, for the purpose of form
ing a treaty with the Cherokees, that he had never
seen a shirt, been in a fair, heard a sermon, or seen
a minister in all his life. Upon which the Governor

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 277
promised to send him up a minister, that he might
hear one sermon before he died. The minister
came and preached; and this was all the preaching
that had been' heard in the upper part of South Caro
lina before Mc Aden's visit.*
We shall have occasion to recur to this journal
when we come to treat of the early settlers and set
tlements in Upper Carolina.
At the head of the society that had been formed
in England for the propagation of the Gospel among
the heathens of the New World was the celebrated
Robert Boyle, equally as well known in the highest
walks of science as in many benevolent enterprises
for doing good to men. His measures were after
wards warmly seconded by the excellent Queeu
Mary, of Orange, and Dr. Compton, Bishop of Lon
don; and if their plans had been forwarded in Ame
rica, in the English settlements and on the frontiers
among Indians and traders, by agents as conscien
tious and pious as themselves, great results must
have followed.
Dr. Tennisou, Archbishop of Canterbury, was,
however, the immediate founder of the society to
which we have referred as having been chartered
for the propagation of the Gospel in foreign parts.
The people of England, we are told, welcomed the
enterprise with their usual ardor, and made the
society many munificent benefactions; so that in a
short time it was enabled to send out and support
# Foot's Sketches of North Carolina.

278 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
numerous missionaries in the plantations. A co-
temporary of this period thus describes the religious
and moral destitution of that portion of their field
which was embraced in Carolina: "About this time
the number of inhabitants in the colony amounted
to between five and six thousand, besides Indians
and negroes. In Charleston they had one minister
of the Church of England, and another of the
Church of Scotland; but in the country there was
no such thing as public worship, nor schools for the
education of children ; and the people living thus
scattered through a forest were likely in time to sink
by degrees into the same state of ignorance and bar
barism with the natural inhabitants of the wilder
ness."* This was at the beginning of the eighteenth
century. It is not to our purpose to detail what the society
did for Carolina; it is enough to know it did nothing
for the Cherokees and whites of the upper-country.
The old journal of McAden anticipates more than
half a century of the time before us, and he is suffi
ciently explicit on that point. His statement, too, in
regard to the startling destitution among the settlers
on the border is singularly corroborated by an Act
of that period, which wc find in the Statutes of
South Carolina :f "And whereas, the inhabitants of
the Congarees and the Waterees have never had any
minister of the Gospel to preach and perform, divine
service among them, — be it therefore enacted by the

* Hewit. jr v0|. iv-i p. ao.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 279
authority aforesaid, that the public treasurer of this
province, for the time being, shall pay to such minis
ter of the Gospel ofthe Established Church as shall
statedly preach and perform divine service at Saxe-
Gotha, or such other centrical place in the Conga
rees as the Commissioners hereinafter named, shall
direct, and six times a year, at least, at the most
populous places within forty miles of the same, the
sum of seven hundred pounds, current money, per
annum." The same favor was likewise extended to
the settlers in the old Fredericksburg township, at
the Pine Tree, now Camden, and all surrounding
settlements within forty miles. This statute was
ratified in the council chamber, January 27th, 1756.
If this was the first religious instruction that had
been supplied lhe people of the Congarees and Pine
Tree, we may well agree with McAden and others,
who assert, that up to this late period lite Indians
aud traders, and scattered pioneers of the upper-
country, were still utterly destitute of any stated
religious services.
And now, at last, the provincial establishment had
awakened, too late, to a sense of duty and to aggres
sive enterprise. Already were the pious, church-
loving Scotch-Irishry beginning to pour by steady-
streams into the long-neglected, unoccupied wilder
ness of north-western Carolina. The Lyleses had
built their cabins and were leveling the forest on
Broad River iu the present territory of Fairfield.
The Gowdies were at Ninety-Six, and the Calhouns,
on their way to the rich cane-pastures of the flat-
woods; but we must not anticipate.

CHAPTER XI.
Unprincipled white men the originators of most of the disturbances
that afflicted the trade — No class more safe in the Nation than
horse-thieves and pilferers — The declaration, in regard to these
abuses, of Anthony Dean, a Trader singularly learned and saga
cious — The Traders become loo numerous — They compete with
one another as pedlers and skulking hucksters of trifles and in
toxicating liquors — the office of Agent either discontinued or of no
practical efficiency— Blakeney, Chicken, Hastings and Charles-
worth Glover — Punch-houses are set up on (he border — The In
dians become more and more idle and depraved — The profits of
the trade fall off, &c.
It must be confessed, that unprincipled white men
were ever concerned with or at the bottom of most
of the difficulties that continued to disturb the Na
tion. And no wonder, when every horse-thief could
find means to screen himself from justice, and insti
gate the Indians to persecute and harass the traders.
This state of things could not have existed, if the
trade, after being properly regulated, had been judi
ciously and firmly directed; if suitable officers had
been placed and maintained in the Cherokee towns,
to superintend its interest, and see that justice was
done to all parties. It is a matter of surprise to us
at this day, that a government so remarkable for the
energy and excellence of its laws, and for its large
sympathies for the distressed of mankind, did not

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 281
take this decaying branch of traffic in hand, to cor
rect its abuses and relieve the sufferings of hundreds
connected with it. The more especially since it
would have formed a powerful barrier between the
outer English settlements aud a nation of wild people
whose friendship was ever too fickle to be implicitly
trusted; and it might have been brought to approxi
mate, at least, its former lucrativeness.
This neglect, it must be supposed, originated in
the want of truthful representations to the governor
aud members of the Assembly; otherwise the nume
rous complaints, that constantly came down, would
have been heard, the grievances redressed, and those
engaged in the trade could not have been forgotten.
The country would have been free from some ofthe
burden of taxation, the merchants have received
their dues, the poor trader subsistence, and the In
dians satisfaction and peace. Such is the substance
of a communication written by Anthony Dean —
himself a, trader among the Cherokees and a mau of
singular learning — to the Governor and Commis
sioners.* " Formerly, each trader had a license for two
towns or villages; but according to the present un
wise plan, two, and even three, Arab-like pedlers
skulk about in a single town. Several of them,
also, frequently emigrate into the woods with spiri
tuous liquors and cheating trifles, after the Indian
hunting camps in the winter season, to the groat in-
* Indian Books, Columbia.
24

282 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
jury or the regular trader, who supplies them with
all the conveniences of hunting ; for, as they will
sell even the shirts from their backs for intoxicating
liquors, they must be supplied anew in the fall of
the year by him, when they are in no condition to
remunerate him for his goods. At my first setting
out among them, a number of traders, who lived
contiguous to one another, joined, through our various
nations, in different companies, and were generally
men of worth ; of course, they would have a living
price for their goods, which they carried on horse
back to the remote Indian countries, at very great
expenses. These set an honest copy for the imita
tion of the natives; for, as they had much at stake,
their own interest and that of the government coin
cided. As the trade was, in this wise manner, kept
up to its just standard, the savages were industrious
and frugal; but, having lowered it, through a mis
taken notion of re-gaining their affections, we made
ourselves too cheap to them, and they despised us
for it. The trade should be raised again, to a reason
able fixed price; thus we shall keep them employed,
and ourselves secure. Were we to lower the trade,
even fifty per cent, below the prime cost of goods,
they would become only the more discontented, by
thinking we had been cheating them all the years
past. A mean, submissive temper can never man
age our Indian affairs. The qualities of a kind
friend, sensible speaker, and active, brisk warrior,
must constitute the character of a superintendent.
Great care must be taken not to give the Indians

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 283
offence, or a mean opinion of the people our super
intendents represent."*
It was, at first, the practice of the government, in-
accordance with the statute, to have responsible
agents to reside in the nation, in order to watch over
the interest of the trade, and to regulate the man
ners of both Indians and traders ; but this salutary
custom had, it appears, already fallen into disuse.
After Hastings, Blakeney, Charlesworth, Glover and
Chicken, we scarcely hear the name of agent or
superintendent mentioned in connection with the
Nation or Indian affairs, till the time of the cele
brated John Stuart, and his hardly less famous dep
uty, Alexander Cameron, of Lochaber, in the present
territory of Abbeville District.
At the same time that the office of the Indian
agent was thus practically abolished, it ceased, like
wise, to be that a few worthy men, alone, were
licensed to live and trade among the Indians, whose
influence and ability would have compensated, in
great part, for the loss of the accredited overseer.
The license system was thrown open to every one
who presented himself, with the legal fees, and the
Nation was quickly overrun with a troop of vicious
hucksters, whose depravity was only equalled by
their utter worthlessness. Men of honesty and mer
cantile pride were deterred from embarking in the
trade with such competitors.
Hence, the large and increasing traffic in rum with
* Adair.

284 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
the Indians; the establishment of punch-houses on
the border; the idleness and debauchery of the
savages ; the rapid falling off of the profits of the
tiade, and the consequent ruin of the regular traders;
the. dissatisfaction, complaints and violence of the
Indians, and their threatened defection to the French.
A deputation ofthe Creeks complained to the Board
in Charleston, that their people were unable to ob
tain a needed supply of goods, because their traders
expended such quantities of those they brought to
the Nation in clothing and decorating the persons of
their Indian mistresses.
In the prime of the trade, before the complete de
terioration of the Indian character, the life of the
trader, to one whose courage and love of wild ad
venture adapted him to such scenes, was intensely
fascinating. The Indians, upright, manly and in
dustrious, were no mean or disagreeable compan
ions; and their esteem and affection for the honest,
bold trafficker knew no bounds. They watched for
his welfare, and were ever ready to defend him with
their lives against any assailant. In the frequent
turmoils and dangers incident to a savage commu
nity, many of the traders owed their lives to this
friendly disposition of their Indian allies. Adair, in
several places, speaks of the great risk that any man
would have run in attempting to assault or to arrest
a trader of this description when surrounded by the
Indians of his town.
In the latter periods, however, when both Indians
and white men had sadly degenerated from their for-

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 285
mer hardy virtue, the endangered trader was much
oftener indebted for his safety to the devotion and
cunning of his corrupt Indian mistress. Many ro
mantic instances of this kind could be related.
There is one connected, by tradition, with the his
tory of Old Ninety-six, which we will relate in its
proper place.
Despite, however, the ardent attachments which
the traders often had the address to inspire in the
breasts of the savages, they were constantly beset
with dangers, and many good and true men among
them lost their lives. The records in the Secretary
of State's office, relating to Indian affairs, and the old
chroniclers of the times, abound in such incidents.
Yet we may venture the assertion that the half has
never been told ; many are the dark deeds of atro
city and blood, perpetrated in the gloomy woods aud
recesses of the Cherokee nation alone, whose history
no living soul shall know till that day come, when
all such spots shall be required to yield up their
dead, and their long-kept secrets as well.
Having fixed upon a village or town suited to his
purpose, the trader went to work, with the assistance
of the Indians, and soon built for himself and his
handsome Indian wife, a dwelling house; nor was
it a structure by any means uncomfortable or un
sightly, lt was usually put up in the regular Chero
kee or pioneer style of notched logs, with a roof of
boards; but, unlike most houses of the early immi
grants, it was neatly plastered, both inside aud ont,
with white porcelain clay. This was in the true

286 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
Cherokee manner, and greatly added to its comfort
and appearance. Its inner conveniences and furni
ture were not altogether rude or barbarous. The
trader's pack-horse trains, direct from Charleston,
enabled him to gratify the vanity of his copper-col
ored bride with chairs and neat bedsteads, instead of
the skins of buffaloes and bears, on which she had
been brought up. The utensils of the house-keep
ing department, except a few heir-looms of savage
life, were precisely similar to those of any immi
grant's cabin on the border. If we were to mention
a single article that seemed to be of prime domestic
use, it would be the iron tea-kettle; the manuscript
records frequently make mention of kettles, sent up
by the merchants of Charleston to the Cherokee
towns. In 1716, Elisha Prioleau was paid by the
Board nine pounds seven shillings and six-pence, for
a lot of seven kettles sent up to the Nation.
After the completion of his dwelling-house, the
trader next built, hard by it, a store-room, for the re
ception of his goods and peltries, and for general
business purposes. This was called his trading
house. The erection ofa poultry house, acorn crib,
and sweating oven for the use of his wife and half-
breed responsibilities, with which his cabin was soon
well filled, completed his private improvements. The
sweating oven was always fixed just in front ofthe
dwelling, and was in great requisition.
If the town, in which he is settling, happens to
be at war with any neighboring tribe, his whole es
tablishment is placed so as to be surrounded by the

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 287
houses ofthe Indians, in order to afford it the greater
security in case of an attack from the enemy. But
usually, as was the custom of the Indians, he built
at a considerable distance from any other dwelling,
for purposes of domestic convenience, in the rearing
of useful animals and garden vegetables. Adair
says, "that the Indian children of his time were as
destructive to the pigs and poultry running at large
about the villages as the wild-cats and foxes of the
woods; and, for these mischievous offences, their
fond, degenerate mothers, only called them ' mad
caps,' instead of dry-scratching them, as in former
and better times."
The " dry-scratch" was a famous mode of
punishment among all the savages of North
America, and except, perhaps, the Turkish bas
tinado, no infliction upon the naked skin can be
conceived more horrible. If any Anglo-American
mother is amused with this, let her ask herself the
question, whether there is not in the present day, and
in her own household, a leniency towards her way
ward offspring, which is filling our schools and col
leges with unmanageable, lawless youth, just as the
corrupt remissness of the ancient Cherokee mother,
reared in her Nation a generation of truce-breakers
and moral vipers, who, in due time, fell in savage
furv upon the defenceless families of our immigrant
fathers. We learn from Lawson the reasons assigned by
the traders for their intimate association with the
Indian women. " The English traders are seldom

288 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
without an Indian female for his temporary wife,
alleging these reasons as sufficient to allow of such a
familiarity. First, they being remote from any white
people, that it preserves their friendship with the
'^heathens, they esteeming children begotten by white
men much above those by native husbands; the In
dian mistress ever securing her white friend provi
sions whilst he stays amongst them. And, lastly, this
correspondence makes them learn the Indian tongue
much the sooner, they being of the Frenchman's
opinion,' how that an English wife teaches her hus
band more English in one day than a school-master
in a week. But one great misfortune, which often
times attends those who converse with these savage
women, is that their childen by them, are seldom
educated otherwise than in a state of infidelity; for
it is a certain rule and custom amongst all the sav
ages of America, that I was ever acquainted withal,
to let the children always fall to the woman's lot.
When man and wife separate, all the children go
along with the mother. And, therefore, on this
score, it ever seems impossible for the Christians to
get their children, which they have by these Indian
women, away from them, whereby they might bring
them up in the knowledge of Christian principles.
Nevertheless, we often find that Englishmen aud
other Europeans, that have been accustomed to the
conversation of these savage women and their way
of living, have been so allured with that careless
sort of life, as to be constant to their Indian wives,
so long as they lived, without ever desiring to return

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 289
again amongst the English, although they had very
fair opportunities of advantages in their country, of
which sort I have known several."
The education of their mongrel offspring in the
precepts of Christianity, did not, it is quite probable,
give many of the traders any great solicitude ; but, it
cannot be doubted, that they often found excellent
wives in their beautiful savage consorts, and spent
with them cheerful and contented lives. And it
must not be taken for granted, that because the bold
adventurer, thus associated himself with the barba
rians, that he was, therefore, cut off from any of the
necessaries of life, or even from many of its luxu
ries. Under the care of his thrifty wife, his crib
was usually well stored with corn; the yard swarmed
with poultry, and the common pastures with his
swine, horses and cattle. Cherokee women of intel
ligence made the best housekeepers on the conti
nent; in their habits and persons, they were as
cleanly as purity itself, and yet knew from child
hood what it was to labor with their own hands, and
provide every domestic comfort. Lawson observes :
" The floors of their cabins are never paved nor
swept, so that they always have a loose earth on
them, yet I never felt any ill or unsavory smell in
them; should we live in our houses as they do,
we should be poisoned with our own nastiness,
which confirms these Indians to be, as they really
are, some of the sweetest people in the world. They
are of a very hale constitution ; their breaths are as
sweet as the air they breathe in, and their women
25

290 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
seem to be of that tender composition, which better
fits them for the blandishments of love than the
rough drudgery of labor." Bartram and other old
chroniclers, speak in the same strong terms of the
charms of the young Cherokee women.
In their proper seasons, the woods of the Nation
abounded in many varieties of nuts, and delicious
fruits. Milk and butter were plenty, and no great
expense supplied them with sugar and other grocer
ies from Charleston, with which materials the females
were as expert in making savory pies, tarts, puddings,
and cakes of different sorts, as the boasted house
wives of the English settlements.
An old trader relates : " Till of late years the hon
est traders lived among the Indians in the greatest
plenty. They abounded with hogs, which made
very firm streaked bacon, and much preferable to
that in English settlements, chiefly owing to the
acorns, and hickory-nuts they feed on. But the In
dians are now grown too proud and lazy by having
goods too cheap and plenty, that very few raise any.
There are, at least, five times the number of trading
houses in all the western Indian nations, since gen
eral licenses, through the wisdom of our civil rulers,
were first granted, than was formerly, while experi
ence directed South Carolina to pursue and enforce
proper measures. Such a number of lewd, idle
white savages, are very hurtful to the honest part of
the traders, by heightening the value of vegetables,
especially iu time of light crops, to an exorbitant
price ; for, by inebriating the Indians with their poi-

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 291
sonous liquors, they purchase the necessaries of life,
at four or five hundred per cent cheaper than the
orderly traders ; which is a great check to the few
who love their country, and observe the strict laws
of trade.
" The industrious old traders, have still, however,
a plenty of hogs, which they raise in folds, mostly
on the weeds of the fields, during the whole time the
crops are in the ground ; likewise some hundreds of
fowls at once, and plenty of venison."*
In another place the same narrator adds : " I am
writing this by the side of an Indian female, as great
a princess as ever lived among the ancient Peruvi
ans or Mexicans, and she bids me be sure not to
mark the paper wrong, as do most of the traders,
otherwise it will spoil the making of good bread or
hommony, and of course beget the ill will of our
white women."
The every-day life of the trader in the Nation,
was one of primitive and most delightful freedom
and simplicity. No hollow-hearted etiquette, no
grinding social customs, trammeled or annoyed him ;
he dressed as best suited him, and conformed to
nothing except as his own taste or inclination prompt
ed him. No mode of living could more nearly ap
proximate than his the complete ideal of social
liberty. Yet there were privileges, which the dignity and
self-respect, even of savages denied him. He could
* Adair.

292 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
not with impunity, pry into the sacred, religious
rites of the Indians, nor abuse the sanctity of their
marriage relations. Indeed he was made constantly
to feel that the preservation of his character for so
briety, truthfulness, and fair-dealing, was as essen
tial to his popularity, and pecuniary interest in the
Nation, as in the civilized community he had left.
A dishonest, drunken trader, was ever an object of
contempt to the Indians, and his life worth but little,
when the solitude of the forest or a drunken brawl,
offered an opportunity to cut him off.
It is true that the Cherokees, unlike every other
native tribe of the continent, were found to have no
formal law against adultery ; but it had not always
been so ; and though Adair uses the following lan
guage, it would appear that this heinous crime was
not altogether free from danger of punishment, in
his time, in the Nation : " They have been a consid
erable while under petticoat-government, and allow
their women full liberty to plant their brows with
horns, as oft as they please, without fear of punish
ment." Yet, he, immediately after, admits that he
had known a case among this people, in which one
of the guilty parties was arraigned, aud proceeds to
describe minutely the penalty awarded by the judges
— an infliction too horrible to relate.
The ordinary punishment was severe enough.
" They commonly begin with the adulterer, because
of the two he is most capable of making his escape.
They generally attack him at night, by a surprise,
lest he should make a desperate resistance, and

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 293
blood be shed to cry for blood. They fall on, eager
and merciless, whooping their revengeful noise, and
thrashing their captive with long-knoted flails; some
over his head and face ; others on his shoulders and
back. His belly, sides, legs and arms are gashed
all over, and at last, he happily seems to be insensi
ble of pain ; then they cut off his ears.''
The same author adds: "The traders' ears are
often in danger among the Indians by the sharpness
of this law, and their practice of admitting the testi
mony of foolish children as legal evidence ; but gen
erally, either the tender-hearted females or their
friends, give them timely notice of their danger.
Then they fall to the rum-keg, and as soon as they
see the pursuers approaching they stand to arms in a
threatening parade. Formerly the traders, like so
many British tars, kept them in proper awe, and con
sequently prevented them from attempting any mis
chief. But since the patenteed daublers set foot in
their land, they have gradually become worse every
year, murdering valuable, innocent British subjects
at pleasure ; and when they go down to Charleston,
they receive presents as a tribute of fear, for which
these Indians upbraid and threaten us. The Mus-
cogees lately dipt off the ears of two white men for
supposed adultery.
For the first offence, the ears ofthe adulterer were
cut off close to the head ; if he repeated the crime,
his nose and upper lip were sacrificed ; and for the
third offence, he was sometimes put to death.

294 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
Bartram gives rather an amusing account of an
affair of this kind, which he witnessed, while travel
ing through the Creek Nation, in 1777: "On my
arrival at the town of Mucclasse, I was not a little
surprised at a tragical revolution in the family of my
friend the trader* — his stores shut up, and guarded
by a party of Indians. In a few minutes, however,
the whole affair was related to me. It appeared that
this son of Adonis had been detected in an amorous
intrigue with the wife of a young chief, the day after
his arrival. The chief was out on a hunt, but came
in next day ; and upon information of the affair — the
fact being confirmed — he, with his friends and
kindred, resolved to exact legal satisfaction, which,
in this case, is cutting off both ears of the delinquent
close to the head. This being determined upon, he
took the most secret and effectual method to effect
his purpose. About a dozen young Indian fellows,
conducted by the injured husband, having provided
and armed themselves with knotty cudgels of green
hickory, which they concealed under their mantles,
in the dusk of the evening, paid a pretended friendly
visit to the trader at his own house, when the hus
band, feigning a private matter of business, took him
aside in the yard, then whistling through his fingers,
he was instantly surrounded, knocked down, and
stripped to his skin, and beaten with their knotty
bludgeons. He had the cunning, however, to feign

* A Mr. Tap  y, with whose caravan he had just arrived from
Mobile.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 295
himself speechless before they had really killed him,
which he supposed was their intention ; and when
he lay as if dead, the executioner drew out his knife
with the intention of taking off his ears. This res
pite gave him time to reflect, when instantly spring
ing up, he ran off, leaped the fence, and had the
good fortune to get into a dark swamp, where he
miraculously eluded the pursuit of his enemies, and
finally made a safe retreat to the house of his father-
in-law, the chief of the town, throwing himself under
his protection, who gave him his word that he. would
do him all the favor that lay in his power. This
account I had from his own mouth; for, hearing
of my return, he sent a trusty messenger, by whom
I found access to him. He farther informed me
that there had been a council of the chiefs of the
town convened to deliberate on the affair, and their
final determination was that he must lose his ears
or forfeit all his goods, which amounted to upwards
of one thousand pounds sterling; and even that for
feiture would not save his ears unless Mr. George
Gulphin interposed in his behalf; and after all, the
injured Indian declares he will have his life. He
entreated me with tears to make what speed I could
to Silver Bluff, and represent his dangerous situation
to Mr. Gulphin, and solicit that gentleman's speedy
interference — which I assured him I would under
take."* Of the success of our author's friendly mission to
* Bartram, p. 446.

296 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
Silver Bluff, and of the fate of the unfortunate
trader, or his ears, we are left wholly to conjecture.
It is quite probable, however, that long before the
potent influence of Col. Gulphin could reach his
case, his life, perhaps, had paid the penalty of his
crime, and of the violated code of the Muscogee.
Those coy Indian beauties, while they were gen
erally faithful to their English husbands, and made
them industrious, thrifty wives, were nevertheless,
not always the simple, unsophisticated creatures
that many may be disposed to regard them from
their wild breeding in the woods. The true femi
nine characteristics are observable in every form of
society, and only await the proper opportunities and
culture to be developed, either in the loveliness of
an angel or the hateful depravity of Jezebel.
The same author quoted last, in the interesting
narrative he gives of his explorations in East Florida,
several years previous to the Revolution, tells the
following story of a young trader from North Caro
lina, whom he met on the St. John's: "On our ar
rival at Spaulding's upper trading house, we found
it occupied by a white trader, who had for a com
panion a very handsome young Seminole woman.
Her father, who was a prince, by the name of the
White Captain, was an old chief of the Seminoles,
and, with part of his family, was encamped in an
orange grove, near the stores, having lately come in
from a hunt.
This white trader, soon after our arrival, delivered
up the store-houses to my companion, and joining

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 297
his father-in-law's camp, soon after went away into
the forest on a hunting tour, and to trade with the
flying camps of Seminoles. He is unhappy in his
connection with his beautiful savage. It is but a
few years since he came here, I think, from North
Carolina, a stout, well-bred genteel man, active, and
of a heroic, amiable disposition; and by his indus
try, honesty, and engaging manners, had gained
the affections of the Indians, and soon made a little
fortune by trafficking with the Seminoles; when,
unfortunately, meeting with this potent charmer,
they were married in the Indian fashion. He loves
her sincerely, as she possesses every perfection in
her person to render a man happy. Her features
are beautiful, and manners engaging; innocence,
modesty and love appear to a stranger in every
action and movement; and these powerful graces
she has so artfully played upon her beguiled and
vanquished lover and unhappy slave, as already
to have drained him of all his possessions, which
she dishonestly distributes among her savage rela
tions. He is now poor, emaciated, and half-dis
tracted, often threatening to shoot her, and afterwards
himself; yet, he cannot summon resolution enough
even to leave her; but now endeavors to drown
and forget his sorrows in deep draughts of brandy.
"This is a striking instance," he adds "of the
power of beauty in a savage, and her art in improv
ing it to her private ends." Does it not illustrate,
as well, the fascinations of an artful beauty of
many a civilized community? " It is, however, but

298 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
doing justice to the virtue of the Seminoles, and of
the American aborigines, to observe that the charac
ter of this woman is condemned and detested by
her own people, of both sexes. If her husband
were to turn her away she could not marry again,
and would be regarded as a harlot."
The Cherokee towns were now swarming with the
half-breed offspring from this opportune amalgama
tion of the vigorous, unadulterated English stock
with the more beautiful and robust of the Indian
females; and while the native blood was fast deteri
orating from the fearful licentiousness of the women,
and other causes already enumerated, this generation
grew up into a race whose physical and intellectual
energies have been active and prominent in develop
ing the civilization of the modern Cherokees. The
same remark is applicable to the other leading na
tions of the South, and the names of McGillivray,
Ross, Ridge, and Adair, belong to the history of their
maternal ancestry.
Alexander McGillivray, the celebrated Chief of the
Creeks, was the son ofa Scotchman named Lachlan
McGillivray, by Sehoy Marchand, a princess of the
wind, and whose father was a Captain Marchand,
commandant of the old French Fort Toulouse.
Lachlan ran away from wealthy parents, living in
Dunmaglass, Scotland, when a boy of sixteen, and
landed in Charleston in 1735. Pickett thus describes
him: " He then had no property, except a shilling in
his pocket, a suit of clothes upon his back, a red
head, a stout frame, an honest heart, a fearless dis-

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 299
position, and cheerful spirits, which seldom became
depressed." The English were at this time conducting a lucra
tive commerce with the Chickasaws and a portion of
the Creeks; Lachlan, while strolling over the town
came upon the busy quarters of the traders in the
western suburbs, and beheld with astonishment
hundreds of pack-horses, pack-saddles, and curious
looking men in half-savage garbs, together with huge
piles of packed merchandize, ready for conveyance
to the Indian country. He became a pack-horse
driver on the spot. Ten years after he married
Sehoy, at the Hickory-nut Ground, near old Fort
Toulous, and became very rich. Alexander, their
first child, studied Latin and Greek, in Charleston,
and while yet a young man, succeeded, in right of
his mother, to the Chieftaincy of the Creek Nation.
The regular experienced English trader was a man
of no ordinary traits of character, he was always re
markable for enterprise, shrewdness, courage, and an
astonishing fertility of expedients. Difficulties and
dangers that appalled most men only served to stim
ulate his energy and sharpen his wit. He encoun
tered many risks, as well as hardships, both on the
lonely trading path and in the Indian country, while
in the exciting pursuit of his favorite calling. And
such were the charms of the wild adventures or the
prospects it held out of speedily enriching all who
engaged in it, that there were not wanting men at
the head of the peltry trains, and in remote trading
posts, whose learning and abilities might have raised

300 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
them to places of distinction amid the rivalries of
civilized society. In another place we shall have
occasion to speak particularly of these.
Most of the traders from motives of expediency — a
few no doubt from choice — adopted the dress and
many of the habits of the savages. Indeed, we are
told, that after a year or two's residence in the
Nation, those who loved their wild life so well as to
desire to obliterate the last remains of their Christian
bringing-up, effected so great a change in their ap
pearance and complexion by the strange dress they
had assumed, by exposure, and the constant use of
bear's oil on the skin, as to be almost uudistinguish-
able from the native Indians.
It was a curious custom of the Cherokees that as
soon as a trader had proved himself acceptible and
popular in the Nation, some warrior would select
him as a fast friend and confidant; and having ex
changed his clothes for his, would thus exhibit to
each other, and to all around them, a constant pledge
of their mutual regard and affection. And this was
no unmeaning parade, at least, on the part of the
Indian ; it bound his heart as firmly, as does the eat-
iiig of bread with an enemy, the hand of the wan
dering Arab. In not a few instances it secured the
lives of these bold adventurers when perhaps no
other human instrumentality could have effected it.
We know of no custom like this among any other
people, except the ancient Jews — could the Indians
of America have derived it from them ? " Then
Jonathan and David made a covenant, because he

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 301
loved him as his own soul. And Jonathan stripped
himself of the robe that was upon him, and gave it
to David, and his garments, even to his sword, and
to his bow, and to his girdle.''*
It was 'not often that a trader ventured upon the
path, or iu any part of the Nation, without being
well armed. The frontiers were seldom free from
the marauding cut-throats of their own color and
race, and often swarmed with hostile Indians at war
with the Cherokees and Catawbas. He was, more
over, too well versed in the subtleties of Indian char
acter, not to know that even the friendly Cherokees
were always the more respectful and trustworthy for
being kept in awe of his prowess. They had a su
preme contempt for any man, who either would not
or could not stand up in his own defence.
On retiring to his bed at night, he took the inva
riable precaution to hang his arms — a gun, toma
hawk, knife and pistols — on the wall just above his
head, in quick reach of his hand. He knew not at
what moment he might need them ; vigilance being
the watchword of his life. At this very period, or
only a few years previous, a fearful massacre of a
large number of traders had been perpetrated by the
enraged Creeks, at A palachucla — one of their ancient
towns ou the Chattahoochee. Nearly all the traders
at that juncture, in the Nation, were cut off at a sin
gle blow.
They had repaired to Apalachucla from their dif-
# 1st Sam. ch. 18.

302 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
ferent towns, in hopes of finding refuge, on being
apprized, by their temporary wives, that the Indians
designed to attack them ; and were all assembled in
one house, under a promise from the chiefs, that they
should be protected. But while the former were de
liberating in council on the means of doing it, the
Indians, in great numbers, surrounded the house,
and set it on fire. All of them, to the number of
eighteen or twenty, miserably perished in the flames.
Bartram remarks of this tragedy: " I was shown by
a trader the ruins of the house in which they were
burned." Adair and other narrators abound in thrilling inci
dents, illustrative of the perils that beset the traders
in the Indian country. About the year 1750, there
lived at the Congarees an experienced and much-re
spected Catawba trader, of the name of H. G. — Herman
Geiger. We found in the manuscripts of the Secre
tary of State's Office, the name of Herman Geiger,
as one of the first settlers and Indian traders at the
Congarees. There can be little doubt that those ini
tials, in Adair's history, refer to him.
On one occasion he had been employed, it seems,
by the provincia! authorities in Charleston, to go, in
company with a member of the Board of Indian
Trade, to the Cherokee Nation, in search of the pre
cious metals, which were supposed to exist in inex
haustible abundance in that mountainous region.
Having set out, and reached in safety one of the
middle towns, they there discovered several of their
friendly settlement Indians in the hands of a party

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 303
of hostile Canadian savages, who had captured them
near Charleston, and were carrying them prisoners
to their towns in the north.
The settlement Indians were a class of the natives
who, preferring the habits and customs of the whites,
had settled in and around their plantations in the
low country, and looked to them for protection, which
they appear very much to have needed ; for they
were objects of contempt and hatred to all other In
dians, and were little able to defend themselves when
attacked by their enemies. In more than one place
in the manuscript journals, they are called the parch-
corn Indians — a name of derision which they had
received, either from the lower class of whites, or the
Indians of the Nation. They appear to have been
very useful, and were evidently favorites on the plan
tations. Geiger's pity, as well as patriotism, was aroused at
the sight of these poor fellows in the hands of their
merciless enemies ; he knew full well the, doom that
awaited them at the end of their long journey, and
resolved to rescue them at every hazard. At this
period the old friendship of the Cherokees for the
English had greatly waned; they were on terms of
close amity with the Canadians and the bloodthirsty
Savannahs ofthe Ohio, and, as before intimated, the
captives were objects of their special aversion.
The assistance ofthe traders of the town was ne
cessary, and through the mediation of one of them,
the leading Cherokees at length consented to remain
neutral in the affair.

304 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
Geiger now put himself at the head of several
of the traders, among whom was Colonel Fox,
and going to the camp of the Canadians, who were
dancing, whooping, and cursing the English at a
wild rate, seized and bore off the prisoners, despite
the loud threats of the savages; and having placed
them in a house, the bold Englishmen stood around
it upon their arms, till an opportunity offered to
supply them with provisions and send them safely
home. All was well so far; and little did Geiger think,
that this act of kindness to the friendly Indians
would one day cost him his life. But so it was.
The following summer, having set out for the Ca
tawba Nation, in company with a half-breed, the
favorite son of T. B., a famous old trader, they were
intercepted and captured by several of the very party
of Canadians from whom Geiger had delivered the
domestic Indians. The savages, fearful of the Ca
tawbas, hastened with their captives beyond the
mountains, but ventured to encamp several days a
short distance from the Cherokees, apparently for no
other purpose than to receive the congratulations of
those already hostile Indians, who freely visited their
camp and exulted with them in their good fortune.
The authorities of the province very soon hearing
of Geiger's capture, dispatched an express to the
towns of Keowee, Sugaw and Seneca, requesting the
lower Cherokees to rescue the prisoners if they
passed in reach of their part of the Nation ; adding
the inducement of a considerable reward. But so

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 305
far from doing this, they threatened the lives of sev
eral of the traders who were preparing to attack the
Canadians, in order to save their comrades; and
they were thus suffered to escape.
The savages now resumed their flight, and bear
ing to the north-west, in order to avoid all possible
danger from the intrepid Catawbas, they crossed the
present territory of Tennessee and Kentucky, gradu
ally turning due northward again towards their
towns on the Ohio or iu Canada. Geiger, worn-
down at length by the fatigues of their rapid marches
and the excessive heat of the weather, entreated
them to put him to death aud end his misery ; but
regarding this as only indicative of his warlike spirit,
they conceived a respect for him, and having pre
pared a sort of litter, bore him with great care, in
this manner, until they reached a point where the
parly were to divide on two different routes, each
division taking a prisoner.
Geiger resolved to go no farther; his sufferings
may have been great, but he, no doubt, anticipated
the more dreadful tortures and death that awaited
him in the enemy's country. Having bid his com
panion a last farewell, and seen him out of sight and
hearing, he turned to the savages and told them to do
their worst, for farther with them he would not go.
Whereupon, enraged at his obstinacy, they buried
their tomahawks in his head, and left him dead on
the spot.
The old chronicler, who gives us these particulars,
adds: "The half-breed afterwards got safe home,
26

306 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
and told us of the death of our much-lamented
friend, who died, as he lived, always despising life
when it was to be preserved only in a state of sla
very. And though he was lost to his family and
the country by a manly performance of the duties of
his office, in which he engaged by the pressing
entreaties of the Governor,* yet his widow was
treated ungenerously and basely, as was Capt. J. P.,f
at the Congarees."
The winter months, with a portion of the spring,
constituted the chief hunting-season in which the
Indians collected their peltries. The traders fre
quently accompanied them, encamping with them
in the woods to the end of the hunt; their packs
were usually made up by the first of May, at which
time they set out with the trains for Charleston or
Augusta; leaving their wives and the Indian fel
lows to begin the operation of planting the crop of
corn, beans, and other vegetables, for the year.
It has already been related, that the chief agents
in the Nation, under the Commissioners, were Hast
ings, Glover and Blakeney. They were all, at dif
ferent times, stationed at Savannah Town. Hast
ings served a short time besides at Tugaloo. Over
and above their regular salaries, these agents were
allowed twenty pounds yearly, to furnish their tables
in the Nation, and defray expenses, when called on
public business to Charleston. Hastings appears to
? Governor James Glen, against whose policy and acts Adair is
often exceedingly severe.
f Who was Capt. J. P., ofthe Congarees ?

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 307
have been a more conscientious public man than is
usually met with in similar positions at the present
day. On one occasion, when expecting to pay a visit to
Charleston, he sent down an humble petition from
Tugaloo to the Board, begging, that he might be
allowed to bring with him, on his own account, a
lot of the beautiful baskets manufactured by the
Cherokees, to be distributed as presents among his
friends in town. The Commissioners had the little
ness to deny the request; but the lasting record of it
in their journals testifies as well to the petitioner's
honesty and kindness of heart. John Chester and
William Hatton were assistant factors in the Nation
in 1717; the one at Keowee, and the other at
Tugaloo. There was a character of the name of Edward
Maxwell, who is mentioned in several places of the
records of this period for the performance of extraor
dinary express service between Charleston and the
border. This appears to have been his business.
He resided at Savannah Town. In one place it is
ordered by the Board, that Edward Brailsford, Cash
ier of Indian Trade, pay to Edward Maxwell, or
order, the sum of ten pounds, for an extraordinary
express he had just rode from Savannah Town to
Charleston; and for others that he had rode between
the same points before this date.
In 1717, he brought down from Charlesworth
Glover, Agent and Commandant at Fort Moore, to
the Board, a letter giving an account of Colonel

308 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
Mackey's having been attacked by hostile Indians,
three days' journey from Tugaloo towards Charles
ton, with the loss of a soldier, named Wilson, and
an Indian killed, and several horses that fell into the
hands of the enemy; and that no goods had yet
been taken on the trading path. This adventure
occurred on the old Keowee trail, and during the
prevalence of a fierce war between the Creeks and
Cherokees. We shall recur to it again, as affording
a most remarkable confirmation of a well-known
tradition, that accounts for the origin ofthe name of
Wilson's Creek in Abbeville District.
Colonel Mackay was at this time the leader of a
company of rangers, who scoured the country in the
vicinity of the Cherokee border. " Tell the Indians,"
said the Commissioners at this period, to a trader just
setting out for the Nation, " that we have a ranging
army on our frontier or outer settlements." Henry
Webb, and Benjamin Edwards, are also mentioned
as traders, at this time, among the Cherokees. In
1717, John Sharp was assistant factor at Quanasse;
Hill, at Cowee ; Dauge, at Terrequa and Tennassee.
Charite Hayge, who has already been mentioned
as an influential conjurer of Tugaloo, was greatly
esteemed by the public authorities. In 1718, it was
ordered by the Board, " that a keg of rum be pro
vided, and sent up by the pack-train, now starting to
the Nation, as a present to Charite Hayge, of
Tugaloo, from the Commissioners, in remembrance
of friendship." At the same time, John Coleman
was appointed to be chief of the pack-horsemen, em-

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE- CHEROKEES. . 309
ployed in the Cherokee trade ; and John Milligan,
Joseph Ponder, John O'Brian, John Poor, aud John
Carroll, to accompany and serve under him.
The present of a keg of rum from the Board, was
the surest evidence of their regard for a head-man ;
for no gift could have been more acceptable, and it
implied, at the same time, a confidence, on their part,
that the chief would use it with discretion. In
October of the same year, the Commissioners sent
up a special messenger to inform Charite Hayge
that they would soon erect, according to pro
mise, the trading-house and fort at the Congarees.
It has been before intimated, that the first attempt to
establish this post proved a failure ; the same mes
senger now acquaints the Conjurer with the reason.
In the month of January previous, the Board pur
chased, from one Thomas Wilkinson, a periago boat,
for the purpose of sending up men, provisions and
utensils, to build the fort. On the 28th, Captain
James Howe was ordered to take twelve men, and a
carpenter named Sam Stan wood, and proceed up
the river, in the periago, to the Congarees. Stan-
wood was to direct the work. The order was never,
however, carried out by Howe. The very night,
perhaps, before he was to embark, a party of ma
rauding white men stole the Commissioners' boat,
and succeeded in making off with it to safe quarters.
This affair delayed the work till the following year,
and placed it in the hands of a different party of men.
In June 1716, a great council was held at Tugaloo,
presided over by the Conjuror, at which Hastings

310 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA.
was present. The proceedings were sent, soon after,
to Charleston, attested by the mark of the former.
This was, in all probability, a treaty relating to the
trade; for the important statute, already presented,
by which it passed under the control of the govern
ment, was enacted by the Assembly, the last day of
the same month.

CHAPTER XII.
The Pack-horsemen employed in the Trade — The Great Chickasaw
Trading-path — Hostile Incursions of the Creeks into the Territory
of the Cherokees and Catawbas — Description of a Caravan of
Pack-horses — Old Fort Charlotte — George Whitfield, nephew of,
the celebrated Rev. George Whitfield — John Lewis Gervais —
The Wedding at White Hall— Andrew Williamson— The Chicka
saw Path between Charleston and Savannah Town — Peter St.
Julian — The Old Savannah Trail connecting the Cherokee Towns
with Savannah Town and Augusta — The Founding of Augusta,
1736 — Bartram visits it in 1776 — His Description of the ruins of
Fort Moore, &c.
Next to the trader, the most interesting characters
employed in the traffic with the Indian Nation, were
"the pack-horsemen. These frequently consisted, in
part, of boys, under the direction of an experienced
voyageur ; and their life was one of exposure, hard
ships, and, not unfrequently, of thrilling adventure.
In peace, and in war, and every vicissitude of
weather, they were found upon the path. When
menaced, however, by lurking enemies, it was usual
for several caravans to unite for mutual protection;
yet they were not unfrequently attacked, the drivers
and traders murdered or routed, and their horses
and goods seized by the marauders. Many instances
of this kind could be related.
The great Chickasaw trading-path was particularly
infested by hostile Creeks and Choctaws. The for-

312 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
mer were accustomed, when at war with the Chero
kees and Catawbas — and they were not often on
friendly terms with those nations, till the time of
Governor Glen — to extend their predatory incur
sions beyond the Savannah, and lay in ambuscades
on that portion of the old Keowee trail that traversed
the territory now embraced in the Districts of Edge
field and Abbeville.
An illustration, from life, of the daily movements
and stages of one of these caravans, will not be un
interesting. It occurs, however, at a period some
what later than the one whose history we are now
relating. Early iu the spring of 1776, Bartram hav
ing completed his tour among the Lower and Over-
hill Cherokees, returned to Dartmouth, at the mouth
of Broad River of Georgia, and there learned that a
company of adventurers for the West were quite for
ward with their preparations for setting out. He
determined to join them.
"Our place of rendezvous,'' he says, "was'Fort
Charlotte, on the opposite side ofthe Savannah, and
about" a mile from Fort James." Old Fort Char
lotte stood close on the east bank of the Savannah,
in the present District of Abbeville. The waste of
time, and still more ruinous floods from the river,
have not yet completely demolished the once power
ful stone-walls and bastions of this venerable relic
of the past. We shall have occasion to speak of it,
yet again, in a more interesting connection.
"On the 22d of June, we set out from Fort Char
lotte, in company with Mr. George Whitfield, who

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 313
was chief of our caravan. We traveled about twenty
miles, and lodged at the farm of Mons. St. Pierre, a
French gentleman, who received and entertained us
with great politeness and hospitality. Next morn
ing, after breakfast, we set off again, continuing nine
or ten miles farther down the river, where we stop
ped at a plantation, the property of one of our com
panions, where we were joined by the rest of the
company. After dining here, we set off again, and
proceeding six miles down the river, we crossed over
into Georgia, taking a road which led us into the
great trading path from Augusta to the Creek Nation.
Early in the evening we arrived at the Flat Rock,
where we lodged. This is a common rendezvous for
the traders and Indians, and lies near the bank of
one ofthe head branches ofthe Ogechee.
" This evening, two companies of Indian traders
from Augusta arrived and encamped near us ; and
as they were bound for the Nation, we concluded to
unite with them; it was a favorable opportunity, in
case of necessity. Next morning, we set forward
together. " I thought worthy of note, a singular method the
traders made use of to reduce the wild young horses
to their hard duty. When one persisted in refusing
to receive his load — if threats, the whip, and other
abuse prove insufficient — after being haltered, a
pack-horseman catches the tip of one of his ears
between his teeth, and sharply pinches it, when in
stantly the furious creature trembling, stands per
fectly still till he is loaded.
27

314 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
"Our caravan now consisted of about twenty men
and sixty horses; we made a formidable appearance,
having now little to apprehend from predatory bands
or outlaws.
"At evening we came to camp on the banks of a
beautiful creek, a branch of Great Ogechee, called
Rocky Comfort, where we found excellent accom
modations, there being pleasant, grassy spots to
spread our beds upon, surrounded with extensive
cane-meadows, affording the best of food for our
horses. " First of July, we encamped on the banks of the
Oconee; it is here about two hundred and fifty yards
over, and we crossed it next day by fording, and
traveled twenty miles. The following day's journey,
of twenty miles, carried us across the Ocmulge by a
ford of three or four hundred yards over. At this
point the Ocmulge is just forty miles distant from
the Oconee. In the evening we encamped on the
banks of Stony Creek — six miles beyond the river.
The travel of the next day carried us over the Great
and Little Tobosochte Creeks, to an encampment on
Sweet Water, a beautiful brook. Afternoon of the
following day, we crossed Flint River, through a ford
of about two hundred and fifty yards.
" We had not gone far beyond the Flint, before the
heat and burning flies began to torment our horses
to such a degree, as lo excite compassion even in the
hearts of pack-horsemen. We traveled almost from
sunrise to his setting, amidst a flying host of these
persecuting spirits, that formed a vast cloud around

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 315
our caravan, so thick as to obscure every distant ob
ject. The head, neck, and shoulders of the leading
horses were continually in a gore of blood.
" The next day, being still oppressed and harassed
by the stinging flies and heats, we halted at noon,
being unable longer to support ourselves under such
grievances. Two days after, we arrived at the Chata-
hooche,* opposite the Uchee Town, where, after un
loading our horses, the Indians came across to us in
large canoes, in which, with their assistance, we fer
ried over the merchandize, and afterwards swam
over the horses."
We have thus conducted a caravan from Old Fort
Charlotte, along the great trading path of the Creeks
and Chichasaws, leading to Augusta and Charleston,
from the towns of the former. The minute topo
graphy of the botanist will enable the reader, by
reference to any good map of the country, to trace
the entire route. Previous to 1736 — the year in which
Augusta was founded — Savannah Town, or Fort
Moore, as we have already seen, was the great
terminus ou our western border, of this famous trail.
From that point it ran to Charleston, first by the
head of the Salkehatchie, through or near the present
site of Barnwell Village, thence to the Ponds, in the
north-west corner of Colleton District, from which it
passed towards Conwayborough, and to the Ashley.
George Whitfield, who is mentioned as chief
of the caravan, which Bartram accompanied to the

# Bartram writes it Chala-Uc-he.

316 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
Creek Nation, was a nephew of the celebrated Rev.
George Whitfield, and father of the late Tyler Whit
field, of Anderson. He was also the grandfather of
Drs. Charles and Thomas Wilson, of the Rev. John
Wilson and Mrs. Amelia Simmons — all formerly of
Abbeville District, but the first two now of Georgia,
and the latter of Mississippi — and of Susan Winter
Wilson, first wife of Dr. John Logan, of Greenwood.
Five years previous to this adventure he was
married at White Hall, the then residence of Gen.
Andrew Williamson, of Revolutionary memory, to
Miss Frances Tyler of Virginia, sister to Mrs. Wil
liamson, and Mrs. Leroy Hammond, of Snow Hill.
John Lewis Gervais, a well-known German land
speculator, and Justice of the Peace, who lived on
the plantation at present owned by John Foster, near
White Hall, officiated on the occasion — a minister
not often being convenient at that early day for such
a purpose. A few days after the wedding, Gervais wrote as
follows to his friend, Colonel Henry Laurens, of
Charleston : " I had the honor, last week, at Mr.
Williamson's, to marry Mr. George Whitfield, nephew
of the late Rev. Mr. Whitfield, to Miss Frances
Tyler, sister of Mrs. Williamson — a charming bride,
who would have made a figure in Charleston, as
well for her appearance as elegance of dress. A
Justice less grave than myself might have been
tempted to give, now and then, a sly look."*
* Charleston Courier of recent date.

ANCIENT TF.RRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 317
This letter was dated from Herrenhausen— the
name of the correspondent's residence — 2d of Octo
ber, 1771. The Rev. George Whitfield had died the
month previous to the wedding at White Hall. At
the time of Bartram's visit to Fort Charlotte, George
Whitfield owned the old Fort Charlotte plantation,
now the property of Col. Wm. Tatom, and was pro
bably the commandant of that post. The year be
fore it had been visited by the Rev. Wm. Tennent,
as a Commissioner with Wm. Henry Drayton from
the Provincial Congress, who, after examining its
works and means of defence, wrote as follows in his
journal : " I called for Captain Whitfield and con
sulted with him on the propriety of cutting down
his corn around the fort."* The Tories and Loyalists
were then gathering all their strength in Upper-Caro
lina preparatory for the great struggle, and an attack
from them was expected every day upon the fort.
Several stages of a caravan, which was sent up to
Savannah Town by the Board, in 1717, we found
thus specified in the journals: They were to proceed
from Charleston, first to one Peter St. Julien's, thence
to Washmasaw, after which they were to pass to the
Ponds, and at Edisto Garrison, where they would
arrive after leaving the Ponds, they were to await
Lieut. James Howe, who would conduct them to
Fort Moore.
Peter St. Julien, it appears from other passages of
the journals, lived at a point where the trails met
* Drayton's Memoirs.

318 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
coming respectively from the Congarees and Savan
nah Town to Charleston. It was a great camping
place, and the Board frequently deposited corn there
for the use of the public caravans. Lieut. Howe
held the post of Lieutenant in the fort, and had been
ordered, doubtless, on this occasion, to march with a
guard to meet the approaching caravan and protect
it over part of the path that was peculiarly exposed.
This much of the old Creek and Chickasaws trail
formed the larger part of the first path of commercial
communication that was ever opened up between
Charleston and the Cherokees. Soon after the erec
tion of a factory at Savannah Town, under the pro
tection of Fort Moore, the Indians themselves cut a
trail from their towns down the east bank of the Sa
vannah to that place, of sufficient width and straight-
ness for the conveyance of peltries and goods on the
backs of "burdeners." As the traffic increased it
gradually enlarged, and by the time the trading
houses and fortress were erected at Augusta, in 1736,
under the auspices of Oglethorpe, it had become a
thoroughfare for caravans of pack-horses.
Savannah Town was now deserted, and Augusta
became a great centre of trade. Caravans by the
trail, and pettiaugers by the water route, were con
stantly in motion, bearing their loads of merchandize
from Charleston to Augusta. She was soon a busy
mart, and a large town full of houses and people —
the first example on the continent of the astonishing
growth of a western village into a populous town.
The -waluable trade of the three great Indian nations

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 319
united its streams in her streets; and perhaps at no
time since have they exhibited more stirring or busi
ness-like scenes.
An old writer, thus describes Augusta at this
period: " The trustees ordered the town of Augusta
to be laid off in 1735, and garrisoned in 1736. Sev
eral ware-houses were built, aud furnished with
goods suitable to the Indian trade — boats were built
by the inhabitants calculated to carry about ten
thousand weight of peltry; making four or five
voyages annually to Charleston. Augusta became a
general resort for the Indian traders in the spring,
where they purchased annually about two thousand
pack-horse loads of peltry ; and including towns
men, pack-horsemen and slaves, it was calculated
that six hundred white persons were engaged in this
trade. A path was opened to Savannah, which was
passable on horseback.''*
Bartram visited Augusta in the spring of 1776 ;
but was too intent on his favorite study of flowers
and animals, to make a single observation of its
social, commercial or architectural advancement at
that period. He did better for the site of Savannah
Town, and old Fort Moore ; and his notes, though
brief in relation to it, show that a rapid decay had
fallen upon everything there, after the founding of
Augusta. " In early times, the Carolinians had a fort, and
kept a good garrison here, as a frontier and Indian
# McCall's History of Georgia, p. 50.

320 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
trading post, but Augusta superseding it, this place
wasdismantled; and since that time, which probably
cannot exceed thirty years,* the river hath so much
encroached upon the Caroliua shore, that its bed now
lies where the site of the fort then was; indeed,
some told me that the opposite Georgia shore, where
there is now a fine house and corn field, occupies
the place."f
At length, after many fair promises to the Indians,
the Commissioners, in 1718, erected at the Conga
rees, a fort and store-house. It was then that pack-
horse trains from Charleston, first began to pass by
that route towards the interior, and the Cherokees
and Catawbas to the sea-board. The spot had been
chosen for the new garrison and factory, some dis
tance eastward of a direct route to the Cherokees,
for the equal accommodation ofthe lower towns and
Catawbas, as Savannah Town had been as far to the
westward of it, for the convenience of the Over-hill
Cherokees, and the more distant Creeks and Chick
asaws. It is quite probable that the Congaree and Chick
asaw trails united, before reaching Charleston, at
the present site of Dorchester ; and that there was
the residence of Peter St. Julien. From that point
the former ran directly up the east bank ofthe Four
Hole Creek, towards the nearest point of the Santee,
thence across Amelia Township to the Congaree
River, and up it to the fort at the falls. Beyond

* Forty years, rather. •(¦ Bartram, p. 314.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 321
these it followed tbe southern bank of the Saluda to
the spot, where, in after-years, Ninety-six was built,
and where it fell into a path that was, no doubt,
even then known as the great Keowee trail leading
from the lower towns to Charleston.
Fort Moore and the Congarees were the only
garrisoned posts erected on the border by the govern
ment, at this early period, for the protection of the
Indian trade. It must be reasonably supposed, there
fore, that the first horse-paths from Charleston to the
upper-country, touched at those points in their
course. But, doubtless, before 1693, the year in
which the Cherokees made their first formal visit to
the English — perhaps in the earliest primitive times,
an Indian foot trail ran by the most direct route from
their towns to the main, at or near the mouth of the
Ashley. This became gradually much frequented,
as intercourse between the two people increased. In
process of time the peltry traffic was inaugurated,
and soon the Cherokees had grown so dependent
upon the English for all the necessaries of life, that
their greatly enlarged commerce required, if not a
wider, a more direct thoroughfare than either the
Chickasaw or Congaree path.
It was then that pack-horse trains began to fre
quent the Keowee Trail throughout its whole extent;
and it became a great central high-way of communi
cation between Charleston and the interior, and the
mountain valleys of the Cherokee Nation. It form
ed a common track with the path last described, as
far northward from Charleston as the present site of

322 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
Dorchester or its vicinity; thence after crossing Four
Holes Creek, at the point, where, before the Revolu
tion, the old Four Holes Bridge stood, it passed to
the site of Orangeburg Court-house, and there cross
ing North Edisto, it pursued its course along the
ridge between the main branches of thai stream, to
the head waters of the Little Saluda, the country on
each hand abounding in rich pastures of cane. From
Little Saluda, it ran to Gowdy's Fort and trading
house at Old' Ninety-six, where, having formed a
juncture with the trail from the Congarees, it pur
sued its way, almost in a bee line, to the towns of
the Lower Cherokees.
In the vicinity of Greenwood, it crossed Little
Wilson's Creek at a ford long afterwards known, and
used in the plantation formerly owned by the Rev.
Joel Townsend, and ran thence through the lands of
the late Capt. T. B. Byrd, and Capt. J. Johnson,
having traversed, from Old Ninety-six, grounds now
owned by Maj. R. A. Griffin and Nathaniel McCants.
It passed a few paces eastward of the large granite
rock, already described as standing immediately on
the Barksdale Ferry Road, near the Rock Church.
A few miles north of the Pointing Rock, it crossed
Rocky Creek, just above the site of Venning's Mill,
and ran thence to the Coronaka, which it crossed at
a spot famous as a camping ground with all the
traders and Indians, who once frequented this cele
brated trail. It lies on a plantation recently occu
pied by H. W. Leadbetter.
At that period, the creek, here, was shaded by a

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 323
notable grove of large white oaks, on which account
it received from the Indians the name of Quoo-ran-
he-qua — the place of very big white oaks. It was
estimated, by the measurement of that time, to be
fourteen miles from Ninety-six, and eighty-two from
Keowee. Adair mentions it as being a well-known camp
ground, and presents its name, to illustrate the man
ner in which the Cherokees frequently combined
with their words a syllable or an initial letter of
their sacred name for God, when they wished to
express an idea in the superlative sense.*
From the Coronaka, it pursued its course towards
the head branches of Mulberry Creek, passing a
little to the west of the present site of Cokesbury.
In the fork of the Mulberry, it turned suddenly, for
a short distance, to the left, to take in its way the old
trading post at Dewitt's Corner. Thence it ran across
the head waters of Rocky River, and passed, in a
similar manner, through the head streams of all the
eastern tributaries of the Savannah, that flowed
south of its point of destination, the town of Keo
wee on the ancient Isundiga.
Bartram, in his travels, thus speaks of the old
Keowee Trail: "I chose to take this route up the
Savannah River, in preference to the straight and
shorter road from Charleston to the Cherokee
country, by Fort Ninety-six, because, by keeping
near this great river, I had frequent opportunities
# Adair's North American Indians, p. 70.

324 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
of visiting its steep banks, vast swamps, and low
grounds. Had 1 pursued the great trading path,
by Ninety-six, I should have been led over a high,
dry, sandy ridge, and, a great part of the distance, an
old settled or resorted part of the country, and, con
sequently, void of the varieties of original or novel
productions of nature."*
The fort referred to here by the botanist, was not
the star redoubt, whose remains are still conspicu
ous on the site of old Ninety-six; nor was it the
temporary defence of palisades, thrown up on the
opposite hill, a little south of the Child's House, by
General Williamson and the Whigs of the Ninety-
six District, in November of 1775. It will be seen,
as our narrative progresses, that an older fort than
either of those once stood at that famous spot.
There is scarcely a plantation, through which the
Keowee Trail passed in the upper-country, that
does not still bear the marks of its once well-worn
track ; and wherever the primitive forest, that shaded
it in old times, has been left untouched, its deep,
narrow bed is as plainly traceable as if English
armies and pack-trains had gone over it — as of yore
— but yesterday. Such traces of it are particularly
noticeable in the vicinity of Cokesbury, and near its
termination, as it goes down into the Valley of the
Keowee. This ancient highway is often confounded, at
present, in Abbeville District, with the old Reed's
* Page 315.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 325
and Pratt's Mill Road — a public work that had little,
at any time, in common with it, and, in comparison,
was but an affair of recent date. The Reed's Road
was the result of an enactment by a Federal State
Legislature ; the Keowee Trail had its origin long
previous, doubtless, to the period when any mo
narchy of the old world had obtained a foothold on
American soil.
In the index to Dr. Cooper's Statutes of South
Carolina, we find the following record: " Au Act to
make, and keep in repair, a road from Ninety-six
Court-house, to the mill of George Reed, on Long-
Cane Creek, and from thence to Pratt's Mill, on the
north-west fork of Long-Cane. — Passed, March
5th, 1778."
It was not, however, until seven years after, that
this enactment was carried into effect. Two years
subsequent to the Revolution, a court — sitting at the
Old Block House, or in the house of General
Pickens, one ofthe presiding judges, (both of which
stood under 'the south-eastern side of the hill on
which the village of Abbeville has since been
built,) — appointed, in accordance with the provi
sions ofthe Act, Captain John Irwin, Captain Hugh
Wardlaw, and Colonel John Logan, to survey the
designated route. This they soon accomplished,
and the same year, (1785,) the Reed's Road was cut
from Pratt's Mill, by Reed's, to Ninety-six.
The tradition goes, that one of the surveyors fixed
the sights of his compass at Pratt's, and wagered
the company a bottle of brandy that, at the end of

326 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
his course, he would strike Ninety-six. The bet
was taken, two to one, on the spot. The line ran
out over the top of the hill, on which they were
at that time preparing to build the old Cambridge
College. The result was of considerable interest to
the party; for they were men of no ordinary physical
powers, and old Ninety-six never knew what it was
to suffer from a dearth of brandy, of the best and
purest bead.
Soon after leaving Pratt's, the Reed's Road fell
into a part of the Keowee Trail, near Dewitt's
Corner, on the plantation now owned by Captain J.
R. Wilson; which, with its general direction, and
lower terminus, well accounts for its being con
founded with the Keowee path. Thence it ran by
Reed's, (now Cochran's Mill,) through the parade-
ground, at Lomax's, to the Deadfall, and the present
site of Greenwood, where its track still deeply marks
the lots occupied by R. M. White, and J. R. Tar
rant. At a point between the latter and the Barks
dale Ferry road, it ran into the old Ninety-six and
Abbeville Road. Much of this old highway has
been long out of use, and its former site well nigh
forgotten. The enterprise and progress of the present age
have developed a fact in relation to the ancient
Indian trading paths of Carolina, that is too remark
able to be omitted here; though we have never seen
it noticed by any one. Nearly the entire railway
system ofthe State has been constructed almost pre
cisely on the routt-s of the old peltry trails of her

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 327
infant commerce. The South Carolina Road passes
between Charleston and Augusta, over the line of
the great Chickasaw and Creek path ; the Greenville
and Columbia along that of the Cherokees; and the
Carolina and Charlotte pursues, on the ridge between
the Broad and Catawba Rivers, with no less fidelity,
the old path that led from the Catawbas to the Con
garees. But the correspondence does not cease here ;
oue of the first railway enterprises in the State of
Georgia was to construct, from Augusta, a continua
tion of the line completed in Carolina, over the
Chickasaw and Creek trail ; and but recently, Charles
ton has been rejoicing at her betrothal, by a tie of
the iron rail, to the same prolific region, and in
the main, over the same route, in the completion of
the Memphis and Charleston Railroad, from which,
a hundred and thirty years ago, she was accustomed
to receive, on the backs of pack-horses, the bulk of
her exports.
The great enterprise of the Blue Ridge Railroad, is
only a continuation, by rail, of the ancient extension
of the Keowee path from the site of Fort Prince
George, across the mountains to the Over-hill settle
ments, and the teeming valleys ofthe Tennessee;
and, when it shall have been accomplished, for
which we have the obligations of a State that has
never asked for more, as an incentive to noble ac
tion, than to know the path of her true interest and
glory — and the long projected Savannah Valley Road,
constructed over the route of the old Savannah, or
Isandiga trail, which connected Augusta with the

328 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
Lower Cherokee towns — the correspondence will be
general and complete, and the shrill echoes of the
steam-car will be heard amid the same hills and
valleys, in every part of the State, where, in the olden
time, resounded the gentler notes of the pack- horse
man's bells. "There is nothing new under the
sun ;'' and, while we are wondering at these new
combinations of science and art, an amazement no
less great possesses us, ou the discovery that, after
all, they are only the more complete development
ofthe ideas and practice of our less cultivated immi
grant fathers.
The philosophy of this does not lie deeper than
two simple facts: the one of history, and the other
of political economy. The aborigines of America
invariably displayed in their choice of lands, on
which to form their settlements, a judgment as
shrewd and business-like as that of the whites.
Hence the same regions of country that were the
productive hunting-grounds and maize fields of the
Indians, are still the prolific sources of the valuable
staples of modern traffic and exchange — and political
economy teaches the fundamental principle that com
merce is like the natural processes of crystalization —
it best performs its work when left free and untram-
meled. Here, therefore, we have, from her history,
a powerful, but unobtrusive, argument, for all that
has been done or undertaken, in the development of
the physical resources of our beloved commonwealth.
If the recent substitution ofthe railway for the old
fashioned market thoroughfare has done away, in

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 329
great part, with the suffering and exposure incident
to the men and animals employed on the latter, the
relief afforded the same objects, in an earlier age,
by the widening ofthe narrow pack-horse trails into
commodious wagon-roads, was no small approxima
tion to the facilities and comforts of the present sys
tem. The abuse of horses, aud the hardships of the
drivers, on the trading paths, were sometimes dread
ful, and never iuconsiderable.
It may be truly said, that the bleaching bones of
the* former made white many a weary mile of the
great trails leading from Charleston to the Chero
kees, and towards the Mississippi; and not unfre
quently mingled with them, were seen the ghastly
skeletons of men and women. It is a curious fact,
that the Cherokee Indians would leave their dead
unburied on the path, rather than contract ceremo
nial uncleanness in the act of preparing them for in
terment, according to their custom, when at home,
and in possession of their usual means of purifica
tion. In some instances, the bodies thus deserted^
were covered up, out of reach of the wolves, by the
traders belonging to the passing caravans. An in
stance of this kind occurred on the Keowee trail,
just below Ninety-six, not long after the settlement
of that place.
An Indian having died at that spot, in aparty with
which were Adair and several other traders, his body
as usual, was about to be left by his savage com
rades to the wild beasts, where it lay, when the white
men, moved by feelings of humanity, buried it them-
28

330 HISTORY OF UPPJR CAROLINA,
selves. A more notable instance took place, about
the same time, at or near the Congarees.
We described, in a previous chapter, the curious
marriage of a young Indian woman, surnamed the
Dark Lantern, to an Englishman of Charleston, and
her initiation into the Establishment. Not long after
that event, and her dismissal from the church, on
account of her licentiousness, she fell sick, and died
on the path near the Congarees, the scene of her
marriage, and notwithstanding a twin-brother was
one of the party, her body was left exposed in -the
woods. In February, 1755, Gov. Glen invited a large num
ber ofthe head-men ofthe Cherokee Nation to meet
him in a talk, in Charleston, when he received in
reply the following message from Old Hop, of Chote,
the great head-chief of the Nation : " I have ordered
my head-men to proceed no farther to meet you than
the Congarees. From time to time, according to
your Excellency's desire, I have sent down my best
warriors to Charleston, who, by reason of fatal sick
ness contracted either there or on the trail, returned
no more. Their bones yet lie on the path, and are
in many places to be seen.''*
The abuse suffered, however, by the animals used
in these pack-horse trains, was, in great part, owing
to the savage treatment they received from the mer
ciless drivers. They seldom decamped in the morn
ing before the sun was already so high as to be hot

* Indian books in Columbia.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 331
and disagreeable. Every driver carried a heavy
whip, made ofthe toughest cow-skin. They started
all at once, the horses ranging themselves in regular
Indian file — the most experienced in the front, and
the younger in the rear; then the chief driver, with
the crack of his whip, and a whoop or a shriek,
which rang through the forest and plains, spoke,
often in the Indian tongue, commanding them to
proceed, which order was repeated by all the com
pany, and they set off at once in a brisk trot, which
was incessantly urged, and continued as long as the
miserable brutes were able to move forward. When
they could go no farther, a camp was formed, fre
quently before the afternoon — the most favorable
part ofthe day for travel — was more than half gone.
Bells were suspended from the necks of the horses,
and these, though frequently stuffed with grass at
starting in the morning, were soon loosened, by its
jolting out, and they were not stopped again during
the day ; and, altogether, the incessant ring and clat
ter of the bells, the whoops, shouts and loud curses
ofthe pack-horsemen, produced a noise and din on
these primitive highways, scarcely less disagreeable
and annoying, though not so loud and shrill, as the
modern steam-whistle.* * Bartram's Carolina.

CHAPTER XIII.
The Abuses already detailed, not the only source of Disorder and
Disaffection in the Nation — France fiercely competes with England
for the Sovereignty ofthe West — The1 advantageous position ofthe
former firmly established in Canada and in the Mississippi Valley —
Her magnificent Schemes, Finesse, and indomitable Energy — The
English to be circumscribed, harassed, and, if possible, driven from
the Continent — Upper Carolina exposed to French Emissaries, and
menaced by encroaching French Settlements, &c.
The abuses arising in the Nation, from the indis
criminate granting of licenses, from the traffic in
intoxicating liquors, and the pernicious influence of
men, who falsely claimed to be missionaries of the
Cross, though prevalent and lamentable enough,
were not the only, nor the most exciting, sources
of anarchy and disaffection. England had never
been without formidable rivals in her efforts to pos
sess the soil and dominion of North America.
The most powerful of these were the French, un
der the sagacious rule of Louis the Fourteenth; and
never had France encountered her ancient rival on
a more magnificent field, and never, in her history,
had she displayed a more brilliant policy, or pushed
her deep-laid schemes with greater energy. Firmly
established in Canada and Louisiana, and rapidly
connecting these extreme points by a chain of mili-

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 333
tary posts, stretching through the entire length of
the Mississippi Valley, and in close commercial al
liance with several of the most powerful tribes ofthe
Continent, her triumph was apparently beyond per-
adventure, and not far distant.
The design of the French was to secure the pos
session of the great Valley, and having circum
scribed the English colonists within their narrow
belt along the Atlantic., when everything was ready
for the blow, to fall upon them with the hordes of
their savage confederates, and exterminate or drive
them from the soil.
In an old map constructed previous to 1741, by
M. De LTsle, geographer to the French King, a
definite line is traced, marking the eastern limit of
France's assumed domain on the American Conti
nent.* It is set out from a point near the City of
Charleston, ran north-eastward to Cooper River,
which it crossed some sixty miles from the ocean —
passed the Santee one hundred miles from its mouth,
turned north-westward along the eastern bank of
that stream till it reached the Catawba; pursued this
tributary into the Alleghany Mountains, followed
their course around the head waters of the Potomac
to the Susquehanna, crossing it at a point some sixty-
five miles from the head of the Chesapeak Bay —
ran thence up its eastern bank to the North Branch,
and along that stream to the Mohawk, which it
crossed some fifty miles above its junction with the
* See Map accompanying Cox's Carolina.

334 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
Hudson — thence to a point near the lower extremity
of Lake Champlain, and along the channel of that
water to the mouth of the Sorrelle, by which it
passed, finally, to the River St. Lawrence.
The sandy strip of country lying between this
imaginary, defiant line of frontier and the ocean,
was all that was allowed England for her portion of
the continent. France claimed and ran off for her
self the lion's share — the rich, inexhaustible domain
ofthe Mississippi Valley, and an illimitable territory
stretching back into the unexplored regions of the
West. Had her diplomacy, skill and military energy,
won for her the permanent possession of all that she
had thus marked out, hers would have been the
boast, that the sun never shone upon a more mag
nificent, territorial empire, than that she had acquired
and planted in America.
As early as 1682, her enterprising voyagers had
re-discovered the Mississippi, and explored it from
its sources to the Gulf of Mexico.* The first expe
dition set out from Quebec, in Canada, three years
after the English had formed their settlement on the
coast of Carolina. It was led by a courageous Je
suit priest, named Marquette. His company was
composed of Joliet, an experienced Canadian fur
trader, five other Frenchmen, and several Indian
guides. Their mission was to find the Mississippi
River, of which they had heard many vague, though

*The Mississippi had been discovered by the unfortunate Span
iard, De'Soto, one hundred and forty years before.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 335
wonderful accounts from the Indians, and from Ca
nadian traders, whose enterprise had led them as far
south-westward as the region of the great lakes.
Having ascended Fox River to the head of naviga
tion, from Lake Michigan, with their birch-bark
canoes on their shoulders, the voyagers crossed the
country to the Wisconsin River, on which they again
launched their frail boats and floated down to the Mis
sissippi. Marquette, once on the bosom of the great
stream he had come in search of, descended as far as
the mouth of the Arkansas, charmed with the delight
ful climate, and the grand natural scenery that every
day presented new features of beauty and sublimity to
his astonished gaze. He here made the acquaintance
of lhe Chickasaw Indians, who informing him that
the banks of the river from their country to the sea,
were inhabited by hostile nations, he decided to pro
ceed no farther, and turning about his canoes, pad
dled northward on the Mississippi, till discovering
the mouth of the Illinois, he ascended that stream
to its source, aud again bearing their canoes across
the portage to the spot where Chicago now stands,
they once more embarked on Lake Michigan, and,
shortly after, Joliet reported their interesting adven
tures and discoveries to the authorities in Quebec.
A brave, enterprising young Frenchman, named
La Salle, happened at that time to be in Quebec,
and heard the glowing accounts brought back by
those voyagers of the Mississippi and the South
west. He had been educated a Jesuit, and had come
to America in search of fame and adventure. In-

336 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
spired by these discoveries, he conceived and resolved
to execute the more dating exploit of exploring the
Mississippi to its mouth. First, returning to France,
in order to obtain a royal commission for his enter
prise, with which he was also granted n monoply in
the trade of buffalo skins, he sailed back to Canada,
furnished with men and stores, and set out at once
on this expedition by the way of the great lakes.*
Two years passed away, and La Salle was still ou
these waters purchasing furs and building forts. He
had not, however, forgotten the main object of his
voyage, aud at length making his way to the Missis
sippi by the same route, doubtless, that had been
pursued by Marquette, he there constructed a vessel
better suited to the rough current of the Father of
Waters, and was borne in safety to its mouth. Cox
remarks, in his book on Carolina: "The River Mes-
chacebe is so called by the inhabitants of the north ;
cebe meaning river, and mescha, great — the great
river. The French, who learned it from them, pro
nounced the name corruptly, Mississippi. The cor
rect name, "Meschacebe," it doth still retain among
the savages during half its course. Afterwards, some
call it Chucagua, others, Sassagoula and Malaban-
chia. This history of the name, Mississippi, differs
widely from that given us by the geographies in use.
Mooring his boat, and ascending a hillock in full
view of the Gulf, he solemnly took possession of the

* Pickett's History of Alabama.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 337
country in the name of his King Louis XIV., and in
honor of him, called it Louisiana.
La Salle having thus accomplished the great ob
ject of his enterprise, returned to the country of the
Illinois, there garrisoned Fort St. Louis, and has
tened back to Canada and to France, to give an
account of his discoveries.
On the fortunate results of these expeditions of
Marquette and La Salle, France chiefly founded her
claims to the Mississippi Valley, and the regions of
the West; and began, without delay, to make ample
provision for adding to her right of discovery — the
better right of actual occupancy. Her first attempt
to colonize the Mississippi proved abortive; but not
discouraged, after a few years she renewed it with
complete success, under the celebrated pioneer broth
ers, Iberville and Bienville.
This was in the spring of 1699, and, in three years
more, these enterprising leaders had not only effected
a settlement at Biloxi, in the territory of the present
State of Mississippi, but had erected a fort and ware
houses on Mobile Bay — had established a chain of
military posts, as far up as the present City of Natchez,
and were already in amity and commerce with va
rious Indian tribes.
Louisiana, as defined by France, stretched north
ward from the Gulf, beyond the sources of the Alle
ghany and Monongahela.
It was about this period that the English of Caro
lina first began to harass the French, by sending
emissaries to plot against them among the Musco-
29

338 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
gees and Alabamas.* These warlike tribes were
induced to take up the bloody hatchet against the
French; and they soon became so formidable as to
threaten the existence of the colony. Those active
emissaries from Carolina were no others, doubtless,
than traders, whose interest in the Indian peltry
traffic, just then beginning to be lucrative, as well as
their inherent hatred and opposition to the French,
moved them to adopt any, even the most unscrupu
lous measures to distress and ruin them. It does
not appear that the public authorities of Carolina
were yet fully aroused to a sense of the dangers
which threatened them from the designs and en
croachments of the French.
From a very early period after the settlement on
the Cooper and Ashley, adventurous traders, both
from Carolina and Virginia, had penetrated among
the populous Indian nations, whose towns lay in the
territory of the present States of Mississippi and
Alabama. "These fearless British traffickers con
veyed upon the backs of pack-horses such goods as
suited the Indians, from distant Charleston to the re
mote Chickasaw Nation, over creeks without bridges,
rivers without ferries, and woods pathless and preg
nant with many dangers." | "Before the removal
from Old Charlestowne, on the western bank of the
Ashley, the proprietors forbade all trade with the
Indians for seven years, that the settlers might
become more numerous and better able to defend
? Pickett's History of Alabama. | Pickett, Vol. i., page 21 S.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 339
themselves." "At the close of the Westoe war, in
1681, many individuals had added to their traffic the
purchase of captives; and the proprietors endeav
ored to check abuses of this kind in the trade and
intercourse with the natives, by taking under their
nominal protection all the Indians within four hun
dred miles of Charleston. In 1691, it became expe
dient to limit, by a heavy penalty, the extent of trade
and traveling to the vicinity of the settlement; but
private enterprise must soon have rendered the en
actment nugatory; for Archdale relates, not many
years after, that the colonists had extended their in
land trade to the distance of one thousand miles."*
The commerce, however, of Carolinians with the
tribes on the Mississippi and Alabama, was as yet
desultory and irregular — no trading posts had been
established — it was sustained by private enterprise,
and regulated wholly by private interest. It was not
until 1717, that the Legislature deemed it proper to
interfere in a traffic so distant and precarious. In
the winter of that year, the House of Commons en
joined it upon the Commissioners of Indian Trade,
to consult with Alex. Mackey and James Alford, in
order to ascertain the most eligible spot on which to
erect a factory for the uses of the trade with the
Creeks and Chickasaws.f Several head-men of the
latter nation were at that time in Charleston, and the
#Chalmers and Oldmixon Carr. Coll. Prof. W.J. Rivers's Topics
of History.
f MS. Records in Secretary of State's Office.

40 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
question being referred to them, their reply was, that
they had already intimated to the Governor their
willingness to have a trading-house settled at the
town of Coosa,* a place that could be easily fur
nished with goods by means of pack-horses from
Savannah Town. It was decided at last, however,
that the factory should be established at Talasse.f
We have already remarked that, after the erection of
this post, Colonel Hastings was withdrawn from the
factory on Savannah, and made chief agent at the
new house among the Creeks. It was at this time,
that one Wm. McGilvery is mentioned as one of a
party who had been employed to conduct twenty-
three pack-horses from Charleston to the factory of
the Creeks.
In the summer of 1718, Andrew Patterson, George
Douglass, Wm. Parrot, Daniel Kennard, and an Iu
dian, Sanhoe, were ordered by the Board to go up
under Lieutenant Joseph Chambers in a periago to
Savannah Town; after which they were to proceed,
with their goods on horses, without Chambers, to the
factory of the Creeks. Chambers was a lieutenant
under Charlesworth Glover, at the Savannah Fort.
Three years before, the indefatigable Bienville had
ascended the Alabama River from Mobile, and es
tablished at Tuskegee the famous old Fort Toulouse,
in the very heart of the formidable Creek Nation.
He had previously made frequent representations to
? Spelt in the old record, Coosatees.
f Indian Books in Secretary of State's Office, Columbia.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 341
his government of the necessity of planting a for
tress and trading post on the Alabama, in order to
repel the aggressive Carolinians.* The bravery and
address of Bienville had made him exceedingly pop
ular with the Indians. Indeed, there was much in
the French character that peculiarly fitted them for
the business of intriguing among savages: their
sprightly vivacity, their easy manners, and indomi
table courage and energy, were qualities irresistibly
fascinating to all the tribes with whom they came in
contact in America. The erection of Fort Toulouse
in a position that gave Bienville not only command
of the Creek Confederacy, but the opportunity of
tampering effectually with the Cherokees and Ca
tawbas on the very borders of the English settle
ments, was observed by the latter with the most un
accountable apathy. It was not yet, by twenty years,
that the fierce struggle began between Carolina and
French Louisiana, not so much for the privileges
and profits of the Indian trade as for the very exis
tence of Carolina.
It appears from the recorded testimony in relation
to these events, little of which has ever been pub
lished, that such, for that length of time, was the
feebleness of her policy, and remissness of her pub
lic officers, compared with the persevering energy
and admirable sagacity of the French, that she was
chiefly indebted for her ultimate triumph and safety
to her own extraordinary and unflinching chivalry,
# Pickett.

342 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
in the moment of trial, united with British valor in
the field.
English writers, even of that day, did not hesitate
to eulogize the skill and tact displayed by the
French in America : " The French are a great, en
terprising, polite nation, and fully sensible of the ad
vantages of foreign colonies in reference to Euro
pean trade; and use all manner of artifices to lull
their neighbors asleep with fine speeches, and plausi
ble pretenses, whilst they cunningly endeavor to
compass their designs by degrees, even at the hazard
of encroaching on their friends and allies, and de
priving them of their territory in time of peace, and
contrary to the most solemn treaties."*
Bienville was now well prepared to pay back to
Carolina, with full interest, the intrigues and aggres
sions of 1703; and from this period, both French
and Spanish emissaries, usually under the disguise
of private inoffensive traders, began to frequent the
Nation. Some of these, it has already been observ
ed, were men of education and ability — a few of them
Jesuits of rare learning and address — for Carolina
was called upon in this exigency to contend not only
against the power and skill of the French, but against
secularized Popery and spiritual wickednesses from
high places. The distinguished Jesuit voyageurs,
whose exploits on the Mississippi have been describ
ed, were emissaries engaged in the prosecution of
arduous enterprises, not for the aggrandizement of
* Cox's Carolina.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 343
France only, but to win new and wider fields in
which to disseminate the superstitions and mum
mery of Rome. Mr. Bancroft, when treating of the
expedition of Father Marquette, closes an imposing
period with this rhetorical flourish: "and France
and Christianity stood iu the Valley of the Missis
sippi ;" when at that very moment, thousands of
poor Huguenots, ruined and expatriated through the
weakness aud bigotry of Louis XIV, and the malice
of intolerant priests, were crying to Heaven to avenge
an outraged Christianity.
The same couriers who announced to Europe the
successful exploration of the Mississippi, bore, after
a short interval, the more astounding news that Louis
had decreed the Edict of Revocation. The first
centennial anniversary of the Great Massacre oc
curred while LaSalle was in the midst of his explor
ations; and though in the depths of the wilderness,
and surrounded by savages, it is quite probable
that the devout Jesuit did not fail to observe a day
so sacred in the calendar of all true Papists with be
coming ceremonies and respect.
" Facts are stubborn things," yet it is not seldom
that, under beautiful figures of speech, they are found
either perverted or wholly ignored. France and
Romanism, very probably, stood in 1673, for the first
time, in the Mississippi Valley; but it by no means
follows with reason that the genius of Christianity
accompanied them either in the person or inspira
tions of Father Marquette.
France, it appears, relied much upon Jesuit saga-

344 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA.
city to carry out her plans for harassing and circum
venting the English; but bold, learned and indefatig
able as they were, the latter, when once in the field,
were scarcely inferior to them, even in their own
boasted art of moulding savages to their purpose.
And it may be inferred too, from the following con
fession found in a letter written by one Father Vivier,
that they were not always so busy with their traffic,
so practical and plodding, as not to find time to hurl
an occasional bomb into the theological magazine of
the holy brotherhood. "The English, as well as the
French, trade among the Alabama Indians. You
can easily imagine what an obstacle this presents to
the progress of religion ; for the English are always
ready to excite controversy." Indeed, humble traders
as they were, in the secret employment of neither
church nor state; but trafficking among the Indians
with the sole view of building up their private for
tunes, they were not all of them unlearned or desti
tute even of the polished weapons of scholarship.

CHAPTER XIV.
James Adair, the Trader and Historian — His valuable History of the
Southern Indians — Charleston Library — Colonel John Galphin — A
narrative of adventures and hair-breadth escapes in the life of
Adair. James Adair, the author from whom we have so
frequently quoted, and from whose vabiable and now
rare book the world has derived most that is known
of the manners and customs of the Southern In
dians, was for forty years, a trader among the Chero
kees and Chickasaws. He was not only well versed
in the dialects of those tribes, but was also learned
in the Hebrew, the Oriental, and Latin languages ;
and displays in his writings much good sense, and
rare powers of observation. His " History of the
American Indians," was published in London, in
1775, the greater part of which appears to have been
written in the midst of the arduous duties and tur
moils of his adventurous occupation.
Its style is exceedingly figurative and characteris
tic — partakes much of the idiom of the Indian dia
lects to which the author was so long accustomed;
and this imparts to it a quaintness, which, with the
novelty of the subject, the remarkable life of the
writer, the cogency of his reasoning, his ingenious

346 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
philosophy, earnest truthfulness, and stalwart vigor,
renders it one of the most interesting, as well as
valuable works relating to American history.
The title of this book has a place in the catalogue
of the South Carolina College Library, but it is no
longer found in its alcove of American History — the
copy having been unfortunately consumed with a
private house that was burned down a few years
ago in Columbia. The only remaining one that we
know of in the State, belongs to the Charleston Li
brary, whose shelves are peculiarly rich in collections
of valuable, old and rare books. This copy has a
history of its own worth relating. It was once the
property of Col. George Galphin, the famous Indian
trader and Whig of the Revolution, whose residence
was at Silver Bluff. On one of its fly-leaves is in
scribed George Galphin, aud the year 1775, in that
beautiful style of chirography peculiar to the busi
ness-men of his day. It afterwards fell into the
hands of John Drayton, and was by him presented
to the Charleston Library, in 1802. Galphin is fre
quently mentioned by the author in terms of flatter
ing commendation.
It is to be regretted, however, that an observer so
intelligent, and so admirably situated for obtaining
the minutest information, in a field becoming every
day more and more interesting, should have collected
and used it mainly to illustrate the single idea which
Adair appears to have fondly cherished, that the In
dians of America were descended from the ancient
Israelites. His arguments in proof of this are ex-

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 347
ceedingly plausible and well arranged; but the value
of the history would have been greatly enhanced if
he had presented his facts free from the bias and
prejudices of any pre-conceived notion.
An interesting narrative of adventures and hair
breadth escapes in the personal history of Adair,
could be gleaned from his work. He was a traveler,
and valiant warrior, as well as trader and historian.
The great Chickasaw path, and the Keowee trail,
were the frequent scenes of his adventures. In the
Cherokee war of 1760, he served as Captain, under
a commission from South Carolina, whose interest
and prosperity he appeared ever ready to promote.
In the Indian country he was not unfrequently
found on the war-path, leading bands of painted
warriors against the French and their savage allies,
whom he hated with all the hearty good will of
which an Englishman of that period was capable.
For the dangers and exigencies of war, as well as its
toils, he seems to have been admirably fitted ; for,
besides the quick penetration of the Indian, he pos
sessed audacity, cool self-possession, aud great pow
ers of endurance. These qualities did not fail to
make him popular and a great favorite with the In
dians. One or two incidents, related in his own language,
will be sufficient to illustrate his manner of life, and
the peculiarities of his style as a writer. At the
request of Governor Glen, in the fall of 1747, he
visited Charleston on business connected with the
trade, while residing among the Chickasaws; and,

348 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
having been detained longer than he expected, winter
overtook him on his return, before he had cleared
the territory of Carolina: "I was detained so late in
November that the snow fell upon me at Edisto, the
first day, in company with Captain W  d, an old
trader of the Okwhuske, who was going to Savannah.
In the severity of winter, frost, snow, hail and
heavy rains succeed one another in these climes, so
that I partly rode and partly swam to the Chickasaw
country ; for, not expecting to stay long below, I took
no leathern canoe. Many of the broad, deep creeks
that were almost dry when I went down, had now
far overflowed their banks, ran a rapid rate, and were
impassable to any but desperate people. When I got
within forty miles of the Chickasaw, the rivers and
swamps were dreadful, by rafts of timber driving
down the former, and the great fallen trees floating
in the latter, for near a mile in length. Being forced
to wade deep through cane-swamps or woody thick
ets, it proved very troublesome to keep my fire-arms
dry, on which, as a second means, my life depended ;
for, by the high rewards of the French, some enemies
were always rambling about in search of us. On
the eastern side of one of the rivers, in taking a
sweep early in a wet morning, in quest of my horses,
I discovered smoke on a small piece of rising ground
in a swamp, pretty near the edge; I moved nearer,
from tree to tree, till I discovered them to be Choc
taws* creeping over the fire. I withdrew without
? The Choctaws were the firm friends of the French.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 349
being discovered, and apprehended no danger, as at
the worst I could have immediately inswamped,f and
secured a retreat with my trusty fire-arms and taken
through the river and the broad swamp, which then
resembled a mixed ocean of wood and water. I soon
observed the tracks of my horses, found them and
set off. At the distance of a hundred yards from
the river there was a large and deep lagoon, in the
form of a semi-circle. As soon as I swam this and
got on the bank, I drank a good draught of rum; in
the middle of the river I was forced to throw away
one of my belt-pistols and a long French scalping-
knife I had fouud where the Choctaws killed two of
our traders. When I got on the opposite shore I re
newed rny draught, put my fire-arms in order, and
set up the war-whoop. I had often the like scenes till
I got to the Chickasaw country, which was also all
afloat. The people had been saying a little before I
got home, that, should I chance to be on the path, it
would be near fifty, days before I could pass the
neighboring deep swamps. As I had the misfortune
to lose my tomahawk, and wet all the punk in my
shot-pouch, by swimming the waters, I could not
strike fire for the space of three days, and it rained
extremely hard during that time. By being tho
roughly wet so long, in the cold month of December,
and nipped with the frost, seven months elapsed be
fore I had the proper use of the fingers of my right
f An expressive term to the woodsman of that period when the
high forest lands were sq open as to afford no concealment in the
moment of danger.

350 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
hand. On that long and dangerous war-path, I was
exposed to many dangers, and yet so extricated my
self that it would appear like quixotism to enumerate
them." Two years afterwards, he passed over the same
path, at the head of a party of Chickasaws; and
though he was thus well guarded, and the trail free
from the obstructions of floods and snow, his trials
and adventures were numerous and interesting.
"I unluckily had the honor to receive from the
Governor, another polite letter, dated September,
1749, citing me, under the great seal ofthe province,
to come down with a party of Indians, as I had
given His Excellency notice of their desire of pay
ing a friendly visit to South Carolina. And having
purchased and redeemed three French captives,*
whom the Chickasaws had taken in war, under their
leader, Pa-ya-matahah, I now bestowed them on
him, to enable him to make a flourishing entrance
into Charleston, after the manner of their American
triumphs. He was very kind to them, though their
manners were as savage as his own ; excepting a
few beads, they used to count, with a small silver
cross fastened to the top of them, they had nothing
to distinguish them, and were ignorant of every
point of Christianity."

* From a very early period, in her conflicts with the French and
Spaniards, South Carolina had humanely offered a constant reward
to the Indians for every one of those, people who chanced to fall
into their hands. In this way many were redeemed, and saved from
torture and horrible deaths.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 351
We saw, among the records in Columbia, an in
stance of a Frenchman's being brought to Charles
ton, and delivered to the Governor, by a squaw,
named Peggy; for which she received a yard or two
of strouds cloth, and a piece of duffils. Also, an
other of a Conjurer of one of the Cherokee towns,
who, about the same time — 1716 — delivered to the
authorities a French-Canadian, for whom he was
ordered by the Board to be presented with a coat
and hat. Peggy appears to have been a character
of some note in that day; she came to town with
her son, accompanied by Col. Hastings, superinten
dent at Savannah Town, and put up with him, at
Mrs. Elizabeth Gray's, at the public expense. A
year later, we found another note of Peggy. Hat
ton, an agent, was removed from Keowee to Tug
aloo, and among other orders, he was directed, before
he left the latter place, to take charge of fifteen deer
skins, two bags of bullets, and a remnant of strouds
— public property — which had been deposited in
Peggy's corn-house.
"I set off with about twenty warriors, and a few
women, along with the aforesaid war-leader, for
Charleston. As the French kept a watchful eye on
my conduct, and the commanding officers of Tom-
beckbe garrison, in the Choctaws, and the Alabama,
in the Muscogee country, kept a continual communi
cation with one another, the former equipped a party
of their Choctaws to rc-take the French prisoners by
force, if we did not previously deliver them to a
French party of the Muscogees, who were sent by

352 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
the latter, as in the name of the whole nation —
though falsely — to terrify us into a compliance. We
had to pass through the Muscogee country on our
way to the British settlement; and though the French
were at a great distance, yet they planned their
schemes with consummate wisdom ; for the two
companies met at the time appointed, from two op
posite courses, of about a hundred and fifty miles
apart, on the most difficult pass from Charleston to
the Mississippi, where the path ran through a swamp
of ten miles, between high mountains, which were
impassable in any other place for a great distance
on either side. Here, the Muscogees left the Choc
taws, and met us in half-a-day's march of their ad
vantageous camping place. The foremost of ojir
party had almost fired on the Muscogees who were
ahead of the rest; but as soon as they saw their
white emblems of peace, they forbore, and we joined
company. The Muscogee leader was called, by the
traders, the ; Lieutenant;' and he had been a steady
friend of the English, till — by our usual misman
agement in Indian affairs — he became entirely de
voted to the French." A long talk here ensued
upon the path, which resulted in the Chickasaws
holding fast to their prisoners. The Lieutenant,
finding that his threats and entreaties, both, proved
ineffectual, he was obliged to acquiesce. " Soon
after, we set off. On that day's journey, a little be
fore we entered the long swamp, all our Chickasaw
friends staid behind, killing and cutting up buffalo.
By this means, I was a considerable way before the

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 353
pack-horses when we entered into that winding and
difficult pass, which was a continued thicket. After
riding about a mile I discovered the fresh tracks of
three Indians. I went back, put the white people on
their guard, gave my horse and sword to a corpulent
member of the Sphinx Company,* and set off ahead,
shunning the path in such places as the savages
were most likely to post themselves. Now aud then
I put up the whoop on different sides of the path,
both to secure myself and intimidate the opposite
scout party; otherwise, I might have paid dearly for
it, as I saw, from a rising point, the canes where
they were passing to shake. I became more cau
tious, and they more fearful of being inclosed by
our party. They ran off to their camp, and speedily
from thence up the craggy rocks, as their tracks tes
tified. Their lurking place was as artfully chosen
as a wolf could have fixed on his den. When our
friendly Indians came up, it was too late to give
chase; they only viewed their tracks. At night, the
Chickasaw war-leader give out a very enlivening
war-speech, and each of us lay in the woodland
form of a war-camp. As we were on our guard,
the enemy did not think it consistent with their
safety to attack us — ambuscading is their favorite
plan of operations. The next day, the Indians — by
agreement — led the van, and I brought up the rear
with the French prisoners. A short way from our
camp there were steep rocks, very difficult for loaded
* A mercantile corporation.
30

354 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
horses to rear and ascend. Most of them had the
good fortune to get safe up, but some of which I es
corted, tumbled backwards; this detained us so long
that the van gained nearly three miles upon us. I
posted myself upon the top of one of the rocks as a
sentinel, to prevent our being surprised by the Choc
taws, and discovered them crawling on the ground,
behind trees, a considerable way off, on the side of
a steep mountain, opposite to us. I immediately
put up the war-whoop, and told a young man with
me the occasion of it; but he being fatigued and
vexed with his sharp exercise, on account ofthe
horses, only cursed them, and said we were war
riors, and would fight them if they durst come near
enough. As I was cool, I helped and hastened 'him
off; in the meanwhile, I cautioned the captives against
attempting to fly to the enemy in case they at
tacked us, as their lives should certainly pay for it;
and they promised they would not. We at last set
off, and met with no interruption; the enemy hav
ing a sharp dread of our party ahead, who would
have soon run back to our assistance had ihey at
tacked us. About an hour after our van we got to
camp. The Choctaws, at night, came down from
the mountains and crept after us. Our camp was
too well pitched to be surprised; but they used an
artful stratagem to draw some of us into their treach
erous snares; for they stole one of the bell-horses,
and led it away to a place near their den, which was
about a mile below us, in a thicket of reeds, where
the creek formed a semi-circle. This horse was a

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHER&KEES. 355
favorite with the gallant and active young man I
had escorted the day before to camp.
"As he was of a cheerful and happy temper, the
people were much surprised to find him at night
peevish and querulous, contrary to every part of his
past conduct; and though he delighted in arms, and
carried them constantly when he went from camp,
yet he went out without any this night, though I
pressed him to take them. In less than an hour he
returned safe, but dejected. When he sat down, he
drooped his head ou his hands, which were placed
on his knees, and said the enemy were lurking,
and that we should soon be attacked, and some of
us killed. As I pitied the state of his mind, I only
told him that yesterday he and I knew the French
savages were watching to take an advantage of us ;
but, for his satisfaction, I would take a sweep on
foot, while the Chickasaws painted themselves ac
cording to their war custom, when they expected to
engage an enemy. I went out with my gun, pouch,
and belt-pistols, and within two hundred yards of
the camp discovered the enemy's tracks ; they had
passed over a boggy place ofthe creek, upon an old
hurricane-tree. I proceeded with the utmost caution
— posting myself now and then behind large trees,
and looking out sharply, lest I should fall into an
ambuscade, which the Choctaws are cunning artists
in forming. In this manner I marched for three
quarters of an hour, and then took to high ground,
a little above the enemy's camp, in order to return
for help to attack them. But the aforesaid brave

356 ftlSTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
youth, led on by his ill genius, at this time mounted
a fiery horse, which soon ran into the ambuscade,
where they shot him with a bullet in his breast, and
another entered a little below the heart. The horse
wheeled round in au instant, and sprung off; but in
pitching over a large fallen tree, the unfortunate
rider, by reason of his mortal wounds, fell off, a
victim to the barbarians. One of them soon struck
a tomahawk into his head, just between his eyes,
and jerked offa piece of scalp about the bigness ofa
dollar; they took also his Indian breeches, and a
handkerchief he had on his head, and immediately
flew through a thicket of briars, to secure their re
treat. When they fired their two guns, I imme
diately gave the shrill war-whoop, which was re
sounded by one of the Chickasaws, who had been
out bunting from the camp. They instantly set off
at full speed — naked, except their Indian breeches
and moccasins. I put myself in the same flying
trim, on the enemy's firing; we soon came to the
tragical spot, but without stopping we took their tracks,
gave chase, and continued it a great way; unluckily,
as we were running down a steep hill, they discov
ered us from the top of another, and soon dispersed
themselves, by which means, not being able to dis
cover one track of those forces, on the hard, hilly
ground, we were obliged to give over the chase, and
return to camp. We buried our friend by fixing, in
a regular manner, a large pile of great logs for the
corpse, with big tough saplings laid over it and on
each side, thrust deep into the ground, to secure it

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 357
from the wild beasts. Though the whole camp at
first imagined the enemy had killed me, and cap
tured the other, yet the warriors did not show the
least emotion of gladness, nor even my favorite friend,
the war-leader, when they first saw me safe; but the
women received me with tears of joy. I mention
this to show the force of education and habit; those
who are used to scenes of war and blood become
obdurate, and are lost to all the tender feelings of
nature; while they whose employment it is trf mourn
for their dead, are susceptible of the tender impres
sions they were originally endued with by Deity."
This adventure, it is very probable, occurred in
North 'Alabama; the principal Chickasaw towns lay
on the head waters of the Yazoo River, so that their
great trail to Charleston would pass directly across
the mountain-spurs of that State.
" Soon after this event, our Chickasaw friends were
attacked by small-pox, which, becoming general in
the camp, I was under the necessity of setting off
by myself, between Flint River and the Ockmulgee.
I came up with a large camp of Muscogee traders,
returning from the English settlements. They told me
that they had been lately assured at Augusta by the
Cherokee traders, that above a hundred and twenty
of the French Shawanese, might be daily expected
near that place, to cut off the English traders, and
plunder their camp; and cautioned me, with much
earnestness at parting, to keep a watchful eye during
that day's march. After having rode fifteen miles,
about ten o'clock I discovered a head through the

358 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
trees — an Indian ascending a steep hill; he perceived
meatthesame instant — for they are extremely watch
ful on such dangerous attempts. As the company
followed their leader in a line, each at a distance of
a few yards from the other, all soon appeared in view.
As soon as I discovered the foremost one, I put up
the shrill whoop of friendship, and continually seemed
to look earnestly behind me till we approached near
to each other, in order to draw their attention from
me, and fix it in that way, as supposing me to be the
foremost of a company still behind. Five or six
soon ran at full speed, on each side of the path, and
blocked up two valleys, which happened to be
at the place of our meeting, to prevent my escape.
They seemed as if their design was to attack me
with their barbed arrows, lest they should alarm my
supposed companions by the report of their guns.
I observed, that instead of carrying their bows and
quivers over their shoulder, as is the custom, they
held the former in their left hand, bent, and some
arrows. I approached and addressed them, and en
deavored to appear quite indifferent at their hostile
arrangement. While I held my gun ready in my
right hand, about five yards distant from them, I
struck my breast with the but-end of one of my
pistols, which I had in my left hand, and told their
war-leader, with that vehemence of speech which is
always requisite on such an occasion, that I was an
English Chickasaw, and informed him by expressive
gestures that there were two tens of Chickasaw war
riors', and more than half that number of women,

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 359
besides children, a little behind just beyond the first
hill. At this news they appeared to be much con
fused, as it was unexpected for such a number of
warlike enemies to be so near at hand. This Sha-
wanno party consisted only of twenty-three middle-
sized, but strong-bodied men with large heads and
broad, flat crowns, and four tall young persons,
whom I conjectured to be of the Cherokee Nation.
I spoke a little to a hair-lipped warrior among them,
who told me he lived in Tukkaseche, a northern
town of that country. The leader whispered some
thing to his waiter, which, in like manner, was com
municated to the rest, and then they all passed by
me, with sullen looks and glancing eyes. I kept my
guard till they were out of arrow-shot, when I went
on at a seemingly indifferent pace; but as soon as
out of sight of their view, I rode about seventy miles
with great speed, to avoid the danger of a pursuit,
as I imagined they would be highly enraged against
me, for their double disappointment.
"About sunset ofthe same day, I discovered more
Indians ahead ; but, instead of sounding the usual
whoop of defiance, I went on, slowly and silently, a
little way, reasoning with myself about the safest
method in so dangerous a situation. I had appre
hensions of their being another party of the Sha-
wanno company, separated in that manner to avoid
a pursuit, which otherwise might be very easy, by
the plainness of their tracks through the long grass
and herbage. But at. the critical time — when I had
concluded to use no chivalry, but give them leg-bail

360 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
instead of it, by leaving rny baggage-horses, and
making for a deep swamp— I discovered them to be
a considerable body of the Muscogee head-men, re
turning home with presents from Charleston, which
they carried chiefly on their backs. The wolf-king,
as our traders called him — our old steady friend of
the Amooklasah town, near the late Alabama — came
foremost, harnessed like a jackass, with a saddle on
his back, well girt over one shoulder, and across
under the other.
" We seemed equally glad to meet each other ; they
to hear how affairs stood in their country, as well as
on the trading path ; and I to find, that instead of
bitter-hearted foes, they were friends, and would se
cure my retreat from any pursuit that might happen.
I told them the whole circumstances attending my
meeting the Shawanno, with their being conducted
by our deceitful Cherokee friends, who were desirous
of spoiling the old beloved white path, by making
it red; and earnestly persuaded them to be on their
guard that night, as I imagined the enemy had pur
sued me, when they found I had eluded their bloody
intention. I endeavored especially to arouse them
against the Cherokee, well knowing that one pack of
wolves was the best watch against another of the
same kind. They thanked me for the friendly notice
I gave them, and we parted company. The Sha
wanese whom I had eluded, after rambling about,
and by viewing the smoke of fires from the tops of
high hills and trees, and carefully listening to the
report of guns, fell in with two Chickasaw hunters,

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 361
who were adopted relations of the Muscogee, and
killed and scalped them, and then ran off to the
northern towns of the Cherokees. This was the
true and sole cause of the last war between the
Muscogees and Cherokees, whose direful effects are
still feelingly known to great numbers of the suffer
ing inhabitants. I insert this by way of caution to
statesmen hereafter."
The remainder of his journey to Charleston,
appears to have been made without the occurrence
of any other incidents worth relating. " The next
year," he resumes, (1750,) " I had occasion to go
to the Cherokee country, and happened to have a
brave, cheerful companion, Mr. H. F., of Ninety-six
settlement. We took a hearty drink of punch
about ten miles from Keowee town, opposite to
which the late Fort Prince George stood, and were
proceeding along, when we discovered the fresh
tracks of Indians in the path, who were gone ahead.
As we could not reasonably have the least suspicion
of their being enemies, we rode quite carelessly ; but
they proved to be the above-mentioned Mononga
hela Indians. Their watchfulness, and our singing,
with the noise of our horses' feet, made them hear
us, before they could possibly see us ; when they
suddenly posted themselves off the path, behind
some trees, just in the valley of Six-mile Creek, in
order to revenge their loss by the Euchees, which
they ascribed to the information given by the white
man.* But their Cherokee guide prevented them
* This refers to an incident that will be related farther on.
31

362 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
from attempting it, by telling them that, as his
country was not at war with us, his life must pay
for it, if they chanced to kill either of us ; and as
we were fresh and well armed, they might be sure
we would fight them so successfully, as at least one
of us should escape aud alarm the towns. With
this caution, they forbore their hazardous attempt.
They squatted and kept close, therefore, so that we
did not see one of them, aud suspected no danger.
By the discontinuance of their tracks, we soon
knew we had passed them. But just after we had
hidden two kegs of rum, about two miles from the
town, four of them appeared unarmed, stark naked,
and torn by the thickets. When we discovered
them, we concluded they had been below on mis
chief. If we had not been so nigh the town, my
companion would have fired at them. We went
into Keowee, and the traders there soon informed us
of their cowardly design.
" We went as far as the mid-settlements, and found
most of the towns much disaffected to us and in a
fluctuating situation, through the artifice of the
French. In a few days we returned, but found they
had blocked up all the trading paths, to prevent our
traders from making their escape. Just as we de
scended a small mountain, and were about to ascend
a very steep one, a hundred yards before us, which
was the first of the Apalache, a large company ofthe
lower-town Indians, started out from the sloping
rocks, on the north side of the path, a little behind
us. As they were naked except their breech-cloth,

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 363
painted red and black, and accoutred every way like
enemies, I bid my companion leave the luggage-
horses and follow me ; but as he had left his arms
at the lower-towns, and was not accustomed to such
surprises, it shocked him till they ran down upon
him. On this, I turned back, and stood on my arms,
expecting they would have fired upon us. However,
they proposed some questions, which I answered, as
to where we had been, and were going, and that we
were not any of their traders. Had it been other
wise the dispute would have been dangerous. We
got over the mountain, and safe to Tomassee ;* here
we rested two nights, and found the people distract
ed for mischief, to which the many causes before
mentioned prompted them."
After diligent research, we have been unable to
discover with certainty, who H. F. of Ninety-six was.
It is quite probable, however, that the initial F. stands
for the name of Francis ; for we met with a note in
the Indian Books, which intimates that Adair was,
about this time, living at Ninety-six, in the house of
Capt. Francis. It may be that the publication of his
initials, with several others from the same source, of
prominent men, who, at this early period, figured at
Old Ninety-six and the Congarees will lead to more
than one pleasing recognition.
"The Governor,! in less than a month after this
period, had the strongest confirmation of the ill in
tention of these savages and their allies, through an
* Adair writes this name Tymahse. f Governor Glen.

364 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
express I sent with the intelligence ; but the news
was pocketed, and my services traduced. The
French, however, had a different opinion of them ;
they were so well acquainted with the great damages
I had done to them, and feared others I might occa
sion, as to confine me a close prisoner for a fortnight
when I went to the Alabama garrison,* in the Mus
cogee country. They were fully resolved to have
sent me down to Mobile or New Orleans, as a capital
criminal, to be hanged for having abetted the Musco
gees, Chickasaws and Choctaws, to shed a torrent of
their Christian blood; though I had only retaliated
upon them, the long train of blood they had, years
before, wantonly spilled. They wanted to have
confronted me with the French prisoners I formerly
mentioned, and with the long Lieutenant, whom we
met two days before the Choctaws killed one of our
people, below Book Pharaah,or the Long Swamp. I
was well assured he was to have gone down to be
baptized, and so become a good West-Florida French
chieftain, in order to condemn me, the poor bloody
heretic. I saw him, and they had by this time taught
him to count beads; but I doubted not of being able
to extricate myself some way or other. They ap
pointed double centriesover me, for some days before
I was to be sent down in the French King's large
boat. They were strictly charged against laying
down their weapons, or suffering any hostile thing to
be in the place, where I was kept, as they deemed
? Old Fort Toulouse, at the juncture ofthe Cosa and Tallapoosa.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 365
me capable qf any mischief. I was not indeed lock
ed up only at night, lest it should give offence to our
friendly Indians ; but I was to have been put in
irons, as soon as the boat passed the Indian towns,
that lay two miles below the fort.
"About an hour before we were to set off by water
I escaped from them by land ; and though they had
horses near at hand, and a corrupt town of savages
settled within a hundred and fifty yards of the
garrison, yet, under those disadvantages, besides
heavy rains that loosened the ground the very night
before, I took through the middle of the low land,
covered with briers, at full speed. I heard the French
clattering on horseback along the path, a great way
to my left hand, and the howling savages pursuing
my tracks with careful steps; but my usual good for
tune enabled me to leave them far enough behind,
on a needless pursuit. As they had made my arms
prisoners, I allowed them, without the least regret, to
carry down my horses, clothes, and other things, and
punish them by proxy, in the manner they intended
to have served the owner, for his faithful services to
his country."
Once in the Choctaw Nation, while traveling the
path alone towards Mobile, he was beset by enemies
and dangers, to which, he affirms, he came nearer
falling a bloody victim, than any he ever encountered
in all his life besides.
Near the remote town of that tribe, called Yowan-
na, which appears on Adair's meager map, to have
stood on Pearl6River, somewhere between the present

36(5 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
sites of Jackson and Monticello, in Mississippi, a
party of strolling Muscogees, who were endeavoring
to surprise its inhabitants, and failing in their pur
pose, savage-like, not to be disappointed in their
thirst for blood, attacked a camp of two while traders,
and killed and scalped both, after a desperate fight
with one of them, who happened to be a man of
courage, and muscular strength. The marauders
then, having hung the bodies of their victims on a
neighboring tree with the halters of their own horses,
fled with the plunder of six horse -loads of dressed
deer skins, towards the Mobile River. They were
quickly pursued, however, by the Great Red Chief
tain of Yowanne, who, fortunately coming up with
them, killed and scalped two of the party, and re
covered the horses and leather. With these, and the
scalps of the enemy, he expected, on showing them
to the English authorities, to procure for himself and
warriors afresh supply of presents and ammunition.
But he was sadly disappointed, for so cold was his
reception by the Deputy-superintendent of Indian Af
fairs, that he returned home deeply incensed against
the English.
Adair continues : " I have reason to remember this
too well, for a little while after those white men were
murdered, business calling me to Mobile by myself,
I chose to decline the eastern path, and the middle
one that leads by the Chakehooma Old Fields, as they
were much exposed to the incursions of the Musco
gee, and rode through the chief towns of the Nation,
along the horse-path that runs from the Chickasaws,

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKKES. 367
nearest the Mississippi, to Mobile. About six miles
below the seven towns that lie close together, and
next to New Orleans, I met a considerable party of
the leaders and head warriors, returning home from
war. We shook hands together, and they seemed
very glad to see me. They earnestly dissuaded me
from proceeding any farther, advised me to return
to their friendly towns, and rest a while among them,
declaring that if my ears were mad, and would not
hear their friendly speech, I should surely be killed,
the enemy were ranging the woods so very thick.
They were good judges of the danger, as they knew
the treacherous plan they had concerted together at
Yowanne. I thanked them, and said I wished bu
siness allowed me to act according to their advice,
but it did not. However, if my limited days were
not finished before, I would shortly have the plea
sure to see them again. I then proceeded, and met
several parties of the same main company, several
miles distant from one another, carrying small pieces
ofa scalp, singing the triumphal song and sounding
the shrill death whoop, as if they had killed hun
dreds. "I encamped early and within two leagues of Yo
wanne, as it seemed to be a good place for killing
wild game. I imagined, also, that here the people
were awed by the Muscogee from ranging the woods,
but it happened otherwise; for soon after the horse-
bells began to ring, two sprightly young fellows came
through the cane swamp, and, as enemies, they
crawled up the steep bank of the creek near to me,

368 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
before I discovered them. My fire-arms were close
at hand, and I instantly stood on my guard. They
looked earnestly around to see the rest of my com
pany, as it is very unusual for any ofthe traders to
take that journey alone. I asked them who they
were, from whence they came, and what they were
so earnestly searching for. They evaded answering
my queries, and asked me if I did not come by
myself? I told them, without hesitation, that some
way behind, my companion rode out of the path to
kill deer, as his gun was good, and he could use it
extremely well. On this they spoke a little together
with a low voice, and then told me that they be
longed to Yowanne, and were part of a hunting
camp, which was near at hand and in view of the
path. I asked them to sit down, which they did,
but their discourse was disagreeable, as my supposed
fellow-traveller was the chief subject of it. They ¦
said they would go back to their camp and return to
mine soon, to see whether the white man was come
from hunting. They went and were as good as their
word — for they did me the honor to pay me a second
visit. As they were so very earnest in that which
did not concern them, unless they had ill intentions,
the sight of them would have instantly inflamed the
heart of one not infected with stoicism, to wish for
a proper place to make a due retribution. At this
time the sun was near three hours from setting. The
white hunter's absence was the first and chief sub
ject of their discourse till evening. As on a level
place all the savages sit cross-legged, so my visitors

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 369
did, and held their guns on their knees, or kept them
very near, with their otter-skin shot-pouch over
one of their shoulders, as is usual in time of dan
ger. I observed their mischievous eyes, instead of
looking out eastwardly towards the Muscogee coun
try, they were generally turned toward the north
west, the way I had come. As by chance I walked
near to one of them, he suddenly snatched up his
gun. No friendly Indians were ever known to do
the like, especially so near home, and a considera
ble camp of their own people; innocence is not sus
picious, but guilt is. He knew his own demerit, and,
perhaps, imagined I knew it fro,m concurring cir
cumstances. To see whether his conduct proceeded
from fear of danger or from accident, I repeated the
trial, and he did the same, which confirmed me in
my opinion of their base intentions.
"In this uneasy and restless manner we continued
till sun-set, when one of them artfully got between
me and my arms. Then they ordered me to stop
the bells of my horses, which were grazing near the
camp. I asked them the reason — they told me be
cause the noise frightened away the deer. I took no
notice at first of their haughty command, but they
repeated it with spiteful vehemence, and I was forced
to obey their mandate. They looked and listened
earnestly along the edge of the swamp, but being
disappointed of their expected additional prey, in
about the space often minutes they ordered me to
open the bells again. Of the manifold dangers I
ever was in, I deemed this by far the greatest, for I
stood quite defenceless. Their language and beha-

370 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
viour plainly declared their mischievous designs. I
expected every minute to have been shot down; and
though I endeavored to show a manly aspect, the
cold sweat trickled down my face through uneasi
ness and a crowd of contrary passions. After some
time in this alarming situation, they told me the
ugly white man staid long, and that they would go
to their camp a little while and return again — they
did as they said. To deceive them, I had made
my bed as for two people, of softened bear and buf
falo skins, with the long hair and wool on and
blankets. My two watchmen came the third time,
accompanied with one older than themselves; he
spoke little, was artful and very designing. They
seemed much concerned at the absence of my sup
posed companion, lest he should, by unlucky mis
chance, be bewildered or killed by the Muscogee. I
gave them several reasons to show the futility of
their kindly fears, and assured them he usually staid
late to barbacue the meat, when he killed much, as
he could not otherwise bring it to camp ; but that he
never failed, on such an occasion, to come some time
in the night. The cunning fox, now and then, asked
me a studied short question upon the main point
they had in view, and my answers were so cool and
uniform, that I almost persuaded them firmly to
credit all I said. When he could no way trepan me —
and there was silence for several minutes — he asked
me if I was not afraid to be at camp alone. I told
him I was an English warrior — my heart was hon
est — aud as I spoiled nobody, why should I be
afraid ? Their longing eyes were by this time quite

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 371
tired. The oldest of them very politely took his
leave of me in French, and the others, through an
earnest friendly desire of smoking and chatting with
my absent companion, told me, at parting, to be sure
to call them, by sounding the news whoop, as soon
as he arrived at camp. I readily promised to com
ply for the sake of the favor of their company; and
to prevent any suspicion of the truth of my tale, I
added that if he failed in his usual good luck, they
ought to supply us with a leg of venison, or we
would give them as much if he succeeded.
"And now all was well, a't least with me, for I took
time by the forelock, and left them to echo the
news-whoop. Yowanne lay nearly south-east from
me, but to avoid my either being intercepted on the
path, or heard by the quick-eared savages, I went a
quarter of a mile up to the large cane swamp, and
passed through it on a south-west course, but very
slow, as it was a dark thicket of great canes and
vines, over-topped with large spreading trees. I sel
dom had a glimpse of any star to direct my course,
the moon being then far spent. About an hour be
fore daylight, I heard from the top of a high hill
my troublesome visitors fire off a gun at the camp,
which was, I suppose, when they found me gone,
and in order to decoy my supposed companion to
answer them with the like report; conjecturing he
would imagine it was I who fired for him, according
to custom in similar cases. I kept nearly at the dis
tance of three miles from the path, till I arrived at
the out-houses of Yowanne."

CHAPTER XV.
French Policy and Intrigues continued — The Mountain Barriers of
Upper Carolina the key to tbe Province — Cherokee's account
of the first appearance among them of French Emissaries — Francis
Nicholson — The English strangely indiiferent lo the dangerous
encroachments of lhe French — The wonders arTd extent of the
Great Valley, little apprehended by the settlers on the Atlantic —
Gov. Nicholson meets the Cherokees in Council, &c.
The incidents of the last chapter, though interest
ing and truthful pictures of the times, and of their
faithful chronicler, led us considerably in advance
of the regular order of events.
The French, still bent on their grand scheme of
uniting their possessions on the Gulph of Mexico,
with those of Canada on the north, erected, in rapid
succession, after the completion of Fort Toulouse,
Fort Tombeckbe among the Choctaws, Fort Assump
tion on the Chickasaw Bluff, and Paducah at the
mouth of the Cumberland River, besides numerous
trading houses along the Tennessee, in close prox
imity to the Cherokees and Catawbas; the former
occupying a position in the midst of their mountain
barriers, on the immediate border of Carolina, which
had long been regarded as the key to that province.
The French knew this, quite as well as the public

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 373
guardians of the people, who were most interested,
and were now ready to take the last step — the se
duction to their alliance and amity of the Cherokees,
preliminary to the successful invasion and ultimata
ruin of Carolina.
We found in the manuscript records the account
given by the Cherokees themselves, of the first ad
venture made by the French among them in prose
cution of these plans. They pushed a boat, loaded
with goods and presents, as high up the Tennessee
as they could approach in that manner the Over-hill
settlements; and going boldly into one of the towns,
proposed to hold a conference with the head-men.
The Indians appeared to assent; the chiefs were
assembled, and a scaffold erected, no doubt at the
request of the French, in accordance with their
notions of public dignity. On this the head-men
and their new visitors took their seats with great
solemnity, and entered upon the business that had
brought the latter into the Nation.
All, in a short time, seemed greatly interested in
the animated French talk, when suddenly the indig
nant warriors springing up, drew their tomahawks,
and cut them all off with their friendly Indian in
terpreters; after which they threw their dead bodies
from the scaffold and dragged them into the river.
This account was preserved by a conjurer, who ap
pears to have been an eye-witness ofthe scene. It
is further related that this rebuff so discouraged the
French, that for many years, they made no more at-

374 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
tempts to entice the Cherokees from their alliance
and commerce with the English.
In 1721, Francis Nicholson was appointed Gover
nor of South Carolina. He was the first chief magis
trate under the royal government ; and though all
parties were now in the enjoyment of a delightful
calm, after the fierce political struggle that had just
freed the province from the hateful rule of the pro
prietors, it does not appear that either the new Gov-
3rnor or the Assembly had any adequate conception
of the policy of the French, or of the dangers that
threatened Carolina, from their splendid schemes of
self aggrandizement.
Indeed, it is an interesting fact, that even at this
period of American history, the whole of that vast
region now known as the West, had made no defi
nite impression upon the minds of the English in
habiting lhe Atlantic coast. To them it was an un
known world, shut alike to their view and their
enterprise, by the impassable barrier of the Alle
ghany Range. It is true, that much earlier than this,
a few bold spirits, allured by the profits of trade, or
in search of new hunting-grounds and wild adven
ture, had found here and there a pathway which led
to advanced points, from which they enjoyed mag
nificent views of the wonders of the Great Valley.
But, like the ancient Northmen — whom we are told
fortuitous winds wafted to the shores of the New
World, long before its discovery by Columbus — the
many strange stories they brought back of the scenes

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 375
they had witnessed in their distant excursions, only
served to fill the imaginations of the people with
vague ideas of a mysterious region that lay far be
yond the blue mountain summits that studded their
western horizon.
" They little dreamed of the breadth, the length,
and the resources of the Great Valley, whose verge
they had approached ; nor imagined that a re
gion lay beyond them, wrapped in the silent splen
dor of unbroken forests, which, in extent and beauty,
far exceeded the territories which had previously
been subdued by our ancestors, at so great an expen
diture of life and wealth. They were, perhaps, un
aware, that the French were even then building forts
and villages, planting the grape, and playing the vio
lin, upon the borders ofthe Mississippi."*
We are not left, however, to mere conjecture on
this point. An old chronicler of the times, thus
quaintly writes: " We have very little or no corres
pondence with the mountainous parts of this prov
ince, and towards the country ofthe Messiasippi, all
which we have strange accounts of, and some very
large ones, with respect to the different and noble
fruits, and several ornaments and blessings of nature,
which Messiasippi possesses ; more to be coveted than
any of those we enjoy to the eastward ofthe mountains.
Yet, when I come to discourse some of the idolizers of
that country, I found it to be rather novelty than
truth and reality, to induce those persons to allow it
* Judge James Hall.

376

HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,

such excellencies above others. It may be a brave
and fertile country, as 1 believe it is ; but I cannot
be persuaded that it can be near so advantageous a§
ours, which is much better situated for trade, being
faced all along with the ocean, as the English Amer
ica is, when the other is only a direct river, in the
midst of a wild, unknown land, greatest part of whose
products must be fetched or brought a great way,
before it can come to a market. Moreover, such
great rivers commonly allow of more princes' terri
tories than one, and thus nothing but war and con
tention accompanies the inhabitants thereof."*
The Colony, relieved from the agitations of its re
cent domestic troubles, and once more restored to
quiet, under the mild sway ofthe royal government,
had ample leisure to make provision for its commer
cial prosperity and security against the hostile en
croachments of neighboring savages. With this end
in view, Gov. Nicholson, soon after his arrival in
the province, proposed to form with the warlike
Cherokees a treaty of close friendship and amity.
He accordingly dispatched a messenger to the Na
tion, informing them of his desire to meet them in a
general council, on the border, that he might dis
tribute presents amongst them, and confer with their
chiefs on the interests and claims of their growing
commerce with the English. The Cherokees, pleased
and flattered by a proposal so conciliatory and re-

* John Lawson's History of Carolina, published iu London, at the
Black-Boy, Paternoster Row, 1718.

ANCIENT TERRITORY' OF THE CHEROKEES. 377
spectful from their white neighbors, readily accepted
the invitation ; and the head-men of thirty-seven of
their towns, came down with a great company of
warriors, and women, and children, and met Gov.
Nicholson. This council was held, it is quite prob
able, at the Congarees; just three years before this
event, as has been related, the fort and trading-house
had been built at that place; it was then the only
advanced or fortified post on the Cherokee border.
Ninety-six was not settled till about thirty years
after, and Old Fort Prince George had not been
dreamed of. The Cherokee Nation numbered in
population, at this period, more than twenty thou
sand, and could send into the field more than six
thousand bowmen.
It indeed behooved the colony of Carolina to cul
tivate the friendship of a people so truly formidable,
and so well situated for harassing her, and, when di
rected by French emissaries, for effecting her total
ruin. Well would it have been, if all her public
agents and private citizens had constantly manifested
towards these savage but generous warriors, the
same respectful and kindly tone shown on this occa
sion by Gov. Nicholson. It would have been hap
pier for the people on the sea-board, infinitely hap
pier for the hardy pioneers and their defenceless
families of the upper-country, whose blood, in after
years, flowed in streams, to appease the wild spirit
of revenge; which was at length aroused by the cru
elty, oppression and neglect of English traders, and
English government officials.
38

378 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
There is no chapter in our history which more
strikingly illustrates the evil consequences that are
sure to flow from the continued disregard of the
great Scriptural truth — " With what measure ye
mete, it shall be measured to you again" — than
that which details the public and private dealings of
Carolina with the Cherokee Indians, and the conse
quent retribution that in due time followed, when
the frontiers were lit up with a flame of savage war
fare, and the tomahawk and scalping-knife were
doing their terrible work around the hearth-stones of
the Scotch-Irish backwoodsmen.
The difference between the French and English,
in their manner of treating the Indians, was just the
measure ofthe specific difference in the social habits
of the two people. The one was ever characterized
by the mildness, suavity, and respectful considera
tion, so striking in the Frenchman, whether he is
studied in Paris, or in his rude village on the Illi
nois ; the other, by that selfish bluntness, and utter
disregard for the feelings of others, not unfrequently
pushed to the degree of brntality, equally inherent in
the Englishman.
It may be replied by some that, after all, French
suavity is only an exhibition of intense selfishness,
under the form of a refined policy; but what is all
the suavity aud politeness of social life, but a refined
policy, except that rare manifestation of it which
springs from lhe heaven-born benevolence of true
piety. It is pleasing to any man, be he Christian or
savage, to be thought worthy of even that deference

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 379
in the conduct of others, which yields only the sem
blance of true feeling. And that this much is an
acceptable work, arid does not fail of its earthly re
ward, is shown in the remarkable fact, that the
French were enabled to penetrate into the very heart
of the continent, and there form peaceful and
flourishing settlements; when the English, with all
their courage and dogged hardihood, had scarcely
advanced a hundred miles towards the interior,
from their first strong-holds on the Atlantic coast.
During one hundred years, large communities of the
French settled in the Mississippi Valley, planted
their gardens, reared fruits, and embellished their
cheerful homesteads — in the midst of vast savage
hordes — with scarcely an instance of hostile inter
ruption from those wild children of the wood, only
confiding and gentle, when treated with kindness
and respect.
Governor Nicholson, we are told, although re
cently from Europe, was not unacquainted with the
character and habits of the Indians. Indeed, his
conduct in this congress, with the Cherokees, and
another, which he soon after held with the warlike
Creeks — whose eastern boundary was the Savannah
River — sufficiently indicated his estimation of their
prowess, and their capacity for an alliance of friend
ship and amity with their civilized neighbors.
This first assemblage in council with the English,
of the head-men and warriors of the Nation, was,
without doubt, more striking and imposing than any
that were afterwards held at Old Ninety-six, Ne-

380 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
quossee, or at the same place — if the Congarees was
really the spot — at which this was convened. There
was scarcely a town or a village in all their settle
ments that was not represented; and the proud
chiefs and warriors, and young females of the
Cherokee Nation of that period, dressed in the wild,
picturesque costume of their race, presented the
finest specimens of the physical man and woman,
to be found on the American Continent.
" The Cherokees," observes Bartram, " are yet
taller and more robust than the Muscogees, and by
far the largest race of men I have seen. Their
countenance and actions exhibit an air of magna
nimity, superiority and independence. The women
are tall, slender, erect, and of a delicate frame ;
their features formed with perfect symmetry, and
they move with a becoming grace and dignity. The
complexion of some of them is so bright as to
approximate quite closely to the bloom of European
women." The botanist saw the Cherokees at the period of
the Revolution — when it was already the testimony
of history that they differed as much in their moral
and physical characteristics from what they had
been iu the time of Governor Nicholson, as the
Greeks under Alexander differed from the Greeks
who fought at Marathon and Salamis.
No minute record,* it appears, was ever made of
* It was not until Governor Glen's time, that any regular, and, at
the same time, full records were kept ofthe public transactions with
the Indians. It is to his intelligence, liberality and praiseworthy re-

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 381
the proceedings and incidents of this council, on the
remote border ; the name of but one, even, of the
many head-men who took a part in it has been pre
served ; yet their speeches on the topics laid before
them by the Governor, must have afforded examples
of wild eloquence worthy of preservation and study.
The business in hand was soon dispatched, and
the promised presents distributed; after which the
Governor smoked, with the chiefs, the pipe of peace.
He, on this occasion, regulated their weights and
measures, and marked out the boundaries of their
lands, that they might no more be intruded upon by
English settlers. The Cherokees had made frequent
complaints of encroachments upon their hunting-
grounds. An agent was appointed to superintend
their affairs; and, in order to have them united, as
far as their notions of government would permit,
under a common head, he selected and empowered,
with their consent, Wrosetasato, to be the chief
warrior, and commander of the Cherokees, endowing
him, at the same time, with ample authority to
punish the guilty and lawless, and to obtain redress
for every act of oppression perpetrated by English
settlers or traders, upon the Indians.* The Chero
kees returned to their towns, from this congress,
greatly pleased, both with their presents, and with
gard for system, that the State is indebted for those invaluable manu
script records in the Secretary of State's office, known as the Indian
Books. They are contained in four volumes, and are themselves a
deeply interesting and curious history.
* Hewit, Car. Col.

382 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
the excellent temper and good sense displayed by the
Governor; and the tranquillity, as well as the rapid
political developments of the twenty-two years
immediately following, fully vindicated the wisdom
that conciliated, on that occasion, the friendship and
good-will of this formidable people.
The interval that elapsed between 1721 and 1743,
were, without doubt, the most prosperous years of
the peltry trade, and the most peaceful in the rela
tions of Carolina and the Cherokee Nation ; yet it
is just that period in their mutual history, of which
we have been furnished the fewest records. Some
were lost in the subsequent turmoils and vicissitudes
of the colony ; some, perhaps, through neglect,
were destroyed by the canker and damp; but much
more, that would have been interesting and valuable,
was either suffered to pass away unrecorded by any
chronicler,* or lies locked up and useless in the
British archives.
It. was in 1716, as we have seen, that the first car
avan or periagof of goods was sent up by the Board
to the Cherokees; and, as late as 1731, there were
collected from all quarters in Charleston, for expor
tation, as many as two hundred and twenty-five
thousand deer-skins alone. And the annual rate of
exportation was above two hundred thousand. J
? Professor Rivers, in his Topics of Carolina History, gives a
minute account of the sources of our history, and the condition of
the manuscript records in the State archives.
t This is sometimes written peltiauger; periago is the word used
in the journals.
J Professor Rivers's Topics of History.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 383
It cannot, of course, be precisely ascertained how
many of these peltries were contributed from the
hunting-grounds of the Nation; but we found a
single brief note in one of the Indian Books which
enables us to venture something more than a mere
conjecture as to the actual number. Nearly a quar
ter of a century later, 1755, it is stated, that Corne
lius Dougherty anticipated, if the winter of that year
was but tolerably favorable for hunting, collecting
from his district alone in the Nation, fourteen thou
sand pounds of buck-skin leather. His tradiug-
house stood in the town of Tugaloo. Three years
before, the entire Nation had been mapped off into
thirteen hunting-ranges or districts, and a trader ap
pointed to every one, to superintend its traffic aud
business. If for one of these ranges only two-thirds
of Dougherty's expected crop be taken as an average
return, it would give for the entire Cherokee country
an annual production of more than one hundred
thousand pounds of buck-skin leather; no mention
being made of the skins of the raccoon, the beaver
and bear; all of which animals were still quite abun
dant in the upper-country and the mountains.
It was estimated in old times, and is still, that the
average weight of deer-skins is four pounds to the
skin; and there is little difference between its weight
when dry and raw, and when taken from the vat
ready for transportation. In the winter of 1755,
therefore, Dougherty expected the hunters of Tuga
loo range to bring down with their rifles some thirty-
five hundred deer; making for the whole Nation,

384 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
according to our average, about twenty-five thousand
annually. This is, doubtless, far below the true number-
four pounds being a large average per skin — larger,
it would appear, from the following note taken from
the same records, than that allowed in the practical
estimates of 1716. The enacted price of deer-skins
for this period were — for white skins of a pound
weight and upwards, five shillings; light, two shil
lings and six-pence; raw buck-skins, of a pound
and a half weight and upwards, five shillings; all
raw, doe, and other light skins, two shillings and
six-pence, or -according to weight.
Tugaloo, early aud late, was an important place
in the peltry trade; it is frequently mentioned in the
journals ofthe Board. June the 11th, 1717, it is re
corded, that the Commissioners received from Tuga
loo, nine hundred and one dressed deer-skins, fifty-
six raw, thirty beaver-skins, and twenty-one slaves,
purchased at that factory.
In 1755, one hundred deer-skins were worth, in
Charleston, at the present value ofthe English pound
in federal currency, two hundred and fifty dollars.
A beaver-skin brought four shillings, three and one-
half-pence. During the administration of Governor
Glen, after the staple of rice, which had then grown
to be of the first importance on the list of colonial
exports, there was no commodity that surpassed in
value the peltries yielded by the Indian hunting-
grounds. An old chronicler quaintly informs us of
the extent and value of the traffic in its earlier periods:

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 385
" They carry on a great trade with the Indians, from
whom they get these great quantities of deer-skins,
and those of other wild beasts, in exchange for
which they give • them only lead, powder, coarse
cloth, red paint, iron-ware, and some other goods,
by which they have a very considerable profit."
In 1747, there were exported from Charleston two
hundred pounds weight of beaver-skins, and seven
hundred and twenty hogsheads of deer-skins ; worth,
in Carolina currency, nearly four hundred thousand
pounds. The latter commanded five hundred and
fifty pounds per hogshead.
If such was the importance of the peltry trade in
the last years of its existence, when wild animals
had become comparatively scarce, and the degene
racy and indolence of the Indians a by-word and
reproach, no reason is left for amazement at the
assertion, that in the periods of its greatest prosperity
it was the most lucrative business on the Continent.
The wonder must be, how it was possible for the
hapless animals, whose skins supplied this active
commerce for the greater part of the eighteenth cen
tury, to continue to subsist so long in such incredible
numbers. It is a fact, not unworthy of notice in natural his
tory, that long after most of the beasts of prey had
become well-nigh extinct in the country, the gentle
deer and inoffensive beaver were still numerous in
their primitive haunts; though, during more than a
century, they had been the constant objects of the toil
and cuuning of a nation of the best hunters in the
33

386 HISTORY OT UPPER CAROLINA,
world, and had supplied, through their destruction,
the greater part of that time, the most valuable por
tion ofthe colony's exports. Do not the meek, even
among brute animals, inherit the earth ?
It was once remarked by an old hunter, when
speaking of the deer, "that the reason why they were
not all cut off when young — as they breed but once
a year, and were always surrounded by other animals
which preyed upon them, as dogs, wolves, wild-cats
and panthers — was, that no dog or other animal
could smell the track ofa doe or fawn while the lat
ter was too young to take care of itself. He de
clared, that he had often seen it demonstrated; he had
often taken his dogs over the grouud where he had
just before seen them pass, and they would take no
notice of the track, and could not be induced to fol
low when led to the spot, while they would instantly
discover the track of any cleer not having young
ones." This is but another proof from nature of the
wisdom and goodness of God.
Great as were, however, the profits of the peltry
trade, they began seriously to fall off so soon as the
evil effects of the English policy, in its management
had time to develop themselves. The irregularities
and abuses produced by the licentiousness and rapa
city of a few bad men engaged in the traffic, no doubt,
did it an injury — sometimes even endangering the
peace of the province — but so far as they immedi
ately affected the character of the Indians, they had
a decided tendency to sharpen thoir wits, stimulate
their energies, and increase their self-reliance, while

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 387
just the opposite influence was brought to bear upon
them by the government monopoly, through its fos
tering care and protection.
They were now taught to rely, in all their exi
gencies, upon the strong arm of the colony, instead
of upon themselves, and their private traders, whom
they had formerly met on terms of mutual freedom
and independence. The whole affair had become a
State concern, and neither trader nor Indian was
any more free. The former, who, before only abused
the Indians, now learned to cheat the government,
and abated not one whit of his evil practices in the
Nation. But the blameworthy policy of the government
did not stop at this ; from a sad misconception of
the Indian character — in which even Gov. Glen,
with all his tact and ability, participated — they
adopted the method of conciliating the savages by
frequent large distributions of presents to their wo
men and head warriors. No small portion of the
revenue accruing from the Indian trade was thus
expended. A few years were sufficient to develop the evil
tendencies and fruits of such a system. The Indian
character degenerated with most alarming rapidity ;
its original manliness was soon greatly abated ; the
self-reliant energy, courage, and noble bearing, that,
in primitive times, had distinguished the Cherokees
as the most intelligent and formidable warriors in
America, were exchanged for the indolence and
empty, noisy parade of a nation of doomed, proud
beggars.

388 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
A reliable eye-witness observes : " Before the In
dian trade was ruined by our left-handed policy, and
the natives corrupted by the liberality of our dim-
sighted politicians, the Cherokees were frank, sincere
and industrious. Their towns then abounded in hogs,
poultry, and everything sufficient for the support of
a reasonable life, which the traders purchased at an
easy rate, to their mutual satisfaction ; and as they
kept them busily employed, and did not make them
selves too cheap, the Indians bore them good will
and respect — and such is the temper of all the red
natives."* In the early years of the traffic, as before remarked,
the traders established their store-houses wherever
they found a town or settlement favorably situated
for their business. The commissioners decreed, how
ever, about the year 1718, after forts and factories
had been built, both at Savannah Town and the
Congarees, that the Indians, for the future, should
come down to those posts to obtain their goods and
do their trading; "it being the resolution and sense
of the whole country, not to have, any more, a set
tled store among the Indians, but, by degrees, cause
them to come down to our forts, and purchase what
they want."f
This arrangement would have been productive of
a two-fold good effect : it would have withdrawn
from the Nation the swarm of roving, unprincipled
white leeches, who preyed upon both traders and
Indians, and whose vicious- example corrupted all
? Adair. -j- Commissioners' Journals.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 389
who came within their reach ; and have brought, as
well, the Indians repeatedly, every year, under the
influence of a better sort of men — whom it must
have been the interest of the government to appoint
as its agents at those factories.
An unaccountable whim, however, or a deep-
seated prejudice of the Cherokees to coming to the
forts for purposes of traffic, as well as the uncontrol
lable enterprise of the traders — great numbers of
whom soon began to be licensed — effectually pre
vented this salutary measure.
The manuscripts add: "The Cherokees utterly
dislike coming down to the garrisons to deal, and
will not, on any account — except to procure rum —
agree to that proposal." It is not at all improbable
that the Indians were potently aided in contracting
this prejudice to the trade at the forts, by the horde
of white savages, who infested their towns ; for the
proposed arrangement was obviously fatal to their
nefarious enterprises and licentious dalliance in the
Nation. The full blaze of day would have produced no
greater commotion among as many skulking bats,
than the removal of the scenes of their exploits to
places where the eyes of upright men, and some
portion of civilized influence, could reach them.
The fate of the Nation was now sealed. Long
before the breaking out of the war of 1760, the
Cherokees had become so thoroughly corrupt, as
to be no longer able — as in the times ot their
primitive strength — to resist the insinuating address

300 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
and tempting bribes of the French emissaries, who,
well aware of their opportunity, had been, for years,
hard at work, in their own dangerous way, in every
part of the Nation. We are in advance, however,
of some events too interesting and important to be
omitted.

CHAPTER XVI.
The results of Gov. Nicholson's Treaty — They are soon rendered
valueless hy the successful Intrigues of the French — The English
begin to be si-n.-ible of their danger — Active Emissaries once more
at work among the Cherokees — Gov. Middleton dispatches Col.
Chicken to lhe Nation, to counteract their influence — Adair's des
cription of Herbert's Spring, near the Tugaloo — The Over-hill
Towns encourage tlie French.
It was related in the last chapter how Gov. Nichol
son had met the head-men of the Cherokees on the
border, and formed with them a treaty of friend
ship and commercial union. The good effects of
that alliance were long felt, both in the province and
in the Nation ; the frontier was free from violence,
and the prosperity of the peltry trade greatly en
hanced. This era of peace and tranquillity was now rapidly
drawing to a close; in less than ten years after
Nicholson's treaty, the truth began to force itself,
even upon English senses, that the French, of Lou
isiana, had in view the vast design of connecting,
by military posts, their possessions ou the Gulf with
those of Canada — thus circumscribing, in menacing
proximity, tlie whole north-western from ier of Caro
lina. They had once more taken courage, and hav
ing sent out into the Over-hill settlements, several

392 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
dangerous emissaries, were already exerting a most
dangerous influence upon that portion ofthe Nation.
Arthur Middleton, who was now Governor, being
informed of this movement of the French, dispatched
Colonel George Chicken to the Cherokee towns, to
counteract, by his influence, the designs of these
skillful intriguers. And during the remainder of
his administration, Chicken was enabled, by the ex
ercise of all his address, to keep the Indians to the
English interest.
Adair gives an amusing account of a spring, then
famous as Herbert's Spring, situated only half a mile
from the head of Tugaloo River, whose waters flow
into the Mississippi, and were, therefore, called the
French waters. It lay close to the trading path, and
became a great resort for pack-horsemen, and other
wayfarers. When a man drank of it, he was said to
have partaken of French waters. It came, at length,
to be regarded with a sort of superstitious awe, and
the heads of many were completely turned by hav
ing tasted it but once. The belief grew current that
it possessed the magical power of fastening a man
for seven years in the Nation ; a notion eagerly laid
hold of by the dallying debauchees who sought a
plausible excuse for their continued sojourn iu the
towns, when nothing detained them but the allure
ments of vicious pleasure. The river French Broad,
is another notable memorial ofthe encroachments of
the French, at this period, upon English territory.
The emissaries from the Valley now met with an
encouraging reception among the Over-hills, and

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 393
having distributed many presents in their villages,
promised them a much more valuable contribution
in the future, if they would only discard the English
and look exclusively to French store-houses and
traders for all their goods and supplies.* In order,
however, to carry their measures, they did not trust
alone to the influence of glittering gewgaws and
trinkets; they maliciously proclaimed in all their
talks with the Indians, that the English were a sel
fish and treacherous race — that their alliance with
the Cherokees was solely for their own aggrandize
ment ; their friendship was mere pretence, and as
soon as it suited their purpose they would withhold
from them goods and ammunition, and reduce them,
with their wives and children, to the miserable ne
cessity of using ashes instead of salt; and thus
deprived of every resource and comfort, they would
make war upon them and utterly destroy their
Nation. The British Government at length deemed it
highly important that their alliance with the Chero
kees should be ofa tenure more reliable than a mere
treaty of commerce and amity; but what steps to
take to secure an object, now so desirable, was a
practical question, the solution of which required no
small amount of wisdom and a peculiar experience.
The course at last decided upon, was not striking in
its exhibitions of either. ? Indian Books.

394 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
They proposed to convert them suddenly into
gentle and obedient subjects of King George —to
exact of them the performance of duties, of whose
nature they had no more conception than they had
of the principles of the British Constitution.
A Commissioner must be sent directly to the
Cherokee Nation, empowered by the king, to form,
with its leading mon and warriors, a treaty, whose
provisions should bind them and their people forever
to be the willing subjects of Great Britain, and their
country an appendage of its crown.
Sir Alexander Cumming was selected as a suitable
agent for this mission. He lauded in Charleston
early in 1730, and having collected a party of traders,
with an interpreter, all of them well acquainted with
the trail and the Nation, he set out for the moun
tains; and passing up by the site of Ninety-six, then
an unbroken wilderness, reached Keowee, probably
in the latter part of March.
The head-men of the lower towns hastened to
meet him at that place, and, with many demonstra
tions of friendship, welcomed him to their country.
From Keowee he sent an invitation to all the remain
ing chiefs of the Nation to meet him iu a general
congress, at Nequassee, a town on the Hiwassee.
Accordingly in April, having crossed the mountains
to the place appointed for the meeting, he had tho
salisfaction of finding himself surrounded by a gor
geous assembly of all the leading men of the Chero
kees.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 395
The pipe of peace was introduced, and Moytoy,
the head warrior, having first smoked it with the
usual solemnity, handed it to Sir Alexander, who
smoked it in like manner, and passed it to the next
in rank; and thus it went round, till the whole
company had testified, by participating in this old
national custom, their amicable feelings and inten
tions. Everything was now ready for Sir Alexan
der's business.
He arose, and doubtless, after a preface of some
length, abounding in handsome compliments to the
warriors present, and their magnificent country, made
them a very plausible speech on the subject of King
George's power, munificence, and the cheerful obe
dience of his happy people; and concluded by in
forming them that he had come a great way to their
Nation to ask of Moytoy, and the other chiefs, an
acknowledgment of the same obedience as faithful
subjects of King George, in return for his love and
protection of their country. This same plea was
made by a later George to the rebellious colonists of
America, in a similar exigency and with precisely
the same amount of truth.
To all this handsome talk, delivered in a manner
and style calculated to impress an Indian council,
the chiefs, we are told, readily assented, with many
demonstrations of grateful humility. Sir Alexander
then proceeded, with the same easy acquiescence of
the whole assembly, to name Moytoy as Viceroy and
Commander-in-chief of the Cherokee Nation, and
enjoined upon the subordinate head-men the obliga-

396 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
tion they had placed themselves under to obey and
respect him as their king.*
The packs of merchandize which Sir Alexander
had the foresight to bring up with him, and the dis
play of which in the council had produced even a
greater effect upon the supple necks and pregnant
knees ofthe Indians than the eloquent speech ofthe
Commissioner, were now opened and distributed;
after which, the new-born loyalty of the warriors
waxing enthusiastic, they presented to Sir Alexander
the sacred tiara of eagles' feathers, usually worn by
the great head chief of the Nation, and fine painted
eagles' tails and four scalps of their enemies. These
emblems of peace and friendship were to be laid at
King George's feet on his arrival in England.
It was now proposed, however, as a happy sug
gestion by Sir Alexander, that Moytoy should dele
gate several of their chiefs to go with him to England,
to offer in person, to the great king, their homage and
emblems of friendship. This proposal was joyfully
acceded to, and six of their most prominent head
men, were immediately -selected for the mission
across the great waters. These returned on the trail
with the Commissioner to Charleston, where being
joined by a seventh, who, it appears, had either been
invited in that town, to join the embassy, or had

* The ideas conveyed by the words king and monarchy were not
quite so clear to the Cherokees at this period as some of the princi
ples of Newton's Principia; yet Hewit describes this whole scene
with a gravity suited to the description of the event of signing the
Declaration of American Independence.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 397
been added to it after their departure from Nequas-
see, they all set sail in the English ship Fox, and
landed the following June at Dover.
Their appearance on the road, in the passage from
Dover to London, produced a sensation only akin to
that awakened in Spain by a like cortege, which ac
companied Columbus in his first return from the
New World. On their arrival in the metropolis,
plumed, dressed and painted, in the most elaborate
style of American barbarism, hearing with them their
bows and quivers, and the decorated emblems of their
power and proffered friendship, they became, at
once, objects, of intense curiosity to all classes ofthe
people. Crowds of boys and idlers thronged them
in the streets; they received many formal visits from
the great, and were invited to the houses and tables
of the nobility.
During their stay iu England, they lived at the
public expense, and no attentions were spared to
impress them, in turn, with due admiration of Eng
lish grandeur and munificence. Adair informs us,
however, that the rooms assigned them in London
were subterranean. We are not told by any records
preserved in Carolina, what they said or how they
acted on first beholding the architectural splendors
of the great city, and the pageantry of its court ; but
the assertion may be ventured, that, however deep
ly they felt, not the least excitement or enthusiasm
betrayed it in their outer movements. A Cherokee
warrior, would have stood in view of London Bridge,
and the dome of St. Paul's, with the same stoical in-

398 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
difference that he would go to the stake, and suffer
the tortures inflicted by his enemies.
. This apparent incapacity of the Indians to be
charmed by the strange and wonderful sights they
saw in Britain, must have disappointed, as well as
surprised the English ; but they were not them
selves prepared to comprehend the depths of pride
that locked up the bosom and lips of every one of
those red warriors, nor the heroism and dignity of
his native self-control.
Sir Alexander introduced them to the king; and
the scene was, no doubt, such as to remind some
who were present of the patriarch's interview with
the ruler of Egypt. With the self-possession with
which they would have conducted the business of the
council-house in Keowee, they related to the Eng
lish sovereign, how at Nequassee the chiefs of their
Nation had met the British Commissioner, and form
ed with him a treaty by which they pledged them
selves to be the loving friends and allies of Great
Britain; in token of which, they had brought with
them their national crown, the scalps of theirenemies,
and their painted emblems of peace, and now laid
them at his Majesty's feet.
The king made them a suitable reply, and caused
the treaty, thus confirmed, to be written out as faith
fully, as could then be done in England, in the glow
ing, figurative style ofthe Cherokees. This English
version of it mainly stipulated that the colonists of
Carolina, should furnish the Indians with all man
ner of goods, and hasten to build houses, and plant

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEF.S. 399
corn towards their towns behind thegreat mountains.
They, on their part, were to keep the path, where
the English trod, clean and free from blood ; to fight
the enemies of Great Britain, and suffer the people
of no other nation to build any forts or cabins, or
plant corn upon the lands belonging to the great
king. Notwithstanding the long-threatened encroach
ments of the French, and the formidable position of
the Cherokees on tho north-western border of Caro
lina, this was the first treaty of any kind that was
ever concluded between the Nation and the English
Government; aud this neglect or want of foresight,
would have been sufficiently fatal to any promise of
good in what was now done, if each provision of this
high-sounding compact, had not itself been as empty
as the wind.
The excitement and pleasure of a costless voyage
across the Atlantic, to see a world new to them, and
the gratification of displaying their fine things, and
of acquiring more presents, were inducements enough
for seven head-men of any Indian nation to go on a
visit to a European sovereign. But King George
exhibited, perhaps, a pardonable ignorance of Indian
character, when he fell easily under the delusion
that the Cherokees had, on this occasion, come over
with their sacred eagles' tails, and painted scalps,
from a profound sense of their duty as loyal, obedi
ent subjects of Great Britain, to pay him their per
sonal homage, having already voluntarily yielded
him their magnificent country in exchange for a belt

400 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
of wampum, a few flints and pots of red paint. Eng
land then began to fillibuster in America.
The chronicler of these events thus piously com
ments on the article of the treaty, which relates to
the fancied acquisition ofthe splendid domain of all
Upper-Carolina, and much more besides : "The Cher
okees, however barbarous, were a free and indepen
dent people; and this method of obtaining a share
of their lands by the general consent, was fair and
honorable in itself, and most agreeable to the general
principles of equity, and the English Constitution.
An agreement is made with them, in consequence of
which, the king could not only give a just title to'
Indian lands, but, by the Indians becoming his vol
untary subjects, the colonists obtained peaceable
possession."* But did they obtain peaceable possession, when
they came to build their cabins and plant corn, to
wards the mountain villages of the Cherokees?
Rather, did the warriors iu London, and at Nequas
see, intend to make any sort of title to King George,
by which he could hold and grant their lands at
pleasure? A curious incident occurred among the
chiefs, while in England, that throws a flood of light
upon this notable affair, revealing the shrewdness
and consummate tact of those red statesmen of the
American woods. It is preserved by Adair.
In the Cherokee language, the word to-e-u-h-a-h
was regarded the most sacred form of affirmation.
?Hewit.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 401
Its final syllable contained an essential part of
Jehovah's name; and to once give it, and then deny
its obligations, was deemed infamous blasphemy.
One night in September, in the dead hours, after
they had returned to their subterranean lodging-
place, they fell into a fierce debate, whether they
should not kill, on the spot, one of the war-chief
tains, and their interpreter, Cheesto-Kaiehre, the Old
Rabbit; because, by the mouth of the latter, the
chief had answered to-e-u-h-a-h to the king's speech,
in which he claimed not only their lands, but those
of the neighboring nations, as his right and property.
The difficulty was finally deferred till they should
return home, to give an account of what they had
done in their mission. They were carried back to
America in the same vessel that bore Governor
Robert Johnson — a second time appointed to the
Chief Magistracy of Carolina — and, soon after reach
ing their towns, the two offending warriors were
regularly tried bofore a great council of the Nation,
The charges preferred against them were, that
they had betrayed the public faith, and sold their
country for an acknowledged price, by a firm com
pact, as representatives of the Nation ; the value re
ceived being a certain quantity of goods, and a de-
coying-belt of white wampum. The case was care
fully discussed ; but, on mature deliberation, it was
decided to acquit them honorably, because it was
judged that the interpreter was bound by an oath
to explain their speeches ; and that surprise, inad
vertence, self-love, and the unusual glittering pa-
34

402 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
geantry of the courtiers, had extorted the sacred
assent, to-e-u-h-a-h, from the chieftain — both of
them being, at the same time, greatly afraid lest
they should say something amiss, owing to the
difference in the idioms of the English and Chero
kee languages.
The Cherokees were, at no time, loth to enjoy the
profits and fine displays incident to the talks and for
mation of treaties with their liberal white neighbors;
but they ever put a higher value on their lands than
the consideration of any amount of the flints, belts,
and other presents bestowed upon them by the Eng
lish. Yet, shrewd as they were, and rich and
valuable their domain, they, at last, received
scarcely more for much of it than that miserable
equivalent, save the sweet satisfaction of exacting a
heavy interest of blood on the border. We shall
have more to say on this interesting topic, when we
come to treat more fully of the events of Governor
Glen's administration.
Some six or seven years of comparative tranquillity
followed Sir Alexander Cumming's treaty, so full of
promise for the future; but not one advantage was
obtained by it for Carolina, that had not already been
secured by the more sensible negotiations of Gover
nor Nicholson. Unfortunately for both the English
and Cherokees, the magicians of France knew well
how to do the same, and much more, with their
enchantments. We gave, in a former chapter,'a brief sketch of
the famous English trader and historian, James

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 403
Adair. At the same period that he lived among the
Chickasaws and Cherokees, the French were repre
sented among the latter, by a man whose genius
and learning appear to have been of a very high
order; but whose skill and untiring energy as an
emissary, combined with an utter disregard of every
moral principle and restraint, made him, perhaps,
the most dangerous character that ever figured among
our Southern Indians, or in any country.
His name was Christian Priber, a German Jesuit —
"a gentleman ofa curious and speculative temper."
Having been deputed by the French as a special
agent among the Cherokees, he came into the Nation
in the year 1736, and, with admirable judgment,
fixed his residence in one of the towns on the great
Tellico River. His instructions were to ingratiate
himself, by any means, with the Indians, and use
all his influence to seduce them from the British to
the French interest.
Though possessing, besides a highly cultivated
mind, the refinements of manner that fitted him to
adorn any position in civilized society, he adapted
himself at once, with the utmost ease, to the life
and habits ofthe savages. He began by exchanging
his clothes — and every thing else he had brought
with him into the Nation — with the warriors around
him, and in this way greatly won upon their confi
dence. He now selected a handsome woman, and
made her his wife; and ate, drank, slept, danced,
and painted himself after the manner of the Chero
kees. So completely had he succeeded in disguising

404 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
himself, in a short time, by these arts, that his most
intimate friends could scarcely have distinguished
him from the natives with whom he lived. En
dowed with a fine memory, and ready talent in the
acquisition of language, he soon became perfect
master of the' Cherokee tongue ; and now set to
work in earnest to execute the immediate business
of his dangerous mission.
His first object was to impress the Indians with
sentiments of hatred and contempt for the English,
which he effected by constantly representing them
as a people both dishonest and rapacious ; not omit
ting, at the same time, to flatter and inflame the
pride of the savages, by reminding them of their
valor, the great number of their warriors, and the
formidable barriers of their mountainous country,
against which no power of the English could ever
prevail. He was now prepared to put in practice a grand
scheme, which appears to have been a conception of
his own, and something additional to his main in
structions as an emissary; and when viewed in rela
tion to the late effort of the English Government to
convert the Cherokees into loyal subjects of King
George, it looks very like a plan of the skillful en
chanter to foil them by a resort to their own arts, but
with far superior abilities and opportunity to secure
success. Complete master of the minds of the Indians, he
now proceeded to reorganize their Nation after the
form of a European monarchy: their great beloved

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 405
man was duly decorated for the occasion, and crowned
the first sovereign of the new American empire;
after which the cunning Jesuit, created for him a
sort of court, composed of the several officers of
state; for each of whom he invented a high-sounding
title that the Indians might be the better pleased and
conciliated. Himself he appointed to the responsible
position of Chief Secretary of State, and actually
corresponded as such, with the authorities of Caro
lina. Adair observes, that he received several letters
from him himself, during the first year of his secre
taryship. In these communications he insisted with
consummate effrontery, upon having due respect and
consideration shown his office.
South Carolina being thus informed of the threat
ening state of things in the Nation, dispatched Col.
Fox over the hills, armed with full powers to arrest
this bold Secretary of the new Cherokee empire. Fox
came upon him while standing in the square before
their council or state-house, and took him into cus
tody; but before attempting to remove him, he
deemed it prudent to explain, in quite a speech, his
reasons and authority for acting in such a manner
towards so popular and influential a functionary.
He had scarcely got it all out, however, before a war
rior interposed in a threatening manner, aud ordered
him to be silent, telling him that Priber was one of
their own people, and had become a great beloved
man among them; and to this the Secretary himself
added, in his own defence, a most plausible apology
for his presence and acts in the Nation.

406 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
Col. Fox, who was deemed to have more strength
in the muscles of his arm than in his head, over
whelmed by these arguments, desisted from his pur
pose. It is more probable, however, that a man,
whose courage and experience fitted him for so haz
ardous an enterprise, had the tact to see at a glance,
in the threatening manner of the Indians, that it
would be at his imminent peril to proceed farther in
the matter.
They permitted him to go safely off, and Priber
gave the finishing stroke to the insolence of his
triumph, by granting him, with many assurances of
regard, a party of armed warriors to escort him to
the border.
Encouraged by his success thus far, the learned
Jesuit now greatly enlarged his plan, and began to
set up for himself. He proposed to constitute a vast
territorial empire, by a union of the Cherokees,
Creeks and Choctaws, with tribes beyond the Mis
sissippi. It was his chief design, he afterwards
asserted, in attempting to bring about this dangerous
confederation of Southern and Western Indians, to
inspire them with industry, to teach them the
useful arts of life, and ultimately to unite them in a
combined effort to crush every European colony in
Southern America.
He selected a site for the capital of his proposed
empire at a favorable spot in the Cherokee country
of Georgia: into this, in imitation of the policy of
the famous founder of Rome, were to be gathered
the fugitives of all nations; the larger number of

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 407
whom, it was expected, would be outlawed English,
French and Germans; criminals escaped from jus
tice, exiled felons and vagabond scoundrels of every
hue. After the acquisition of these, and all the pro
perty they could bring with them into the new im
perial city, it was particularly designed to be an
asylum for the white slaves of Georgia, and run
away Africans from the plantations of the Carolinas
and Virginia.
To this delectable crew, the Jesuit held out the
alluring bait of unbridled licentiousness and full im
munity for every crime, except murder and idleness.
The marriage-tie was especially to be annulled, and ¦
a community of women to be established in its
stead. Such were the diabolical plans of this consum
mate schemer. Since the time of the Roman Cata
line, history gives the details of no conspiracy vaster
in its reaches, or more dangerous in its ends to the
interest of mankind. Fortunately, Divine Provi
dence cut them all short in a summary manner.
Some five years after his first arrival in the Nation,
business having called him to Mobile, he set out
for that place, attended by several of his Cherokee
friends, and had proceeded on his journey by land
as far as the head of navigation on the Tallapoosa,
when the English traders in the neighboring Creek
towns discovered his presence; and, being well-in
formed of his dangerous influence among the Chero
kees, and suspecting the object of his present voyage,
went in a body to his lodging-place in the town of
Tookabatcha, and arrested him.

408 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
They found in his possession a large package of
valuable manuscript papers, which they carried,
with their prisoner, to the town of Frederica, on the
Savannah. Oglethorpe was then Governor of Geor
gia ; and in consideration of the Jesuit's having once
occupied a position of rank in the French army, he
committed him to a room of the prison separate from
that of the common felons. Under these trying
circumstances, he lost neither his courage nor his
philosophy. An incident occurred soon after he
entered the jail that put them both to a severe test.
The magazine of the town, which stood close to the
jail, took fire. The sentinels threw open the doors,
and ordered him to run for his life, as they them
selves hastened to do; but, instead of obeying, he
threw himself flat upon his face on the spot where
he stood, and, while in that position, the powder of
the magazine, and thousands of shells exploded over
and around him without the least injury to his per
son. On being afterwards rebuked for his rashness,
he remarked, that experience had taught him it was
the best means of escaping danger under such cir
cumstances.* Falling sick not long after this event, in his cell,
death, happily for all, but himself, put an end alike to
his life and ambitious hopes. During his imprison-

? Adair observes, that it was about the fifth year of his Indian em
pire that Priber was arretted. It would appear from this, taken in
connection with a remark in McCallV Georgia, that his residence
among the Cherokees extended to eight years. The latter thus
speaks of the blowing up of the magazine at Frederica: "On the 22d
of March, 1741, the bomb-magazine was blown up at Frederica.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 409
ment he had won the notice and kindly sympathies
of many of the citizens of Frederica by his uniform
cheerfulness and the affability with which he re
ceived every one who approached him. Oglethorpe
found leisure, before his death, to give him a
thorough examination, and was astonished to dis
cover, that though dressed in deer-skins and mocca
sins, he was a man of polished address and of sin
gular learning and genius.
He was not only a perfect master of the English
and Cherokee languages, but spoke fluently the
Latin, French and Spanish. There are reasons to
regret the loss ofa large portion of his manuscripts;
for, besides his private journal, there was found
among them a complete dictionary of the Cherokee
language. Adair remarks of him, in relation to
these papers: "As he was learned and possessed ofa
very sagacious, penetrating judgment, and had every
qualification that was requisite for his bold and diffi
cult enterprise, it is not to be doubted, that as he
wrote a Cherokee dictionary, designed to be pub
lished in Paris, he likewise set down a great deal
that would have been exceedingly interesting to the
curious, and serviceable to the historians of Carolina
and Georgia; which maybe readily found in Frede-
Very little damage was done, though it contained three thousand
bombs. Whether fire was communicated by design or accident is not
known ; ifthe shells had not been well-bedded, the damage must have
been very considerable. By some, it was attributed to an Irishman
who arrived there a few days before, and disappeared immediately
after the accident happened."
35

410 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
rica, if the manuscripts have had the good fortune to
escape the dispoiling hands of military power.''
His journal, with some other papers, appears to
have been preserved. In the former, he gives the
names of certain Indians and negroes who were to
assist him in his conspiracy, and of a private trea
surer in Charleston for managing the funds of the
conspirators. Another volume contains the elaborately digested
rules and regulations for his proposed capital. "It
was drawn up," remarks a writer* who had the
privilege of examining it, " with much art, method
and learning, and was designed to be privately print
ed and circulated."
It appears from certain confessions made a short
time before his death, that in all his schemes and
enterprises he was not seeking his own aggrandize
ment alone, or even acting under the direction of his
own will. Some one who approached him had re
marked, that his plans were necessarily attended
with many difficulties and dangers, and that the es
tablishment of his empire must require the labor and
vigilance of many years. "Proceeding properly,"
he replied, "many of these evils may be avoided;
and as to length of time, we have a succession of
agents to take up the work as fast as others leave it.
We never lose sight of a favorite point, nor are we
bound by the strict rules of morality in the means,
when the end we pursue is laudable. If we err, our

*Dr. Wm. B. Stevens, in his History of Georgia.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 41 1
general is to blame; and we have a merciful God to
pardon us. But believe me, before this century is
passed, the Europeans will have a very small foot
ing on the American Continent." *
This able Jesuit emissary was therefore acting,
from first to last, in these nefarious schemes, chiefly
under the direction of his order. Can the gloomy
annals of any European court afford a more striking
illustration of the desperate iniquity and moral
abomination of the Mother of Harlots ? Endowed
with the great talents he certainly possessed, and
having at his command so many of the physical ele
ments of success, it would appear that nothing in
the providence of God, but his timely death, saved
Carolina and Georgia from destruction. It will be
presently seen, however, that he lived long enough
to inflict incalculable injury upon the former.
At that period, there were in the Cherokee Nation
alone, six thousand warriors ; a force amply suffi
cient, if firmly united and rightly directed, to crush
in detail, at least, all the settlements of the infant
colony. Had Priber confined his influence and am
bitious projects to this warlike people, impressing
them, as he began, with vengeful hatred ofthe Eng
lish ; marshalling, by his skillful tactics, all their
military strength, and instructing them in the proper
us'es of the formidable advantages of their natural
position, the chances would have been, if he had
been suffered to live, wholly in favor of the complete
success of his cherished design, to ruin Carolina.
# Dr. Stevens.

412 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
This special interference of Heaven in her behalf,
did not, however, begin nor end with the death of
Priber. Powerful causes had been operating for a
series of years to reduce the strength of the Chero
kees. Their lower settlements had suffered greatly
from the hostile incursions of the Creeks; several
important towns on the Tugaloo — among them Ish-
tatohe, Echia, and Tugaloo — were, about this time,
totally forsaken or destroyed ; while the Over-hills
and valleys, were no less harassed by the repeated
attacks ofthe tribes on the Ohio and Mohawk.
In 1738 — three years before Priber's fatal attempt
to visit Mobile — a slaver from the coast of Africa ar
rived in Charleston, having on board the then deadly
small-pox. It was communicated to the town, and
thence a party of Indians or traders conveyed it to
the Nation, where it acted like a spark upon the dry
grass of the prairie.
Adair says, it was carried up by a pack-horse train,
whose goods were infected with the disease. His
description of its ravages is too graphic to be
omitted :
"At first it made slow advances ; and as it was a
foreign, and to them a strange disease, they were so
deficient in proper skill, that they alternately applied
a regimen of hot and cold things to those who were
infected. The old Magi and religious doctors who
were consulted on so alarming a crisis, reported that
the sickness had been sent among them on account
of the adulterous intercourses of their young mar
ried people, who, the past year, had, in a most noto-

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 413
rious manner, violated their ancient laws of mar
riage in every thicket. * * * To those flagitious
crimes they ascribed the present disease, as a neces
sary effect of the divine anger. * * * However,
it was thought needful, on this occasion, to endeavor
to put a stop to the progress of such a dangerous dis
ease; and as it was believed to be brought on by
their unlawful * * * in the night-dews, when
they formed their dancing-parties in the council-
houses, it was thought most practicable to try to
effect a cure under the same cool element. Imme
diately they ordered the reputed sinners to lie out of
doors, day and night, with their breasts frequently
open to the night-dews, to cool the fever. They
were likewise afraid that the disease would pollute
their houses, and by that means cause all their
deaths. Instead of applying warm remedies, they
at last, in every visit, poured cold water on their
naked breasts, sung their religious, mystical song,
"yo, yo," &c, with a doleful tune, and shook a cala
bash, with the bubbles, over the sick, using a great
many frantic gestures, by way of incantation. * * *
When they found their theological regimen had not
the desired effect, but that the infection gained upon
them, they held a second consultation, and deemed
it the best method to sweat their patients, and plunge
them into the river, which was accordingly done.
Their rivers being very cold in summer, by reason
ofthe numberless springs which pour from the hills
and mountains, and the pores of their bodies being
open to receive the cold — it rushing in through the

414 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
whole frame — they immediately expired. Upon this,
all the Magi and Conjurors broke their old conse
crated physic pots, and threw away all the other
pretended holy things which they had used as medi
cines, imagining they had lost their divine power by
being polluted, and shared the common fate of their
country. A great many killed themselves ; for being
naturally proud, they are always peeping into their
looking-glasses, * * * by which means, seeing
themselves disfigured, without hope of regaining
their former beauty, some shot themselves, others cut
their throats; some stabbed themselves with knives,
and others with sharp-pointed canes. Many threw
themselves, with sullen madness, into the fire, and
there slowly expired, as if they had been utterly di
vested ofthe native power of feeling pain."*
The same author describes the particular case of
a great head chief of the town of Tomassee, ten
miles above the present site of old Fort Prince George,
who, finding himself disfigured for life by the scourge,
resolved to die rather than survive his imagined
shame. And when his relatives, by dint of close
watching, prevented him from destroying himself by
the ordinary means, he darted his head with all his
might against a wall ; and this failing to effect his
purpose, he finally succeeded by fixing a hoe-helve,
nearly upright in the ground, upon which he threw
himself in such a manner as to force the end of it
down his throat, when he miserably perished.
* Adair's American Indians, p. 232.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 415
In the course of a single year, this terrible disease
swept off nearly one half of the Nation. This is
asserted by the author just quoted; yet we are as
sured by another, that in 1740. the Cherokees num
bered five thousand warriors, but lost one-fifth of
that number the same year from small-pox.* It is
very probable, therefore, that at the time of the es
tablishment of Priber's Imperial Cpurt, the military
strength of the Nation was, at least, not less than
that previously stated.
A more fearful agent of destruction, however,
than either war or pestilence, had been, from the
earliest period of their intercourse with the whites,
silently but effectually preying upon the vitals of all
the native" tribes — it was the scourge of intemper
ance. There was something in the Indian's consti
tution or temperament that kindled, and kept burning
in him an insatiable appetite for intoxicating liquors.
His favorite beverage was rum; and this, despite all
laws to the contrary, was supplied him without
stint, as long as he was able to pay for it the required
price. An interesting, as well as an instructive chapter
could alone be written on the incidents of the rum
traffic in the Nation. Thus, was Divine Providence
bringing good out of evil ; for these penal scourges,
while they gradually humbled the pride and de
stroyed the power of the Cherokees, who, from their
ancient purity and gentleness, had now become ex
cessively insolent and corrupt, opened the way for

# Pickett's History of Alabama, page 157.

416 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA.
the permanent settlement of a nobler race upon the
fertile hills and mountain valleys ofthe upper-coun
try. It was not destined, however, that this should
be consummated without long years of suffering,
and a fearful expenditure of treasure and of blood.
These were the penalties to be endured, in a mea
sure, by the English, for crimes and violences which
offended justice could not, in the presence of men,
visit with a milder retribution.
These various evil influences before related, did
effectually their work of corrupting the minds and
habits of the Indians; and, from the time that
Priber lived among them, there was no more peace
in the Nation, till it was restored by the pioneer rifle
and English musket.

CHAPTER XVII.
Traders from Virginia continued — A Deputation from the Over-hills,
headed, it appears, by the famous Atacullaculla, goes to Williams
burg — The Gov. of Virginia gives them an encouraging Answer — ¦
A hostile spirit towards Carolina manifest in the Nation — The
Board cuts off their supplies of ammunition — The Over-hills in
direct correspondence with the French, &c.
Notwithstanding the remonstrances of the Board?
the intruders from Virginia continued, year after
year, to disturb the Cherokee peltry traffic and lessen
its profits. At length, in 1751, a deputation from
the Over-hills, headed, it seems, by a chief who was
greatly disaffected towards the English in Charles
ton, presented themselves before Gov. Lee, of Vir
ginia, praying for a formal treaty of commerce be
tween the Cherokees and the Old Dominion.
The Governor received them with great kindness,
heard their talk, smoked with them the pipe of
peace and friendship, and dismissed them with pre
sents and assurances that a regular trade should be
opened up between their people and the colony of
Virginia. The Over-hills, disaffected towards Caro
lina, first through the intrigues of the French, had
of late manifested so hostile a spirit, in their con
versations with the traders, and by many overt acts

418 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
of petty violences, that the Board ordered the latter
to supply them with no more goods, till they should
make reparation for what had been done, and give
proper guarantees for their future good behavior.
Their pressing necessities, therefore, at this time, as
well as a spirit of opposition to Carolina, induced
them to turn in any direction, whence they could
hope to obtain sympathy and a good supply of
goods and ammunition.
Soon after the death of Priber, seven of their
towns hastened, in fear and dissimulation, to inform
the traders that they had renounced the French and
all their schemes, and were resolved to cling to their
old friends, the English. Great Tellico, however,
the chief scene of the Jesuits' operations and influ
ence, declared itself still firm in the French cause.
They corresponded with the French, says Adair, in
the name of the other seven towns, which are the
most warlike part of the Nation ; and so strongly
were they prepossessed with the notions their' be
loved secretary had infused into their heads, in the
then weak State of Louisiana, that they had resolved
to remove, and settle lower down the river, at a
point where the French pettiaugers could easily reach
them; but the hot war they fell into with the
northern Indians caused them to abandon this de
sign. The French had offered to build at that point a
strong fort, to be well garrisoned, and supplied with
every article of merchandize desired by the Indians.
The valley and lower towns were yet steadfast to

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 419
the English interest, but wavering and discontented.
About the same period, a deputation similar to the
one from the Over-hills, went up to the same autho
rities from the Catawbas. But nothing could have
elicited this, except strong allurements held out by
Virginia herself.
Gov. Glen was thoroughly aroused. No one bet
ter knew than he the political importance of the
Cherokee and Catawba trade to Carolina, or better
understood the Indian character. He immediately
addressed a letter to Gov. Lee, couched in terms of
strong remonstrance. The Governor replied in sub-
tance, that he had been deceived by the Indians who
came to him from Chote. They passed themselves
off as a king and eight nobles, sent with authority
from their emperor to treat for the Nation.*
They complained of Carolina, that though she had
promised them a constant supply of goods, they had
received none, and were then in great want of many
necessaries.f He adds, that he was moved by their
pitiable condition, and asks of Glen, if he could have
acted otherwise under the same circumstances ; for,
as the warrior of Israel was deceived by the cunning
Gibeonites, they had presented themselves before him
in a condition of apparent squallor and wretchedness.

* After the time of Priber, the terms emperor, king and noble,
grew familiar in the Nation.
t " They had been receiving goods from Carolina," wrote Gov. Glen
on this occasion, " during forty years." This would fix the commence
ment of the traffic with the Cherokees as early as 1711. — Indian
Books.

420 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
That measure was difficult indeed, that an Indian
could not carry by his cunning, if too great for the
prowess of his arm.
In the Virginia Gazette of August, 1751, the fol
lowing advertisement appears :
" As the Governor of South Carolina advises us
that the Cherokees, who were recently in Williams
burg, under the character and denomination of am
bassadors and nobles, were people of no eminence,
or quality, or dignity, but obscure persons — that they
had committed many cruelties and injuries upon the
inhabitants of that province, and were to have
been delivered up by their countrymen to be pun
ished ; that it is false that they ever made applica
tion to South Carolina for goods, and were refused —
they having been supplied by that province abund
antly with everything needed for near forty years.
This intelligence is therefore inserted in the Gazette,
that the inhabitants of this colony may be cautious
in their commerce with them."
Nevertheless, the government of Virginia did not
seriously design to check these encroachments of her
traders ; she rather claimed an equal right with
Carolina to trade with all the southern Indians.
These pretensions were soon after put in practical
operation by Governor Dinwiddie, which drew from
Governor Glen a very clear and able defence of the
exclusive claims of his province to the commercial
amity of those tribes.
" South Carolina," he wrote to the Governor of Vir
ginia, " is a weak frontier colony, and in case of an

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 421
invasion by the French, would be their first object
of attack. We have not much to fear, however, while
we retain the affection of the Indians around us ;
but should we forfeit that by any mismanagement
on our part, or by the superior address ofthe French,
we are in a miserable situation. The Cherokees
alone, have several thousand gun-men, all well ac
quainted with every inch of this province — their
country is the key of Carolina. We have been great
ly alarmed by the behavior of the Virginians in re
gard to the Cherokees. Few or no Indians are in
treaty with Virginia. By long experience, we have
become thoroughly acquainted with their nature and
inclinations, and have been so successful in manag
ing them, as to keep them steady to the British inter
est, notwithstanding the vigorous and persevering
efforts of France to seduce them from us. We can
see no good end or wise policy in endeavoring to
draw away these Indians from one of his Majesty's
provinces to another. We have been enabled to fix
the affections of the four great nations around us.*
Let facts speak : they come when we send for them,
and go when we bid them depart ;' they do whatever
we desire of them. They now perfectly understand
the injustice of punishing the innocent for the guilty,
and the necessity of punishing the latter in conform
ity to the treaties between them and us. And when,
under any circumstances, a white man is killed in
their country, the offender is sure lo die, though the
greatest chief of the Nation.

* The Cherokees, Catawbas, Muscogees and Chickasaws.

422 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
"When a people, unacquainted with the nature of
crimes and punishments, are brought to deal with
offenders on principles that guide, under similar cir
cumstances, the most enlightened nations, may we
not safely boast of having progressed a great way in
the education of savages? All this, we do aver to
be truthful. What benefit, therefore, do you hope to
gain for the common cause, by sending so many press
ing invitations to those four nations, or the five of
New York, to come to Virginia ? 1 will answer for
their good behavior with my life, if your province
will let them alone. In my absence the council of
this colony wrote, praying you not to intermeddle
with our Indians. I have also requested the same
thing in the strongest terms ; yet you have sent mes
sages lately to the Catawbas, and as many to the
Cherokees and Chickasaws, inviting them to come
and receive the presents sent over by the king.''*
Little else than the mere variety of witnessing the
extension of his influence and power over Indian
hordes and vast territories could have instigated
Dinwiddie in these abortive efforts to entice the four
great southern tribes from their alliance with South
Carolina, and their dependence upon her for the
necessaries of life. They lay, in great part, far out
of reach of her marts ; and, at that period, she was
not so related, even in her most advanced settle
ments, to the boundaries of any one of these tribes,
as to make it necessary for her safety to form with
them treaties of commerce and reciprocity.
* Letter addressed lo Dinwiddie, 1754. See Indian Books.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 423
The tact and energy of Governor Glen arrested, at
length, the danger from this source. It was an
emergency that afforded him an opportunity of dis
playing, in no insignificant manner, his ability and
prudence, as a guardian of the public weal.
One of the proximate causes of this threatened
defection of the Cherokees, may have, indeed, been
the temporary withholding of goods from them, by
the order of the Board, until certain crimes and
violations of the peace, committed in the Nation,
had been investigated and atoned for. The records
of this period abound in complaints and warnings
sent down by the traders, and in details of agita
tions and terrors on the border from the hostile
threats and violence of the Indians. The whole
Nation was kept, for years, in a constant tumult of
fear and alarm. The traders adandoned their stores,
and fled for safety to the settlements ; a man named
Murphy was shot in cold blood at Oconee; one
Barnard Hughes, had his store broken open, and
rifled of its goods, himself escaping with difficulty;
the frontier settlers hastily assembled, and fortified
themselves, with their wives and children, at
Ninety-six, the Congarees, and at other points most
convenient for the pioneer communities.
Iu a conference, which Governor Glen held about
this time, in Charleston, with several of the head
men ofthe Nation, in relation to these disturbances,
Skiagunsta, a prominent chief, gave the following
account of one of the most serious of these Indian
outbreaks, in which the Cherokees were implicated :

424 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
"I am from Sugar Town, on the Keowee; last
summer 1 and my people were hunting, near the
Catawba Nation, and we were informed that several
of the Creeks were with the Catawbas; they had
come iu search of some of their people, whom the
Catawbas had retaken from the Northern Indians.
We were also told that these Creeks designed to
attack us as they returned home. News of this
menace soon reached all our hunting-parties, then
in the woods, and they hastily withdrew to their
own country, except one little camp, in which were
a man, a woman and child, who had heard
nothing of the Creeks. The latter soon discovered
and came upon them. The man was absent from
the camp on a hunt, and they took the woman and
the child, intending to make slaves of them. Hut
they had not proceeded far before they were met by
a party of Northern Indians, who killed nine of
them on the spot, and retook the prisoners ; the re
maining five of the band made their escape. They
were quickly, however, pursued by some thirty of
my people, who, in a little while, came upon several
horses they had taken from us, by which they knew
that the enemy was lurking not far off.
"This was at sunset; and they remained still
here until dark, and then sent out a scout to recon
noitre an old house that appeared in sight, and
which they perceived to be occupied either by In
dians or white people. He soon returned, and re
ported that he heard several talking in the Muscogee
tongue, and one in Chickasaw, but heard no Eng-

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 425
lish ; from which it was concluded there could be
no whites among them. They determined to attack
the party, and fired at once upon them, through the
openings in the house. The fire was returned, and
quickly the conflict became warm, several of my
people being wounded with swan-shot. After the
fight had continued for some time, we perceived
that the reports of some of the enemy's guns were
much louder than others ; and we began to sus
pect and fear that, after all, there must be white men
with them. Immediately after, a white man carne
out of the house; and one of us, who stood nearest
him, running up, took him by the hand and led
him aside out of danger. Soon after another came
out, and was approached in like manner by one of
the Cherokees ; but who, instead of protecting him,
knocked him on the head, notwithstanding all the
rest of us called out to him to hold his hand, that
he was striking a white man. The blow fell, and
the Indian ran away. Your Excellency sent to have
this man arrested and brought down to you ; but it
was long before the message reached me, and by
that time the murderer had gone out lo war — pre
ferring to die by the hand of the enemy, rather than
suffer death as a culprit, at home." He beautifully
added : " I cannot write as do you and your beloved
men. My tongue is my pen; my mouth, my
paper. When I am looking upon the writing of the
white man, I am as if I was blind and in 'darkness-
We of our Nation have but one path, and that leads
us to the English. It is now straight and clear ;
36

426 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
on this hand and on that, there is nothing but dark
ness."* The adroit cunning of the Indian is visible
throughout this narrative, but we have from more
reliable sources quite a full account of the sad state
of things at this time in the Nation ; and nothing
more vividly illustrated the restless instability, not of
the Cherokees only, but of any wild people, wholly
dependent upon a neighboring government for sub
sistence, naturally subject to sudden and barbarous
excitements, and with no employment but to roam
from place to place in search of game. They were
prepared to become the easy dupes of any well-di
rected influence, and the French were not so dull as
to let the opportunity slip.
It must not be denied that Gov. Glen, with all his
ability and apparent zeal for the best interest of the
colony, rests here under the serious charge of being
much more jealous from private motives, in the work
of freeing the trade from the damaging intrusion of
the Virginia traffickers, than in repelling the far
more dangerous encroachments of the French. Says
an old trader, who played, himself, an important
part in these scenes — but was no friend to Glen:
"The dormant conduct of the South Carolina chief,
gave them an opportunity to effect that part of their
design; though timely notice, even years before, had
been given by the Cherokee traders, that the French
priests were poisoning the minds of those Indians
* Indian Books.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 427
against us, who live among the Apalache mountains,
and were endeavoring to reconcile them to all the
various nations of the Mississippi and Canada sava
ges; and that there was the greatest probability they
would accomplish their dangerous plan unless we
soon took proper measures to prevent it. The in
formers had ill names and resentment for their news,
and the Assembly was charged with mis-spending
their time in taking notice of the wild, incoherent
reports of illiterate, obscure persons.
But it afterwards appeared that the interest and
security of South Carolina were in great danger.
By the diligence of the French, their Indians entered
into a treaty of friendship with the Cherokees, and
their country became the rendezvous of the red pu
pils of the black Jesuits. Hence they ravaged South
Carolina, beginning at the weak frontier settlements,
and gradually advanced through the country, for the
space of eight years, destroying the live stock, insult
ing, frightening, wounding and sometimes killing
the inhabitants, burning their houses, carrying away
their slaves, and committing every kind of devasta
tion, till they proceeded so low as within thirty
miles of Charleston.
The sufferers often exhibited their complaints in
the most pathetic and public manner; and the whole
country felt the ill effects of the late overbearing and
negligent conduct. False coloring could serve no
longer, and a few inconsiderable parties were sent
out; but not finding any enemy, they were in a few

428 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
months disbanded, and peaceable accounts were
again sent home."*
We have already related how a party of these
northern savages, now acting in open concert with
the Cherokees, and all directed by French intrigue
and energy, had made several captives from among
the settlement Indians, near Charleston ; and whose
timely rescue by Hermon Geiger, cost that noble
trader his life. We found in the manuscript records
a minute account of more than one horrible butch
ery on the border, perpetrated at this time by the
Notowegee or Savannah Indians, under the guid
ance and protection of the treacherous Cherokees.
These have never been seen, except by the few whose
curiosity, or a love of antiquarian research, prompted
to look into the State archives.
On the 7th day of May, 1751, Mrs. Mary Gould
came to the house of Martin Friday, severely wound
ed, and gave the following narrative to Capt. Daniel
Sellider, of the Saxe-Gotha company: "Saturday, the
fourth, two Indians came to my house, situated
about half way between the Congarees and Savan
nah Town. They were Savannahs. It was nearly
dark when they came in, and sat down quite civilly.
My husband being able to speak their language, he
conversed a great while with them. I gave them
their supper, after which they asked my husband for
pipes and tobacco, which he supplied them with, and
we all sat up till midnight, and then went to steep.
* Adair, p, 343.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 429
The Indians also laid down, pulling off their mocca
sins and boots. One of them broke his pipe, and
came to the bed to my husband, who handed him
his out of his mouth, and he laid down again, when
he dropped to sleep. When the cocks began to crow,
they got up and came to the bed-side and shot my
husband through the head; a young man sleeping
on the floor was shot dead the same moment. The
Indians, I suppose, thinking the bullet had gone
through my husband's head, and mine too, struck
me with a tomahawk under my right arm. Believing
that they had killed me, one of them then went to
the bed, where they were sleeping, and murdered, in
cold blood, both of my children; after which they
took the blankets from the beds, and having plun
dered the house of everything valuable, went off.
In this condition I lay among my dead two days,
when one of my horses providentially returning to
the house, I was enabled to mount him and come to
this place."* On another page it is recorded that
this unfortunate woman died soon after, relating to
Friday the above account of the ruin of her home.
A little later, but in the midst of the same agita
tions and dangers, a dreadful massacre took place on
Buffalo Creek, somewhere in the present territory of
York District. We have chosen to relate its history
as we find it recorded in the Indian books:
"May it please your Excellency," writes Captain
James Francis to Governor Glen, from the upper-
# Indian Books, Secretary of State Office.

430 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
country, October 7, 1754, "I should have written
sooner concerning this cruel murder, perpetrated, as I
suppose, by a camp of French Indians, if I had not
heard that Mr. Wilcox of this neighborhood had al
ready set off for town to inform you of the same.
"On a stream called Buffalo Creek, supposed by
some to be in North Carolina, and by others, in the
southern province, at the house of a Mr. Glittery, a
sociable, hospitable man, and of good resolution,
where several families, traveling from the north, had
put up; at the same unfortunate time a family from
the neighborhood had also come in to await the re
turn of a young couple who had gone some forty or
more miles to a Justice of the Peace to be married. In
the mean time a party of sixty Indians came upon
these unhappy people, twenty-one in all, and mur
dered sixteen of them on the spot. Their bodies
were found scattered around in a circumference of
some two or three hundred yards; the remaining
five were either carried off or killed at a distance
from the place where they were attacked. They
have not yet been heard from ; among them are a
woman and three children — of the fifth one I could
get no account.
" This, sir, is the exact story of this unhappy affair,
as far as it relates to the murdered people. Imme
diately after dispatching these, the savages killed all
the hogs, fowls, and cattle about the premises, and
heaped their carcasses upon the dead bodies of the
men and women. Twenty head of horses, some of

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 431
them very valuable, that had belonged to the trav
elers, were driven off.
" But a single one of the butchered people fell by a
guu-shot ; the rest were all killed by means of arrows
and tomahawks, many of which were found sticking
in their bodies. The first who discovered this bloody
deed were the newly-married couple, who returned
soon after it was all over, and the Indians just gone.
They were completely panic-stricken, but staid long
enough to bury the dead, by throwing them hur
riedly into a well, which was near the house.
"Buffalo Creek is about five miles from where the
path crosses Broad River, that leads from the Chero
kees to the Catawbas and Guttery's plantation, some
twenty miles from that ford, which is one hundred
from this Saluda settlement.''
The Governor made praiseworthy efforts to recover
these captive children, and restore them to their rela
tives. It is stated, that, the following October, he
wrote specially to one of the traders in the Nation,
to rescue, from a party of Savannahs, a little white
child, which was supposed to be one of them. He
directed it to be sent to him in Charleston.
A few days afterwards, he received a letter from
John Elliott, at Chote, informing him that a party of
Savannahs were at that place, having in their pos
session two white children, which they declared to
the Cherokees they had obtained from the Indians
who were engaged in the massacre on the Buffalo.
" I tried," adds the trader, " to get them from
them, but could not succeed. I hope your Excel-

432 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
lency will take some steps to rescue the captive chil
dren of our settlers from these savages."*
About the same period, a large party of the same
troublesome savages came from the head ofthe Mo
nongahela to the Cherokee Nation, where, having
procured a willing guide, they set off down the Sa
vannah, to make a bloody attack upon the inoffen
sive Euchees, who were regarded as settlement In
dians, and therefore under the protection of the
English. Like wolves, they came stealthily into a
lurking place, near a small town of that tribe, situ
ated two miles below Silver Bluff, and there waited
an opportunity to do their murderous work, which
was soon offered them, by the men all turning ont
to make a day's hunt; whereupon, springing from
concealment, they butchered the women and chil
dren, and then darted off in different directions, to
secure their retreat.
A striking instance was displayed, on this occasion,
ofthe tender affection ofthe Iudian women for their
children ; for every mother that escaped, bore her
little ones safely off with her. The shrill war-whoop
was soon ringing through the woods, the Euchee
hunters flew to the assistance of their women and
children, and, without stopping to contemplate the
bloody scene that met their gaze, they dashed off up
the river, in pursuit of the main party of the retreat
ing foe.
The Cherokee guide, in order to avoid this, led
* Indian Books.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 433
them a northern course, as far as the commencement
of the open piny-woods country, where, turning to
the north-east, they were stretching away — about
ten miles north of the present site of Hamburg — for
Ninety-six, which lay nearly in a direct line to the
lower Cherokee towns, when luckily, they were dis
covered by an English hunter mounted on a fine
white horse, which made him a fair mark for their
guns; and they would have shot him, for their own
security, if he had not spurred out of reach of them
on their back tracks; for he wished to ascertain what
the mischief was they had done, that their coun
tenances and great haste plainly indicated.
He had not gone far before he met the enraged
Euchees, pressing hard after them. He informed
them, as they ran by, of the course the enemy had
taken, and that they were twenty-six in company.
Thus directed, they were enabled, in a run of twelve
miles more, to come in sight of the marauders ; and
presently, running on each side of them, they fired
upon and killed several of them. The rest, in order
to make good their escape, were forced to throw
away nine guns, a part of their plunder, and even
to strip themselves of their clothes.
They were so terrified that they passed wide of
the then weak settlement of Ninety-six, and contin
ued to run — day and night — till they got in reach of
the Cherokee towns. This occurred in May, 1750.*
These naked Canadians, as he called them, were
# Adair, p. 345.
37

434 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
the same savages who threatened the life of Adair,
and his friend, H. Francis, (?) from Ninety-six, on
the Keowee trail, near that town, as was related in a
previous chapter.
The numerous communications sent down to
Gov. Glen, by the traders and leaders of the com
panies of rangers which he had placed on the fron
tiers in the upper-country, at this troublous period?
contain a faithful picture of the state of things on
the border. In 1750, the following persons were
acting as traders in the nation: "John McCord,
Robert Gowdy, John Kelly, Bryan Salamon, An
thony Lantague, Richard Smith, James May, Rob
ert Emory, David McDonald, John Hatton, James
Beamer, William Bates, and John Hook.
It was in the following year, that all the hunting
grounds of the Cherokees were divided off into thir
teen districts or ranges, and as many traders ap
pointed to superintend them — one to every range —
and two hundred Indian gun-men. There were, at
that time, in the Nation, twenty-six hundred efficient
warriors. It was found difficult to select from the
number of traders thirteen men competent to be
trusted with the superintendency ofthe hunting dis
tricts. They are generally described in the records
as being without "substance, sense or character."
The following are named amongst those who were
at last chosen: Robert Gowdy,* Antony Dean,f
* Gowdy was the first settler of Ninety-six.
¦f Dean has been hefore mentioned as a man of remarkable learn
ing and skill.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 435
and Ben n, for the Over-hills; Cornelius Dougherty
and Grant, for the Valleys ; James Mackey, and
some others, for the middle settlements ; Barnard
Hughes, for the outer towns, with others not men
tioned; and Beamer, Smith and Baldridge, for the
lower towns. Several new rules for the guidance of
the traders arose from this arrangement. Every one
was to confine himself to his own range; no trader
was to carry rum into the Nation, except a few bot
tles for his own use ; a quantity of it was, however,
to be lodged in the forts* — then preparing to be
built — be distributed, twice a year, among the In
dians of the districts — two kegs to a range: one to
be given at the time of the green-corn dance, and
the other on their return from the winter's hunt.
Several of the traders, about this time, repeatedly
expressed the belief that a fort, properly built and
garrisoned, among the lower towns, and another,
equally efficient, over the hills, were all that was re
quired to restore quiet and prosperity to the settle
ments and trade. The Indians, themselves, had,
some time before, requested this as a special favor, in
order to prevent the removal of the people of the
lower towns to the settlements beyond the moun
tains, and the consequent ruin of this division of
the Nation.
May 9th, 1751, Capt. Roger Gibsonf wrote to Gov.
Glen, from the Waterees: "I am informed, this day,
by some of my company, just arrived from the Con-

# Prince George and Loudon. f Captain of Rangers.

436 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
garees, that the inhabitants of Ninety-six, Saluda,
and the Upper Congarees, have fled to the fort at the
latter place, to secure themselves from the Chero
kees and northern Indians, who have killed several
ofthe white people. As my company is the nearest
to the enemy of all the Wateree inhabitants, we are
in most danger, and are wholly unprovided with
ammunition — there being no stores here to supply
us — Charleston a great way off, and the people
mostly new settlers, within the last two years.
" The increase of my company has been from
thirty-five to eighty-three men; we, therefore, pray
your Excellency will grant us a supply of ammu
nition, that we may defend ourselves and families
against these heathens, who threaten our destruc
tion." A few days previous, Gov. Glen had written to
order Capt. Gibson to raise a troop of rangers, con
sisting of fifteen men, besides officers, and five
friendly Indians. He adds : "You and Capt. Fran
cis, are to range, separately, with expedition, from
the Congarees on Saluda, to Ninety-six, and between
the Congarees and the Catawbas — but make no stay
at the latter places; proceed, without loss of time,
towards Ninety-six, where it is probable you will
meet each other; and you are then to visit some of
the settlements in those parts, and assure the people
that nothing shall be omitted by this government
that will promote their security.
"You are to endeavor to dispel their fears; en
courage them to stand by one another, and keep pos-

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 437
session of their homes and settlements ; for to desert
them only emboldens the Indians.''
One Stephen Crell, of Saxe-Gotha, informed the
Governor that a gang of Indians had been killing
horses, mares, and cattle at the Congarees, and in
the more northern settlements, after which they came
to the house of John Geiger, and carried off his negro
boy. Two women were the only members of the
family at home at the time, and these dared to resist
them, rather than give up the negro ; but desisted,
when the savages seemed resolved to murder them.
He advises the Governor, that the close settling of
a number of people on the frontiers, is the best means
of defending the country against the encroachments
of the savages. The lands lately purchased about
Ninety-six, and thence to Broad and Santee Rivers,
and towards the Catawbas, being all very fertile and
well adapted to close settlements, he did not doubt
but that his Excellency would make all proper ar
rangements to have them settled under such regula
tions as would be most conducive to the safety of
the country. There were several single young men
at the Congarees, who were entitled to the bounty, and
would settle higher up towards the border; but were
deterred by the expenses and loss of time in going
to Charleston, to prove their rights. They desired
to be permitted to send down their oaths to the
officers. The tenth of the same month, Capt. John Fair-
child, of Fairchildsboro', on the north side of the
Congaree, wrote as follows to the Governor: " It is

438 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
my duly to inform you, that several distressed fami
lies have been driven from their habitations and liv
ings on the Little Saluda, and have, with great diffi
culty, retreated down to the Congarees, to escape the
Indians. These savages have killed Isaac Cloud,
with two of his children, and a young man living
with him, as appears by Mrs. Cloud's affidavit.*
"This mischief, and the insolence of the several
parties of Indians who are now in the settlements,
plainly indicate their hostile intentions. They are
ready for any violence, as opportunity offers, if not
for a general war. This, 1 fear, must be the result ;
for those who have lost friends, or have been driven
from their homes, will arouse themselves and seek
revenge. At present, however, our corner of the
country is not in a condition to defend itself. We
have not the force nor the arms, and most of us are
foreigners, and strangers to the methods and habits
of the Indians ; yet the- men are full of spirit, and
ready to engage the enemy in defence of their homes
and country.
" We would, therefore, be most thankful to your
Excellency for a supply of ammunition and warlike
accoutrements ; many among us are really poor and
distressed — objects of compassion — and not able to
purchase them for themselves. Having command
of a company on this side of the river, for our better

# These are certainly identical with the Goulds, whose murder by
the Savannah Indians has been related. The name is written differ
ently in another place in the MSS.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKKES. 439
defence, I have divided it into parties, some of whom
Ikeep constantly scouting through thecountry; while
the rest are employed in building a fort, into which
our women and children may retreat. We would
also petition your Excellency for a few swivels with
which to mount the fort, when finished."
These were doubtless Scotch-Irish immigrants,
who had come about this period into the present
territory of Richland, and settled on the north-east
bank of the Congaree. They are mentioned above
as "strangers and foreigners," and they could
not have been the Germans, who settled on Broad
River, at the mouth of Kiusler's Creek. The follow
ing list of Capt. Fairchild's Company of Rangers,
would seem to confirm the conjecture : "
Capt. John Fairchild, Lieut. Philip Raiford, Cristis
Col well, Thomas Copeland, Ebenezer Howard, James
Fletcher, William Low, John Evans, Richard Jones,
James Myrick, Daniel Johnson, Solomon McGrow,
David Jackson, Edward Bush, William Moore, Isaac
Rhodes, Nathaniel Patridge, William Shetter, James
Weston, William Hart, and William Raiford. These
men were enlisted in May, 1751.
In the following August, Capt. Fairchild informed
the Governor that he had ranged with his com
pany as high up as Ninety-six, and built near that
place a fort of puncheon-logs, 'for the protection of
the people in that settlement.

CHAPTER XVIII.
The bank of John's Creek the probable site of JFairchild's Stockade
Fort — The facts in the case — Description ofthe remains, discovered
on the plantation, of P. D. Klngh, Esq. — Old John Youngblood and
Wm. Buchanan — A search for hidden treasures; the excavation
still visible on the ancient site of the fort — The old John's Creek
settlement, &c.
After diligent search, we have had the satisfaction
of discovering the probable site ofthe ancient fabric
mentioned in the last chapter, which, though scarce
ly now perceptible, links the present with the earliest
civilized period in the history of the old Ninety-six
District. If our conjecture is correct, it was built —
and as Fairchild wrote to the Governor — of puncheon
logs, on the north bank of John's Creek, a rifle-shot
from it, on the brow ofa considerable hill, at present
the property of P. D. Klugh, Esq.
The facts are these: On that spot, even previous
to the Revolution, an old stockade fort was found
standing in a ruinous condition. A slight embank
ment of earth had probably been thrown up, and on
this the puncheons fixed in an upright position. The
entire structure inclosed an acre or more of ground.
On the west side of the hill, some sixty yards from
the fort, ran a branch to which a covered ditch was
cut, for the purpose of securing a supply of water

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 441
for the occupants of the stockade, when surrounded
or menaced by enemies. The remains of this ditch
are still traceable.
Within the southern edge of the fort there yet
stands a huge slippery-elm, which has been pre
served by the proprietor of the plantation, in the
midst of a cultivated field, partly for its medicinal
virtues, but chiefly for the sake of its venerable asso
ciations. Old John Youngblood — who removed about the
close of the Revolution from the territory of Edge
field, and settled on the Jews'-land near this place —
related, that when he first saw it, many of the tum
bling palisades were still standing; particularly the
heavier timbers about the gate, and on them were
the marks of the augur and saw, proving it to have
been the work of civilized men. Yet, Wm. Bucha
nan, an old settler, and a Revolutionary soldier, of
the same neighborhood, stated, on being inquired of
by Youngblood, concerning the origin of the fort, that
he had often seen it, but knew nothing of the time
or the occasion of* its construction.
The truth is, the Buchanans and their neighbors
had come into the country long subsequent to 1751 —
the period at which Fairchild built his puncheon
fort — and the rapid changes incident to the popula
tion of every pioneer settlement had left not one of
its previous settlers, who could have given the de
sired information.
A tradition having become prevalent at the begin
ning of the present century, to the effect, that rich

442 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
treasures had been buried in troublous days of the
olden time beneath the fort on John's Creek, a party,
quite hopeful in their anticipations of success, sunk
a pit near the foot of the ancient elm, which still
remains, a monument ofthe cupidity of men, as the
site of the old stockade inclosure is of the Indian
hostilities and pioneer dangers and hardships of co
lonial periods.
To these circumstances, it may be further added,
that the settlement on John's Creek corresponds well
with Fairchild's statement, that he had built this
fort near Ninety-six — it being only some fourteen
miles north-west of the creek, a distance which was
relatively much less in that age of widely-scattered
communities than a modern estimate would regard
it. And since, besides the fort built at the same
period, by the Gowdies, at Ninety-six, and the block
house of Fort Boon, erected several years later by
the Calhouns, Nobles and Houstons, on Cheves's
Creek, there is no other known site of a similar
structure in the present territory of Abbeville, we are
almost driven to the conclusion, -that it was at this
spot, on John's Creek, Fairchild built the stockade
fort of which he speaks in his letter to Governor
Glen. These facts shed a new and interesting light upon
the history of the John's Creek settlement. They
would prove incontestably, that on the fertile cane-
bottoms of that stream a flourishing civilized com
munity was fouuded; cotemporaneous with the first
ever planted in any portion of the Ninety-six Dis-

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 443
trict. And there is much in the present aspect of
this section of Abbeville, to corroborate this view
derived from intimations already referred to in the
records, and from others that have not been men
tioned. No part of the district, not even the Flatwoods or
the lands around Old Cambridge, present a more
worn or ancient appearance than that portion of the
Long-Cane Valley lying between John's Creek and
the Abbeville Branch of the Greenville and Colum
bia Railroad.
Iu May, Captain Francis, of Ninety-six, sent a
letter to the Governor by Robert Gowdy, urging him
to take into consideration the dangers to which the
people there, and on the Saluda, were exposed from
the incursions of the northern Indians, and the
schemes of the French. The inhabitants had as
sembled, and forted themselves. James Maxwell
rode an express from the Nation, and laid the follow
ing narrative before the Governor and Board :
" Having arrived at Keowee, a lower Cherokee
town, I went "to the house of Richard and Abraham
Smith, traders there, and asked the news. They re
plied that the Indians had grown insolent and in
sulting ; three nights before, they expected to be
killed by them, several councils having been held to
deliberate on their fate. A half-breed fellow came
to the house, and, in an insolent manner, asked
Abraham Smith what he thought? 'What should
I think ? ' answered Smith. ' Why, I have killed a
white man,' he replied, 'do you think your Governor

444 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
will be cross ? He may be cross if he will ; I wish
I could see an army of white men coming down
yonder hill, I would be the first to strike my toma
hawk in their heads.'
"A few days ago, when returning from a ball play,
we heard the Indians laughing heartily at some
thing that had been remarked in their conversation. .
We stopped to hear what they were talking about,
and discovered that they were mocking the dying
agonies and exclamations of the four white men they
had murdered at the Oconees, such as, ' 0 ! Lord,
0 ! Lord have mercy upon us,' and the like, at
which they laughed again most extravagantly.
" These Indians also declared that the traders should
not leave the Nation till they had brought up the
promised ammunition. The latter were in great fear
of their lives. The same evening the good warrior
of Tocquillo came to me — Maxwell further relates —
and asked how his Excellency did, and the beloved
men below? 'What does his Excellency say,' he
added, ' of the murdered men at the Oconees ?' ' I
have not lately seen the Governor,' I answered. He
asked again, what I thought of it, and if the Gover
nor would resent the killing upon the whole Nation ?
I told him that such was not the way of the Eng
lish, to punish the innocent for the guilty ; the Na
tion would not be punished unless it was concerned
in the deed. The Governor will, however, require
satisfaction from the guilty. He answered that that
would be very just.
" From Keowee I went to Cheowee and Tomassee,

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 445
and heard the same complaints from the traders at
those towns. I now crossed the mountains to Hi-
wassee, and called on Dougherty, at his trading-
house. He informed me that the Over-hills were
well disposed — that the Raven of Hiwassee, and the
chiefs of the Seven Towns, would not hear bad
talks. I likewise met here Robert Gowdy and
'Samuel Bonn, who made the same report. From
Hiwassee, I came to the town of Johree, on my
return, where I had scarcely lighted from my horse,
when I was told that a runner was in the house,
sent from the lower towns to cut me off. I was
struck with astonishment; and, calling the fellow
out, demanded of him if what I had heard was true.
He did not deny it. I then told him that such vil
lainy should be severely punished.
"Next day, meeting three men who were walking
very fast, I called out to one of them, James May,
and asked what was the matter. He replied 'Bad
news.' An Indian woman had come up from
Sticoe, on the Tucosigia River, and reported that an
Indian fellow had killed Daniel Murphy, a trader,
and robbed the store of Barnard Hughes, who had
taken refuge in Tucosigia. This was done by a
man and a warrior. I now sent for the head-men
of Johree and the neighboring town, and asked them
if they had heard of the murder of Murphy, and
the plundering of Hughes's store. Hoy answered
that they had heard of it that morning. 'Why, then,'
I asked again, 'did you not tell me of it?' 'We
thought you knew it,' he replied. * Do you believe

446 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
it?' I asked. 'Yes; we have received messages
that confirm it.' ' Do you approve of such acts ?'
4 No, we do not.' 'Will you protect me if they
come to cut me off?' ' Yes, if it is in our power.
They may be too strong for us. We will send for
the Raven of the Valley, and be directed by him in
the matter.' The white people now advised me to
leave the Nation, and not to return by the way of
Keowee or Ninety-six, as the Indians would cer
tainly murder me ; whereupon I procured arms for
seventeen white men and two negroes, and, setting
off* at midnight, we made good our escape to this
place, by the Augusta path."
The four men mentioned as having been killed
at the Oconees, were Hugh Murphy, Bartholomew
Hughes, Thomas Langley and Charles Grows.
In July, 1751, Captain James Frances wrote as
follows, from Ninety-six, to Governor Glen : " We,
therefore, beg leave, with all due submission, to de
clare to your Excellency, that to such lengths have
matters now gone on the frontiers, that peace and
quietness can no more be expected, unless a fort is
built here on some commanding spot, and a com
pany of rangers sent up, of sufficient force to drive
these Northern or French Indians* from molesting
and destroying our effects, which are our livelihood.
" When the Indians in other of his Majesty's pro
vinces behaved formerly in the same manner, all

* These French Indians were the Nalawegese, from the Ohio, a.
branch of the Shawannese, the devoted allies ofthe French.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 447
efforts of the public authorities to keep them in
submission were unavailing, until this method was
proposed and carried out : a fort and body of
rangers were put in force, which had quickly the
desired effect; and those parts, though never so
much encroached upon by the savages, soon began
to be strong settlements, and made ample amends
for the expenses the country was at to sustain them
during their minority. And as the world can
scarcely surpass this region in healthfulness of
climate — in clear and wholesome streams running
over a soil both fertile and beautiful — thousands
would be induced to come and partake of it with
us, when they understand that this government hath
taken such methods that they need be under no
concern or fear of danger from the Indians. It is
certain that a fort in the Cherokee Nation will be of
service on sundry accounts. It is absolutely ne
cessary, however, to prevent the breaking up of the
lower towns. But while the people believe it would
secure the present settlements on the frontier, and
all future settlements, it cannot, they think, be
efficient without a company of rangers to scour the
woods continually in those parts where the French
Indians have taken possession.
" Captain Fairchild was very ill at the Congarees
when T came by. His men, however, had gone on
to Ninety-six, where they arrived three or four days
before Captain Gibson reached the same point.
" Captain Minnick has also since met them there,
who had previously acquainted those officers of the

448 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
mischiefs committed, and of the necessity of con
centrating the rangers at Ninety-six.* Capt. Gibson
was so good as to come over to my house to inquire
for the truth of the rumor of Indian depredations
recently perpetrated ; but as it was thought too late
to pursue with success the retreating gang of north
ern savages, who had been killing the cows of the
settlers, he returned to his company at Ninety-six.
The neighborhood, however, humbly begs leave of
your Excellency, that one, at least, of the ranging
companies be appointed to range these woods back
ofthe settlements, on the north side ofthe river; for
it is only there that much damage can be done, there
being no livers on Ninety-six to receive any."f
A few days after the reception.of this letter by the
Governor, Captain Roger Gibson sent down the fol
lowing additional information. He wrote from the
Coronaka: " According to the first instructions given
by your Excellency, I visited with my troops the
several places and inhabitants that had been desig
nated, but without meeting with any Indians or ac
cidents worth mentioning. I must, however, inform
you of the miserable condition in which we found
the upper settlers: they had been driven from their
homes, their houses robbed, and their crops destroyed.
I did all that I could to dispel their fear, by telling
# These officers were leaders of companies of rangers— a force
that it had been the policy of the colony to maintain on the frontiers
from an early period. None, however, had yet been posted higher up
than Ninety-six.
f State Records vol. 5th.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 449
them that your Excellency and council would do
everything that could be done for their safety and
protection. "I have also, in compliance with the same instruc
tions, ranged with my troops as far as Ninety-six.
About one mile above that place we encamped, and,
taking a small detachment of my men, I went up the
river to Coronaka, to discover, if possible, the In
dians who, we learned, had killed the cattle of the
people there, cut down their corn, and committed
other acts of violence.
"My Lieutenant and Captain Fairfield's company
ranged likewise in another direction with the like
object in view, but we saw none of the enemy.
While we were gone, however, these Indians came
to a house with long knives drawn in their hands,
and having entered it, one of them fired off his gun,
and immediately after re-loaded it. They told the
people living in it, that they were Cherokees, and
went off showing impudent airs, as if they despised
and did not value us. So lhat from all we can learn,
they meditate nothing but war; and it is the opinion
of every one acquainted at all with Indian charac
ter, that as soon as they know your resolution by
Mr. Bunyon, they will break out and fall upon us
and the upper inhabitants, and cut us all off before
your Excellency can come up with an armed force
to our relief. I therefore advised Captain Minnick
to join us, and delay his visit to the Catawbas ; fifty
or sixty men being too small a number to withstand
three hundred Indians; for that number you may
38

'50 HISTORY OF I'TPER CAROLINA,
surely expect. It is the desire of these upper inhab
itants that we go no farther up, but stay and build a
fort near Ninety-six, to which they may resort when
the danger comes. At that place we shall await
further orders from your Excellency."*
Most deplorable was now the condition of the
struggling settlers of the upper-country; never be
fore, not even in the darkest hour of their partizan
conflict in the Revolution, did they suffer more, or
stand in greater need of assistance from a stronger
arm than their own. Their territory over-run by
roving bands of savages, more barbarous in some
respects than the nest of restless hornets on their
border; themselves murdered in cold blood at their
fire-sides, or while wrapt in sleep, unconscious of an
enemy's approach ; their children carried into cap
tivity, their houses burned, and their property de
stroyed or plundered — every settlement in a panic of
fear, the frightened people hurrying at constantly
recurring alarms to the friendly refuge of forts and
block-houses, hastily constructed in some central
spot. And these dangers and agitations — this violence
and invasion — were not endured for a week or a
month ; during many gloomy years they were more
or less the constant portion of the early pioneers of
the upper-country. From 1749, to the close of Col.
Grant's campaign, in 1761, embracing a period of
more than ten years, there was not a settlement in
* Indian Books.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 451
this portion of the province that was not exposed to
the inroads of hostile savages, and, at their hands,
became the not unfrequent scene of bloody tragedies
and domestic ruin.
Through the most critical and trying half of this
period, the destinies of the colony were presided over
by Gov. James Glen. The question forces its own
consideration: Did he sustain his trust with fidelity?
We have already intimated, that Adair, a sufficiently
intelligent, though not altogether disinterested cotem-
porary, does hot hesitate to charge him with the
deliberate sacrifice of the public interest to the pro
motion of his own private aggrandizement;* and it
must be confessed that an impartial review of all the
facts in the case, drawn from various and the most
reliable sources, does not restore his memory to the
unqualified admiration of posterity.
He entered upon his office in the very midst of the
energetic and open efforts of the French to seduce
the Cherokees and Catawbas from their alliance with
Carolina ; Priber, the prince of the intriguers, was
known to be among the former people, and busily
preparing for the accomplishment of designs that
must issue in the serious injury if not total ruin of
the province ; yet nothing is heard of a more efficient
opposition to these encroachments than the occasion-
# The conduct of Governor Glen, in this respect, as estimated by
many of his cotemporaries, was severely reprehended in a pamphlet
published at the time, entitled, "A Modest Reply to J. G., Esq.," and
which is, no doubt, still preserved among the other valuable collec
tions of the South Carolina Historical Society.

452 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
al advice to the traders to keep a sharp eye upon the
French and Spanish emissaries. A feeble effort had
just been made to apprehend the scheming Jesuit*
through the agency of Colonel Fox, which resulted
in a complete failure, and the ejection of Fox from
the Nation, under circumstances of mortification and
disgrace; yet nothing more was done in the matter,
till the accidental opportunity that was offered for
his arrest by the Carolina traders, on the Tallapoosa.
A few years later, and the savage allies of the
French, from the banks of the Ohio, were already
over-running the settlements on the border,and even
boldly depredating in the very vicinity of the capital.
We have already related how, at this time, a band of
them captured and tomahawked, in cold blood, Her
man Geiger, a respectable and popular trader of the
Congarees. But if any effort was made, even now,
to vindicate the rights and secure the safety of the
people of upper-country, or to receive Geiger during
the considerable time that the savages were encamp
ed with him in the Cherokee country, further than a
simple message sent to the lower towns, and a petty
reward offered for his re-capture, it does not appear
in any record or chronicle of those times.
When, at length, after depredating, for years, with
impunity, upon the property of the prisoners — for
it has been shown that, in the absence of assist
ance from the government, the feeble settlements

# Priber was in the full tide of success with his plans, when Glen
was appointed Governor, in 1743.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 453
were utterly unable to protect themselves — the
savages 'began the wholesale butchery of defence
less families, the minute details of which, with earn
est prayers for deliverance, were constantly sent
down to be laid before the Governor and his council ;
what shall be said of their continued indifference to
these foul wrongs, or at best, their puerile efforts to re
move and redress them through the instrumentality
of a few patrol bands on the back of the settle
ments ?
In the interval that elapsed between the murder of
the Goulds, or Clouds, and the horrible massacre of
the immigrants and wedding party on the Buffalo,
Governor Glen was coolly sitting in Charleston, dic
tating,, in a masterly manner, it is true, a correspond
ence with the Governor of Virginia, in relation to the
interference of that colony with the business and
profits of the Cherokee peltry trade. Like many, who
had figured in responsible places of public trust before
him, he seemed much better fitted to shine in the
management of the etiquette and pageantry of a
court or government, aud in fostering its literature
and arts, than in discharging the more arduous du
ties of the statesman and military leader.
Negociation was his strength. Negociation conduct
ed with tact and vigor, must accomplish everything;
and it must be confessed, that no Governor of Caro
lina ever presided in her councils or public confer
ences with a better dignity or more graceful address
than James Glen. The Indians regarded him as a
consummate orator ; but were certainly never im-

454 HISTORY OF UPPF.R CAROLINA,
pressed with the least respect for his prowess as a
warrior. An old chronicler thus briefly describes
him : " He was a man of considerable knowledge,
courteous and polite ; exceedingly fond of military
parade and ostentation, which commonly have great
force on ordinary minds, and by these means he
maintained his dignity and importance with the
people.''* It was chiefly by diplomacy and management that
he had hoped all along to quell the disturbances on
the border. The manuscript abounds with mutual
communications that passed, during these years, be
tween him and the most prominent head-men ofthe
Nation. The Cherokees with their usual shrewd
ness, soon discovered this bent of his genius, and
showed themselves neither remiss nor unskillful in
the art of amusing it. In the spring of 1751, the
chiefs of the lower towns, f of Keowee, Tomassee,
Cheowee, Ustustee, Estatoe, and Sugaw Town of
Toxso, addressed him a letter, in which they express
their sorrow for the outbreaks that had occurred to
disturb the peace of the upper settlements ; and
promise that a better state of things shall be main
tained in the Nation ; concluding with the assurance,
that it had all originated in the lies of those who
went about to sow the seeds of discord.
* Hewit.
f The following names of chiefs were signed to this communica
tion : Skiogusla, Little Conjurer, Howsufto, of Keowee; Skiogusta
and All Bones, of Cheowee ; Chumroheke, of Ustustee ; Tuckeoruf-
teke, of Tomassfej Oconaco, of Sugaw.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 455
Similar communications, either written or in the
form of a message, were frequently sent him by Old
Hop of Chote, and the Raven of Hiwassee. We
have seen that even the wary traders in the Nation
were sometimes beguiled by these fair promises, and
penitential regrets ofthe chiefs.
At length, in the summer of 1753, Governor Glen
invited all the leading men of the Nation to meet
him in a general conference in the town of Charles
ton. As many as were able to come at the appoint
ed time promptly obeyed the summons, and as this
was one of the most remarkable Indian talks that
ever occurred in Charleston, developing important
historical facts, as well as many interesting details
illustrative of Indian character, we have ventured
to quote its proceedings entire, as they are recorded
in one ofthe volumes ofthe Indian Books.
Before introducing these, however, it may be well
to recur to a few previous events. In 1751, tired
out by the continued misrule and disorder on
the border, it was seriously proposed in council to
throw off altogether the commercial alliance of the
Cherokees. This proposition met the wise and un
qualified disapproval of Gov. Glen. His remarks on
the occasion are, however, characteristic:
" It would be impolitic to resent, in the manner
proposed, anything they have yet committed. To
prove this, I would refer you to a few facts that
must be fresh in your memories. Soon after the
breaking out of the present war between France
and England, the French were very busy with their

45R HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
agents and friendly Indians, endeavoring to obtain
a foot-hold iu the nations in alliance with the Eng
lish. The Catawbas returned an answer to the over
tures made to them, that they would have no con
nection with any other than the English of Carolina —
they would stand or fall with them. These were
overtures not of peace only, but to instigate the
Catawbas to take up the hatchet against the Eng
lish.* The same proposals were made to the Chero
kees, and received a similar auswer.
"These attempts of the French, however, very
justly alarmed this government, the more especially
as bad talks had been spread by them among the
Creeks. These events gave great uneasiness to all
our outer settlements and new townships, and they
petitioned the council to have forts built on the
border, which the council advised to be granted. I,
at the same time, thought it important that I should
have an interview with those nations, that these
things might be looked into, and the Indians con
firmed in the British interest. I accordingly went
up and met them near their respective countries; I
met the Catawbas at the Congarees. and the Chero
kees at a place called Ninety-six. Head-men came
to this place from almost every town in the Chero
kee Nation ; and in all their speeches they expressed
so much attachment to the English interest, and

* Adair declares that the French, at this time, offered a standing
reward to the Choctaws and other Southern tribes, for every scalp oi
an English inhabitant they should bring in.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 457
spoke with so much sincerity, as not only to con
vince me, and the. gentlemen who were with me, of
their good intentions, but likewise all the inferior
sort of people, to the number of two hundred, who
had attended the meeting, and were very attentive to
what passed, most of them being greatly interested
in the consequences, as settlers in the new town
ships. And so fully were they persuaded of the
friendship of the Cherokees, that they petitioned me
that the money it had been proposed to expend in
building forts, should be applied to the repairing of
their highways.
" Soon after this, a French emissary came into the
Nation ; the Cherokees beat out the brains of an
Indian, who had come with him, and he scarcely
escaped with his life. Other instances of their
friendship could be given. An Englishman hap
pened to be killed some time ago in one of their
towns — a pack-horseman of indifferent character.
The town at first refused to avenge the murder; the
warrior who committed the deed, they said, was
a very great man, while the Englishman was a
nothing. I insisted on satisfaction. A council of
head-men was called, and they resolved to reduce
the town to ashes, and massacre its people, if they
did not yield up the murderer, or put him to death
themselves. They consented to cut him off, and
struck him in the town-house, but only wounded
him ; he ran and hid in a hollow tree ; thence they
dragged him, and cut him to pieces with a hatchet,
having first chopped off his hands. His friends
39

11

458 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
begged his body, that they might bury it; the chiefs
refused, declaring that it should lie above ground,
that the English might see how faithful they were to
their engagements."* Such was Gov. Glen's confi
dence in the Cherokees, and such his plan for reme
dying the existing evils in the Nation and pioneer
settlements. A brief, but no less characteristic communication,
was sent about the same time, by James Adair, the
historian, to William Pinckney: "If the government
designs to stand on the defensive, and will grant me,
with sufficient credentials, that encouragement which,
if possible, I might merit, as well in this as in the
Choctaw and Chickasaw affairs, I shall induce the
Chickasaws at Augusta, and many brave woodsmen,
to join me in the service of Carolina ; and, if I am
not mistaken in myself, with such brave, wanton
fellows iu the field, I will accomplish something
remarkable. "f
A fierce war was now raging between the Creeks
and Cherokees. It will be recollected that we related
in another place, how that Adair, on one occasion,
singularly escaped being murdered on the Chickasaw
path, by a band of the prowling Savannahs. After
he had got away from them, they fell in with a cou
ple of Chickasaw hunters — adopted relations of the
Creeks — whom they killed and scalped ; and then,
as they had been long doing in Carolina, ran and
took refuge among the Cherokees. The exasperated
* Indian Books. -f- Ibid.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 459
Creeks, having more respect for their national honor
and private rights, and less confidence in Cherokee
honesty, than the intelligent rulers in Charleston,
made war at once upon that Nation.
Our credulity is now put to the test, though we
are assured of the fact, that Gov. Glen summoned
the Cherokee chiefs to meet him in the conference
in Charleston, to which we have alluded, not for the
purpose of giving them even the gentlest rebuke for
the outrages they were obviously abetting, upon the
defenceless settlements of the upper-country, nor to
require them to make reparation for their recent in
sult to the Creeks ; but solely to persuade them to
bury the hatchet, and be at peace with the latter
people. The proceedings of the conference will tell their
own story. A cotemporary* has discovered, how
ever, an identical motive in this step of the Gover
nor, with that which induced him to expostulate
with Virginia, in relation to the Cherokee trade — the
Creek war was greatly interfering with the profits of
the traffic. * Adair.

CHAPTER XIX.
Gov. Glen's Great Council with the Cherokee Chiefs, in Charleston —
Attaculaculla makes the first speech — The Governor replies — Long
Jack and other Chiefs follow — Certain Savannah Indians in the
town-jail become the subject of an angry debate — The Chiefs de
part for their Towns — Incident on the Path near Saluda Old
Town, &c.
The Conference was opened in the Council-Cham
ber, July 4th, 1753, Gov. Glen presiding. Attacula-
culla* appears to have made the first business speech.
" I remember when I was in England, we were told
by the great King George to defend ourselves against
all our enemies, aud that we should have ammuni
tion to fight against the Muskogee and other south
ern Indians who might attack us. I want to know
if you have any orders from the great King to make
peace between us and the. Creeks ?
Governor. — You were very young at that time,
and must have forgotten the talk. I have the great
King's instructions on paper, in my keeping, and he

'¦¦ * This chief, when quite young, had gone with the famous Chero
kee EmbassjLto England, and was better known lo the whites by his
surname of Little Carpenter. He wa-. exceedingly small in his per
son, but eloquent, sagacious, and brave. His Indian name signifies
the viost excellent wood-cutter.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 461
desires that all the Indians, who are friends to the
English, should be at peace with one another.
Little Carpenter. — The great King desired us,
when I was in England, to avenge the lives of his
white people, whose bones lie white upon the ground
ofthe Muskogee. ,
Governor. — What I say is the great King's talk ;
you are not to be guided by any one else.
Little Carpenter. — I shall be glad if you will let
me go to England in the spring; I want to talk with
great King George myself.
Governor. — It may be that in two or three years
hence, after all things have been made easy, you can
get leave to go ; but your Nation is at present so en
gaged in war with the Creeks, that it would be inju
dicious to send so able a warrior as you are away
from your country.
Little Carpenter. — There are other countries and
places from which one could go to England besides
this. Governor. — The great King will see no one from
this country but whom I send.
Little Carpenter. — I should be glad to hear your
Excellency's talk about your white people and our
trade; but as to making peace With the Muskogee,
we have no directions about that; we can do noth
ing without the consent of Old Hop.*
Governor. — You knew for what purpose you were

* The King of Chotie and the great beloved wise-man of the
Nation.

462 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
invited here before you came down; I am surprised
that you did not bring full powers with you to con
clude a peace, to which you had agreed above two
months ago. (Then turning to the Little Carpenter,
he continued:) I have been here now ten years, and
never saw you before; many serious complaints
have been brought down to me about your being a
disturber of the peace; but as you are present to
speak for yourself, I do not doubt but that you will
clear yourself of these charges, and prove worthy of
my good opinion.
Little Carpenter, (taking a lighted tobacco-pipe
in his hand.) — This pipe was sent by Old Hop, of
Chotie, who desired that it might be delivered to
your Excellency and your beloved men, that all of
you might smoke of it. (An Indian fellow, having a
brass cross hanging from his ear, received the pipe,
and hands it to the Governor, who, with the council
and all the Indians present, smokes in the usual
manner.) Governor. — We have now smoked out of our
pipe; this is a token of peace, and that we are all
friends of your Nation. The last time I smoked the
pipe of peace in this room, the Cherokees, Musko-
gees and Catawbas, all smoked it with me. I love
such smoking, and should be glad to witness such a
scene again, when they shall all once more be friends
and united as brothers. The business you were sent
upon was to conclude a peace with the Creeks.
Long Jack. — I came hither from my town, and
from the place where Old Hop and our council meet.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 463
I came to see the Governor at the edge of the great
water. I have not seen your Excellency for a long
time. There are many enemies on the path ; I knew
not that I should ever get here alive. But we have
come safe, where we find all bright and clear, and
we are thankful. I am with you ; and I have seen
the smoke of peace rising from your mouth on the
air. I shall now return home, and if I get safely
back, shall go directly out to war. Everything I
have seen and heard here is clear and bright, but
my people at home are dark. I shall go out to war
only against my enemies; never against my friends.
I shall go home as soon as I get dowu these stairs;
this room looks to me like a great tree; but it is a
tree that may fall and bury me under it, so that I
shall hasten to get out of it. When we left my town,
we brought our arms with us, and Old Hop desired
us to hurry down with our people, and attend to
what your Excellency should say about the white
people and our trade; but to give no definite answer
as to a peace with the Muskogee. Old Hop will set
tle that matter himself. He told us that he would
be impatient of our return, and would keep his face
turned towards Charleston, in the hope of seeing the
smoke of friendship rise towards the clouds from the
edge of the great water. (Pointing to the pipe.)
This pipe is Old Hop's; he is as much a governor of
his towns, as you are of your people here. We are
only sent to your Excellency as messengers of peace,
to smoke with you and your beloved men.
. Governor. — If Old Hop was here, I should only

464 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
hear him speak; but if any others of the head-men
have something to say, I shall hear them.
Several Indians. — We did not come down to give
a talk ; we were ordered by Old Hop to hear what
your Excellency had to say.
Governor. — Your comparison of this government
to a great tree was very just ; but you are mistaken
if you think it may fall; its roots are deep, and the
branches strong and wide-spreading, and happy is
that nation of Indians who shall find shelter under it.
Long Jack. — I did not mean that; your Excel
lency mistook my meaning in regard to the tree. I
meant by it, that we are so much exposed to our
enemies, particularly the French Indians, that we
want a large tree to be planted in our Nation, to pro
tect and shelter us from our enemies.*
Governor. — The English are very careful to pro
vide for their friends; and you may depend upon all
the assistance you need from this presence.
Long Jack. — We are in haste to be gone, and shall
be thankful for a supply of arms and ammunition.
The day here is bright, but not so on our path, which
is full of enemies; they lurk in every bush and
thicket to cut us off as we pass, and we know not
that we shall live to see our homes again. When
we came down we were safer than when we shall
return, because the white men were with us.
Governor. — You shall have a supply of ammuni-

*Loug Jack, no doubt, asks here, under a beautiful figure, for a
fort.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 465
tion, and I. shall take care that it be carried a part of
the way with you in a cart.
Long Jack. — We are greatly obliged to your Ex
cellency. We also very much need pipes, hatchets,
and pins with which to stretch our skins. We had
these things from Virginia, and we wish to get them
from you, so that we may show our people, that we
can get as good things here as in Virginia.
Governor. — Yesterday you heard my talk, when I
told you, the chief thing for which I sent for you was
to make peace with the Creeks. There are other
things, however, proper to be mentioned ; but as you
have not yet fully answered on that point, if you have
anything more to say, I am ready to hear it. I have
now in my hand a letter from Old Hop, attested by
Beamer and Hatton, concerning a peace with the
Creeks. "Before this," he says, "everything was
cloudy; but since hearing 'from the Governor, all is
clear and bright." I perceive that Ustinca and Tas-
site,* of Hiwassee, were present when it was writ
ten; I suppose they remember it, and as this is the
last time we shall probably talk together before you
leave, I desire that you will unburden your minds to
me, and conceal nothing. I see (pointing to one of
the Indians) you have in your hand the pipe sent
me by Old Hop; I accept it as a token of friendship
between us, and I and my people will smoke of it.
(Orders a candle to be lighted.)
Indian. — Canachte, of Chotie, sent this pipe and
#The Raven.

11
466 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
these eagles' wings, as a token of friendship for the
English, that when they see them they may remem
ber Canachte.
Governor. — I do receive it as a token of peace
and friendship (the Indian presenting it lighted, with
the eagles' wings, and all present smoke ; presently,
the tobacco is exhausted, and the Governor contin
ues): I perceive that the tobacco is all burnt out,
and as sure as I now re-fill this pipe, I do publicly
promise that the Cerokees shall be, hereafter, plen
tifully supplied with goods. It is the fault of the
traders that there are frequent complaints on this
head, who do not keep me informed of your neces
sities. When you are in want of anything, send a
messenger to the Captain of the Fort at the Con
garees. Long Jack. — We thank your Excellency. While
Robert Kelly and Stains traded in our towns, we
were well supplied, and wanted nothing; but since
they are no more, we are often necessitous. We are
now in the great Council House, with your Excel
lency and beloved men, our brothers, and with our
traders, also — several of whom, we know, have lost
their lives in coming to our country, and for whose
blood we shall yet have satisfaction of the French.*
Last winter, when you sent up the talk desiring us
not to go against the Muscogee, I did observe it, and
begged our warriors not to go out on the war-path
*Long Jack here cunningly insinuates that it was Indians in the
pay of the French, and not Cherokees, who had been guilty of the
murders in the Nation.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 467
against them any more. The last message that came
up, was a request that we would meet you at the
Congarees ; but that failing, we have now come, at
the request of Old Hop, to meet and talk with you
here. We are not desirous to continue the war
against the Creeks, for there are other enemies of
our Nation to fight at present. But the making of
peace with the Muscogee, is, in reality, making no
peace at all ; for a treaty of friendship and amity
that they may make to-day, they will break to-mor
row. Governor. — I have given great attention to what
you say. I am sensible that Kelly was a very good
man, and supplied you well with goods; but as he
is gone, we shall take care that you shall be as well
supplied by others, as if Kelly were still alive. The
name of Kelly brings to my remembrance .the bar
barity of the French in encouraging their Indians to
kill our people, by giving them a reward for their
scalps. They murdered Robert Kelly ; but, in time
to come, if any white man is killed on the path, or
in the Nation, they may depend upon it, satisfaction
will be required.
As Old Hop is head-man over the hills, and he
appears desirous of a peace with the Creeks, I am
hopeful that the latter people will be as ready to ac
cede to it on their part. I am glad that you think
the loss of one man is not a sufficient cause for war.
If the murderer, himself, is punished, it will prevent
further mischief. You, Cherokees, are much more
beloved by us than the Savannahs; but should

468 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
one of you come down and murder any of my peo
ple, we would insist upon having satisfaction, and
yet, not make war upon your nation. This is our
constant practice. There is an instance of it among
the Muscogee ; they came down and killed several
of you, Cherokees, our friends, near this town. I
sent up and demanded satisfaction. They complied
without a murmur, and took away the life of one
of their greatest men.
Little Carpenter. — When I was in England, two
papers were given by the great King George, one for
the Cherokees, and the other, I suppose, for the au
thorities of Carolina. I have not seen those papers
since ; doubtless, they are lost.
Governor. — The paper for Carolina, though it can
not at present be readily come at, being in a great
heap of other papers, is not lost. I showed it to you
the other day, printed in a book.
Little Carpenter. — This is the third time I have
been here, and I remember the great king's talk.
He promised that we should never want for goods;
nevertheless, we have suffered much, because we
could not procure them from the Carolina traders;
we were forced to go for them to other countries.
But now that your Excellency has given your pro
mise that we shall lack these things no more, our
hearts are straight, and we shall not look to any
other people for supplies.
Governor. — I am glad that that was your only
reason for going to Virginia.
Little Carpenter. — I heard that your Excellency

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 469
sent several times for me, and I was sorry that I was
from home; for, perhaps, you may have thought
that I had done something that made me afraid to
come hither ; but I was then in Virginia, where the
Governor showed us his commission, and said it was
the same as that of the' Governor of Carolina. It
was not from fear that I did not come; it was be
cause the Over-hill people, being poor, and in great
straits from want of goods, compelled me to go to
Virginia, in search ofa supply for them. There are
now only two regular traders in our Nation, Mr.
Beamer and Cornelius Dougherty; the others have no
goods of their own, except what they get of other
traders, with the view of speculating as they can.
Now, it is to be hoped, however, that our traders will
receive a supply sufficient for all the wants of the
Nation. We need some small articles for our women.
When I was in England, I heard what the great
king said ; and I remember that he directed in the
paper he gave us, that the Governor of Carolina was
to supply us with all kinds of goods, and if he failed
to do it, we could get them from Virginia — that you
were both one people, under the same great king.
Long Jack. — We are now almost ready to go home,
and I would be glad to have an answer from your
Excellency to Old Hop's letter, which mentions that
he was not able to come down with us. We would
rejoice if you would go up towards our country, as
far even as the point at which Old Hop said he
would meet you, if he had to be carried on the back
ofa slave.

470 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
Governor. — I will first reply to the Little Carpen
ter. I am very sorry that you were obliged to go
through briars and thickets to obtain a supply of
goods. For the future, they shall be sent to you in
abundance. I am glad that you went into those
parts ; for, in your absence, your enemies gave it out
you had gone over to the interest of the French ; but
now that you have returned, and given your own
report ofthe matter, I shall no more give eartowhat
they say. It is very true what you remark about
the goods. Yon have at present but two traders
among you — Beamer and Dougherty; but, indeed,
there is no encouragement for them ; the price of
goods is so very low, that the traders cannot live
among you ; notwithstanding, I recently senlyou,by
another trader, enough for your wants. I do not
mention this in view of raising the price of goods ;
you shall have them always as usual ; but you must
pay for them. You cannot but be sensible of the
fact, that they are much lower in price with you than
with the Creeks. I shall mention one article only:
The Creeks pay a pound of leather for but forty bullets,
while the Cherokees get sixty for the same. I have
read over the paper that you speak of, from the great
King George, and find not a word in it about the
government of Virginia, or of her supplying you
with goods. It is true, that province belongs also to
the great king ; but if, at any time, I should send to
its Governor, requesting him not to supply you with
goods, on account of some misdemeanor committed
by you, he would not dare do it.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 471
Little Carpenter. — What I say about that is only
talk. I do not assert that such is to be, or likely to
be; but if it should so happen, that Carolina refuse
to send us goods, there are many great waters and
rivers to go down to, where they can be obtained.
We hope, however, that we shall be laid under no
such necessity; the first offence shall never be on
our part.
Governor. — You would be at a great loss if you
did desert Carolina ; and ultimately as naked as the
French themselves are. We shall always be good
friends to the Cherokees.
Little Carpenter. — I have no desire to look else
where for goods ; but Old Hop is a wise man, and
can give your Excellency full satisfaction as to these
things, were you to talk with him. We are only
warriors, and have no great knowledge of many
things, in which lies much good for our Nation ;
neither can we express ourselves, nor argue upon
dark questions ; we, therefore, refer you to the good
and wise old man. Formerly, when we had more
men than we now have, four traders trafficked in
our towns. Mr. Elliott has brought us a great many
goods ; but, we fear, he will not be able to supplyall
our wants.
Governor. — Then, I will send more. You have
pressed me very much to see Old Hop; but there are
many affairs that require my presence here. If, at
any time, however, I should go up as far as the Con
garees, I will send for him to meet me there. (Point
ing to Skiagunsta, he continued.) — I am glad to see

472 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
you ; you are always the messenger of peace and
good news, and have come down at the proper time,
to witness that all the reports against our govern
ment are false. You always give good talks to your
people. We look upon you as our good friend, and
hope always to do so. If Skiagunsta, the small-pox
conjurer, has anything to say, let him speak.
Skiagunsta. — I am listening to hear if the upper
towns have anything more to say, and kept silent
because their two head-men did not appear to be
done. When they are, I have something to say ; for,
it is not our custom, like the white people, to talk
all at once; but when one is through, another be
gins. When they are all quiet, I shall begin to speak.
Governor. — It is a very good rule, and, indeed, we
observe the same.
Skiagunsta. — We were talking about the trade.
1 believe your Excellency and we are imposed upon
by some of the traders. When we tell them of it,
they say they have the Governor's orders; and if we
complain, we are ill-treated by them. The price of
a white shirt is five pounds of leather; a broad hoe
the same, and of a small shirt, three pounds ; and
when we complain of this the answer is, they have
come a great way, and their horses break their bones
carrying the goods over the hills and mountains.
Some of them make us pay six pounds of leather
for a fathom of calico.
Governor. — What the traders say is very true.
They often sustain great losses in conveying their
goods to your Nation. They are frequently spoiled

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 473
in the carriage ; and indeed the prices are so low
that many of them cannot live. Sometimes they
get no pay at all for their goods, and many other dis
advantages there are which they labor under; so
that you must not expect goods at too low a price.
By the last treaty, you were to have them at the
same prices as were usual before that treaty was
made. Long Jack. — Many of our Nation are often killed
in war, while others fall by sickness on the path ;
and when we die thus, though we are in debt to
the traders, they should not seize upon our horses.
The little that is left is of service to the living.
Governor. — I am very sorry to hear that such
things are done. If you will but mention the name
of a trader who is guilty of it, he shall be punished.
But you yourselves should keep an account of your
traffic, that you may compare it with that of the
traders. (He here reads the article in the last treaty
relating to trade, and the names of all the head-men
who signed it.) — " All goods shall stand at their usual
prices, and if any trader imposes upon the Indians
higher rates, he shall be punished." Let me know
the man that does it.
Little Carpenter. — A flap was to cost one pound
of leather, and six pounds were to be the measure
of a match-coat.
Governor. — You shall take up with you an iron
yard-stick, so that the traders cannot cheat you.
Skiagunsta. — When I and my people were here
before, we were about to fix the price of a flap and
40

474 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
a shirt at eight pounds of leather; but something
intervened and put a stop to it.
Little Carpenter. — It was on account of the trade
that we went to Virginia. When I was in England
I was told to go and procure goods wherever I could
get them cheapest. The price of shirts is dearer
now than formerly.
Governor. — It was agreed that the prices should
be as had been usual.
Little Carpenter. — The traders are very cross
with us Indians. We dare not speak to them. If
we do, they take our skins and dash them upon the
ground, and deny us goods. We must give them
whatever they demand, or go without goods.
Governor. — You have in your country right
weights and measures ; they cannot, therefore, cheat
you. But as I before remarked, the prices are
already so low, that the traders can scarcely pay for
their goods and live. I desire you to show me one
who ever made a farthing among you. One of the
greatest traders who ever went to your Nation — from
whom other traders procured their goods — being
unable to get them elsewhere, has left you to go to
another country, and there broken. Here is James
Beamer, who went very young among you, and
settled as a trader; he is now gray-headed, and yet
in debt. Even among the Muscogee, the traders
make but a shift to live. This is all they can do.
Mr. Kelly, who was a long time in your Nation, left
nothing. His wife and children are poor to-day.
The day is now nearly spent ; but if any of yon have
more to say, speak on.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEIIS. 475
Little Carpenter. — Do what we may, the white
people will cheat us in our weights and measures —
they will make them less. What is it a trader can
not do ? They give us bad measure in our powder.
Some ofthe white men borrowed my yard-stick, and
cut it shorter, for which 1 was blamed.
Governor. — Let the yard-measure be kept by one
of your beloved men, and then if any trader cuts it,
send him to me.
Little Carpenter. — We are satisfied.
Skiagunsta. — I look towards the south-west, and
it is bright. I am heartily glad of the peace. We
are obliged to your Excellency. I am ready to con
firm it. I like the talk ofthe Muscogee ; but would
like to have seen them here. We are but two towns,
at present, in the Lower Cherokees ; but we are men
and warriors, as well as the others ; we have a war-
hatchet as well as they. But as soon as I heard the
peace talk, we buried the bloody hatchet, and it
shall appear no more. Since that time all has been
quiet, and we have hunted without fear. A young
man brought word that the upper towns were for
peace, but the lower were not ; then your agent came
to the Nation and proposed peace; and you have
obtained it, and I am glad. May it be lasting. I
have always been obedient to the Governor's com
mands. I have followed him step by step. I have
none other now to assist me. This is the last speech
I shall make. Your Excellency must remember
that you promised to build us a fort at Keowee. It
has not been done. Should it not be built, my

476 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
people must desert their towns, and remove beyond
the blue hills.
Governor. — I have heard you ; I hope the peace
will be lasting, and there will be no occasion for a
fort. I do remember that I promised it, and what I
promise, I shall always perform ; such is the custom
of the English. But many things happened; some
bad talks among the Cherokees prevailed ; every
thing appears bright and clear now, however, and I
shall endeavor to build you a fort at Keowee.
Skiagunsta. — I should be very glad to depart now ;
but I do not know when I shall get home, as 1 have
lost my horse ; perhaps some rogue of a white man
has taken him.
Governor. — Diligent search shall be made for your
horse, and if he cannot be found, I will present you
with another to carry you home.
At the same time that these Cherokee chiefs arrived
in town to hold their talk, it so happened that the
identical Savannahs,* who were mentioned in a
former chapter, as having been captured in the act
of committing depredations near Charleston, and
unwisely confined there, were brought in, and had
undergone a slight examination in the presence of
the Cherokees, before the conference began. When,
to the surprise of the Governor, if not of other
Englishmen present, they suddenly manifested a
warm interest in their favor. The talk now turned
upon the Savannah prisoners, and the speeches be
came shorter and somewhat spiced.
* Ohio Indians.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 477
Long Jack. — I should like to know what is to be
done with the Savannahs below; for the wise old
man at home will be very anxious to know that;
they have always acted like messengers of peace.
'Governor. — They have not behaved well, and we
have not yet decided what to do with them.
Long Jack. — They came to us with talks of
peace. Governor. — By their bringing talks of peace they
may have had business at Chotie ; but they had no
business at all in our settlements.
Long Jack. — If they brought ropes, with which
to tie prisoners, they did not design them for white,
but red men. If they had had a mind to kill white
people, they could have done it before they came
here. Governor. — It is for that very reason, the seizing
of our friendly settlement Indians, that we punish
them. Long Jack. — If you will not take our talk about
the Savannahs, we will not take yours about the
peace with the Muskogee.
- Governor. — You have no business with our af
fairs. Little Carpenter. — We will not have a peace with
the Creeks, while these prisoners are here.
Governor. — I am sorry to repeat my words again;
it is the last time I shall do so. If any Cherokees
had done the same, we should punish them and yet
remain friends to the Nation. We never suffer
Indians to meddle in our affairs. You say you came

478 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
from Old Hop, and that you would declare nothing
yourselves, till you should hear and tell him all that
I say ; therefore I do not regard what you speak con
cerning the Savannahs.
Little Carpenter. — I do not defend the Savannahs;
it is for the safety of the white people, who come
among us, that I contend. If these Indians are pun
ished, the path will be made bloody, and no white
man will be able to come to our country. You,
(pointing to the Governor,) and those about you, are
safe; but many a straggling white man will lose his
life.* Governor. — What Indian dare do it.
Little Carpenter. — Many of the five nations will
join these people, and some of the Cherokees ; we
cannot prevent it.
Governor. — The Savannahs never go into the
councils of the five nations; if they did, however,
we would soon run them out.
Little Carpenter. — There are three towns of them.
Governor. — If there were thirty we are strong
enough to destroy them all.
Little Carpenter. — I do not refer to numbers ; we
know you are able to cut them off, but in the mean
time, they may do you much injury.
Governor. — We are not afraid of the French In
dians; we are determined to defend our friendly
red people. Old Hop says, he has sent me down his
boys ; I am sorry indeed to find them behaving like
* This was in good part verified by those savage vagabonds.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 479
boys. If these Savannahs are guilty, we will pun
ish them ; if not, they may go free, lt is not for our
own sakes, we desire peace between you and the
Muskogee; it is at your earnest desire. The upper,
middle and lower settlements all urge its consum
mation. But if you covet war rather than peace,
you may be gratified ; I will write to the Creeks, and
you shall have enough of it.
The next day the Governor resumed his speech :
— I have read over this morning your treaty with the
great King George in England. In that treaty you
engage to keep the path free from .blood, and to pro
tect our traders in your Nation. You also promise
that when his Majesty is at war with any nation of
Indians, you are to go out against the same — his
enemies are to be your enemies. When you return
on the path I will send ten soldiers to protect you
as far as the Congarees ; and, hereafter, whenever
this government shall have anything to say to your
Nation, we will order some one to accompany you
from the Congarees Fort to this town; the traders
will come with you that far, from your country. I
will send a letter by you on this occasion, to Old
Hop, your emperor, and to the Raven of Hiwassee.
I did not intend to say this much to you, after your
behavior on yesterday. I have never met with like
treatment before from any Indians; it was very dif
ferent from what I expected.
Long Jack — This is the last talk we shall have
together, at this time. We have listened well to every
word your Excellency had to say, and shall keep it

480 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
in our hearts; the chain of friendship is bright be
tween us aud the English ; it shall never rust, neither
shall it ever be broken. We confess that our talk
yesterday to your Excellency, about the prisoners,
was very wrong ; we beg you to forgive it. It was
for the good of the white people. For our part we
have forgotten it, in token whereof we present you
with this piece of tobacco, (lays it before the Gover
nor,) to smoke with Old Hop. Take it as a proof
that we are very sorry for what we did. Old Hop
knows that a peace has been agreed upon in general
between us and the M uskogee ; so that as soon as
we return, the talk of your Excellency will be con
sidered, and war heard of no more.
Usteneca here arose and delivered the Governor
his commission.*
Governor. — Usteneca, your conduct has always
been good, particularly since you have been iu this
place; I therefore return you your commission, and
hope you will still continue good to the English.
Long Jack here hinted that a commission would
not be displeasing to the Little Carpenter.
Little Carpenter. — What we had to say, we have
already said ; but it is right to give these commis
sions. Governor. — It has been a long time since Attacu-
lacullaf was here, I shall give him a new commission.
* In order to gain or conciliate the favor of the Cherokees, their
head-men were frequently commissioned by the Governor as in his
provincial militia. ,
f Little Carpenter.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 481
Little Carpenter. — When I was taken by the
Northern Indians I lost my commission, and thought
I should have lost my life. If I get another com
mission, we shall once more be alive together.
Governor. — Mr. Butler shall also go up with you.
Do not forget that if you wish to have always a
plenty of goods you must make good hunts, and in
duce no more traders to come among you. As old
Hop is not able to travel, I am going to show him
other countries in a glass, and he may show them to
his people. (Here a mirror, with perspective prints,
was laid on the table.)
Soon after the Indians took their leave and with
drew. Skiagunsta was a head-man of the lower towns,
Sugar Town, and Keowee ; the Little Carpenter,
Long Jack, and Ousteneca, were Chiefs ofthe Over-
hill settlements. Each one on leaving the council
chamber, received a scarlet suit, a ruffled shirt, and
laced hat, stockings, garters and buckles, and a set of
ribbon buttons.
Near the close of this famous talk, Governor Glen
made several interesting inquiries of the traders who
were present, some of whom had acted as interpre
ters, concerning the state of things in the Nation.
These traders were Beaver, Elliotte, and Butler. He
learned from them that it was not probable the Chero
kees were at that time in correspondence with the
French; though several suspicious characters had
recently come among them. There was one Lan-
tiquae, with a Frenchman for his pack-horseman;
41

482 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
and Anthony Dean, a violent Catholic, and so learned
as to arouse the suspicion that he was a Jesuit
emissary. His pack-horseman was a Spaniard, who
spoke also fluently in the French language. They
mentioned another, though not by name, a very
dangerous intruder — that the Indians were anxious
for forts to be built in certain places in their country;
these, they believed, would enable them to regulate
everything in the Nation — to keep up the lower
towns — repel enemies, and drive out dissolute, worth
less white men, who only preyed upon the Indians.
That some of the traders still continued to smuggle
large quantities of rum into the Cherokee country.
William Gawdy had recently carried up two hogs
heads of it; it may have been intended, however,
only for his store at Ninety-six. A trader, McDaniel,
who had come down with the chiefs, refused to re
turn with them on. the path, because he was sure it
would be certfiin death for any trader to do so while
the Savannahs were held as prisoners. The Governor
then declared that he would write to Old Hop and
Cornelius Dougherty; he knew Dougherty to be a
skillful and willing healer of differences.
The events, however, connected with this visit of
the Cherokees to Charleston, were not confined solely
to their business and display of eloquence before the
Governor and council. We hear of them again be
fore they reach their towns, and under circumstances,
which, though trivial in themselves, afford with all
the proceedings detailed above, interesting material
for reflection to the student of our upper-country

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 483
history, who would be informed of the manner in
which the lives and property of his immigrant fathers
were, at this trying period, watched over by the
powers then existing in Charleston.
They returned by the path that led to the Conga
rees, and thence to Saluda Old Town. Near that
place, on the Little Saluda, lived Stephen Holston;
his house, it appears, stood not far from the trail.
When the Indians reached that point, they had fallen
short of provisions ; Holston was absent from home ;
the ten soldiers sent to escort them had been left at
the Congarees, and if any trader was with them, it
was Butler alone. The party, forty in all, grew in
solent and mischievous. They surrounded Holston's
house and demanded of his wife a supply of provi
sions. Mrs. Holston readily granted it, and what
ever else she could afford them; still they were not
satisfied. At night two of them insisted on being
permitted to sleep upon the floor of the house. After
some hesitation, she yielded this also ; and near mid
night, when she and her servants were fast asleep,
those on the outside again surrounded the house ;
the fellows, who had pretended to sleep on the floor,
opened the doors — there being one on each side —
and the whole party rushed in, after making a great
uproar by whooping and firing off their guns. Mrs.
Holston was greatly frightened , seizing her infant,
that slept by her side, she sprang from the bed. At
that instant one of them attempted to force the door
of her room ; she had sufficient presence of mind,
however, to ask him what he wanted; but, before he

484 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA.
could reply, she caught sight ofthe Indians, through
the openings in the rude door, moving wildly about
the house with their arms in their hands, upon which
rushing to the window, she jumped through it to the
ground, still clinging to her child, and did not cease
to run till she had reached in safety the house of a
neighbor, who lived several miles distant in the
forest. The marauders did not pursue her — they
may not have noticed her flight — they were content
with the plunder of the house; for, on Mrs. Holston's
return next day, she found they had robbed her of
the best part of her pewter plates and dishes, of all
her tea-cups and a kettle, besides thirty bushels of
corn, and two valuable mares from the stables,
Holston came home not long after, but too late to
recover his property; he could only lay an account
of his grievance before the Governor, and petition
for an indemnity. Whether it was ever granted him
does not appear; his letter to the Governor, ou the
subject, afforded us the data from which we have
hus endeavored to commemorate an event long up
permost in the memory, at least, of his wife.*

*See Indian Books in Columbia.

CHAPTER XX.
The favorite object of Governor Glen accomplished — The Obliga
tions of the public man and private citizen prompt — Vigorous Re
sistance to Wrong — Little Carpenter begins to rise in importance
— His Character — Supplants Old Hop as Great Beloved Head-man
ofthe Nation — The Responsibilities, and timid, temporizing policy
of Governor Glen wonderfully suggestive of present political
troubles and obligations — Many new and interesting revelations
from the old MS. Records in Columbia, &c.
The Governor's favorite object was thus obtained
with little pecuniary cost.* A firm peace was con
cluded between the Creeks and Cherokees at the
very flood-tide of an opportunity that should have
been seized by the authorities in Carolina to unite with
the Creeks in punishing the insufferable insolence and
treachery of the Cherokees. We shall presently see
that when the crisis came, the former joined the
latter, and carried fire and the scalping-knife into
the infant settlements of Upper-Georgia and north
west Carolina.
It is very true that the admirable virtue of benevo
lence and good-will to men should ever be promi
nent in all our public and private acts ; yet there are
* The chiefs of the Creeks met the Governor, in the same cham
ber, shortly after the departure of the Cherokees.

486 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
obligations that may rest upon the same individual,
both as a public officer and private citizen, which
should prompt vigorous resentment and the condign
punishment of an offending party. Such a course,
then, best subserves the ends of benevolence and a
wholesome morality. The unscriptural doctrine of
absolute non-resistance to encroachment and injury
would be likely to find apologists and prevalency
among fanatics,* but never among a people whose
religion, and blood, and institutions, all approve a
different standard. But Governor Glen was an Eng
lishman, and making too much of an extraordinary
opportunity to advance his own schemes of self-
aggrandizement. In the exigencies and obligations of this dark
period of our colonial history, we are forcibly re
minded of much that has transpired, and of much
that constitutes the present crisis of our sectional
struggle. Even the great council of chiefs — on
nearly the identical spot where more than one hun
dred years ago Governor Glen met the assembled
head-men of the Cherokee Nation — will not be want
ing to complete the resemblance. And whatever
may be the result of the approaching civilized talk
in Charleston ; whether, as suggested by an ex-
Governor and sound politician, it end in simply
ascertaining how much more insult, contempt and
injury the South can possibly bear short of the ne-

* See the ethical deductions of free-soilism in the ethereal philoso
phy of one Daymond.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 487
cessity of resistance; or in a political reconciliation
among the discordant elements — the miserable odds
and ends of a great temporizing, watch-and-wait
party — the circumstances and pressing obligations
of the two periods are wonderfully alike.
It is true that we are not now contending with
savage hordes; but with fanatics, whom God appears
to have demented. And they have invaded our
country — have destroyed or forcibly seized our
property ; murdered, in cold blood, our peaceable
citizens ; — have applied the incendiary's torch to our
cities and homes — have abused, villified and misre
presented us from the sacred desk and through a
triumphant press; and, as the last act of the atro
cious drama, are inciting our slaves to rise in arms
against their masters, that the hellish work may be
at once completed in the indiscriminate butchery of
our people — of our women aud innocents — in scenes
of ruin and desolation, such as only savages can
contemplate without remorse. The Little Carpenter,
who figured so conspicuously in the recent talk,
began, it appears, from that time to rise in impor
tance both with his own people and the English.
He had previously been, as he himself confessed,
disaffected — had eveu rested under the suspicion of
having entertained proposals of peace from French
emissaries; and had once gone to Virginia to obtain
from that province a regular supply of goods for the
Over-hills. His love for the English was not, how
ever, so strong as to restrain him from similar de
signs if he had possessed the power to carry them

488 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
out. His fear of the great king, whom he had seen
in England, had not wholly subsided, and the
French were in no condition to supply all the wants
of his people.
Deer skins were the chief staple of the Chero.
kees. For these the French traders found little sale
in France, and her manufactures afforded few of the
articles of prime necessity which the Indians re
quired in exchange.
Eminently practical, sagacious and eloquent, he
was also excessively vain and self-conceited ; but
much of this vanity was, no doubt, one of the results
of the intense independence and love of liberty
which characterized the Cherokees beyond any
other native people. Partly by his own wisdom and
address, and partly through the influence of the
English, he attained, not long after the conference
in Charleston, the chief seat of power in the Nation,
in the room of Old Hop.
This change in his fortunes is thus mentioned by
Adair: "Notwithstanding the Cherokees are now a
nest of apostate hornets, pay little respect to gray
hairs, and have been degenerating fast from their
primitive religious principles for above thirty years
past ; yet, before the last war,* Old Hop, who was
helpless and lame, presided over the whole Nation
as Archimagus. and lived in Chotie, their only town
of refuge. It was entirely owing to the wisdom of
those who then presided in South Carolina that his

* War of 1760.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 489
dangerous, pontifical, and regal-like power was im
paired by their setting up Attaculaculla, and sup
porting him so well, as to prevent the then easy
transition of an Indian high-priesthood into a
French-American bloody chair, with a bunch of red
and black beads, where the devil and they could as
easily have instructed them in the infernal French
catechism, as they did the Canada Indians — as who
killed Christ? Answer, the bloody English.
Both Bartram and the author just quoted, describe
him as the most diminutive Indian they ever saw ;
he was well nigh a dwarf, though belonging to a
tribe whose men were more gigantic in stature, than
any other American people.
The botanist, as late as June, 1776, while explor
ing among the Over-hills, accidentally met Attacu
laculla, and thus describes the incident : "Soon after
crossing a large branch ofthe Tennessee, I observed
descending the heights, at some distance, a company
of Indians, all well-mounted, ou horseback. They
came rapidly forward. On their near approach, I
observed a chief at the head ofthe caravau, and ap
prehending him to be the Little Carpenter, Emperor
or Grand Chief of the Cherokees, as they came up, I
turned off from the path, to make way, in token of
respect, which compliment was accepted, and mag
nanimously returned; for his highness, with a gra
cious and cheerful smile, came up to me, and clap
ping his hand on his breast, offered it to me, saying:
' I am Attaculaculla,' and heartily shook hands with
me, and asked me if I knew it. I answered, that

490 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
the Good Spirit, who goes before me, spoke to me,
and said, 'That is the great Attaculaculla;7 and
added that the name of Attaculaculla was dear to his
white brothers of Pennsylvania, whence I came.
" After this compliment, with which he seemed
pleased, he inqnired if I came lately from Charles
ton, and if John Stewart was well, saying that he
was then going lo see him. I gave him my compli
ments for the superintendent, and the emperor
passed on towards Charleston."
This visit to John Stewart was, no doubt, closely
connected with the Cherokee invasion of lhe first of
July, that once more made the upper-country the
scene of bloodshed and savage warfare.
We shall meet with him again, acting in more in
teresting scenes than any in which he has yet ap
peared ; and the once flippant, testy Little Carpenter,
will scarcely be recognized in the calm, dignified,
politic Attaculaculla. It is proper to add, however,
that in one of them he must be judged by the stan
dard we are accustomed now to apply to many pub
lic men — not as Attaculaculla the great beloved man,
and representative ofthe Cherokee Nation ; but sim
ply as an Indian most gloriously drunk.
We have seen how often and earnestly the traders,
settlers, and even many of the Indians, petitioned
the authorities for the establishment of well-garri
soned forts on the border, or in the Nation. As early
as 1734, shortly after the return of the Cherokee Em
bassy from London, the importance of such a work
had been apprehended in Charleston ; but instead

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 491
of promptly meeting the necessity with their own
strength, and with the resolution with which, unas
sisted, they had achieved, in less propitious times,
more difficult enterprises in their own defence, they
laid it in a prayer, signed by the Governor, the Presi
dent of the Council, and the Speaker of the Lower
House of Assembly, before the British Government.
After detailing the numerous dangers that threat
ened the province from the French settlements and
Indians, in the Mississippi Valley, and urging the
necessity of planting forts in the country of the upper
Creeks, the petition continues: "We find the Chero
kee Nation has lately become very insolent to your
Majesty's subjects trading among them, notwith
standing the many favors the chiefs of that Nation
received from your Majesty in Great Britain, besides
a considerable expense which this province has been
at iu making them presents, which inclines us to be
lieve that the French, with their Indians, have been
tampering with them. We, therefore, beg leave to
inform your Majesty, that the building and mount
ing some forjs likewise among the Cherokees, and
making them presents, will be highly necessary to
keep them steady in their duty to your Majesty, lest
the French may prevail in seducing that Nation,
which they may the more readily be inclined to do,
from the prospect of getting considerable plunder in
slaves and cattle. Several other forts will be indis
pensably-necessary, to be a cover to your Majesty's
subjects settled far back in this province, as those
also of the colony of Georgia, both which, in length,
are very extensive."

492

HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,

In conclusion, they observe: " This is the present
state aud condition of your Majesty's province of
South Carolina; utterly incapable of finding funds
sufficient for the defence of this wide frontier, and so
destitute of white men, that even money itself cannot
here raise a sufficient body of them."*
It is quite true, that the resources of the province
were, at this period, not great. The united mili
tia force of Carolina and Georgia, did not num
ber more thau thirty-five hundred efficient men;f
but if their respective governments had been ani
mated with a spirit of self-reliance, and had rightly
used the strength they possessed, they would have
found themselves fully equal to the task, not, indeed, of
fortifying and defending their whole exposed frontier,
but that portion of it on the north and north- west, where
the most imminent dangers now menaced them, and
whence the privations and helplessness of the suffer
ing pioneers were calling loudly, not upon their pa
triotism and obligations as guardians of the public
safety only, but upon their pity and humanity, as
men. A single fort and garrison among the lower Chero
kees, aided by the companies of rangers already em
bodied, would have awed them into quiet submission,
and, in a little while, repelled from the settlements
the plundering bands of savages from, the Ohio. At
last, after years of criminal temporizing and delay,
the province was forced to assume and perform this
work at her own expense.
# Hewit in Carroll's His. Col. -(• Ibid.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 493
The Council thus reasoned in regard to it: "Tak
ing into consideration the several messages that have
passed between the Assembly and the Governor,
concerning the building of a fort among the lower
Cherokees, the testimony of the traders, and the ap
plication of the Indians themselves; and the same
having been frequently under the consideration of
the Council, they deem it unnecessary to add further
reasons; but are of the unanimous opinion, that it
would be greatly for his Majesty's service and safety
of the traders and settlements, that such a fort be
built, and the Council, therefore, advise the Gover
nor to give directions for its construction this fall,*
provided it does not cost more than three thousand
pounds; that the land on which it is built be pur
chased from the Indians, and the site selected as
close as possible to the town of Keowee. f
Skiagunsta — a favorite chief with the English in
Charleston — had thus closed one of his speeches be
fore the late Council: " I live in the town of Keo
wee. I call it a town ; but there are so few people
in it now, that it scarcely deserves the name. I
must, therefore, once more put your Excellency in
mind of your promise to build us a fort, that our
people and wives may come and go as safely as
in your streets."!
In obedience to the above directions of the Coun-

# 1753. f Indian Books. t Ibid.

494 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
cil, Gov. Glen, in the fall of 1753,* visited the coun
try of the lower Cherokees. and having purchased
from them a quantity of land, erected the long-
promised and earnestly desired fort, at Keowee.
Iu one of the first conferences held between Gov.
Glen and the Indians, in relation to the fort at Keo
wee, the latter assured him that they would not only
dispose of lands sufficient for its site, and the uses of
its garrison, but would, themselves, assist in build
ing it, they would supply provisions for the laborers
employed in the work, and cut all the timbers that
would be required.
" What assistance will you give us in building
the fort ?" asked the Governor, of the Raven of Hi
wassee, in Charleston.
Eaven. — " All that we are able to give ;v the lower
towns will furnish provisions."
"What number of men will you lend to the
work?" asked the Governor, again.
Eaven. — " We will send ten men every day, from
each town, alternately, till it is finished ;f we can
only cut and carry timbers, however."
The following is a faithful copy of the deed of
conveyance by which the lands on which it stood
were secured to South Carolina:
* Hewitt, and all after him, who have made mention of this event
in our history, state that this visit of Gov. Glen was made in 1755.
We know nothing of the authority on which the statement was first
made ; the records in Columbia are our sole guide.
f Indian Books.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 495
"This paper witnesseth to all manner of persons,
what has been transacted in the Cherokee Nation,
between His Excellency, James Glen, Esq., Gov
ernor of South Carolina, and Corane, the Raven of
Toxawa, in the presence, and by the approbation of
many of the head-men, and most of the beloved
men of the Nation. Whereas, the head-men of the
said Cherokee Nation have, for many years, solicited
the said Governor of the province aforesaid, to have
a fort built in the Nation; and in order to induce
him thereto, freely offered the land in any part of
the said Nation he should choose to build upon.
"7lnd whereas, some of the head-men are since
dead, and the said Raven of Toxawa being now in
their stead, and having consulted with many of the
head-men of said Nation, and most of the beloved
men of the lower towns, they do offer to make a
free donation of all the lands on the north-east side
of Keowee River, betwixt a creek, known by the
name of Mile Creek, and the river aforesaid, for that
purpose. "But he, the said Governor, refusing to accept of
the same by gift, and being desirous of purchasing
it, Therefore, this present paper witnesseth, that for
and in consideration of thirty stroud match-coats,
a certain number of duffil blankets, striped flannels,
shirts, guns, a certain quantity of powder and bullets.
flints, knives and paint, the receipt whereof is hereby
acknowledged; I, the said Raven of Toxawa, have,
in the name of the Cherokee Nation, aforesaid, by
the consent of many of the head-men, and most of

496 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
the beloved men, granted, bargained, sold, alienated
and confirmed unto the said James Glen, Esq.,
Governor of South Carolina, his heir in trust, never
theless, for His Majesty, King George the Second,
King of Great Britain, and his heirs and successors
forever, for the use of his subjects of the province
aforesaid, not only the spot of ground on which a
fort is at present building, near Keowee, and all the
lands betwixt that and a place called Long-Canes, of
the width of said fort ; but also, all the lands, as
well corn-fields, as pasture-grounds, hills, woods and
waters, all the right and title the Cherokee Nation
can lay claim to in the said lands, forever.
"And I have put the said Governor in the posses
sion thereof by giving him a handful of the earth,
with what was growing thereon, and hy delivering
him a branch of a tree, with design that neither we
nor our children, will ever lay any claim to the said
premises, while the sun shines or the rivers run;
and we shall, and will be, always ready to defend
his said Majesty, King George the Second, his heirs'
and successors' right thereto, against all manner of
persons whatsoever.
" In witness whereof, we have subscribed these
presents by putting our marks and seals to the same,
in Fort Prince George, this 24th day of November,
in the year of our Lord 1753.
Signed, sealed and delivered in the presence of
Raymond Demere, James McKay, White Outer-
bridge, Thomas Glen, James Francis, Ludwick
Grant, James Beamer and John Elliotte. Signed by

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 497
Corane, the Raven of Toxawa ; Canacaugh, the great
Conjurer of Keowee; Sinnawa, the Hawk's-Head
warrior of Toxawa; Nellewagalehe, of Toxawa;
Yahoma, of Keowee; Canasaita, of Keowee; Yor-
halehe, of Toxawa; and Owasta, the head beloved
man of Toxawa.''*
Gov. Glen carried up with him to Keowee, on this
occasion, the pipe Old Hop had sent him, and the
eagles' wings, with a good supply of tobacco, intend
ing to have a friendly smoke with the wise old man
of Chotie; but he was so infirm as not to be able to
meet him at Keowee. Hewit describes as follows,
this meeting between Gov. Glen and the chiefs of
the Nation: "After the usual ceremonies previous
to such solemn treaties were over, the Governor sat
down under a spreading tree, and Attaculacullaf
being chosen speaker for the Cherokees, came and
took his seat beside him. The other warriors, about
five hundred in number, stood around them in
solemn silence and deep attention. Then the Go
vernor arose and made a speech in the name of his
king, representing his great power, wealth and good
ness, and his particular regard for his children, the
Cherokees. He reminded them of the happiness
they had long enjoyed under his protection ; and
added that he had many presents to make them, and
expected they would surrender a share of their terri-

* Indian Books.
f Chulochculla, the name used by Hewit here, is evidently meant
for Attaculaculla. No such name appears in all the records.
42

IOS HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
tories in return for them. He demanded lands to
build two forts in their country to protect them
against their enemies, and to be a retreat to their
friends and allies, who furnished them with arms,
ammunition, hatchets, clothes and everything they
wanted. "When the Governor had finished his speech, At
taculaculla arose, and holding his bow in one hand,
his shaft of arrows, and other simbols used by them
on such occasions, in the other, in answer spoke to
the following effect : ' What I now speak, our father,
the great king, should hear — we are brothers to the
people of Carolina — one house covers us all.' Then
taking a boy by the hand, he presented him to the
Governor, saying: 'We, our wives and our children,
are all children of the great King George; I have
brought this child, that when he grows up he may
remember our agreement on this day, and tell it to
the next generation, that it may be known forever.'
Then opening his bag of earth, and laying tbe same
at the Governor's feet, he said : 'We freely surren
der a part of our lands to the great king.' * * *
Then showing his bow and arrows, he added:
'These are all the arms we can make for our de
fence; we hope the king will pity his children, the
Cherokees, and send us guns and ammunition.'
Then delivering the Governor a string of wampum,
in confirmation of what he had said, he added :
' My speech is at an end ; it is the voice ofthe Che
rokee Nation; I hope the Governor will send it to
the king that it may be kept forever.' "

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 499
We learn that at this Congress a territory of pro
digious extent was acquired for the king, of no less
than the valuable domain embraced in the present
Districts of Abbeville, Edgefield, Laurens, Union,
Spartanburg, Newberry, Chester, Fairfield, Richland
and York. That, from this time it was claimed by
the English, and their settlements began rapidly to
extend towards the mountains, does not admit of a
moment's doubt ; but in view of the curious and
exceedingly vague language used in the deed, as co
pied above, from the records, when defining the lim
its and boundaries of the lands disposed of by the
Nation for the uses of the fort, may not the careful
inquirer be pardoned for asking, if such was really
the construction the Cherokees intended to be put
upon it?
And, indeed, whether the Indians made a mental
reservation of their rights or not, despite the tenor of
the contract to which they appended their names,
will any. just interpretation of its present language
admit of such a construction ? It is impossible to
ascertain from the deed itself, what were the precise
extent and locality of the lands released on this oc
casion to the English ; but that they did not embrace
so large a territory as the one claimed, would seem
to be clear.
Long previous to this event, the Cherokees, in or
der to obtain the benefits they hoped to receive from
the establishment of a fort in their country, had
proffered to give the English authorities land suffi-

500 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
cient for its site, and for other purposes connected
with a military post ; and this, and nothing more,
appears to have been the idea they sought to express,
in the very cautious or very loose language of their
deed. It admits of but two constructions, neither of
which yields to the King of Great Britain the shadow
of a claim upon a foot of the upper-country, south
of the north-branch of Long-Cane.* It may, possi
bly, mean just what it says, that besides the imme
diate site of the fort, and the surrounding woods,
pastures and waters, quite necessary to a garrison, a
strip of land was also released, the width of the fort,
which extended thence as far southward as a place
called the Long-Canes — a sort of thoroughfare or
unalienable way of access to the future garrison._
Or again, by the phrase "width of the fort," they
may have designed simply to convey the idea, that
the ceded lands extended over the distance that in
tervened between the garrison and the Long-Canes —
that is, so far south as the fort was wide of the latter
place. This view is confirmed by a variety of co-
temporaneons facts. A few months after Governor
Glen's return from Keowee, the following dialogue
took place in Charleston :
Governor, (to two Indians who had just brought
him a message or letter from Prince George, the
name that had been gives to the new fort.) — This is
* Now Little River.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 501
the paper (holding up the original deed) you gave
me, when I bought the land; are not these the
marks of the head-men of the Cherokee Nation?
Indians. — They are.
Governor. — Do you know the Raven of Toxawa?
One of the Indians. — He is my grandfather.
Governor. — Are those who made these marks be
loved men of the lower towns?
Indian. — Yes, they are all beloved head-men.
Governor. — By this paper you gave me all the
land, between the Eiver Keowee and a place called the
Long- Canes ; together with all the trees, corn-fields,
pasture-grounds, hills, woods and waters. Of these
you put me in possession; but a letter from Thomas
Harrison, commandant of the fort, informs me, that
your people — which very much surprises me — re
fuse to let the English plant their corn on these
lands. Indians. — We heard nothing of that before we
came away; there is land enough for us all. We
design to plant our corn at Ustenate.
Governor. — Very well; I think it is better for you
to plant your corn near your own river; there will
then be no dispute. If, however, you have already
planted on our lands, you shall be welcome to it
this year. One of the head-men was out hunting
when the land was sold me; what is that warrior's
name? Indians. — His name is Washatehee.
Governor. — As he was not at Keowee when the
paper was signed, I shall send it up that he may put

502 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
his name to it; and I will also send him the pistols
and saddle he asks for.*
In February, 1756, James Beamer informed Gov.
Glen, that the Cherokees were extending their hunt
ing excursions into the advancing settlements; and
were complaining bitterly of these encroachments
upon their lands. He adds: "There are several
families who have this fall settled too high up. They
say they have fixed their settlement above the divi
dend path on a stream called Rocky River, which is
about three miles within the dividend path on Tu
galoo road.|
W'hat is meant here by the Tugaloo road is not
apparent, unless it was the old trail that passed up
from Augusta along the east bank of the Savannah,
already described; but in regard to Rocky River,
there can be no uncertainty; it still bears its primi
tive English name, and lies almost wholly in the
District of Abbeville, a few miles north of the larger
branch of the ancient Long-Canes.
The term "dividendj path" is still more inexpli
cable than " Tugaloo road," if it does not relate to the
narrow strip of land which the deed of conveyance
seems to describe as extending from the base of the
fort to the Long-Canes.
An old chronicler,§ ofa neighboring province, de
tailing events connected with the Cherokee Indians,
* Indian Books.
f Ibid.
J The word dividon is used here in the manuscript records,
jSMcCall's History of Georgia, p. 305, Vol. i.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 503
nine years later, observes: "This tribe had also
shown some discontents, arising from encroachments
on land claimed by them as hunting grounds to the
north-west of Little River, afterwards Wilks County;
and similar complaints were made against encroach
ments in Carolina upon a creek called Long Cane."
We have seen no complaints of encroachments
upon their lands, sent down at this period by the
Cherokees to the Governor of Carolina, that did not
relate to those about Long-Cane Creek; yet, at this
very time, the rapidly advancing settlement had al
ready , progressed considerably northward of a line
running from the Long-Canes directly across to the
Catawba, through territory now included in the Dis
tricts of Laurens, Newberry and Fairfield. In the
latter district, eight crops of corn had been gathered
from the rich bottoms of Broad River by the hardy
pioneers of the Scotch-Irishry, and Newberry was
settled at least a year before tbe establishment of
Fort Prince George.
The truth is, the only satisfactory explanation that
can be given of these conflicting facts is, that the
Indians — true to their old habit of dealing deceit
fully with the whites in all contracts and treaties, no
matter how deliberately and solemnly formed, which
related to the disposal of their lands — never once
designed by the deed of conveyance, signed and de
livered at Keowee, to yield the English any real
possession of an acre of their soil.
But thev knew, that, ever on the alert to seize and
appropriate new lands, their pioneers would hasten

504 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
to build cabins and plant corn on the territory which
they now regarded as their own — the lands that had
been designated as lying between Keowee River and
Long-Cane. Hence these were to be guarded with
peculiar care; though few, if any, complaints had ever
been made of the encroachments on their hunting
grounds farther south — on the present territory of
Richland, Newberry and Fairfield, where settlements
had been gradually progressing for years — one of
them having been founded as early as 1740.
The first attempt made by the garrison of Fort
Prince George to plant corn on the surrounding
lands, it has been seen, was promptly resisted by the
Indians; the same resistance was offered when the
advancing pioneers began to overleap the waters of
the Long-Cane; and so determined were the Chero
kees to debar the English from these lands, that the
latter were forced to yield, and rest satisfied, as well
they might, with the magnificent domain they had
already peaceably acquired, and were holding by no
better title than that of simple possession.
It has, all along, been supposed, that Gov. Glen
purchased, from the Cherokees, in the famous treaty
at Keowee, the whole upper-country with the present
Districts of Richland and Fairfield, as far north
as the ancient boundary line which separated this
territory from that of Old Pendleton; and that the
latter was only fairly obtained by the treaty of 1777,
at Dewitt's Corner; whereas, Governor Glen himself
being judge, if any reliance can be placed in a large
and interesting portion of our State records, certain

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 505
lands, afterwards embraced in the Districts of Green
ville, Anderson, Pickens, aud a portion of Abbe
ville, were the first and only part of their soil ever
acquired by a formal purchase or treaty from the
heads ofthe Cherokee Nation, previous to the Revo
lution. The people of the upper-country, who live be
tween the Keowee and the northern boundary of
Abbeville, hold lands by purchase, or inheritance
from their fathers, for which there may be found in
the archives, sound original titles, preserved in as
many as twodistinct State documents, each of which
are associated with most interesting events in the
history of Carolina.
The treaty at Dewitt's Corner removed the Indians
above the old boundary line, which ran from near
the mouth of the Chatuga, across towards the Estatoe
Mountain. This was obliterated in 1817, when the
Cherokees gave up the last foot of their ancient ter
ritory in the present limits of Carolina.
Fort Prince George was erected in gun-shot dis
tance of the town of Keowee, and designed to be a
much more formidable structure than the ordinary
stockade inclosures which the agitations and dangers
of late years, on the border, had made familiar in
every community of pioneers.
It was built in the form of a square, with a ram
part or wall of earth some six feet in height, on
which stockades were fixed ; a ditch, and natural
alasis strengthened two sides of it, and strong bastions
the angles upon which were mounted sixteen small
43

506 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
cannon — four on each bastion. Its barracks were
sufficiently spacious for a hundred men.
Twenty-three years after the completion of this
fortress, the spot was visited by Bartram ; in that
brief period it had become hallowed by many thril
ling events of deep historical interest. A war, dis
astrous to the frontier, and well nigh ruinous to the
Cherokees, had swept, as with a besom, this whole
lovely region ; its natural beauties were, however,
indestructible, and these rendered doubly interesting
by the surrounding vestiges of the former handi
work and hostile collisions of savage and civilized
men, did not escape the observant eye of the botanist.
" Keowee is a most charming situation, and the
adjacent heights are naturally so formed, and dis
posed, as, with little expense of military architecture,
to be made almost impregnable. It lies in a fertile
vale at this season enameled with fragrant straw
berries and blooming plants, through which the
beautiful river meanders, environed at various dis
tances by high hills and mountains, some rising
boldly almost upright upon the verge of the expan
sive lawn, so as to overlook and shadow it, whilst
others more lofty, superb, misty and blue, majestical
ly mount far above.
" The vale of Keowee is seven or eight miles in
extent, that is from the little town of Kulsage*
about a mile above, thence down the river six or
seven miles, where a high ridge of hills on each
* Sugaw town.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 507
side of the river almost terminates the vale, but
opens again below the narrow ridge and continues
ten or twelve miles down to Seneca, and in width
one and two miles. This fertile valley, within the
remembrance of some old traders with whom I con
versed, was one continued settlement ; the sides of
the adjacent hills were then covered with habita
tions, and the rich level grounds beneath lying on
the river were cultivated and planted, which now
exhibit a very different spectacle — humiliating in
deed to the present generation, the posterity and
feeble remains of the once potent and renown
ed Cherokees. The vestiges of the ancient Indian
dwellings, are yet visible at the foot of the hills bor
dering and fronting on the vale, such as posts or pil
lars of their habitations, and the scattered fragments
of their hearths and utensils.
"There are several Indian mounds or tumuli, and
terraces — monuments of the ancients, at the old site
of Keowee, near Fort Prince George — but no Indian
habitations, at present; and here are several dwell
ings belonging to white people concerned in the
Indian trade; Mr. D. Homes is the principal trader
at this time. The old fort bears no marks of a for
tress, but serves for a trading house."
These observations were made in the spring of
1776  one month later began the last Cherokee war —
of that we will speak in its proper place.
The founding of Fort Prince George, purchased
but a brief peace for the Nation, and a short-lived
confidence on the border. The very next year,

508 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
occurred the massacre on Buffalo Creek, already
described; and soon the fickle savages, were as rest
less and annoying as before. Gov. Glen sent up
and invited the head-men to meet him, in another
talk in Charleston. It was on this occasion that Old
Hop replied that he could not expose his warriors to
the fatal sickness which they often contracted in town,
and on the Keowee trail ; this message, or one of the
same import, was brought down by Attaculaculla,
accompanied by an escort of nineteen warriors;*
upon which the Governor consented to meet their
head-men in council, at some point mid-way between
the Nation and Charleston. The meeting was ac
cordingly held at Saluda Old Town.
All that is known of its proceedings must be
gleaned from a communication addressed the follow
ing year, (January, 1756,) to the Governor by one
Moses Thompson, in which the writer presents a
valuable synopsis of the Governor's official career,
and takes occasion to speak of its acts in terms suffi
ciently flattering to his pride, if not to the judgment
of most of his cotemporaries.
" I cannot forget my impressions of your paternal
care of South Carolina since you came among us.
First, your journey to Ninety-six, to settle a peace
with the Cherokees; and thence to Savannah, to
make peace with the Creeks. Second, your long
journey to the Cherokee Nation to build a fort.

* Letter to Glen, from Harrison, commandant of Fort P. George.
-Ind. Books.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 509
Third, your journey to Saluda, in the heat of sum
mer, to settle a second peace with the Cherokees in
troublous times;* which act crowns all the rest; for,
1 verily believe, there was never such a firm peace
made with any Indians before, and all resulting in
the advancement of the indigo manufacture. And
likewise your great care of our back-settlers ; for,
when I was major under your Excellency, I cannot
forget your care, by your instructions to me on several
occasions ; besides, your private letters to me to in
form your Excellency of any event, that proper steps
might be taken for our safety. I think your succes
sor will have nothing to do but to walk in your foot
steps : for you have paved the plainest road that
can be taken, which, I think, will keep your memory
in the minds of the people when you are dead and
gone."f His successor, Governor William Henry Lyttleton,
soon had an opportunity to test the virtue of this
famous gubernatorial highway. He was shortly
after superceded ; and one of the first official acts of
the new Governor was to send a formal message! t0
Old Hop, informing him of his appointment and
arrival ; and what was more pleasing to the aged
chieftain, that the men were already on their way
up, with implements to build, for the Over-hills, the
fort on the Tennessee, which Governor Glen had so
long before promised them.

# Summer of 1755.
+ Indian Book.
t This occurred June 3d, 1756. — Indian Books.

510 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
This step had now become absolutely necessary
in order to preserve the peace of the Nation and
safety of the border, the agitations and hostile
threats of the Indians having grown fiercer than
ever before. They were beginning even to talk
openly of killing all the whites in their reach.
These discontents were greatly aggravated by the
prevalence, at this time, of famine, especially among
the Over-hills, where they were reduced to a state of
nakedness, having disposed of all their clothing for
food ; and some had actually died of starvation.
Added to this, a party of Creeks, who had paid their
towns a visit, seeing their restless, discontented state,
maliciously sought to increase it, by insinuating that
the policy of the English was at the bottom of it all,
and that their design was to rob them of their lands,
and reduce them to slavery.*
The energy of the French, it may be well conjec
tured, did not slumber over such an opportunity as
this presented to advance their schemes. Indeed, as
has been shown, the potency of their dangerous in
fluence had not once ceased to work in the Nation,
since the days of Priber.
A great council of the head-men was now held at
Keowee, and all but five in the upper and lower
towns, were urgent to fall at once upon the traders
and settlements. It required all the influence of Old
Hop and the Little Carpenter, to arrest the outbreak. f
# Letter from Commandant Harrison to the Governor, June 2d,
1756. — Indian Books.
-)- Letter from Harrison.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 511
"Yet," remarks Adair, "his Excellency, our Gover
nor, neglected the proper. measures to reconcile the
wavering savages, till the gentleman who was ap
pointed to succeed him had just reached the Ameri
can coast. Then, indeed, he set off, with a con
siderable number of gentlemen in flourishing parade,
and went as far as Ninety-six settlement; whence,
as most probably he expected, he was fortunately
recalled, and joyfully superceded. I saw him on his
way up, and plainly observed he was unprovided
for the journey. It must have proved abortive be
fore he could have proceeded as far as the Over-hill
settlements. He neither sent before, nor carried with
him any presents wherewith to soothe the natives;
and his kind promises and smooth speeches would
have weighed exceedingly light iu the Indian scale."
The condition of Fort Prince George at this junc
ture was little calculated to inspire confidence on
the border; it had fallen, through neglect, into an
almost ruinous state; the palisades had tumbled
from the ramparts, the ditches were partially filled
up, and gaping breaches had been washed or wan
tonly cut in the walls. An officer, who inspected
it, reported it in a worse condition than the old slock-
ade at the Congarees, the defenceless condition of
which was then well known in Charleston. " For
my part," he adds, " I would rather be in an open
field than in such an apology for a fort; the Indians
may at any time, pass over both the ditches and
walls." When the fort was first built, the ditches
had been dug five feet wide at top, two at bottom,
and five deep, with a parapet, or breast-work, also

513 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
five feet in height, and a banquet? or foot-bank on
the outside.
Under the superintendence of Capt. John Crayton,
it was now speedily repaired, by widening the ditches
to seven feet, bridging them, and mounting a swivel
upon each bastion.* This was in July, 1756. f
The speedy erection of Fort Loudon — for that was
the strong-hold it was now proposed to build on the
Teunessee — would, it was fondly hoped, not only
put an effectual barrier against the French in that
accessible quarter, but so gratify the Indians as to
quell all their discontents. Gov. Lyttleton, though
patriotic and indefatigable, was profoundly and un
fortunately ignorant of the savages with whom he
had to deal.
The previous year Governor Glen had promised
the Little Carpenter to build a fort for the Over-hills
on the Tennessee, provided he and his people .would
surrender themselves to be the subjects of the King
of Great Britain, and their lands his possession for
ever;! and from this, no doubt, or from the treaty
formed at Little Saluda, has originated the reiterated
statement that Governor Glen, in 1755, purchased
from the Cherokees the greater portion of the pre
sent territory of Upper Carolina.
Three months later he again informed the same
chieftain that the regard he entertained for his Na
tion had moved him to make the promise to build
* What had become of the twelve others originally placed upon its
walls ?
f Letter to Gov. Lyttleton from Capt. Raymond Demere.
X In a letter dated October 1755. — Indian Books.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 513
for them, that spring, a fort on the Tennessee; and
that the bearer of this communication had been sent
up for the express purpose of selecting for it a
suitable site. His instructions were that it should
be fixed on the above-mentioned stream ; but con
venient to the towns, and chosen in view of the
health of its garrison — in reach of good water — out
of gun-shot of any neighboring eminence, and in the
midst df good pasture and corn-lands.* It was
ultimately built one mile above Chotie, and five from
the spot selected for it first, according to the above
instructions, by Pearson. f
The Carolinians were assisted in building Fort
Loudon by one hundred men, sent for that purpose,
from Virginia, under Major Lewis and Captain Over
ton, by the Earl of Loudon — in honor of whom it
was named — who had been appointed commander-
in-chief of the king's forces in America, and Governor
of the Old Dominion.
At the same time that Governor Glen hurried off
the party destined to be employed in erecting the
fort, he had ordered, it appears, several companies,
with those of the provincial troops, to concentrate at
Ninety-six, in case an out-break in the Nation should
require their services; among them were two that
hastened to that point from Fort Moore. In the
mean time he was superseded by Governor Lyttle
ton but not, as we have seen from Adair, before he

# Letter lo Little Carpenter, dated February 1755.
+ Dr Ramsay of Tennessee fixes its ruins five miles from the site
of Chotie. We have followed the records.

514 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
himself had set out for the Cherokee towns with
several wagons, laden with provisions for the work
men. The provisions were taken in at the Conga
rees, and presents for another talk had, no doubt,
been procured in Charleston, which Adair was not
permitted to see.
The new Governor, having learned, soon after his
arrival, the result ofthe council of chiefs at Keowee,
and informed, from other sources, that the Indians
did not then meditate hostilities, dispatched a mes
senger to overtake the ex-governor, and deliver to
him, with other important information, an order for
Captain Raymond Demere, ofthe provincials, to the
effect, that those troops should be disbanded.
The wagon train arrived safely at Ninety-six, the
provincials were disbanded, the two companies from
Fort Moore returned to that post, and Demere, with
the ex-governor and young Ensign Coytmore, pro
ceeded to Fort Prince George, at the head of the
party going to the site of Fort Loudon. Before set
ting out, however, he prepared a communication for
Governor Lyttleton, from which we have gleaned
these facts.* It concludes as follows: "I find my
self alone here, with a young officer, Ensign Coyt
more, who, although quite capable, is yet too young
*Dr. Ramsay, of Tennessee, states, that Captain Demere had been
sent, with a corps of two hundred men, by the Earl of Loudon, to
garrison the new fort; yet in these letters to the Governor of Caro
lina, which we lind in the Indian Books, Demere declares himself in
command of Carolina troops, and subject to the orders of her Gov
ernor.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 515
for such a command, unassisted, at this time. I
shall, therefore, march with the whole party myself
as far as Keowee, and there await further orders
from your Excellency."*
While resting his men at Fort Prince George, sev
eral incidents occurred worth relating. A few days
after his arrival, he was honored with a visit from the
Little Carpenter, who staid and took breakfast with
him, appearing in excellent humor; warming up,
however, with the conversation that ensued between
them, he suddenly announced to Demere that he re
garded both him and the ex-Governor as arrant
liars: the latter, he said, had promised him two kegs
of rum from town, but had deceived him, and De-
mere's promises were no more to be relied upon.
The captain expostulated, and demanded why he
addressed him in so abusive a manner? "I have
said what I have said," replied the defiant chief.
Demere at length conceiving it to be all assumed, in
a style well becoming the address and cunning of the
Little Carpenter, for the express purpose of extorting
the objects he coveted, ordered a keg of rum to be
given him ; and soon after, in his presence, dispatched
eighteen men forward towards the upper-Cherokees.
This restored his good humor; he seemed greatly
pleased, and made Demere many apologies for his
rudeness, declaring, among other things, that he was
vexed at the moment.
He soon left the fort; but returned in the evening

# Indian Books.

516 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
with the King of Chotie,* and begged of Demere, as
one of the greatest favors he could bestow upon him,
one more keg of rum, to drink with his friends;
promising that no one should get drunk or cross the
river that night to the fort. The rum was granted
him; and taking the keg upon his shoulder he re-
crossed to Keowee, and there, in the presence of the
Chotie King and the assembled town, proclaimed
Demere the Commandant of Keowee, of the inhabi
tants thereof, and all the whites of the Nation.
" Nothing more was heard of him till about eight
o'clock next morning, when he came into the fort
reeling drunk, supported by two young fellows ofthe
worst class ; for no decent man would venture with
him in that condition, especially, as he was well
known to be exceedingly troublesome, when under
the influence of rum. He happened to get a sight
of me as he entered the gate, and I was obliged then
to ask him to a seat, and sit with him.
" He soon became so annoying that I got up to leave
him; he made a motion as if he would strike me
with a bottle which he held in his hand; I instantly
ordered several Indians, who had come in, in the
meantime, to seize and carry him to Keowee, which
they did, and once more relieved me of his presence.
"Early next morning he was back again; but this
time perfectly sober and respectful. He quickly
began with all the apologies he could muster for
his bad conduct the previous day — declared that it
* Old Hop — Oconostota.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 517
was not he who was guilty of the offense, but the
rum that was in him, and hoped it would all be for
gotten. I said to him that, notwithstanding my
civilities to him, he had twice used me ill, and that
the English had never treated him in such a man
ner ; that if he had struck me, the consequences
might have been very serious.
" He continued to apologize, and to assure me
that there were three persons engaged in the diffi
culty, and not two only ; — that I was the first, him
self the second, and Rum the third.* He moreover
informed me, that the people of Keowee had that
morning stripped and dry-scratched him with snakes'
teeth to remind him of his bad conduct, and make
his blood good. Upon this I promised to forgive
him." The Captain adds : " It is true the Little Carpen
ter has great power and influence in the Nation ;
but it renders him excessively insolent and saucy.
I have a bad opinion of him for his brutish dispo
sition, and regard him as very deceitful when sober,
and an impertinent fellow at all times."
Demere, soon after his arrival at Fort Prince
George, summoned the head-men of the five lower
towns to meet him in Keowee, on which occasion
he made them a suitable speech. Among other
things, he said to them that it was to be hoped they
were now convinced that the English were in ear-
# This was, no doubt, the first temperance lecture ever delivered in
that region.

518 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
nest to fulfill all their promises, in view of the great
number of wagons, big guns, presents, cattle and
provisions they had just brought with them to the
Nation ; and that besides these, they also had with
them all the tools necessary for building the fort on
the Tennessee ; — that this work would have been
performed long ago, but for the neglect of those to
whom it had been entrusted. He concluded by
giving them a general invitation to dine, the next
day, with him at the fort. These remarks, and
especially the closing sentence ofthe speech, pleased
them prodigiously; they immediately sent off run
ners to the five towns, and called together that night,
at Keowee, a great council of the lower Nation.
They sat in the council-house all night, and next
morning sent a messenger to Demere with word that
they would wait upon him with their compliments,
in mass, at ten o'clock. The Captain relates: "I
immediately gave orders to the men to be in readi
ness to receive them. In a little time they appeared
in regular procession, a numerous train, dressed in
their most gaudy apparel, their faces being painted
over every part. Large belts of wampum and
plates of silver hung from their necks on their
breasts, with bracelets of the same around their
arms. " In front of the procession appeared a body of
young men, moving in a slow, solemn pace, at the
same time singing, and displaying, above their
heads, eagles' tails and rattle-boxes. On each flank
marched a young man, playing on a flute of their

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 519
own manufacture. In the midst was borne a large
bough of a sycamore tree, and, in another place, a
white flag, tied to the end of a stick. Just as they
entered the fort, I ordered the men to fire a salute
from the swivels.
"They took their seats in one of the houses, in
side the walls, and there delivered their talk, which
consisted in expressions of joy and delight at our
present friendly demonstrations. Ever since I ar
rived here I have had nothing but mirth and re
joicings. A runner came to me yesterday, with the
compliments of the ladies of the towns, and also
informed me that they would give me a dance the
next day.
"This also came off in due time, and was hand
somely performed, by a large number of them;
after which, in return for our presents, they made
offerings of cakes and bread, baked by themselves,
and green peas and squashes; every woman bring
ing her own present in a basket, and setting it down
before me. At this time, like the Over-hills, they
were nearly naked, and in a starving condition."*
These timely supplies, particularly of cattle and
provisions, with the erection of Fort Loudon, gave
a short respite of tranquillity, and a hope to the in
fant settlements along the Cherokee line. But no
human instrumentality could have availed to reform
a people so hopelessly degenerate as the Cherokees
had now become. While the flesh was yet in their
# Letter to Gov. Lyttleton's Indian Books.

520 HISTORY OF UPPER CAROLINA,
mouths which the English had brought, at great
expense, to relieve their starving condition, the mur
murs and discontents broke out afresh.
Major Lewis informed the Governor, of North
Carolina that on his arrival at Chotie, he had- re
ceived the kindest attentions from Old Hop and the
Little Carpenter, and that the Indians in general,
expressed their readiness to comply with all their
treaties and promises; but this disposition was
manifested only while the fort was building. As
soon as it was finished, and they were urged to
fulfill the obligation they had assumed to send their
warriors with the English against the French, they
began to equivocate. He also observed, that the
French, with their Indian allies, the Savannahs,
maintained a regular correspondence with the Cher
okees, especially with the head-men of Great Tellico.
It was evident that some measure was on foot for
the distress of the back-settlers in the Carolinas and
Virginia, and that the Indians were greatly disposed
to join the French.*
This, indeed, was the fast-hastening consumma
tion of the long years of abuse, neglect and mis
management, whose various details we have, from
the beginning, endeavored to portray. The special
topics, however, which last engaged our attention,
carried us some distance in advance of the main
events of this troublous and memorable period.
France, with the ripened schemes and experience
*Dr. Ramsay's History of Tennessee, p. 52.

ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE CHEROKEES. 521
of nearly half a century, was now preparing to put
every nerve to the stretch, in a final struggle with
Great Britain, for the dominion of North America.
Before the site of Fort Loudon had been marked
out, the old French and Indian War — or, as the
people of the upper-country better knew it — Brad-
dock's War, had begun.
The famous battle of 1755 had been fought at the
ford of the Monongahela, where that presumptuous,
though unfortunate general won nothing more hon
orable for himself than a soldier's grave. War had
been formally declared by England ;* and now, at
the conclusion of three campaigns, all terminating
in the success and exultation of France, William
Pitt assumed the direction of affairs.
The fourth campaign — that of 175S — opens ; Ad
miral Boscawen invests Louisburg ; Abecrombie
marches upon Ticonderoga; Forbes is sent to re
trieve, by the capture of Fort Du Quesne, the terrible
disaster at the Monongahela. And now the train of
events begins rapidly to transpire, which were to
prove the proximate cause of inflicting upon Upper
Carolina the horrors of another Indian war. This
was the Cherokee war of 1760; but its story of car
nage, and thrilling scenes of savage vengeance on
the border must b£ reserved for another volume.

# 17th of May 1756.

END OF VOLUME FIRST.

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