Occoneechee, the Maid of the Mystic Lake

"I know not how the truth may be, I tell the tale as 'twas told to me."

THE CHEROKEE.

A brief history of the Cherokee Nation or tribe.

This history has been gleaned from the works of Ethnology by James Mooney and from word of mouth, as related to the author during the past thirty years.

In the beginning of historical events, we hear of man in his paradisaical home, located somewhere within the boundaries known as ancient Egypt or Chaldea. His home was far away and his former history shrouded in the darkness of countless centuries of the past, and when we contemplate the remoteness of his ancestry, we become lost in the midst of our own research.

When historical light began to flash from the Orient, we find man emerging with some degree of civilization from a barbaric state into the advanced degrees of civilized and enlightened tribes.

When the maritime navigator, full of visions and dreams, dared to sail for those hitherto undiscovered shores, now known as America, there lived within the realm a wandering, happy, yet untutored, race of men whom we afterwards called Indians, who dwelt in great numbers along the whole distance from Penobscot Bay south to the everglades of Florida.

Among the more noted tribes were the Abnaki, Mohawk, Mohican, Huron, Iroquois, Munsi, Erie, Seneca, Susquehanna, Mamrahoac, Powhatan, Monacan, Nollaway, Tuscarora, Pamlico, Catawba, Santee, Uchee, Yamasee, Creek, Choctaw, Seminole, Showano and Cherokee, but of all of these it is left for us to speak alone of the valiant Cherokee, the most noble of all Red Men, who inhabited that picturesque country in the Appalachian chain of mountains in East Tennessee, Western North Carolina, Northern Georgia, South Carolina and Alabama, and part of Virginia, Kentucky and West Virginia.

These are the people of whom little has been said and less written than most of the children of men. Yet of all of the native Americans the Cherokee tribe was the most noble, humane and intelligent.

Somewhere in the annals of the Aborigines of America, the Cherokee separated from the great Northern tribe, the Iroquois, and by preference inhabited the hills of the Appalachian range, and here we find them early in the dawn of American history, occupying a country which affords ample environment for the artist, the poet and the painter. Had Homer seen and Michelangelo traveled among the towering hills of the happiest land of earth, the song and the chisel, instead of being draped with the vail of blood, would have inspired the world to look forward to the time when there will be no death serenely sitting upon the throne of war.

At one time the Cherokee tribe was the largest and most learned in art and literature of any tribe in the United States, having perhaps as many as twenty-five thousand people, and attained, under Sequoya, whose photograph is herein reproduced, that degree of learning, that many of the tribe became quite familiar with letters and literature, printed from the alphabet invented by this noted man, inventor and devout preacher of the Christian gospel.

Sequoya was himself an untutored half-breed, yet to him are we indebted for an alphabet of 76 characters which stands third among the alphabets which have been invented among men, and by which a Cherokee child learns to read as fluently in six months of study as does the average English child in three years of study under our system.

The name Cherokee, so far as research reveals, has no meaning or the meaning has been lost or perhaps Anglicized, but we have authority for its use, for the past 375 years.

When De Soto's expedition was made through the Appalachian mountains, in 1540, he encountered this great and friendly nation living peacefully in their paradise among the hills and mountains, who received him as they were wont to receive a friendly tribe; so did they ever receive and treat the white neighbor until treaty after treaty had been broken and their homes had been destroyed and every compact violated.

Hostilities were in most cases caused by encroaching whites and broken promises and intrigues of the foreigners, who were gradually drawing the cordon around the diminishing tribe.

The battle of Horseshoe Bend, which took place in the Tallapoosa river, in Alabama, on the 27th day of March, 1814, was one of the notable events in Cherokee history, where Junaluska, in conjunction with General Jackson, slaughtered or massacred nearly one thousand Creeks, which ended the Creek war and brought much honor to Junaluska and his valiant Cherokee army of more than 500 men.

For the terrors which followed the battle of Horseshoe Bend, we have only to refer to history to be able to ascertain the facts concerning the bloody atrocities which were perpetrated upon an oppressed people. Then came the end, which occurred in the year 1838, which culminated in the removal of the band to the Indian Territory, which is now called Oklahoma, (a Choctaw word meaning red people, Okla, people; homa, red).

This removal was the most luckless and recreant of all the abuses that had been heaped upon the brave but helpless band of Cherokee.

Junaluska, who witnessed the removal, but was permitted to remain with the residue, remarked that had he known that General Jackson (who became President), would have removed the Cherokee in such a brutal manner, he would have killed him at the battle of Horseshoe Bend.

The history of the removal of the Cherokee, as told by James Mooney of the Department of American Ethnology, gleaned by him from eye witnesses and actors in the tragedy, may well exceed in weight of grief and pathos any other act in American history. Even the much sung song of the exile of the Arcadians falls far behind it in the sum of death and misery.

Under General Winfield Scott, an army of 5,000 volunteers and regular troops were concentrated in the Cherokee country, and by instruction from Washington, D. C., he was directed and gave orders to soldiers to gather all Indians to the various stockades, which had been previously prepared for their reception. From these posts, squads of soldiers were sent to search out, with rifle and bayonet, every small cabin which could be found within the ramifications and deep recesses of the great Appalachian range of mountains, and bring to the forts every man, woman and child to be found within the gates of the granite hills.

Families, while sitting peacefully at the noon-day meal; others while performing the matutinal ablution, were suddenly startled by the gleam of bayonets and with blows, curses and oaths from the men called soldiers, the Indians were driven like cattle from their humble homes down the rugged mountain paths, and their houses in many cases were burned and their small possessions destroyed, as the brave but defenceless Cherokee people looked on with that wonderful stoicism which no other race of men ever possessed.

Men were seized in the fields, women torn from the wheel and the distaff, and children frightened from the pleasures of play. The vandals who followed in the wake of the soldiery, looting and pillaging, burning and destroying, yet calling themselves civilized Christians, were such a band of outlaws as is seldom seen even among the most savage and barbaric races.

Even Indian graves were robbed of the silver pendants and other valuables which had been deposited with the dead. Women who were not able to go, were actually forced at the point of a bayonet to march with the same speed as men.

Upon one occasion the soldiers surrounded the house of an old Christian patriot, who when informed as to what was to take place, called his wife, children and grandchildren around him, kneeling down among them offered a last prayer in the sanctuary of his home, in his native tongue, while the soldiers stood astonished, looking on in silence.

When his devotions were finished, he arose, bade the household follow him, and he led them into exile, with that becoming Christian fortitude which is seldom witnessed among men.

One woman, on finding the house surrounded, went to the door and called up the chickens, fed them for the last time, bade them farewell, then taking her baby upon her back, she extended her hands to her other two small children, then followed her husband into exile, from whence she never returned.

A Georgia volunteer, who afterwards became a Colonel in the Confederate service, said, "I have fought through the Civil War and have seen men shot to pieces and slaughtered by the thousands, but the Cherokee removal was the most cruel work I ever witnessed."

All were not thus so submissive. One old man named Tsali, "Charlie," was seized, with his wife, his brother, his three sons and their families; exasperated at the brutality accorded his wife, who being unable to travel fast, was prodded with the bayonets to hasten her steps, he urged the other men to join him in a dash for liberty, and as he spoke in Cherokee, the soldiers, although they heard, understood nothing until each warrior suddenly sprang upon the soldier nearest and endeavored to wrench his gun from him. The attack was so sudden and unexpected that one soldier was killed and the rest fled, while the Indians escaped to the mountains. Hundreds of others, some of them from the various stockades, managed also to escape to the hills and mountains from time to time, where those who did not die from starvation subsisted on roots and wild berries until the hunt was over.

Finding that it was impossible to secure these fugitives, General Scott finally tendered them a proposition, through Colonel W. H. Thomas, known as Wil-Usdi in Cherokee, their trusted friend and chief, that if they would bring Charlie and his party for punishment, the rest would be allowed to remain until their case could be adjusted by the Government.

On hearing of the proposition, Charlie voluntarily came in with his sons, offering himself as a sacrifice for his people.

By command of General Scott, Charlie, his brother and the two elder sons were shot, near the mouth of Tuckaseigee river, a detachment of Cherokee prisoners being compelled to do the shooting in order to impress upon the Indians the fact of their utter helplessness.

From those fugitives thus permitted to remain, originated the present eastern band of Cherokee.

When nearly 17,000 Cherokee had been gathered into the stockades, the removal began.

Early in June several parties, aggregating about five thousand persons, were brought down by the troops to the old agency on Hiwassee river, at the present Calhoun, Tenn., and to Ross landing (now Chattanooga, Tenn.) and to Gunter's landing (now Guntersville, Ala.) lower down on the Tennessee, where they were put upon steamers and transported down the Tennessee and Ohio to the farther side of the Mississippi, whence their journey was continued by land to Indian Territory (now Oklahoma).

The removal in the the hottest part of the year was attended with so great sickness and mortality that, by resolution of the Cherokee National Council, John Ross and the other chiefs submitted to General Scott a proposition that the Cherokee be allowed to remove themselves in the fall, after the sickly season ended. This was granted on condition that all should have started by the 20th of October, except the sick and aged, who might not be able to move so rapidly. Accordingly, officers were appointed by the Cherokee council to take charge of the emigration; the Indians being organized into detachments averaging one thousand each, with two leaders in charge of each department, and a sufficient number of wagons and horses for the purpose.