British Indian Department
The British colonial government yielded to the appeals of some of its administrators that colonial Indian policy should be centralized, with control over both trade and political affairs of with the various tribes. The department was divided into two districts, the Northern District, which William Johnson administered from Johnstown, New York, and the Southern District, which Edmond Atkin administered from Williamsburg, Virginia. The dividing line between the two districts was the Ohio River. The affairs in the Southern District were divided into six groupings, the five major tribes: Cherokee, Catawba, Creek, Choctaw, and Chickasaw and the Small Tribes, mostly along the Lower Mississippi River: Biloxi, Houma, Attacapa, Bayogoula, Tunica, Apalachee, Ofogoula, and Quapaw.
At the time, and lasting until nearly the 19th century, the Seminole were counted, even by themselves and the Creek, as part of the Creek Confederacy, which was itself further divided into Upper, Middle, and Lower Towns. The Choctaw had three divisions, the Eastern Towns, the Western Towns, and the southern group, the Six Towns. The Chickasaw main body stretched from the Mississippi River in West Tennessee and northern Mississippi across northern Alabama to the area at the beginning of the Great Bend of the Tennessee River later called Chickasaw Old Fields. Around 1757, a body of Chickasaw seeking to be closer to British traders settled on the Savannah River in the vicinity of Augusta, Georgia, and were known as the Lower Chickasaw. The Catawba were wholly within the province of South Carolina, Control over relations with the Virginia tribes seems to have been retained by the colony of Virginia. The divisions of the Cherokee are discussed below.
Each commissary was assisted by an interpreter and a clerk, and had authority over local trade and politics as well as serving as justice of the peace. By 1771, there was a commissary post each for the Cherokee, the Upper and Middle Creek, the Lower Creek, the five southernmost Lower Creek towns and the Seminole, the Eastern and Western Choctaw, the Six Towns Choctaw, the (western) Chickasaw, and the Small Tribes, plus one each at the West Florida towns of Pensacola and Mobile. The Virginia tribes still fell under the province of Virginia while relations with the Catawba and the Lower Chickasaw were handled out of Southern District headquarters in Charlestown, South Carolina.
Stuart's commissary to the Cherokee, and later deputy superintendent, Alexander Cameron, lived among them, initially at Keowee town on the river of the same name.
While the Mingo, Shawnee, and Lenape did most of the fighting on their side, the Cherokee and the Creek were active also, mainly confining themselves to small raids on the backcountry settlements of the Carolinas and Georgia. The fighting reached into the later Tennessee with an attack by the Shawnee and their allies upon the recent North-of-Holston settlements.
The Valley Towns occupied the upper Hiwassee and Valley Rivers in southwestern North Carolina.
The Keowee Towns stood on the Keowee and Seneca Rivers in northwestern South Carolina.
Southern District of the British Indian Department, 1775
On the eve of the Revolution, John Stuart remained Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Southern District. His brother, Henry Stuart was Chief Deputy Superintendent. Alexander Cameron still served as Deputy Superintendent to the Cherokee, now at Toqua (Dakwayi) on the Little Tennessee River, with John McDonald as his assistant, set up at a commissary post a hundred miles to the southwest on the west side of Chickamauga River (South Chickamauga Creek), where it was crossed by the Great Indian Warpath.
Elsewhere, David Taitt served as Deputy Superintendent to the Creek, Charles Stuart as Deputy Superintendent to the Choctaw, John McIntosh as Deputy Superintendent to the western Chickasaw, and John Thomas as Deputy Superintendent to the Small Tribes in West Florida and on the Mississippi River. All of the commissary posts mentioned above were probably still operational, but that was soon to change in the chaos of war.
On 15 September 1775, Whig militia seized Fort Johnson, the principal fort in Charlestown, and the royal governor sought refuge aboard the HMS Tamar in the harbor. This left the Whigs in control of Charlestown. Not long afterwards, Stuart was besieged by a mob at his house in Charlestown and had to flee for his life before he could act. His first stop was at Savannah, then he had to move again, to St. Augustine in East Florida.
American Indian Department
In October 1775, the Continental Congress decided its government needed its own Department of Indian Affairs, which it divided into Northern, Middle, and Southern Districts. The Congress appointed John Walker of Virginia of Virginia and Willie Jones of North Carolina as commissioners for the Southern District.
To fill the remaining three spots, the Congress authorized the South Carolina Committee of Safety to appoint commissioners to those vacancies: George Galphin to the Lower Creek and Seminole, Robert Rae to the Upper and Middle Creek, and Edmund Wilkinson to the Cherokee.
From St. Augustine, Stuart sent his deputy, Cameron, and his brother Henry to Mobile in West Florida to obtain short-term supplies with which the Cherokee could survive and fight if necessary. Dragging Canoe took a party of eighty warriors to provide security for the pack-train, and met Henry Stuart and Cameron, his adopted brother, at Mobile on 1 March 1776. He asked how he could help the British against their rebel subjects, and for help with the illegal settlers, and they told him to take no action at the present but to wait for regular troops to arrive.
When they arrived at Chota, Henry sent out letters to the trespassers of the Washington District of North Carolina (Watauga and Nolichucky) and Pendelton District of Virginia (North-of-Holston and Carter's Valley) reiterating the fact they were on Indian land illegally and giving them forty days to leave.
First blood
In June 1776, the British launched an attempt to capture Charlestown Harbor by land and by sea. On 28 June the land forces commanded by Henry Clinton attacked the harbor's chief defense, Fort Sullivan, commanded by William Moultrie. An attempt by three of the British ships to maneuver in support failed due to hidden natural obstructions. Meanwhile, Moultrie's guns inflicted heavy damage on several of the other ships in the fleet. The land forces attack failed too.
After withdrawing, the British abandoned the South for the next two-and-a-half years. However, the British officials could not halt plans already in motion for supporting attacks by the Cherokee and Loyalists.
In May 1776, partly at the behest of Henry Hamilton, the British lieutenant governor in Detroit, the Shawnee chief Cornstalk (Hokoleskwa) led a delegation from the northern tribes (Shawnee, Lenape, Iroquois, Ottawa [Wadaawewinini], others) arrived in Chota to meet with the southern tribes (Cherokee, Creek, Chickasaw, Choctaw) about fighting with the British against their common enemy. Cornstalk called for united action against those they called the “Long Knives”, the squatters who settled and remained in Kain-tuck-ee (Ganda-gi), or, as the settlers called it, Transylvania.
Siege of McDowell's Station
On 3 July, a small war party of Cherokee besieged a small fort on the North Carolina frontier. The garrison managed to keep from being overrun until a large body of militia under Griffith Rutherford arrived in the rear of besiegers, who then retreated.
Battle of Lindley's Station
A 190-strong war party of Cherokee and Loyalist partisans dressed as Cherokee attacked the large fort on the South Carolina frontier known as Lindley's Station. Its 150-man Whig garrison had just finished building it the day before. After repulsing the attack, the Whigs gave chase, killing two Loyalists and capturing ten, but inflicting no casualties on the Cherokee.
Dragging Canoe's force advanced up the Great Indian Warpath and had a small skirmish with a body of militia numbering twenty who quickly withdrew. Pursuing them and intending to take Eaton's Station at Long-Island-on-the-Holston, his force advanced toward the island. However, on 20 July, it encountered a larger force of militia six miles from their target, about half the size of his own but desperate, in a stronger position than the small group before.
Colonial response
The affected colonies of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia conferred and decided that swift and massive retaliation was the only way to preserve peace on the frontier.
Christian gathered his forces near Fort Patrick Henry, built by Lt. Col. William Russell of Virginia, commanding the Fincastle Rangers. It was built on top of the ruins of a post Anglo-Cherokee War fortification called Fort Robinson dating to the aftermath of the Anglo-Cherokee War.
The Cherokee in the Hill, Valley, Lower, and Overhill towns signed the Treaty of Dewitt's Corner with Georgia and South Carolina (Ostenaco was one of the Cherokee signatories) 20 May and the Treaty of Fort Henry with Virginia and North Carolina on 20 July. They promised to stop warring, with those colonies promising in return to protect them from attack.
Changes to the American Indian Department
Having lost faith in the Continental Indian Department over the Cherokee War, each state appointed its own Indian superintendents. For the Cherokee, North Carolina appointed James Robertson and Virginia appointed Joseph Martin. South Carolina maintained Edward Wilkinson, George Galphin, and Robert Rae in their positions with the the Cherokee, the Lower Creek and Seminole, and the Upper and Middle Creek; these three also represented Georgia.
In addition, George Washington tasked Nathaniel Gist with recruiting warriors from among the Cherokee for the Whig war effort, but he was only able win over seventeen to serve as scouts.
Other Southeastern Indian nations
In March 1777, Cameron, then at Pensacola, sent the refugees Cherokee refugees there to Chickamauga along with a sizable amount of goods. The colonials learned of the material and planned to intercept it. When Cameron informed him of the danger, Emistisigua, paramount chief of the Upper Creek, sent a force of three hundred fifty warriors to guard them as well as to assist in rebuilding and waging war.
Continuing the fight
In contempt of the peace proceedings at Fort Henry, Dragging Canoe led a war party that killed a settler named Frederick Calvitt and stole fifteen horses from James Robertson, then moved to Carter's Valley, killing the grandparents of later U.S. Congressman David Crockett along with several children near the modern Rogersville, and marauding across the valley. In all the raiders took twelve scalps.
On 17 June, Whig Indian commissioner George Galphin held a conference with the Lower Creek at Ogeechee Old Town to convince them to either remain neutral or side with the Americans. Stuart later reported that the attendees were supplied with copious amounts of whiskey. Afterwards, Galphin took Handsome Fellow (Hobbythacco) of Okfuskee Town and eight other leaders to Charlestown for a visit to impress them with the benefits of remaining neutral. The Coweta, who had boycotted the conference, were so incensed by the outcome that they launched raids against five parts of the frontier.
In summer 1777, Deputy Superintendents Cameron and Taitt led a large contingent of Cherokee and Creek warriors against the back country settlements of the Carolinas and Georgia. An assassination attempt by Lower Creek warriors of the pro-American faction in September 1777 against the two of them, McIntosh, and Emistisigua forced Cameron and Taitt to relocate to Pensacola. The attack, instigated by American Indian commissioner George Galphin, was led by Handsome Fellow. Taitt returned to Little Tallassee in early 1778, but he was recalled to Pensacola shortly thereafter.
While they were thus engaged, the Shawnee repeatedly attacked the Kentucky settlements between the Cumberland River and Levisa Fork.
Besides continued small harassment raids against the back country of Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia, the Cherokee established at camp at the confluence of the Tennessee and Ohio Rivers to prevent infiltration into the Mississippi in the spring of 1778.
Warriors of the Chickamauga Towns renewed their raiding after the Green Corn festival in August 1778.
Targets of the Cherokee
Willing's Raid
In February 1778, James Willing led a contingent of some 100 Whig marauders down the Mississippi River, where they ravaged Loyalist settlements of West Florida at Natchez, Walnut Hills (now Vicksburg, Mississippi), Baton Rouge, and smaller settlements and farmsteads along the river and the Gulf Coast. In response, Stuart sent John McGillivray in command of 100 provincial troops to the Natchez District to coordinate Choctaw and Chickasaw war efforts on the Mississippi.
Raids in the Overmountain region
Spain attacks
Spain officially entered the war as an ally of France, and therefore of the new United States of America, on 8 May 1779, but it was not until several months later that it took any military action. On 7 September 1779, Bernardo de Galvez, governor of Luisiana out of New Orleans, led a force of around one thousand Spanish regulars, Cajun militia, free men of color, and ten Whig volunteers upriver to Fort Bute, 115 miles north of New Orleans on Bayou Manchac. Defending the fort, built in 1766 and in disrepair, were one Captain von Haake and 20 Waldekian (from the German state of Waldeck) grenadiers. The Spanish force took the fort with only one of the Waldekians killed.
Proceeding north, the Spanish force laid siege to newly-built Fort New Richmond outside the town of Baton Rouge on 21 September. After three hours of bombardment, Lt. Col. Andrew Dickson surrendered both the fort and the town, as well as Fort Panmure and the town of Natchez next to it, and his force of 400 regulars, 120 Loyalist militia, and company of Waldekian grenadiers. The Spanish took possession of the latter fort and town on 5 October. The American-allied Spanish now controlled the entire Lower Mississippi River nearly to Chickasaw Bluffs.
Following this, the only pro-British force active in the area was that led by James Logan Colbert, a longtime trader among the Chickasaw, and his Loyalist militia and (mostly) Chickasaw warriors.
The conflict between Spain and Great Britain during this time (1779-1783) is sometimes referred to as the Anglo-Spanish War, given that most of the action was completely separate from the wider conflict to the east.
While Dragging Canoe and his warriors turned their attentions to the Cumberland, the Shawnee began raiding settlements in the Overmountain region and Southwest Virginia, the latter by now having become Washington County. In particular they targeted those along the Clinch and Holston Rivers and in Powell's Valley. These Shawnee came down from their homes on the Ohio River by way of the Warriors’ Path through the Cumberland Gap.
Siege of Star Fort
Also known as the Second Siege of Ninety-Six.
In late December 1780, the British began constructing an earthen eight-pointed fort at the capital of the District of Ninety-Six known as Star Fort because of its design. Finished in early January 1781, the fort was commanded by Col. John Cruger. Supported by a smaller redoubt nearby, it quickly became the most important outpost in the South Carolina backcountry.
After the fall of Camden, South Carolina, to the Whigs in May that year, Maj. Gen. Nathanael Greene, commander of the Continental Army in the South, decided to take Ninety-Six. Beginning the siege of Star Fort on 22 May, the same day Lee and Pickens began theirs at Camden, Greene and his men from the Continental Army and Whig militia dug in.
After hearing of British Gen. Francis Rawdon-Hastings advancing from Charlestown with a force of 2000 to relieve the fort, Greene ordered his forces to attack on 18 June. They captured the smaller redoubt, but were rebuffed at the Star Fort. With the relief force only 30 miles away on the next day, Greene ordered his forces to withdraw. The British and Loyalist forces had won the day, but they abandoned and burned the fort shortly thereafter.
In midsummer, a party of Middle Towns Cherokee came west over the mountains and began raiding the new settlements on the French Broad River. Sevier raised a force of one hundred fifty and attacked their camp on Indian Creek.
On 26 July 1781, the Overhill Towns signed the second Treaty of Long-Island-on-the-Holston, this time directly with the Overmountain settlements. It is notable in that, although affirming previous land cessions, it required none further.
Lenape refugees
While the Middle Towns warriors kept the Overmountain Men busy, the Chickamauga Towns welcomed a sizable party of Lenape warriors seeking refuge from the fighting in the Illinois and Ohio Countries. These were not just warriors down south temporarily but permanent resettlers who brought their families.
Though filled by different warriors shifted back and forth, these three bands remained in the Northwest until after the Treaty of Greenville in 1795.
Colbert's Raid
On 27 April 1783, Capt. James Colbert led a 82-strong force of his sons, Loyalists, Chickasaw, Natchez, a few free men of color, and one Frenchman in an attack against Fort Carlos III, which guarded the Spanish settlement at Arkansas Post at the confluence of the Arkansas and Mississippi Rivers, bordering Quapaw territory and composed of more French than Spanish. The garrison under Capt. Jacobo Dubreuil half that strength was composed of mostly Spanish soldiers, four Quapaw warriors, and three French militia. After the battle had last over six hours, a counterattack by just fourteen from the fort, including all four Quapaw, surprised the Colbert force and scattered it into retreat.
In consequence of their support of the British during the Revolution, the State of Georgia seized the lands of the Lower Chickasaw around Augusta, and they returned to their cousins in the west.
With the signing of these two treaties, McDonald and Ross relocated to Turkeytown to consolidate their efforts and business with those of Campbell closer to their Spanish suppliers and to the British trading house of Panton, Lesley, and Company in Pensacola.
Though most of the action took place in the Northwest, especially the Ohio County, a significant amount occurred in Kentucky, part of the Southwest. From the mid-1780's till the end of the decade, for instance, raiders killed nearly fifteen hundred settlers.
Treaty of Galphinton
As if McGillivray and his people were not angered enough, on 12 November 1785, Georgia officials signed a new treaty with a few compliant Lower Creek micos (headmen) in which the latter ceded the land between the Altamaha and St. Mary's Rivers, and from the head of the latter to the Oconee River. They called this wide stretch of land the Tallassee Country, after the tribe which lived there.
Conflict erupted largely because of dissatisfaction over the Treaty of Hopewell, the flames of which were fanned by Dragging Canoe. In the east, it primarily involved warriors from the Overhill and Valley Towns against Franklin, which the Lower Towns to the west primarily raided the Cumberland.
Throughout the summer of 1786, Dragging Canoe and his warriors along with a large contingent of Creek raided the Cumberland region, with several parties raiding well into Kentucky. One such occasion that summer was notable for the fact that the raiding party was led by none other than Hanging Maw of Coyatee, who was supposedly friendly at the time.
In early 1787, encroachments by American settlers became so great that the Overhill Towns held a council on whether to completely abandon their homes on the Little Tennessee for more removed locations to the west. They elected to stay, but the crisis provoked another rise in the small-scale raiding which never really ceased completely. The situation of the Overhill Cherokee was so bad that refugees appeared in Creek towns, and the Chickasaw threatened to break the treaty of 1783 and go on the warpath if something were not done to alleviate the situation.
Though they provided auxiliary support against Franklin, the Cherokee of the Lower Towns, playing their role as members of the confederacy, had made Kentucky the target of most of their efforts. A sally from the Kentucky militia led by John Logan mistakenly attacked a hunting party from the Overhill Towns and killed several of its members. In their non-apology to Chota, the Kentuckians warned the Overhill Towns to control Dragging Canoe's warriors or there would be widespread indiscriminate revenge.
Around 1785, some of these traders took over the post at Coldwater. This new management began covertly gathering Cherokee and Creek warriors into the town, whom they then encouraged to attack the American settlements along the Cumberland and its environs. The fighting contingent eventually numbered approximately nine Frenchmen, thirty-five Cherokee, and ten Creek.
Cherokee attacks upon the Franklin communities in small parties continued well into the spring.
Wilkinson remained a paid Spanish agent until his death in 1825, including his years as one of the top generals in the U.S. army, and was involved in the Aaron Burr conspiracy. Ironically, he became the first American governor of Louisiana Territory in 1803.
Council at Coweta
On 2 March 1789, the Lower Creek chief town of Coweta hosted a council between their division of the Creek Confederacy and the Cherokee. As town headman, John Galphin, half-blood son of former Indian Commissioner for the United States George Galphin, presided. Dragging Canoe and Hanging Maw led the Cherokee delegation. The representative of the two nations present agreed they trusted neither the Americans nor the Spanish and drafted a letter to the government of Great Britain pledging their loyalty in return for the king's direct assistance. They promised that if this happened, then the Mohawk, the Choctaw, and the Chickasaw would come over. Nothing ever came of the petition, but the council is notable for this as well as for where it took place.
Treaty of Swannanoa
The next month, on 25 May 1789, the Cherokee were supposed to sign a peace treaty with the newly federated United States at the War Ford on the French Broad River, near Swannanoa, North Carolina. The Americans chose the location because it was scene of a major Cherokee defeat in 1776. The Cherokee leaders never showed, but when the Americans under Andrew Pickens ran across Cherokee on their way to Rock Landing on the Oconee River to meet with the Creek, they were assured hostilities were over
Although intended to end the Oconee War, it angered the American settlers expelled from the Tallassee Country and Creek who wanted to keep the Oconee Country, so the war continued. The treaty also marked the beginning of the decline of McGillivray's influence in the Creek Confederacy and the rise of that of William Augustus Bowles, a bitter rival dating back to the Spanish campaign against Pensacola. By early 1791, Bowles wielded enough influence to send large war parties raiding the Cumberland once again despite the recent treaty.
Fighting on the other side were a company of militia from the Washington District of Southwest Territory and Chickasaw scouts.
Such was the respect for Dragging Canoe as a leader and patriot of his people that Gov. Blount, leader of his greatest enemies, remarked upon hearing of his death that, “Dragging Canoe stood second to none in the Nation”.
The Trans-Appalachian communities formerly of North Carolina became the Southwest Territory of the United States in 1790. For administrative purposes, the territorital government grouped the counties in the Overmountain region together as the Washington District while those in the Cumberland region became the Miro District, already the name for its judicial district since 1788.
Emboldened by the American loss at the Wabash River, Cherokee and Creek warriors and their Shawnee guests began raiding both districts of the Southwest Territory. The Miro District had it worse, suffering at least one a week, often more.
Though they didn't stop, the raids slowed to a handful in the summer. However, one of those raids served as one of the most notorious incidents of the period.
Invasion of the Miro District
On 7 or 8 September, a council of Cherokee meeting at Running Water formally declared war against the United States, or at least against the Southwest Territory.
Afterwards, Doublehead’s party returned south and held scalp dances at Stecoyee, Turnip Town, and Willstown, since warriors from those towns had also participated in the raid in addition to his and Benge’s groups.
A party of Shawnee came down from the north in January to reinforce ties with the Cherokee and the Creek and to encourage them to punish the Chickasaw for joining St. Clair’s army in the north. They stopped at Ustanali, then Running Water, before proceeding to the Creek town of Broken Arrow, home of their leader Talotiskee who had died at Buchanan's Station.
The Creek-Chickasaw War began with an attack by the Creek upon a Chickasaw hunting party on 13 February 1793, the Creek fighting as members of the Western Confederacy, the Chickasaw as allies of the United States.
Lesley's group was not the only Creek party, nor were the Creek alone. Warriors from the Upper Towns and some from the Overhill and Valley Towns, also raided the eastern districts in spring 1793.
Another Spanish treaty
Using John McDonald, who had remained in communication with Alexander McKee in Canada, as their emissary, the four nations (Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Seminole; the Chickasaw were left out) negotiated a treaty of military protection with the Spanish government in New Orleans that was signed at Walnut Hills on 10 April 1794.
Spring and summer 1794
Frustrated with the governor's call for restraint, John Beard, leader of the chase group that attacked the diplomatic party, organized a party of one hundred fifty men in the Washington District and attacked the Hiwasee Towns, burning two, including Great Hiwassee, and killing several Cherokee.
Against orders, George Doherty of the Hamilton District militia mustered his men and attacked Great Tellico, burning it to the ground, then crossed the mountains into the Valley Towns, in which they burned at least two towns and several acres of crops.
Trans-Oconee Republic
In May 1794, Revolutionary War hero Elijah Clarke led a party of fellow Georgians across the Oconee River to settle the west side, annexation by occupation. This came about after a French-backed scheme to invade East Florida fell through. After Clarke and his followers ignored the governor's orders to leave, a combined force of federal troops and state militia destroyed their fort and homesteads in September.
Treaty of Greenville
At the trading post of Coleraine in what's now South Georgia, the Creek signed a peace treaty with the United States on 29 June 1796, effectively ending the Southwest Indian War.
Cherokee Agency
In 1794, the U.S. established a military presence at the later Vonore, Tennessee, in the form of Tellico Blockhouse and its garrison. Along with Fort West Point in Maryland and Fort Pitt in Pennsylvania, it was the third permanent station of the then tiny regular standing army.
At the new blockhouse, the U.S.G. established its first Cherokee Agency for trade and diplomatic relations between the U.S. and the Cherokee, with John McKee the first agent. The army and the government upgraded their presence in the region in July 1797 with the completion of Fort Southwest Point at Kingston, Tennessee, made possible by the soon-to-be abandonment of Fort Pitt.
With the appointment of Return J. Meigs as U.S. Agent to the Cherokee in 1801, the Agency moved from Tellico Blockhouse to Fort Southwest Point at Kingston, Tennessee, though the trade functions remained at Tellico. In 1807, the troops at Tellico Blockhouse transferred to a new site on the right bank of the Tennessee River just above its confluence with Hiwassee River to what became known as Hiwassee Garrison. Meigs moved his agency to the new site along with the related trade operations at Tellico Blockhouse.
In 1811, Fort Southwest Point closed and its troops added to the contingent at Hiwassee Garrison, which was itself abandoned by the War Department two years later (1813). Meigs maintained the Cherokee Agency at the site until 1815, when he moved some distance up Hiwassee River to the mouth of Agency Creek on its right or north bank, relocating again in 1817 to what became Charleston, Tennessee, where he remained until his death in 1823 and the Cherokee Agency remained until 1838.These blood quantums would also deny former Principal Chief of the Eastern Band William Holland Thomas and former Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation West John Rogers membership in the tribes of which they held the highest office. They are also the means through which the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma disenfranchised Cherokee Freedmen from the time of Ross Swimmer and Wilma Mankiller in the 1980s.
* Corkan, David. The Creek Frontier, 1540-1782. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1967).
* Davies, Robert S. “George Galphin and the Creek Congress of 1777”. Proceedings of the Georgia Association of Historians 1982, pp. 13-29. (Marietta: Georgia Association of Historians, 1983).
* Flint, Timothy. Indian Wars of the West. (Cincinnati: E. H. Flint, 1833).
* Lowrie, Walter, and Matthew St. Clair Clarke, ed. American State Papers: Foreign Relations, Volume I . (Washington: Giles and Seaton, 1832).
* Lowrie, Walter, and Matthew St. Clair Clarke, ed. American State Papers: Indian Affairs, Volume I . (Washington: Giles and Seaton, 1832).
* McLoughlin, William G. Cherokee Renascence in the New Republic. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992).
* Milling, Chapman. Red Carolinians. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1940).
* Roosevelt, Theodore. The Winning of the West, Part IV: The Indian Wars, 1784-1787. (New York: Current Literature Publishing Co., 1905).
* Sheftall, John Mackay. “George Galphin and Indian-White Relations in the Georgia Backcountry During the American Revolution”. Master's Thesis, Corcoran Department of History. (Charlottesvile: University of Virginia, 1983).
13 comments:
Nice write-up....I thoroughly enjoyed it!
Thank you, mdfreels
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Reading your article I noticed two factual errors that warrant correction:
The Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma does not have a blood quantum requirement. See www.cherokee.org/enrollment.
The reference to the time of Ross Swimmer as the point which excludes freedmen is also in error. Cherokees included a blood quantum requirement for holding office in the 1828 Constitution which was continued in the 1839 (post-Removal Constitution). In 1828, freedmen were three and a half decades away from receiving citizenship. The provision was written to temper the influence of intermarried whites who were often the trader-entrepreneurs who with their mixed-blood children were more acculturated toward the local non-Indian community and not often cultural Cherokees. John Ross was an exception. He lead the majority full-blood/traditional faction of the tribe which was 2/3 of it. The Waties like Stand Watie and his brother Buck Watie aka Elias Boudinot, were half-bloods who supported evisceration of the tribe. Elias Boudinot was raised and educated white. Boudinot is his mentor's name. The were leaders among the "faction" that illegally signed away Cherokee lands in the east by treaty which resulted, ultimately, in the death of 1/3 of the forcibly removed The same group also became the Confederate Cherokees. See William G. McLoughlin, After the Treaty. The so-called "Treaty Party" were generously given large stipends and their choice of leader for removal, they were allowed to ship their baggage/possessions; they were also the overwhelming majority of slaveowners. Michael F. Doran, Negro Slaves in the Five Civilized Tribes (+/-).
Continued
Only 2.387% of Cherokees at peak ownership in 1860, the year before the Civil War started. According to Doran, the majority of Cherokees had "no direct interest in slavery;" McLoughlin reports at the same point that the remainder of the Cherokees did not have slaves and "did not want any." As a reference point since the freedmen have been mentioned: In 1860, there were 3,950,528 slaves in the U.S., 20,000 of which were owned by free Negroes as they were called, the remainder out of the 393,975 slave owners were white. Contrary to popular belief, the Seminoles had no slaves at all. 1,000 were "attributed" to them by a casual traveler. Nonetheless, Seminoles, like the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw and Creek tribes paid, in cash and in kind (land) over nearly $143,000,000 which is the equivalent of ca. $3,700,000,000 in today's dollars. The U.S. actually introduced an agricultural system that demanded slaves in order to be successful and forcibly removed the tribes below 36'30" in order to perpetuate a system in which only the intermarried whites and mixed bloods participated as "labor slave" owners. The rare full-blood who had a slave did not hold them as labor slaves. They had great days-to-day autonomy, were intermittently asked to perform a task and the FBs themselves lived in the exact same conditions and shared what they had with the nominal slaves. Notwithstanding, the Cherokees have become the posterchild for a vast system of servitude in which they were but minor actors. Most people do not realize that there was a vast system of graft in the Indian Territory by which state Negroes, random free persons of color never affiliated with any tribe and even whites grifted (often at the instance of land speculators) their way into citizenship. Some paid bribes. E.g. Luster Foreman, a freedman, solicited bribes from other freedmen to be put on the rolls. His list included over 7,000 when the most recent census showed ca. 5,000. See Kent Carter, The Dawes Act:...1893-1904 which describes the millions of dollars that the tribes spent on commissions trying even partially to weed out the con artists. See Congressional Record of Proceedings and Debates, House of Representatives, April 8, 1912 for a complete discussion and also an example of grifter citizenship/allotment applicants called "the Riley family of Negroes" who had applied multiple times, appealed, lost and had the denials affirmed on review, yet at two hours before the Dawes Roll was to close on March 4, 1907, a hidden hand allowed 93 state Negroes from Girard, Kansas to obtain Cherokee citizenship and land allotments over the objection of multiple tribunals and the National Council of the Cherokee Nation. I am an enrolled Cherokee in Oklahoma with nearly 50 years of Indian law experience under my belt. For 35 of those years, I have taught Indian people across the nation their own tribal histories, including treaties and federal Indian polices. Let me sum up by quoting Will Rogers, "If it were not for reformers, Indians wouldn't need saving." My own quote captured in Kristen Ruppel's Unearthing Indian Land is "Indians live on the whip end of someone else's crazy." Academics and law review types seem to love this characterization. Enough about me and mine. I thoroughly enjoyed the skim of your piece that I did and now intend to sit down and devour it by committing your timeline and players to memory. I am a documented descendant of Cornstalk. I'm all about the backstory.
The constitution of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma approved by the Commissioner of Indian Affairs on 5 September 1975 and ratified by the voting members of the Nation on 26 June 1976 specified that members of the tribe were those who could prove they had an ancestor on the Dawes Rolls. This necessarily excluded the Cherokee Freedmen. This was definitely during Swimmer's tenure as Principal Chief.
Swimmer issued an executive order in 1983 that members of must have a CDIB card (Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood), which even more fully excluded the Freedmen, a fact which strikes down two of your points. While not specifying a degree, the requirement for a CDIB necessarily requires a blood quantum. Also, since Swimmer issued that executive order, it was certainly during his tenure as PC.
Third, Stand Watie and Elias Boudinot's mother, Susanna Reese, was half-blood herself, making the two of them three-quarters, not half.
I'm glad you enjoyed my piece, thank you for your comments.
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