Chapter VIII: Part 8

In the fall of 1835 the Texan revolution began, resulting in the secession of Texas from Mexico and her establishment as an independent republic until annexed later to the United States. General Samuel Houston, a leading member of the revolutionary body, was an old friend of the Cherokee, and set forth so strongly the claims of them and their confederates that an act was passed by the convention pledging to these tribes all the lands which they had held under the Mexican government. In accordance with this act General Houston and John Forbes were appointed to hold a treaty with the Cherokee and their associated bands. They met the chiefs, including Bowl and Big-mush (Gatûñ'wa`li, "Hard-mush"), of the Cherokee, at Bowl's village on February 23, 1836, and concluded a formal treaty by which the Cherokee and their allies received a fee simple title to all the land lying "west of the San Antonio road and beginning on the west at a point where the said road crosses the river Angelina, and running up said river until it reaches the mouth of the first large creek below the great Shawnee village, emptying into the said river from the northeast, thence running with said creek to its main source and from thence a due north line to the Sabine and with said river west. Then starting where the San Antonio road crosses the Angelina and with said road to where it crosses the Neches and thence running up the east side of said river in a northwest direction." The historian remarks that the description is somewhat vague, but is a literal transcription from the treaty. [361] The territory thus assigned was about equivalent to the present Cherokee county, Texas.

The treaty provoked such general dissatisfaction among the Texans that it was not presented to the convention for ratification. General Houston became President of Texas in November, 1836, but notwithstanding all his efforts in behalf of the Cherokee, the treaty was rejected by the Texas senate in secret session on December 16, 1837. [362] Texas having in the meantime achieved victorious independence was now in position to repudiate her engagements with the Indians, which she did, not only with the Cherokee, but with the Comanche and other wild tribes, which had been induced to remain neutral during the struggle on assurance of being secured in possession of their lands.

In the meantime President Houston was unremitting in his effort to secure the ratification of the Cherokee treaty, but without success. On the other hand the Cherokee were accused of various depredations, and it was asserted that they had entered into an agreement with Mexico by which they were to be secured in the territory in question on condition of assisting to drive out the Americans. [363] The charge came rather late in the day, and it was evident that President Houston put no faith in it, as he still continued his efforts in behalf of the Cherokee, even so far as to order the boundary line to be run, according to the terms of the treaty (45). [364]

In December, 1838, Houston was succeeded as President by Mirabeau B. Lamar, who at once announced his intention to expel every Indian tribe from Texas, declaring in his inaugural message that "the sword should mark the boundaries of the republic." At this time the Indians in eastern Texas, including the Cherokee and their twelve confederated bands and some others, were estimated at 1,800 warriors, or perhaps 8,000 persons. [365]

A small force of troops sent to take possession of the salt springs in the Indian country at the head of the Neches was notified by Bowl that such action would be resisted. The Indians were then informed that they must prepare to leave the country in the fall, but that they would be paid for the improvements abandoned. In the meantime the neighboring Mexicans made an effort to free themselves from Texan rule and sent overtures to the Indians to make common cause with them. This being discovered, the crisis was precipitated, and a commission consisting of General Albert Sidney Johnston (secretary of war of the republic), Vice-President Burnet, and some other officials, backed up by several regiments of troops, was sent to the Cherokee village on Angelina river to demand of the Indians that they remove at once across the border. The Indians refused and were attacked and defeated on July 15, 1839, by the Texan troops under command of General Douglas. They were pursued and a second engagement took place the next morning, resulting in the death of Bowl himself and his assistant chief Gatûñ'wa`li, "Hard-mush," and the dispersion of the Indian forces, with a loss in the two engagements of about 55 killed and 80 wounded, the Texan loss being comparatively trifling. The first fight took place at a hill close to the main Cherokee village on the Angelina, where the Indians made a stand and defended their position well for some time. The second occurred at a ravine near Neches river, where they were intercepted in their retreat. Says Thrall, "After this fight the Indians abandoned Texas, leaving their fine lands in possession of the whites." [366]

By these two defeats the forces of the Cherokee and their confederates were completely broken up. A part of the Cherokee recrossed Red river and rejoined their kinsmen in Indian territory, bringing with them the blood-stained canister containing the patent for their Texas land, which Bowl had carried about with him since the treaty with Houston and which he had upon his person when shot. It is still kept in the Nation. [367] Others, with the Kickapoo, Delawares, and Caddo, scattered in small bands along the western Texas frontier, where they were occasionally heard from afterward. On Christmas day of the same year a fight occurred on Cherokee creek, San Saba county, in which several Indians were killed and a number of women and children captured, including the wife and family of the dead chief Bowl. [368] Those of the Cherokee who did not return to Indian territory gradually drifted down into Mexico, where some hundreds of them are now permanently and prosperously domiciled far south in the neighborhood of Guadalajara and Lake Chapala, communication being still kept up through occasional visits from their kinsmen in the territory. [369]

THE CHEROKEE NATION IN THE WEST--1840-1900

With the final removal of the Cherokee from their native country and their reunion and reorganization under new conditions in Indian Territory in 1840 their aboriginal period properly comes to a close and the rest may be dismissed in a few paragraphs as of concern rather to the local historian than to the ethnologist. Having traced for three full centuries their gradual evolution from a savage tribe to a civilized Christian nation, with a national constitution and national press printed in their own national alphabet, we can afford to leave the rest to others, the principal materials being readily accessible in the Cherokee national archives at Tahlequah, in the files of the Cherokee Advocate and other newspapers published in the Nation, and in the annual reports and other documents of the Indian office.

For many years the hunter and warrior had been giving place to the farmer and mechanic, and the forced expatriation made the change complete and final. Torn from their native streams and mountains, their council fires extinguished and their townhouses burned behind them, and transported bodily to a far distant country where everything was new and strange, they were obliged perforce to forego the old life and adjust themselves to changed surroundings. The ballplay was neglected and the green-corn dance proscribed, while the heroic tradition of former days became a fading memory or a tale to amuse a child. Instead of ceremonials and peace councils we hear now of railroad deals and contracts with cattle syndicates, and instead of the old warrior chiefs who had made the Cherokee name a terror--Oconostota, Hanging-maw, Doublehead, and Pathkiller--we find the destinies of the nation guided henceforth by shrewd mixed-blood politicians, bearing white men's names and speaking the white man's language, and frequently with hardly enough Indian blood to show itself in the features.

The change was not instantaneous, nor is it even yet complete, for although the tendency is constantly away from the old things, and although frequent intermarriages are rapidly bleaching out the brown of the Indian skin, there are still several thousand full-blood Cherokee--enough to constitute a large tribe if set off by themselves--who speak only their native language and in secret bow down to the nature-gods of their fathers. Here, as in other lands, the conservative element has taken refuge in the mountain districts, while the mixed-bloods and the adopted whites are chiefly on the richer low grounds and in the railroad towns.

On the reorganization of the united Nation the council ground at Tahlequah was designated as the seat of government, and the present town was soon afterward laid out upon the spot, taking its name from the old Cherokee town of Talikwa', or Tellico, in Tennessee. The missions were reestablished, the Advocate was revived, and the work of civilization was again taken up, though under great difficulties, as continued removals and persecutions, with the awful suffering and mortality of the last great emigration, had impoverished and more than decimated the Nation and worn out the courage even of the bravest. The bitterness engendered by the New Echota treaty led to a series of murders and assassinations and other acts of outlawry, amounting almost to civil war between the Ross and Ridge factions, until the Government was at last obliged to interfere. The Old Settlers also had their grievances and complaints against the newcomers, so that the history of the Cherokee Nation for the next twenty years is largely a chronicle of factional quarrels, through which civilization and every good work actually retrograded behind the condition of a generation earlier.

Sequoya, who had occupied a prominent position in the affairs of the Old Settlers and assisted much in the reorganization of the Nation, had become seized with a desire to make linguistic investigations among the remote tribes, very probably with a view of devising a universal Indian alphabet. His mind dwelt also on the old tradition of a lost band of Cherokee living somewhere toward the western mountains. In 1841 and 1842, with a few Cherokee companions and with his provisions and papers loaded in an ox cart, he made several journeys into the West, received everywhere with kindness by even the wildest tribes. Disappointed in his philologic results, he started out in 1843 in quest of the lost Cherokee, who were believed to be somewhere in northern Mexico, but, being now an old man and worn out by hardship, he sank under the effort and died--alone and unattended, it is said--near the village of San Fernando, Mexico, in August of that year. Rumors having come of his helpless condition, a party had been sent out from the Nation to bring him back, but arrived too late to find him alive. A pension of three hundred dollars, previously voted to him by the Nation, was continued to his widow--the only literary pension in the United States. Besides a wife he left two sons and a daughter. [370] Sequoyah district of the Cherokee Nation was named in his honor, and the great trees of California (Sequoia gigantea) also preserve his memory.

In 1846 a treaty was concluded at Washington by which the conflicting claims of the Old Settlers and later emigrants were adjusted, reimbursement was promised for sums unjustly deducted from the five-million-dollar payment guaranteed under the treaty of 1835, and a general amnesty was proclaimed for all past offenses within the Nation. [371] Final settlement of the treaty claims has not yet been made, and the matter is still a subject of litigation, including all the treaties and agreements up to the present date.

In 1859 the devoted missionary Samuel Worcester, author of numerous translations and first organizer of the Advocate, died at Park Hill mission, in the Cherokee Nation, after thirty-five years spent in the service of the Cherokee, having suffered chains, imprisonment, and exile for their sake. [372]

The breaking out of the civil war in 1861 found the Cherokee divided in sentiment. Being slave owners, like the other Indians removed from the southern states, and surrounded by southern influences, the agents in charge being themselves southern sympathizers, a considerable party in each of the tribes was disposed to take active part with the Confederacy. The old Ridge party, headed by Stand Watie and supported by the secret secession organization known as the Knights of the Golden Circle, declared for the Confederacy. The National party, headed by John Ross and supported by the patriotic organization known as the Kitoowah society--whose members were afterward known as Pin Indians--declared for strict neutrality. At last, however, the pressure became too strong to be resisted, and on October 7, 1861, a treaty was concluded at Tahlequah, with General Albert Pike, commissioner for the Confederate states, by which the Cherokee Nation cast its lot with the Confederacy, as the Creeks, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole, Osage, Comanche, and several smaller tribes had already done. [373]

Two Cherokee regiments were raised for the Confederate service, under command of Stand Watie and Colonel Drew, respectively, the former being commissioned as brigadier-general. They participated in several engagements, chief among them being the battle of Pea Ridge, Arkansas, on March 7, 1862. [374] In the following summer the Union forces entered the Cherokee country and sent a proposition to Ross, urging him to repudiate the treaty with the Confederate states, but the offer was indignantly declined. Shortly afterward, however, the men of Drew's regiment, finding themselves unpaid and generally neglected by their allies, went over almost in a body to the Union side, thus compelling Ross to make an arrangement with the Union commander, Colonel Weir. Leaving the Cherokee country, Ross retired to Philadelphia, from which he did not return until the close of the war. [375] In the meantime Indian Territory was ravaged alternately by contending factions and armed bodies, and thousands of loyal fugitives were obliged to take refuge in Kansas, where they were cared for by the government. Among these, at the close of 1862, were two thousand Cherokee. In the following spring they were sent back to their homes under armed escort to give them an opportunity to put in a crop, seeds and tools being furnished for the purpose, but had hardly begun work when they were forced to retire by the approach of Stand Watie and his regiment of Confederate Cherokee, estimated at seven hundred men. Stand Watie and his men, with the Confederate Creeks and others, scoured the country at will, destroying or carrying off everything belonging to the loyal Cherokee, who had now, to the number of nearly seven thousand, taken refuge at Fort Gibson. Refusing to take sides against a government which was still unable to protect them, they were forced to see all the prosperous accumulations of twenty years of industry swept off in this guerrilla warfare. In stock alone their losses were estimated at more than 300,000 head. [376]

"The events of the war brought to them more of desolation and ruin than perhaps to any other community. Raided and sacked alternately, not only by the Confederate and Union forces, but by the vindictive ferocity and hate of their own factional divisions, their country became a blackened and desolate waste. Driven from comfortable homes, exposed to want, misery, and the elements, they perished like sheep in a snow storm. Their houses, fences, and other improvements were burned, their orchards destroyed, their flocks and herds slaughtered or driven off, their schools broken up, their schoolhouses given to the flames, and their churches and public buildings subjected to a similar fate; and that entire portion of their country which had been occupied by their settlements was distinguishable from the virgin prairie only by the scorched and blackened chimneys and the plowed but now neglected fields." [377]

After five years of desolation the Cherokee emerged from the war with their numbers reduced from 21,000 to 14,000, [378] and their whole country in ashes. On July 19, 1866, by a treaty concluded at Tahlequah, the nation was received back into the protection of the United States, a general amnesty was proclaimed, and all confiscations on account of the war prohibited; slavery was abolished without compensation to former owners, and all negroes residing within the Nation were admitted to full Cherokee citizenship. By articles 15 and 16 permission was given the United States to settle friendly Indians within the Cherokee home country or the Cherokee strip by consent and purchase from the Nation. By article 17 the Cherokee sold the 800,000-acre tract in Kansas secured by the treaty of 1835, together with a two-mile strip running along the southern border of Kansas, and thereafter to be included within the limits of that state, thus leaving the Cherokee country as it was before the recent cession of the Cherokee strip. Payment was promised for spoliations by United States troops during the war; and $3,000 were to be paid out of the Cherokee funds to the Reverend Evan Jones, then disabled and in poverty, as a reward for forty years of faithful missionary labors. By article 26 "the United States guarantee to the Cherokees the quiet and peaceable possession of their country and protection against domestic feuds and insurrection as well as hostilities of other tribes. They shall also be protected from intrusion by all unauthorized citizens of the United States attempting to settle on their lands or reside in their territory." [379]

The missionary, Reverend Evan Jones, who had followed the Cherokee into exile, and his son, John B. Jones, had been admitted to Cherokee citizenship the year before by vote of the Nation. The act conferring this recognition recites that "we do bear witness that they have done their work well." [380]

John Ross, now an old man, had been unable to attend this treaty, being present at the time in Washington on business for his people. Before its ratification he died in that city on August 1, 1866, at the age of seventy-seven years, fifty-seven of which had been given to the service of his Nation. No finer panegyric was ever pronounced than the memorial resolution passed by the Cherokee Nation on learning of his death. [381] Notwithstanding repeated attempts to subvert his authority, his people had remained steadfast in their fidelity to him, and he died, as he had lived for nearly forty years, the officially recognized chief of the Nation. With repeated opportunities to enrich himself at the expense of his tribe, he died a poor man. His body was brought back and interred in the territory of the Nation. In remembrance of the great chief one of the nine districts of the Cherokee Nation has been called by his Indian name, Cooweescoowee (46).

Under the provisions of the late treaty the Delawares in Kansas, to the number of 985, removed to Indian territory in 1867 and became incorporated as citizens of the Cherokee Nation. They were followed in 1870 by the Shawano, chiefly also from Kansas, to the number of 770. [382] These immigrants settled chiefly along the Verdigris, in the northwestern part of the Nation. Under the same treaty the Osage, Kaw, Pawnee, Ponca, Oto and Missouri, and Tonkawa were afterward settled on the western extension known then as the Cherokee strip. The captive Nez Percés of Joseph's band were also temporarily located there, but have since been removed to the states of Washington and Idaho.

In 1870 the Missouri, Kansas and Texas railway, a branch of the Union Pacific system, was constructed through the lands of the Cherokee Nation under an agreement ratified by the Government, it being the first railroad to enter that country. [383] Several others have since been constructed or projected.

The same year saw a Cherokee literary revival. The publication of the Advocate, which had been suspended since some years before the war, was resumed, and by authority of the Nation John B. Jones began the preparation of a series of schoolbooks in the Cherokee language and alphabet for the benefit of those children who knew no English. [384]

In the spring of 1881 a delegation from the Cherokee Nation visited the East Cherokee still remaining in the mountains of North Carolina and extended to them a cordial and urgent invitation to remove and incorporate upon equal terms with the Cherokee Nation in the Indian territory. In consequence several parties of East Cherokee, numbering in all 161 persons, removed during the year to the western Nation, the expense being paid by the Federal government. Others afterwards applied for assistance to remove, but as no further appropriation was made for the purpose nothing more was done. [385] In 1883 the East Cherokee brought suit for a proportionate division of the Cherokee funds and other interests under previous treaties, [386] but their claim was finally decided adversely three years later on appeal to the Supreme Court. [387]

In 1889 the Cherokee female seminary was completed at Tahlequah at a cost of over $60,000, supplementing the work of the male seminary, built some years before at a cost of $90,000. The Cherokee Nation was now appropriating annually over $80,000 for school purposes, including the support of the two seminaries, an orphan asylum, and over one hundred primary schools, besides which there were a number of mission schools. [388]

For a number of years the pressure for the opening of Indian territory to white settlement had been growing in strength. Thousands of intruders had settled themselves upon the lands of each of the five civilized tribes, where they remained upon various pretexts in spite of urgent and repeated appeals to the government by the Indians for their removal. Under treaties with the five civilized tribes, the right to decide citizenship or residence claims belonged to the tribes concerned, but the intruders had at last become so numerous and strong that they had formed an organization among themselves to pass upon their own claims, and others that might be submitted to them, with attorneys and ample funds to defend each claim in outside courts against the decision of the tribe. At the same time the Government policy was steadily toward the reduction or complete breaking up of Indian reservations and the allotment of lands to the Indians in severalty, with a view to their final citizenship, and the opening of the surplus lands to white settlement. As a part of the same policy the jurisdiction of the United States courts was gradually being extended over the Indian country, taking cognizance of many things hitherto considered by the Indian courts under former treaties with the United States. Against all this the Cherokee and other civilized tribes protested, but without avail. To add to the irritation, companies of armed "boomers" were organized for the express purpose of invading and seizing the Cherokee outlet and other unoccupied portions of the Indian territory--reserved by treaty for future Indian settlement--in defiance of the civil and military power of the Government.

We come now to what seems the beginning of the end of Indian autonomy. In 1889 a commission, afterward known as the Cherokee Commission, was appointed, under act of Congress, to "negotiate with the Cherokee Indians, and with all other Indians owning or claiming lands lying west of the ninety-sixth degree of longitude in the Indian territory, for the cession to the United States of all their title, claim, or interest of every kind or character in and to said lands." In August of that year the commission made a proposition to Chief J. B. Mayes for the cession of all the Cherokee lands thus described, being that portion known as the Cherokee outlet or strip. The proposition was declined on the ground that the Cherokee constitution forbade its consideration. [389] Other tribes were approached for a similar purpose, and the commission was continued, with changing personnel from year to year, until agreements for cession and the taking of allotments had been made with nearly all the wilder tribes in what is now Oklahoma.

In the meantime the Attorney-General had rendered a decision denying the right of Indian tribes to lease their lands without permission of the Government. At this time the Cherokee were deriving an annual income of $150,000 from the lease of grazing privileges upon the strip, but by a proclamation of President Harrison on February 17, 1890, ordering the cattlemen to vacate before the end of the year, this income was cut off and the strip was rendered practically valueless to them. [390] The Cherokee were now forced to come to terms, and a second proposition for the cession of the Cherokee strip was finally accepted by the national council on January 4, 1892. "It was known to the Cherokees that for some time would-be settlers on the lands of the outlet had been encamped in the southern end of Kansas, and by every influence at their command had been urging the Government to open the country to settlement and to negotiate with the Cherokees afterwards, and that a bill for that purpose had been introduced in Congress." The consideration was nearly $8,600,000, or about $1.25 per acre, for something over 6,000,000 acres of land. One article of the agreement stipulates for "the reaffirmation to the Cherokee Nation of the right of local self-government." [391] The agreement having been ratified by Congress, the Cherokee strip was opened by Presidential proclamation on September 16, 1893. [392]

The movement for the abolition of the Indian governments and the allotment and opening of the Indian country had now gained such force that by act of Congress approved March 3, 1893, the President was authorized to appoint a commission of three--known later as the Dawes Commission, from its distinguished chairman, Senator Henry L. Dawes of Massachusetts--to negotiate with the five civilized tribes of Indian territory, viz, the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole, for "the extinguishment of tribal titles to any lands within that territory, now held by any and all of such nations and tribes, either by cession of the same or some part thereof to the United States, or by the allotment and division of the same in severalty among the Indians of such nations or tribes respectively as may be entitled to the same, or by such other method as may be agreed upon ... to enable the ultimate creation of a state or states of the Union, which shall embrace the land within the said Indian territory." [393] The commission appointed arrived in the Indian territory in January, 1894, and at once began negotiations. [394]

At this time the noncitizen element in Indian Territory was officially reported to number at least 200,000 souls, while those having rights as citizens of the five civilized tribes, including full-blood and mixed-blood Indians, adopted whites, and negroes, numbered but 70,500. [395] Not all of the noncitizens were intruders, many being there by permission of the Indian governments or on official or other legitimate business, but the great body of them were illegal squatters or unrecognized claimants to Indian rights, against whose presence the Indians themselves had never ceased to protest. A test case brought this year in the Cherokee Nation was decided by the Interior Department against the claimants and in favor of the Cherokee. Commenting upon threats made in consequence by the rejected claimants, the agent for the five tribes remarks: "It is not probable that Congress will establish a court to nullify and vacate a formal decision of the Interior Department." [396] A year later he says of these intruders that "so long as they have a foothold--a residence, legal or not--in the Indian country they will be disturbers of peace and promoters of discord, and while they cry aloud, and spare not, for allotment and statehood, they are but stumbling blocks and obstacles to that mutual good will and fraternal feeling which must be cultivated and secured before allotment is practicable and statehood desirable." [397] The removal of the intruders was still delayed, and in 1896 the decision of citizenship claims was taken from the Indian government and relegated to the Dawes Commission. [398]

In 1895 the commission was increased to five members, with enlarged powers. In the meantime a survey of Indian Territory had been ordered and begun. In September the agent wrote: "The Indians now know that a survey of their lands is being made, and whether with or without their consent, the survey is going on. The meaning of such survey is too plain to be disregarded, and it is justly considered as the initial step, solemn and authoritative, toward the overthrow of their present communal holdings. At this writing surveying corps are at work in the Creek, Choctaw, and Chickasaw Nations, and therefore each one of these tribes has an ocular demonstration of the actual intent and ultimate purpose of the government of the United States." [399]

The general prosperity and advancement of the Cherokee Nation at this time may be judged from the report of the secretary of the Cherokee national board of education to Agent Wisdom. He reports 4,800 children attending two seminaries, male and female, two high schools, and one hundred primary schools, teachers being paid from $35 to $100 per month for nine months in the year. Fourteen primary schools were for the use of the negro citizens of the Nation, besides which they had a fine high school, kept up, like all the others, at the expense of the Cherokee government. Besides the national schools there were twelve mission schools helping to do splendid work for children of both citizens and noncitizens. Children of noncitizens were not allowed to attend the Cherokee national schools, but had their own subscription schools. The orphan asylum ranked as a high school, in which 150 orphans were boarded and educated, with graduates every year. It was a large brick building of three stories, 80 by 240 feet. The male seminary, accommodating 200 pupils, and the female seminary, accommodating 225 pupils, were also large brick structures, three stories in height and 150 by 240 feet on the ground. Three members, all Cherokee by blood, constituted a board of education. The secretary adds that the Cherokee are proud of their schools and educational institutions, and that no other country under the sun is so blessed with educational advantages at large. [400]

At this time the Cherokee Nation numbered something over 25,000 Indian, white, and negro citizens; the total citizen population of the three races in the five civilized tribes numbered about 70,000, while the noncitizens had increased to 250,000 and their number was being rapidly augmented. [401] Realizing that the swift, inevitable end must be the destruction of their national governments, the Cherokee began once more to consider the question of removal from the United States. The scheme is outlined in a letter written by a brother of the principal chief of the Cherokee Nation under date of May 31, 1895, from which we quote.

After prefacing that the government of the United States seems determined to break up the tribal autonomy of the five civilized tribes and to divide their lands, thus bringing about conditions under which the Cherokee could not exist, he continues:

Then for a remedy that will lead us out of it, away from it, and
one that promises our preservation as a distinct race of people
in the enjoyment of customs, social and political, that have been
handed down to us from remote generations of the past. My plan is
for the Cherokees to sell their entire landed possessions to the
United States, divide the proceeds thereof per capita, then such
as desire to do so unite in the formation of an Indian colony,
and with their funds jointly purchase in Mexico or South America
a body of land sufficient for all their purposes, to be forever
their joint home.... I believe also that for such Indians as did
not desire to join the colony and leave the country provision
should be made for them to repurchase their old homes, or such
other lands in the country here as they might desire, and they
could remain here and meet such fate as awaits them. I believe
this presents the most feasible and equitable solution of the
questions that we must decide in the near future, and will prove
absolutely just and fair to all classes and conditions of our
citizens. I also believe that the same could be acted upon by
any or all of the five civilized tribes.... [402]

The final chapter is nearly written. By successive enactments within the last ten years the jurisdiction of the Indian courts has been steadily narrowed and the authority of the Federal courts proportionately extended; the right to determine Indian citizenship has been taken from the Indians and vested in a Government commission; the lands of the five tribes have been surveyed and sectionized by Government surveyors; and by the sweeping provisions of the Curtis act of June 28, 1898, "for the protection of the people of the Indian Territory," the entire control of tribal revenues is taken from the five Indian tribes and vested with a resident supervising inspector, the tribal courts are abolished, allotments are made compulsory, and authority is given to incorporate white men's towns in the Indian tribes. [403] By this act the five civilized tribes are reduced to the condition of ordinary reservation tribes under government agents with white communities planted in their midst. In the meantime the Dawes commission, continued up to the present, has by unremitting effort broken down the opposition of the Choctaw and Chickasaw, who have consented to allotment, while the Creeks and the Seminole are now wavering. [404] The Cherokee still hold out, the Ketoowah secret society (47) especially being strong in its resistance, and when the end comes it is possible that the protest will take shape in a wholesale emigration to Mexico. Late in 1897 the agent for the five tribes reports that "there seems a determined purpose on the part of many fullbloods ... to emigrate to either Mexico or South America and there purchase new homes for themselves and families. Such individual action may grow to the proportion of a colony, and it is understood that liberal grants of land can be secured from the countries mentioned. [405] Mexican agents are now (1901) among the Cherokee advocating the scheme, which may develop to include a large proportion of the five civilized tribes. [406]

By the census of 1898, the most recent taken, as reported by Agent Wisdom, the Cherokee Nation numbered 34,461 persons, as follows: Cherokee by blood (including all degrees of admixture), 26,500; intermarried whites, 2,300; negro freedmen, 4,000; Delaware, 871; Shawnee, 790. The total acreage of the Nation was 5,031,351 acres, which, if divided per capita under the provisions of the Curtis bill, after deducting 60,000 acres reserved for town-site and other purposes, would give to each Cherokee citizen 144 acres. [407] It must be noted that the official rolls include a large number of persons whose claims are disputed by the Cherokee authorities.

THE EASTERN BAND

It remains to speak of the eastern band of Cherokee--the remnant which still clings to the woods and waters of the old home country. As has been said, a considerable number had eluded the troops in the general round-up of 1838 and had fled to the fastnesses of the high mountains. Here they were joined by others who had managed to break through the guard at Calhoun and other collecting stations, until the whole number of fugitives in hiding amounted to a thousand or more, principally of the mountain Cherokee of North Carolina, the purest-blooded and most conservative of the Nation. About one-half the refugee warriors had put themselves under command of a noted leader named U'tsala, "Lichen," who made his headquarters amid the lofty peaks at the head of Oconaluftee, from which secure hiding place, although reduced to extremity of suffering from starvation and exposure, they defied every effort to effect their capture.

The work of running down these fugitives proved to be so difficult an undertaking and so well-nigh barren of result that when Charley and his sons made their bold stroke for freedom [408] General Scott eagerly seized the incident as an opportunity for compromise. To this end he engaged the services of William H. Thomas, a trader who for more than twenty years had been closely identified with the mountain Cherokee and possessed their full confidence, and authorized him to submit to U'tsala a proposition that if the latter would seize Charley and the others who had been concerned in the attack upon the soldiers and surrender them for punishment, the pursuit would be called off and the fugitives allowed to stay unmolested until an effort could be made to secure permission from the general government for them to remain.

Thomas accepted the commission, and taking with him one or two Indians made his way over secret paths to U'tsala's hiding place. He presented Scott's proposition and represented to the chief that by aiding in bringing Charley's party to punishment according to the rules of war he could secure respite for his sorely pressed followers, with the ultimate hope that they might be allowed to remain in their own country, whereas if he rejected the offer the whole force of the seven thousand troops which had now completed the work of gathering up and deporting the rest of the tribe would be set loose upon his own small band until the last refugee had been either taken or killed.

U'tsala turned the proposition in his mind long and seriously. His heart was bitter, for his wife and little son had starved to death on the mountain side, but he thought of the thousands who were already on their long march into exile and then he looked round upon his little band of followers. If only they might stay, even though a few must be sacrificed, it was better than that all should die--for they had sworn never to leave their country. He consented and Thomas returned to report to General Scott.

Now occurred a remarkable incident which shows the character of Thomas and the masterly influence which he already had over the Indians, although as yet he was hardly more than thirty years old. It was known that Charley and his party were in hiding in a cave of the Great Smokies, at the head of Deep creek, but it was not thought likely that he could be taken without bloodshed and a further delay which might prejudice the whole undertaking. Thomas determined to go to him and try to persuade him to come in and surrender. Declining Scott's offer of an escort, he went alone to the cave, and, getting between the Indians and their guns as they were sitting around the fire near the entrance, he walked up to Charley and announced his message. The old man listened in silence and then said simply, "I will come in. I don't want to be hunted down by my own people." They came in voluntarily and were shot, as has been already narrated, one only, a mere boy, being spared on account of his youth. This boy, now an old man, is still living, Wasitû'na, better known to the whites as Washington. [409]

A respite having thus been obtained for the fugitives, Thomas next went to Washington to endeavor to make some arrangement for their permanent settlement. Under the treaty of New Echota, in 1835, the Cherokee were entitled, besides the lump sum of five million dollars for the lands ceded, to an additional compensation for the improvements which they were forced to abandon and for spoliations by white citizens, together with a per capita allowance to cover the cost of removal and subsistence for one year in the new country. The twelfth article had also provided that such Indians as chose to remain in the East and become citizens there might do so under certain conditions, each head of a family thus remaining to be confirmed in a preemption right to 160 acres. In consequence of the settled purpose of President Jackson to deport every Indian, this permission was canceled and supplementary articles substituted by which some additional compensation was allowed in lieu of the promised preemptions and all individual reservations granted under previous treaties. [410] Every Cherokee was thus made a landless alien in his original country.

The last party of emigrant Cherokee had started for the West in December, 1838. Nine months afterwards the refugees still scattered about in the mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee were reported to number 1,046. [411] By persistent effort at Washington from 1836 to 1842, including one continuous stay of three years at the capital city, Thomas finally obtained governmental permission for these to remain, and their share of the moneys due for improvements and reservations confiscated was placed at his disposal, as their agent and trustee, for the purpose of buying lands upon which they could be permanently settled. Under this authority he bought for them, at various times up to the year 1861, a number of contiguous tracts of land upon Oconaluftee river and Soco creek, within the present Swain and Jackson counties of North Carolina, together with several detached tracts in the more western counties of the same state. The main body, upon the waters of Oconaluftee, which was chiefly within the limits of the cession of 1819, came afterward to be known as the Qualla boundary, or Qualla reservation, taking the name from Thomas' principal trading store and agency headquarters. The detached western tracts were within the final cession of 1835, but all alike were bought by Thomas from white owners. As North Carolina refused to recognize Indians as landowners within the state, and persisted in this refusal until 1866, [412] Thomas, as their authorized agent under the Government, held the deeds in his own name. Before it was legally possible under the state laws to transfer the title to the Indians, his own affairs had become involved and his health impaired by age and the hardships of military service so that his mind gave way, thus leaving the whole question of the Indian title a subject of litigation until its adjudication by the United States in 1875, supplemented by further decisions in 1894.

To Colonel William Holland Thomas the East Cherokee of to-day owe their existence as a people, and for half a century he was as intimately connected with their history as was John Ross with that of the main Cherokee Nation. Singularly enough, their connection with Cherokee affairs extended over nearly the same period, but while Ross participated in their national matters Thomas gave his effort to a neglected band hardly known in the councils of the tribe. In his many-sided capacity he strikingly resembles another white man prominent in Cherokee history, General Sam Houston.

Thomas was born in the year 1805 on Raccoon creek, about two miles from Waynesville in North Carolina. His father, who was related to President Zachary Taylor, came of a Welsh family which had immigrated to Virginia at an early period, while on his mother's side he was descended from a Maryland family of Revolutionary stock. He was an only and posthumous child, his father having been accidentally drowned a short time before the boy was born. Being unusually bright for his age, he was engaged when only twelve years old to tend an Indian trading store on Soco creek, in the present Jackson county, owned by Felix Walker, son of the Congressman of the same name who made a national reputation by "talking for Buncombe." The store was on the south side of the creek, about a mile above the now abandoned Macedonia mission, within the present reservation, and was a branch of a larger establishment which Walker himself kept at Waynesville. The trade was chiefly in skins and ginseng, or "sang," the latter for shipment to China, where it was said to be worth its weight in silver. This trade was very profitable, as the price to the Indians was but ten cents per pound in merchandise for the green root, whereas it now brings seventy-five cents in cash upon the reservation, the supply steadily diminishing with every year. The contract was for three years' service for a total compensation of one hundred dollars and expenses, but Walker devoted so much of his attention to law studies that the Waynesville store was finally closed for debt, and at the end of his contract term young Thomas was obliged to accept a lot of second-hand law books in lieu of other payment. How well he made use of them is evident from his subsequent service in the state senate and in other official capacities.

Soon after entering upon his duties he attracted the notice of Yonaguska, or Drowning-bear (Yâ'na-gûñ'ski, "Bear-drowning-him"), the acknowledged chief of all the Cherokee then living on the waters of Tuckasegee and Oconaluftee--the old Kituhwa country. On learning that the boy had neither father nor brother, the old chief formally adopted him as his son, and as such he was thenceforth recognized in the tribe under the name of Wil-Usdi', or "Little Will," he being of small stature even in mature age. From his Indian friends, particularly a boy of the same age who was his companion in the store, he learned the language as well as a white man has ever learned it, so that in his declining years it dwelt in memory more strongly than his mother tongue. After the invention of the Cherokee alphabet, he learned also to read and write the language.

In 1819 the lands on Tuckasegee and its branches were sold by the Indians, and Thomas's mother soon after removed from Waynesville to a farm which she purchased on the west bank of Oconaluftee, opposite the mouth of Soco, where her son went to live with her, having now set up in business for himself at Qualla. Yonaguska and his immediate connection continued to reside on a small reservation in the same neighborhood, while the rest of the Cherokee retired to the west of the Nantahala mountains, though still visiting and trading on Soco. After several shiftings Thomas finally, soon after the removal in 1838, bought a farm on the northern bank of Tuckasegee, just above the present town of Whittier in Swain county, and built there a homestead which he called Stekoa, after an Indian town destroyed by Rutherford which had occupied the same site. At the time of the removal he was the proprietor of five trading stores in or adjoining the Cherokee country, viz, at Qualla town, near the mouth of Soco creek; on Scott's creek, near Webster; on Cheowa, near the present Robbinsville; at the junction of Valley river and Hiwassee, now Murphy; and at the Cherokee agency at Calhoun (now Charleston), Tennessee. Besides carrying on a successful trading business he was also studying law and taking an active interest in local politics.

In his capacity as agent for the eastern Cherokee he laid off the lands purchased for them into five districts or "towns," which he named Bird town, Paint town, Wolf town, Yellow hill, and Big cove, the names which they still retain, the first three being those of Cherokee clans. [413] He also drew up for them a simple form of government, the execution of which was in his own and Yonaguska's hands until the death of the latter, after which the band knew no other chief than Thomas until his retirement from active life. In 1848 he was elected to the state senate and continued to serve in that capacity until the outbreak of the civil war. As state senator he inaugurated a system of road improvements for western North Carolina and was also the father of the Western North Carolina Railroad (now a part of the Southern system), originally projected to develop the copper mines of Ducktown, Tennessee.

With his colleagues in the state senate he voted for secession in 1861, and at once resigned to recruit troops for the Confederacy, to which, until the close of the war, he gave his whole time, thought, and effort. In 1862 he organized the Thomas Legion, consisting of two regiments of infantry, a battalion of cavalry, a company of engineers, and a field battery, he himself commanding as colonel, although then nearly sixty years of age. Four companies were made up principally of his own Cherokee. The Thomas Legion operated chiefly as a frontier guard for the Confederacy along the mountain region southward from Cumberland gap.

After the close of the conflict he returned to his home at Stekoa and again took charge, unofficially, of the affairs of the Cherokee, whom he attended during the smallpox epidemic of 1866 and assisted through the unsettled conditions of the reconstruction period. His own resources had been swept away by the war, and all his hopes had gone down with the lost cause. This, added to the effects of three years of hardship and anxiety in the field when already almost past the age limit, soon after brought about a physical and mental collapse, from which he never afterward rallied except at intervals, when for a short time the old spirit would flash out in all its brightness. He died in 1893 at the advanced age of nearly ninety, retaining to the last the courteous manner of a gentleman by nature and training, with an exact memory and the clear-cut statement of a lawyer and man of affairs. To his work in the state senate the people of western North Carolina owe more than to that of any other man, while among the older Cherokee the name of Wil-Usdi' is still revered as that of a father and a great chief. [414]

Yonaguska, properly Yâ'nû-gûñ'ski, the adopted father of Thomas, is the most prominent chief in the history of the East Cherokee, although, singularly enough, his name does not occur in connection with any of the early wars or treaties. This is due partly to the fact that he was a peace chief and counselor rather than a war leader, and in part to the fact that the isolated position of the mountain Cherokee kept them aloof in a great measure from the tribal councils of those living to the west and south. In person he was strikingly handsome, being six feet three inches in height and strongly built, with a faint tinge of red, due to a slight strain of white blood on his father's side, relieving the brown of his cheek. In power of oratory he is said to have surpassed any other chief of his day. When the Cherokee lands on Tuckasegee were sold by the treaty of 1819, Yonaguska continued to reside on a reservation of 640 acres in a bend of the river a short distance above the present Bryson City, on the site of the ancient Kituhwa. He afterward moved over to Oconaluftee, and finally, after the Removal, gathered his people about him and settled with them on Soco creek on lands purchased for them by Thomas.

He was a prophet and reformer as well as a chief. When about sixty years of age he had a severe sickness, terminating in a trance, during which his people mourned him as dead. At the end of twenty-four hours, however, he awoke to consciousness and announced that he had been to the spirit world, where he had talked with friends who had gone before, and with God, who had sent him back with a message to the Indians, promising to call him again at a later time. From that day until his death his words were listened to as those of one inspired. He had been somewhat addicted to liquor, but now, on the recommendation of Thomas, not only quit drinking himself, but organized his tribe into a temperance society. To accomplish this he called his people together in council, and, after clearly pointing out to them the serious effect of intemperance, in an eloquent speech that moved some of his audience to tears, he declared that God had permitted him to return to earth especially that he might thus warn his people and banish whisky from among them. He then had Thomas write out a pledge, which was signed first by the chief and then by each one of the council, and from that time until after his death whisky was unknown among the East Cherokee.

Although frequent pressure was brought to bear to induce him and his people to remove to the West, he firmly resisted every persuasion, declaring that the Indians were safer from aggression among their rocks and mountains than they could ever be in a land which the white man could find profitable, and that the Cherokee could be happy only in the country where nature had planted him. While counseling peace and friendship with the white man, he held always to his Indian faith and was extremely suspicious of missionaries. On one occasion, after the first Bible translation into the Cherokee language and alphabet, some one brought a copy of Matthew from New Echota, but Yonaguska would not allow it to be read to his people until it had first been read to himself. After listening to one or two chapters the old chief dryly remarked: "Well, it seems to be a good book--strange that the white people are not better, after having had it so long."