Talking Walls

1
Talking Walls

• Jeff Bishop
• July 10, 2006

2
When was America first settled?
3
Human settlement

• Paleoindian Period (ca. 12,0008000 B.C.)
• Archaic Period (ca. 80001000 B.C.)
• Woodland Period (ca. 1000 B.C.A.D. 1000)
• Mississippian Period of North Georgia (ca. a.d.
  10001540)

4
(No Transcript)
5
(No Transcript)
6
(No Transcript)
7
(No Transcript)
8

• Rangel on Ulibahali a very fine village close
  to a large river.
• Sept. 1540
• Elvas large timber sunk deep and firmly into
  the earth, having many long poles the size of the
  arm, placed crosswise to nearly the height of a
  lance, with embrasures, and coated with mud
  inside and out, having loop-holes for archery.
• Rangel said that, at a distance, such timbers
  looked like a fine wall or rampart and that
  such stockades are very strong.

9

• Elvas Ten or twelve chiefs came to him on the
  road, from the Cacique of that province,
  tendering his service, bearing bows and arrows
  and wearing bunches of feathers.
• There were many Indians lying in wait for them
  planning to rescue the chief of Coça from the
  Christians because they were his subjects, said
  Rangel. They had determined to wrest the Cacique
  of Coça from his power, should that chief have
  called on them, reports Elvas.
• But instead the chief of Coça ordered the
  Indians to lay aside their arms, and it was
  done, said Rangel.

10

• As usual, DeSoto required food, labor, and women.
  After some words between him and the Governor,
  proffering mutual service, he gave the tamemes
  that were requisite and thirty women as slaves,
  said Elvas. Rangel reports that only twenty
  women were given, but agrees that the discussions
  were peaceful.

11

• DeSoto lost two men here, a Spaniard and a black
  man. The white man, a gentleman of Salamanca
  named Mancano, was apparently quite taken with
  the local cuisine. The grapes, Rangel said, were
  as good as those grown in the vineyards of
  Spain. And while they had reported that in Coosa
  they had eaten very good ones, these of
  Ulibahali were the best.

12

• Elvas agrees it was the grapes that got him.
  Mancano strayed off in search of the grapes,
  which are good here, and plenty, he said, and he
  was lost.
• Rangel noted that Mancano had kept by himself
  for some time, walking alone and melancholy. He
  had asked the other soldiers to leave him to
  himself, and he went missing shortly thereafter.
  So it was impossible to say whether Mancano had
  left DeSotos group of his own will or whether
  he lost his way.
• The other man, Johan Biscayan, a negro, who
  spoke Spanish and who belonged to Captain Johan
  Ruiz Lobillo, was also missing. said Rangel.

13
(No Transcript)
14
(No Transcript)
15
(No Transcript)
16

• Davila Padilla
• It was Gods will that they should soon get
  within sight of that place which had been so far
  famed and so much thought about (Coosa) and, yet,
  it did not have above thirty houses, or a few
  more. There were seven little hamlets in its
  district, five of them smaller and two larger and
  Coza itself, which name prevailed for the fame it
  had enjoyed in its antiquity. It looked so much
  the worse to the Spaniards for having been
  depicted so grandly, and they had thought it to
  be so much better. Its inhabitants had been said
  to be innumerable, the site itself as being wider
  and more level than Mexico, the springs had been
  said to be many and of very clear water, food
  plentiful and gold and silver in abundance,
  which, without judging rashly, was that which the
  Spaniards desired most. Truly the land was
  fertile, but it lacked cultivation. There was
  much forest, but little fruit, because as it was
  not cultivated the land was all unimproved and
  full of thistles and weeds. Those they had
  brought along as guides, being people who had
  been there before, declared that they must have
  been bewitched when this country seemed to them
  so rich and populated as they had stated. The
  arrival of Spaniards in former years had driven
  the Indians up into the forests, where they
  preferred to live among the wild beasts who did
  no harm to them, but whom they could master, than
  among the Spaniards at whose hands they received
  injuries, although they were good to them. Those
  from Coza received the guests well, liberally,
  and with kindness, and the Spaniards appreciated
  this, the more so as the actions of their
  predecessors did not call for it ... Every day
  little groups of them went searching through the
  country and they found it all deserted and
  without news of gold ...

17

• Woe is our nation! their descendants later
  recalled in a myth about the destruction of
  Coosa. We were the greatest of all the nations
  our tus-e-ki-yas were numerous, reaching out and
  known and dreaded the world over. But it is not
  so now great is the humiliation that has fallen
  on us. Shame and humiliation is now our portion.

18

• Cherokees 1760s
• Coosawattee
• Ustanauli
• Hightower

19

• Thomas Petitt, a mixed-blood Cherokee, reported
  in 1829 that
• Toward the close of the Revolutionary War,
  General Pickens, with an army, burnt the towns of
  Chota ... He was taken prisoner with his mother
  and many others, but the general left him and his
  mother in the Nation when he took most of the
  prisoners away with him.
• John Wright, a white man married to a Cherokee,
  also said in 1829
• About the close of the Revolutionary War,
  General Andrew Pickens of South Carolina and old
  General (Elijah) Clark of Georgia marched an army
  into the Nation and penetrated the country as far
  down the Etowah as the Oostanaula, into the
  latter river. He was then a boy in the Hightower
  Village. The inhabitants run and left their town
  but the army did not cross the river at that
  place nor attack the Hightower Village.

20

• A Cherokee named Rain Crow remembered After the
  close of the Revolutionary War, his father, for
  fear of the whites, fled from Seneca, South
  Carolina to a new Cherokee town at the confluence
  of the Etowah and Oostanaula rivers in Georgia.
  The town previously the Coosa town of Ulibahali
  -- was now known as Hightower or Etowah Old
  Town. Even though it was acknowledged as an old
  site, white man John Wright reported that when he
  came there in about 1770 there was no
  respectable village at that place.

21

• Richard Dick Rowe, a mixed-blood Cherokee, said
  in 1829 that
• His father many years ago lived up the Holston
  and when he was a small boy about the close of
  the Revolutionary War, the war between the whites
  and the Cherokees became very oppressive to the
  Cherokees, so much so, that his father removed
  the family to the south side of the Etowah or
  what is commonly called the Hightower, where his
  father considered them safe.

22

• The Creeks were still living there when the
  Cherokees came.
• At the time they settled there, there was a
  small Creek village ... His father had not been
  there a year when the Creek village broke up and
  moved down the country to the Newyorker villages
  on the Tallapoosa.
• When Rain Crow came to Hightower he was a small
  boy and did not travel much. But even as a boy
  he knew that Creeks still lived on the south side
  of the Etowah, and joined by an ever increasing
  number of Cherokee refugees on the north side.
• The Creeks agreed, he said, that should the
  whites drive the Cherokees from their towns, they
  might go and settle on the south side of the
  Etowah River, where they would be out of reach.
  The Creeks, Rain Crow said, never gave them the
  land, only allowed them to live there on these
  conditions.

23

• John Sevier, whom the Cherokees knew as
  Nolichucky Jack, was notorious for his scorched
  earth raids into these Cherokee towns. Now, in
  the fall of 1793, he was leading another punitive
  raid of 800 volunteers against the Cherokee he
  wound up fighting a decisive battle at the very
  spot visited by DeSoto and the Coosa chief 150
  years earlier.

24

• I marched in pursuit of the large body of
  Indians, Sevier reported. He and his party of
  about 700 militiamen marched straight for the
  heart of the Cherokee Nation, reaching the
  capital town of Oostanaula on Oct. 14.
• We there made some Cherokee prisoners, who
  informed us that John Watts headed the army
  lately out on our frontiers, said Sevier. The
  prisoners informed him that the warriors came
  from Turkey Town (modern day Centre, Alabama),
  Salacoa ( just below Fairmount), Coosawattee
  (Carters Lake), and several other principal
  towns. The Cherokee warriors almost to a man
  (were) out, joined by a large number of the upper
  Creeks, who had passed through Oostanaula only a
  few days before Seviers arrival.

25

• The warriors had made for a town at the mouth
  of the Coosa River, Sevier was told, for
  Hightower.
• We, after refreshing the troops, marched for
  that place, taking the path that leads to that
  town, along which the Creeks had marched, in five
  large trails, Sevier said. This would have led
  them through Oothcaloga and what is known today
  as Adairsville and Shannon, then southwest along
  what is now called Old Calhoun Road.
• On the afternoon of Oct. 17, Sevier and his
  troops arrived. Sevier ordered Col. Kelly to take
  his regiment and cross the Etowah River, but the
  Creeks and a number of Cherokees had intrenched
  themselves to obstruct the passage, he reported.

26

• Col. Kelly and his men went down the river half
  a mile below the ford and began to cross at a
  private place, where there was no ford, Sevier
  said. Kelly and some of his men began to swim
  across and the Indians, discovering this
  movement, immediately left their intrenchments
  and ran down the river to oppose their
  passage...
• Walking Stick corroborated this episode in
  testimony given Dec. 21, 1829
• A group of Cherokees met the whites on the Etowah
  River about one mile above the mouth of the
  Oostanaula, Walking Stick said. A party of
  Cherokees met the general and fought him and he
  turned back again and recrossed the Etowah.
  Walking Stick was among a group of 100
  reinforcements who arrived too late.

27

• But it was a diversion tactic a lure. As soon
  as the Indians left their entrenchments, Capt.
  Evans immediately with his company of mounted
  infantry strained their hoses back to the upper
  ford and began to cross the river, said Sevier.
• Very few had got to the south bank before the
  Indians, who had discovered their mistake,
  returned and recieved them furiously at the
  rising of the bank, said Sevier. An engagement
  instantly took place and became very warm, and
  notwithstanding the enemy were at least four to
  one in numbers, besides the advantage of
  situation, Capt. Evans with his heroic company
  put them in a short time utterly to flight.
• The Indians left several dead on the ground,
  Sevier said, but carried others away both on
  foot and on horse. Bark and trails of blood from
  the wounded were to be seen in every quarter.

28

• The encampment fell into our hands, with a
  number of their guns, many of which were of the
  Spanish sort, with budgets, blankets and match
  coats, together with some horses. We lost three
  men in this engagement, which is all that have
  fell during the time of our route, although this
  last attack was the fourth the enemy had made
  upon us, but in the others repulsed without loss.
• After the last engagement we crossed the main
  Coosa, then proceeded on our way down the main
  river near the Turnip Mountain, destroying in our
  way several Creek and Cherokee towns, which they
  had settled together on each side of the river,
  and from which they have all fled with apparent
  precipitation, leaving almost everything behind
  them. Neither did they after the last engagement
  attempt to annoy or interrupt us on our march, in
  any manner whatever. I have got reason to believe
  their ardor and spirit was well checked.
• The party flogged at Hightower were those which
  had been out with Watts. There are three or four
  men slightly wounded and two or three horses
  killed, but the Indians did not, as I heard of,
  get a single horse from us the time we were out.
  We took and destroyed nearly 300 beeves, many of
  which were of the best and largest kind. Of
  course their losing so much provision must
  distress them very much.
• Many women and children might have been taken,
  but from motives of humanity I did not encourage
  it to be done, and several taken were suffered to
  make their escape. Your Excellency knows the
  disposition of many that were out on this
  expedition, and can readily account for this
  conduct.

29

• From Hughes Reynolds Coosa River Valley
• The last sentence in this report was evidently
  intended to cover up a matter that happened
  immediately after the Battle of Etowah. An Indian
  woman who had been taken prisoner with her child
  was standing close by a wounded officer of
  Seviers army. The officer said irritably, Take
  her out of my sight. One of the officers
  friends raised his gun and shot the woman dead.
  He then grasped the child by the legs and dashed
  its brains against a tree.

30
(No Transcript)
31
(No Transcript)
32
The Cherokee Way

• The Seven Clans (Wolf, Deer, Bird, Paint, Blue
  Savannah, Wind/ Twisters / Longhair, Wild Potato)
  
• Matrilineal
• Blood Law

33
White Encroachment

• The Traders / intermarriage / dependence on trade
  goods
• The Federal Road
• Inns / Taverns / Ferries
• The 1802 Compact Agreement with GA
• The Civilization Program.
• Missions
• Acculturation / Constitution / New Echota
• Clans abolished 1820. Blood law abolished.
• Loss of land / Trade deficits / bribes

34
The Ross-Ridge Feud
35
Removal

• Nearly every time anthropologist Charles Hudson
  refers to the removal of the Southeastern Indians
  from their eastern homelands, he puts the word
  removal, in quotation marks. Removal, he
  said, is a gentle, almost antiseptic word for
  one of the harshest, most crudely opportunistic
  acts in American history. It was act that could
  only have been perpetrated on a conquered people.

36

• May 24, 1838 (began on 26th)
• In GA, 10 forts and five camps
• Fort Means, located on a spring-fed creek along
  the old Cass County / Floyd County line (one land
  lot west of the current Bartow / Floyd line),
  served as the collection point for 467 Cherokee
  prisoners. Capt. John Means commanded 68 men from
  here.
• Camp Scott in Western Floyd County.

37

• Wm. Cotter spoke for most Georgians when he said
  the whites had a perfect right to demand
  immediate Cherokee removal
• Mississippi was admitted as a State and had
  been in possession of her territory for
  twenty-one years. Alabama, admitted in 1819, had
  been in possession of her territory nineteen
  years. Much-maligned Georgia had been kept from
  her rights thirty-six years, from 1802 to 1838.
  Take notice of this when you see in encyclopedias
  and other books that Georgia is charged with
  robbing the Indians of their lands.

38

• Cotter sets the scene
• The spring of 1838 opened most beautifully.
  There was no cold weather after the first of
  March. Vegetation advanced without any backsets
  from cold. The buds burst into leaves and
  blossoms the woods were green and gay and merry
  with the singing birds. The Indians started to
  work in their fields earlier than ever before.
  ... That spring you could see the smoke of their
  log heaps or piles of ashes where the boys had
  been. Fence corners and hedgerows were cleaned
  out. The ground was well plowed and the corn
  planted better than ever before. Soon it was
  knee-high and growing nicely. They cultivated
  only the richest bottoms.
• After all the warning and with the soldiers in
  their midst, the inevitable day appointed found
  the Indians at work in their houses and in their
  fields. It is remembered as well as if it had
  been seen yesterday, that two or three dropped
  their hoes and ran as fast as they could when
  they saw the soldiers coming into the field.
  After that they made no effort to get out of the
  way. The men handled them gently, but picked them
  up in the road, in the field, anywhere they found
  them, part of a family at a time, and carried
  them to the post.

39

• There are few records of the round-up that the
  Cherokees themselves recorded, but a woman named
  Oo-loo-cha, the widow of Sweet Water, wrote the
  following remembrance on Mar. 5, 1842
• The soldiers came and took us from our home.
  They first surrounded our house and they took the
  mare while we were at work in the fields and they
  drove us out of doors and did not permit us to
  take anything with us, not even a second change
  of clothes. Only the clothes we had on. And they
  shut the doors after they turned us out. They
  would not permit any of us to enter the house to
  get any clothing, but drove us off to a fort that
  was built at New Echota. They kept us in the fort
  about three days and then marched us to Rosss
  Landing. And still on foot, even our little
  children. They kept us for about three days at
  Rosss Landing and sent us off on a boat to this
  country.

40

• Rebecca Neugin was only thee years old when her
  family was taken prisoner by the soldiers, but
  her mother had related what happened that day
• After they took us away my mother begged them to
  let her go back and get some bedding. So they let
  her go back and she brought what bedding and a
  few cooking utensils she could carry and had to
  leave behind all of our other household
  possessions.

41

• Brainerd, May 26, 1838 Saturday
• ...The soldiers at the various posts now
  commenced that work which will doubtless long
  eclipse the glory of the United States....
• In Georgia were supposed to be about 8,000
  Cherokees. These, in general were taken just as
  they were found by the soldiers, without
  permission to stop either for friends or
  property.
• As the soldiers advanced toward a ... house,
  two little children fled in fright to the woods.
  The woman pleaded for permission to seek them, or
  wait till they came in, giving positive
  assurances that she would then follow on, and
  join the company. But all entreaties were vain
  and it was not till a day or two after that she
  would get permission for one of her friends to go
  back after the lost children.
• A man deaf and dumb, being surprised at the
  approach of armed men, attempted to make his
  escape, and because he did not obey and hear the
  command of his pursuers, was shot dead on the
  spot.
• One man it is said, had shot a deer, and was
  taking it home to meet the joyful calculations of
  his family, when at once he was surprised taken
  prisoner to a fort.
• Women absent from their families on visits, or
  for other purposes, were seized, and men far from
  their wives and children, were not allowed to
  return, and also children being forced from home,
  were dragged off among strangers. Cattle, horses,
  hogs, household furniture, clothing and money not
  with them when taken were left. And it is said
  that the white inhabitants around, stood with
  open arms to seize whatever property they could
  put their hands on. Some few who had friends to
  speak for them, were assisted afterwards in
  getting some part of their lost goods.

42

• His fellow missionary, Rev. Evan Jones, said that
  Well-furnished houses were left a prey to
  plunderers, who, like hungry wolves, follow in
  the trail of the captors. These wretches rifle
  the houses, and strip the helpless, unoffending
  owners of all they have on earth....
• Rev. Jones said it was a painful sight to see
  his fellow whites descend upon the Cherokee
  farms. The property of many has been taken, he
  said, and sold before their eyes for almost
  nothing the sellers and buyers in many cases
  having combined to cheat the poor Indians...

43

• Butrick continues
• Thus in two or three days about 8,000 people,
  many of whom were in good circumstances, and some
  rich, were rendered homeless, houseless and
  penniless, and exposed to all the ills of
  captivity.
• In driving them a platoon of soldiers walked
  before and behind, and a file of soldiers on each
  side, armed with all the common appalling
  instruments of death while the soldiers, it is
  said would often use the same language as if
  driving hogs, and goad them forward with their
  bayonets.
• One man, on being pricked thus, and seeing his
  children thus goaded on, picked up a stone and
  struck a soldier but for this he was handcuffed,
  and on arriving at the fort, was punished and on
  starting again was whipped a hundred lashes.

44

• Mooneys famous summary of the round-up also
  mentions families at dinner ... startled by the
  sudden gleam of bayonets in the doorway... These
  families were driven with blows and oaths along
  the weary miles of travel leading to the
  stockades.
• Men were seized in the fields all along the
  roads. Women were taken from their wheels, and
  children from their play. In many cases, as they
  turned for one last look as they crossed the
  ridge, they saw their homes in flames, fired by
  the lawless rabble that followed on the heels of
  the soldiers to loot and to pillage. So keen were
  these outlaws on the scent that in some instances
  they were driving off the cattle and other stocks
  of the Indians almost before the soldiers had
  started their owners in the other direction.
  Systematic hunts were made by the same men for
  Indian graves to rob them of the silver pendants
  and other valuables deposited with the dead.

45
(No Transcript)
46
(No Transcript)
47
(No Transcript)