I flatter myself that you have fortitude and perseverance to bear up and cheerfully glide along during our long absence—may Heaven in all kindness protect & guide you, give you comfort in all your trials is the best that I can wish you—I rec’d a letter from brother a few weeks ago. I was glad to hear that he had called to see you—he says you are getting on well and he thinks will do well for some time to come—which I hope is the case I feel great anxiety for you all—I hope our dear ones are learning their books and all that is good and now my dear little ones be obedient to your Ma learn to love your books be industrious and helping domestick [sic] affairs. Learn to love and fear God—and you will have the love and esteem of all good people and it will afford your Pa so much pleasure on his return home to find you—growing up in industry virtue truth and literary accomplishments—your Pa often thinks of you and your dear Ma and Prays that God may protect you all.
William and Charley are both well and send much love to you all—we are making some money but not a fortune in a few days by no means—we hope to do better this winter.—My best wishes to John & Livona S. C. McG & Mary & little ones with all inquiring friends—my best Wishes to each servant—I hope they are good & obt to you and that they will continue so—howdy to all—May heavens choicest blessing attend you all is the most earnest wish & prayer of your ever affectionate husband.
J.D. Phillips
[Margin Note: I am providing much more comfortable winter quarters than we had last winter. We have had no rain here yet. Excuse any mistakes as the bearer is ready to start & I have not time to correct. Think not that our long separation is for the worse but I hope all will yet be for the better. I know that you can very readily appreciate the reasons that induce me to stay here to make something—and I believe and trust that you will persevere and keep all things in as proper order at home as your circumstances will admit. Kiss all the little ones for me 10,000 to yourself.]26
History of Blue Hill by Ben E. Kidd III
Alabama gold miners like James D. Phillips and others who struck out from the southern Piedmont to make their fortune in the West were leaders in the California gold mining fields. They were experienced in the different methods of mining and surviving in a hostile environment. But the trip west was long and fraught with dangers. Ben E. Kidd III in his summary of Phillip’s trip to California referred to H.W. Brands’s The Age of Gold to describe his trip and means of travel.
The most used initial travel route to California for Americans in 1849 was by ship. If the route chosen was a sea voyage around the tip of South America, it required five or six months, depending on the conditions off Cape Horn. The closest and fastest route was by ship to the Central American isthmus in Panama at Chagres, the port on the Caribbean side of Panama. The land crossing was over sixty or so miles of mountains and jungle between Chargres and Panama City on the Pacific side. The first leg of the land crossover was usually made by ascending the Chargres river to Gorgona, a distance of about fifty winding miles using natives in their dugouts. Paddles were used to row upstream until the elevation and rapid current required poles and great effort to push the craft…the final leg taken to reach San Francisco was to catch a ship from Panama City. By late 1849 and during 1850 normal departures were problematic because many ships lost their entire crews who jumped ship in San Francisco to seek their fortunes in the gold fields. Hundreds of ships were left stranded in the harbor for lack of crews to man them.
James D. Phillips’ letter to his wife dated 10 November, 1850, indicates that he passed through Mobile and New Orleans on his trip to California. It is most probable that he chose the isthmus route and if so, he could have departed on the ship Crescent City of the Pacific Mail steamship line. Their price of ocean passage from New Orleans to Chargres and from Panama City to San Francisco inclusive ranged from $200 to $500, depending on the class of shipboard accommodations.
James D. (Dowd) Phillips’ letter of 1850 provides insight into the man himself and his surroundings. He was obviously well educated, pious, and diligent and loved his wife and children deeply. He also wanted to provide for the wellbeing of the two unidentified men from home who accompanied him to the California Mine to work with him. His California mine venture was apparently profitable. He died in 1866 leaving his estate to his wife. His holdings included the 300 acre Winn Creek Place, a 600 acre plantation, land in Clay County and a town home with several adjoining lots in Dadeville on Lafayette Street.27
In the Devil’s Backbone District, Blue Hill, Gregory Hill and Silver Hill were all located on the same vein system, three miles long and in places one hundred feet wide. In the early days of gold mining, a large quantity of alluvial gold was retrieved from Blue Creek, which ran parallel to the large vein. The ore was of a fairly low grade and contained graphite, which caused mercury to slide off the plates of the stamp mill used at the site. By 1850, gold mining activity had subsided. Large numbers of miners headed west to join in the western gold rush taking with them Alabama gold for a grub stake and mining experience that would give them an edge against the novices coming from all over the United States. In Tallapoosa County, mining was left to a few men who were adept at handling both a plow and a gold pan.
Historian Otis Young remarked that the $40 million gold production of the South before 1861 appears relatively miniscule when compared to the $550 to $680 million production estimated for California between 1848 and 1861. However, the effect of the southern gold mining industry on local economies was significant, encouraging speculation and investment in the mining industry.28
3
“It’s Good to Be Shifty in a New Country”
ROBERT GRIERSON
The Creeks, also known as Muscogee, were one of the Five Civilized Tribes who had adapted to the European lifestyle. The more prosperous Indians owned black slaves. Promoting assimilation of the Indians into the white culture, the federal government appointed Indian agents to live among the Indians. Benjamin Hawkins was the Indian agent for the southeast territory and friends with the Robert Grierson family, whom he described as “the most prosperous of the trader families in the Upper Creek Nation.” As a licensed trader with the Creek Indians, Grierson was respected by Indians and by US government representatives, interacting with both on a regular basis. His wife, Sinnuggee, hired women from the Hillabee villages to pick cotton and to work in the fields. Women were paid with a half pint of salt or three strands of small glass beads for each basketful of cotton they picked or a half pint of rum after they picked two basketsful.
In “The Letters of Benjamin Hawkins,” a collection of personal correspondence, Hawkins referred to Grierson’s involvement in the Revolutionary War, stating, “Inasmuch as there is no other reference in Alabama history to any other white man living in what was subsequently the State of Alabama than Mr. Grierson, he should be credited with being Alabama’s only Revolutionary soldier.”29
Grierson’s prominence is also documented in the “Memoirs” of Marinus Willet, a member of Washington’s staff. Willet was sent by President George Washington to invite Alexander McGillivray and the Creek chiefs to the 1790 New York conference and located him “in the Hillibees” at “the hospitable mansion of Mr. Grierson.”30 As conditions worsened for the Creeks and for the Grierson, now Grayson, family, Robert Grierson appealed to Indian agent Benjamin Hawkins:
We are injured in our property, we are told to go to the protection of the Alabama laws—to present our case before an Alabama court. We present our case, and we are not permitted to be heard in behalf of each other. Our cause is adjudged by a jury of Alabama, under the direction of a court of Alabama, administering the law of Alabama. The law, if it contains a single provision which can protect the Indian from outrage, or can redress his wrongs when they have been sustained, is, to this extent, unknown to us. We know it only an instrument by which we are oppressed, and as opposing an insurmountable obstacle against our obtaining redress.31
After the defeat of the Red Sticks and destruction of the
Creek Nation, Robert Grierson and his Creek family remained in the area, where he died in 1825 of natural causes. In the 1830s, his descendants suffered through the displacement of Indians by settlers and speculators who rushed in to claim a piece of America’s new frontier. Descendants of Grierson became known as the Graysons, and some, such as George Washington Grayson, became famous leaders in the federation of tribes in the West.
GRIERSON DESCENDANTS
A direct descendant of Robert Grierson, George Washington Grayson was an officer in the Second Regiment of Creek Confederate Volunteers and commanded Company K. He was for a time treasurer of the Creek Nation of the West, secretary of the five tribes and principal chief of the nation and represented the Indians as a delegate in Congress prior to the admission of Oklahoma.32
Robert Grierson was honored when a Daughters of the American Revolution chapter was organized at Headland, Alabama, on November 12, 1947. The DAR chapter was named Robert Grierson for the only man from the present state of Alabama who fought in the Revolutionary War on the side of the colonists. The irony is many of his descendants were removed from the land he fought to save for American families.
George Washington Grayson wrote a four-volume autobiography that was the basis for Claudio Saunt’s Black, White, and Indian: Race and the Unmaking of an American Family, providing for a modern audience a view of the Grayson family, Native Americans and African Americans during the influx of white settlers, illegal land transactions, slavery and the Trail of Tears.
ALABAMA CENSUS
In 1830, the state population had increased from 127,901 a decade earlier to 309,527 and then to 590,756 in 1840, reflecting the numbers of settlers, miners, entrepreneurs and speculators arriving during the Alabama Fever.
Claudio Saunt notes in Black, White, and Indian, “Thousands of whites moved onto their [Creek] lands, notching trees to mark their claims, sometimes in the middle of cornfields actively cultivated by Creeks” and names Henry Towns and Mr. Rhoden as two offenders. By the end of 1831, the Creeks were desperate. George Washington Grayson appealed to President Andrew Jackson for help, describing the harsh conditions in which the Native Americans lived: “Your White children are fast settling up my country. They are building houses, Mills…and destroying all my timber and games.” Neha Micco, a prominent Creek chief, confessed, “We expect to be driven from our homes.”33 In this hostile environment, the Indians had no protection from the military troops, nor did they possess legal recourse when they were threatened or their property was stolen or damaged. Creek leaders signed the final treaty with the US government, the Treaty of Cusseta, on March 4, 1832, in which “the Creek tribe of Indians cede to the United States all their land, East of the Mississippi river.”34
In 1835, as the Creeks lost their land and legal rights, Alabama’s first gold rush was in full force at Arbachoochee in Cleburne County. George Washington Grayson described the culture of lawlessness in central Alabama during gold fever and land rush days:
Theft reached its greatest proportions in the first three months of 1835, just before charges of corruption led the government to suspend all sales. One might expect the Graysons to have survived the onslaught, like most Creeks, quietly and desperately. A few Creeks did not survive at all. They starved to death, died in drunken brawls, or were shot down by white intruders.35
FRAUD IN LAND DEALINGS
Land speculators took advantage of the Creeks’ situation by illegally purchasing Creek allotments and selling them to settlers. Saunt observed, “Other strikers dispensed with legal ruses and simply ran the rightful residents off their land and set fire to their houses.” Hostilities between whites and Indians resulted in a final conflict in 1835, after which “U.S. troops, assisted by Georgia and Alabama militia and led by General Winfield Scott, forcibly rounded up Creeks and sent them to Indian Territory. Some went in chains, under the watch of armed soldiers. Creeks had to begin life anew in lands west of the Mississippi.”36
Creek leader Opothleyaola described how unscrupulous speculators profited from the sale of land allotted to the Creek families by the US government: “A ‘fiendish designing scoundrel’ would hire an Indian to impersonate the owner of an allotment. After certification of the sale, the impersonator returned the money to the purchaser, saved five or ten dollars, ‘given to the Indian as a premium for his rascality.’” Opothleyahola concluded that in this way “a few hundred dollars and four or five Indians could sell all the land in the Creek purchase.…In the other common method of swindling, strikers would purchase land from the rightful owner. By force or fraud, they later recovered the payment from the seller. Said one striker, the ‘best of it was’ that this method allowed him to recoup his entire outlay.”37
JOHNSON JONES HOOPER: THE OLD SOUTHWEST HUMORIST (1815–1861)
No one was more familiar with the rugged elements of the Old Southwest—the tall tales, dishonest land transactions and frontier humor—than humorist Johnson Jones Hooper. In 1835, Hooper moved to Dadeville from Wilmington, North Carolina, during Alabama’s “flush days.” He was attracted by the adventure of living on the Alabama frontier and building a prosperous life in the Old Southwest. Based on his experiences as Tallapoosa County’s first census taker, Hooper wrote the satirical essay “Taking the Census in Alabama,” which was published in 1843 in the East Alabamian newspaper and later reprinted in William T. Porter’s Spirit of the Times. As editor of the East Alabamian newspaper during the gold rush years of 1842–45, Hooper heard stories of and perhaps witnessed deals made between land speculators and Creeks, who were being pushed out of their homeland.
From Hooper’s book The Adventures of Captain Simon Suggs, the following story demonstrates how Suggs made every business deal “work to his good” and fulfill his philosophy that “it’s good to be shifty in a new country.” The opening lines of Chapter Six set the tone for the manner in which Indians were treated: “There are few of the old settlers of the Creek territory in Alabama, who do not recollect the great Indian Council held at Dudley’s store, in Tallapoosa County, in September of the year 1835. In those days, an occasion the sort drew together white man and Indian from all quarters of the ‘nation’—the one to cheat, the other to be cheated.”
The story focuses on speculators who wish to gain valuable land owned by an Indian known as “Sky Chief,” who adamantly refuses to sell the land. A speculator named Eggleston gains control of the land through courting and marrying Sky Chief ’s fifteen-year-old daughter Litka. Eggleston promises to take care of Litka and her father when the rest of the Indians are forced to leave; they can stay with him “by the graves of their fathers.38 Sky Chief decides this is “good talk” and signs away his land title to Eggleston, who sells the land for $3,000 and then refuses even to provide a wagon to help them during the Indian removal to the West. The story was an episode in Johnson’s writing about Creek frauds.
Other episodes in Hooper’s Captain Simon Suggs illustrate how frontier con men like Simon Suggs are eager to “best” other land speculators who are no more honest than he is. Such is the case in the tale of Widow Rugsby and the land she has promised to sell Captain Simon Suggs. Perhaps flattered by the captain’s attention and his military title, the widow refuses to consider attractive offers from other speculators. Knowing the captain has no money, the other speculators persist in their offers to the widow. The captain disappears for several days after suggesting he is going to borrow money from a friend. He returned before the widow sells the property to one of the other speculators. Seeing two bulging saddle bags, the speculators, “reckoned” the captain had “struck it rich.” They were eager to obtain the choice parcel of land and paid him more than “two and a half times” what he had paid the widow. With the transaction completed, the captain leaves, later emptying the saddlebags of rocks on the side of the road, congratulating himself for his good business sense and lack of greed.39
TALLAPOOSA COUNTY 1840 CENSUS
In his role as narrator in “Taking the Census in Alab
ama,” Johnson Jones Hooper describes Tallapoosa County as “thinly populated” in many places; the hill people were suspicious of census takers coming “to count the noses of the men, women, children, and chickens resident upon those nine hundred square miles of rough country which constitute the county of TaHapoosa.” This job “took Hooper into every nook and comer [ sic] of the hilly, muddy county and gave him ample opportunity to see Alabama frontier life at its crudest.” Seeing Hooper approaching at a distance, children would run to warn their parents that “the chicken man was coming.” Settlers feared the census man would count and tax every chicken, child and possession they might have. Some of the backwoods women refused to name their children and instead just gave them a number. When Hooper finished, the total count was “2,318 white males, 2,106 white females, 2,013 slaves and 9 free colored persons 6,444 in all.”40
CAPTAIN SIMON SUGGS, LATE OF THE TALLAPOOSA VOLUNTEERS
As editor of Lafayette’s first newspaper, the East Alabamian, Hooper began writing Whig editorials and short stories. When he lived at the old Dennis Hotel in Dadeville, he; a brother, George; and Bird H. Young entertained themselves by swapping stories about the “backwoods” folk with whom they came in contact, exaggerating the dishonesty and ignorance of people to create colorful tales, characteristic of the Old Southwest humor.
Intrigued by the tales and his own experiences with settlers, speculators and clients, Hooper wrote in 1845 what is arguably the most influential work of fiction produced in the Old Southwest: Some Adventures of Captain Simon Suggs, Late of the Tallapoosa Volunteers. In the character of Simon Suggs, he created the stereotypical frontier con man, who appeared, slightly modified, in the character of King in Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn and in William Faulkner’s character Abner Snopes. In his notes, Johnson Jones Hooper reveals he based the character of Simon Suggs on the real Bird H. Young, who came to central Alabama a year after Jackson’s Indian Removal Act was passed and Tallapoosa County was formed. Hooper followed in 1835. By 1840, the two had met since B.H. Young appears on Tallapoosa County’s first census as number 137.
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