American Dreams Trilogy

by Michael Phillips

  The white council was made up of men fifty years and older. Most were chiefs and they performed both secular and religious functions. The highest authority in the nation was the Great High Priest, whose Cherokee name was Uku. The Great High Priest had a principal assistant, a speaker, and seven counselors representing the seven clans, whom he consulted on all matters of importance.

  On the red council sat military officials who had been elected or acquired their rank from bravery in battle. They were honored with victory and scalp dances and sat in places of honor in the town council houses. The national white and red chief had up to a dozen officers, the two highest were the right-hand man and the speaker.

  Upon any threat of war or attack, messengers were dispatched to the Uku and the national tribal council summoned. If it was determined that war was required, the war chief summoned his advisors to make plans for the battle strategy.

  Each warrior carried his own provisions into battle, as well as his own weapons and armor—a shield and club for defense, an ax, knife, lance, bow, and quiver of arrows. Helmets were worn for head protection—three-inch-wide headbands of thick buffalo hide, whose upper edge held a tightly packed circle of upright feathers painted red. Twenty-four-inch-wide shields were also made of thick buffalo skin, boiled and hardened in the sun. When starvation threatened from long engagements away from home, some warriors roasted and ate their shields, and were afterward called “shield eaters.”

  The Cherokee crafted precision war bows of oak, ash, and hickory, and arrows of deadly accuracy. For maximum flexibility, the bows were coated with bear oil, then warmed by fire so that the oil would penetrate the wood. War bows were up to five feet in length and could support more than a fifty pound draw. Strings of great strength and durability were fashioned from twisted bear gut. Stone-headed cane arrows averaged thirty inches in length and were fletched with split turkey feathers.

  When warriors from each town and village were assembled, armed, and ready, their war chief and their war officers led them in rapid procession for the long march to the place of meeting at the national capital. The Great War Priest wrapped his divining crystal in seven sacred deerskins from the treasure house and gave the bundle to his assistant. The priest then took up a pottery ark filled with live coals from the sacred fire. With his assistant and the war chiefs behind him, he marched through the town to bestow his blessing upon the upcoming battle.

  Once the entire army was assembled in the capital, a twenty-four-hour fast was celebrated, and then the war chief led his warriors away to battle.

  On their return to their own village after battle, the warriors stayed at their town council houses for twenty-four days before returning to their wives and families. This was a time for extensive purification rituals to rid themselves of uncleanness contacted during fighting, and also for the treatment of wounds and injuries. Warriors who distinguished themselves in battle were honored by a new name that was publicly bestowed by a general council of town leaders. Killer was the highest name that could be given, and the names Raven, Owl, Wolf, and Fox were also common.

  Though DeSoto himself died in the New World without finding the gold he sought, a century later, the Spanish were smelting gold, silver, and copper on Cherokee lands. The invasion had begun. Gradually the French claimed more and more of the land drained by rivers flowing into the Mississippi. As the European population in the Americas grew and the more adventuresome of its number spread west, competition for control of vast tracts of verdant and forested land, as well as economic rivalry for the Indian fur trade became fierce between the rival European powers. The French enjoyed friendly relations with the Indian tribes in the Mississippi and Tennessee regions, who found them polite and gracious, even-tempered, and understanding toward native ways. As French influence among native tribes expanded north and east, control of the Indian trade on the headwaters of the upper Tennessee River valley took on heightened importance to the British colonial economy of the Carolinas.

  In the early 18th century, both English and French in America edged their colonial claims closer and closer to one another. The nation of the great Cherokee tribe was caught in the middle of inevitable conflict between them.13

  Note 2—Seven Cherokee in England, and the Articles of Friendship and Commerce

  “Sir Alexander Cuming took his charges once again from the Mermaid Tavern up the rise to the summit of the hill where Windsor Castle looked out over the surrounding countryside. The Baronet led the way… behind him in single file came the Indians, and trader Wiggan brought up the rear.

  “Seayagusta was second in line. He wore a scarlet jacket and breechclout, but the rest were dressed only in breechclouts, which were called aprons in the newspaper.

  “The Cherokee had spent much time on their face and body decorations. Each had his own distinctive style, streaks and whirls and spots of reds and blues and greens.

  “The warriors had gathered their long black hair into strands tied with ribbons so that these queues of hair arched from the back of each head like a horse’s tail. Several had turkey feathers thrust into their hair. Collannah wore the gaudy feathers of the Carolina parakeet, and the young Ukwaneequa was decked with the iridescent feathers of a wood duck.

  “The people of Windsor had become accustomed to seeing the Indians about their town, but they had never seen them painted and adorned as they were this day. Men and women cheered as they passed, and merchants ran out of their shops to view the parade” (The Cherokee Crown of Tannassy, William O. Steele, pp. 109-10).

  “London newspapers of the day reported that the Cherokees’ audience with His Majesty went off splendidly, the seven so-called savages from North America kneeling, as did Sir Alexander, at the proper time. As related by Sir Alexander in his journal, he (Sir Alexander) “laid the Crown of the Cherokee Nation at His Majesty’s Feet, with the five Eagle Tails, as an Emblem of His Majesty’s Sovereignty, and four Scalps of Indian Enemies; all of which His Majesty was pleased to accept of.”

  “When afterward the group was conducted to the gallery over the terrace, one Cherokee carrying a bow caught sight of an elk in the park below and had to be restrained from demonstrating his marksmanship to his royal host. Later, at the command of His Majesty, Cuming’s wards were provided a banquet of leg of mutton and saddle and loin of mutton at The Mermaid. This repast was unquestionably devoured without the aid of cutlery.

  “After their reception at Windsor Castle, the Cherokees became the rage of London. Wined, feted, and followed by great crowds, they visited the Tower, attended theatrical performances, fairs, and were entertained sumptuously by a group of London merchants interested in South Carolina trade at the Carolina Coffee House in Birchin Lane. Habited in rich garments laced in gold presented to them by His Majesty, they strolled through St. James’s Park, visited Westminster Abby and the Houses of Parliament, and sat for a group portrait and single portraits for His Grace the Duke of Montague. And, in early September, they were grandly driven in two coaches to Whitehall, escorted “by a sergeant of the Foot Guards and file and a half of grenadiers,” to meet the Lords Commissioners, who acquainted them with the Articles of Agreement drawn up to regulate trade in their country—articles of agreement that would bind the Cherokee Nation to England for the next fifty years” (The Cherokees, Grace Steele Woodward, pp. 64-66).

  After the seven Cherokee who had accompanied Sir Alexander Cuming had been in England for three months, a document was drawn up and, in September of 1730, the Articles of Friendship and Commerce were presented to the seven Cherokees for approval. They were signed in Sir Alexander Cuming’s home in London, and included the following provisions: The Cherokee committed to trade exclusively with England, whites committing crimes in Cherokee lands were guaranteed trial in English colonial courts, and the Cherokee pledged to English military service should England go to war with France or any foreign power.

  A last minute misunderstanding, however, nearly turned the signing into disaster.

  Afte
r meeting with the king’s representatives, the seven returned to their quarters. There they demanded an exact translation of all that had just occurred in the meeting, and what exactly the Articles of Friendship said. When Wiggan translated, and they learned that Oukah-Ulah had recognized “The Great King’s right to the Country of Carolina,” several of the seven were furious and immediately went into formal counsel. The majority voted to repudiate the claim by killing both Wiggan and their chief Oukah-Ulah. Eventually calm returned to the discussion. They agreed to submit the treaty to their priest and let him decide the outcome.

  A great ceremony was held to formalize the agreement. Ukwaneequa, now speaking for the group, addressed the King’s Commissioners in English, impressing the British with his dignity and stature that was in inverse proportion to his slight frame.

  “We look upon the Great King George,” said Ukwaneequa in English, “as the Sun, and as our father, and upon ourselves as his children. For though we are red, and you are white yet our hands and hearts are joined together. What we have seen, our children from generation to generation will always remember. In war we shall always be with you.”

  With a dramatic flourish, Ukwaneequa laid the white eagle feathers brought by the seven on the table along with the document. “This is our way of talking,” he said, “which is the same thing to us as your letters in the book are to you, and to your beloved men we deliver these feathers in confirmation of all we have said.”

  The seven Cherokee men returned home after five months with many tales to tell of the strange land across the sea called England. They were not accompanied home by Sir Alexander Cuming, who was detained in England on charges brought against him by the colonists of Charlestown for embezzlement and fraud. He remained beloved by the Cherokee, however, with many of whom he had become close friends. Ever after, he was honored as “a man whose talk is upright and who came to the Cherokee like a warrior from His Majesty.”

  It was upon his return that the stature of Ukwaneequa, though both the youngest and smallest of the group, began to grow. Though Oukah-Ulah had been appointed leader of the group at the outset, Ukwaneequa’s knowledge of English and skillful persuasive and oratory powers was thereafter looked to by his comrades to tell of the visit to their people.

  When the Articles of Friendship were explained to the tribal counsel of the Cherokee nation, the older chiefs questioned the seven intently about what promises they had made to “the Man who lives across the Great Water,” and whether they had, as some rumors were reporting, given away ancient Cherokee lands. But they were assured both by Ukwaneequa and Eleazar Wiggan, their faithful friend and translator, that the seven had been loyal and had represented the tribe faithfully.

  Ever after his trip Ukwaneequa lost no opportunity to recount in great detail, to young and old alike, their adventures in England, and what amazing and spectacular things he and his comrades had seen. Ukwaneequa gave this personal account of the events twenty-five years later: “He said… that it would have much better effect if some of us would go along with him. But after some questions were asked about England and how far it might be to it not one of our people would consent to go…. At night Mr. Wiggins the Interpreter came to the house where I was, and told me that the Warrior (Cuming) had a particular favor for me, and that if I would consent to go he would be indifferent whether any other went; and Mr. Wiggan pressed me very much to accept of his Invitation. I was then a young man but I thought it would be right to Consider before I spoke, I told him I understood England was a great Way off. That I should be long in going there, I should be detained there a Considerable time, and would be long in returning and I did not know how I should get back. But he assured me the distance was very much magnified and that I might be back at the end of the Summer or at least some time in the fall.

  “Upon which assurances I agreed to go. Early next morning One of our people came to me…. He then told me that neither he nor any other had intended to have gone but since I was to go That I should not go alone, for that he would accompany me and that he knew of Two or three more that he could persuade to go accordingly they were spoke to and agreed making it all Six and we Immediately got ready and soon set off.”14

  Note 3—The Difficult Years of 1730-1755

  It was not only war that brought change to the Cherokee. The effects of the white man’s encroachment were felt in many ways. DeSoto and those who followed him to the New World brought both conquest and strange diseases that the natives were unable to withstand, diseases capable of wiping out entire villages. Most southeastern tribes suffered a 75 percent decimation from European epidemics after 1540. No one knows how many were lost in the first epidemics, but by 1674 the combined native population of the southeast U.S. was estimated at about 50,000. Their once great cities of commerce were gone, their numbers reduced to a fraction their former levels. Gradually the population of native peoples increased. But another series of smallpox epidemics in the 1730s and 1740s cut the number of Cherokee remaining in half again. Carried by slave ship to the Carolina coast in 1738, the disease spread inland and resulted in the death of more than half of many villages. The natives had no medicines or methods to deal with the unknown killer. Their common practice of plunging not only infants into cold rivers and streams for consecration, but also the sick for healing, could not have been a worse remedy. The disease was not only horrifying in its result, the proud Cherokee were so humiliated by the disfiguring effects of the pox that some of their warriors killed themselves because of it. Priests and medicine men, unable to control the disease, fell out of favor and the influence of Cherokee religion began to decline in the eyes of the people.

  During these years, too, neighboring tribes, such as their centuries-long adversaries the Creek and the Seminole to the south, continued to raid the new colonial settlements. The retaliation of the English did not honor their treaty with the Cherokee nor differentiate between one indigenous tribe and another.

  The French and the English continued to dispute their right to various territories, pursuing each other back and forth across Cherokee land. Their agreement with the English king did not prevent American colonists, assuming the land was free for the taking, from seizing Cherokee land as more and more of their number trekked westward.

  By the time twenty years had passed since the visit of the Cherokee to England in 1730 and the treaty with representatives of the English king, division was rampant within the Cherokee council. Once again the old war and peace factions were divided on what course the Cherokee should pursue in response to the white man’s greed for land.

  Note 4—The Legacies of Attacullaculla, Oconostota, and Dragging Canoe

  When Daniel Boone sent his adventurous eyes westward and began to explore the region of the Alleghenies in the 1760s, he encountered a very different Cherokee nation than that of the wild and untamed land braved by traders and trappers two generations earlier.

  All the eastern seaboard of the growing nation, and inland no mere dozens but hundreds of miles, had become increasingly civilized. Settlements were becoming towns, towns were becoming cities. Trade with Europe was mounting, and immigration from many countries exploding. The African slave trade was mounting steadily as great plantations spread throughout the South. The economy of the colonies was no longer that of a mere frontier outpost but was becoming a force to be reckoned with throughout western Europe. The American colonies were maturing toward nationhood, and the nation of the Cherokee was being changed along with it toward modernity. Whether that trend was good or bad for the Cherokee people would be for posterity to determine. Inevitability perhaps propels as much history forward as do discoveries, decisions, and the destinies of peoples. Whereas the history of black America in the eighteenth century was largely determined by the cruelty, greed, and inhumanity of its oppressors, and though many chapters of the history of native America would likewise be written in that same language of oppression, at the same time the sheer inexorability of time’s march forward was a yet de
eper source of the momentum that gradually pulled the Cherokee, along with native peoples the world over, out of antiquity into the modern age.

  It would thus also be for his posterity to determine whether the great chief Attacullaculla would be viewed as one with prophetic eyes of foresight for seeing the necessity of embracing new times with dignity and realism, or as a traitor to his people for too easily allowing the ways of European colonialism to infiltrate Cherokee lands, customs, and loyalties. For whatever reasons, his voyage to England as a young man in 1730 forever changed the youthful Ukwaneequa, later to become the powerful peace chief Attacullaculla, and as a result changed the future destiny of his people. He saw the English colonists not merely as an “enemy” to be repulsed. Attracullaculla viewed them, rather, as people—from a different race and culture, to be sure, but yet as fellow citizens of a common humanity. They were people to learn from, people to cooperate with, people with whom mutual respect was possible as the inevitability of time’s march brought them ever into closer contact.

  The thirteen years following 1763 were ones of rapid change and mounting conflict in America. The colonies themselves were changing, not merely toward the Cherokee but toward their motherland. An infant nation was flexing its muscle and growing feisty and independent. The colonists no longer saw themselves as British but as Americans. In the years following the end of the French and Indian War in 1763, that independent spirit grew into a conflict that began to surge toward the boiling point.

  Colonists flooded west across the mountains in increasing numbers. The attempt to fix a permanent boundary of Cherokee land resulted in more treaties with the colonies. But each treaty was ignored. Settlers simply came, found land they wanted, and built homes and refused to leave. For years Indians had been striking blows against frontier settlements to preserve their land. But it became more difficult with every passing year. Homes of settlers on their lands had once numbered in the dozens. Now they numbered in the many thousands. It was now American colonists who were taking Indian land, and a treaty of long ago with the king of England meant nothing to them.