[2 Page 18.] The name of this famous town is variously given. Adair spells it as Choàte. Bancroft inclines to Chotee. Bartram has it as Chote-Great. Some of the old maps show it as Chotte. Modern historians of Tennessee, Hayward, J. G. M. Ramsey, Putnam, and others make it Chota, but most of the earlier writers concerning this region adopt the French rendering and call it Choté; Hewatt, however, David Ramsey, and others use the accent grave, Chotè. This town, seldom alluded to without the phrase "old town" or "beloved town," to distinguish it from another Indian village of the same name among the Lower Towns, was a veritable "city of refuge," and the only one of the Cherokee nation. A murderer, even if a white man and the victim a Cherokee, might live for years here secure from vengeance. Although there is an instance known of a malefactor, who sought an asylum here and was prevented from landing, being held down in the Tennessee River until drowned, still the rule was inviolable that if the refugee could but gain a footing on the ever-sacred soil, he was as safe as if clinging to the horns of an altar. This fact contributed, with other confirmatory circumstances of usage and tradition, to continue the speculations touching the identity of the American Indians with the lost tribes of Israel. Humboldt says that from the most remote times of the Missions the opinion has been entertained that the languages of the American Indians and the Hebrew display extraordinary analogies. He ascribes this fact to the position of the personal and possessive pronouns at the end of the nouns and verbs, and the numerous tenses of the latter, a characteristic of both the Indian and Hebrew tongues which naturally struck the attention of the monks. An analogy, however, does not go far to prove an identity of origin. He refers to Adair as among travelers "somewhat credulous who have heard the strains of the Hebrew Hallelujah among the Chickasaws and Choctaws of North America,"—and he might have added the Cherokees also. James Adair, however, could hardly be called a traveler. He published in London in 1775 the results of his observation during a residence of forty years as a trader among the Chickasaws and neighboring tribes. He adduces many analogies of their languages with the Hebrew, and calls attention to many customs for which he seeks to discern precedent in the Mosaic dispensation. How much he had read of previous speculations it is impossible to say. He protests that he is but a trader and not "a skillful Hebraist," by his vocation obliged to write far from all libraries, literary associations, and conversation with the learned, compelled even to keep his papers secret from the observation of the Indians, always very jealous of the enigmatical "black marks" of the traders' correspondence, but he quotes largely from many writers both English and foreign—the Reverend Mr. Thorowgood, Don Antonio de Ulloa, Acosta, Benzo, etc., and shows considerable aptness of logic in adapting his theories to his investigations into the structure of the Indian languages. Such nice verbal distinctions, such order and symmetry, such a train of subtle and exact religious terms, he argues, could not be invented by a people so ignorant and illiterate as the modern Indian, and contends that they obviously bear all the distinctive marks of a language of culture. He further declares that one of the Chickasaw prophets, the Loache, assured him that they had once had an "old beloved speech," which in the course of time and national degeneration they had lost. In this connection, but entirely apart from all Hebraic analogies, one is moved to wonder if there were also among them a reminiscence of an "old beloved character," and if the extraordinary invention of the Cherokee character of the "syllabic alphabet" by the Indian, Guest, early in the present century, partly partakes of the nature of tradition.
[3 Page 22]. The high value which the French government placed on the services of these allies may be inferred from a remark which has come down from a council of state, in reference to their conduct in this battle: "Quoique je n'approuve pas qu'on mange les morts, cependant il ne faut pas quereller avec ces bonnêtes gens pour des bagatelles."
[4 Page 38]. Among others bearing witness to these strange relics, Timothy Flint says, in his History and Geography of the Mississippi Valley: "In this state [Tennessee] burying grounds have been found where the skeletons seem all to have been pigmies. The graves in which the bodies were deposited are seldom more than two feet or two feet and a half in length. To obviate the objection that these are all the bodies of children, it is affirmed that the skulls are found to have possessed the dentes sapientiæ and must have belonged to persons of mature age. The two bodies that were found in the vast limestone cavern in Tennessee, one of which I saw at Lexington, were neither of them more than four feet high; the hair seemed to have been sandy, or inclining to yellow. It is well known that nothing is so uniform in the present Indian as his lank, black hair. From the pains taken to preserve the bodies, and the great labor of making the funeral robes in which they were folded, they must have been of the 'blood royal' or personages of consideration in their day." (Hayward, in his quaint and rare Natural and Aboriginal History of Tennessee, referring to the curious method of interment, in a copperas cave, of two mummies, both of full size, however, arrayed in fabrics of great beauty, evincing much mechanical skill in manufacture, also mentions the hair on the heads of both as long, and of a yellow cast and a fine texture.) Webber, in his Romance of Natural History, gives the size of the diminutive sarcophagi of the supposed pygmies found in Tennessee as three feet in length by eighteen inches in depth. Hayward also mentions the pygmy dwellers of Tennessee, and another writer still, describing one of these singular graveyards of the "little people," states that the bones were strong and well formed, and that one of the skeletons had about its neck ninety-four pearls. The painfully prosaic hypothesis of certain craniologists that such relics were only those of children is, of course, rejected by any person possessed of the resources of imagination.
[5 Page 40]. This name is also given in one or two instances as Dejean, and several dates both earlier and later have been assigned to the disastrous visit to Choté to which reference is here made.
[6 Page 82]. Washington readily recognized the futility of the cumbrous regular military methods in a rough, unsettled country. On the Forbes expedition, to counteract the French and their Indian allies, Washington continually sent out small parties of the Cherokees under his command. "Small parties of Indians," said he, "will more effectually harass the enemy by keeping them under continual alarms than any parties of white men can do." However, "with all his efforts," says Irving, "he was never able to make the officers of the regular army appreciate the importance of Indian allies in these campaigns in the wilderness." But the fact has been taught elsewhere, both earlier and later than Washington's day. General Gordon, in his journal, says of the Soudan: "A heavy lumbering column is nowhere in this land. Parties of forty or sixty men moving swiftly about will do more than any column. Native allies, above all things, at whatever cost. It is the country of the irregular, not of the regular. I can say I owe the defeats in this country to having artillery with me, which delayed me much, and it was the artillery with Hicks which in my opinion did for him." And as if he himself merely turned back a leaf instead of the pages of centuries, he here inserts an extract from Herodotus: "Cambyses marched against the Ethiopians without making any provision for the subsistence of his army or once considering that he was going to carry his arms to the remotest parts of the world, but as a madman ... before the army had passed over a fifth of the way all the provisions were exhausted, and the beasts of burden were eaten.... Now if Cambyses had then led his army back he would have proved himself a wise man. He, however, went on ... the report was that heaps of sand covered them over, and they disappeared." Gordon comments, "Hicks' army disappeared. The expedition was made into these lands."
[7 Page 137]. This pride flourished probably too far on the frontier to be deteriorated by the knowledge of the gradual decline in the popularity of the periwig then in progress, for only a few years later the wig-makers of London found it necessary to petition the king, setting forth their distresses occasioned by the perversity of the men of his realm in persisting in wearing their own hair. The most definite outcome of this proceeding was the sprightly travesty of the petition, appearing in the Gentleman's Magazine on behalf of the carpenters, entreating his majesty to wear a wooden leg himself, and to require this of all his subjects, since otherwise the advent of peace bade fair to ruin the joiner's trade in wooden legs.
[8 Page 148]. The Duke of Cumberland has never been considered what is prettily called a "lovely character." His temperament, which would not even brook that certain gentlemen, whom he denominated with a profane adjective "old women," should talk to him "about humanity" (and it may be said in passing that these hopeful "old women" were most obviously condemned to disappointment at least), his rigid discipline of his own troops, and his unparalleled brutality to the enemy, leave the devotion exhibited for him by his soldiers to be accounted for only by the admiration which they felt for his personal courage, which was very great, and of which Walpole tells a good story about this time,—of course before the days of anæsthetics: "The Duke of Cumberland is quite recovered after an incision of many inches into his knee. Ranby [the surgeon] did not dare to propose that a hero should be tied, but was frightened out of his senses when the hero would hold the candle himself, which none of his generals could bear to do: in the middle of the operation the Duke said 'Hold!' Ranby said, 'For God's sake, Sir, let me proceed now—it will be worse to renew it.' The Duke repeated, 'I say, hold!' and then calmly bade them give Ranby a clean waistcoat and cap; 'for,' said he, 'the poor man has sweated through these.' It was true; but the Duke did not utter a groan."
[9 Page 168]. It is with a renewal of confidence in the better aspects of human nature, and the genuineness of such sanctions as control civilized war that we realize that the French and English officers encountering dangers so far transcending legitimate perils as those pervading Indian fighting manifested individually, now and again, a true and soldierly sympathy with one another, and sought to protect the helpless in their power, often liberating those exposed to torture at the hands of their savage allies. For the methods of the Indians were by no means ameliorated by association with their civilized comrades, and they could scarcely be held subject to any control. Washington himself, whose capacity in authority amounted to a special genius, even when only a young provincial officer, could not restrain his Indian allies from scalping the slain, and in several instances it required his utmost exertions to prevent a like fate from befalling his own living prisoners.
[10 Page 217]. Governor Lyttleton on the request of Atta-Kulla-Kulla released Oconostota, Fiftoe, the chief warrior of Keowee Town, and the head warrior of Estatoe, who the next day surrendered two other Indians to be held as substitutes. Although it has been generally said that there were twenty-two hostages, only twenty-one seem to have been detained, and it is therefore possible that Oconostota was liberated without exchange, on account of his position and influence in the tribe, being always known as the "Great Warrior." The names of the hostages detained are as follows: Chenohe, Ousanatanah, Tallichama, Tallitahe, Quarrasatahe, Connasaratah, Kataetoi, Otassite of Watogo, Ousanoletah of Jore, Kataletah of Cowetche, Chisquatalone, Skiagusta of Sticoe, Tanaesto, Wohatche, Wyejah, Oucachistanah, Nicolche, Tony, Toatiahoi, Shallisloske, and Chistie.
[11 Page 236]. Bancroft says this detached force comprised six hundred Highlanders and six hundred Royal Americans. Adair says it consisted of twelve hundred Highlanders. Other historians add to this number a body of grenadiers. Hewatt, who writes almost contemporaneously, publishing in 1779, and who was a resident of Charlestown, where the force landed and whence it departed, states that it consisted of a battalion of Highlanders and four companies of the Royal Scots, and it was there joined by a company of South Carolina Volunteers. He further mentions that upon Colonel Montgomery's return to New York he left four companies of his force in Charlestown, upon the urgent request of the governor and assembly, to aid the defense of the Carolina frontier, and that these were of the royal regiment under the command of Major Frederick Hamilton. The Royal Scots, being one of the oldest and most celebrated of military organizations, has the peculiar claim on the consideration of all the world, that having been the body-guard of King Louis XI. of France, the renowned Scottish Archers, it must surely bear on the ancient and illustrious rolls the ever-cherished name of Quentin Durward, for are we not told that the venerable commander of the guard, Lord Crawford, entered it there himself? And if it is not now to be seen, why—so much the worse for the ancient and illustrious rolls!