Within twenty miles of the late Fort-Loudon, there is great plenty of whet-stones for razors, of red, white, and black colours. The silver mines are so rich, that by digging about ten yards deep, some desperate vagrants found at sundry times, so much rich ore, as to enable them to counterfeit dollars, to a great amount; a horse load of which was detected in passing for the purchase of negroes, at Augusta, which stands on the south-side of the meandering beautiful Savanah river, half way from the Cheerake country, to Savanah, the capital of Georgia. The load-stone is likewise found there, but they have no skill in searching for it, only on the surface; a great deal of the magnetic power is lost, as being exposed to the various changes of the weather, and frequent firing of the woods. I was told by a trader, who lives in the upper parts of the Cheerake country, which is surrounded on every side, by prodigious piles of mountains called Cheèowhée, that within about a mile of the town of that name, there is a hill with a great plenty of load-stones—the truth of this any gentleman of curiosity may soon ascertain, as it lies on the northern path[[122]] that leads from South-Carolina, to the remains of Fort-Loudon: and while he is in search of this, he may at the same time make a great acquest of riches, for the load-stone is known to accompany rich metals. I was once near that load-stone {236} hill, but the heavy rains which at that time fell on the deep snow, prevented the gratifying my curiosity, as the boggy deep creek was thereby rendered impassable.
In this rocky country, are found a great many beautiful, clear, chrystaline stones,[[123]] formed by nature into several angles, which commonly meet in one point: several of them are transparent, like a coarse diamond—others resemble the onyx, being engendered of black and thick humours, as we see water that is tinctured with ink, still keeping its surface clear. I found one stone like a ruby, as big as the top of a man’s thumb, with a beautiful dark shade in the middle of it. Many stones of various colours, and beautiful lustre, may be collected on the tops of those hills and mountains, which if skilfully managed, would be very valuable, for some of them are clear, and very hard. From which, we may rationally conjecture that a quantity of subterranean treasures is contained there; the Spaniards generally found out their southern mines, by such superficial indications. And it would be an useful, and profitable service for skilful artists to engage in, as the present trading white savages are utterly ignorant of it. Manifold curious works of the wise author of nature, are bountifully dispersed through the whole of the country, obvious to every curious eye.
Among the mountains, are many labyrinths, and some of a great length, with many branches, and various windings; likewise different sorts of mineral waters, the qualities of which are unknown to the natives, as by their temperate way of living, and the healthiness of their country, they have no occasion to make experiments in them. Between the heads of the northern branch of the lower Cheerake river, and the heads of that of Tuckasehchee, winding round in a long course by the late Fort-Loudon, and afterwards into the Missisippi, there is, both in the nature and circumstances, a great phænomenon—Between two high mountains, nearly covered with old mossy rocks, lofty cedars, and pines, in the valleys of which the beams of the sun reflect a powerful heat, there are, as the natives affirm, some bright old inhabitants, or rattle snakes,[[124]] of a more enormous size than is mentioned in history. They are so large and unwieldy, that they take a circle, almost as wide as their length, to crawl round in their shortest orbit: but bountiful nature compensates the heavy motion of their bodies, for {237} as they say, no living creature moves within the reach of their sight, but they can draw it to them; which is agreeable to what we observe, through the whole system of animated beings. Nature endues them with proper capacities to sustain life;—as they cannot support themselves, by their speed, or cunning to spring from an ambuscade, it is needful they should have the bewitching craft of their eyes and forked tongues.
The description the Indians give us of their colour, is as various as what we are told of the camelion, that seems to the spectator to change its colour, by every different position he may view it in; which proceeds from the piercing rays of light that blaze from their foreheads, so as to dazzle the eyes, from whatever quarter they post themselves—for in each of their heads, there is a large carbuncle, which not only repels, but they affirm, sullies the meridian beams of the sun. They reckon it so dangerous to disturb those creatures, that no temptation can induce them to betray their secret recess to the prophane. They call them and all of the rattle-snake kind, kings, or chieftains of the snakes; and they allow one such to every different species of the brute creation. An old trader of Cheeowhee told me, that for the reward of two pieces of stroud-cloth, he engaged a couple of young warriors to shew him the place of their resort; but the head-men would not by any means allow it, on account of a superstitious tradition—for they fancy the killing of them would expose them to the danger of being bit by the other inferior species of that serpentine tribe, who love their chieftains, and know by instinct those who maliciously killed them, as they fight only in their own defence, and that of their young ones, never biting those who do not disturb them. Although they esteem those rattle snakes as chieftains of that species, yet they do not deify them, as the Egyptians[Egyptians] did all the serpentine kind, and likewise Ibis, that preyed upon them; however, it seems to have sprung from the same origin, for I once saw the Chikkasah Archi-magus to chew some snake-root, blow it on his hands, and then take up a rattle snake without damage—soon afterwards he laid it down carefully, in a hollow tree, lest I should have killed it. Once on the Chikkasah trading war-path, a little above the country of the Muskohge, as I was returning to camp from hunting, I found in a large cane swamp, a fellow-traveller, an old Indian trader, inebriated and naked, except his Indian breeches and maccaseenes; in that habit he sat, {238} holding a great rattle-snake round the neck, with his left hand besmeared with proper roots, and with the other, applying the roots to the teeth, in order to repel the poison, before he drew them out; which having effected, he laid it down tenderly at a distance. I then killed it, to his great dislike, as he was afraid it would occasion misfortunes to himself and me. I told him, as he had taken away its teeth, common pity should induce one to put it out of misery, and that a charitable action could never bring ill on any one; but his education prevented his fears from subsiding. On a Christmas-day, at the trading house of that harmless, brave, but unfortunate man, I took the foot of a guinea-deer out of his shot-pouch—and another from my own partner, which they had very safely sewed in the corner of each of their otter-skin-pouches, to enable them, according to the Indian creed, to kill deer, bear, buffaloe, beaver, and other wild beasts, in plenty: but they were so infatuated with the Indian superstitious belief of the power of that charm, that all endeavours of reconciling them to reason were ineffectual: I therefore returned them, for as they were Nimrods, or hunters of men, as well as of wild beasts, I imagined, I should be answerable to myself for every accident that might befal them, by depriving them of what they depended upon as their chief good, in that wild sphere of life. No wonder that the long-desolate savages of the far extending desarts of America, should entertain the former superstitious notions of ill luck by that, and good fortune by this; as those of an early Christian education, are so soon imprest with the like opinions. The latter was killed on the old Chikkasah, or American-Flanders path,[[125]] in company with another expert brave man, in the year 1745, by twenty Choktah savages, set on by the Christian French of Tumbikpe garrison; in consequence of which, I staid by myself the following summer-season, in the Chikkasah country, and when the rest of the trading people and all our horses were gone down to the English settlements, I persuaded the Choktah to take up the bloody tomohawk against those perfidious French, in revenge of a long train of crying blood: and had it not been for the self-interested policy of a certain governor, those numerous savages, with the war-like Chikkasah, would have destroyed the Missisippi settlements, root and branch, except those who kept themselves closely confined in garrison. When I treat of the Choktah country, I shall more particularly relate that very material affair. {239}
The superior policy of the French so highly intoxicated the light heads of the Cheerake, that they were plodding mischief for twenty years before we forced them to commit hostilities. The illustration of this may divert the reader, and shew our southern colonies what they may still expect from the masterly abilities of the French Louisianians, whenever they can make it suit their interest to exert their talents among the Indian nations, while our watch-men are only employed in treating on paper, in our far-distant capital seats of government.
In the year 1736, the French sent into South-Carolina, one Priber[[126]] a gentleman of a curious and speculative temper. He was to transmit them a full account of that country, and proceed to the Cheerake nation, in order to seduce them from the British to the French interest. He went, and though he was adorned with every qualification that constitutes the gentleman, soon after he arrived at the upper towns of this mountainous country, he exchanged his clothes and every thing he brought with him, and by that means, made friends with the head warriors of great Telliko, which stood on a branch of the Missisippi. More effectually to answer the design of his commission, he ate, drank, slept, danced, dressed, and painted himself, with the Indians, so that it was not easy to distinguish him from the natives,—he married also with them, and being endued with a strong understanding and retentive memory, he soon learned their dialect, and by gradual advances, impressed them with a very ill opinion of the English, representing them as a fraudulent, avaritious, and encroaching people: he at the same time, inflated the artless savages, with a prodigious high opinion of their own importance in the American scale of power, on account of the situation of their country, their martial disposition, and the great number of their warriors, which would baffle all the efforts of the ambitious, and ill-designing British colonists. Having thus infected them by his smooth deluding art, he easily formed them into a nominal republican government—crowned their old Archi-magus, emperor, after a pleasing new savage form, and invented a variety of high-sounding titles for all the members of his imperial majesty’s red court, and the great officers of state; which the emperor conferred upon them, in a manner according to their merit. He himself received the honourable title of his imperial majesty’s principal secretary of state, and as such he subscribed himself, in all the letters he wrote to our government, and lived in open defiance {240} of them. This seemed to be of so dangerous a tendency, as to induce South-Carolina to send up a commissioner, Col. F—x,[[127]] to demand him as an enemy to the public repose—who took him into custody, in the great square of their statehouse: when he had almost concluded his oration on the occasion, one of the head warriors rose up, and bade him forbear, as the man he entended to enslave, was made a great beloved man, and become one of their own people. Though it was reckoned, our agent’s strength was far greater in his arms than his head, he readily desisted—for as it is too hard to struggle with the pope in Rome, a stranger could not miss to find it equally difficult to enter abruptly into a new emperor’s court, and there seize his prime minister, by a foreign authority; especially when he could not support any charge of guilt against him. The warrior told him, that the red people well knew the honesty of the secretary’s heart would never allow him to tell a lie; and the secretary urged that he was a foreigner, without owing any allegiance to Great Britain,—that he only travelled through some places of their country, in a peaceable manner, paying for every thing he had of them; that in compliance with the request of the kindly French, as well as from his own tender feelings for the poverty and insecure state of the Cheerake, he came a great way, and lived among them as a brother, only to preserve their liberties, by opening a water communication between them and New Orleans; that the distance of the two places from each other, proved his motive to be the love of doing good, especially as he was to go there, and bring up a sufficient number of Frenchmen of proper skill to instruct them in the art of making gun-powder, the materials of which, he affirmed their lands abounded with.—He concluded his artful speech, by urging that the tyrannical design of the English commissioner toward him, appeared plainly to be levelled against them, because, as he was not accused of having done any ill to the English, before he came to the Cheerake, his crime must consist in loving the Cheerake.—And as that was reckoned so heinous a transgression in the eye of the English, as to send one of their angry beloved men to enslave him, it confirmed all those honest speeches he had often spoken to the present great war-chieftains, old beloved men, and warriors of each class.
An old war-leader repeated to the commissioner, the essential part of the speech, and added more of his own similar thereto. He bade him to inform {241} his superiors, that the Cheerake were as desirous as the English to continue a friendly union with each other, as “freemen and equals.” That they hoped to receive no farther uneasiness from them, for consulting their own interests, as their reason dictated.—And they earnestly requested them to send no more of those bad papers to their country, on any account; nor to reckon them so base, as to allow any of their honest friends to be taken out of their arms, and carried into slavery. The English beloved man had the honour of receiving his leave of absence, and a sufficient passport of safe conduct, from the imperial red court, by a verbal order of the secretary of state,—who was so polite as to wish him well home, and ordered a convoy of his own life-guards, who conducted him a considerable way, and he got home in safety.
From the above, it is evident, that the monopolizing spirit of the French had planned their dangerous lines of circumvallation, respecting our envied colonies, as early as the before-mentioned period. Their choice of the man, bespeaks also their judgment.—Though the philosophic secretary was an utter stranger to the wild and mountainous Cheerake country, as well as to their language, yet his sagacity readily directed him to chuse a proper place, and an old favourite religious man, for the new red empire; which he formed by slow, but sure degrees, to the great danger of our southern colonies. But the empire received a very great shock, in an accident that befel the secretary, when it was on the point of rising into a far greater state of puissance, by the acquisition of the Muskohge, Choktah, and the western Missisippi Indians. In the fifth year of that red imperial æra, he set off for Mobille, accompanied by a few Cheerake. He proceeded by land, as far as a navigable part of the western great river of the Muskohge; there he went into a canoe prepared for the joyful occasion, and proceeded within a day’s journey of Alebahma garrison—conjecturing the adjacent towns were under the influence of the French, he landed at Tallapoose town, and lodged there all night. The traders of the neighbouring towns soon went there, convinced the inhabitants of the dangerous tendency of his unwearied labours among the Cheerake, and of his present journey, and then took him into custody, with a large bundle of manuscripts, and sent him down to Frederica in Georgia; the governor committed him to a place of confinement, though not with common felons, as he was a foreigner, and was said to have held a place of considerable rank in {242} the army with great honour. Soon after, the magazine took fire, which was not far from where he was confined, and though the centinels bade him make off to a place of safety, as all the people were running to avoid danger from the explosion of the powder and shells, yet he squatted on his belly upon the floor, and continued in that position, without the least hurt: several blamed his rashness, but he told them, that experience had convinced him, it was the most probable means to avoid imminent danger. This incident displayed the philosopher and soldier, and after bearing his misfortunes a considerable time with great constancy, happily for us, he died in confinement,—though he deserved a much better fate. In the first year of his secretaryship I maintained a correspondence with him; but the Indians becoming very inquisitive to know the contents of our marked large papers, and he suspecting his memory might fail him in telling those cunning sisters of truth, a plausible story, and of being able to repeat it often to them, without any variation,—he took the shortest and safest method, by telling them that, in the very same manner as he was their great secretary, I was the devil’s clerk, or an accursed one who marked on paper the bad speech of the evil ones of darkness. Accordingly, they forbad him writing any more to such an accursed one, or receiving any of his evil-marked papers, and our correspondence ceased. As he was learned, and possessed of a very sagacious penetrating judgment, and had every qualification that was requisite for his bold and difficult enterprize, it is not to be doubted, that as he wrote a Cheerake dictionary, designed to be published at Paris, he likewise set down a great deal that would have been very acceptable to the curious, and serviceable to the representatives of South-Carolina and Georgia; which may be readily found in Frederica, if the manuscripts have had the good fortune to escape the despoiling hands of military power.
When the western Cheerake towns lost the chief support of their imperial court, they artfully agreed to inform the English traders, that each of them had opened their eyes, and rejected the French plan as a wild scheme, inconsistent with their interests; except great Telliko,[[128]] the metropolis of their late empire, which they said was firmly resolved to adhere to the French proposals, as the surest means of promoting their welfare and happiness. Though the inhabitants of this town were only dupes to the rest, yet for {243} the sake of the imagined general good of the country, their constancy enabled them to use that disguise a long time, in contempt of the English, till habit changed into a real hatred of the object, what before was only fictitious. They corresponded with the French in the name of those seven towns, which are the most warlike part of the nation: and they were so strongly prepossessed with the notions their beloved secretary had infused into their heads, in that early weak state of Louisiana, that they had resolved to remove, and settle so low down their river, as the French boats could readily bring them a supply. But the hot war they fell into with the northern Indians, made them postpone the execution of that favourite design; and the settling of Fort Loudon, quieted them a little, as they expected to get presents, and spirituous liquors there, according to the manner of the French promises, of which they had great plenty.
The French, to draw off the western towns, had given them repeated assurances of settling a strong garrison on the north side of their river, as high up as their large pettiaugres could be brought with safety, where there was a large tract of rich lands abounding with game and fowl, and the river with fish.—They at the same time promised to procure a firm peace between the Cheerake and all the Indian nations depending on the French; and to bestow on them powder, bullets, flints, knives, scissars, combs, shirts, looking glasses, and red paint,—beside favourite trifles to the fair sex: in the same brotherly manner the Alebahma French extended their kindly hands to their Muskohge brethren. By their assiduous endeavours, that artful plan was well supported, and though the situation of our affairs, in the remote, and leading Cheerake towns, had been in a ticklish situation, from the time their project of an empire was formed; and though several other towns became uneasy and discontented on sundry pretexts, for the space of two years before the unlucky occasion of the succeeding war happened—yet his excellency our governor[[129]] neglected the proper measures to reconcile the wavering savages, till the gentleman[[130]] who was appointed to succeed him, had just reached the American coast: then, indeed, he set off, with a considerable number of gentlemen, in flourishing parade, and went as far as Ninety-six[[LV]] settlement; from whence, as most probably he expected, he was fortunately recalled, and joyfully superseded. I saw him on his way up, and plainly observed he was unprovided for the journey; it must unavoidably have proved abortive {244} before he could have proceeded through the Cheerake country,—gratifying the inquisitive disposition of the people, as he went, and quieting the jealous minds of the inhabitants of those towns, who are settled among the Apalahche mountains, and those seven towns, in particular, that lie beyond them. He neither sent before, nor carried with him, any presents wherewith to soothe the natives; and his kind promises, and smooth speeches, would have weighed exceedingly light in the Indian scale.