(28) St Clair’s defeat, 1791 (p. [72]): Early in 1791 Major-General Arthur St Clair, a veteran officer in two wars and governor of the Northwestern Territory, was appointed to the chief command of the army operating against the Ohio tribes. On November 4 of that year, while advancing upon the Miami villages with an army of 1,400 men, he was surprised by an Indian force of about the same number under Little-turtle, the Miami chief, in what is now southwestern Mercer county, Ohio, adjoining the Indiana line. Because of the cowardly conduct of the militia he was totally defeated, with the loss of 632 officers and men killed and missing, and 263 wounded, many of whom afterward died. The artillery was abandoned, not a horse being left alive to draw it off, and so great was the panic that the men threw away their arms and fled for miles, even after the pursuit had ceased. It was afterward learned that the Indians lost 150 killed, besides many wounded. Two years later General Wayne built Fort Recovery upon the same spot. The detachment sent to do the work found within a space of 350 yards 500 skulls, while for several miles along the line of pursuit the woods were strewn with skeletons and muskets. The two cannon lost were found in the adjacent stream. Authorities: St Clair’s report and related documents, 1791; American State Papers, Indian Affairs, I, 1832; Drake, Indians 570, 571, 1880; Appleton’s Cyclopædia of American Biography.
(29) Cherokee clans, (p. [74]): The Cherokee have seven clans, viz: Ani′-Wa′ʻya, Wolf; Ani′-Kawĭ′, Deer; Ani′-Tsi′skwa, Bird; Ani′-Wâ′dĭ, Paint; Ani′-Sahâ′nĭ; Ani′-Ga′tâge′wĭ; Ani′-Gilâ′hĭ. The names of the last three can not be translated with certainty. The Wolf clan is the largest and most important in the tribe. It is probable that, in accordance with the general system in other tribes, each clan had formerly certain hereditary duties and privileges, but no trace of these now remains. Children belong to the clan of the mother, and the law forbidding marriage between persons of the same clan is still enforced among the conservative full-bloods. The “seven clans” are frequently mentioned in the sacred formulas, and even in some of the tribal laws promulgated within the century. There is evidence that originally there were fourteen, which by extinction or absorption have been reduced to seven; thus, the ancient Turtle-dove and Raven clans now constitute a single Bird clan. The subject will be discussed more fully in a future Cherokee paper.
(30) Wayne’s victory, 1794 (p. [78]): After the successive failures of Harmar and St Clair in their efforts against the Ohio tribes the chief command was assigned, in 1793, to Major-General Anthony Wayne, who had already distinguished himself by his fighting qualities during the Revolution. Having built Fort Recovery on the site of St Clair’s defeat, he made that post his headquarters through the winter of 1793–94. In the summer of 1794 he advanced down the Maumee with an army of 3,000 men, two-thirds of whom were regulars. On August 20 he encountered the confederated Indian forces near the head of the Maumee rapids at a point known as the Fallen Timbers and defeated them with great slaughter, the pursuit being followed up by the cavalry until the Indians took refuge under the guns of the British garrison at Fort Miami, just below the rapids. His own loss was only 33 killed and 100 wounded, of whom 11 afterward died of their wounds. The loss of the Indians and their white auxiliaries was believed to be more than double this. The Indian force was supposed to number 2,000, while, on account of the impetuosity of Wayne’s charge, the number of his troops actually engaged did not exceed 900. On account of this defeat and the subsequent devastation of their towns and fields by the victorious army the Indians were compelled to sue for peace, which was granted by the treaty concluded at Greenville, Ohio, August 3, 1795, by which the tribes represented ceded away nearly their whole territory in Ohio. Authorities: Wayne’s report and related documents, 1794, American State Papers: Indian Affairs, I, 1832; Drake, Indians, 571–577, 1880; Greenville treaty, in Indian Treaties, 1837; Appleton’s Cyclopædia of American Biography.
(31) First things of civilization (p. [83]): We usually find that the first things adopted by the Indian from his white neighbor are improved weapons and cutting tools, with trinkets and articles of personal adornment. After a regular trade has been established certain traders marry Indian wives, and, taking up their permanent residence in the Indian country, engage in farming and stock raising according to civilized methods, thus, even without intention, constituting themselves industrial teachers for the tribe.
From data furnished by Haywood, guns appear to have been first introduced among the Cherokee about the year 1700 or 1710, although he himself puts the date much earlier. Horses were probably not owned in any great number before the marking out of the horse-path for traders from Augusta about 1740. The Cherokee, however, took kindly to the animal, and before the beginning of the war of 1760 had a “prodigious number.” In spite of their great losses at that time they had so far recovered in 1775 that almost every man then had from two to a dozen (Adair, p. 231). In the border wars following the Revolution companies of hundreds of mounted Cherokee and Creeks sometimes invaded the settlements. The cow is called wa′ka by the Cherokee and waga by the Creeks, indicating that their first knowledge of it came through the Spaniards. Nuttall states that it was first introduced among the Cherokee by the celebrated Nancy Ward (Travels, p. 130). It was not in such favor as the horse, being valuable chiefly for food, of which at that time there was an abundant supply from the wild game. A potent reason for its avoidance was the Indian belief that the eating of the flesh of a slow-moving animal breeds a corresponding sluggishness in the eater. The same argument applied even more strongly to the hog, and to this day a few of the old conservatives among the East Cherokee will have nothing to do with beef, pork, milk, or butter. Nevertheless, Bartram tells of a trader in the Cherokee country as early as 1775 who had a stock of cattle, and whose Indian wife had learned to make butter and cheese (Travels, p. 347). In 1796 Hawkins mentions meeting two Cherokee women driving ten very fat cattle to market in the white settlements (manuscript journal, 1796). Bees, if not native, as the Indians claim, were introduced at so early a period that the Indians have forgotten their foreign origin. The De Soto narrative mentions the finding of a pot of honey in an Indian village in Georgia in 1540. The peach was cultivated in orchards a century before the Revolution, and one variety, known as early as 1700 as the Indian peach, the Indians claimed as their own, asserting that they had had it before the whites came to America (Lawson, Carolina, p. 182, ed. 1860). Potatoes were introduced early and were so much esteemed that, according to one old informant, the Indians in Georgia, before the Removal, “lived on them.” Coffee came later, and the same informant remembered when the full-bloods still considered it poison, in spite of the efforts of the chief, Charles Hicks, to introduce it among them.
Spinning wheels and looms were introduced shortly before the Revolution. According to the Wahnenauhi manuscript the first among the Cherokee were brought over from England by an Englishman named Edward Graves, who taught his Cherokee wife to spin and weave. The anonymous writer may have confounded this early civilizer with a young Englishman who was employed by Agent Hawkins in 1801 to make wheels and looms for the Creeks (Hawkins, 1801, in American State Papers: Indian Affairs, I, p. 647). Wafford, in his boyhood, say about 1815, knew an old man named Tsĭ′nawĭ on Young-cane creek of Nottely river, in upper Georgia, who was known as a wheelwright and was reputed to have made the first spinning wheel and loom ever made among the mountain Cherokee, or perhaps in the Nation, long before Wafford’s time, or “about the time the Cherokee began to drop their silver ornaments and go to work.” In 1785 the commissioners for the Hopewell treaty reported that some of the Cherokee women had lately learned to spin, and many were very desirous of instruction in the raising, spinning, and weaving of flax, cotton, and wool (Hopewell Commissioners’ Report, 1785, American State Papers: Indian Affairs, I, p. 39). In accordance with their recommendation the next treaty made with the tribe, in 1791, contained a provision for supplying the Cherokee with farming tools (Holston treaty, 1791, Indian Treaties, p. 36, 1837), and this civilizing policy was continued and broadened until, in 1801, their agent reported that at the Cherokee agency the wheel, the loom, and the plow were in pretty general use, and farming, manufacturing, and stock raising were the principal topics of conversation among men and women (Hawkins manuscripts, Treaty Commission of 1801).
(32) Colonel Return J. Meigs (p. [84]): Return Jonathan Meigs was born in Middletown, Connecticut, December 17, 1734, and died at the Cherokee agency in Tennessee, January 28, 1823. He was the first-born son of his parents, who gave him the somewhat peculiar name of Return Jonathan to commemorate a romantic incident in their own courtship, when his mother, a young Quakeress, called back her lover as he was mounting his horse to leave the house forever after what he had supposed was a final refusal. The name has been handed down through five generations, every one of which has produced some man distinguished in the public service. The subject of this sketch volunteered immediately after the opening engagement of the Revolution at Lexington, and was assigned to duty under Arnold, with rank of major. He accompanied Arnold in the disastrous march through the wilderness against Quebec, and was captured in the assault upon the citadel and held until exchanged the next year. In 1777 he raised a regiment and was promoted to the rank of colonel. For a gallant and successful attack upon the enemy at Sag harbor, Long island, he received a sword and a vote of thanks from Congress, and by his conduct at the head of his regiment at Stony point won the favorable notice of Washington. After the close of the Revolution he removed to Ohio, where, as a member of the territorial legislature, he drew up the earliest code of regulations for the pioneer settlers. In 1801 he was appointed agent for the Cherokee and took up his residence at the agency at Tellico blockhouse, opposite the mouth of Tellico river, in Tennessee, continuing to serve in that capacity until his death. He was succeeded as agent by Governor McMinn, of Tennessee. In the course of twenty-two years he negotiated several treaties with the Cherokee and did much to further the work of civilization among them and to defend them against unjust aggression. He also wrote a journal of the expedition to Quebec. His grandson of the same name was special agent for the Cherokee and Creeks in 1834, afterward achieving a reputation in the legal profession both in Tennessee and in the District of Columbia. Authorities: Appleton, Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1894; Royce, Cherokee Nation, in Fifth Annual Report Bureau of Ethnology, 1888; documents in American State Papers, Indian Affairs, I and II.
(33) Tecumtha (p. [87]): This great chief of the Shawano and commander of the allied northern tribes in the British service was born near the present Chillicothe, in western Ohio, about 1770, and fell in the battle of the Thames, in Ontario, October 5, 1813. His name signifies a “flying panther”—i. e., a meteor. He came of fighting stock good even in a tribe distinguished for its warlike qualities, his father and elder brother having been killed in battle with the whites. His mother is said to have died among the Cherokee. Tecumtha is first heard of as taking part in an engagement with the Kentuckians when about twenty years old, and in a few years he had secured recognition as the ablest leader among the allied tribes. It is said that he took part in every important engagement with the Americans from the time of Harmar’s defeat in 1790 until the battle in which he lost his life. When about thirty years of age he conceived the idea of uniting the tribes northwest of the Ohio, as Pontiac had united them before, in a great confederacy to resist the further advance of the Americans, taking the stand that the whole territory between the Ohio and the Mississippi belonged to all these tribes in common and that no one tribe had the right to sell any portion of it without the consent of the others. The refusal of the government to admit this principle led him to take active steps to unite the tribes upon that basis, in which he was seconded by his brother, the Prophet, who supplemented Tecumtha’s eloquence with his own claims to supernatural revelation. In the summer of 1810 Tecumtha held a conference with Governor Harrison at Vincennes to protest against a recent treaty cession, and finding after exhausting his arguments that the effort was fruitless, he closed the debate with the words: “The President is far off and may sit in his town and drink his wine, but you and I will have to fight it out.” Both sides at once prepared for war, Tecumtha going south to enlist the aid of the Creek, Choctaw, and other southern tribes, while Harrison took advantage of his absence to force the issue by marching against the Prophet’s town on the Tippecanoe river, where the hostile warriors from a dozen tribes had gathered. A battle fought before daybreak of November 6, 1811, resulted in the defeat of the Indians and the scattering of their forces. Tecumtha returned to find his plans brought to naught for the time, but the opening of the war between the United States and England a few months later enabled him to rally the confederated tribes once more to the support of the British against the Americans. As a commissioned brigadier-general in the British service he commanded 2,000 warriors in the war of 1812, distinguishing himself no less by his bravery than by his humanity in preventing outrages and protecting prisoners from massacre, at one time saving the lives of four hundred American prisoners who had been taken in ambush near Fort Meigs and were unable to make longer resistance. He was wounded at Maguagua, where nearly four hundred were killed and wounded on both sides. He covered the British retreat after the battle of Lake Erie, and, refusing to retreat farther, compelled the British General Proctor to make a stand at the Thames river. Almost the whole force of the American attack fell on Tecumtha’s division. Early in the engagement he was shot through the arm, but continued to fight desperately until he received a bullet in the head and fell dead, surrounded by the bodies of 120 of his slain warriors. The services of Tecumtha and his Indians to the British cause have been recognized by an English historian, who says, “but for them it is probable we should not now have a Canada.” Authorities: Drake, Indians, ed. 1880; Appleton’s Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1894; Eggleston, Tecumseh and the Shawnee Prophet.
(34) Fort Mims Massacre, 1813 (p. [89]): Fort Mims, so called from an old Indian trader on whose lands it was built, was a stockade fort erected in the summer of 1813 for the protection of the settlers in what was known as the Tensaw district, and was situated on Tensaw lake, Alabama, one mile east of Alabama river and about forty miles above Mobile. It was garrisoned by about 200 volunteer troops under Major Daniel Beasley, with refugees from the neighboring settlement, making a total at the time of its destruction of 553 men, women, and children. Being carelessly guarded, it was surprised on the morning of August 30 by about 1,000 Creek warriors led by the mixed-blood chief, William Weatherford, who rushed in at the open gate, and, after a stout but hopeless resistance by the garrison, massacred all within, with the exception of the few negroes and halfbreeds, whom they spared, and about a dozen whites who made their escape. The Indian loss is unknown, but was very heavy, as the fight continued at close quarters until the buildings were fired over the heads of the defenders. The unfortunate tragedy was due entirely to the carelessness of the commanding officer, who had been repeatedly warned that the Indians were about, and at the very moment of the attack a negro was tied up waiting to be flogged for reporting that he had the day before seen a number of painted warriors lurking a short distance outside the stockade. Authorities: Pickett, Alabama, ed. 1896; Hamilton and Owen, note, p. 170, in Transactions Alabama Historical Society, II, 1898; Agent Hawkins’s report, 1813, American State Papers: Indian Affairs, I, p. 853; Drake, Indians, ed. 1880. The figures given are those of Pickett, which in this instance seem most correct, while Drake’s are evidently exaggerated.
(35) General William McIntosh (p. [98]): This noted halfbreed chief of the Lower Creeks was the son of a Scotch officer in the British army by an Indian mother, and was born at the Creek town of Coweta in Alabama, on the lower Chattahoochee, nearly opposite the present city of Columbus, Georgia, and killed at the same place by order of the Creek national council on April 30, 1825. Having sufficient education to keep up an official correspondence, he brought himself to public notice and came to be regarded as the principal chief of the Lower Creeks. In the Creek war of 1813–14 he led his warriors to the support of the Americans against his brethren of the Upper towns, and acted a leading part in the terrible slaughters at Autossee and the Horseshoe bend. In 1817 he again headed his warriors on the government side against the Seminole and was commissioned as major. His common title of general belonged to him only by courtesy. In 1821 he was the principal supporter of the treaty of Indian springs, by which a large tract between the Flint and Chattahoochee rivers was ceded. The treaty was repudiated by the Creek Nation as being the act of a small faction. Two other attempts were made to carry through the treaty, in which the interested motives of McIntosh became so apparent that he was branded as a traitor to his Nation and condemned to death, together with his principal underlings, in accordance with a Creek law making death the penalty for undertaking to sell lands without the consent of the national council. About the same time he was publicly exposed and denounced in the Cherokee council for an attempt to bribe John Ross and other chiefs of the Cherokee in the same fashion. At daylight of April 30, 1825, a hundred or more warriors sent by the Creek national council surrounded his house and, after allowing the women and children to come out, set fire to it and shot McIntosh and another chief as they tried to escape. He left three wives, one of whom was a Cherokee. Authorities: Drake, Indians, ed. 1880; Letters from McIntosh’s son and widows, 1825, in American State Papers: Indian Affairs, II, pp. 764 and 768.