Gorgeous forest trees are seen.”
Among the more noted tribes were the Abnaki, Mohawk, Mohican, Huron, Iroquois, Munsi, Erie, Seneca, Susquehanna, Mamrahoac, Powhatan, Monacan, Nollaway, Tuscarora, Pamlico, Catawba, Santee, Uchee, Yamasee, Creek, Choctaw, Seminole, Showano and Cherokee, but of all of these it is left for us to speak alone of the valiant Cherokee, the most noble of all Red Men, who inhabited that picturesque country in the Appalachian chain of mountains in East Tennessee, Western North Carolina, Northern Georgia, South Carolina and Alabama, and part of Virginia, Kentucky and West Virginia.
These are the people of whom little has been said and less written than most of the children of men. Yet of all of the native Americans the Cherokee tribe was the most noble, humane and intelligent.
Somewhere in the annals of the Aborigines of America, the Cherokee separated from the great Northern tribe, the Iroquois, and by preference inhabited the hills of the Appalachian range, and here we find them early in the dawn of American history, occupying a country which affords ample environment for the artist, the poet and the painter. Had Homer seen and Michelangelo traveled among the towering hills of the happiest land of earth, the song and the chisel, instead of being draped with the vail of blood, would have inspired the world to look forward to the time when there will be no death serenely sitting upon the throne of war.
At one time the Cherokee tribe was the largest and most learned in art and literature of any tribe in the United States, having perhaps as many as twenty-five thousand people, and attained, under Sequoya, whose photograph is herein reproduced, that degree of learning, that many of the tribe became quite familiar with letters and literature, printed from the alphabet invented by this noted man, inventor and devout preacher of the Christian gospel.
Sequoya was himself an untutored half-breed, yet to him are we indebted for an alphabet of 76 characters which stands third among the alphabets which have been invented among men, and by which a Cherokee child learns to read as fluently in six months of study as does the average English child in three years of study under our system.
The name Cherokee, so far as research reveals, has no meaning or the meaning has been lost or perhaps Anglicized, but we have authority for its use, for the past 375 years.
When De Soto’s expedition was made through the Appalachian mountains, in 1540, he encountered this great and friendly nation living peacefully in their paradise among the hills and mountains, who received him as they were wont to receive a friendly tribe; so did they ever receive and treat the white neighbor until treaty after treaty had been broken and their homes had been destroyed and every compact violated.
Hostilities were in most cases caused by encroaching whites and broken promises and intrigues of the foreigners, who were gradually drawing the cordon around the diminishing tribe.
The battle of Horseshoe Bend, which took place in the Tallapoosa river, in Alabama, on the 27th day of March, 1814, was one of the notable events in Cherokee history, where Junaluska, in conjunction with General Jackson, slaughtered or massacred nearly one thousand Creeks, which ended the Creek war and brought much honor to Junaluska and his valiant Cherokee army of more than 500 men.