I have already acquainted you with John McDonald, Scotch trader, and Dragging Canoe’s Chickamauga Town across the creek from McDonald’s home. Before the removal of the Cherokees there was more history made at that place, which at the time attracted visitors from as far away as England, and yet it is in less than 10 miles of the Chickamauga Dam.
After a hundred years of warfare, not until the year 1800 were the Cherokees able to rest. That year the Moravians established a mission at Spring Place, Georgia. Before selecting that place they visited McDonald’s on the Chickamauga and, after examining it closely, rejected it because they judged it to be an unhealthy place in which to live. In 1816, when the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, of Boston, sent Cyrus Kingsbury to the Cherokee country, he purchased the identical place that the Moravians had rejected. It was directly across the Chickamauga Creek from Chickamauga Town.
On his way South, Kingsbury stopped in Washington and laid his plans for establishing a mission and school before President James Madison, who heartily approved it and tendered government assistance in equipping it. The school was opened in January 1817 and had the distinction of being the first school in North America where domestic science and agriculture were taught. It preceded the Gardiner Institute of Maine by four years.
The institution grew rapidly. At one time there were forty buildings of one kind and another standing on its grounds. Some of the outstanding men and women of New England were its leaders and teachers. Its first superintendent was Ard Hoyt, who left many prominent descendants. Hundreds of Cherokees were educated and Christianized during its twenty-one years of existence.
At first the mission was called Chickamauga, but since Chickamauga Town was situated on the other side of the creek, visitors coming to the school often became confused and went to the Indian village. It was decided to correct the handicap by changing the name to Brainerd, in honor of David Brainerd, the pioneer missionary among the Indians of New England and New York. David Brainerd had been in his grave seventy years before the founding of this namesake of his.
Many were the visitors of prominence who came to Brainerd. Perhaps the most noted person was President James Monroe, who paid the mission a surprise visit May 27, 1819, and spent the night there. Monroe took a deep interest in the institution and gave it the material support of the Federal Government.
John Howard Payne, author of the famous song, Home Sweet Home, while collecting data for a history he was preparing of the Cherokee, spent two weeks at Brainerd, and the fourteen large volumes of his manuscripts now at the Newberry Library in Chicago contain copies of many letters written by the pupils of this mission school.
Dr. Samuel Worcester, one of the founders of the American Board and its first secretary, who was largely responsible for founding Brainerd Mission, visited the institution in 1821. He was ill when he left his home in Boston and traveled by boat as far as New Orleans. After driving a horse and buggy from that southern city to Brainerd, he arrived there on May 25 a very sick man. On June 7 he passed away. His funeral in the Brainerd cemetery on June 9, 1821, was attended by hundreds of Cherokees riding horseback from all parts of the nation, who came to show their respect for a man they had not seen but whom all had learned to love.
Little Owl’s village site on the Elise Chapin Wildlife Sanctuary