Grant Foreman • The Five Civilized Tribes

The Cherokee tribe was early noted for its pursuits of civilization and desire for education. The first mission where youths of that tribe were taught was established in December, 1801, by the Society of United Brethren for the Southern States, commonly called Moravian Brethren, at Spring-place three miles east of the Connesaga River, near the public road leading from Georgia to West Tennessee.⁠1 The school continued in operation for many years and boys and girls were taught reading, writing, arithmetic and some of them English, grammar, and geography. The girls were taught spinning, sewing, knitting and marking, so that they could make their own stockings and those of their families. The boys were taught agricultural labors and even to make their clothing.

Dr. Morse reported that as early as 1800 the Cherokee people understood the use of the wheel and card, with which they manufactured cotton cloth that in turn they made into clothing. They used the horse and plow, wagon roads were opened up by them and a number of natives owned and operated gristmills and saw-mills. Some of them manufactured spinning wheels and looms, and in certain neighborhoods the women wove coverlets and double twilled cloth, and others manufactured sheets for family use. The venerable Charles Hicks, an intelligent chief of the Cherokee and one of the first to be baptized at the Moravian mission, wrote an interesting letter in 1819 for the information of Dr. Morse. He said that the "Cherokees had already with stimulus spirits, entered the manufacturing system in cotton clothing in 1800, which had taken rise in one Town in 1796 and 7, by the repeated recommendations of Silas Dinsmoore, Esq. which were given to the p353 Chiefs in Council."⁠2 Dr. Morse said that some of the Cherokee lived in very decent style. Two of them named Vann had built good brick houses.

When a delegation of Cherokee Indians visited Thomas Jefferson in May, 1805, he gave them some good advice on the subject of improving their condition.

"I see, with my own eyes," he said, "that the endeavors we have been making to encourage and lead you on in the way of improving your situation have not been unsuccessful — it has been like grain sown in good ground producing abundantly. You are becoming farmers, learning the use of the plough and the hoe, enclosing your grounds and employing that labor in their cultivation which you formerly employed in hunting and in war; and I see handsome specimens of cotton cloth, raised, spun and wove by yourselves; you are also raising cattle and hogs for your food. . . . You will find your next want to be mills to grind corn, which by relieving your women from the loss of time in beating it into meal, will enable them to spin and weave more.

"When a man has enclosed and improved his farm, built a good house on it, and raised a plentiful stock of animals, he will wish when he dies, that these things should go to his wife and children, whom he loved more than he does his other relations, and for whom he will work with pleasure during his life. You will therefore find it necessary to establish laws for this. When a man has property earned by his own labors, he will not like to see another come and take it away from him, because he happens to be stronger, or else to defend it by spilling blood. You will find it necessary then to appoint good men judges, to decide contests between man and man according to reason and to the rules you shall establish."⁠3

"There was thirty-two pieces of cloth wove in Dougle-Head'sº Town within 14 months past. There was about 600 yards wove the last year in one loom at Hiwassee. . . . The Bold Hunter's family made this year, 90 yards of cotton cloth, raised the cotton, spun and wove the cloth. . . . Hilderbrand the miller living on Highwassee says that he ground some wheat raised by the Indians the last summer, about 20 p354 or 30 bushels. That several families have some wheat this fall. Wheat is also raised by the half breeds at or near Crowtown; that wheat grows well in this country. . . . Burgess's family raised hemp, flax, and cotton the last year. . . . The Cherokees had salt peter caves where gun powder was made; 200 pounds of powder a year is paid by white men for use of the cave."⁠4

Colonel Meigs said the Cherokee had "many thousand head of cattle & other domestic animals. They manufacture cotton cloth in every part of the nation for the cloathing of their families. In 1803 they consented to have a public school established, which commenced in the course of 1804. At that time there was a small private school. The President of the United States gave the particular superintendence of such schools as the Reverend Mr. Gideon Blackburn should be able to establish, to him. Mr. Blackburn established his first school on the river Highwassee & afterwards united the private school with it. The number of scholars in this school is now about 48. Since, Mr. Blackburn has established another school under another instructor; the large school has two instructors. In the two schools there are 73 scholars. These children are all Cherokees or children of white men by Cherokee women." Mr. Blackburn was a minister of the Presbyterian Church at Marysville, Tennessee. Dr. Morse says that he taught the school with great zeal, ingenuity, perseverance, and with great success for four or five years until his means were exhausted. He had at one time eighty pupils who were clothed, fed and taught at his expense.⁠5 Another early laborer in that field was the Reverend Evan Jones, who in 1805 left records of his work. For many years he served as a teacher among the Cherokee in their eastern home and after their removal west to Indian Territory.

The first establishment by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions among the Cherokee was that of Brainerd in 1817, on the west side of Chickamauga Creek in Tennessee and two miles from the Georgia line; among the early workers there were the Rev. D. S. Butrick and the Rev. S. A. Worcester. Dr. Morse gives the names of eight Cherokee boys and two Choctaw who were attending school in 1820 at Cornwall, Connecticut, also conducted by the American p355 Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions; the Cherokee were Elias Boudinot or Kub‑le‑ga‑nah, Leonard Hicks, Thomas Bassel or Taw‑tchoo‑o, David S. Taucheechy or Taw‑chee‑chy, John Ridge, John Vann, James Fields, and David Brown or A‑wih; the Choctaw were McKee Folsom and Israel Folsom. Several of these boys became prominent in the affairs of their tribes. Dr. Morse was impressed with "the calculation of the eclipse of August 2nd, 1833, very neatly projected and the results stated in the usual form by Elias Boudinot, a Cherokee of seventeen."⁠6

In those early days the Cherokee Nation east of the Mississippi was governed by the acts of the national council which met annually. Written laws of the tribe had been recorded and preserved as far back as 1810⁠7 and included many wholesome measures devised to maintain an orderly course of conduct by the members of the tribe. The Cherokee people established their national council in 1817, which elected as president John Ross who served in that office for many years. The national council and national committee in 1820 laid off the Cherokee country into eight districts, appointed circuit judges, sheriffs, constables and justices of the peace, and laid a tax on the people to build a courthouse in each district.⁠8

June 1, 1827 the Cherokee people held an election for delegates to a convention that was to form a constitution for the nation. The names of the districts were Chickamaugre, Coosewatte, Amaoah, Challoogee, Hickory Log, Etowah, Tanquobee, and Aquahee.⁠a The delegates from the first district were John Ross, Richard Taylor, and John Bainbridge; for the second John Martin, Joseph Vann, and Kalachulee; from the third were Lewis Ross, Thomas Foreman and The Hare.⁠9 The convention met at New Echota July 26, 1827, and adopted a republican constitution.⁠10

The population of the Cherokee country by the enumeration of their agent in 1809 was 12,395 Cherokee, half of whom were of mixed blood; besides 583 Negro slaves, and 341 white, making a total of 13,319. They had by 1820 increased to 14,500 souls. They had property p356 in horses, cattle, sheep, ploughs, mills, etc., estimated at about $571,500. Their country included at that time sixty-five villages and towns.⁠11

By 1825 their census showed a total population of 15,160, including 1,377 Negro slaves; they had 22,531 black cattle, 7,683 horses, 46,732 swine, 2,566 sheep, 330 goats, 762 looms, 2,486 spinning wheels, 172 wagons, 2,843 plows, 10 sawmills, 31 gristmills, one powder mill, 62 blacksmith shops, 8 cotton gins, 18 schools, two turnpikes, 18 ferries and 20 public roads.⁠12

Further interesting statistics concerning the Cherokee people were compiled by Eugene A. Vail. He says that on their predatory excursions to the Carolinas they carried off slaves whom they used to work their lands, of whom 610 were males and 667 females. Their agricultural and industrial wealth consisted of thirty-three flour-mills, thirteen sawmills, sixty-nine forges, two tanneries, and other belongings of an industrious and progressive people.⁠13 It is not surprising that many of the whites of Georgia, less progressive than these Indians coveted their land and herds and other property.

With the removal of the Arkansas Cherokee to their western home Dwight Mission was also removed. The log buildings at the settlement of Nicksville,⁠14 on Sallisaw Creek, were purchased from Col. Walter Webber and the school was opened here May 1, 1830.⁠15 Two other schools were begun by the missionaries, in the new Cherokee nation, one at Fairfield and one at the forks of the Illinois. The missionaries proceeded to erect a number of buildings for the mission at Dwight. A dining room and kitchen built of hewn logs was two stories high, twenty-four by fifty-four feet in size; it was chinked with stones and pointed with lime mortar and whitewashed, and had two fireplaces. Log houses for residences were built of two rooms with a passageway p357 between which, the whole under one roof, and verandas the full length front and back, and four of them a story and a half high; one was two stories; the dormitory for boys was also of logs two stories high with a gallery on each floor. Altogether, there were eleven log structures erected by September, 1830, beside a number of small outbuildings; the mission premises appeared as a considerable institution in the wilderness.

With the completion of the school at Dwight there were sixty-five pupils and for many years this institution maintained a reputation as the best school in all the Indian country. Boys and girls both were educated there and many of the graduates became teachers in this and other schools of the tribe.

Dwight assumed a position of considerable importance in the activities in the Cherokee country. It was the destination of Rev. S. A. Worcester, who arrived there with Mrs. Worcester May 29, 1835. They left Brainerd on April 8, and proceeded overland through Kentucky, Illinois, and Missouri to avoid swamps then impassable for wagons. They were detained a week in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, by the illness of Mrs. Worcester. They sustained a heavy loss in the sinking on the Arkansas River of the steamboat on which their household goods, table linen, bedding and clothing were being carried to the West; besides, there were Mr. Worcester's books and the printing paper for the press which also was on the sunken boat. They salvaged some of the property, but many of Mrs. Worcester's choicest possessions were stolen, including her best feather bed, much table linen, and eight blankets. Their greatest loss however, was in printing paper and books.⁠16 The printing press rescued from the river was delivered at Fort Gibson about the first of June and with the consent of the Cherokee council it was set up at Union Mission where Mr. Worcester operated it, the first printing press within what is now Oklahoma. In August they began printing the Cherokee alphabet and select passages of scripture.⁠17 Until Boudinot arrived from the East in 1837 Mr. Worcester had no Cherokee interpreter and the press was mainly employed in printing books and tracts prepared by others in the Choctaw language. The press was continued here until June, 1837 when it was p358 removed to Park Hill where Mr. Worcester had located December 2, 1836, having removed from Union Mission when his new home was ready for occupancy. Here he operated the press for many years.⁠18

In 1837 it was said that the Cherokee were further advanced in agriculture than any other tribe. Those living in the western country had between 1,000 and 1,100 farms where they produced corn, oats, potatoes, beans, pumpkins, and melons and raised horses, cattle and hogs; some of them had taken and filled contracts for the garrison at Fort Gibson and for subsisting immigrant Indians to the amount of $60,000.00.⁠19 John Rogers, a native Cherokee was manufacturing eighty bushels of salt a day at the Grand Saline on the Grand River, then considered one of the greatest assets of the Cherokee Nation.⁠20 Native traders were engaged in merchandising and transportation;⁠21 others operated gristmills and sawmills of great importance to the tribe. Native Cherokee traders, guided by Kichai Indians, were seen as far from home as the Forks of the Brazos River in Texas on their way to the Comanche Indians with powder and lead to exchange for horses and mules.⁠22

The Cherokee were supporting their few schools and a number of native teachers were employed, including the famous Sequoyah, who was paid $400.00 a year for his invaluable service in teaching the use of his alphabet. "The Cherokee show a great deal of improvement," said the commissioner of Indian affairs, "and are still improving and bid fair at no distant date to rival their white brethren of the west in point of wealth, civilization and moral and intellectual improvement. . . . The greater part of the Cherokees are farmers, have good comfortable homes and live, many of them, as well and as genteel and in a pecuniary point of view will compare with the better class of farmers in the states."

The Committee and Council of the Cherokee Nation in General Council, June 7, 1835, directly after the arrival of Rev. Mr. Worcester p359 and his printing press, adopted a resolution declaring that no more missionary establishments could be located in the Nation until the General Council should enact laws to authorize and regulate all such establishments;⁠23 but provided that private teachers might continue to enter the nation and reside in the families of citizens for the education of their children.⁠24 The Cherokee council then met at Tolluntusky, at the mouth of the Illinois River. John Jolly, Joseph Vann and John Rogers were the principal chiefs, John Smith was president of the Committee and Glass president of the Council, William Shorey Coodey secretary pro tempore and William Thornton acting clerk.

The Moravian missionaries preached their last sermon to the Cherokee Indians before their enforced migration, on September 16, 1838. A party of three of them, Miles Vogler, Herman Ruede and John Renatus Schmidt, then set out for the western country; they traveled the route taken by the Indians, through Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri and Arkansas, on October 27 passing through Fayetteville and into the Indian Territory. They located first and began a station on the Barren Fork where most of the Indians who had been attending their church were settled. This place proved sickly and with the consent of the Cherokee council Mr. and Mrs. Vogler removed to Beattie's Prairie; the Indians did not follow in numbers sufficient to encourage them and the missionaries then removed to the head of Spring Creek and began a missionary station known as New Spring Place.⁠25 At first the Cherokee council was reluctant to permit the Moravian settlement here, but in 1842 they gave their consent. The Moravians were indefatigable and for many years maintained mission stations and schools at Barren Fork, Beattie's Prairie, and New Spring Place.⁠26

After the removal of the eastern Cherokee to Indian Territory the tribe numbered about 18,000 persons, two thousand of whom professed p360 Christianity. While divided into two bitter political parties by the machinations of Schermerhorn, both factions were remarkable for their fidelity to the laws of the nation and strict observance of treaty obligations. Cause for bitter complaint, however, existed in the fact that the authorities of Arkansas persisted in entering the Cherokee nation and arresting members of that tribe for offenses committed upon white people wandering into their country but having no business there. This was a great hardship on the Indians, who were compelled to travel many miles to attend the trial of such cases in the courts of Arkansas.

The Cherokee people were favored with a rich and productive country divided into woodland and prairie, well watered and adapted to raising wheat, corn, oats, and vegetables. Many of the natives owned stocks of cattle, horses, hogs and sheep, and some had valuable fruit orchards. The more prosperous Indians possessed neat looking farms and houses and exhibited signs of wealth and intelligence; some of them owned fine residences and even the poorer members of the tribe had comfortable houses.

After the arrival of the great majority of the tribe from the East in 1839 the Cherokee people exhibited an increasing interest in education. John Ross took the lead in this movement. One of his first acts as chief after the establishment of the new government in September 1839 was a special message submitting to the Cherokee National Council communications from the Moravian missionaries Rev. Miles Vogler and Rev. Herman Ruede, the Baptist Rev. Evan Jones, and the Presbyterian Dr. Elizur Butler seeking permission to set up their mission churches and schools in the Nation.

Some of the Cherokee immigrants already had "full and well selected libraries. Thousands of them can speak and write the English language with fluency and comparative accuracy, and as many hundreds who draw up written contracts, deeds, and other instruments for the transfer of property."⁠27

The Cherokee had intermarried more with white people than had any other tribe and by their associations had acquired many of the customs and much of the view point of the white race. Having a larger percentage of white blood than any other of the immigrant tribes, they p361 justly boasted more outstanding individuals distinguished for intellect and leadership; so also did they possess more lawless characters; more bloodthirsty bandits; more merciless feuds than all the other immigrant tribes together.⁠28

The Cherokee people suffered irreparable loss in the progress they should have achieved by the party strife, divisions and faction growing out of the old treaty. As time passed, political animosities and feuds existed in spite of the nominal adjustment of governmental differences; but regardless of this situation, the people continued to exhibit commendable zeal in the promotion of education, agriculture, domestic economy, and industry, which were reflected in the neatness and style in which they lived, and the possession of necessities and comforts of living enjoyed by them.⁠29 It was said that the wearing apparel manufactured from the raw material in the nation by the women with spinning wheel and loom⁠30 compared well with the products of private families of the same character in most of the States. By 1844 Dwight Mission that had contributed much to the advancement of the Cherokee people had been converted into a girl's school in connection with which there were ten teachers.⁠31

The Author's Notes:

2 Letter from Charles Hicks to Dr. Jedidiah Morse, ibid., 167. Hicks was one of the first men in the Cherokee Nation who learned to read and write.

4 "Indians" Return Jonathan Meigs, "Memorandum Book of Occurrences, 1796‑1807," Library of Congress, Manuscript Division.

12 Census furnished by Elias Boudinot to New York Observer, copied in Edwardsville (ill.) Spectator, May 20, 1826, p3, col. 4.

13 Eugène A. Vail, Sur les Indiens de l'Amérique du Nord (Paris, 1840), p67.

14 When the legislature of Arkansas created Lovely County in 1827 Nicksville was made the county seat (Foreman Pioneer Days in the Early Southwest, 65), and a post office was established there April 25, 1828 with John Dillard as postmaster; it was discontinued October 2, 1829. This location is near the present Marble City, Sequoyah County, Oklahoma.

15 Foreman, op. cit., 66; Washburn to Evarts, September 1, 1830, Andover-Harvard Library, Missionary letters, Vol. LXXIII, No. 2.

18 Missionary Herald, March 1837; Report of American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions for 1837.

20 In 1842 plans were made to enlarge the salt works here to permit of its manufacture on a large scale.

23 The Cherokee had "no public schools and but two or three of any description [in the West before emigration]; when the emigration shall be completed it is to be expected that the number will be greatly increased (Armstrong to Harris, October 31, 1838, OIA "Schools, Western Superintendency" A 402).

26 Report of David Z. Smith, August 1, 1844 in commissioner of Indian affairs Report for 1844.

28 The most desperate men in the history of these feuds were the Starrs. Besides the slaying of the Vores they were charged with the butchery of a family of the name of Wright, and of participation in the "Cane Hill Tragedy" some time before (Benson, Life among the Choctaws, 158). It is also a well known fact that many of the best people in the Cherokee Nation were and are of the Starr family; for integrity and good citizenship they are excelled by none.

29 "The Cherokees, you are aware, are more intelligent as a whole, and further advanced in civilization, than any other tribe within my jurisdiction. Many of them are men of decided talents and education" (Armstrong to Crawford, Report of commissioner of Indian affairs, 1843).

30 In 1845 Agent Butler reported that "there are 400 spinning wheels manufactured at the public expense and issued annually, one-half of which are made by a Cherokee and are of good workmanship (Butler, report, September, OIA, "Cherokee" B 2569). These were made by a Cherokee named Bullfrog for which he was promised by the United States $4 each, which four years later he was trying to secure (Brown to commissioner of Indian affairs, August 20, 1849, OIA, "Cherokee" file B 495).

31 The boys' school at Dwight burned in 1840 but was rebuilt and the school was opened again March 1, 1841 (American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions Report for 1841).

Thayer's Note:

a On p362, Foreman lists eight districts with entirely different names; whether these are the same districts or whether a different division is meant, he doesn't say.

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The Author's Notes:

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p352 Chapter twenty-six
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