The Chickamaugas were a diverse group of Cherokees, Creeks, dissatisfied whites, and African Americans who stymied white settlement in Tennessee for approximately nineteen years. On March 19, 1775, one month before the outbreak of fighting in the American Revolution, Richard Henderson signed the Treaty of Sycamore Shoals with the Cherokees led by Attakullakulla, or Little Carpenter. The private treaty ceded Central Kentucky and northern Middle Tennessee to Henderson. Little Carpenter’s son, Dragging Canoe, led the opposition and warned the whites that they were buying a “dark and bloody ground.” (1)

In 1776 the Shawnee chief Cornstalk came south to persuade the Cherokees and other southern tribes to join the British and resist American settlement across the Appalachian mountains. Dragging Canoe and many of the younger Cherokees were quite sympathetic, and eventually the majority of the 2,500 Cherokee warriors attacked the Upper East Tennessee settlements. The Watauga settlers drove away the attackers, and soldiers from the Carolinas and Virginia destroyed most of the Cherokee villages east of the mountains. The most antiwhite Cherokees, led by Dragging Canoe, Bloody Fellow, Young Tassel, and Hanging Maw, moved into several abandoned Creek towns including Citico and Chickamauga along Chickamauga Creek and began calling themselves Chickamaugas after the “river of death.”

The British provided the group with two thousand pounds of supplies early in 1779 in preparation for a major raid on the East Tennessee settlements. In a preemptive strike, Evan Shelby and 900 Virginia and North Carolina troops descended the Tennessee River by boat and surprised the Chickamaugas. The whites burned the villages and seized the supplies. The raid produced few Indian casualties, however, and Dragging Canoe moved the group to the more defensible territory west of Lookout Mountain, setting up the five Lower Towns: Running Water and Nickajack in Tennessee, Lookout Mountain in Georgia, and Long Island and Crowtown in Alabama.

By this time the Chickamaugas, who had started out as dissatisfied Overhill Cherokees, included many Upper Creeks, Shawnee, French “boatmen,” some blacks, and Scots traders. Daniel Ross settled among them by 1785. The Shawnee warrior Cheesekau and his younger brother Tecumseh also lived with them.

The Donelson river voyagers to Fort Nashborough fought their way through the Chickamauga area during the spring of 1780. In the course of their voyage, several members of the party were killed. In the fall of 1780 the Chickamaugas struck at the Cumberland settlements and destroyed Mansker’s Station in Goodlettsville. The following April they attacked Fort Nashborough but lost the battle of the Bluffs. In December 1780 the Chickamaugas lost 80 men to forces under John Sevier at Boyd’s Creek, near the Little Tennessee River. The Chickamaugas kept the Cumberland settlements isolated in 1787, and even attacked Fort White (Knoxville) in 1788. On a river trip, Joseph Brown was captured; he spent a year at Nickajack. In 1792 they struck at Buchanan’s Station, just four miles south of Fort Nashborough. Travelers between East and Middle Tennessee were forced north on the Wilderness Trail, and even there, some 100 deaths occurred. Then, on February 29, 1792, the day after a great victory celebration, Dragging Canoe died suddenly, and the mantle of leadership passed to Young Tassel.

The specific end of the Chickamauga period came on September 12, 1794, when a Southwest Territory militia unit under Major James Ore and led by former prisoner Joseph Brown crossed Monteagle Mountain and wiped out Nickajack and Running Water. By the end of the year the remaining Chickamaugas had joined the Overhill Cherokees to make treaties with the white Tennesseans.

Indian resistance continued, as the towns of Lookout Mountain, Long Island, and Crowtown realigned themselves with the Upper Creeks. Raids into southeast Middle Tennessee continued on a regular basis. The area from Murfreesboro to Beech Grove could not be settled until 1800; Warren County opened to white settlement in 1806; and whites settled Sequatchie County between 1807 and 1810. No effective white settlements, however, except the trading post of Daniel Ross, reached Chattanooga until 1817. The Chickamauga movement finally ended with Andrew Jackson’s victories over the Red Stick Creeks in the 1813-14 Alabama campaign.

Fred S. Rolater, Middle Tennessee State University

(1) Mary French Caldwell, Tennessee: The Dangerous Example, Watauga to 1849 (1974), 35.

Suggested Reading(s): Ronald N. Satz, Tennessee’s Indian Peoples: From White Contact to Removal, 1540-1840 (1979).

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Since the late 1700s observers have pondered the who, what, why, and where of the people in Tennessee they called Melungeons. In earlier American eras that focused on racial pedigrees, any group that did not fit into easy identification as white, African, or American Indian was often called mulatto, mestizo, or mustee, depending on the perceived racial mix. These words, as does the French-derived “melungeon,” share their root in the Latin verb miscere, “to mix.” The theories on the origins of the families termed Melungeon have changed through the years. As one scholar has noted, the history of the Melungeons may ultimately be the individual histories of many families, rather than of one people.

The most well-known location for Melungeons in the state is in the Clinch River area of Hancock and Hawkins Counties. Other groups of people called Melungeon can be found in the Graysville area of Rhea and Hamilton Counties and in Davidson and Wilson Counties in Tennessee, as well as in the states of Virginia, Kentucky, Florida, South Carolina, and Louisiana. One estimate is that approximately forty nonwhite/nonblack communities similar to the Hancock County Melungeons live in the South.

From the earliest days of the exploration and settlement of the southeastern United States, tales abounded about exotic civilizations lost in the wilderness. Hernando de Soto explored the area looking for cities filled with gold and pearls. Others believed they would find a lost tribe of Israel, remnants of a Welsh Prince’s empire, races of pygmies and giants, and tribes of “White Indians.” The imaginations of many of the first settlers of Tennessee were filled with such legends, including Tennessee’s first governor, John Sevier, and first historian, John Haywood.

At the same time, the rich mingling of English, French, Spanish, and other European colonists, free and enslaved Africans, and native Indian tribes on the Atlantic seaboard resulted in new Americans who were of mixed ethnicity and race. The distinctive appearances of such persons gave rise to descriptive names such as mulatto or Melungeon, and mixed race communities were sometimes associated with the legends of “mysterious” peoples. One group of these families arose before 1780 in the piedmont of southeast Virginia and northeast North Carolina. Their movement into the Hancock-Hawkins County area of Tennessee about 1790-1810 can be traced through genealogical and public records, including land grants for service in the Revolutionary War.

The earliest documented use of the term “Melungeon” found to date is in the Stoney Creek Baptist Church (Scott County, Virginia) minutes for September 26, 1813. At a church service, Sister Susanna Kitchen complained against another church member “for saying she harbored them Melungins.” The term was derogatory, used by an outsider for those in the community she disapproved. The term appears again in October 1840 in the Jonesborough (Tennessee) Whig, where “an impudent Melungeon” from the nation’s capital, then called Washington City, was identified as “a scoundrel who is half Negro and half Indian.” Through the nineteenth century, the word “Melungeon” appears to have been used as an offensive term for nonwhite and/or low socioeconomic class persons by outsiders. The people called Melungeons on the whole denied the existence of such a group and when pressed on their racial lineage would claim Indian ancestry. Documentation on the use of the word within the group reveals that even those likely to be classified as Melungeons themselves used the word as an insult.

In the 1890s a new interest in exotic origins for the Melungeons arose along with the popularity in magazines and fiction of colorful stories of the mountain people of the Appalachians. Nashville writer Will Allen Dromgoole wrote many short stories and novels on Tennessee characters, and her articles in The Arena in 1891 are credited by most historians for popularizing the “mystery” of the Melungeons. By her account, the Melungeons arose from African, white, Indian, and Portuguese ancestry, with an emphasis on the latter two. (In the post-Civil War period, some persons of color commonly claimed Portuguese blood, associated with dark skin, as they sought to escape oppression as African Americans.) Similar works of fiction and human-interest stories recounted romantic origins for Melungeons well into the 1900s.

Some authors attempted to factually trace the origins of the Melungeons in the late 1800s. Dr. Swan Burnett wrote recollections of stories he had heard about them for the American Anthropologist in 1889, and although he saw a mixture of white, Indian, and black in the group, he noted that they resented the name Melungeon and called themselves Portuguese. Dromgoole included some family history in her articles and postulated the same mix as Burnett, adding a Portuguese progenitor named Denhan. In 1894 the U.S. Department of the Interior, in its Report of Indians Taxed and Not Taxed, noted that the Melungeons in Hawkins County “claim to be Cherokee of mixed blood.” Folklorists and novelists would continue to explore the possible origins of this mix for the next century.

An especially important scholarly work emerged in 1950 in the form of cultural geographer Edward Price’s dissertation on “Mixed-Blood Populations of the Eastern United States as to Origins, Localizations, and Persistence.” Thoroughly analyzing census and other archival records, Price determined that the Melungeons had descended from free persons of color who moved into Hancock County in the late 1700s and early 1800s from the Virginia-North Carolina piedmont. Children of European and free black unions had intermarried with persons of Native American descent. These conclusions have been largely upheld in subsequent scholarly and genealogical studies.

In 1969 cultural anthropologists William S. Pollitzer and W. H. Brown published their study comparing the physical characteristics and gene frequencies in six blood group systems of 177 Melungeons in Tennessee and Virginia to various worldwide populations. Their conclusion was that the Melungeons most likely derived from a predominately English background with some African American and/or Cherokee roots, with a possible Portuguese component. The authors also concluded that the admixture from marriages with whites in recent generations was ending the ethnic distinctiveness of Melungeons. In 1990 an article by chemist James Guthrie revisited the Pollitzer-Brown study, looking at the gene frequencies in five blood groups. Guthrie argued that the Melungeons in the sample were a Caucasoid population from the Mediterranean, with some African ancestry, though it is impossible to ascertain whether this admixture dates from the Old World or has occurred since the group’s arrival in America.

In a 1951 article Edward Price observed that no group called themselves Melungeons or recognized themselves as Melungeons. Indeed, the name Melungeon had until that time been used primarily by outsiders as a way to identify, and to belittle, a group within their community that appeared to be different. This changed by the 1960s, as many of the residents in the Melungeon section of Hancock County gained better education through settlement schools and entered the middle and upper classes of the county, and as media interest in the “mystery of the Melungeons” created an opportunity for tourism development in Hancock County.

The outdoor drama “Walk Towards the Sunset,” produced outside Sneedville from 1969 to 1975, created an especially sympathetic view of Melungeons, while the Hancock County sheriff and deputies sported shoulder patches stating “Home of the Melungeons” and local restaurants sold “Melungeon cheeseburgers.” In 2001 the Hancock County Chamber of Commerce Web site invited tourists to visit–”Hancock County, Tennessee, home of the mysterious Melungeons, offers numerous mountain byways and scenic panoramas”–and the Old County Jail was in the process of being restored as a Melungeon history museum. The Hancock County Historical and Genealogical Society estimated in 2001 that about 500 Melungeon descendants still lived in northeast Tennessee and southwest Virginia.

In 1981 anthropologist Anthony Cavender published a study based on extensive interviews and observation in the region on the persisting social identity of the Hancock County Melungeons. His conclusion was that although the identity of the Melungeons as a distinctive mixed-race group had virtually disappeared, the term Melungeon still served a major function in two seemingly opposite ways. On the one hand, the word was still used as a pejorative for shiftless persons of low socioeconomic standing, while on the other hand many members of the local elite class identified themselves as Melungeons because of its exotic and romantic associations, encouraged in part by tourism promotion.

A major phenomenon in the Melungeon lore of the 1990s and early 2000s was a revival of interest in the possible Portuguese lineage of the group, spurred in large part by college administrator Brent Kennedy’s 1994 book The Melungeons: The Resurrection of a Proud People. In this work, Kennedy gleans from his own family’s history a theory that the Melungeons originated as Islamic Moors from Iberia, Turkey, and North Africa, refugees from Spanish and English activities on the Atlantic coast in the 1500s. Masking themselves as Christian Portuguese to avoid possible ethnic cleansing, he asserts, the men made their way inland, intermarried to a limited degree with Native Americans, and created the people called Melungeons. Research into this theory is centered at the University of Virginia branch campus at Wise, and the Muslim-Portuguese account can be found at several Web sites devoted to Melungeons.

Today a large number of persons have begun to search for their Melungeon roots, embracing an identity that most of their ancestors denied. For some, the Kennedy theory of Moorish ethnicity is accepted, while others adhere to the evidence of a mixture of white, black, and Native American family lines. One group of Melungeon descendants is actively seeking recognition as an Indian tribe from the State of Tennessee, continuing the claims of Cherokee and other Indian heritage that people called Melungeon have avowed since the early 1800s.

Genealogists and geneticists may ultimately find the answer regarding the factual origins of the Melungeons; most likely, they will discover different ethnic and racial identities for each of the so-called Melungeon families. In the meantime, researcher Mike Nassau has concluded there is no racial or anthropological definition of Melungeon today, but rather that some people identify themselves as Melungeons, or they live in a former Melungeon community, or they are identified as Melungeon because they look Melungeon and come from an area of Melungeon settlement.

Ann Toplovich, Tennessee Historical Society

Suggested Reading(s): Anthony P. Cavender, “The Melungeons of Upper East Tennessee: Persisting Social Identity,” Tennessee Anthropologist 6 (1981): 27-36; C. S. Everett, “Melungeon History and Myth,” Appalachian Journal (1999): 358-409; N. Brent Kennedy and Robyn Vaughan Kennedy, The Melungeons: The Resurrection of a Proud People (1994).

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The term Overhill Cherokee refers to the settlements of the eighteenth-century Cherokee people found in eastern Tennessee. The name Overhill is generally derived from the geographic location of the Cherokees and the need to travel over the mountains from South Carolina to reach them. Early historic sources also often refer to these as the upper settlements in contrast to the lower and middle settlements found east of the Appalachians.

The Overhill towns were found primarily in the lower Little Tennessee and Hiwassee River valleys and those of their tributaries, although some less well-known towns were located in upper East Tennessee. Scholars disagree concerning the establishment of the Overhill towns. Some believe that Overhill Cherokee settlements date as early as the sixteenth century while other researchers argue that the Cherokees came into the area in the late seventeenth century. The most frequently identified towns on the Little Tennessee are Chilhowee, Tallassee, Citico, Chota, Tanasi, Toqua, Tomotley, Tuskeegee, and Mialoquo, and on the Tellico River, Great Tellico and Chatuga. Chestue and Hiwassee Old Town were located on the Hiwassee River. Other divisions of the Cherokees included the Lower towns in northern Georgia and northwestern South Carolina and the Middle, Valley and Out towns in western North Carolina.

Towns within each group had close linguistic, political, economic, and religious ties and shared similar architecture and material culture but were largely politically autonomous. Individual residents were members of one of seven Cherokee clans. Clan membership and kinship relations were established through an individual’s mother. Cherokees could be virtually certain that a fellow clan member resided in any Cherokee town they visited regardless of the region. Clan membership provided a rich network of social and economic alliances that could be called upon at all times. Social and linguistic differences among the regional town clusters were recognized by the Cherokees and clearly identified by English traders and settlers.

Overhill people, for example, spoke a distinctive dialect, which they shared with the Valley towns. One settlement in each region was considered a mother town. By the mid-eighteenth century Chota was considered the mother town, although early in the century its neighbor Tanasi had filled this role, and still earlier Great Tellico may have been the mother town.

Village populations numbered about one hundred to four hundred people. Each village had an octagonal council house or town house measuring up to sixty feet in diameter and a rectangular summer council house measuring about fifteen by forty feet. Both buildings were located at one end of a village plaza that covered an acre or more. The council houses and plaza were the site for all public meetings, including religious festivals, social gatherings, political debates, and military planning. Lieutenant Henry Timberlake in 1760 and Duke Louis Phillipe in 1797 provide particularly vivid descriptions of these buildings. The townhouse and plaza were surrounded by associated households, which were scattered along a river for as far as a mile. Each household included a circular winter house and a rectangular summer house built to the same plan as the council houses, only smaller. In and around these structures, Cherokee families stored and prepared plant and animal foods, processed hides, and manufactured pottery and other household and personal items. Scattered among the houses were small family gardens. At greater distances were agricultural fields where native crops of corn, beans, and squash, as well as plants introduced by Europeans such as potatoes, cabbage, melons, and field peas, were grown, and apple and peach trees were cultivated.

The Overhill towns were the homes of a number of prominent Cherokee leaders well known in American history. These include, for example, Oconastota, the Great Warrior, and Attakullakulla or Little Carpenter, the great diplomat, both of whom resided at Chota. Ostenaco, the warrior and political leader who hosted Henry Timberlake during his well-known diplomatic mission following the Cherokee war of 1760, was from Tomotley. Dragging Canoe, from Chota, was famous for his resistance to American Revolutionary War forces. He established the town of Mialoqua and led the establishment of the Chickamauga towns in the vicinity of Chattanooga. Sequoyah, the inventor of the Cherokee syllabary, came from Tuskegee, which was located near Fort Loudoun.

British traders and colonial officials were well aware of the Overhill settlements by the 1690s, and sustained contact by traders began in the early 1700s. The first official diplomatic mission was attempted in 1715 but failed to reach the primary settlements on the Little Tennessee River. In 1725 this goal was achieved when Colonel George Chicken met with Cherokee headmen at the Tanasi townhouse. Thereafter, a steady stream of diplomatic, economic, and military missions flowed into the area as the British came to depend on the Overhills to provide deer hides and as they recognized the importance of the Cherokees as a military buffer against the French and their Indian allies to the west. Among early missions to the Overhills were the visit of Alexander Cummings in 1730 and the expeditions led by Raymond Demere and William Gerard De Brahm in connection with the construction of Fort Loudoun near Tomotley and Tuskeegee in 1756.

During the Cherokee War of the 1760s many refugees moved to the Overhills when the British destroyed the Lower and Middle towns in North and South Carolina. During the American Revolution and the hostilities that continued into the 1790s, colonial and later territorial militia repeatedly destroyed Overhill towns. People escaping these deprivations and continuing their resistance to American encroachment moved south to form the Chickamauga towns in the vicinity of present-day Chattanooga. The population of the Overhill towns was so greatly reduced that some towns were completely abandoned. At other towns council houses were maintained to serve the political, social, and religious needs of households in the vicinity, and some towns retained small resident populations.

In the Treaty of 1819 the Cherokees ceded land from the Little Tennessee River south to the Hiwassee River and in so doing transferred the sites of the Overhill settlements to the United States. The treaty of 1819 also provided for Cherokees to retain residence in this area on 640- or 160-acre reservations. Some individuals reestablished households at former village locations, while other families resided along smaller streams and uplands throughout the region. This effort to sustain a cultural identity and physical connection with the Overhill settlements lasted until 1838, when the Cherokees were removed to Oklahoma by the United States government.

In the 1960s and 1970s extensive archaeological studies of the Overhill villages on the Little Tennessee River in Monroe and Loudon counties were undertaken because of their inclusion in the Tellico Dam Reservoir. In the late 1970s the village sites were inundated. A small area of the Chota townhouse and plaza were covered with fill, and two monuments, one at the site and another overlooking the site, honoring the Cherokee people were erected. The Sequoyah Birthplace Museum, located near Vonore, is dedicated to the public presentation of Cherokee history, especially the Overhill towns.

Gerald F. Schroedl, University of Tennessee, Knoxville

Suggested Reading(s): John P. Brown, Old Frontiers, The Story of the Cherokee Indians from Earliest Times to the Removal to the West, 1838 (1938); David Cockran, The Cherokee Frontier: Conflict and Survival, 1740-1762 (1962); Verner Crane, The Southern Frontier, 1670-1732 (1929); Charles M. Hudson, The Southeastern Indians (1976); James Mooney, Myths of the Cherokee (1900); Samuel Cole Williams, Dawn of Tennessee Valley and Tennessee History (1937).

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The Overhill Cherokee village of Chota was located in the Little Tennessee River valley of eastern Tennessee in present-day Monroe County. Chota, or Itsa’sa, is also spelled Echota and Chote. The original meaning has been lost. Chota probably developed from its close neighbor Tanasi, which it had superseded in size and population by the 1740s. Contemporary descriptions of the village in the 1750s and 1760s, generally confirmed by archaeological studies, indicate that it consisted of a central village plaza with an octagonal townhouse, or council house, where public ceremonies and social events took place. An open rectangular building, or pavilion, where public affairs were conducted in warm weather, stood adjacent to the townhouse. Approximately sixty individual domestic households surrounded the plaza and public buildings and extended along the river for nearly a mile. Each household included a circular winter house, an adjacent summer house, and their associated corncribs and outdoor work areas. Probably three hundred to five hundred individuals populated the village.

By the mid-eighteenth century, both Europeans and Native Americans recognized Chota for its military power, political authority, and economic influence, and regarded it as the capital of the Cherokee nation. Among the Cherokee leaders residing at Chota were Connecorte (Old Hop), Attakullakulla (Little Carpenter), Oconastota, Kanagatuckoo (Standing Turkey), Old Tassel, and Hanging Maw. British colonial traders resided at the town, and a steady flow of emissaries representing the British colonies visited it throughout its history. Henry Timberlake’s 1762 journal conveys particularly vivid images of Cherokee life at Chota. In 1780 American Revolutionary War forces destroyed Chota, but it had been rebuilt by 1784. In 1788 the Cherokee capital was moved from Chota to Ustanalli in northern Georgia. By 1807 only thirty people resided at Chota, and by 1813, the population had diminished to a single household. The land occupied by Chota was finally ceded to the United States in 1819.

In 1939, and again from 1969 through 1974, the University of Tennessee conducted extensive archaeological investigations at Chota, recording the townhouses, thirty-seven domestic structures, and hundreds of refuse-filled pits and human burials. This work has contributed substantially to the description of eighteenth-century Overhill Cherokee culture and the changes it experienced as a result of European contact. Prior to the completion of the Tellico Reservoir in 1979, the central portion of the site in the vicinity of the townhouses was covered with fill by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). By agreement with the TVA, this area is now managed by the Eastern Band of the Cherokee. Two monuments, one dedicated to Tanasi and the other commemorating the Chota townhouse, were placed at the site in the 1980s.

Gerald F. Schroedl, University of Tennessee, Knoxville

Suggested Reading(s): Gerald F. Schroedl, ed., Overhill Cherokee Archaeology at Chota-Tenasee (Report of Investigations 38, Department of Anthropology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville).

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NANCY WARD
1738-1822

Nancy Ward gravesite in Polk County. State of Tennessee Photographic Services.

A monument was erected by the Nancy Ward Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution at her gravesite in Polk County. Credit: Courtesy of Carroll Van West.

Last Beloved Woman of the Cherokees, Nancy Ward was born in 1738 at Chota and given the name Nanye-hi, which signified “One who goes about,” a name taken from Nunne-hi, the legendary name of the Spirit People of Cherokee mythology. Her birth came near the outbreak of a smallpox epidemic that resulted in the deaths of approximately one-half of the Cherokees. The identity of her father is not known, but the Cherokees practiced a matrilineal tradition, and Nanye-hi’s mother was Tame Doe, of the Wolf Clan, a sister of Attakullakulla, civil chief of the Cherokee nation.

In her adult years, observers described Nanye-hi as queenly and commanding in appearance and manner and as a winsome and resourceful woman. By age seventeen she had two children, Five Killer and Catherine. Her husband was killed in a raid on the Creeks during the 1755 battle of Taliwa, where she fought by her husband’s side, chewing the lead bullets for his rifle to make them more deadly. When he fell in battle, she sprang up from behind a log and rallied the Cherokee warriors to fight harder. Taking up a rifle, she led a charge that unnerved the Creeks and brought victory to the Cherokees.

Because of her valor, the clans chose her as Ghighau “Beloved Woman” of the Cherokees. In this powerful position, her words carried much weight in the tribal government because the Cherokees believed that the Great Spirit frequently spoke through the Beloved Woman. As Beloved Woman, Nanye-hi headed the Women’s Council and sat on the Council of Chiefs. She had complete power over prisoners. Sometimes known as Agi-ga-u-e, or “War Woman,” she also prepared the warriors’ Black Drink, a sacred ritual preparatory to war.

Bryant Ward, an English trader who had fought in the French and Indian War, took up residence with the Cherokees and married Nancy in the late 1750s. Ward had a wife, but since Cherokees did not consider marriage a lifelong institution, the arrangement apparently presented few problems. Ward and her English husband lived in Chota for a time and became the parents of a daughter, Betsy. Eventually Bryant Ward moved back to South Carolina, where he lived the remainder of his life with his white wife and family. Nancy Ward and Betsy visited his home on many occasions, where they were welcomed and treated with respect.

Nancy Ward also became respected and well known by the settlers moving across the mountains into the Cherokee territory. James Robertson visited her home. John Sevier owed much of his military success to her: on at least two occasions, she sent Isaac Thomas to warn Sevier of impending Indian attacks. She once stopped the warriors of Toqua from burning Lydia Bean at the stake. Ward kept Bean, the wife of Tennessee’s first permanent settler, at her home for a time before allowing her to return to Watauga. Ward made good use of the white woman’s enforced stay and learned the art of making butter and cheese. Subsequently, Ward bought cattle and introduced dairying to the Cherokees.

Ward exerted considerable influence over the affairs of both the Cherokees and the white settlers and participated actively in treaty negotiations. In July 1781 she spoke powerfully at the negotiations held on the Long Island of the Holston River following settler attacks on Cherokee towns. Oconastota designated Kaiyah-tahee (Old Tassel) to represent the Council of Chiefs in the meeting with John Sevier and the other treaty commissioners. After Old Tassel finished his persuasive talk, Ward called for a lasting peace on behalf of both white and Indian women. This unparalleled act of permitting a woman to speak in the negotiating council took the commissioners aback. In their response, Colonel William Christian acknowledged the emotional effect her plea had on the men and praised her humanity, promising to respect the peace if the Cherokees likewise remained peaceful. Ward’s speech may have influenced the negotiators in a more fundamental way because the resulting treaty was one of the few where settlers made no demand for Cherokee land. Before the meeting, the commissioners had intended to seek all land north of the Little Tennessee River. Nevertheless, the earlier destruction of Cherokee towns and the tribe’s winter food supply left many Indians facing hunger. As a result of the desperate circumstances, Ward and the very old Oconastota spent the winter in the home of Joseph Martin, Indian Agent to the Cherokees and husband of Ward’s daughter Betsy.

Again at the Treaty of Hopewell in 1785, Ward made a dramatic plea for continued peace. At the close of the ceremonies, she invited the commissioners to smoke her pipe of peace and friendship. Wistfully hoping to bear more children to people the Cherokee nation, Ward looked to the protection of Congress to prevent future disturbances and expressed the hope that the “chain of friendship will never more be broken.” (1) Although the commissioners promised that all settlers would leave Cherokee lands within six months and even gave the Indians the right to punish recalcitrant homesteaders, whites ignored the treaty, forcing the Cherokees to make additional land cessions.

During the 1790s Ward came to be known as Granny Ward because she took in and provided for a number of children. At the same time, she observed enormous changes taking place within the Cherokee nation as the Indians adopted the commercial agricultural lifestyle of the nearby settlers and pressed for a republican form of government. Unlike the old system of clan and tribal loyalty, the new Cherokee government provided no place for a “Beloved Woman.”

The Hiwassee Purchase of 1819 forced Ward to abandon Chota. She moved south and settled on the Ocoee River near present-day Benton. There she operated an inn on the Federal Road until her death in 1822. Her grave is located on a nearby hill beside the graves of Five Killer and her brother Long Fellow (The Raven). A monument was erected on her grave in 1923 by the Nancy Ward Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution.

David Ray Smith, Oak Ridge

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The largest institution of its type among the eastern Cherokees, Brainerd Mission was a multi-acre school near Chattanooga. Courtesy Chattanooga-Hamilton County Bicentennial Library.

The cemetery at Brainerd Mission near Chattanooga. Photograph by Carroll Van West. Courtesy MTSU Center for Historic Preservation.

Brainerd Mission was a multi-acre mission school situated on Chickamauga Creek near present-day Chattanooga. Named for eighteenth-century missionary David Brainerd, it was the largest institution of its type among the Eastern Cherokees. The Boston-based American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) received the Cherokees’ approval to establish the school in October 1816 and began classes there the following March. During its two decades of operation Brainerd enrolled more than three hundred male and female Cherokee students and employed forty ministers and teachers. While the institution was a frequent source of conflict between the Cherokees and the board, most students acquired at least basic proficiency in reading and writing, and several staff members provided Cherokee leaders with valuable political advice and assistance during the removal crisis.

The Congregationalist and Presbyterian missionary founders, including Daniel Butrick, Ard Hoyt, and Cyrus Kingsbury, assumed that proper education for Indian children included instilling them with Christian religious precepts and Anglo-American work habits. Accordingly, they designed a curriculum which included Bible study, hymns, prayer, and vocational training (stock-raising, gardening, smithing, and carpentry for boys and domestic chores, spinning, and weaving for girls) as well as the “three Rs,” grammar, and geography. Lessons followed the Lancastrian plan, wherein older and more accomplished students helped instruct their younger counterparts. Rigorous discipline included corporal punishment for infractions of the school’s code of behavior.

The Brainerd missionaries enjoyed some success as teachers, helping at least one hundred students achieve high levels of proficiency in English and reading and sending several young Cherokee men to the ABCFM’s Foreign Mission School in Connecticut for further instruction. Few students joined the mission’s Congregational church, however, and many parents objected to the missionaries’ use of corporal punishment and the agricultural chores required of male students–unsuitable work for men, according to Cherokee norms. Moreover, the missionaries’ pronounced bias in favor of bicultural students alienated full blood children and their parents. Consequently, the number of full-blooded Cherokees at Brainerd fell by one-third between 1821 and 1825.

The ABCFM initially charged students one dollar per week for tuition and board but eliminated these charges in 1819 to boost enrollment. Funding for Brainerd and for the board’s seven other mission stations in Cherokee territory came from private contributions and from the U.S. government, which gave the ABCFM a large (one thousand to two thousand dollars) annual grant. Using these funds, the Brainerd missionaries provided their students with free instruction, board, and clothing and financed the construction of an extensive mission complex which included separate boys’ and girls’ quarters and schoolhouses, housing for the missionaries and other instructors, a church, two mills, and a garden. In 1824 Cherokee leaders expressed concern over Brainerd’s rapid expansion and asked the National Council to prohibit further hiring by Superintendent William Chamberlain, to which the Council agreed. Tension between the Cherokee government and the board missionaries subsided in the late 1820s, however, as the two groups joined forces to resist removal.

In March 1830 a fire destroyed much of the central part of the mission, and classes and religious services could not resume for two years. In the mid-1830s Brainerd became a refuge for missionaries and Cherokee congregants driven from the ABCFM’s smaller stations in Georgia; by 1837 the Church of Christ of Brainerd included a record 110 members. The expulsion of the Cherokees from the Southeast the following year forced the ABCFM to permanently abandon the site. Brainerd’s staff held their final religious services in August 1838.

David A. Nichols, University of Kentucky

http://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/imagegallery.php?EntryID=B081

In 1819 Rev. Ard Hoyt (our ancestor) was Superintendent of Brainerd w/ Rev. Daniel S. Buttrick as his asst. The school had 60 pupils that year. One of them, Lydia Lowrey age 16 (our ancestor), joined the Presbyterian Church & was baptized on 1/31/1819. Shortly afterward, she had a dream in which the words came to her so impressively that on arising in the morning she wrote them out as the first hymn ever written by a Cherokee.

http://diglib.lib.utk.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=tdh;view=text;rgn=main;idno=ch010
http://brainard-braynard-brainerd.blogspot.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Presbyterian_Church_in_Chattanooga,_Tennessee
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/WWworcester.htm
http://unknownscottishhistory.com/articlefour.php

Seminary Hall April 2008

Northeastern State University (NSU) is a public university with its main campus located in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, at the foot of the Ozark Mountains. Northeastern’s home, Tahlequah, is also the capital of The Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. The University also has two other campuses in Muskogee and Broken Arrow.

History

The school was founded on May 7, 1851 as the Cherokee National Female Seminary. On March 6, 1909, the State Legislature of Oklahoma passed an act providing for the creation and location of Northeastern State Normal School at Tahlequah, Oklahoma, and for the purchase form the Cherokee Tribal Government of the building, land, and equipment of the Cherokee Female Seminary. In the 1950s Northeastern emerged as a comprehensive state college, broadening its curriculum at the baccalaureate level to encompass liberal arts subjects and adding a fifth year program designed to prepare master teachers for elementary and secondary schools. In 1974, the Oklahoma Legislature authorized that the name of the institution be changed from Northeastern State Normal School to Northeastern Oklahoma State University and then again in 1985 to Northeastern State University. Northeastern is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of Oklahoma as well as one of the oldest institutions of higher learning west of the Mississippi River.^[3] Today NSU is the fourth largest University in Oklahoma.^[4]

Tahlequah Campus

The Tahlequah campus, which spans over 200 acres (0.81 km2), rests on the grounds of the Cherokee Female Seminary. The original building for the seminary is still in use, and now known as Seminary Hall. The campus consists of a multitude of different buildings with classroom, laboratory, residential, and athletic facilities. Recent years have witnessed the construction of a $10 million Science Center which was funded by a bond issued by the University.[5] NSU boasts the only College of Optometry in Oklahoma, and the largest enrollment of Native American students of any public institution of higher education by both percentage and amount.[6] NSU offers 69 undergraduate degrees, 18 graduate degrees, and 13 pre-professional programs in five colleges (Business & Technology, Liberal Arts, Education, Optometry, and Health & Science Professions). The student-to-faculty ratio is 26 to 1 and in the Spring of 2008 the total enrollment for the Tahlequah Campus was 6,216.[7] There is also a distance learning program, where students who cannot attend the university due to work or family obligations can complete courses via the Internet or videoconferencing.

A few of my relatives went to school/graduated from here including Monroe Calvin Keys & his wife Lucy Lowrey Hoyt Keys. They graduated in 2/1885.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeastern_State_University

http://www.thepeoplespaths.net/Cherokee/FemaleSeminaryNotes.htm
http://www.yvwiiusdinvnohii.net/Articles2002/CHC020814RichInCulture.htm
http://members.virtualtourist.com/m/4b7c5/cfd2f/6/

Our ancestor Sarah LeForce married Nelson Beecher Chamberlain. Her brother, Clarence William LeForce, married Nelson’s daughter, Emma Grace Chamberlain.

Genealogy of Chamberlains/Chamberlins:

Richard Chamberlain married Sarah Dugbee

They were the parents of:

Joseph Chamberlain married Hannah Gilbert

They were the parents of:

Nathaniel Chamberlain married Elizabeth Hunkins

They were the parents of:

Moses Chamberlain I married Jemima Wright

They were the parents of:

Moses Chamberlain II married Abigail Stevens

They were the parents of:

Rev. William Chamberlain married Flora Hoyt

They were the parents of:

Rev. Armory Nelson Chamberlain married Eunice Dolly Hoyt

They were the parents of:

Nelson Beecher Chamberlain married Emma Marie Meeks & Sarah Viola LeForce.

Nelson & Emma were the parents of:

Emma Grace Chamberlain LeForce married Clarence William LeForce

Rev. Armory Nelson Chamberlain married Eunice Dolly Hoyt

They were the parents of:

Flora E. b. 8/30/1847 d. 7/17/1875

Abigail Eunice b. 5/13/1849 d. 1927 married Unknown Talbert

Nelson Beecher Chamberlain b. 9/9/1850 d. 12/13/1936 married Emma Marie Meeks & Sarah Viola LeForce

William Clifford b. 4/23/1852 d. 10/13/1933 married Lydia Ann Ward b. 8/1/1856 d. 7/27/1882 & Madge Goodykoontz b. 8/7/1859 d. 5/23/1925

Edward Warren b. 10/10/1853 d. 3/31/1899 married Sarah E. Nazworthy. They had daughter Abbie Mae b. 5/23/1884 d. 4/6/1885

Arthur Fanshaw b. 10/9/1857 married Letitia Goodykoontz.

Henry Eugene b. 2/24/1860 d. 5/23/1883

Robert Lee b. 10/28/1865

Nelson & Emma were the parents of:

George B. – b. 4/18/1878 d. 6/8/1881

Emma Grace – b. 4/7/1881 married Clarence William LeForce

Marie Eunice b. 9/29/1882 married Frank Edward Nix

William Nelson b. 11/22/1883

Nelson & Sarah were the parents of:

Roy – b. 1886

Abigail Otellia – b. 10/18/1890 married Thomas Cogne

Erastus Donald – b. 11/7/1891 d. 5/31/1978 married Maude Barney

Mary Ellen – b. 4/23/1894 married William A. Parker

Clarence Eugene – b. 8/25/1895 d. 1/2/1974 married Effie Barlow b. 11/24/1896 d. 10/7/1993

William & Lydia were the parents of:

Flora Hoyt – b. 3/6/1877 d. 8/13/1896

Edith Ursa – b. 8/20/1879 d. 12/25/1880

Clara Emily – b. 8/2/1881

William & Madge were the parents of:

Winfred Clark – b. 4/3/1888 d. 3/19/1929 married Ethel O’Niel b. 7/1/1894 d. 10/21/1987

Louis Margaret – b. 2/27/1893

Milo Reu – b. 3/8/1895 d. 6/1/1985 married Lou (Lulu) Scarborough & Carrie ?

Clint Lowry – b. 5/30/1897

Quatie Eulatia – b. 5/13/1899

William Clifford Jr. – died in infancy

Lucian B. – died in infancy

Mary & William Parker were the parents of:

Norman Eugene Parker – b. 4/1/1912

Billie Parker – b. 1/23/1914

Viola Mae Parker – b. 5/15/1916

Mary Jane Parker – b. 11/1/1919

Missing Headstones:

Rev. William Chamberlain
Emma Marie Meeks LeForce
Arthur Fanshaw Chamberlain & Letitia Goodykoontz Chamberlain
Robert Lee Chamberlain
Marie Eunice & Frank Edward Nix
William Nelson Chamberlain
Roy Chamberlain
Abigail Otellia & Thomas Cogne
Maude Barney Chamberlain
Mary Ellen & William Parker
Flora Hoyt Chamberlain
Clara Emily Chamberlain
Lou (Lulu) Scarborough Chamberlain
Clint Lowry Chamberlain
Quatie Eulatia Chamberlain
William Clifford Chamberlain Jr.
Lucian B. Chamberlain

Genealogy of Wright’s:

John Wright

He was the father of:

John Wright married to Enfell

They were the parents of:

Deacon Samuel Wright married Margaret

They were the parents of:

Sgt. Samuel Wright married Elizabeth Hurt

They were the parents of:

Capt. Benjamin Wright married Thankful Taylor

They were the parents of:

Rememberance Wright married Elizabeth

They were the parents of:

Jemima Wright married Moses Chamberlain I

Genealogy of Kent/Stevens or Stephens

Thomas & Joan/Jean Kent came from England to Town of Essex before 1643.

They were the parents of:

Josiah Kent married Mary Paflin

They were the parents of:

Abigail Kent married Otto Stevens

They were the parents of:

Unknown Stevens/Stephens married Sarah Hadley

They were the parents of:

Abigail Stevens/Stephens married Moses Chamberlain II

Abigail Stevens/Stephens Chamberlain’s sister Judith married George Washington Stone & her grandson was Chester A. Arthur – President.