30 MYTHS OF THE CHEKUKKK [eth.ann.19 



six or .seven hundred Rechahecrian Indians — liy which is |)ro1)aV)ly 

 meant that niimlKT of warriors — from the mountains had invaded tlie 

 lower country and established themselves at the falls of .lames river, 

 where now is the city of Richmond. The assembly at once passed 

 resolutions " that these new come Indians be in no sort sntfered to seat 

 themselves there, or an}^ place near us, it having cost so much blood 

 to expel and extirpate those perfidious and treacherous Indians which 

 were there formerly." It was therefore ordered that a force of at least 

 100 white men be at once sent against them, to be joined by the war- 

 riors of all the neighboring subject tribes, according to treaty obliga- 

 tion. The Pamunkey chief, with a hundred of his men, responded to 

 the summons, and the combined force marched against the invaders. 

 The result was a bloody battle, with disastrous outcome to the Vir- 

 ginians, the Pamunkey chief with most of his men being killed, while 

 the whites were forced to make such terms of peace with the Recha- 

 hecrians that the assembly cashiered the commander of the expedition 

 and compelled him to pay the whole cost of the treaty from his own 

 estate.' Owing to the imperfection of the Virginia records we have 

 no means of knowing the causes of the sudden invasion or how long 

 the invaders retained their position at the falls. In all prol)a))ility it 

 was only the last of a long series of otherwise unrecorded irruptions 

 by the mountaineers on the more peac^-ful dwellers in the lowlands. 

 From a remark in Lederer it is probable that the Cherokee were assisted 

 also by some of the piedmont tribes hostile to the Powhatan. The 

 Peaks of Otter, near which the Cherokee claim to have once lived, as 

 has been already noted, are only about one hundred miles in a straight 

 line from Richmond, while the burial mound and town site near 

 Charlottesville, mentioned by .Jefferson, are but half that di.stance. 



In 1655 a Virginia expedition sent out from the falls of .James river 

 (Richmond) crossed over the mountains to the large streams flowing 

 into the Mississippi. No details are given and the route is uncertain, 

 l)ut whether or not they met Indians, they must have passed through 

 Cherokee territory.'-' 



In l(j70 the German traveler, John Lederer, went from the falls of 

 .lames river to the Catawba country in South Carolina, following for 

 most of the distance the path used by the Virginia traders, who already 

 had regular dealings with the southern tribes, including probably the 

 Cherokee. He speaks in several places of the Rickahockan, which 

 seems to be a more correct form than Rechahecrian, and his narrative 

 and the accompanying map put them in the mountains of North Caro- 

 lina, back of the Catawba and the Sara and southward from the head 

 of Roanoke river. They were apparently on hostile terms with the 

 tribes to the eastward, and while the traveler was stopping at an Indian 



1 Burk. John, History of Virginia, ii, pp. 104-107: Petersburg, 180.'S. 



2Ram.se.v, J. G. M., Annals of Tennessee, p. 37; Ctiarleston, 1853 (unoting Martin, North Carolina, i, 

 p. 115, 1853). 



