32 MYTHS OP' THE CHEROKEE [eth.ann.19 



and Congaree, all of that colony, who had made war upon thoni and 

 .sold a mnnber of their trilx'snien into .slavery. They were told that 

 their kin.snieii could not now be recov^ered, but that the Engli.sh de.sired 

 friend.ship with their tribe, and that the Government would see that 

 there would l>e no future oround for such complaint.' The promise 

 was apparently not kept, for in 1705 we find a bitter aceu.sation biought 

 against Governor Moore, of South Carolina, that he had granted com- 

 missions to a numlier of persons "to set upon, as.sault. kill, destroy, 

 and take captive as many Indians as they pcs.sible [.svVJ could." the 

 prisonei's l)eing sold into slavery for his and their private profit. By 

 this course, it was asserted, he had "already almost utterly ruined the 

 trade for skins and furs, whereby we held our chief correspondence 

 with England, and turned it into a trade of Indians or slave making, 

 whereby the Indians to the .south and west of us are already invohed 

 in blood and confusion." The an-aignment concludes with a warning 

 that such conditions would in all pro1)ability draw down upon the colony 

 an Indian war with all its dreadful consequences." In view of what 

 happened a few years later thi.sreads like a prophecy. 



About the year 1700 the first guns were introduced among the Cher- 

 okee, the event l)eing fix(>d ti'aditionally as having occurred in the girl- 

 hood of an old woman of the tribe who died about 177.5.'' In 17os we 

 find them described as a numerous people, living in the mountains 

 northwest from the Charleston settlements and having sixty towns, but 

 of small importance in the Indian trade, lieing "but ordinary hunters 

 and less warriors."' 



In the war with the Tusearora in 1711-1713. which resultfd in the 

 expulsion of that tribe from North Carolina, more than a thousand 

 southern Indians reenforced the South Carolina volunteers, among 

 theuj being over two hundred Cherokee, hereditary enemies of the 

 Tusearora. Although these Indian allies did their work well in the 

 actual encounters, their assistance M'as of doubtful advantage, as they 

 helped them.selves freely to whatever they wanted along the way, so 

 that the settlers had reason to fear them almost as much as the hostile 

 Tusearora. After torturing a large number of their prisoners in the 

 usual savage fashion, they returned witli the remainder, whom they 

 afterwai'd sold as .slaves to South Carolina. ' 



Having wiped out old scores with the Tusearora, the late allies of 

 the English proceeded to discuss their own grievances, which, as we 

 have seen, were sufficiently galling. The result was a combination 



1 Hewat. South Carolina and Georgia, i, p. 127, 1778. 



-Documents of 1705, in Xorlli Carolina Colonial Records, ii, p. 904: Raleigh, ismi. 



■1 Haywood, Nat. and Aborig. Tenn., p. 237,1823; with the usual idea that Indians live to extreme 

 old age, Haywood makes her 110 years old at her death, putting back the introduction of firearms 

 to 1677, 



< Letter of 1708, in Rivers, South Carolina, p, 238, ISoti. 



■■' Royce, Cherokee Nation, Fifth .\nn. Rep. Bureau of Ethnology, p. 140, 1888; Hewat, op. cit.,p, 216 

 et passim. 



1 



