3H MYTHS OF THE CHEROKEE [etu.ann.III 



thfv took ship for Caroliiiii, wlicir tlu>y arrived, a.s we are told l)y 

 the yovernor, "in good liealth and mightily' well satisfied with His 

 Majesty's bounty to them."' 



In the next year some action was taken to use the Cherokee and 

 Catawba to subdue the refractory renuiant of the Tuscarora in North 

 Carolina, but when it was found that this was liable to l)rin<)' down the 

 wrath of the Iroquois upon the Carolina settlements, more peaceable 

 methods were used instead." 



In 1738 or 173^ the smallpox, brought to Carolina by slave ships, 

 broke out among the Cherokee with such teirible effect that, according 

 to Adair, nearly half the tribe was swept away within a year. The 

 awful mortality was due largely to the fact that as it was a new and 

 strange disease to the Indians they had no proper remedies against it, 

 and therefore resorted to the universal Indian panacea for '"strong" 

 sickness of almost any kind, viz, cold plunge l)aths in the running 

 stream, the worst treatment that could possibly be devised. As the 

 pestilence spread unchecked from town to town, despair fell upon the 

 nation. The priests, believing the visitation a penalty for violation of 

 the ancient ordinances, threw away their sacred paraphernalia as things 

 which had lost their protecting power. Hundreds of the warriors 

 committed suicide on beholding their frightful disligurement. ''Some 

 shot themselves, others cut their throats, some .stabbed themselves 

 with knives and others with sharp-pointed canes; many threw them- 

 selves with sullen madness into the tire and there slowly expired, as if 

 they had been utterly divested of the native power of feeling pain."^ 

 Another authority estimates their loss at a thousand warriors, partly 

 from smallpox and partly from rum brought in by the traders.' 



About the year 17-10 a trading path for horsemen was marked out 

 by the Cherokee from the new settlement of Augusta, in Georgia, to 

 their towns on the headwaters of Savannah river and thence on to the 

 west. This road, which went up the .south side of the river, soon 

 l)ecame much frequented.* Previous to this time most of the trading 

 goods had been transported on the backs of Indians. In the same 

 year a party of Cherokee under the war chief Ka'lanu. "The Raven," 

 took part in Oglethorpe's expedition against the Spaniai'ds of Saint 

 Augustine.'^ 



In 173(5 Christian Priber, said to be a Jesuit acting in the French 

 interest, had come among the Cherokee, and, by the facility with which 

 he learned the language and adapted himself to the native dress and 



'Hevvat, South Carolina and Georgia, ii, pp. 3-11, 1779; treaty documents nl 1730, North Carolina 

 Colonial Records, m, pp. 128-133, 1886: Jenkinson, Collection of Treaties, ii, pp. 315-318: Drake, S.G.. 

 Early History of Georgia: Cuming's Emba,ssy; Boston, 1872; letter of Governor Johnson, December 27, 

 1730, noted in South Carolina Hist. Soc. Colls., i, p. 246, 18.57. 



- Documents ol 1731 and 17:52, North Carolina Colonial Records, ii i , pp. 153, 202, 34.'i, Siltf, :!93. 1886. 



■'Adair, American Indians, pp. 232-234. 1775. 



^Meadows (?|, State of the Province of Georgia, p. 7, 1742, in Force Tracts, i. is:iij. 



'Jones, C. (;., History of Georgia, i. pp. ;i27,328; Boston, 1883. 



