MooNEY] AVHITE-l'ATIl's RKBELLION 1828 113 



Ross as assistant fhit;!'. ' With a toiistitution and national press, a 

 well-developed system of industries and home education, and a gov- 

 ernment administered hy edueated Clii-istian men, the Cherokee were 

 now justly entitled to be considered a civilized people. 



Tile idea of a civiliz(>d Indian government was not a new one. The 

 first treatv ever negotiated by the United States with an Indian tribe, 

 in 1778, held out to the Delawares the hope that by a confederation of 

 friendly tribes they might be able " to form a state, whereof the Dela- 

 ware nation shall be the head and have a representation in Con- 

 gress.''' Priber, the Jesuit, had already familiarized the Cherokee 

 with the forms of civilized government before the middle of the eight- 

 eenth century. As the gap b(>tween the conservative and progressive 

 elements widened after the Revolution the idea grew, until in 1S08 

 representatives of both parties visited Washington to propose an 

 arrangement by which those who clung to the old life might lie allowed 

 to remove to the western hunting grounds, while the rest should remain 

 to take up civilization and '"begin the establishment of fixed laws and 

 a i-egular government." The project received the warm encourage- 

 ment of President Jefierson, and it was with this understanding that 

 the western emigration was first ofliciallv recognized a few years later. 

 Immediatel}^ upon the return of the delegates from Washington the 

 Cherokee drew up their first brief written code of laws, modeled agree- 

 ably to the friendly suggestions of Jefl'erson.^ 



By this time the rapid strides of civilization and Christianity had 

 alarmed the conservative element, who saw in the new order of things 

 only the evidences of apostasy and swift national decay. In 1828 

 White-path (Xiiii'na-tsune'ga), an infiuential full-blood and councilor, 

 living at Turniptown (U'luii'yi), near the present Ellijay, in Gilmer 

 county, (jcorgia, headed a rebellion against the new code of laws, with 

 all that it implied. Ho soon had a large band of followers, known to 

 the whites as "Red-sticks," a title sometimes assumed by the more 

 warlike element among the Creeks and other southern tribes. From 

 the townhouse of Ellijay he preached the rejection of the new consti- 

 tution, the discarding of Christianity and the white man's ways, and 

 a return to the old tribal law and custom — the .same doctrine tliat had 

 more than once constituted the burden of Indian revelation in the past. 

 It was now too late, however, to reverse the wheel of progress, and 

 under the rule of such men as Ilicks and Ross the conservative oppo- 

 sition gradually melted away. White-path was deposed from his seat 



> See Royee. Cherokue Katioti. Fifth Aim. Kep. Bureiiu of Etlinology, p. 241, 18S8; Mereilith. in The Five 

 Civilized Tribes, Extra Census BulU'lin. \>. -11, 1,S9I; Morse, Amerienn Geography, i, p. 577, 1819 (for 

 Hicks). 



2 Fort Pitt treaty, September 17, 1778, Indian Treaties, p. 3, 1837. 



» Cherokee Agency treaty. .Inly 8, 1817, it)id., p. 209; Drake, Indians, p. 4.tO. ed. 1880: Johnson in 

 Senate Report on Territories; Cherokee Memorial, .laniiary IS. 18:51; see lawsof 1808. 1810, and hiler, 

 in American State Papers: Indian Atlairs, ii, pp, 279-28:*, 1831, The volume of Cherokee laws, com- 

 piled in the Cherokee language by the Nation, in 1850, begins with the year 1S08. 



19 ETH— 01 8 



