214 MYTHS OF THE CHEROKEE [eth.anx.19 



of c-attle, and wliose Indian wife had learned tci inakebntter and cheese (Travels, p. 

 347). In 17Hti Hawkins mentions meeting two Cherokee women driving ten very 

 fat cattle tu market in the white settlements (manuscript journal, 1796). Bees, if 

 not native, as the Indians claim, were introduced at so early a period that the 

 Indians have forgotten their foreign origin. The De Soto narrative mentions the 

 finding of a pot of honey in an Indian village in Georgia in 1540. The peach wa>s 

 cultivated in orchards a t'entury before the Revolution, and one variety, known as 

 early as 1700 as the Indian jieach, the Indians claimed as their own, asserting that 

 they had had it before the whites came to America (Lawson, Carolina, p. 182, ed. 1860). 

 Potatoes were introiluced early and were so much esteemed that, according to one 

 old informant, the Indians in Georgia, before the Removal, "lived on them." Coffee 

 came later, and the same informant remembered when the full-bloods still consid- 

 ered it poison, in spite of the efforts of the chief, Charles Hicks, to introduce it 

 among them. 



Spinning wheels and looms were introduced shortly before the Revolution. 

 According to the Wahnenauhi manuscript the first among the Cherokee were brought 

 over from England by an Knglishman named Edward Graves, who taught his 

 Cherokee wife to spin and weave. The anonymous writer may have confounded 

 this early civilizer with a young Englishman who was employe<I by .\gent Hawkins 

 in 1801 to make wheels and looms for the Creeks ( Hawkins, 1801, in .\merican State 

 Papers: Indian Affairs, i, p. 647). Wafford, in his lioyhood, say about 1815, knew an 

 old man named Tsi'nawi on Young-cane creek of Nottel}' river, in upper (Teorgia, 

 who was known as a wheelwright and wa.s reputed to have made the first spinning 

 wheel and loom ever made among the mountain Cherokee, or perhaps in the Nation, 

 long before Watford's time, or "about the time the Cherokee began to drop their 

 silver ornaments and go to work." In 1785 the commissioners for the Hopewell 

 treaty reported that some of the Cherokee women had lately leartied to spin, andmany 

 were very desirous of instruction in the raising, spinning, and weaving of flax, cotton, 

 and wool (Hopewell Commissioners' Report, 1785, American State Pajjers: Indian 

 Affairs, i, p. 39). In accordance with their recommendation the next treaty made with 

 the tribe, in 1791, contained a provision for supplying the Cherokee with farming 

 tools (Holston treaty, 1791, Indian Treaties, p. 36, 1837), and this civilizing policy 

 wa.s continued and broadened until, in 1801, their agent reported that at the Chero- 

 kee agency the wheel, the loom, and the plow were in pretty general use, and farm- 

 ing, manufacturing, and stock raising were the principal topics of conversatioli among 

 men and women (Hawkins manuscripts. Treaty Commission of 1801). 



(32) Colonel Return J. j\Iek;s (p. 84): Return .Jonathan Jleigs was born in Mid- 

 dletown, Connecticut, December 17, 1734, and died at the Cherokee agency in Ten- 

 nessee, .January 28, 1823. He was the first-born son of his parents, who gave him 

 the somewhat jieculiar name of Return Jonathan to commemorate a romantic 

 incident in their own courtship, when his mother, a young Quakeress, called back 

 her lover as he was mounting his horse to leave the house forever after what he 

 had supposed was a final refusal. The name has been handed down through five 

 generations, every one of which has produced some man distinguished in the pub- 

 lic service. The subject of this sketch volunteered immediately after the open- 

 ing engagement of the Revolution at Lexington, and was assigned to duty under 

 .\rnold, with rank of major. He accompanied .\rnold in the disastrous march 

 through the wilderness against Quebec, and was captured in the assault upon the 

 citadel and held until exchanged the next year. In 1777 he raised a regiment and 

 was promoted to the rank of colonel. For a gallant and successful attack upon the 

 enemy at Sag harbor, Long island, he received a sword and a vote of thanks from 

 Congress, and by his conduct at the head of his regiment at Stony point won the favor- 

 alile notice of Washington. After the close of the Revolution he removed to Ohio, 

 where, as a mendjerof the territorial legislature, he drew up the earliest code of regula- 



