222 MYTHS OF THK CHERoKKK [eth.axn.IU 



wliilt.' waiting in the stofkade caniii. The inscription, with details, is given from 

 nil'orniation kindly furnished liy Mr D. K. Dunn of Gonasauga, Tennessee, in a 

 letti-r dated August 16, 1890: 



"Saered to tlie memory of David and Delilah A. McXair, who departed this life, the 

 former on the 15th of August, 1836, and the latter on the ;iOth of November, 183S. 

 Their children, being members of the Cherokee Nation and having to go with their 

 people to theAVest, <lo leave this monument, not only to show their regard for their 

 parents, but toguard their sacred ashes against the unhallowed intrusion of the white 

 man." 



(45) President Sam I'EL HorsTox, (p. 145) : This remarkable man was born in Kock- 

 bridge county, Virginia, March 2, 1793, and died at Huntsville, Texas, July 25, 1863. 

 Of strangely versatile, but forceful, character, he occuiiies a unique position in Ameri- 

 can history, condjining in a wonderful degree the rough manhood of the pioneer, 

 the eccentric vanity of the Indian, the stern dignity of the soldier, the genius of the 

 statesman, and withal the high cliivalry of a knight of the olden time. His erratic 

 career has been the subject of nuich cheap romancing, lint the simple facts are of 

 sufficient interest in themselves without the aid of fictitious embellishment. To the 

 Cherokee, whom he loved so well, he was known as Ka'lanii, "The Raven," an old 

 war title in the tribe. 



His father having died when the bo)' was nine years old, his widowed mother re- 

 moved with him to Tennessee, opposite the territory of the Cherokee, whose boundary 

 was then the Tenne.?see river. Here he worked on the farm, attending school at 

 intervals; but, being of adventurous disposition, he left home when sixteen years old, 

 and, crossing over the river, joined the Cherokee, among whom he soon became a 

 great favorite, being adopted into the family of Chief .Tolly, from whom the island at 

 the mouth of Hiwassee takes its name. After three years of this life, during which 

 time he wore the Indian dress and learned the Indian language, he returned to civili- 

 zation and enlisted as a private soldier under .Tackson in the Creek war. He soon 

 attracted favorable notice and was promoted to the rank of ensign. By striking 

 bravery at the bloody battle of Horseshoe bend, where he scaled the breastworks with 

 an arrow in his thigh and led his men into the thick of the enemy, he won the last- 

 ing friendship of .Tackson, who made him a lieutenant, although he was then barely 

 twenty-one. He continued in the army after the war, serving for a time as subagent 

 for the Cherokee at .Tackson's request, until the summer of 1818, when he resigned 

 on accomit of some criticism liy Calhoun, then Secretary of War. An <ifiicial investi- 

 gation, held at his demand, resulted in his exoneration. 



Removing to Nashville, he began the study of law, and, being shortly afterward 

 admitted to the bar, set up in practice at Lebanon. Within five years he was succes- 

 sively district attorney and adjutant-general and major-general of state troops. In 

 1823 he was elected to Congress, serving two terms, at the end of which, in 1827, he 

 was elected governor of Tennessee by an overwhelming majority, being then thirty- 

 four years of age. Shortly before this time he had fought and wounded (Tcneral White 

 in a duel. In January, 1829, he married a young lady residing near Nashville, but 

 two months later, without a word of explanation to any outsider, he left her, resigned 

 his governorshiji and other official dignities, and left the state forever, to rejoin his 

 old friends, the CUierokee, in the West. For years the reason for this strange conduct 

 was a secret, and Houston himself always refused to talk of it, but it is now under- 

 stood to have been due to the fact that his wife admitted to him that she loved 

 anothei' and hail only been induced to marry him by the over-persuasions of her 

 parents. 



From Tennessee he went to Indian Territory, whither a large part of the Cher- 

 okee had already removed, and once more took up his residence near Chief Jolly, 

 who was now the principal chief of the western Cherokee. The great disap- 

 pointment which seemed to ha\e l)lighted his life at its l)rightest was heavy at his 



