238 MYTHS OF THE CHEROKEE [f.th.ann.19 



"Worn-out-blanket," a mixed-blood speaking and writing both ian- 

 guages, born in the old Cherokee Niition near the site of the pi-es- 

 ent Clarkesville, Georgia, in iSOti, and dying when about ninety 

 years of age at his home in the eastern part of the Cherokee Nation, 

 adjoining the Seneca reservation. The name figures prominently in 

 the early history of North Carolina and Georgia. His grandfather, 

 Colonel Wafford, was an officer in the American Revolutionary army, 

 and shortly after the treaty of Hopewell, in 1785, established a colony 

 known as '* Wafl'ord's settlement," in upper Georgia, on territory which 

 was afterward found to be within the Indian boundary and was acquired 

 by special treaty purchase in 1804. His name is appended, as witness 

 for the state of Georgia, to the treaty of Holston, in 1791:.' On his 

 mother's side Mr Wafford was of mixed Cherokee, Natchez, and white 

 blood, she being a cousin of Sequoya. He was also remotely con- 

 nected with Cornelius Dougherty, the first trader established among 

 the Cherokee. In the course of his long life he filled manj- positions 

 of trust and honor among his people. In his youth he attended 

 the mission school at Valleytown under Reverend Evan Jones, and 

 just before the adoption of the Cherokee alphabet he finished the 

 translation into phonetic Cherokee spelling of a Sundaj' school speller 

 noted in Filling's Iroquoin Bibliography. In 1821 he was the census 

 enumerator for that district of the Cherokee Nation embracing upper 

 Hiwassee river, in North Carolina, with Nottely and Toccoa in the 

 adjoining portion of Georgia. His fund of Cherokee geographic 

 information thus acquired was found to be invaluable. He was one of 

 the two commanders of the largest detachment of emigrants at the 

 time of the removal, and his name appears as a councilor for the western 

 Nation in the Cherokee Almanac for 1816. When employed by the 

 author at Tahlequah in 1891 his mind was still clear and his memory 

 keen. Being of practical lient. he was concerned chiefiy with tribal 

 history, geography, linguistics, and every-day life and cu.stom, on all 

 of which subjects his knowledge was exact and detailed, but there were 

 few myths for which he was not able to furnish confirmatory testi- 

 mony. Despite his education he was a firm believer in the Nuiine'hi, 

 and several of the best legends connected with them were obtained 

 from him. His death takes from the Cherokee one of the last connect- 

 ing links between the present and the past. 



1 See contemporary notice in the Historical Sketch. 



