While tracing an insurrection against British Authority called the War of Regulation, and the formation of some small, short-lived Appalachian nations, I came across some curiously Anglophonic tribal chiefs and ended up tracing a trail, not of Indian tears, but of Arуan semen…

I was reminded here of letters, written in good English by Tecumseh and his brother and by a particular Cherokee chief writing a gunsmith for a custom-made rifle. What follows is a rough chronology of tribal survival and assimilation through miscegenation. Keep in mind that when Indian chiefs used non-Indian names, it was either because they were part or full European, most often a mixed-breed. There is great resistance this idea that “white” and Indians intermarried and current historians are trying to redact any notion of interbreeding unless explicitly stated. Note that the duty of the Indians by treaty to return runaways, if it was not always abided by, would result in undocumented race-mixing.

The treaties represented gradual documentations of extortion and concession that tracked from northeast to southwest across the Appalachians from the 1750s through the 1820s. So the focus begins on the Iroquois and I will note the indications of mixed-breed leaders and the hazy evidence for Amerindian racial purity and English separatism generally claimed by historians. Generally historians claim that the Indians were given pet names by the English or adopted honorable nick-names of honored English allies. This did occur. However, it was also common for adopted Anglo-Americans to have two names, an Indian name and their Anglo name.

We begin in faint racial haze and may marvel at the rampant intermarriage of the Cherokee with the English, Scottish and possible some Irish and German fathers and mothers.

-1720, Pathkiller, last hereditary and possibly the last full-blooded war-chief of the Cherokee, is born and will die in 1828 after serving as an officer and/or ally under British and American leaders. He fought against American separatists, the Shawnee and the Creek for British and American interests.

-1738, Dragging-Canoe, a Cherokee who led multi-ethnic warbands, is born of adopted captive parents and he survived small-pox, possible indication of mixed ancestry. In any case, the following adoption practices make European-style family tracing difficult: “Born about 1738, he was the son of Attakullakulla ("Little Carpenter") and Nionne Ollie ("Tamed Doe"). Both parents had been born to other tribes, taken captive in war, and adopted by Cherokee families who raised them in their tradition. His father was born to the Nipissing near Lake Superior. His mother was born to the Natchez and adopted as a daughter by Oconostota's wife”

-1752, Treaty of Logstown, Pennsylvania, the Half-King or Tanacharison, a Seneca chief, who had been enslaved by the French, with close ties to fur trader George Croghan who was actually inducted into the Onondaga tribe as a chief. Logstown was a multi-ethnic settlement and the Half-King was possibly mixed race, as one French officer declared him “more English than the English” though referring to behavior, not race.

-1759-61, Anglo-Cherokee War

-1762, Red-headed half-breed Bob Benje or “Captain Bench” or “The Bench” would serve as a war leader during the Cherokee-American wars of 1784-93

-1767, Charles Hicks, is born to a European father and a mixed blood mother, making him a quadroon, he will rise as a Cherokee chief until his death in 1827. His wives included Nancy Anna Felicitas Broom, daughter of another Indian Trader or half-breed Chief.

-1768, Treaty of Fort Stanwix, New York, November

-1769, William Abraham Hicks, future Cherokee chief, was born as a ¼ Cherokee and would serve as chief from 1827-37.

-1770, Sequoya, also known as George Gist and George Guess, the man who invented the Cherokee alphabet, is born to a Cherokee woman and a German or Scotsman. Sequoya, greatest Native American genius, was possibly half-German or Half-Scotch.

-1770, Treaty of Lochaber, South Carolina, 18 October

-1772, Major Ride, also known as the Ridge and Pathkiller II, is born, and will be killed by enemy Cherokee for political reasons in 1839. He looks like a half-breed in the 1834 portrait by Charles Bird King. Note that his father’s parentage is not known, but hopefully “believed” to be fully indigenous:

“Ridge was born about 1772 into the Deer clan of his mother, Oganotota (O-go-nuh-to-tua), a Scots-Cherokee woman, in the Cherokee town of Great Hiwassee, along the Hiwassee River (an area later part of Tennessee).[1] His father was believed to be full-blood Cherokee. Ridge's maternal grandfather was a Scots trader who returned to Europe and left a Cherokee wife and daughter behind in America."

-1774,Treaty of Camp Charlotte, Ohio, boycotted by a “Chief Logan” and also known as “Captain John Logan” who had a brother named John Petty and a female relative slain and her mixed-race baby to a certain John Gibson spared, Jesse Logan, a grandson of chief and officer, recalled that his mother’s father, Chief Cornplanter was “not dark” and had “grey eyes.” Logan has no known European ancestry, but had brother with a full European name of common type and two mixed race relatives by marriage. There is little chance of nailing down racial ancestry from such accounts as follows, especially since the Indians did not seem to suffer from the racial paranoia of the English:

-1782, John Looney, future chief of the Cherokee was born ¾ Cherokee, he was the father-in-law of Stand Watie, Confederate Cherokee leader

-1788, The Bench saves various women and children, including Jane Brown, who he promised to return in true highland style, while holding his famous war axe, “"I will bring the girl, or the owner's head".

-1790, The birth of John Ross, Scottish-American, with 1/8th Indigenous ancestry. Ross’s photo shows a very “white” looking Indian. He would serve as chief from 1828 until 1866.

Ross was the son of a Cherokee mother and a Scottish father. His mother and maternal grandmother were of mixed Scots-Cherokee ancestry since his maternal grandfather was another Scottish immigrant. At the time among the matrilineal Cherokee, anyone born of a Cherokee mother was counted as a Cherokee and a member of her clan. As a result, young John (in modern times, he would be counted as one-eighth Cherokee by blood quantum) grew up bilingual and bicultural, an experience that served him well when his parents decided to send him to schools that served other mixed-race Cherokee.

-1792, Dragging-Canoe dies of a heart attack after a victory dance, his biography leaves out the fact that he married the daughter of an English Governor who introduced dairy farming to the Cherokee. Dragging canoe was probably full-blooded Cherokee.

John Watts, mixed-blood son of an Englishman, succeeds Dragging Canoe as war chief. John Watts was at best a half-blood.

-1793, Watts sent envoys to Knoxville, which was at the time the capital of the Southwest Territory, to meet with Governor Blount to discuss terms for a lasting peace. The peace party included Bob McLemore, Tahlonteeskee, Captain Charley of Running Water, and Doublehead, as well as the white delegates.”

Aside from Bob McLemore, an obvious white Indian, another Cherokee leader was James Vann. Then there is Tahlonteeskee’s mixed-race heritage:

According to the Cherokee genealogist, Dr. Emmet Starr, the alternative spelling of his name, "Talotisky," was possibly an alliterative spelling of Tahlonteeskee (since at that time there was not yet a uniform system of writing Cherokee sounds into English). He was the older brother (or possibly a half-brother) of John Jolly. Tahlonteeskee married Jennie Lowrey, sister of Assistant Principal Chief George Lowrey. Lowery may have been a cousin of Sequoyah. Lowery's wife was Lucy Benge, a half-sister of Sequoyah. Lucy was the sister of Chickamauga warrior, Bob Benge (often referred to as 'Captain' Bench), whose uncle was John Watts (or 'Young Tassel').

Before 1800 we see clearly, that among the leadership of this tribe, mixed-race parentage is the norm. Was a pure, non-mixed race tribal body leaders because of their European connections? Possibly, but this argues for a body of mixed race tribe members to select from. As these tribal societies operated on merit, it is hard to believe that the only qualification for leadership was European parentage.

-1793, Chief James Van, ¼ Cherokee, rose as a war-leader. Son of a half-blood girl and Indian trader Joseph John Vann, he had sisters named Nancy and Jennie. He would marry three European American women.

-1794, April 6, The Bench is killed and scalped by U.S. forces in Wise County, Virginia, while he was returning from a raid with hostages for adoption.

-1800, David Vann, nephew of James and the brother of the grandmother of Will Rogers. His portrait by Charles Bird King in 1825 is clearly of a person of European heritage. He married two women named Jennie Chambers, Martha McNair and was killed in 1863 fighting for the Confederacy.

-1804, birth of Cherokee Baptist missionary, Jesse Bushyhead, to a half-blood mother and half-blood father

-1828, John Jolly, a mysterious Indian chief with no known date of birth, whose 1834 portrait shows an obvious European with a tan and mixed clothing, who legend says did not speak English, looks to this cynical eye like an Irish runaway turned Indian, with totally Gaelic facial features.

-1828, John Bird King paints Sequoya’s portrait, who looks exactly like my Uncle Fred Kern, who is half-German. So I’m siding with the German father.

-1830, Sequoya’s portrait by Henry Iman agrees with King’s.

-1839, John Rogers, a mysterious person of unknown parentage is elected as a Cherokee chief.

-1843, Sequoya, polymath and warrior and scholar, dies in Mexico. 

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