SOME CHEROKEE HISTORY NOTES
MYTHS OF THE CHEROKEE - James Mooney.
If ever a book was mis-named, it is this one. James Mooney compiled the stories and tales from the Cherokees living in North Carolina around the turn of this century. But, the first part of the book is a very terse, but accurate, history of the Cherokee people. Sure, he talks of the "tribe" when he should be saying "Nation" and he uses "Indians" when he should be just saying "Cherokees", but that is the usual nonsense that we have had to live with. However, we found in the book a personal comment that he made which we wish to pass on:
"We turn aside now for a time from the direct narrative to note the development of events which culminated in the forced expatriation of the Cherokee from their ancestral homes and their removal to the far western wilderness.
"With a few notable exceptions the relations between the French and Spanish colonists and the native tribes, after the first occupation of the country, had been friendly and agreeable. Under the rule of France or Spain there was never any "Ind" boundary. Pioneer and native built their cabins and tilled their fields side by side, ranged the woods together, knelt before the same altar and frequently intermarried on terms of equality, so far as race was concerned. The result is seen today in the mixed-blood communities of Canada, and in Mexico, where a nation has been built upon an Ind. foundation. Within the area of English colonization it was otherwise. From the first settlement to the recent inauguration of the allotment system it never occurred to the man of Teutonic blood that he could have for a neighbor anyone not of his own stock and color. While the English colonists recognized the native proprietorship so far as to make treaties with the Inds. it was chiefly for the purpose of fixing limits beyond which the Ind. should never come after he had once parted with his title for a consideration of goods and trinkets. In an early Virginia treaty it was even stipulated that friendly Inds. crossing the line should suffer death. The Ind. was regarded as an incumbrance to be cleared off, like the trees and the wolves, before white men could live in the country." Mooney, Myths of the Cherokee, page 98.
On page 53, Mooney writes: "The barbarous custom of scalping to which the border men had become habituated in the earlier wars was practiced upon every occasion when opportunity presented, at least upon the bodies of warriors, and the South Carolina legislature offered a bounty of seventy-five pounds for every warrior's scalp, a higher reward, however, being offered for prisoners".
Note: The prisoners were sold into slavery immediately.
How much money was 75 pounds? Somebody said: multiply by 30! It was an enormous amount of money for that time, and the British didn't care whether the scalps were from their "friends" or their enemies. A "dead Ind." was a "good Ind." Not so with the blacks, however. Blacks were valuable property. Native Americans meant no more to the white intruders than a jackrabbit in the forest. This is one reason why the Cherokees don't like blacks very much -- the blacks were always given much better treatment. During the Civil War, the Cherokees freed the blacks among them, being the first in the country to do so. But, after the Civil War, the Federal USofA government forced the Cherokees to list them on a census roll, and give them 160 acres of land. Later, when the Cherokees were forced to receive their "allotments", most of them received only 110 acres. And, today the living Cherokees don't like it when black people claim to be Cherokees, just because they had ancestors forcibly listed on the Cherokee freedmen rolls.