CHEROKEE COMMUNITIES OF THE SOUTH
by
ROBERT K.
THOMAS
Abstract
Cherokee Communities
of the South was written by Mr. Thomas in the mid-70's. It includes a
hand drawn map at the end and appears to be a result of some of Mr.
Thomas' survey work in the southeastern United States during the summer
of 1978 (?). It was submitted to the Consortium of American Indian
Title IV Programs of Southeastern Michigan in 1979
In this article I would like to present the reader with a brief sketch
and some history of the various groups of Indians in the South who are
referred to as Cherokees, and who generally consider themselves to be
Cherokees. There are several such groups, some of them unrelated
to others. There is one "block" of Indian people who live in the
Cumberland region of Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia and southern Ohio
who refer to themselves as Cherokee. It is this group which I
would like to examine in detail, but I would like, also, to look at the
whole spectrum of groups who refer to themselves as Cherokees.
Of course, the best known body of Cherokees are those Indians who I
will call, for lack of a better name, legal Cherokees. They are
descendants of the Cherokees who lived in the region of southeastern
Tennessee, wetern North Carolina and northwestern South Carolina at the
time of white contact. By 1820 most of them had moved from the
old Cherokee area south and west into northern Georgia and northeastern
Alabama. Northwestern South Carolina, as well as a great deal of
the original Cherokee country in southeastern Tennessee and western
North Carolina, had been sold to the United States by 1820. The
area of the Cherokee Nation was restricted largely to northern Georgia
and northeastern Alabama by 1820. In 1838 most of these Cherokees
were removed to the Indian Territory, now Oklahoma. A few
families escaped the removal in scattered areas of northern Georgia and
northeastern Alabama. A larger group, the majority of whom had
been living out of the Cherokee Nation under American jurisdiction in
western North Carolina, were able to negoitiate with federal
authorities and remain, as a community, in their home territory.
Of this body of legal Cherokees, who have treaties with the federal
government, there are now two main groups. One is a group which
lives in North Carolina still within the original Cherokee country; on
the Qualla Reservation around Cherokee, North Carolina and further west
about 50 miles in a small community near Robinsville, North
Carolina. These Cherokees at Robinsville do not live on a
reservation but on a patchwork of scattered trust lands which are
occupied by individual Cherokee families. There are probably,
altogether, of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, some 4,000 Indians
who are resident on the Qualla Reservation and in the Cherokee
settlement near Robinsville. Of this 4,000, 3,000 are
predominately of Indian blood; of that 3,000 some 1,500 or more are
Cherokee speaking in the home. Language use varies in diferent
parts of the the reservation. Some townships are much more
conservative and traditional than others. But insofar as the
spectrum of Indians in the United States goes, all the North carolina
Cherokees are fairly conservative and traditonal Indians.
Besides this group of legal Cherokees in North Carolina there is also a
category of people who are descendants of the Cherokee Indians who were
left behind after the removal in northern Georgia and northeastern
Alabama. These people do not live in a separate Indian community;
they are simply members of the general white society who have some
Cherokee blood in them.
Recently, members of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians have migrated
to other areas. Ohio and southeastern Michigan has been the
region to which they have migrated, primarily. There are
Cherokees of Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, for instance, in the
Flint area.
This above population is, by and large, all the Cherokee Indians who
have a connection to the legal Cherokee tribe now living in the eastern
United States.
The other large body of Indians that are legal Cherokees live in
eastern Oklahoma. There are now about 15,000 of what are called
full blood Cherokees residing in five counties in eastern Oklahoma in
the Ozark region. These 15,000 people are traditional,
conservative Cherokee speakers of predominately Indian ancestry.
There are some other 10,000 full blood Cherokees who live in Tulsa,
Muscogee, Fayetteville, etc.; working just out of the "core" area and
who maintain very close contact with "home", perhaps even returning on
weekends. Functionally, there is a tribal society of at least
20,000 Cherokees in eastern Oklahoma. There are also besides this
25,000 in Oklahoma, probably another 10,000 full bloods now living in
Texas and California. There is a large body of Cherokees in the
Dallas-Fort Worth area. In fact, there is a colony just west of
Fort Worth near Weatherford, Texas of about 1,200 full blood Cherokees
from southern Adair County, Oklahoma. There must be at least
5,000 Cherokees from this group of traditional full blood Cherokees
scattered over the state of California.
Besides this body of traditional full blood Cherokees, there are many
other people in the general society of Oklahoma who are functionallly
whites, that is socially, culturally, and linguistically whites, who
have a legal claim to being Cherokee. There are many thousands of
such people. They, like other white Oklahomans, have also
migrated in recent years to Kansas, Colorado, the Southwest, and
California. It would be very hard to estimate the number of such
people but I would guess there are a minimum of 60 or 70 thousand in
Oklahoma and other western states.
The above migrations are not the first migrations out of the Oklahoma
area. There were two other areas to which individual Cherokees
migrated in past years. One, some of the Cherokees who
sympathized with the Confederacy during the Civil War remained in Texas
and never came back to the Cherokee Nation after the war. They,
then, pioneered into west Texas and became ranchers. They are now
simply white Texans with special Cherokee heritage.
During the gold rush times there were quite a few Cherokees who went to
California. In fact, in the 1850's there was a community of
Cheorkees called Cherokee Flats near Oroville, California that existed
as a distinct Cherokee community until about 1900 and then
dispersed. There were also individual Cherokees scattered around
through California in the mid-1800s. Most of them either married
whites and their descendants became whites or else they married local
Indians and their descendants are now native California Indians.
Among California Indians you find names like Hicks, Ridge, and the like
of old Cherokee names, passed down from some Cherokee wagon train scout
or gold miner.
Briefly, those are the two main bodies of legal Cherokees, plus the
areas to which these Indians have migrated in recent years.
Now, besides these two groups of legal Cherokees there are quite a few
other groups in the South who are referred to by whites as Cherokees
and who think of themselves as Cherokees. More than that, there
are some groups in which a significant number of people refer to
themselves as Cherokee, but others of the same group may not so
identify; that is to say, there is not unanimous agreement in how all
the Indians think of themselves in some communities. In some
groups in the South different individual Indians will present
themselves as being of different tribes. I want to examine both
community types; those where everybody refers to themselves as
Cherokees and are thought of by whites as Cherokees, and at those
groups where only a significant proportion of the community identifies
as Cherokees.
The first such community is a small group of Indians that live north of
Charleston, South Carolina and call themselves the Four Hole-Edisto
Cherokees. There is a large swamp in that region called Four Hole
Swamp where many of these Indians live. Others live along the
neighboring Edisto River. They have joined together into one
group and call themselves the Four Hole-Edisto Cherokees. In
fact, they are, socially, one group. There must be about 1,500 of these
Indians. They speak only English and are quite heavily mixed with
white and probably a little black blood from early days. In fact,
most of the Indian people in the South who refer to themselves as
Cherokees, other than the legal Cherokee tribe, are very heavily mixed
in background. Sometimes they are mixed with white and sometimes
with both white and black. In the case of the Four Hole-Edisto
Cherokees, it appears to be mainly with white. In style of life
these Indians are very much like any other rural southerner in the area.
The Four Hole and Edisto Indians have a strong notion of being
Cherokee. They have a tradition that about the time of the
removal of Indians from the east in the 1830's they fled from the
Cherokee Nation, down the Santee River in dugout canoes, to Four Hole
Swamp. I am sure that they probably did come down the Santee
River in dugouts, but I doubt that they came from the area of the old
Cherokee Nation. To come down the Santee River in a dugout from
where the Cherokees were living in the 1830's would have been
practically impossible unles you wanted to carry a dugout over the Blue
Ridge Mountains. I would guess that this tradition aludes to
coming down the Santee from the Catawba area, which is a rather hilly,
rough area not too far north of their present site. Quite a
number of small, unrelated groups had moved into the Catawaba country
in the middle 1700's and were living with the Catawba. In fact, there
was one group of Natchez Indians who fled from Mississippi to the
Cherokee area, then to the area of Four Hole Swamp, and then later in
the 1700's moved north to the Catawba area. It is very
likely that during the time of the removal, some of these
Natchez returned to the Four Hole Swamp area to avoid the possibility
of being caught up in the removal. I would guess that the Indians
on the Edisto are probably an old native tribe which has married very
heavily with Indians on the Four Hole Swamp so that both groups have
come to think of themselves as the same people and as Cherokees.
There is in northern North Carolina a tribe which is officially called
the Haliwa Indians. They live in Halifax and Warren Counties,
North Carolina near the town of Roanoke Rapids. They are a fairly
large group of about 5,000. Their official name is Haliwa - a
contraction created by putting together the names of the counties of
Halifax and Warren and creating the term Haliwa. Many of the
Indians in this group refer to themselves as Cherokee. They do
not accept the term Haliwa and refer to themselves as Cherokee although
the term Haliwa is gaining more acceptance as time goes on. This
tribe appears from the research I have done, to be the remnants of the
North Carolina Tuscaroras. When the Tuscaroras fled north in the
early 1700s they left a large body, of so-called neutral Tuscarora, on
a reservation just to the east of the modern Haliwa country near
Windsor, North Carolina. There were several hundred Indians left
on that reservation after the "hostile" Tuscaroras fled north and
became part of the Iroquois League in New York. Slowly throughout
the 1700's, parties of Indians left that reservation and joined their
brethren in New York. In the first decade of the 1800's the few
remaining Tuscarora sold their lands at Windsor, North Carolina.
It appears they simply moved west a few miles to the present Haliwa
area. There were a few other Indians, possibly Tuscarora, already
living in that area. In any case, it appears that the Haliwa are
remnants of the neutral Tuscarora.
If one continues north into the state of Virginia, there is another
group of people who refer to themselves as Cherokees, fairly
unanimously. The Indians in Four Hole swamp and on the Edisto
River in South Carolina uniformly say they are Cherokees. The
Haliwa are divided. In Amherst County, Virginia just north of
Lynchburg in the foothills of the Blue Ridge, there is a group of 1,500
or so Indians who uniformly refer to themselves as Cherokees and are
generally referred to by whites as Cherokees or as "Issues". From
the research I have done, they appear to be Indians who migrated west
from the east coast of Virgniia, east of Richmond, from the several
Powhatan Indian communities in that area. Slowly over the space
of 20 years or so, about the time of the American Revolution, they
formed a fairly cohesive community in the area in which they are today.
There are also scattered families of this same stock north of Amherst
County on the east side of the Blue Ridge. There is another small
community of Indians on the west side of the Blue Ridge, north and west
of Amherst County. All of these Indians identify as Cherokees.
Further north and west of Amherst County, Virginia there is a fairly
large group of about 5,000 Indians living in the counties of Taylor and
Barbour in northern West Virginia. Some of these people speak of
themselves as Delawares and other identify as Cherokees. They
are, at least in part, descended from Powhatan Indians from the east
coast of Virginia who migrated there, plus others from a group living
in Maryland right south of Washington D.C. who refer to themselves as
Piscataway Indians. Some of these Indians in Taylor and Barbour
Counties have, over the years, moved into southern Ohio until there is
fairly respectable number now living in Vinton County, Ohio.
There are also reputed to be two small groups of Cherokees in
Pennsylvania but I have not been able to verify this and I have no
information on these two grops. I do not know if, in fact, they
are still in existence as distinct communities.
By far the major population of Indians in the South who refer to
themselves as Cherokees, or where at least a large number of Indians in
the community refer to themselves as Cherokee, have the same historical
origin. These are the Indians of Robeson County, North Carolina,
many of who identify as Cherokees, but who are officially called
Lumbees; scattered individual families in central South Carolina; a
fairly cohesive community south of Augusta, Georgia; a small community
near Dead Lake in northern Florida; scattered families in Patrick
County, Virginia; and many small kin based communites and scattered
family groups in Appalachia. All of these familes and communities
have the same historical origin. In order to show you how these
communities tie together, I will have to start with their beginnings.
In my research I find a small group of Saponi Indians in Granville
County, North Carolina (now Vance County) who lived in that region
between 1743 and sometime in the 1760’s. The Saponi originally
lived several miles further north on the Roanoke River in
Virginia when they were contacted by early Europeans in the late
1600’s. Later, because of pressure from whites, they moved west to the
Yadkin Valley, near modern Winston-Salem, North Carolina. About 1710
they were migrating east and appear to have gotten caught “in between”
the whites and the hostile Tuscarora Indians. The Saponi “sat out” the
war in the neutral Tuscarora country near Windsor, North Carolina.
Around 1714, Governor Spotswood, the governor of Virginia, settled them
along with two kindred tribes, the Tutelo and the Occaneechi, at Fort
Christiana, Virginia close to modern Lawrenceville, Virginia. The
Saponi absorbed the Occaneechi at about this time. In 1722 the Tutelo
moved north to join the Six Nations Confederacy. However, the Saponi
remained in the area until around 1728 or1730 when, due, to hostilities
with the neutral Tuscarora and Meherrin, they retired to the Catawba
country in South Carolina.
The Catawba spoke a Siouan language and it is probable that the Saponi
were also Siouan speakers. These two tribes may have even been able to
understand one another. We do know for certain that there had been
contact between the two tribes for a great many years. The Catawbas
were always going back and forth between their country and Fort
Christiana when the Saponies were living there. Conversely the Saponi
were always visiting the Catawbas.
The Saponi did not remain in the Catawba country for long. At least
some of them left in the early 1740’s. We pick up, in the records, one
band in northern Virginia in 1743 who appear to be heading north. A few
years later they settled on the Susquehanna River in
Pennsylvania. By the late 1740’s they had moved to New York and
were adopted by the Iroquois, the League of the Six Nations. This is
the last record we have of the Saponi in the north. They were
probably absorbed by the Cayuga now living near Buffalo or there might
be descendants of these Saponi among the Tutelo on the Six Nations
Reserve in Ontario, Canada.
One band of Saponi came back to their original country, some 30 people,
and settled on the plantation of Colonel William Eaton in Granville
County, North Carolina. They lived there from 1743 to sometime in the
1760’s, at which time they disappear from history; that is, there are
no more records of them as a tribe of Indians. This area of Granville
County, North Carolina (now Vance County) was the coastal
frontier in the period between the 1740’s and 1750’s.
It appears that this band of Saponi were not the only Indians in the
area. Individual Indian families from broken tribes further east were
gravitating into this same area, perhaps to attach themselves to the
Saponi or perhaps just to live in an area where there were other
Indians. In the 1730’s and 40’s the Yawpim and Potoskite tribes near
the coast in extreme northeastern North Carolina had lost their lands.
Individual Indian families were moving to the frontier from this
region. Indirect evidence indicates these were families like the
Braveboys, Hatchers, Taylors, Jones’, Sandersons, and others. The
Nansemond and other tribes in southeastern Virginia were being
fragmented as well and settling in the Granville and Edgecombe Counties
area of North Carolina; families like the Basses, Goings’, Powells,
Kerseys, and others. So that by the 1750’s there appears to have been
fairly extensive number of Indian families other than Saponies in that
region. Many of these Indians were involved in the military, in
frontier Indian fighting, almost like professional mercenaries for
whites.
In the early 1760’s Indians, as families, began to move out of the
Granville County area. Many went south into the region of Cumberland
County, North Carolina around Fayetteville and then into present day
Robeson County. (These were simply the first Indian settlers in Robeson
County. They were later joined by the Hatteras from the coast and
Cheraw from South Carolina. Robeson County became a refuge for “loose”
Indians and Indian families from all over that region congregated there
over the years.) Theses Granville County families who went south into
Robeson County were the Chavis’, Locklears, Gibsons, Collins’, Goings’,
etc. These are families that we are sure came from the area of
Granville County, North Carolina. Some of these families may have been
composed of a black or white man with an Indian wife, although there is
fairly good evidence that Collins is a Saponi family name. The Gibsons
moved on further south from Robeson County so that name is no longer
found in Robeson County among the Indians there who are officially now
called the Lumbees.
All these above families not only settled in Robeson County but also
scattered further south and west through central South Carolina. In
fact, in central South Carolina some names show up from that original
northern center in Granville County which one does not find in
Cumberland and Robeson Counties in that period. I presume that they
came directly from Granville County into South Carolina. These are
families like Taylor, Hicks, Bunch, and Strickland. Many of these
northern migrants married into the Cheraw and Peedee and almost
absorbed these native South Carolina tribes. Later in South Carolina
other family names show up - Willis, Ware, Dial - who appear to be
Indians of this same “northern” stock. However, we cannot find these
family names in the north. These family names may have originated with
blacks, whites, or native Indians who married into these scattered
Indian Families.
By 1840 most of these families had left South Carolina. A few went to
Robeson County, North Carolina. One does find south of Augusta, Georgia
near what is called Shafertown, a small community of people called
either Creeks or Cherokees. The main family name in this group is
Shafer which is a variant of Chavis or Chavers, or Shavers. But most of
the Indians who migrated to central South Carolina from North Carolina
had moved on by 1840. By Civil War times there appears to have even
been a community of these former South Carolina Indians in northern
Florida west of Blountstown in Calhoun County, near a large body of
water called Dead Lake. The main family name in this community is
Strickland.
However, this migration did not stop Georgia and Florida but continued
west and in census records in the 1830’s in western Louisiana you begin
to see names of Indian families from South Carolina. As far as I
can tell, most of these families moved on further west into east Texas.
The Bass’, Dials, Wares, Willis’, etc., particularly, tarried awhile in
western Louisiana and then moved on to east Texas. However, while they
were in Louisiana they intermarried quite heavily with a group of
Indians who were the remnants of small tribes from the Mobile, Alabama
area - Chatot, Bayagoula, and others; that is to say, individuals from
these South Carolina families married native Indians to form what is
known by whites in that area as the “Redbones” of western Louisiana.
This is quite a prolific group. I do not know how this group of people
refers to themselves. I simply know that local nickname for them. I
have heard that some of them identify as Choctaws and some as Spanish,
but I cannot verify this. I do know that Indians coming in from South
Carolina married into this local group and then moved on west leaving
members of their families there in western Louisiana. Some of these
same South Carolina Indians - Hicks, Strickland, Bunch, etc. – moved
northwest into east Tennessee in the 1830’s and 1840’s. There they
joined another stream of Indian pioneer of this same Granville County,
North Carolina stock moving south from Newman’s Ridge on the Tennessee
- Virginia border.
A large body of Indians from Granville County very early started moving
straight west. In the 1760’s we pick up Collins, Gibson, and Bunch in
Orange County, North Carolina which was just immediately to the west of
Granville County. These families are listed in the records as
Mulattoes. In the Carolinas in the 1700’s and 1800’s Mulatto meant a
person with one white parent and one non-white parent, either Indian or
black. Thus, by 1760 Indians of this stock were beginning to push west.
If one goes west from Orange County there is a little community of
people in Rockingham County, North Carolina made up primarily of two
family names, Goings and Harris. Harris is found widely among Indian
groups in the Carolinas. So it is probable that this was a group of
Indians which dropped off here in the main migration west.
The next “drop-off” we find is just a little further west in Patrick
County, Virginia just across the state line and west from Rockingham
County, North Carolina. The county seat of Patrick County is Stuart,
right at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains. One finds a great many
families in Rockingham County tend not to identify as Indians, for some
reason I am unclear about. However, the Going’s in Patrick County
generally identified as Cherokees. It appears that Indians from
Granville County, from 1760 on, were moving in individual family groups
west. Some went straight west and by 1790 many were in extreme
northwestern North Carolina in the present day counties of Ashe and
Alleghany. The family names of Collins and Gibson were particularly
common in Ashe and Alleghany Counties in the 1790’s. However, some
families did not move directly west into the very mountainous
northwestern North Carolina counties. Some had “swung” a little bit
north, over the Blue Ridge and into the wide valleys of southwestern
Virginia; valleys which run from northeast to southwest. They continued
their journey west by that route. In the 1790’s one finds these family
groups in Floyd, Carroll, and Wythe Counties, Virginia. They were
living just as far west, however, as the Collins and Gibson families
who were further south in northwestern North Carolina.
By 1810 these families were beginning to come together in the present
day northern Hancock County, Tennessee and southern Lee County,
Virginia on a mountain known as Newman’s Ridge, near Sneedville,
Tennessee and Blackwater Virginia. This became the core community of
these Granville families in the west by 1810. In this community one
finds that Collins, Gibson, Mullins, and Goings are predominate and
most numerous family names; other family names are Minor, Odell, Delph,
etc. However, on the way west this stream of migration left behind the
Goings and Harris families in Rockingham County, North Carolina and the
Goings’ in Patrick County, Virginia.
There was another small stream which parted from this general westward
migration. When these migrating families came to the region of the New
River, which heads in the northwestern North Carolina and then flows
straight north through southwest Virginia, and some migrants went north
down the New River and settled close to the West Virginia border in
Giles County, Virginia, near the small town of Pembroke, Virginia.
Families in this area are Collins, Cumbee, and Shavers.
This westward movement tended to terminate at Newman’s Ridge. Within a
generation this core community began to send out migrants north and
south. However, a few families came to Newman’s Ridge, stayed a few
years, and then continued on further west. Families like the Browns who
appear to have come from Lincoln County, North Carolina to Newman’s
Ridge, continued on west into southeastern Kentucky, particularly into
Knox and Bell Counties. The Taylor family is another such family which
scattered into McCreary County, Kentucky and Scott County, Tennessee.
The Bell Family is found all over this same area.
However, the main migration of this group of Indians was not further
west after forming this core community on Newman’s Ridge, but north or
south. The northern migration simply spread north from Newman’s Ridge
into Lee, Scott, Wise, and Washington Counties, Virginia. There are
little pockets of Indians all over this area. Once again, the names of
Collins, Goings, Mullins, and Gibson are in the majority. However,
there begins to be other family names which show up in this period in
southwest Virginia, particularly Nash and Hall. These appear to be
families that tarried in the northwestern counties of North Carolina
until the 1830’s and then moved in and joined the general stream of
Indian migration. The original seat of the Nash family appears to be
Orange County in the early 1760’s. He was heavily involved in Indian
affairs and had fought in many frontier military engagements. I
would guess that an Indian family either took his name or else, more
probable, he sired an Indian family. Hall however, shows up as a
family name modernly among the Meherrin in northeastern North Carolina
and I suspect that is its origin as well. Thomas is another early
Meherrin family found in this region.
After working north through these Virginia counties this stock of
Indians then moved through the Pound Gap on the Virginia-Kentucky
border and into Letcher County, Kentucky. I would estimate that
at least half of modern Letcher County, Kentucky is of this stock of
Indians. Indian migrants to Letcher County must have had a strong
Indian identity. In the pre-Civil War census for Letcher County
one finds Indian "given" names like Blackfish Thomas, Tecumseh Collins,
and the like. From Letcher County, Kentucky some families moved
west into Knott County and a few continued on even as far west
Breathitt County. However, the main stream of migration continued
north from Pound Gap, as did the main stream of white migration; down
the Big Sandy Valley into Pike County, to Martin County, and on to the
region of Ashland, Kentucky.
There is a small group west of that main stream that went north down
the Big Sandy River in Magoffin County, near Salyersville,
Kentucky. These people appear to be primarily from this original
Granville County group, but one begins to find other families in
Magoffin County - Freeman, Perkins, Cole and Nichols, who did not
originate in Granville County, North Carolina but are from southeastern
Virginia, in Suffolk County; from a small former Indian community
called Skeetertown. This is now a community of small farmer
blacks with some Indian background. I would guess that the
Indians began to move out of Skeetertown in the 1830's and 1840's as it
began to grow progressively more black and that they then joined this
stream of migrating Indians going north into eastern Kentucky.
Other Indians continued on north from the Ashland area and scattered
into southern Ohio. In fact, some of these migrants finally ended
up in the last part of the last century in Vinton County, Ohio where
they met Indian migrants coming from West Virginia. There are quite a
few families in the Vinton County region who are an amalgam of migrants
originationg from Newman's Ridge and the migration stream west from the
northern West Virginia.
The second migration stream of these Indians from Newman's Ridge was
south along the eastern edge of the Cumberland Escarpment. These
Indians were very poor people; they had little money, and probably were
not able to purchase land in productive areas. In most
places they were simply squatters in hollows. The general east
Tennessee region is an area of productive valley land. However,
the Cumberland Escarpment is extremely rough country. There are
hollows along the eastern edge of that Escarpment where on could
''squat'' without fear of being dispossessed. Indians from
Newman's Ridge, thus, began to move south. They are scattered all
along the eastern edge of the Escarpment in Tennessee. I suppose
that the largest concentration would be in Anderson County and Roane
County. I know that there are small clusters of Indian families
around Petros, Coalfield, Harriman, Oakdale, and Rockwood.
Continuing south, Rhea County, has a great many of these Indians.
There is one small settlement in Southern Rhea County, Graysville,
which is primarily composed of Goins'.
At Chattanooga the stream of migration south begins to turn west and
"peter out". For one thing, this areas was occupied until 1838 by
what I have called earlier, the legal Cherokees. One finds many
members of this stock of Indians just west of Chattanooga in Marion
County near Jasper. However, by this time one finds other family
names here besides Gibson, Collins, Goings, etc. Near Chattanooga
one finds Bunch, Hicks, and Strickland. Indians were moving from
South Carolina in this period and joining the Newman's Ridge stream of
migration here at Chattanooga. From Marion County a few of these
families moved south over the Alabama-Tennessee line into Jackson
County, Alabama. Most of them, however, continued northwest on
the old pioneer trial which is now Interstate 24 and which runs from
Chattanooga to Nashville. Some settled near modern Monteagle,
Tennessee which is north and west of Chattanooga, towards Nashville.
There are a few other Indian families in East Tennessee who migrated
independently of the main migration from Granville County and who apear
never to have lived on Newman's Ridge. Two such families are the
Andersons and Thompsons who live in Blount County, Tennessee, south of
Knoxville, almost in the Smoky Mountains. As you can see from the
attached map, this area is completely separate from the main migration
south from Newman's Ridge.
From this point on, the migration begins to be a little vague to
me. I know there are some Indians of this stock north and west of
Nashville in Cheatham County. I also know that there are Indians in
Stewart County, quite a distance north and west of Nashville near a
place called Indian Mounds. I think that is probably the extent
of Indian communities in that region. However, a great many
families continued further west and scattered all over western Kentucky
and Tennessee and in Arkansas and Missouri. Individuals of this
stock wandered all around and married into communities all over this
section of the South. It is very common in Arkansas and Missouri
to find families who have a tradition of Indian ancestry. If one
looks closely one will usually find their Indian forebears were from
Granville County, North Carolina by way of Kentucky or Tennessee.
There is only one place I know of west of the Mississippi where these
Indians formed any kind of community. That was in southwestern
Missouri in Stone County. I think, however, there were victims of
racial persecution after the First World War and the community
dispersed into other parts of Missouri, Arkansas, and Oklahoma.
There is a third and early small migration of Indians into the
Appalachian area. It came into the region of Asheville, then went
north along the French Broad River into east Tennessee. It
appears to have "petered out" at this point. I am not clear as to
the source of this stream. There are some indications that it
came from a settlement of largely Hatteras Indians on the Neuse River
near New Bern, North Carolina, on the coast. It may have
originated in Granville County, or in both communities. There is
evidence that there was intermarriage and movement between the Indian
settlement in Granville County and the one on the Neuse. This is
not an important stream in the history of Appalachia and we will have
to wait for further investigation to be sure of its source.
Some Indians from Robeson County, North Carolina did migrate to the
Cumberland Mountains of Tennessee after 1800. We can find them
listed in the census in Campbell County, Tennessee, Dials, Locklears,
and Oxendines. But they soon moved on west or else returned to
Robeson County. I suspect that the Taylors who now live in
northern Scott County near the Kentucky line came from Robeson
originally.
One other scholar besides myself has examined the Indians in
Appalachia; his name is Price, a geographer trained at the University
of California. He did his doctor's thesis on what he called
"mixed blood" communities in the South, among them the Indians in
Appalachia. He concludes that most of these communities,
including the ones in Appalachia, are simply collections of old free
black families who have absorbed a lot of white blood, over the years,
as well as an incidental and small amount of Indian blood. He
thinks that their claim to being Indian is fradulent and simply a way
to raise their social rank. I was never able to ascertain from
Price's data exactly why he thinks this is the case. I find the
idea preposterous. Why any free black would want to pass for
Indian in the 1800's in the South is quite beyond me. That would
be like "jumping out of the frying pan into the fire." Further,
the historical records tells another tale.
It is true that there were many whites and a few blacks married into
Granville County Indian families in the 1750's. However, if
possession of some black ancestry makes one a black then many whites in
the modern coastal South, especially the aristocracy, are really
blacks. It is true that some of the Lumbees show some black
ancestry, dating from this early period; but I see little evidence of
black ancestry among Appalachian Indians. Most of the Indian
families in Granville County with black "blood" appear to have moved
south to Robeson County; Chavis', Locklears, and a few others.
Appalachian Indian families carry little or no, black ancestry in their
families. Visually, the Indians in Appalachia look much more
Indian than do the Lumbees. Indian features predominate in
Appalachian Indian families. Rarely, does one see a "nappy"
haired Indian in Appalachia. Price's hypothesis is simply beyond
the realm of possibility or probability.
By the time of the Civil War, I think that most of the areas I have
listed had been settled. I would guess that some 40 thousand
people in Appalachia are descendants of this westward stream of
Granville County Indians. That seems like a tremendous number of people
and it is, indeed. However, the Lumbee Indians have more than doubled
their population every 20 years, from 1790 on. In 1790 there were
hardly 300 Indians in Robeson County and another 30,000 Lumbees in
other parts of the United States who have migrated out of Robeson
County since World War II. This is not an unusual
situation. It is a population explosion, but a population
explosion that is fairly normal for the southern United States.
Most Americans in the South and West descend from some 200,000 or
300,000 immigrants from northern Ireland who entered the United States
before the Revolutionary War. The population explosion of the
Lumbees and the Appalachian Indians is probably very little more than
the population explosion of pre-revolutionary stock Americans generally.
Now how did these Indians settle all over this area in such a short
time? Think, for example, that your are living on Newman's Ridge
in 1810 and you have 12 children. This means that after awhile,
every four or five years, two or three grown children are probably
going to be leaving home and going north or south. So that by the
time your youngest child is ready to leave home, your oldest child is
living in another area and has children or even grandchildren. It
was possible not only to have a very quick population explosion but a
very rapid migration spread, as well, in those times.
It appears that when these people from Granville County first came into
Appalachia, they were known to whites as Melungeons. In fact,
some whites in southwest Virginia and east Tennessee still refer to
these people as Melungeons. I would guess that this term was used
by these Indians when whites asked their nationality. There is
some evidence that his term was applied to early Indians in Robeson
County, as well. It appears to have been a term that originiated
around New Bern, North Carolina. It was coined by the French
speaking settlers of that section. It connotes a population that
is mixed, coming from the French word melange, "to mix"; thus,
Melungeons. Melungeons are said, in east Tennessee, to be a
mixture of Indian and Portuguese.
I imagine that very few people on the frontier in those days wanted to
be known as Indian; particularly not Cherokee. Newman's Ridge is
in an area in which the Indians, whom I call the "legal Cherokees",
were periodically raiding and burning, up until 1795. I do not
imagine that Indians on Newman's Ridge in 1810 were telling whites who
had relatives killed by Cherokees some years earlier that they were
Cherokee Indians. However, all of this is speculative, except I
do know Melungeon is a term applied to these people by older whites in
this region. I would guess that these Indians brought this term
with them from eastern North Carolina and communicated it to local
whites, and were not in any rush to be considered Indians.
I think that the term Cherokee got fixed on a lot of Indian gorups in
the south after 1850. Whites began to refer to nearly all Indian
groups as Cherokee, after 1850 in the South. After several
generations of communicating this term to Indians it tended to stick;
so that by 1900 most Indians in the South who did not have some legal
relationship with officialdom, like the Pamunkey and Mattaponi in
eastern Virginia, which firmly fixed an old legal label in their minds,
simply became Cherokees. Cherokee really came to mean southern
Indian or ''civilized'' Indian.
Most of these small Indian communities and scattered families in
Appalachia were very much like their white neighbors from their early
beginnings. Indians in Granville County in 1750 were a tribally
mixed group of Indians to begin with. There was also in that
generation, around 1750, extensive out marriage, with whites
particularly. By 1780 there were no Indian languages spoken by
these family groups moving west through the Appalachians. By 1840
they were culturally and linguistically like thier white neighbors in
all outward respects.
They came into Appalachia just behind the first settlement.
Southwest Virginia was first settled in the late 1780's and Indians
from Granville County began to "bunch up" on Newman's Ridge in
1810. There were about 20 years behind the main tide of
settlement. This "policy" put them in an economically
disadvantaged position since they came into already settled areas and
had to take up marginal land even if they had money to buy land. Most
of their descendants have clustered in small pockets of two or three
families in the Appalachian area, particularly the Cumberland
area. In some areas family groups were scattered but knew and
associated with one another. However, there were many families
and individuals who were early assimilated into the general population.
Up until 1900 most of these small Indian communities in Appalachia were
very cohesive. However, after the First World War their cohesion
began to break up; for what reason I cannot say. Some communities
began to have a lot of intermarriage with outsiders; that is, no longer
did a Collins marry a Gibson or a Goings, but tended to marry a local
white. This varied considerably in defferent parts of the
Cumberland Mountain region.
The breakdown of cohesion increased after World War II in some
places. I presume that highways and industrialization began to
''open up'' the Cumberland region. There are few Indian
communities in Appalachia that are still cohesive and yet identify as
Indians; what proportion I am not able to say. I do know that in
Letcher County, Kentucky, where the majority of people are of this
stock, they refer to themselves as having Indian blood or as part
Indian' with the implication that they are whites, just like anyone
else in the general population. In one area in Virginia which I
visited, there had not been extensive out marriage, but people had
simply begun to think of themselves differently. In several
interviews, respondents would say that all four of their grandparents
were Indian, but they would add that "there were Indians around here in
our grandparents' generation; or they would say, "Our grandparents were
Indian." They thought of themselves as whites, whites with some
Indian blood, usually Cherokee. In a few communites I visited the
older people thought of themselves as Indian, but the younger people
thought of themselves as not "really" Indians or as part Indians. They
would say things like, "well, you won't find any real Indians around
here", or " there hasn't been a full blood around here in a hundred
years." I ran into one community in Knott County, Kentucky in
which everyone consistently identified as Indians. Several
older people there told me they were full blood Cherokees and
that both their parents and all their grandparents were full
blood. I can think of one such old gentleman by the name of
Gibson in Knott County, Kentucky who was, about three years ago, some
70 years old. He reported this to me. The condition of
these communities, in terms of cohesion and identification, varies
considerably. How much out marriage has recently occured varies,
as well.
The racial situation relative to whites differs considerably,
too. In some places, as in Letcher County, Kentucky, these
families are thought of by whites as whites who are part Indian.
In Roane County, Tennessee it is my experience that most whites, as
does Dr. Price, think the Indians in that county are really light
complexioned blacks who are trying to escape the disability of being
black by claiming to be Indians. I don't know how common that
attitude is, but there is tremendous variation from county to county as
to race relations and as to social acceptance.
It would be my guess that 90 per cent of the people in southeastern
Michigan who identify themselves as Cherokee are from the communities
that I have been outlining. Since the Second World War there has
been a lot of migration from this region of eastern Kentucky and
southwestern Virginia into the Detroit area. Along with that
general migration came a great many poeple from these Indian, or former
Indian, communites. Some of them no doubt come from communities
that are fairly cohesive and which identify as Indian. Others
come from communites that assimilated into the general population
several generations ago, even though they might be of considerable
Indian back ground. Other individuals are the result of two or
three genearations of mixed marriage, after the local Indian community
dissolved. Some simply have an Indian grandparent who wandered
into a white community, married, and settled down there. There is
tremendous social variation in the areas of origin of Michigan people
who identify as Cherokees.
Appendix I
A. Cherokees of Dead Lake, Florida
1. Calhoun County
2.Family names;
Strickland
(Other names not known)
B. Cherokees of Shafertown, Georgia
1. Richmond County, south of Augusta
2. Family names;
Shafer (Chavis, Chavers, Shaver)
Clark
Woods
Deal
C. Cherokees of Central South Carolina (scattered families)
1. Counties;
Orangeburg
Bambert
Richmond
Clarendon
Williamsburg
2. Family names;
Chavis
Oxendine
Scott
Bunch
Driggers
Gibson
Boone
Goings or Goin
Swett
Jacobs
D. Peedee in South Carolina
1. Marion County, near Peedee
2. Family names;
Taylor
Goings
Gibson
E. Cheraw in South Carolina
1. Marlboro County, near Cheraw
2. Family names;
Chavis
Quick
Silver
Brigham
F. Lumbee in South Carolina
1. Dillon County, near Latta
2. Family names;
Braveboy
(See Lumbee names in North Carolina)
G. Cheraw in North Carolina
1. Richmond County, near Hamlet
2. Family names;
Chavis
Jacobs
H. Lumbee in North Carolina
1. Robeson County, center at Pembroke
2. Family names;
Locklear Lowry
Oxendine
Revels Chavis
Brooks
Maynor Dial
Cuming
Taylor Braveboy
Powell
Warricks Wilkins Harris
Collins Carter
Bass
Viccars Brown
Lasie
Scott Swett
McMillan
Lucas Sampson
Willis
Stickland Wood
Woods
Wright White
Cooper
Thomas Hammonds Sanderson
Deas Jacobs Reid
Coleman Jones
Bennett
Goins Ransom Bell
Williams Williamson
I. Indians of Cape Fear
1. Cumberland County, near Fayetteville, North Carolina
2. Family names;
Gibb or Gibbs
(Others not known)
J. Haliwa in North Carolina
1. Halifax and Warren Counties, center is at Hollister
2. Family names;
Richardson Lynch
Evans
Mills Silver
Carter
Copeland McGee
Daniel
Harris Green
Francis
Wilson Dale
Hedgpeth
K. Meherrin in North Carolina
1. Hertford County, near Ahoskie
2. Family names;
Brown Flood
Chavis Hall
Lewis Melton
Thomas?
L. Nansemond in Virginia
1. Chesapeake County, near Bowers Hill
2. Family names;
Bass
Weaver
M. Potomoc Band of Powahatan in Virginia
1. Stafford County, northwest of Fredericksburg
2. Family names;
Newton
Green
N. Cherokees of the Virginia Blue Ridge Region
1. Counties;
Amherst, near Sweet Briar College
Nelson (scattered families)
Albemarle (scattered families)
Greene (scattered families)
Madison ( scattered families)
Rappahanock (scattered families)
Loudon (scattered families)
Rockbridge, on Irish Creek
O. Indians of northern West Virginia
1. Taylor and Barbour Counties (colony located in Vinton County, Ohio)
2. Family names;
Adams Miner or Minear
Collins Newman
Croston Norris
Dalton Pritchard
Dorton Proctor?
Kennedy Male or Mayle
P. Indians of Person County, North Carolina
1. Person County, near Virginia line
2. Family names;
Epps
Martin
Coleman
Stewart
Shepherd
Tally
Q. Indians in western Louisianna and east Texas who are descended of
migrants from central South Carolina
1. Locations;
Rapides Parish, Louisiana, near Glenmora
(Remainder - page 30 - is missing. Appears page 30 leads into the
Kentucky families)
5. Cumberland County, Kentucky
(Family names not known)
6. Migration southwest out of Newman's Ridge
a. Anderson and Roane Counties in Tennessee
Collins
Gibson
Mullins
Carter
Dougherty
Other Newman's Ridge family names
b. Rhea County at Graysville
Goings
c. Marion County, near Jasper
White
Hicks
Strickland
d. Jackson County, Alabama
(Family names not known)
e. Cheatham County, Tennessee
(Family names not known)
f. Stewart County, near Indian Mound
(Family names not known)
7. Indians east of Tennessee River, unconnected to the Newman's Ridge
migration
a. Blount County, Tennessee, south of Knoxville
Thompson
b. Polk County, Tennessee
Hicks
8. Migration north of Newman's Ridge and vicinity
a. Letcher County, Kentucky
Nash
Hall
b. Knott County, Kentucky
(Family names same as above)
c. Breathitt County, Kentucky
(Family names not known)
d. Pike County, Kentucky
(Family names same as Newman's Ridge)
e. Magoffin and Floyd Counties, Kentucky
Cole
Nichols
Gibson
Perkins
Freeman
f. Martin County, Kentucky
(Family names unknown but probably same as Newman's Ridge)
g. Lawrence County, Kentucky
(Same as above)
h. Carter County, Kentucky
(Same as above)
i. Boyd County, near Ashland, Kentucky
Cooper
(Other names not known)
j. Bath County, Kentucky near Olympia and Salt Lick
(Family names not known)
k. Rowan County, Kentucky near Morehead, Kentucky
(Same as above)
l. Pike County, Ohio near Cynthiana
Gibson
Nichols
Perkins
m. Vinton County, Ohio
Goings
(Others unknown but probably same as Newman's Ridge)
n. Rest of southern Ohio is unknown but probably same as those on
Newman's Ridge)
8. Part Cherokees in old Cherokee Nation area
1. In north Georgia
Towns County
Union County
Fanin County
Gilmer County
Lumpkin County
Pickens County
Cherokee County
Gordon County
2. In northeastern Alabama
Dekalb County
Cherokee County
3. Family names unknown
Many distinguished Americans have been or are Appalachian Indians, or
are descendants of Appalachian Indians. A few are listed below.
Major William Anderson - Second in command of Quantrell's Raiders
during the Civil War
Captain Anderson Hatfield - Leader of the Hatfield family of
Hatfield-McCoy feud fame
Sam Bass - Legendary Texas outlaw
Harry S. Truman - 33rd President of the United States
John S. Cooper - Senator from Kentucky
Cordell Hull - Secretary of State under Franklin Roosevelt
Jack Dempsey - World's champion heavyweight boxer
Loretta Lynn - Musical entertainer
Waylon Jennings - Musical entertainer
Johnny Cash - Musical entertainer
Dolly Parton - Mucical entertainer
Jonathan Winters - Comedian
Burt Reynolds - Actor
Forrest Carter - Writer
About the Author
Robert K. Thomas added another dimension to the
Carnegie Project. Thomas was born to parents of Cherokee descent in
eastern Kentucky and raised by his maternal grandparents in
northeastern Oklahoma. Though at times he referred to himself as
"marginal," he immersed himself in traditional knowledge as a child and
maintained an abiding connection to tribal communities throughout his
adult life. After serving in World War II, Thomas attended the
University of Arizona, where he completed a bachelor's degree in
geography and a master's in anthropology. Consistent with his
identification with traditional Cherokees, Thomas devoted his thesis to
the spiritual and political movement to resist allotment spearheaded by
Redbird Smith. In 1953 he enrolled in the doctoral program at the
University of Chicago to study with Sol Tax.(n13)
By the time he arrived in Tahlequah in 1963, Bob
Thomas had internalized the principles of action anthropology and
infused it with an anti-colonial impulse. The administration of
federal-Indian affairs, he argued, represented an example of internal
colonialism, and the Cherokee Nation's reliance on a
government-appointed leader signified its quintessence. Like many
traditional Cherokees, Thomas looked upon W. W. Keeler, the successful
businessman and executive officer of Phillips Petroleum who had held
the position of principal chief since 1949, as "a very sincere and
religious man." But he considered Keeler's leadership problematic
because he did not involve himself in and had not formally received the
consent of the larger Cherokee community. The Cherokees needed a
full-time elected principal chief and governing council. Without that,
they would remain subject to a colonial system.(n14)
Through the Carnegie Project, Thomas meant to catalyze
a grassroots movement to heal the traditional community and prepare the
way for a renaissance. "The Cherokee tribe are a broken people," he
lamented to a friend in 1957. "The mixed-bloods are completely
integrated into white society and the full-bloods are discouraged,
broken into factions, and miserably poor. The old productive
institutions are gone and nothing is taking their place. The
full-bloods are withdrawing more and more from white society. They are
not apathetic, they are actively resisting the white man by withdrawing
from him and not participating in white society and this includes the
'tribal government.'"(n15) Under Thomas's direction, the Carnegie
Project would address this "insulation and alienation from the
institutions of the general society" and equip Cherokees with the tools
necessary to present themselves "to whites as modern, 'for real,'
worthy people."(n16)
Thomas invested the idea of peoplehood with profound
meaning. He later identified it as consisting of four critical
components: language, land, religion, and a sacred history. These
inseparable and mutually reinforcing ingredients allowed tribal people
to adjust to new circumstances without losing their identity. (n17)
When the Carnegie Project staff set about assisting Cherokee people in
the creation of a newsletter, short story collection, community survey,
language primer, radio program, and adult education courses in the
Cherokee language, they did so with the reaffirmation of peoplehood in
mind. Though their aim sounded innocuous, it actually represented a
potent challenge to conventional ideas about the place of Cherokees in
Oklahoma society. For what non-Indians defined as fragmented
conglomerations of "backwards full-bloods," Thomas saw as structurally
isolated but tenaciously persistent traditional communities--a people
living in exile within their own homelands. (n18)
The laborious task of formally plotting these
settlements on a map fell to Albert Wahrhaftig, a doctoral student in
anthropology at the University of Chicago. Born and raised in a liberal
Jewish family in California, Wahrhaftig had recently returned from the
Peace Corps, where he worked on community development projects in Latin
America. Beginning in October 1963, Wahrhaftig drove countless miles of
rough back roads with Hiner Doublehead (Cherokee) and Fines Smith
(Cherokee), the grandson of Redbird Smith. Together they charted the
location and population of enclaves such as Bull Hollow, Cherry Tree,
Briggs, Lyons Switch, and Fourteen Mile Creek. In the end, their map
detailed the location of some seventy distinct and viable tribal
Cherokee settlements with approximately ten thousand residents--a
devastating blow to the myth of assimilation and an unqualified
testament to the tenacity of Cherokee peoplehood.(n19)
After a year and a half, the Carnegie Project had
produced impressive results. Robert K. Thomas drew from his knowledge
of the land and people to coordinate their efforts. Albert Wahrhaftig
produced groundbreaking social and demographic data. Linguist Willard
Walker, in cooperation with Watt Spade, Key Ketcher, Alec England,
Wesley Proctor, Sam Hair, and other Cherokee speakers conducted
linguistic research and began compiling a collection of stories and a
primer that could be used in formal and informal settings to learn
Cherokee. Ponca youth activist Clyde Warrior had also come on board to
serve as co-editor of a national periodical entitled Indian Voices. A
twice weekly Cherokee language radio program delivered national and
local news, while the circulation of the Cherokee Nation Newsletter
increased. Project staff also worked with public schools, churches,
businesses, and service agencies to begin adult literacy courses,
employ Cherokee speakers, utilize interpreters, and distribute
information in syllabary.(n20)
CIS, Center for Indian Scholars named a Symposium
after Robert K. Thomas in memorial, see the following:
THE ROBERT
K. THOMAS MEMORIAL SYMPOSIUM
The purpose of the Robert
K. Thomas Memorial Symposium is to promote research, reflection, and
analysis and dialogue on the culture, history and the many profound
issues that face North American indigenous peoples. The CIS plans to
hold this symposium every two years and to publish the results. This Memorial Symposium
was established in memory of Robert K. Thomas, a Cherokee, an
anthropologist who was a founding member of the 1960s Summer
Workshops on North American Indians held in the United States and
Canada, the Indian Ecumenical Conference (IEC) and the Centre for
Indian Scholars. The Robert K. Thomas
Memorial Symposium will create an opportunity for presentations on the
culture, history and the many profound issues that face North American
Indigenous Peoples. There will be academic and oral presentations. The
inclusion of our elders in the Robert K. Thomas Memorial Symposium
provides an opportunity for interaction and dialogue among Indigenous
peoples and with non-aboriginal persons.
Selected Works of
Robert K. Thomas
CURRICULUM
VITAE - Robert K. Thomas
A GOOD CHEROKEE A GOOD
ANTHROPOLOGIST
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