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Tsali, The Cherokee Brave
- University of South Carolina Press
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Tsali, the Cherokee Brave HE GAVE HIS UFE FOR HIS PEOPLE, AND HIS GHOST STILL WALKS THE MOUNTAIN PEAKS WHICH WERE ONCE HIS HOME When the harvest moon pours its rays over the mist shrouded peaks of the Great Smoky Mountains, men swear they see the ghostly figure of an Indian striding the leafy trails or silhouetted for an instant against the sky as though gazing across the deep shadowed valleys. Thus read a dispatch of the Associated Press on August 3, 1940. The story appeared in the Charlotte 47 48 Observer and other North Carolina newspapers on the wire service. Few people knew the Indian's name. It was Tsali. He had beena brave in the powerful Cherokee nation a century before. His home was on the Little Tennessee River not far from the village of Echota, a Cherokee capital near the North Carolina-Tennessee borderwhere the mountains thrust themselves 6,000 feet up into thesky. It is here that thespirit ofTsali roams. And those of his people who dwell there today do so only because of him. The ghost ofTsali has been seen now for more than a hundred years. No one can say when it first appeared or how often it has been seen. But his story is part of a sad and ugly chapter in our history. [18.117.251.51] Project MUSE (2024-04-17 19:52 GMT) In Tsali's time the Cherokee nation extended across and beyond the great mountains. The boundaries had been set in war with the Powhatan, Monacan, Tuscarora, Catawba, Creek, Chickasaw, and Shawano. After the defeat of the Creek and Shawano, the Cherokee lands extended from upper Georgia to the Ohio River and included hunting grounds in Kentucky. But from the East came white settlers pushing steadily farther into the Cherokee territory. In 1777, justa year after the Declaration ofIndependence was signed, the North Carolina legislature offered a bounty of land to able bodied men who would fight the Cherokee. Ofcourse, this land was to come from the Indians. At that time Tennessee was still part of North Carolina. Among the men who came forward to fight the Indians was Colonel John Sevier. (Later he led his men ina vital victoryover the British at King's Mountain.) Another young man named Andrew Jackson also joined the campaign. When peace finally came again and treaties were signed, The Cherokee saw much of their land taken away. But it wasn't the desire for farm land or the settlers moving West that finally sounded the death knell of the Cherokee nation . Its fate was sealed the day an Indian boy found a yellow stone in a creek near the present site of Dahlonega, Georgia. His 49 50 mother polished it and showed it to a white trader. The "stone" was gold. Like a pestilence the cry spread: "There's gold on the Cherokee land!" Old treaties were forgotten and a new treaty was signed in 1817 and approved by President James Monroe. It provided for removing the Cherokee from the Great Smoky Mountains to the Territory of Oklahoma. After all, the Cherokee didn't "need" gold and there was other land out beyond the Mississippi where they could hunt. Rage swept the Cherokee nation. War drums echoed across haze filled valleys. Then the white men, faced by certain conflict, backed down and years of bickering followed. At last they agreed to pay the Cherokees five million dollars for their land-the land of the sky. It was a warm spring day in May of 1838 when General Winfield Scott marched into Cherokeecountry at the head of seven thousand troops. He delivered an ultimatum to the Cherokee chiefs. They and their people must "move West before the new moon." The soldiers set about building stockades and rounding up Indians. Cattle were shot. Families were seized, many while they were eating. Some were not even given time to gather up their possessions . What was to be an orderly move turned into a debacle. Perhaps it was a miscarriage of orders, or maybe lower ranking officers who hated the Indians abused their authority-who can say? But the effect was disastrous. By the time the first group of Indians reached the banks of the Mississippi there was ice in the river. There were no shelters, no blankets. The soldiers [18.117.251.51] Project MUSE (2024-04-17 19:52 GMT) didn't provide them. Before the Indians reached Oklahoma four thousand of them...