The History of the American Indians

James Adair: His Life and History

James Adair hardly seems to exist outside the con¤nes of his monumental history of southern backcountry. Shadowy rumors of his existence elsewhere abound: born the youngest son of Irish gentry;1 later, the head of a family by a Cherokee woman in North Carolina on the eve of the American Revolution.2 Yet not a shred of hard evidence is offered to support these claims. James Adair deserves better—for his larger-than-life existence among the southeastern Indians is far more interesting than genealogical conjecture .3 Adair was, in fact, a self-proclaimed “English Chickasaw,” and most of what we know of him begins and ends with the southeastern Indians, among whom he made his home for the meatier part of forty years.4 His life story, interwoven with his historical account and ethnological musing on the southeastern Indians, is an amazing one indeed. Virtually nothing is known of Adair’s family, early life, or education, although his work makes clear that he “had the advantages of a liberal education in the early part of life.”5 And, as advertisements for his book would later tout, he was furnished with “a Genius naturally formed for curious Enquiries.”6 By 1735, the inquisitive Adair entered the Indian country to trade with the Catawba Indians.7 The Catawba, an amalgam of remnant tribes struggling on the margins of colonial South Carolina society, were beset by numerous problems, notably encroachments, constant harassment from enemy northern tribes, and growing problems with alcohol misuse.8 Opportunities for advancement through the dying Catawba trade were slim, and almost immediately Adair ventured farther west, testing his fortunes among the Cherokee Indians. He was in their towns by 1736, trading for a time at Kanootare (Conutory or Connutra), one of the Cherokee Out Towns along the Tuckaseigee River. There are almost no clues to Adair’s business partners, but his mention of George Haig and Thomas Brown sugJames Adair: His Life and History I told him, with that vehemence of speech, which is always requisite on such an occasion, that I was an English Chikkasah. —James Adair, History of the American Indians gest that he was in some loose association or alliance with them in both the Catawba and Cherokee trade.9 Almost at once upon his arrival among the Cherokee, Adair encountered Christian Gottlieb Priber, a German intellectual also newly arrived in the Cherokee country, whom Adair described as “a gentleman of a curious and speculative temper.”10 Settling in Tellico,Priber adopted the dress and mode of living of the Cherokee, and by “smooth deluding art” he began an attempt at reorganizing Cherokee society and making plans for a utopian refuge among the Indians.11 South Carolina envisioned only trouble in Priber’s odd schemes and plotted his arrest. But before that could be effected, Priber and Adair corresponded for a time, until the Cherokee grew suspicious of the letters passing between them.According to Adair,Priber was composing a Cherokee dictionary and “set down a great deal that would have been very acceptable to the curious.”12 Perhaps it was Priber’s efforts that inspired Adair to begin setting down his own observations and thoughts on the southeastern Indians, for Adair’s account of Priber and his capture and his relation of Cherokee reaction to a lunar eclipse that occurred in 1736 are the earliest datable occurrences found in his History.13 The year 1736 was a momentous year for the Chickasaw Indians as well. Long allies of the English, with whom they had traded since the later part of the seventeenth century, the Chickasaw found themselves embroiled in war with France by virtue of the aid and comfort they afforded ®eeing Natchez Indians, who were involved with a bitter struggle with the French from 1729 until 1733. Sandwiched between Francophile Choctaw and France’s more northern Indian allies, the small but stalwart Chickasaw nation had embarked on its own campaign against the French, repeatedly harassing French supply boats traveling the Mississippi River from atop the renowned Chickasaw Bluffs, near modern Memphis, Tennessee. They also stalked French settlers in Louisiana. In early 1736, entrenched in forti¤ed towns and very accurately dispensing English bullets, they managed to rebuff a massive French attack on their towns led by Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, sieur de Bienville, the governor of French Louisiana. News of the great Chickasaw victory was met with jubilation in Charleston ,for until that point,French Louisiana had seemingly garnered the upper hand...