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Show 34 MYTHS OF THE CHEROKEE [ ETH. ANN. 19 Steps were now taken to secure peace by inaugurating a satisfactory trade system, for whk'h purpose a large quantity of suitable goods was purchased at the public expense of South Carolina, and a correspondingly large party was equipped for the initial trip. 1 In 1721, in order still more to systematize Indian affairs, Governor Nicholson of South Carolina invited the chiefs of the Cherokee to a conference, at which thirty- seven towns were represented. A treaty was made by which trading methods were regulated, a boundary line between their territory and the English settlements was agreed upon, and an agent was appointed to superintend their affairs. At the governor's suggestion, one chief, called Wrosetasatow (?) 8 was formally commissioned as supreme head of the Nation, with authority to punish all offenses, including murder, and to represent all Cherokee claims to the colonial government. Thus were the Cherokee reduced from their former condition of a free people, ranging where their pleasure led, to that of dependent vassals with bounds fixed by a colonial governor. The negotiations were accompanied by a cession of land, the first in the history of the tribe. In little more than a century thereafter they had signed away their whole original territory. 8 The document of 1716 already quoted puts the strength of the Cherokee at that time at 2,370 warriors, but in this estimate the Lower Cherokee seem not to have been included. In 1715, according to a trade census compiled by Governor Johnson of South Carolina, the tribe had thirty towns, with 4,000 warriors and a total population of 11,210.* Another census in 1721 gives them fifty- three towns with 3,510 warriors and a total of 10,379,5 while the report of the board of trade for the same year gives them 3,800 warriors,* equivalent, by the same proportion, to nearly 12,000 total. Adair, a good authority on such matters, estimates, about the year 1735, when the country was better known, that they had ik sixty- four towns and villages, populous and full of children,''' with more than ( J, 000 fighting men, 7 equivalent on the same basis of computation to between 16,000 and 17,000 souls. From what we know of them in later times, it is probable that this last estimate is very nearly correct. By this time the colonial government had become alarmed at the advance of the French, who had made their first permanent establishment in the Gulf states at Biloxi bay, Mississippi, in 1699, and in 1714 had built Fort Toulouse, known to the English as fc* the fort at i Journal of South Carolina Assembly, In North Carolina Colonial Records, n. pp. 225- 227,1886. a For notice, see the glossary. 3Hewat, South Carolina and Georgia, I, pp. 297- 298, 1778; Royce, Cherokee Nation, in Fifth Ann. Rep. Bureau of Ethnology, p. 1+ 4 and map, 1888. « Royce, op. cit., p. 142. s Document of 1724. in Fernow, Berthold, Ohio Valley in Colonial Days, pp. 273- 275; Albany, 1890. « Report of Board of Trade, 1721, in North Carolina Colonial Records, n, p. 422, 1880. ' Adair, James, American Indians, p. 227; London, 1775. |
