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Show 3 6 MYTHS OF THE CHEROKEE [ ETH. ANN. 19 they took ship for Carolina, where they arrived, as we are told by the governor, " in good health arid mightily well satisfied with His Majesty's bounty to them.'' 1 In the next year some action was taken to use the Cherokee and Catawba to subdue the refractory remnant of the Tuscarora in North Carolina, but when it was found that this was liable to bring down the wrath of the Iroquois upon the Carolina settlements, more peaceable methods were used instead.* In 1738 or 1739 the smallpox, brought to Carolina by slave ships, broke out among the Cherokee with such terrible effect that, according to Adair, nearly half the tribe was swept away within a year. The awful mortality was due largely to the fact that as it was a new and strange disease to the Indians they had no proper remedies against it, and therefore resorted to the universal Indian panacea for " strong" sickness of almost any kind, viz, cold plunge baths in the running stream, the worst treatment that could possibly be devised. As the pestilence spread unchecked from town to town, despair fell upon the nation. The priests, believing the visitation a penalty for violation of the ancient ordinances, threw away their sacred paraphernalia as things which had lost their protecting power. Hundreds of the warriors committed suicide on beholding their frightful disfigurement. " Some shot themselves, others cut their throats, some stabbed themselves with knives and others with sharp- pointed canes; many threw themselves with sullen madness into the tire and there slowly expired, as if they had been utterly divested of the native power of feeling pain." 8 Another authority estimates their loss at a thousand warriors, partly from smallpox and partly from rum brought in by the traders.* About the year 1740 a trading path for horsemen was marked out by the Cherokee from the new settlement of Augusta, in Georgia, to their towns on the headwaters of Savannah river and thence on to the west. This road, which went up the south side of the river, soon became much frequented. 4 Previous to this time most of the trading goods had been transported on the backs of Indians. In the same year a party of Cherokee under the war chief Ka'lanu. " The Raven," took part in Oglethorpe's expedition against the Spaniards of Saint Augustine. 5 In 1736 Christian Priber, said to be a Jesuit acting in the French interest, had come among the Cherokee, and, by the facility with which he learned the language and adapted himself to the native dress and • Hewat, South Carolina and Georgia, n, pp. 3- 11, 1779; treaty documents of 1730, North Carolina Colonial Records, in, pp. 128- 133, 1886: Jenkinson, Collection of Treaties, n, pp. 315- 318: Drake, S. G.. Early History of Georgia: Cuming's Embassy; Boston, 1872; letter of Governor Johnson, December 27. 1730, noted in South Carolina Hist. Soc. Colls., I, p. 246, 1857. * Documents of 1731 and 1732, North Carolina Colonial Records, in, pp. 153,202,345,369,393,1886. 3 Adair, American Indians, pp. 232- 234, 1775. * Meadows (?), State of the Province of Georgia, p. 7. 1742, in Force Tracts, i, 1836. 6Jones, CO.. History of Georgia, I. pp. 327,328; Boston, 1883. - |
