| OCR Text |
Show MOONEY] CONFLICTS WITH CREEKS- 1794 77 Tennessee river to Natchez. As it passed the Chickamauga towns it was fired upon from Running Water and Long island without damage. The whites returned the fire, wounding two Indians. A large party of Cherokee, headed by White- man- killer ( Une'ga- dihi'), then started in pursuit of the boat, which they overtook at Muscle shoals, where they killed all the white people in it, made prisoners of the negroes, and plundered the goods. Three Indians were killed and one was wounded in the action. 1 It is said that the Indian actors in this massacre fled across the Mississippi into Spanish territory and became the nucleus of the Cherokee Nation of the West, as will be noted elsewhere. On June 26,1794, another treaty, intended to be supplementary to that of Holston in 1791, was negotiated at Philadelphia, being signed by the Secretary of War and by thirteen principal men of the Cherokee. An arrangement was made for the proper marking of the boundary then established, and the annuity was increased to five thousand dollars, with a proviso that fifty dollars were to be deducted for every horse stolen by the Cherokee and not restored within three months. 8 In July a man named John Ish was shot down while plowing in his field eighteen miles below Knoxville. By order of Hanging- maw, the friendly chief of Echota, a party of Cherokee took the trail and captured the murderer, who proved to be a Creek, whom they brought in to the agent at Tellico blockhouse, where he was formally tried and hanged. When asked the usual question he said that his people were at war with the whites, that he had left home to kill or be killed, that he had killed the white man and would have escaped but for the Cherokee, and that there were enough of his nation to avenge his death. A few days later a party of one hundred Creek warriors crossed Tennessee river against the settlements. The alarm was given by Hanging- maw, and fifty- three Cherokee with a few federal troops started in pursuit. On the 10th of August they came up with the Creeks, killing one and wounding another, one Cherokee being slightly wounded. The Creeks retreated and the victors returned to the Cherokee towns, where their return was announced by the death song and the firing of guns. " The night was spent in dancing the scalp dance, according to the custom of warriors after a victory over their enemies, in which the white and red people heartily joined. The Upper Cherokee had now stepped too far to go back, and their professions of friendship were now no longer to be questioned." In the same month there was an engagement between a detachment of about 1 Hay wood, Civil and Political History of Tennessee, p. 308,1823; Ramsey, Tennessee, p. 594.1853; see also memorial in Putnam, Middle Tennessee, p. 502,1859. Haywood calls the leader Unacala, which should be Une'ga- dihi', " White- man- killer.'* Compare Haywood's statement with that of Washburn, on page 100. * Indian Treaties, pp. 39,40,1837; Royce, Cherokee Nation, Fifth Ann. Rep. Bureau of Ethnology, pp. 171,172, 1888; Documents of 1797- 98, American State Papers: Indian Affairs, I, pp. 628- 631, 1832. The treaty is not mentioned by the Tennessee historians. |
