OCR Text |
Show 1 3 8 , MYTHS OF THE CHEROKEE [ ETH. AXN. 19 to them the knowledge of his great invention, which was at once taken up through the influence of Takatoka ( Degata'ga), a prominent chief who had hitherto opposed every effort of the missionaries to introduce their own schools and religion. In consequence perhaps of this encouragement Sequoya removed permanently to the West in the following year and became henceforth a member of the- western Nation. 1 Like other Indians, the western Cherokee held a firm belief in witchcraft, which led to frequent tragedies of punishment or retaliation. In 1824 a step forward was marked by the enactment of a law making it murder to kill any one for witchcraft, and an offense punishable with whipping to accuse another of witchcraft. 2 This law may have been the result of the silent working of missionary influence, supported by such enlightened men as Sequoya. The treaty which assigned the Arkansas lands to the western Cherokee had stipulated that a census should be made of the eastern and western divisions of the Nation, separately, and an apportionment of the national annuity forthwith made on that basis. The western line of the Arkansas tract had also been left open, until according to another stipulation of the same treaty, the whole amount of land ceded through it to the United States by the Cherokee Nation in the East could be ascertained in order that an equal quantity might be included within the boundaries of the western tract. 8 These promises had not yet been fulfilled, partly because of the efforts of the Government to bring about a larger emigration or a further cession, partly on account of delay in the state surveys, and partly also because the Osage objected to the running of a line which should make the Cherokee their next door neighbors. 4 With their boundaries unadjusted and their annuities withheld, distress and dissatisfaction overcame the western Cherokee, many of whom, feeling themselves absolved from territorial restrictions, spread over the country on the southern side of Arkansas river,* while others, under the lead of a chief named The Bowl ( Diwa'rli), crossed Red river into Texas- then a portion of Mexico- in a vain attempt to escape American jurisdiction. 6 A provisional western boundary having been run, which proved unsatisfactory both to the western Cherokee and to the people of Arkansas, an effort was made to settle the difficulty by arranging an exchange of the Arkansas tract for a new country west of the Arkansas line. So strongly opposed, however, were the western Cherokee to this project that their council, in 1825, passed a law, as the eastern Cherokee and the Creeks had already done, fixing the death penalty * Washburn, Reminiscences, p. 178,1869; see also ante p. 206. 2 Ibid, p. 138. sSee Treaty of 1817, Indian Treaties, 1837. * Royee, Cherokee Nation, Fifth Report Bureau of Ethnology, pp. 243,244,1888. 6 Ibid, p. 243. • Author's personal information; see p. 143. |