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Show MOQNEY] JOHN ROSS- THE KETOOWAH SOCIETY 225 them. They were compelled to yield, but not until the struggle had developed the highest qualities of patience, fortitude, and tenacity of right and purpose on their part, as well as that of their chief. The same may be said of their course after their removal to this country, and which resulted in the reunion of mthe eastern and wTest-ern Cherokees as one people and in the adoption of the present constitution.'' Concerning the events of the civil war and the official attempt to depose Ross from his authority, they state that these occurrences, with many others in their trying history as a people, are confidently committed to the future page of the historian. " It is enough to know that the treaty negotiated at Washington in 1866 bore the full and just recognition of John Ross' name as principal chief of the Cherokee nation.'' The summing up of the panegyric is a splendid tribute to a splendid manhood: " Blessed with a fine constitution and a vigorous mind, John Ross had the physical ability to follow the path of duty wherever it led. No danger appalled him. He never faltered in supporting what he believed to be right, but clung to it with a steadiness of purpose which alone could have sprung from the clearest convictions of rectitude. He never sacrificed the interests of his nation to expediency. He never lost sight of the welfare of the people. For them he labored daily for a long life, and upon them he bestowed his last expressed thoughts. A friend of law, he obeyed it; a friend of education, he faithfully encouraged schools throughout the country, and spent liberally his means in conferring it upon others. Given to hospitality, none ever hungered around his door. A professor of the Christian religion, he practiced its precepts. His works are inseparable from the history of the Cherokee people for nearly half a century, while his example in the daily walks of life will linger in the future and whisper words of hope, temperance, and charity in the years of posterity." Resolutions were also passed for bringing his body from Washington at the expense of the Cherokee Nation and providing for suitable obsequies, in order " that his remains should rest among those he so long served" ( Resolutions in honor of John Ross, in Laws of the Cherokee Nation, 1869). ( 47) THE KETOOWAH SOCIETY ( p. 156): This Cherokee secret society, which has recently achieved some newspaper prominence by its championship of Cherokee autonomy, derives its name- properly Kltu'hwa, but commonly spelled Ketoowah in English print- from the ancient town in the old Nation which formed the nucleus of the most conservative element of the tribe and sometimes gave a name to the Nation itself ( see KUu'kwcuft, under Tribal Synonyms). A strong band of comradeship, if not a regular society organization, appears to have existed among the warriors and leading men of the various settlements of the Kituhwa district from a remote period, so that the name is even now used in councils as indicative of genuine Cherokee feeling in its highest patriotic form. When, some years ago, delegates from the western Nation visited the East Cherokee to invite them to join their more prosperous brethren beyond the Mississippi, the speaker for the delegates expressed their fraternal feeling for their separated kinsmen by saying in his opening speech, " We are all Kituhwa people" ( Ani'- KItu'hwagT). The Ketoowah society in the Cherokee Nation west was organized shortly before the civil war by John B. Jones, son of the missionary, Evan Jones, and an adopted citizen of the Nation, as a secret society for the ostensible purpose of cultivating a national feeling among the full-bloods, in opposition to the innovating tendencies of the mixed- blood element. The real purpose was to counteract the influence of the " Blue Lodge" and other secret secessionist organizations among the wealthier slave- holding classes, made up chiefly of mixed- bloods and whites. It extended to the Creeks, and its members in both tribes rendered good service to the Union cause throughout the war. They were frequently known as " Pin Indians," for a reason explained below. Since the close of the great struggle the society has distinguished itself by its determined opposition 19 ETH- 01 15 |