Thanks Richard. TT ----- Original Message ----- From: <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Monday, July 28, 2008 1:19 PM Subject: [CREEK-SOUTHEAST] A little more information on the ChickamaugaCherokees >I would like to add that the Chickamauaga Cherokees were originally based >in > the Upper Creek village of Chickamauga near Chattanooga, but soon spread > their villages throughout what is now NW Georgia and NE Alabama, but was > then > Georgia. They immediately began intermarrying with Creeks. The Upper > Creeks > were active allies of the Chickamauga Cherokees in their raids into > Tennessee. The Chickamauga villages often moved to avoid detection, > since the > Chickamaugas were involved in a guerilla war with the Tennessee Militia. > Interestingly enough, there were very few conflicts with Georgia > citizens even though > most Chickamaugas were living in Georgia, since the Chickamaugas > considered > Georgia to be another country. > > In 1793, many of the Chickamaugas who survived their catastrophic defeat > in > what is now Rome, GA settled in the Natchez village of Pine Log, which is > 13 > miles north of Etowah Mounds. It was here that Sequoyah, John Ridge, > James > Vann and Charles Hicks settled. Sequoyah became a prosperous silver > smith > here, and used the spare time to write his syllabary. About 8 years ago I > lived > in Pine Log only a couple hundred yards from the site of Sequoyah's > cabin. > Sequoyah's work was based on the Taliwa (Creek) syllabary - the > indigenous > people of this region where I live. Talking Rock Creek, here, gets its > name > from the Creek glyphs remaining on the stones. In fact, Sequoyah's name > is > definitely not Cherokee, and apparently derived from the Creek word > sekooya, > which means war captive. Therefore, he was probably at least 1/2 Creek > ... > maybe all Creek in genetic heritage, but spoke Cherokee. > > Up to the time of John Ross, all of the leaders of the Cherokees at > their > capital in New Echota, were from Pine Log. Many of the Pine Log > Cherokees > were full bloods, whereas, John Ross was only 1/8 Cherokee and knew > practically > nothing about his heritage until being elected a leader. So it is > definitely > not correct to describe the Chickamauga Cherokees as predominantly > mixed-blood whites. I live about 20 miles from New Echota and go their > often. > > The Kituwah Band of Cherokees trace their lineage to the 1817 Cherokee > settlers. They are federally recognized. Here is the joke on them > though. > Kituwa is not a Cherokee word other than being a proper noun. It is the > Alabama > word for sacred fire. > > The core of the North Carolina Cherokees, who formed the Qualla Boundary > Reservation, were part of Chief Junaluska's band. THEY WERE EXEMPTED FROM > GOING > TO OKLAHOMA because of a favor granted by Andy Jackson to Chief > Junaluska. > Earlier they had attempted to kill Sequoyah and his wife, because they > considered his syllabary to be witchcraft and non-Cherokee. The North > Carolina > Cherokees were in the midst of slowing torturing Sequoyah to death, when > John > Ridge led a troop of Cherokee Lighthorse from Georgia to save him. Some > Georgia Cherokees did successfully hide out from the troops, and through > the > decades ended up in Qualla, but the story presented to tourists at the > NC Cherokee > Reservation does not explain this. The NC Cherokees did not use the > Sequoyah syllabary until the late 20th century. > > For all my bad experiences with the locals here, I do feel blessed to have > lived in the past ten years in the midst of so much Native American > history. > My first two years back in Georgia were spent in walking distance of > Etowah > Mounds. > > Richard T. > > > > **************Get fantasy football with free live scoring. Sign up for > FanHouse Fantasy Football today. > (http://www.fanhouse.com/fantasyaffair?ncid=aolspr00050000000020) > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without > the quotes in the subject and the body of the message >