PART III
Jacob Shook, the Pioneer
By Bob Jones
Copyright Nov 2000
Revised March 29,
2001
REPRODUCTION OF ANY PORTION IS PROHIBITRTED
WITHOUT PERMISSION
BY COPYRIGHT LAWS
LINKS AND COMMENTS ARE ENCOURAGED
Contents
I.
The Beginning
The Pioneer
Image
II.
Lord Granville’s Trans-Catawba
The Lord
Granville Land Grants attract Pennsylvania immigrants
III.
Der Saut Fark
German Lutherans form the
first church west of the Catawba, today’s St Pauls Lutheran
IV.
Cataber
The settlers around Lyle’s
Creek in today’s Catawba County NC begin to form a distinct community,
eventually resulting in the formation of St. Johns Lutheran
Speculation on Jacob Shook’s
connection to the community based on the meager facts
VI.
The Cherokee, Beginnings
Looking
west from Catawba, the Cherokee and their beginnings
VII.
The People
Cherokee
social customs and life
VIII.
The French and Indian War, and the Peace Pipe
The
Cherokee drawn into European intrigues on the side of the French
IX.
The Cherokee enter the American Revolution, and find
defeat once again…
Allied with
the British against the Americans, the Cherokee Nation is smashed
X.
The First
Settlers move into the Disputed Territories
Disputes
between Cherokee, the Federal Government and North Carolina
make the business of settlement beyond the Blue Ridge risky.
XI.
Hyatt and the
Cherokee, fact or frontier fantasy ?
Edward
Hyatt, and Jacob Shook’s association: fact or fantasy?
XII.
The Issue
of the Disputed Territories is Resolved
The doors
are opened for settlement and the push west begins.
XIII.
1786, Jacob
and his bride begin the journey to the Pigeon
Jacob heads
west from Catawba with Isabella
XIV.
Fort and Indian Battle on Point Lookout
Sign of the
times, The Indian Attack on Point Lookout by Frank FitzSimmons
XV.
Along the Rutherford Trace, crossing the Eastern
Continental Divide
Following Jacob’s footsteps,
across the Blue Ridge
XVI.
The Rutherford Trace, Swannanoa
Following
Jacob’s footsteps, down the Swannanoa River
XVII.
The Community Strong Point, a necessary institution
Description
of a frontier blockhouse
XVIII.
Gum Springs and the making of Buncombe
Following
Jacob’s footsteps, to the banks of the French Broad,
the story of Buncombe County
XIX.
The Great Drives
Wilma
Dykeman’s story of the great stock drives
XX.
The War Ford and the French Broad River
Following
Jacob’s footsteps, across the French Broad River
XXI.
Captain Moore’s Fort
Following
Jacob’s footsteps, the Sand Hill
XXII.
The Gateway to the Pigeon, and the “Gardens”
Following
Jacob’s footsteps, up Hominy Creek
XXIII.
The “Gardens” and the loss of Eden
Development
vs Preservation in Jacob’s Eden
XXIV.
The arrival at
“Shooks”
Following
Jacob’s footsteps, a place to put down roots.
XXV.
The First Summer
Pioneer
Life, first things first.
XXVI.
A cabin is built
Pioneer Life, a roof over
their heads as winter comes howling in.
Jacob Shook, the Pioneer
Part III of V Part series
All of us that have grown up in our American culture have a vision of
the hardy pioneer. This figure has become the mainstay of our historical vision
of early America. Daniel Boone seems the “poster child” for this vision, and
his coonskin cap, deer skin coat and long rifle are familiar to us all. The
local fort, built of sharpened logs set in the ground, and the related
difficulties with the original inhabitants of the land, the Indians, are images
and concepts we feel we know and understand. All these things indeed were
elements of the early frontier, but in no way do they go far enough to
enlighten the interested as to the diversity and detail of the lives of these
frontiersmen.
I
was taught in school about the settlement of the frontier of North Carolina,
but the story I learned was of the Boone genre, the story of the Scot Irish who
provided the bulk of the settlers. Another story, that of the German settlers
was oft reduced to a footnote, if that. As I became interested in my roots
through genealogy I began to discover this seemingly alien culture was actually
my own. I learned about things like the Thirty Years War and the exodus of the
Protestants from the Rhineland. I learned how William Penn encouraged these
Germans to come join he and his English Quakers in Pennsylvania and found a
“New World” there. I saw how they came in great numbers to Lancaster, Bucks and
Northampton Counties in that state, settling the areas to the west of
Philadelphia beginning in the 1720s. By the 1750s there were over 100,000 of
these folks living there, and even today the evidence of this settlement and
culture survives in a very visible manner in the ways and appearance of the
Amish and other “Pennsylvania Dutch” communities. I discovered how the sons of
these immigrants found themselves unable to afford land in these crowded
communities, and how in droves they went “west”, which in those days before the
revolution actually meant to go south down the Great Wagon Road. I learned that
this was the means by which the vast majority of settlers, both Scot Irish and
German came to be on the North Carolina frontier.
Jacob
Shook, or Schuck, was part of this tide of settlers, in the company of his
father and mother, sometime in the 1760s (or soon thereafter some say), he came
south, walking, from Northampton County in Pennsylvania. His family came to the
area west of the Catawba River and joined the families of his aunt’s, the
Vollbrects and the Eigners. Some tradition says this was in 1761, and that they
came as a group to Carolina, however the only evidence of this early arrival is
the land grant to William Fulbright (Wilhelm Vollbrect) dated 1763 on Lyle’s
Creek in today’s Catawba County, NC. Jacob Fulbright, William’s son stated in
his Pension Application many years later that it was actually 1769 when William
brought the family to North Carolina.
Whether
they all came together, or as some suggest the Schucks came later, the fact
that they were there on Lyle’s Creek before the Revolution is not in dispute,
and the story of Jacob Shook the pioneer must start with an understanding of
that place and time.
Lord Granville’s Trans-Catawba
Imagine
if you will a wild country, road-less and pristine. Across the seemingly
endless hills covered with open prairies and down in the many little valleys
crowded with trees and cane thickets let your mind wander. Here and there in
this vastness you might imagine on a cold winters day a plume of smoke rising
from some pioneer chimney. This chimney upon closer inspection would be of the
“stick and mud” variety, attached to a log cabin hewn by the owner from trees
that once stood nearby. The cabin might have two rooms, but if the settler had
been there a few years it could have four or five. Out back you would see a
number of crude outbuildings serving the owner’s family as a corn crib, stable
or smokehouse. Here on this “plantation” of 240 acres about 60 acres might be
cleared of trees and planted in some crop such as oats. Closer to the house
would be the garden of vegetables.
Threading
through the wilderness, connecting these rare outposts you might imagine a
network of not much more than footpaths, pathways that from time to time might see
the hooves of the occasional horse or oxen. Along these pathways one could
find, if he imagined a trip along them down Lyle’s Creek, a household much like
the last about every two hours walking. On Lyle’s Creek in 1760 that distance
was called a “German Mile”. And on Lyles Creek that was exactly what is was,
for the “Dutch” (Americanized version of Deutsch) had settled there in numbers
after their long trek down the Great Wagon Road.
The
original land grants on Lyles creek record the owners, Johan Baum in 1750 was
the first recorded, Simon Yonoss (Jonas) and Hinrich Shrink, Phillip Hahn,
Conrod Mull, Conrad Boobey and Johann Hagins appear soon after. Then in 1753
the German United Brethren or Moravians purchased a huge tract of land in Lord
Granville’s district, location undefined. They set out to determine the land
they would select and brought a small team of surveyors across the Catawba to
“look for the land”. As guide they hired Johann Baum. Being duly impressed with
the area between the South Fork of the Catawba and the Catawba proper they
decided that this area, which included Lyle’s Creek, would be an ideal spot for
their projected colony. John Carteret, Lord Granville set aside this huge
parcel, as well as several others, for the Moravians and ceased to sell land
there late in 1753.
For
ten years the land lay under this reserve. The Moravians decided to place their
colony at a less remote area which is today Forsyth County, NC in 1755, but the
restriction still remained on the Catawba lands until 1763. In that year the
land was released and it seems that many German settlers had been living on the
land in question without deed for up to ten years. In 1763 many of them came to
the Land Office in Rowan County at Salisbury, a two day walk away from home,
and registered their claims. The surnames from Lyle’s Creek include Henry Pope,
George Schmidt (Smith), Jacob Wissenaut, Adam Aker (Eckard), Adam Bolch, Thomas
Cowan, Peter Grunt, Michael Hart, Johan Haun, Andrew Killian, Isaac Lowrance,
Peter Stutz, Christian Treffelstadt, Conrad, Joseph and William Whittenburg and
William Fulbright. (so there is our Jacob’s aunt Chistina’s husband, Wihelm
Vollbrect in 1763)
Then
in late 1763 John Carteret, Lord Granville, died and his heirs in England
closed the sale of his lands. It was 1778, 15 years later, before the office
would open again, and many, many Germans had come to live on the unclaimed
lands by then. In December 1778 8,900 acres were registered in Salisbury on
Lyle’s Creek alone. Among these names we find Christopher Beekman (Jacob’s
Capitan in the Cross Creek Campaign) Adam Bolick, George, Peter and William
Deal, George Eslinger, Peter Gront, Frederick Gross, Devault Hunsucker, Johann
Isonhower, Frederick Shull, Andrew Fulbright and, our guys, Johann (Hans) and
Jacob Shuke (Shook). In that year Jacob was 29 years old.
It
is obvious from these many land rolls that the Germans predominated in Lyle’s
Creek. Land was the historical issue, but religion was the heart of the story
for the Germans. These were a refugee folk, for generations they had been
persecuted, driven to exile and isolated by the surrounding cultures due to
their religious beliefs. As a product of this experience these groups had
developed a self contained resolve to remain independent. This resolve had
motivated the majority to leave Europe behind and make the perilous journey to
America in the first place.
Once
in Pennsylvania, governed by the tolerant visions of the founder of that state,
William Penn, these independent minded German’s began to fashion in a public
manner hundreds of sects and divisions of belief, divergent ideas that had
existed in the old world, but had been suppressed. All these sects coexisted,
and in almost half the Churches in German Pennsylvania they even worshiped
together in a congregation called a “Union”. This Union of sects for worship
was especially helpful when the settlers arrived on the frontier where there
was an acute shortage of German speaking pastors of any sect.
The
Moravians or United Brethren sect had a huge impact on the backwoods of North
Carolina, not only in this land issue noted above, but in their presence in the
hundreds at the new colony at Wachovia. From their “new World” seat of power in
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania they had come to build a Utopian world in the
wilderness. There on over 10,000 acres they built three settlements, the most
famous of which was Salem, which now remains as Old Salem in the heart of
Winston Salem, NC. From their colony they sent out Brethren Missionaries to
preach to the German populations across the piedmont, including those west of
the Catawba, fifty miles to the west.
To
the Lyles Creek community, and the other German communities in today’s Catawba,
Lincoln, Rowan and Mecklenburg Counties, NC had come congregational Lutherans,
German Reformed Lutheran’s, Mennonites (German Baptists), Quakers, Dunkers,
Amish and Moravians. Other groups less in numbers included Sabbatarrian Dunkers
who lived secluded from outside contact, New Mooners who believed the newly
dead face judgment on every new moon requiring special services from earth to
assist the loved ones, as commanded of Moses (Numbers 28-29), Anabaptists,
German Presbyterians, The “New Born”, the “Inspired” the Skippack Brethren and
even some reformed Weberites.
Of
the latter the effect of life so far from the constraints of civilization can
be seen. In 1759 in South Carolina on the frontier at Fort Saluda lived a “very
pious Dutchman” named Jacob Waber, or Weber. The community, being without a
minister that spoke their language, began to depend on Weber for their
religious sustenance, and soon came to his home from great distances to sing
songs and read the Gospels. Weber, smitten with his new found popularity began
to assume the role of Pastor, and soon Priest. About him gathered other lay
preachers and a new “religion” was born. In the story, as told by his
detractors, Weber began to see himself as God “come down to earth”. He began to demand that he be addressed as
“God the Father” by his congregation, and his new associate, Johan Georg
Schmidt-Peter became known as the “Son”. Another man named Dauber, described by
contemporaries, as “a Godless colored preacher” was elevated to the post of
“Holy Ghost” while Weber’s own wife acted the part of the “Virgin Mary”. This
situation grew totally out of hand, so much so that through jealousy and
infighting several murders were perpetrated by the congregation upon their own
members. Having heard enough of this foolishness the Governor of South Carolina
sent the Militia out to the backcountry, arrested Weber and his associates and
returned them for trial in Charleston.
In
March of 1761 Weber and his wife, and two associates were convicted and ordered
to be hung for their crimes “freely admitted”. In court it had been alleged
that they “groups of both sexes went about unclothed and naked and practiced
the most abominable wantonness.” It was also alleged that Weber would “raise
the dead” for his congregation, an event perpetrated through the use of a
confederate who “counterfeited death for the occasion”. In the end all “saw the
light” and redeemed themselves, where upon the Governor commuted the sentence
of three of the four. Weber went to the gallows with his backwoods followers
still believing he would rise again on the third day. When he made no
appearance, the Weberites faded into obscurity and dispersed, many to North
Carolina’s backwoods.
Certainly
the Germans were more pious and moral than the Weber situation might indicate.
The incident was used to sully the name of the Lutherans by the promoters of
the Church of England, which in the Carolinas had been declared the “official”
state religion. We don’t know how true the bills of indictment were, but the
story by no means described the nature of the great majority of settlers.
It
was to be 1770 before the first real congregation of German speaking settlers
began to form west of the Catawba. In those years they were served by itinerate
“circuit riding” preachers who would come from time to time to their meeting
house built on the South Fork of the Catawba. This first church, Der Saut Fark
in German, was the predecessor of “Old” St Pauls Lutheran Church in Lincoln
County which still exists today.
On
the rolls of that church’s early membership, as reported in 1775 by it’s first
permanent minister Johann Arends (or Ahrend, Arent, Arnt and Arndt as it is
variously spelled in English records) we can find the Lyle’s Creek surnames of
Bolich, Hahn, Hauk, Killian, Klien, Siegman, Wiegnburger, Miller and Schuk
(Shook). This was a “Union” congregation however, so we don’t know of which
sectarian persuasion the Shooks may have been. Maybe some researcher might look
into the church records which exist in Williams Township, Northampton County
for an insight into this fascinating story.
Immersed
as we have been on our journey with all these German names, now it is obvious
that a significant community existed in the 1760s and 70s in the region west of
the Catawba, a community that held itself apart from the surrounding English
speaking communities. In those families, especially those headed by foreign
born immigrants like Hans Schuck, English was forbidden. Teaching a child
English was frowned upon and often elevated to the level of a sin. Marriage
outside the Germanic community was unthinkable, and when the unthinkable
occurred the offending couple was summarily banished.
Church
was the only real authority, for although the distant courthouse at Salisbury
was technically the seat of civil power, its reach was weak on the west side of
the Catawba, especially in the tight knit German communities. The language
barrier kept Germans from serving in the civil government and often prevented
their participation in court, both as jurors or as plaintiffs. The Elders
mediated disputes, saw to the banishments and organized community efforts such
as barn raisings and cooperative harvests. Often their minister was the only
person in the community that spoke both German and English and so was made
unofficial ambassador to their “Anglish” neighbors. In the case of Wills and
other official court documents, documents that were often not accepted in
German, the Ministers often made translations for filing with the Clerk in Salisbury.
The
evidence of the linguistics of the Shucks is lacking in this early period, but
it does appear that Jacob learned to speak English well, but there is also
evidence that German remained his primary language. History would tell us that
Hans probably never spoke English at all. Jacob most likely had a very limited
English vocabulary in Pennsylvania, but as he lived in “Cataber” country he
probably became more or less fluent in that language, at least in a “bare
bones” sort of way from necessity. Surely after months of service on the
frontier during the Revolution serving with the Militia he became more
comfortable communicating with his English speaking fellows, but I am sure
English always remained his second language throughout most of his life. .
We
know of the events that occurred in the Revolution, and from his own
recollections we know Jacob’s part in those events. We have land records that
find Jacob registering a land holding in 1778, and his name in St Paul’s Church
registry in 1779. The Revolution came to an end in 1783, and in that same year
Jacob appears once more. In a case brought before the Confiscation Courts
meeting in Lincoln County he and two others presented a charge against a man
from Lyle’s Creek. They accused him of supporting the King during the war. The
court refused to return an indictment as the evidence was lacking, so the man
went unpunished. Unknown is the source of this bit of information, other than
it appears in the minutes of that unusual court, it was cited as an example of
the actions taken against Tories by the new American Government, and how
uncharacteristically reasonable and forgiving these courts were on the frontier
of North Carolina.
So
here and there we see the shadow of the individual man, and we can come to a
“fuzzy” vision of him with his thick German accent, long beard and “plain”
ways. We see a land holder, a “juror”, a man willing to seek redress in court
and a church-goer. A veteran Patriot and Indian Fighter and most of all a Pioneer
since his teens. Beyond that all the rest of his early life is obscured by the
mists of time that envelope him.
Even
more undetectable with our meager means are the reasons for Jacob’s move to the
mountains of Western North Carolina. Was it the loss of this “court case” that
drove him from family and community, could he have had a falling out with the
church, was it a connection with the Indians or some previous comrade in arms,
was it the marriage to Isabella Weitzell? Misty stuff indeed.
On
the latter point of his matrimony some questions need be asked. First of all is
the marriage date of 1786 correct? No such marriage is recorded, but many
German unions weren’t in the day, and many, many records have been lost. Who
was this Isabella? There is a Jacob Wetzel in the records, an early settler of
Buncombe County, was he a brother? He was from Lincoln County which would seem
to indicate a connection. Looking further we find a Weitzel family centered in
Orange and Guilford County NC, descendants of Henrich Weitzel who moved to NC
from Augusta Co VA before 1770. This family eventually Americanized the name to
Whitesel. Interestingly there is some indication that Jacob and Isabella
married in Guilford County. Additionally Jacob Shook’s first cousin, Jacob
Fulbright married Elizabeth Weisel, was she a sister to Isabella? Why was Jacob 36 years of age, wasn’t that a
bit old for a first marriage in those times? These and many other questions are
reluctant to give up answers clothed in these mists of time.
The
only method we are provided for understanding the settlement of the mountains
of North Carolina might well require an understanding of the Cherokee and their
history, an understanding that might be paramount in understanding Jacob.
A
people without a written language, at least until the 19th century,
the origins of the Cherokee are speculative at best. Anthropologists say that
they originated in the Southwestern United States before 1000AD and began a
slow movement northeasterly due to climatic changes about that time. Eventually
they wandered up the Ohio River and on into Pennsylvania, maybe as far north as
New York. Conflicts with their distant cousin’s (linguistically) the Iroquois,
who had proceeded them in this migration, caused a reversal of this drift
northward, and by the 1400s they were moving south generation after generation,
absorbing the existing, primitive Muskegon speaking inhabitants as they went,
generation after generation. By 1500 the center of Cherokee culture lay on the
headwaters of the Tennessee River in today’s Tennessee and North Carolina.
The
first European influence felt by the Cherokee was not in the form of a person,
it was the invisible spread of a series of disastrous germs. European contact
with Indians on the coasts of Florida and the Carolinas after 1508 had
unintentionally released a multitude of these microscopic invaders upon the
unsuspecting population, a population with no immunities to these previously
unknown scourges. Through the trade that was carried on with neighboring
communities, a trade exchanging the gold and gems of the mountains with the
pearls and shells of the coasts these plagues were transported to the Cherokee.
Smallpox, Measles, Mumps, Syphilis, Influenza and even the Plague ravaged the
population. Vast areas previously settled were depopulated and became overgrown
during the next decade.
Then
in 1540 the Europeans themselves arrived among the Cherokee in search of gold
and silver. This initial contact was with the expedition of Hernando DeSoto of
Spain. DeSoto had landed on the coast of Florida near today’s Panama City the
previous year. He was in search of Gold, and the first Native Americans he
encountered, hoping to send him quickly on his way, had told him of a distant
mountain land in which the yellow metal could be found. DeSoto quickly decided
to travel there, and he named the imagined mountains that were to be his
destination for the tribe that had first told him of them, the Appalachee. In
his last report to the Governor at Havana before he left the coast in February
he called his destination the Appalachians, a name that has survived until this
day.
There
is some dispute as to the route of DeSoto through the wilderness, but most
historians agree that he led an army of 300 men, mostly mounted and many in
medieval armor. With them were about 300 camp followers, slaves and women,
another 300 Native Americans pressed into service as carriers, slaves, hostages
and guides from the various cultures they traveled through, and 1000 hogs, 500
horses and 200 oxen. Nothing the natives had ever seen had prepared them for
the arrival of this entourage. They progressed across what is today Georgia,
arriving at a Shawnee village (Silver Bluff) south of the present location of
Augusta, GA on the Savannah River (that’s the Spanish word for Shawnee) late
March 1740. From here DeSoto’s entourage went north toward the mountains,
arriving in the lands of the Cherokee (which the Spanish called the
Richohecrian Indians) in late April. Here the lands were depopulated and
“unhealthy” so turning east they followed the foothills to their destination of
Xuala at the headwaters of the river we today call Broad River. Here among the
Xuala, probably later known as the Catawbas, DeSoto found his gold along the
Second Broad River but not in the quantities he had hoped. This very watershed
was later (1800-1849) the greatest gold field in the fledgling United States
until the California Rush of 1849, and is still lined with campgrounds for gold
prospectors along the creek even today.
Having
been disappointed at Xuala, DeSoto now decided to move into the heart of the
powerful Richohecrain kingdom, and so turned west and crossed the Blue Ridge on
pathways that would be familiar to Jacob Shook 225 years later. (a period equal
to our distance in time from Jacob). They crossed a valley and then on May 26th
1540 crossed the river later named French Broad at a point, I believe, that is
today in my “Backyard” in Henderson Co, NC. Several contemporary journals claim
this was the first “northward flowing river” they had crossed, and declared it
later to be the headwaters of the Espirito Santo (or Mississippi) River. From
here they moved up the creek later known as Hominy Creek and through the area
of Clyde, NC, and on into the heart of the Cherokee Towns. Here they were
received with adoration and given the respect of near Gods. DeSoto tarried here
for a while but after a short period grew restless.
DeSoto
moved on southwest, to eventually collide with an Indian ambush at Mobile, and
later a brutal defeat at the hands of the Chickasaw in today’s northern
Mississippi. From there he proceeded west with his survivors to discover the
Mississippi River, and upon crossing into Arkansas was “killed by Indians”.
(many believe he was poisoned by his own troops to prevent further adventures
west.) Many of his “knights” floated down the Mississippi on rafts they had
built and were rescued by Spanish ships off the delta in 1545, and from their
accounts our history comes down.
This
was not the end of contact with the Spanish for the Cherokee. For the next 100
years and maybe longer Spanish adventurers came to the Cherokee country seeking
gold, DeLuna’s men who may have stayed several years around 1560 in North
Georgia and wore out their welcome. Capitan Jaun Pardo, a sergeant with DeSoto,
returned in 1566 and spent years in the Valley River Valley of North Carolina
and in North Georgia as well as his building a fort in the Catawba country and
garrisoning it with 30 men. Rumors and traditions of Spanish coins, helmets and
guns abound in the western counties of North Carolina. A helmet and broadaxe of
the Spanish style are in the Smithsonian collection, supposedly taken from the
Peachtree Mound in Cherokee Co, NC.
This
familiarity of the Cherokee and Europeans became commonplace spanning the 200
years before Jacob’s time. There are many stories of the whites of many
nationalities and all callings to be found living among the Cherokee. Some of
the more colorful are the Jesuit Priests from France who came up the Tennessee
in the early 1600s. Several of these men became respected leaders of the
Cherokee during the period of French claim to the Mississippi Valley that
didn’t end until 1763.
The
first known English contact was in the 1670s by a Virginian explorer from the
new English colony around Jamestown named Lederer. He traversed the boundaries
of the country of the Tomahitans as the English called the Cherokee in those
early years. Cherokee is a corruption of the French name (Chalaque) that has
“stuck”. He declined to visit the heart of the “Kingdom” because of rumors of
“bearded men” living there, men who he assumed were his enemies, the Spanish.
There were also refugees from the Irish War, escaped Negro slaves and even the
descendants of shipwrecked Portuguese living among “The People” as they
collectively called themselves.
That
was the way it was with the Cherokee. Race wasn’t an issue, anyone could become
a member of the “clan” with the right approvals. The “Kingdom” wasn’t really a
Kingdom at all. There was no authority in this society except the respect given
elders and the fear awarded young warriors. Government was by clan council. A
clan usually consisted of extended matriarchal families where a man entered the
clan of his wife at marriage. The council itself was usually all male, and
elderly, but often came to include some representative of European origin. In
addition great attention was paid to the “old mothers” of the clan. In this
system a complication was presented in the form of the clan’s unattached males.
These warriors were an unruly lot, as boys often are, and knowing they would
soon be leaving the clan for those of their future wives, they were often hard
to control. Blood ran high in these boys, and “war” was a constant state of
affair. Revenge was the name of the game, and “blood feud” was the norm.
Disputes
raged between the various clans of the Cherokee, but rarely did these contests
result in death. The situation was different for those not considered to be
within the Cherokee family. Death or captivity and slavery was the only
consideration when “righting a wrong” perpetrated by some other tribe. This
included the “tribes” of the Europeans, mainly the Spaniards, French and the
English. One of the Cherokee’s greatest downfalls was that they considered it a
right to avenge any wrong perpetrated upon their clan by an “English” for
example, on any other person available of English descent. This was how it was,
and it was acceptable with the Creek or the Shawnee, the Cherokee’s traditional
enemies, but it enraged the settlers when the Indians attacked the innocents,
torturing and murdering them horribly in revenge for some distant crime of some
unknown “English”.
Such
attacks led the Cherokee to general wars in 1720 and 1735 against the
Virginians and the Carolinians. The Cherokee couldn’t understand these new
enemies who would come into their lands in overwhelming force and continue
killing and burning after all semblance of an “eye for and eye” was exceeded.
It was always a tragedy as well that no quarter was given to the old or to
women and children in these attacks by the whites, for they felt that their
fallen loved ones had received none. These Cherokee were innocents as well for
they, as a society, could not control the actions of the perpetrators of these
perceived “crimes”, the young warriors. Warriors who usually fleet footedly
escaped harm. With each war the councils gave up more land to achieve peace by
treaty, and vainly promising to control the excesses of the warriors in the
future.
The French and Indian War, and the Peace Pipe
Then
in the last half of the 1700s the Cherokee became entwined in the complicated
intrigue of the powers of Europe, and in effect became a pawn in their world
conflicts. This came to pass because of the Cherokee societies “addiction” to
the technologies of the Europeans. Over the years they had become dependant on
iron tools; plows, axes, knifes and such. The women had grown fond of the
bright cloth and glass beads of the whites, and the men had grown to yearn for
guns for hunting.
Indian
agents had been sent to the wilderness to administer this trade and to elicit
alliances among the clans. In the struggle the British colonists had been most
successful by the year Jacob was born in Pennsylvania, utilizing a trading path
that went from Virginia near Petersburg and going south along the future path
of the Old Wagon Road through North Carolina. The trail led to a junction with
the Cherokee Path from South Carolina at Fort St George, an outpost at Keowee
in the heart of the Lower Towns of the Cherokee. By 1756, the start of the
French and Indian War, the Carolinians had pushed on into the Overhill Towns,
establishing a fort at Loudon in Tennessee. This imposition by force of these
forts inflamed Cherokee opinion, and when the French agents came to Council in
the valley of the Little Tennessee River they readily allied themselves with
the French cause. In 1760 Fort Loudon was placed under siege and forced to
surrender. A British relief force from Charleston, SC under Montgomery was
ambushed in today’s North Carolina and sent fleeing. Fort St George was
evacuated and the Cherokee War ensued.
While
great battles occurred between the French and British on the frontier in
Pennsylvania and Virginia, the south was feeling the tomahawk and scalping
knife along its frontiers. The few settlers of the Catawba valley fled east
across theYadkin. Some such as Daniel Boone’s parents removed all the way to
the Virginia coast. Many German settlers and their families took refuge with
the Moravians in Wachovia from 1759 to 1762. Then British Lieutenant Grant
arrived from Scotland with a powerful force of British regulars, and marched
from Charleston on the Cherokee country in the summer of 1761. Because of
Grant’s incursion and other actions by North and South Carolina militias, by
1762 the Cherokee had been subdued and their French advisors had fled. The next
year in the Treaty of Paris France officially gave the Cherokee lands to the
British (without asking the Cherokee). Deserted by their allies, the Cherokee
submitted to British authority, giving up a huge area of today’s SC to the
settlers and withdrawing to the Blue Ridge in North Carolina. It was this
withdrawal by the Cherokee in 1763 from these lands that drew a flood of new
settlers from the north to these “new acquisitions”.
A
new alliance grew now between the Colonial Governments of the Carolinas and the
Cherokee. Trade was good and profitable, and the British made sure annual
“gifts” of guns and powder went to the Council’s. In 1767 Governor Tryon of
North Carolina traveled to the far frontier to meet with Cherokee “chiefs” at
the Tryon Blockhouse in Western North Carolina. There, on top of a nearby peak,
he “smoked the pipe of peace” and set the boundary between the settlers and the
Cherokee “forever” at the crest of the Blue Ridge.
In
the nine years that followed peace prevailed and the terrors of the Indian Wars
began to be forgotten across the frontier. In those years Jacob came to the
Catawba. For the Cherokee the issues seemed settled forever, and finally the
young warriors agreed. Then came the Revolution.
The Cherokee enter the American Revolution, and find
defeat once again…
Stuart
and Cameron were the agents of the King of England, his representatives to the
Cherokee. Stuart remained in the white communities, first Charleston, then
Savannah and finally Florida. Cameron lived among the clans and fought beside
them during the war. These two men were instructed by their sovereign to incite
their allies, the Cherokee, to attack the frontier settlers who had shown
disloyalty to his rule. They counseled caution, lest the backlash of releasing
unrestricted warfare of the Indian type on the settlers might drive many
supporters from their camp. The King was unmoved, and in 1776 he commanded that
the Cherokee be ready to cooperate in the campaign to conquer the “rebel”
elements in the Carolina, Virginia and Georgia.
Cameron
traveled the pathways of the Cherokee Townships and made impassioned speeches
to the young warriors. He told them that victory of the King was the only way
to preserve the boundary, and that they were fighting for their homes, and for
the survival of the Cherokee themselves. They rose to the call in every
village, and although the elders counseled caution, they painted their faces
and made their preperations for the assault.
The
British actually planned the assault. Indians and British advisors were brought
from far away; Chickasaw, Creek and Shawnee marched into and through the
Cherokee lands. At key points the warriors gathered, hovering in the mountain
passes overlooking the unsuspecting settlers, awaiting the assigned their “D
Day”. On the border of Virginia, across the face of the Blue Ridge in North
Carolina, all along the South Carolina Indian Boundaries and into Northern
Georgia they gathered. The wilderness hid thousands of painted faces, eager for
war. In the first week of July, 1776, they struck. Hundreds of men women and
children died in the first few days. Farms went to flames and refugees flooded
into the old stockades and forts, all in sad repair from disuse and neglect.
The British advisors attempted to curtail the wholesale slaughter of civilians,
but failed.
Individual
stories abound in the historical record about this surprise attack, the “Pearl
Harbor” of the Revolution. Across the up waters of the Savannah River in
Georgia and South Carolina settler homesteads felt the power of the Cherokee
tomahawk and scalping knife. At the old stockade at Due West in SC 200 settlers
took refuge, and in the following assault exhausted their gunpowder. They were
saved at the last minute from sure death by the arrival of Williamson and 80
men from the post at Ninty Six who had run the twenty mile distance in the dark
to arrive at dawn. A local militia leader named Howard made a preemptive strike
at the Cherokee above Tryon Blockhouse based on the young warrior Skyuka’s
warnings and dispersed the Cherokee threat there. Legend says the boy was
smitten with the daughter of a settler there and betrayed his fellow Cherokee
to prevent her harming. As news of the attack spread Rutherford called up the
Militia from Rowan County, NC and immediately marched to the relief of
Davidson’s Fort at the foot of the Blue Ridge, but not before 37 settlers had
been murdered on the Catawba. A Cherokee woman in love with a white settler
betrayed a band of 700 Cherokee and their British advisors in today’s Tennessee
near Knoxville, and in a surprise attack the Indians were sent reeling.
Abington VA was assaulted with much bloodshed by the chief Raven and his band.
Dragging Canoe led a bloody raid through the Carter Valley Settlements in TN,
at Long Island on the Holston his murderous band was finally beaten and he was
carried from the field badly wounded. At Fort Watauga the surprise attack found
young Bonnie Kate milking a cow outside the stockade. As she raced to the fort
she was hotly pursued by the screaming band of Cherokee. At the fort’s log wall
legend says that “Nolichucky Jack” Sevier, later six times governor and four
times congressman from Tennessee, shot a pursuing Indian as he raised his
tomahawk to slay Bonnie, then reached down and drug the frightened girl over
the wall to safety. He would later wed Bonnie Kate after the Cherokee murdered
his own wife several years later.
In
an unfortunate turn of events for the Cherokee, the British invasion of South
Carolina at Sullivan’s Island near Charleston, an action timed to coincide with
the Indian attack, was repulsed. The large number of troops assembled there,
now victors in this critical battle, hurried to the frontier to punish the
Cherokee. Militia came from near and far and soon the Cherokee and their allies
withdrew back to the shelter of the mountains to assess the situation.
Whole
communities, including the reluctant Germans, responded to the call to arms.
Many of the soldiers would later fight for the British at Kings Mountain or
Cowpens, but in this fight they were all against the “red men”. Nobody could
deny his determination to “pay back the heathens in kind” that summer.
Williamson and Pickens immediately attacked from the south. Crossing the Seneca
Fords at Clemson, SC they ran into ambush and were forced back by the British
agent Cameron leading 600 Cherokee. As reinforcements poured in they once again
crossed the river and advanced into the heart of the Lower Towns while Cameron
withdrew.
Within
weeks the Carolinas, Georgia and Virginia sent expeditions consisting of 7,000
men into the heart of Cherokee country, where the towns were laid to waste,
crops burned and any Indians found, men, women and children, were executed on
the spot. Several sharp encounters occurred with the young warriors, but they were
massively outnumbered and out-gunned. With the “people” starved and exposed to
the elements and all hope of resistance quashed the Elders in Cherokee Council
sued for peace with the Americans in the summer of 1777. (see Jacob Shook and
the War of Independence)
At
Due West in South Carolina that summer the new free government of South
Carolina made a treaty with the Lower Towns in which they forfeited their towns
in upper South Carolina in return for a dubious grant of land in the North
Georgia mountains where they had fled. At Long Island on the Holston River in
East Tennessee several weeks later North Carolina and Virginia made separate
treaties with the Overhill Cherokee in which the Councils granted these two
Revolutionary Governments all of Kentucky, most of Tennessee and all the land
“East of the Pigeon River” in North Carolina. “To the victors go the spoils”
was the catch word that summer. The North Carolina agent however sent a letter
to the government in Hillsboro after the signing that alerted them that no
legitimate representative of the Middle Towns had agreed to the terms of the
treaty, and warned that the Pigeon River concession might not be valid due to
this omission.
Ominously,
at Long Island, the Cherokee leader Dragging Canoe refused to sign the treaty
and “walked out” of the negotiations with his followers. Dragging Canoe
eloquently told the assembled officers before he “walked” that he found the
overbearing nature of the White’s demands beyond endurance. He stated that the
King had granted the Cherokee lands for eternity, that it was plain to see that
these lands belonged to the Cherokee even before the King assumed possession,
and that these new treaties were no more than theft, a theft agreed to by old
men and weak women who did not have the authority to cede the land in the first
place. For 15 more years Dragging Canoe would lead the Chickamaugans, a group
of Cherokee comprised mostly of disaffected “young warriors” who continued the
fight against the White’s incursions long after the Revolution ended. The
Chickamaugans called the rest of the Cherokee people “Virginians” from that day
forward, the ultimate insult.
A
serious rift grew in Cherokee society. The young warriors of almost every
village and clan left home to follow Dragging Canoe. The respect for the
Councils that had so long governed the Cherokee way of life broke apart and
this ‘Generation Gap” sent the social order reeling. Worse still was the fact
that the whites expected that the Council’s could prevent the young warriors
from attacking the settlements, and when these attacks continued after 1777
under the direction of Dragging Canoe they often retaliated against the
villages of the Councils instead of the elusive bands of Dragging Canoe. For
this reason the Cherokee suffered numerous attacks and incursions in 1779, 1781
and 1782.
To
make matters worse the Councils of the Middle Towns refused to recognize the
Long Island Treaty which gave away their lands east of the Pigeon River. In
1779 the Council of Safety of North Carolina sent an emissary to Negaussee to
tell the Cherokee that the state would in due time make payment to secure this
land, and until such time they would allow no settlement of the disputed area.
This payment was anticipated the next year, but as the Revolution came into
North Carolina that year with a fury, no payment was made.
In
1783 the Revolution was ended with a second Treaty of Paris, exactly 20 years
after the first, which had seen their previous ill-fated alliance with the
French undone. The Cherokee’s allies, the British, now withdrew. Gone was the
source of ammunition and trade goods. Now the Councils had no choice but to
treat with the new American nation. Dragging Canoe refused to give up and took
his many followers to an enclave near today’s Chattanooga, TN and continued the
fight. North Carolina was financially bankrupt after the long war, and found
itself not only unable to pay the Cherokee for the land beyond the Blue Ridge
as they had promised, but was under great pressure from creditors, including
its unpaid veterans, to come up with cash. To this end, in 1783, the state of
North Carolina announced the disputed land east of the Pigeon to be open for
grant and settlement.
The First Settlers move into the Disputed
Territories
At first
the settlers were intimidated by Indian threats and seemed to be wary of
crossing the Blue Ridge. Then in the spring of 1784 Samuel Davidson, cousin to
John Davidson who had been killed with his family in the surprise attacks of
1776, and of the family that operated Davidson’s Fort at the head of the
Catawba came across the mountains following the Rutherford Trace and settled at
the mouth of Bee Tree Creek on the Swannanoa River. Here he cleared the land
and built a rough hewn cabin for his young wife and baby child.
The
story is told of how this first settler had let his stock wander to the meadows
on a mountain behind his cabin, and had placed a bell around the neck of his
cow. A band of young warriors who had been lurking about watching the settlers
had taken the bell from the cow and began to ring it from the top of a high
hill, making it seem to Samuel that his cow had fallen to some distress. Upon
climbing the hill to investigate he was ambushed by the Indians, shot and
killed, then scalped. His wife, hearing the report of the rifle knew what must
have happened, so she immediately grabbed the crying baby from its crib and ran
barefoot back down the lonely path, all the way back to Davidson’s Fort.
Samuel’s
twin brother, John Davidson and a large body of men crossed the Blue Ridge the
next morning and came to Bee Tree Creek where they found and buried the body of
Samuel. They then proceeded to track the Cherokee warriors, following them down
the Swannanoa and catching them by surprise near its juncture with the French
Broad. There they had a heated contest and many of the Indians were killed.
Several Indians escaped however, and soon brought back numerous other
Chickamaugans. The Davidson party, now fully aroused, sent for reinforcements
as well and a battle took place in and around the huge cane break at the
junction of the French Broad and Swannanoa, just outside the present city of
Asheville, NC, that lasted 17 days. Reports were made that 70 Cherokee were
killed in this battle.
In
the spring of the next year, 1785, John Davidson and ten other Scot-Irish
families made the move across the Blue Ridge to Samuel’s old cabin on
Christians Creek, and there they planted what is supposed to be the first
permanent white settlement in the lands of the Middle Towns, a settlement they
called the Swannanoa Settlement. But was it. Something occurred that November
100 miles away on the lawn of General Picken’s home at Hopewell near today’s
Clemson, SC that might dispute that claim. On the afternoon of the 28th of that month a Cherokee
elder rose to speak in the Council of Treaty and complained about the
settlements on Swannano and on PIGEON RIVER.
Who
was Musuchanail of Nequassee speaking of on Pigeon River? Jacob Shook would
arrive there the next spring we know, but the Histories of Haywood Co mention
no settlers on the Pigeon earlier than Jacob, except the shadowy specter of
one. That is Edward Hyatt. Nothing much is known about this character, although
he is forever memorialized by the plague set in stone on the lawn of the
Haywood County Courthouse as a Revolutionary War Veteran. Legend has it that he
came as early as 1780, and that he first settled near today’s Clyde. He was
well known to the Cherokee as a “good and fair” man, and for that reason
somehow missed the massacre and turmoil of the region in those times. It is
claimed that Hyatt said of the Cherokee that “they took up most of his time and
ate much of his food” in those early days. (Source: Medford’s Haywood’s
Heritage and Finest Hour, 1971, p. 2)
Hyatt and the Cherokee, fact or frontier fantasy ?
Edward Gaither Hyatt was born 1740 in Anne
Arundel Co, MD.
He was the son of Shadrack Hyatt and Dinah Gaither, parents with Quaker roots
in America back to the early years of the 1600s. Some say he married Hannah
Leatherwood the daughter of Edward Leatherwood and Elizabeth Walker but family
tradition says the woman’s name was actually Hannah Parker. It is possible that
Hannah may well have been part Cherokee. Edward and Hannah were married by
tradition in 1776, the year of Rutherford’s arrival in the area of future
Haywood. Was she found among the Cherokee and carried back east with the
expedition as so many were? Was Hyatt in Rutherford’s army? Did he find her
appealing and take her as wife? Was she his connection to the Cherokee? Hyatt
died in 1817 while visiting land he owned in today’s Jackson County and is
buried there “among his slaves” in the Hyatt Cemetery in the Qualla Community.
(In 1817 this was deep in Cherokee country!)
This story of Hyatt is taken from old documents
and family tradition: “Just after the ‘Big Pigeon Treaty’ had been made with
the Cherokees” (The Treaty of the Long Island of the Holston, 1777, some
writers have confused this with the Hopewell Treaty of 1785) “Edward Hyatt settled
in this county, which was then Burke. He then went back to Morganton, and after
a short while returned with three or four of his sons,” (had he been previously
married?) “two Negroes and a pack horse loaded with provisions. It is said that
he made a crop that year …” “The early settlers of this mountain section
generally made friends with the Indians on arriving here. And some of the
whites, like Edward Hyatt and Wm. H. Thomas greatly befriended the Cherokees.
Edward Hyatt was seeing much of his Cherokee Neighbors. As well established
tradition has it, the Indians often visited in the home of Mr. and Mrs. Hyatt,
he would invite them to ‘put feet under table’ and it appears that Mrs. Hyatt
would also give them food in case her husband was away from home.”
It is an intriguing bit of speculation that
Hyatt may have been an early resident and “trader” within the Cherokee
community of the Pigeon. The abandonment of the area by British agents
(possibly Parker’s father?) just ahead of Rutherford’s incursion into the
Cherokee lands would certainly have opened up a market for such a brave
individual, and a possibility that he had a “part” Indian wife could have
provided the key. The year of 1780 also presented ample reason for a patriot to
abandon the field and find refuge in the mountains. In the spring Elijah Clarke
of Georgia had moved through the area with 300 men and 300 women and children
on their way to refuge in the Watauga Settlements. Then all summer Ferguson
with his red-coated Tory legions had molested settlers across the foothills
around Old Fort, driving many a Patriot into the mountains. Was Hyatt such a
refugee? Did he find friendship among the Cherokee who were seeking peace? Did
they allow him a home site in the lands they claimed, and did he move his
family there under the protection of these now forgotten benefactors? Did he
discover that he held certain immunity from harm because he was able to deliver
goods in trade which the ravaged Cherokee so desperately needed?
A story comes handed down of the expedition of
“Nolichucky Jack” and his Rangers up the Pigeon River from Watauga in 1782
against the Cherokee. In his diary a soldier states that they happened upon the
cabin and trading post of what they assumed was a British Agent and deep in the
wilderness. As the Rangers approached a figure escaped from the back door of
the cabin running for the woods and he was shot dead from a great distance by a
long rifle. (the distance of the deadly shot is what provoked remembrance) Upon
investigation the dead boy turned out to be a black slave belonging to the
resident of the cabin. At first the man who owned the boy was accused of being
a Tory, and as such deserving of a quick hanging, but upon presentation of
papers he convinced the Rangers he was instead a Patriot and veteran. A note
was given for payment for the property destroyed, a note to be paid by the
Government of North Carolina. Was this resident Hyatt? Even if not, the story
indicates that such men were indeed at large among the Cherokee Lands earlier
than 1784.
Such men made their living from trade, the
economy of rich pelts in return for iron goods, gun powder and salt. The
Cherokee were desperate for these things and were unable to travel to the
frontier forts to procure them safely during the war years. The Cherokee
elders, deserted by the young warriors and desirous of peace, would have easily
seen that a relationship with such a man might avoid retribution from the
Rangers that appeared with regularity from the settlements in the foothills, spreading
often indiscriminant destruction among the “people”. Such a relationship could
have also protected such a man and his family from attacks by the Cherokee, for
even the young warriors needed such things. No doubt, however, such a man would
have been walking a razor’s edge balancing such issues as the divisiveness of
the Cherokee and the bitterness of the Revolutionary War’s antagonists. But in
spite of this the man would open the door of his little fortress cabin and take
in the pelts, and dispense his meager supply of goods. Then he would take his
pack horse and more than likely a string of hired “boys” provided by the
Cherokee, and transport his pelts to the nearest post or market, in those days
that would have been Davidson’s Fort. There he would barter the fine hides,
valued at the outrageous price of about $2 per pelt (a value reported by 1810,
maybe higher in earlier years. This can be compared to the price of excellent
“bottom” lands going for $.50 and acre that same year). His return up the “trace”
would find him and his “boys” loaded down with axe heads, traps, seed corn,
powder and salt. Twice a year he might make the two week round trip out of the
hills.
Our “fantasy” can be expanded to include the
circumstance that might have brought Jacob Shook to the Pigeon Valley. In the
summer of 1781 Jacob was standing guard at Davidson’s Fort. Having been to the
Pigeon with Rutherford in 1776, he would have had a keen interest I am sure in
this comrade who now trailed in from beyond the ridge to trade that summer. I
am sure he was participant in the tales of bold streams and wild lands that
must have gone around the fires on those summer evenings at the fort. Later on
that summer he may well have been with patrols that ranged up to Moore’s fort
and maybe even on to Hyatt’s. There can be no doubt that Jacob either knew, or
knew of Hyatt, if Hyatt indeed resided on Pigeon in 1781.
After Jacob returned home from service in August
1781 I’m sure he recalled the man, and the land, and often thought of what it would
be like to leave the problems of community life behind. In 1783 when NC
declared the land up to the Pigeon to be legally available, his mind must have
raced at the prospect. Did he seek out Hyatt in those years? Did he make some
agreement for land and protection with the Trader? We can only speculate. Hyatt
originally settled “below the ford several miles” which would be future Clyde.
Then later he moved to the area of Turpin Chapel nearer Waynesville. Did Jacob
take over his previous home site? Is that why Jacob ended up on Cherokee lands
in 1786? We will most likely never know.
The Issue of the
Disputed Territories is Resolved
To
help visualize the period in which Jacob Shook moved to the Pigeon one must consider
the confusion brought about by the Treaty of Hopewell. Understanding the
happenings at Hopewell in 1785 require an understanding of the politics of the
day, and the growing pains of the new republic. Here at Hopewell General
Pickens, the old Indian fighter and Partisan leader of the Revolution sponsored
a Council of all the south’s Native Americans. Leaders of the Cherokee, the
Creeks, the Choctaw and Chickasaw all came together to meet with
representatives of the states and with representatives of the new Federal
Government. The British treaties of course were all void now, and confusion
reigned about the status of the proliferation of individual treaties signed
between the Indians and the various states. After the Revolution ended North
Carolina claimed all the land which was included in the colony under British
rule. This included what is today Tennessee. Georgia likewise claimed what is
today Alabama and Mississippi. Virginia claimed all of Kentucky (and of course
today’s West Virginia). The Federal Government however claimed that this land
west of the Indian Boundaries was actually owned by all the states, and created
it’s own Government for those areas. The District of Ohio and the Southwest
Territories were created by the congress in New York without regard to the
claims of the several states.
The
Federal officers spoke first to the gathered Council’s of the Cherokee and told
them they would protect their rights and hold the boundary to the Blue Ridge.
From this point on North Carolina was in to position to bargain. The North
Carolina representative walked out on the Council in a moment ironically like
that of Dragging Canoe 8 years earlier at Long Island. He had come with the
payment promised for the Cherokee, and now he took this with him and promised
that North Carolina would not observe this “farce” perpetrated by the Federal
Government. The Council’s asked the Federal representatives what should be
their course of action if confronted by North Carolinian resolve, and were told
they could “drive any settlers from their lands”. They didn’t, however, offer
them any assistance in this endeavor. Fortunately the Cherokee never took this
advice, for they had been taught hard lessons about picking the wrong side in a
dispute between the whites, and they had learned to respect the power and fury
of the North Carolinian Militia. North Carolina responded by offering even more
land in the disputed area at unbelievably low prices not only to settlers but
to land speculators as well. So appealing was this “publicity” that in the
spring the flood gates were opened. From all directions hardy pioneers came
into the valley of the French Broad and the Pigeon. Where maybe twenty families
had been settled in the disputed lands in 1785, by the end of 1786 there were
over a hundred.
In
1789 John Steele, the North Carolina Indian Agent met with the Cherokee at the
War Ford of the French Broad. He had brought with him 3,330 dollars worth of
trade goods, the amount settled on for the purchase of most of Tennessee and the
French Broad and Pigeon River basins. The Cherokee, under the influence of the
Federal agents, Steele reports, refused to treat and Steele returned east with
the goods. Finally, it would be in July 1791, at White’s Fort (today’s
Knoxville, TN) a treaty was signed by the North Carolinians and the Middle
Towns, a treaty that ended dispute over these lands, the Treaty of the Holston.
1786, Jacob and his bride begin the journey to the
Pigeon
Whatever
the circumstance that brought the 37 year old Indian Fighter to the Pigeon,
the histories, studies such as The Early History of Haywood County, by W Clark
Medford, 1961; The French Broad, by Wilma Dykeman, 1955; The Annals of Haywood
County, NC, by W. C. Allen, 1935; A History of Buncombe County North Carolina,
by F. A. Sondley, 1930; History of Western North Carolina by Ora Blackmon,
1880 and many more, all agree the year was 1786 that Jacob Shook first settled
in Clyde, although most of these authors attribute that date to tradition
and none state that it is documented fact. Some researchers contend this date
is in error, that actually jacob came as late as 1799, however no compelling
evidence has been offered to prove this, and certainly not enough to overturn
these previous author's work. It is also known that his brother Andrew Shook
and his cousin Jacob Fulbright came to the Pigeon as well, but they may have
come many years later according to church records in Catawba country. I’ve
yet to see that Jacob sold his land back on the Catawba, so it seems to this
descendant that there’s something that “went on” back in Catawba, maybe a
divorce or some serious breach of the very conservative German social order.
Such things were often swept “under the rug” by later carriers of verbal tradition
and family history. It seems obvious that Jacob wasn’t fully inspired by his
Lutheran or Reformed church membership at Der Saut Fark as he later became
such a devout Methodist and claimed to have had a “religious conversion” which
“cleansed his soul”. Of course the “real” truth could be as simple as the
allure of land offered so cheaply by the Government of North Carolina ($30
for 100 acres), or it could be as complicated as some relationship to a Cherokee
acquaintance that may have offered Jacob land in return for protection from
the North Carolinians for his (or her) family or clan. After all, the land
that Jacob settled was on the west bank of the Pigeon River, theoretically
in Indian lands by the claim of the Federal Government, and by the claim of
North Carolina!
In
1787 settlers continued to pour in, and in that year some notable land grants
were made in the disputed lands. These are the oldest grants still extant, but
there obviously were some made earlier, as these documents speak of corners and
borders adjoining other named settlers. The absence of such records is not
surprising, not only was the area disputed between the Federal Government, the
Cherokee and North Carolina, but it was also disputed between Burke and
Rutherford County as well. It was not until 1785 that McDowell surveyed the
line between the two counties, and then he only went as far as the Pigeon. The
survey found that those lands south of the Swannanoa lay in Rutherford and
those north of that stream lay in Burke. This split the settlements in half,
beginning a movement to have an order established by the creation of a new
county, an establishment that might combine the artificial separation of the
communities into a cohesive and convenient division.
The
absence of early records may be explained as well by the activities of General
Kirk of the Union Army in 1865, 84 years later. As the Civil War drew to a
close he and his “Yankee” raiders occupied Morganton, the county seat of Burke
County. Following the directives of General Sherman, who had declared “these
Rebels hold so much stock in their heritage, it behooves us to remove the
evidence from them”, Kirk had his men break into the courthouse and drag the
old land, marriage and court records into the street, where he made a bonfire
of those yellowed and ancient documents.
The
reader might glean some insight into to the reasons for Jacob’s move to the
Pigeon by creating a vision in the mind’s eye of what it was like to travel
to Jacob’s new home from Davidson’s Fort along the Rutherford Trace in 1786.
The first concern of course was the status of the Indian peace, and the defense
available for protection of the families. I love this account taken from a
local writer named FitzSimmons about a Cherokee attack on the Edneyville community
of then Rutherford County, NC in 1788.
Fort and Indian
Battle on Point Lookout
Chapter 16
“From the Banks of the Oklawaha”
By Frank FitzSimmons
Golden Publishing Co
1976
COMING SOON WHEN WRITTEN PERMISSION IS RECIEVED TO PUBLISH HERE
Along the Rutherford Trace, crossing the Eastern Continental Divide
In the spring of 1786 Jacob Shook and his
wife made the move to what is today Haywood County. That was two years before
the fight recounted above. There is no way that Jacob was ignorant of the
threat the Indians posed, but obviously this seasoned Indian fighter felt he
and his family could stand up to the risk. We might, in a flight of fancy, walk
with Jacob on this journey to his new home, based on the accounts that remain
of those times, while at the same time capturing a vision of these places
today..
Although Jacob lived back down the river
Catawba 40 miles or so from it, we’ll start our trek at Davidson’s Fort, a
sight familiar to Jacob as he was stationed there for six months in the summer
of 1781. The stockade was still being manned by Militia, and the area for a
mile or more around had been cleared of trees to allow sentries to spot any and
all living things that might approach. All around the fort, on the banks of the
Catawba, which was here not much more than a large creek, settlers had built a
ramshackle collection of cabins. During the war there had even been somewhat of
a “tent city” here, where the outlanders had come in fear of the Indians. This
temporary settlement had somewhat disappeared by 1786, but still there was a
large number of transient folks camped around in the spring of 1786 awaiting
the time to take their place on the route westward. The small cabins were turned
to stores and taverns, and they saw not only the business of the settlers from
all around, and of the settlers and hunters going west, but also a steady
stream of Indians come down from the disputed lands to trade for the needed
iron goods, beads and cloth. Even though the settlement had just the stockade
with its enclosed Blockhouse and less than a dozen small cabins and huts, and
never had a population of much more than a hundred souls at its very largest,
this was the biggest “town” anywhere near, and the last sign of “civilization”
the westward bound would see. Ahead lay the imposing mass of the Blue Ridge,
and in just about a mile from the fort the Rutherford Trace began its hazardous
way to the top of those mountains.
Historians aren’t sure of the route which
Rutherford marked in 1776, and we can’t be sure which of the many routes up
that mountain Jacob took. There are about seven known routes, and the most
popular has regularly changed across the years as the requirements of changing
modes of transportation have advanced.. All routes came to the ridgeline at the
same spot however, a place today appropriately named Ridgecrest located in the
Swannanoa Gap. In the days of horse and foot travel this adventure to the ridge
took about a half a day if things went well, even though in distance it was
only about six miles. Today the three most southerly routes are mere forest
trails in the Pisgah National Forest, the next route to the north is followed
by Interstate 40. This road today will zip you to the crest from Old Fort in
about 5 minutes at 60 miles an hour. Further north, in the next cove is old US
70. This concrete relic of the early 50s is closed now. A landslide that took a
section of highway in the 1990s would have cost to much to repair based on the
trickle of traffic that still used the “old road” the highway department
determined. Next is the more modern route of the railroad. This was a marvel of
engineering when built in the 1880s. Such a thing Jacob could never have
imagined when he climbed the ridge a century before its construction. It leaps
the creek on huge stone and concrete bridges, careens across the face of shear
drops and tunnels through the hills in seven different spots, ending its
winding journey upward at the 3,000 foot Tunnel Hill Tunnel at Ridgecrest. And
then there’s the Mill Creek route, a dirt road still open to the public. The
Mill Creek Road winds around and around as it climbs. Up past the Andrews
Geyser, built by the railroad to drain a “wet” cut through the mountain high
above in the 1880s, it provides an artesian delight in a park rebuilt by the
town of Old Fort in the 1970s. Then as it climbs it crosses and re-crosses the
railroad before ducking into seemingly endless woods. Here it twists like a
serpent over and over itself ever climbing, until suddenly it crosses the ridge
at the site of a new Bed and Breakfast. Now it is in the lower reaches of the
gap, but the climb’s not over. After joining the now closed and deteriorated
pavement of “old 74” the road makes a final leap over the crest, and straight
into a bridge over Interstate 40. (At this point the railroad is about 100 feet
below, underground). Of course that’s not exactly what Jacob and Isabella saw.
Their hike that spring was probably at the
head of a string of ten or twelve horses and ponies, all heavily laden with
packs containing all the worldly possessions and the all important tools the
pioneers owned, and all the seed corn, oats and vegetable seed they would need
to grow to survive in the wilds. Following were several cows and a hog or two.
If they went alone, there would have to be a couple of “boys” hired at Old Fort
or more likely relatives from back “home” who wanted the adventure west, but
intended to return. Maybe his cousin Jacob Fulbright was one of the latter. He
might also have been with a group. Other German settlers that may or may not
have been heading to Pigeon River, but were headed west none the less. It’s
likely that part of his entourage were well known neighbors from Lyles Creek
who intended to set up a community together at what would one day be Clyde. No
known account of this particular journey exists, that we know of.
The steep ascent Jacob took to the ridge
was not the winding road of later days, it was a rugged pathway, deeply rutted by
the hooves of so many beasts. Most likely it split and split again at every big
obstacle where previous settlers, soldiers and Indians had found preferred
routes around and over, across the years. Many places the horses had to be
manhandled up with their heavy loads, many whining and refusing to budge until
Jacob’s forceful haul overcame resistance. In places Isabella in her long
homespun skirt would have to grab to tree limbs and pull herself along over the
eroded roots of the great trees that densely covered the slopes. It was a hard,
noisy, sweaty bit of work. A long hard morning if everything went right, and if
several horses toppled, a leg was broken or the cows got away, it was probably
a rough descent the next morning to the fort to get ready for another try. If
all went right the settlers might well stop early at the gap. This huge flat
area right at the crest (Ridgecrest) was once a famous camping sight for first
the Indians, keeping watch on the settlers down below, then of the Militia from
the Catawba, keeping the Indians at bay further west, then for settlers moving
west. Later it became a Baptist Campground during the “Great Revival” of the
early 1800s. Today it is a large Baptist Conference Center, the Ridgecrest
Assembly.
The Rutherford
Trace, Swannanoa
The next morning, just before dawn the
Shooks and their traveling companions set out westward down the Swannanoa
River, the rising sun to their back. At first the river was but a small stream,
but as they moved along the high ground to the north of the rivulet it
continued to grow in volume as many small creeks entered. The traveling was
much easier here than on the previous day as the area of the valley was
virtually devoid of trees, a prairie washing up to the foot of, and sometimes
climbing the flanks of, the surrounding mountains. This unusual (to we
Easterners) landscape was the norm in the mountains of Western North Carolina
until after the settlement of the Europeans. There is some debate on the
ultimate cause, be it natural or man made, but all agree that the ecosystem of
the river valleys was the result of repeated burning, decade after decade for
centuries.
Some historians say this was the result of
the actions of the Native Americans. There is historical evidence of this being
the cause of the numerous “balds” in the southern Appalachians. Settlers record
the Indian method of setting fires about the base of a conical peak when the
wind was just right. This flare up would burn the cap of the mountain to
cinder. As early as the next spring, just like the massive fires in Yellowstone
in our age, life would begin again, and then come on with a vengeance. Wildlife
would begin to thrive, and in the next several years in the ecology of a fire
scald’s return, wildlife would actually overpopulate due to the abundance of
forage. This, combined with the obvious advantage’s offered a hunter when the
game has no cover, led to a sustainable and relatively easy supply of wild
game. The game that predominated in this environment might seem unlikely to the
hunter of modern times in the area, but it mainly consisted of elk and huge
herds of Bison. This pattern of burning was even imitated by many of the new
European settlers who did the same for a generation, resulting in the “balds”
that still exist. In recent times the practice has been curtailed, and the
“balds” are often bald, or without trees, in name only today.
Reasoned speculation makes this a perfect system that may have been practiced on a much larger scale in the centuries before the plagues reduced the Native American populations so substantially, just before the Europeans arrived. It mak