without whose helpful suggestions and unfailing interest the book would never have been completed, I desire to express my special gratitude. For a critical reading of the manusript I am under obligations to Professors A. C. McLaughlin, Francis W. Shepardson and Frederick Starr of the University of Chicago.

In addition to those mentioned there are others whom I wish to thank for assistance rendered and encouragement given. Among these is Mrs. Frances J. Moseby, my late colleague at the Industrial Institute and College of Mississippi.

Finally, if the background of the story adds anything to the merit of the book, the credit is due to Mrs. Lucy Ward Williams, one of the last of the fireside historians of her race, whose vital interest in her people constrained her to repeat their story in season and out of season until it was rooted and grounded in my memory from earliest childhood.

CHAPTER I

THE YOUTH AND EARLY TRAINING OF JOHN ROSS

Few men of aboriginal American stock have figured more conspicuously in United States history, or have been the subject of more diverse opinions than has John Ross, who, for nearly forty years, was chief of the Cherokee Indians.

Beginning his political career when Georgia was commencing to assert her extreme views in regard to the Indian question, he was considered by Georgia statesman and border politician as “a silent and sordid man," dangerous and obnoxious, to be feared for his influence over the Indians and hated because he was absolutely incorruptible. To the majority of the Cherokee he was a Solomon in counsel and a David in the defense of their rights. Between these extreme opinions were those of such men as Clay, Webster, and Marshall, who considered him a cultured and an honest gentleman, the peer of many who sat in the legislative halls at Washington. Even his bitterest enemies conceded that he possessed ability of no mean order.

His qualities of leadership early forced him into the forefront of the conflict which, for almost two decades, waged so bitterly in Georgia and on the borders of Tennessee and Alabama, and which finally terminated in the expatriation of the Cherokees. In the new nation which they organized beyond the Mississippi he was again at the head of government, which position he held until his death, just after the close of the Civil War.

Tracing the lineage of John Ross, we find that he inherited his white blood from sturdy and eminently reputable Scotch stock, while his Indian ancestors were prominent clansmen of the Cherokees, this most progressive tribe of North American aborigines. His maternal grandfather was John McDonald, born at Inverness, Scotland, in 1847. As a youth of nineteen, McDonald visited London, and there falling in with another young Scotchman who had just engaged passage to America, he decided to go with him and try his fortunes in the New World. They landed in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1766. McDonald soon made his way to Savannah where he secured a clerkship in a mercantile establishment which carried on a thriving trade among the Indians. His business judgment and steady habits inspired his employers with such confidence that they sent him to Fort Loudon, on the Tennessee, near Kingston,, to open up and superintend trade among the Cherokees. It was not long until he set up in business for himself and married Ann Shorey, a half-blood Cherokee woman.

In the early days of colonization, when a white man married an

1747

Indian woman, it was the custom among the Indians to adopt him into the tribe if he was deemed worthy of such honor; thereafter he cast his lot among his adopted people, adapting himself to their custims and becoming identified with their interests. So John McDonald, to all intents and purposes, became a Cherokee of the Cherokees, and when a band of them, encroached upon by the white settlers and out of sympathy with the garrison at Fort Loudon, left their homes and pushed out into the wilderness of northwest Georgia, he went with them and settled near Lookout Mountain. It was here he met, under most romantic circumstances, Daniel Ross, another Scotchman, who was destined to play a larger part than his countryman in the affairs of the Cherokees.

Daniel Ross was originally from Sutherlandshire, Scotland. In his childhood he had gone with his parents to America in the latter half of the eighteenth century. They settled in Baltimore where Daniel was left an orphan at the close of the American Revolution. Like many another young man of the time, the west so appealed to him that he accompanied a Mr. Mayberry to Hawkins County, Tennessee, where they built a flatboat, filled it with merchandise and started down the Tennessee to the Chickasaw country to trade for furs. Their route led them through the most hostile part of the land of the Cherokees, and when the party reached the town of Sitico on the Tennesse River, near Lookout Mountain, their appearance caused considerable excitement among the natives. The whole community turned out at once, eager to know the design of the strangers. Upon investigation it was found that, in addition to valuable merchandise, the party had on board a hostile chief named Mountain Leader. Bloody Fellow, a Cherokee chief, counseled the massacre of the whole party and a confiscation of their property. A division of opinion having arisen concerning this course, John McDonald, who lived fifteen miles away, was summoned to give his advice on the subject. Arriving on the scene of excitement he investigated the nature of the party and, finding its object a legitimate one, urged that no harm be done the strangers. He also warned Bloody Fellow that any injury done the white men would be considered a personal affront to him. Not only were the traders released, but they were invited to remain and establish a trading post in that country, and the invitation was accepted.3

Daniel Ross soon afterwards married Mollie McDonald, daughter of John McDonald, a woman said to possess rare beauty of face and charm of manner. During the next twenty years he travelled in different parts of the Cherokee Nation, establishing trading posts and con

3McKenney and Hall, "Indan Tribes of North America," Vol. III,

p. 293.