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Just a thought. So many of us have the story “Cherokee” Blackfoot. I was surfing the Internet for information on the Mingo and found a URL http://microformguides.gale.com/Data/Index/203000o.htm that appears to be an index of microforms.
Think the “Cherokee” part of “Cherokee Blackfoot” be a derivative of “OCHENEEKEES?”
Techteach
I have discovered that if you type in the url in the previous post but change the letter of the alphabet immediately before the .htm to a different letter, you can find the items that are indexed for that letter with little descriptions of what is on that particular primary document. For example, I looked up Tutelo and Saponi and found primary documents describing events with dates and places where they were involved in PA. Includes many names found on these documents.
Techteach
you have found a gold mine! I have just now see this. Much of it I really dont know the source or what it is talking about. But for anyone wanting to research teh Six Nations and their relations with others, there is a lot of information given.
Thank you for providing this reference.
vance
This is something to really take time to look at, the forests here are many, so many I really didn’t see the tree’s.
to research each topic would take months a fill volumes.
Thanx agin! Cindy.
I found out how I can see the documents also. The University of Illinois, Chicago has a set of the microfilms. Now if I only could find the time to mosy on over there! I tried intercampus mail, but the reference desk here indicated that it is 65!! boxes of documents.
So what do you think of my ponderings, that people (like my great aunt who says that my ancestors were Cherokee Blackfoot from PA) who would not recognize “Ocheneekees” as in one of the documents would interpret it as Cherokee?
Cindy
I’m pretty new at this but have gotten the impression that with all the Cherokee Rolls that were done, many people may have taken ‘Cherokee’ as a kind of generic name for NDN.
Hana,
That is what I kind of meant. When I stumbled across this name, Ocheneekees, in a primary document that so closely resembled Cherokee (In the document, it referred to the Saponi in the Northeast.), it might be logical for someone like my great-aunt and others to assume that it was Cherokee, since this tribal name was so common.
Techteach
Oh, and BTW, I just found out that I CAN get these primary documents via interlibrary loan, 4 reels at a time.
Cindy
One more link I stumbled on today – http://64.233.179.104/search?q=cache:ql0v-GEweVsJ:www.constitution.org/jw/acm_5-m.doc+Pamunkeys+Patriots&hl=en&ie=UTF-8 This convoluted URL can also be found by searching Google for “Pamunkeys Patriots.” Don’t use the quotation marks. You will see a link to a document entitled “Introduction” which you can download and read or link to the HTML version which is the above URL. I continue to think that maybe my PA Ranger from the Rev. War was at least part native
American and found this address as I was surfing. It has a great deal of information, some of which indicates the existence of a diary about the Saponi children educated at William and Mary. It would be interesting to obtain that diary.
Cindy
Vance,
Here is a link for you : http://www.interment.net/data/us/pa/washington/burgett_graveyard.htm I found it as I was looking for a database of Cross Creek Cemetery that I know I have searched outside Ancestry.com.
Anyway, Ritcheys and McLains are buried there. Mclain was the name of my ggggrandmother who was Blackfoot.
Cindy
Hi — thanks for that cemetery reference. I do not know if those Richey’s/Ritchey’s are mine or how to connect them to mine. But it mighyt help me to try and see where these Pennsylvania Richey’s came from. So Thank you. 🙂
Also you mentioned the Blackfoot/Cherokee. In my case I had my Richey/Waylands whom we were told were “part Indian” marrying our Brown/Guess family whom I feel we can show through a preponderance of circumstantial evidence were Cherokee. I never heard the word “Blackfoot” or “Melungeon” or even “Saponi” before starting the internet search, but one ancestor, Nevil Wayland, probably was the man who used the word “Melungeon” in those Church Minutes at Stoney Creek Church in Scott County, Virginia. So I think my Wayland/Richey/Wood/Dickson surnames just might have been ‘Eastern Blackfoot” and/or Saponi and/or other tribes. My ancestors from these 2 families married in Arkansas and moved to Indian Territory, but others seem to have married further East.
One link you provided (above in this thread) I intend to copy and paste and ponder. It said Virginia tribes were so descimated that they all lived together and individual tribal groups were melded together and forgotten, I think by about 1750. It also said Virginia Indian people were used in militias against Indian’s further west, which matches the comment that the Melungeon’s were the “friendly Indians” who helped build Fort Blackmore.
But more about the Blackfoot/Cherokee traditions. I think these are definitely 2 separate groups and the 2 did intermarry, but it was not as many people think. Now I could be wrong, but I do believe there were descendants of Cherokee in Kentucky, but is was not from old settlements as Troxell and Brock contend of their websites — there is no evidence of this whatsoever (and I think but Dan Troxell and Ken Tankersley know this) — but rather individual mixed blood families — probably mostly Indian women married to White men, who made the choice to move to Kentucky and neighboring states from the time of the Emigration and Reservation Rolls (1818) until about removal (c. 1840). So many of the pioneer families in those states were part “Eastern Blackfoot” — perhaps this made them more sympathetic to the plight of the Cherokee during the removal period, having a”family stories” their own ancestors were forced to remove from their ancestorial homelands. I say this based on my own family, mostly, and thinking the same might have happened to other families.
These 2 traditions — Eastern Blackfoot and Cherokee — were mixed up perhaps, and the truth was forgotten or grew hazy, with each family doing the best they knew how to preserve the old family stories. With the passing of each generation the next generation tried to rationalize it with good guesses, not having access to old documented truth or ancestors who knew, relying more and more on conflicting versions, with each family’s version of history slightly different but similar. It is also possible that because of the wars from the 1770s (when the first perminant settlers were arriving) to the 1790s (then the Cherokee/Shawnee et al wars were coming to an end) the Cherokees left a deep imprint on the survivors. So if a family said they were “part Indian” they naturally assumed it was Cherokee as their only memory of Indians in this area was of these Cherokee raiders whom their ancestors drove off, but in some ways admired nonetheless. Knowing family stories of “Blackfoot” ancestors coupled with knowledge the Cherokee really wanted that land back might have given birth to some family traditions. So maybe some really were mixed with Cherokee from @ 1818-1840 or so, and others might have no Cherokee at all, but are part Indian nonetheless. This appears to be what a person can derive from known historical documents, and I doubt it can ever be proven, but it seems the most likely.
I have always known some of my ancestors were Indian and somer were Indian fighters, and have always admitted that here at Saponitown forum website. But the more I read the more I belive those “Indian fighters” were also mixed-blood Indian.
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Incidentally, I found a reference to a Cherokee Chief dying in Southern Illinois in the 1830sd I think, maybe 40s — these are Arkansas Cherokee — I’ll get the refererence here later today.
vance
The above website says —
Dream of United Indian Land Dies with Chief
KASKASKIA, Illinois – We have learned that Cherokee Chief Ta-Kah-To-Kuh has died in this year 1827 in Kaskaskia, Illinois. His death marked the end of his dream to persuade Indian tribes from all over the United States to migrate to Arkansas and thus establish an Indian Nation within the Territory’s boundaries.
Chief Ta-Kah-To-Kuh believed that if he could convince all Indians in America to move to Arkansas, they could combine their forces to stop white expansion at the Mississippi River. Although he was considered among the Cherokee to have the most prestige among other tribes, the Osage Indians had always refused to join an alliance against the whites.
It is reported that at his death, Chief Ta-Kah-To-Kuh had in his possession wampum belts signifying the commitment of nearly twenty thousand Indians to migrate into the Arkansas Territory.
The chief’s death causes us to remember an incident that took place when he lived in Arkansas near the Dwight Mission. It shows his interest in learning.
One day at the Dwight schoolhouse, missionary Cephas Washburn was unpacking some world globes which were to be used at the school.
When Chief Ta-Kah-To-Kuh saw the globes, he asked Washburn, “what manner of birds laid these eggs?” Washburn explained that they were models of the world which was round and which revolved to create night and day.
“Ha!” replied the chief, “The water would spill out and all the rocks would fall off.” Washburn then tried to explain gravity. The chief was so intrigued that he sent a brave to fetch a bucket of water, which the chief then whirled about his to test the principle of centrifugal force that Washburn had talked about.
“This subject has always troubled me,” he admitted. “When I was child, I was told that the sun went back to the east in the night when we could not see it, and was ready to rise in the morning. This I knew could not be true, because the sun afforded us light and was the cause of day. When my people have asked me I have told them that there must be a hole in the bottom of the earth through which the sun passes each night. But I was never really satisfied with this for I knew the sun must be very large and a hole so large would weaken the bottom of the earth so much that it could not support the earth. But now that you have explained that the earth is round I can understand about the sun.”
vance
The above reference mentions a Cherokee Village called “Takatoka’s village”, and says it was near Fort Smith, Arkansas. It also mentions a David Brown who is the son of John Brown as living in Takatoka’s village.
I have an ancestor David Brown who was the son of John Brown, but MY David was born about 20 years after the one mentioned. However mine can be traced to living in this region (daughter of MY David Brown — my great grandma Josephine Brown Richey (her husband was Jeffrey Hoten Richey). Jeffrey and Josephine afte rthey were married in 1872 are recorded as living “on the Arkansas River near Fort Smith, but just inside Indian territory.
Maybe my Richey’s came to Arkansas as a result of Tekatoka’s trip to Illinios? Interesting their descendants in the 1872 lived near where Takatoka’s village was located in 1828.
Coincidence? My Richey’s lived in Indiana in Gibson County in 1827, near the southern tip of Indiana. Kaskaskia, where Takatoka died in 1827, is at the southern tip of Illinios — not far from Indiana.
Vance
Vance,
I too have a Brown in my family, on the Rhoads side. My ggggrandmother was Rebecca Brown who married Joseph Rhoads in Portage OH in 1835. Bess determined that she must have been born near there too. However, she is buried in Maple Ridge Cemetery, in Carmi, Illinois which is very close to Gibson County, IN. I found other members of my family in that location also. Her husband is buried in Newcomerstown, OH.
Cindy
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