[Brenda Ferrell Sampsel]

An interesting article from an interesting site….

http://www.people.virginia.edu/~mgf2j/natives.html

“According to Major William Black, grandson of “nearly the first” white settler west of North Mountain, Indians stopped at a cabin on a knob overlooking Cowpasture River, and told the man who lived there if he wanted to “see some fun” to “get up a little before day” and watch an Indian camp they had discovered “in a bottom some distance off … but not to come too nigh.” Next morning the man rose in time to see the camp attacked and nearly all the Indians killed at the first fire.

On another occasion Black’s father “went out to get his horses, and fell in with some Indians [who] were going his direction … As they went, some wild turkeys called ‘tuck’ [and] the Indians were all down in the grass in an instant-as if shot.” To prove there was nothing to fear, Black “started his dogs in and chased [the turkeys] up …” The Indians “got up and went along,” clearly more afraid of hereditary enemies than of the white man with them. “

“By 1750 the contact point between natives and settlers had shifted farther west. On his return from Kentucky in 1750 Dr. Thomas Walker noted at Robert Armstrong’s on Jackson’s River that “[t]he People here … would be better able to support Travellers was it not for the great number of Indian Warriors, that frequently take what they want from them, much to their prejudice.” ”

Occasionally a simple act of kindness was enough to overcome prejudice. One morning on Middle River John Kerr went out to hunt the family’s horses and turned back to the house only to find himself cut off by Indians. He feared the worst until they held out some wild grapes which he gratefully accepted as a peace offering.

At other times the dark passions of lawless white men exploded. In 1753 at Erwin Patterson’s store south of the Great Lick of Roanoke a hunter named John Connelly savagely attacked Old Hop, chief of the Overhill Cherokees, so “That the Blood gushed out of his mouth and Nose.” Interpreter John Watts jumped to pull Connelly off, “other wise he Believed they would have killed him.” Watts accused the storekeeper, Erwin Patterson, of instigating the attack. Watts said Patterson “had many Quarlles” with the chief. He also said the chief’s wife admitted that “Patterson had Debautched her and offten was convivial with her and promised to take her for his wife as soon as he would go to the Nation.”

Seeing the Cherokee on Reed Creek may have stirred memories of a time ten years earlier, when whites and Indians came together “above 40 miles from our outmost settlemt” to eye the trade goods at Samuel Stalnaker’s (Chilhowie, Va.). Others may have remembered William Ingles and John Draper humbly petitioning the Cherokee to intercede with the Shawnee for the return of their wives and children. Veterans of the disastrous Sandy Creek expedition in 1756 would have remembered firing guns to salute Cherokee warriors who came to help them strike the Shawnee towns. The Cherokee returned the salute “with seeming great joy, and afterwards honored us with a war dance.” Major Andrew Lewis bestowed “Captain’s commissions [on] Yellow Bird and Round-O.”

The other sections of this report are likewise fascinating reading.

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