Free Jacksonland: A Great American Land Grab by Steve Inskeep Page B

as a nation of considerable reach and power. He knew of sixty-four towns and villages, “populous, and full ofwomen and children.” He believed that if provoked the nation could bring six thousand warriors into the field, a force that would dwarf anything the British colonists could muster. Later thepopulation was devastated by European diseases, and may have been cut in half by a single smallpox epidemic in 1738.
    Cherokees were attracted by the opportunities of trade with the British. The British were attracted by the possibility of gaining powerful allies against less cooperative natives.In 1711 the colonists of Charles Towne supplied guns to the Cherokees on condition that they help to fight the Tuscaroras, who were being displaced from their homes near the coast. Cherokees joined British forces in an early version of Indian removal, driving the Tuscaroras so far away they were forced to find refuge among the Iroquois of upstate New York. Soon enough, however, the British encroached on Cherokee land, leading to outbreaks of violence. In 1760 the British unwisely massacred twenty-two Cherokee members of a peace delegation, and triggered a powerful response. Standing Turkey, a Cherokee leader, laid siege to Fort Loudon, which had been built in the Appalachians to keep an eye on the Cherokees. The starving garrison was forced to surrender, and though offered a safe passage out, they were attacked once outside the walls. Many British were killed or captured. Retaliating for this retaliation, the British sent an army that burned fifteen Cherokee towns.
    When peace was reestablished, the British agreed to send a young officer, Lieutenant Henry Timberlake, to live for several months among the Cherokees. Timberlake produced a memoir filled with details of Cherokee life and diplomacy. Today it is not unusual to see Cherokees of the Appalachians sporting elaborate tattoos in Cherokee script or traditional patterns; Timberlake saw something similar in 1761 and 1762: “The Cherokees are of a middle stature, of an olive color, tho’ generally painted, and their skins stained with gun-powder, pricked in very pretty figures.” Cherokee women grew their hair “so long that it generally reaches the middle part of their legs,” and wore it “club’d,” or folded back upon itself. Generations of interaction with outsiders hadalready influenced their clothing styles, which were growing closer to those of Europeans.
    Each Cherokee town had atown house for public meetings, next to the public square where games were played. The town house was a building in the shape of a dome, framed with logs and roofed over with bark. People sat around the fire according to their membership in the seven Cherokee clans, divided like slices of pie, as they discussed questions facing the town or the nation. Timberlake described Cherokee government as a “mixed aristocracy and democracy,” with chiefs or headmen being chosen “according to their merit in war and policy at home.” The system was aristocratic because a chief or village headman might serve for life and could be succeeded by members of his family if they had earned the people’s respect. It was democratic because the chiefs had limited power. Timberlake said the chiefs led only “the warriors that chuse to go, for there is no laws or compulsion on those that refuse to follow, or punishment to those that forsake their chief: he strives, therefore, to inspire them with a sort of enthusiasm, with the war-song, as the ancient bards did in Britain.” Not only was there freedom to dissent, and even to sit out war; there was no punishment for any crime short of murder. Murder required the victim’s family to seek revenge, although even an accused killer could find safe haven in specially designated “towns of refuge,” much as hunted men in other cultures sought refuge in churches or mosques.
    The freedom to ignore leaders could trigger instability. One Cherokee story, recorded in 1828,