America, You Are Now Without Excuse
Premeditated Ignorance: Defined - The quality of deliberate unawareness.
It is when people do not know because they do not want to know, for if they did know, they would have to take responsibility for that knowledge; and they would thereby be required to negotiate their identity and to relinquish the states, privilege, and authority that are derived from the false order of knowledge, at the very least, they would be compelled to leave their comfort zone.
So you will not be ignorant, you are hereby informed.
We are Tiscamogee (Chickamauga)
We are Chickamauga, Eshheeloarchie, People of the First Fire, from Elohi Mona. We are a separate and distinct People of no recent origin. This is our home.
The traditional law, culture, and religion of the Ceremonial Mound Complex (Southeast Woodland Indians) with their laws have existed for over a millennium before European contact. The Chickamauga have been misidentified as Cherokee because the Chickamauga spoke the Cherokee trade language along with English, French, Spanish and other trade languages of the time. The Whitehall Treaty of 1730 with England pronounces the Cherokee (most signatories were Powhatan) shall not suffer their people to trade with the white men of any other nation but the English, nor permit white men of any other nation to build any forts, cabins or plant corn amongst them or near any of the Indian towns. How can the Cherokee have any interest in the care and protect that land when they have only been on that land for less than sixty (60) years?
The Whitehall Treaty was made with the King of England and the Chickamauga respected loyalty as a virtue. The Chickamauga were persecuted for their loyalty in protecting the Whitehall Treaty and for doing so the United States, the Cherokee and Chickasaw have repaid the Chickamauga with genocide and ethnic cleansing beginning then and is still carried out to this day.
No Excuses - Nancy Olufteloy
In 1776, some Chickamauga lived at Fieldtown, near the Seneca River. The Carolina and Virginia militias, while raiding Indian villages found Olufteloy who with her eight-year-old daughter had remained behind. The militias killed Olufteloy and took her daughter captive. William Kennedy sold Nancy Olufteloy’s daughter to John Fulton. In Return to the Nation, in 1801 Josiah Meigs called Nancy’s enslavement a “base act.” America’s view of murder and ethnic cleansing was reduced to being a base act.
Academic experts have identified the Chickamauga as victims of genocide and ethnic cleansing as described in the university textbook - Tennessee State of the Nation,4th Edition, Larry H. Whiteaker, 2006, Cengage Learning, ISBM-10: 1-1334-4202-1, chapter 1, pg. 3, 4th line, “As the Chickamauga Chief Dragging Canoe had warned they would see “a dark and bloody ground” as one Tennessee writer phrased it. Every acre of land was paid for in blood. When all the Indians were dead or ethnically cleansed as refugees to the west.” The definition of ethnic cleansing is the mass expulsion or killing of members of an unwanted ethnic or religious group in a society.
No Excuses - Declaration of Independence
We are the Chickamauga, the “merciless Indian savages” identified in the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776 and the Indians identified in a Charlestown letter, July 21, 1776, to full determined resolution to extirpate the whole tribe.
No Excuses - North Carolina Assembly
In 1782, the North Carolina Assembly called an army out against the Chickamauga with the following instructions, “All the males therein to be killed, and all females captured for exchange.” Is this genocide and ethnic cleansing?
No Excuses - Nancy Coody
Another example of ethnic cleansing is a British Sgt. Patrick Clements who lived with the Chickamauga in the Lower Towns was killed by Isaac Thomas in front of his Chickamauga wife, Nancy Coody, who was taken in this raid and sold into slavery in Pensacola, FL by Capt. Samuel Hadley, 1782.
No Excuses - Isaac Thomas
Isaac Thomas was a friend of Nancy Ward. The same Nancy Ward who was an Upper Town Cherokee from Chota, TN, who warned settlers about the Chickamauga and sent messages to militia leaders and colonials who had betrayed the King’s Proclamation 5 different times resulting in massacres. The same Isaac Thomas who was the guide to William Bartram, who in 1775, found a company of Cherokee (Chickamauga) nymphs in a field and had a frolic with them. The Isaac Thomas who guided John Sevier, who was quoted in the Augusta Chronicle, May 2, 1789, about the death of 145 Indians (Chickamaugas) at Flint Creek, “It is with the utmost pleasure I inform your honors, that the arms of Franklin gained a complete victory over the combined forces of the Creeks and Cherokees, on the10th inst. . . . We suffer most for the want of whiskey.” This is the admission to genocide and after killing 145 Chickamauga, all he and his men wanted was whiskey. Brother Schneider’s Moravian Journal notes this same John Sevier ignored the complaints by the Chickamaga about the colonial settlers violating treaties and proclamations and coming into their lands. This is the same Journal which stated this Nation has been much weakened in the last war by the separations of the Chickamakas (sic.) or Lower Cherokee with the Upper Town Cherokee documenting the Chickamauga were not Upper Town Cherokee.
No Excuses - Little Turkey
Little Turkey (1758-1801), an Upper Town Cherokee Chief, “was tired of talking to them, the Chickamauga or Lower Cherokee. He had heard what they had done; he did not intend to travel the path to them anymore to hold talks; if they wanted to go to war, go and he would sit still and look at them; they must stay on their own side of the mountain and not mix with the other part of the Nation; he would inform Gov. Blount where they lived.” Little Turkey then sent a letter to Gov. Blount describing the Spanish in the most derogatory terms he could as “a lying deceitful, treacherous people… not real white people, and what few he met looked mulatto and he would never have anything to say to them”. The same Little Turkey who received a Spanish carbine for coming to Neches and with deliberation, claimed land in areas where he knew privately the Cherokee had no right to, according to James Thompson, interpreter. This was meant to mislead the Chickamauga which resulted in further genocide and ethnic cleansing.
The John Haywood papers contain the account of a Cherokee (Chickamauga) boy adopted (actually captured) by John Shannon, in 1773, who along with other militiamen attacked a camp, killing some and taking others prisoner. Why? Henry Thompson Malone wrote in Cherokees of the Old South, pg. 42, about a letter written to William Blount where Little Turkey expressed shame for the actions of the Chickamauga and their allies and asked that vengeance be meted out to them. That vengeance was finally extracted in 1794, when Maj. James Ore raided the Lower Towns, killing and taking prisoners, with Blount disavowing any responsibility. It was also noted at the time that the militia had a hard time distinguishing the Lower Towns because the Chickamauga Chiefs and Headsmen owned plantations and fine houses. The document demonstrates ethnic cleansing in that the farm goods, livestock, home goods and food were looted and the rest was destroyed.
No Excuses - John Sevier
Documents of United States Indian Policy, by Francis Prucha, shows the report of Henry Knox, July 18, 1788, on the white outrages against Indians which violates the Hopewell Treaty of 1785. The Native South, Tom Alan Garrison, pg. 88, documents John Sevier admitting to keeping Chickamaugas. In 1792, John D. Chisholm tried to redeem captured Chickamauga in Kentucky. The captors refused and threatened to kill their prisoners if Chisholm tried to take them. There were Chickamauga prisoners scattered throughout the South. They were held in Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, Georgia, and South Carolina. These are the Chickamauga as noted by Moravian missionary Schneider, that separated from the Cherokee Nation and identified as Chickamakas (sic.) or Lower Cherokee.
No Excuses - Henry Knox
In 1792, a Henry Knox letter to William Blount stated the Chickamauga were the “germs of evil.” He wrote at another time, “our modes… have been more destructive to the natives than the conduct of the conquerors of Mexico and Peru.” He went on to cite the fact that where there was white civilization there was the utter extirpation of natives or almost none left.
No Excuses - William Whitley
Genocide and ethnic cleansing are proudly displayed on the powder horn of William Whitley, in his personal museum in Kentucky. It has the following inscription, “I am your horn, the truth I love, a lie I scorn. Fill me with the best powder, I’ll make your rifle crack the lowder (sic). See how the dread terrifik (sic) ball make Indians bleed and Tories fall. You with powder, I’ll supply for to defend your liberty.” This is the same William Whitley who personally shot a warrior out of a moving canoe at the same distance after some of his men had failed to make the deadly shot. The Chickasaw Chief Piomingo was with William Whitley. The same Chickasaw Chief who signed the Treaty with the Chickamauga and Spain in 1793. The Chickamauga research also uncovered the US Governmental receipts for the guns given to Piomingo to kill Chickamaugas.
No Excuses - James Robertson
In 1794, the Cumberland militia, without orders from the Kentucky Board of War, took matters into their own hands. James Robertson organized a strike force that invaded the Chickamauga country, burned the Lower Towns including Nickajack and Running Water, killing warriors and took the women and children to Kentucky to sell as slaves. (Tennessee Blue Book 2017-2018, pg. 551)
No Excuses - Mirabeau Lamar, President of Texas
Transitioning from the Southeast to Texas the genocide and ethnic cleansing continued against the Chickamauga. The President of Texas, Mirabeau Lamar, in 1839, issued the order beginning the “Extermination Wars” to remove all Indians from Texas. This resulted in Capt. Robert W. Smith shooting Chief Diwali (Bowls) in the back of the head while he was on his knees after being shot in the back at the Neches Massacre in Texas. Smith, was the son-in-law of Jessie Jernigan Watkins, who was killed by a band of Cherokee (Chickamauga) in1837, according to Luis Sanchez, an interpreter who was also at the Birds Fort Treaty in 1843. The militia then stripped off the skin of Diwali to be kept as souvenirs of which some was made into razor straps, etc. They also took his sword presented to him from Sam Houston, and a tin can on his person which contained Treaties and Land Grants which now reside with the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma Inc, who were Congressionally terminated in 1896, 1902, and 1906.
Chief Diwali (Bowls)had asked for assistance from the Cherokee National Council in Oklahoma before the massacre. The Council decided against helping, stating ‘that none of their young men shall leave for Texas as they may be our brothers, but belong to a different nation.” This act, again, shows the separation of the Chickamauga and Cherokee and their willingness to allow for the ethnic cleansing of the Chickamauga.
In The Texas Cherokees, on page 114, in 1840 the Cherokee Council requested General Arbuckle pursue the extradition of any Cherokees who might be held prisoner in Texas. Arbuckle and Branch T. Archer, Texas Secretary of War, subsequently arranged for the transportation of 12 men, women, and children to Fort Jesup, Louisiana, whose commanding officer is Edmond Pendleton Gaines the son-in-law of William Blount. In May, 1841, the Nacogdoches militia encountered the Cherokee (Chickamauga). Capt. David Gage’s county minutemen at the Sabine River, formerly Cherokee territory, killed those he encountered. David Gage was married to Lucy Fish, the daughter of John Fish and Sally Fish, full blood Cherokee on reserved land in Alabama, yet still carried out Lamar’s orders. He killed Chickamauga knowing that they were not Cherokee because of the way the Chickamauga dressed.
No Excuses - Mormon Church
Transitioning further West, to Utah in 1857, according to the Tennessee Valley Genealogical Association’s Valley Leaves (Vol 54, Issue 3-4; Spring 2020) the Baker Train of the Meadow Mountain Massacre was led by Captain John “Jack” Twitty Baker (1805-1857) who was not a military Captain, but earned the title as the leader of the Baker wagon train. These Baker’s migrated from North Carolina to Tennessee and finally to New Market, Alabama. They were Chickamauga whose wagon train originated in Alabama, stopping in northern Arkansas numerous times to pick up additional Baker family members of Chickamauga descent, stopped again in Oklahoma to pick up additional family and then headed toward California. These Bakers are direct blood ancestors of Chief Jimmie W. Kersh, National Executive Chief of the West Region of The Chickamauga Nation and his cousin, Catherine Baker, who is a researcher, historian, and author.
The train was made up of more than 120 men, women and children traveling from Alabama to California. They were the richest train to ever cross the plain with almost 1,000 head of cattle valued at more than $100,000 in 1857 ($3.5 million in today’s money.) They were robbed and slaughtered by a Mormon militia disguised as Paiute Indians on Sept. 11, 1857in Washington County, Utah. The Baker train had survived a five-day siege. Then a group of Mormon men approached under a white flag and guaranteed to lead them to safety. Their guns were taken and the wounded were gathered and placed in one of the wagons. The group was led out of the encampment and once clear, the order was given by John D. Lee, “Breathern, do your duty!” In less than 30 minutes, all but 17 children were dead. Ironically, it just so happened that Captain Baker’s daughter, Sarah, was married to Charles R. Mitchell whose uncle was a U.S. Senator from Arkansas and was responsible for opening a congressional investigation to find out what happened at the Mountain Meadow in Utah.
America, No More Excuses
The history and legacy of the Chickamauga is extensive and continues to this day, along with the ethnic cleansing committed against them. To deny them justice, honor, and recognition of their history, accomplishments and suffering validates their claims of continued ethnic cleansing. Live up to the honor and dignity that your office is supposed to represent, do the right thing and place the Chickamauga on the Serviced Tribes Roll and negotiate in with them on the legislation they request.