Atlanta And Its Builders, Vol. 1 - A Comprehensive History Of The Gate City Of The South. Thomas H. Martin
statesmanship. The state was upon the edge of the frontier and more or less annoyed by Indian depredations. Even after the Cherokee removal the state found it necessary to send a military expedition to the swamp region in the south to drive marauding Creeks across the line. But, undoubtedly, the principal reasons for desiring to be rid of the Cherokees were because the tribe assumed to maintain an alien sovereignty and fee ownership of a considerable part of the state's territory, and because the Cherokee country was known to be rich in gold. The Cherokees claimed their title from the Creeks, who had early in the century occupied northwest Georgia. Tradition has it that the land was lost by the latter tribe as the prize at stake in a ball game played between the skillfullest warriors of the two tribes. This great ball game was said to have occurred sometime between 1816 and 1820. In his admirable book of reminiscences, "The Georgians," Governor George R. Gilmer throws a flood of light on the "inside facts" connected with the whole Cherokee imbroglio. While the author does not write with the impartiality supposed to belong to the historian, he presents both sides of the controversy clearly enough to enable readers at this late day to form correct conclusions. The state denied the Cherokee title, which the general government sustained. At that time there was a great hue and cry being raised by the citizens of those states that were well rid of Poor Lo against the government's "unchristian" Indian policy. In the north congressmen made their canvass on a platform pledged to the protection of "Indian rights," and the church denominations of that section were strongly represented in the Washington lobby fighting for what they considered a humanitarian cause. Indeed, the Georgia Indian question was a factor in the contest for the presidency between Adams and Jackson, the former standing as the Indian's friend. Contemporary writers assert that Adams had the better of his opponent on this question, so far as the majority sentiment was concerned, and that Jackson would have lost the race in consequence of what was regarded as his anti-Indian views, had not his military record been so glorious. Moreover, as has been shown, the jealousy of a southern state over its disputed sovereignty was a sharp issue. At several stages of the long controversy the troops of the United States and the militia of the state of Georgia were on the point of a collision. Colonel Harden, who had entered the disputed territory at the head of the Hall county militia to expel gold-seekers, was placed under arrest by a military officer of the United States and his command not allowed to execute its commission. Then, too, the course of the missionaries, Worcester and Butler, in making a "stage play" of martyrdom for the benefit of the northern church people, was a most aggravating incident. They claimed federal protection on the ground that they were employees of the government. Governor Gilmer in his book speaks with much bitterness of the sectional and religious prejudice that the missionaries settled among the Cherokees were inciting, and in his correspondence with the federal authorities makes clear the danger of a serious breach between the state and national governments. It was not until 1830 that congress, by the narrow margin of five votes, passed a bill authorizing the president to exchange with any Indian tribe lands of the United States west of the Mississippi river for lands occupied by them in any state or territory. The methods by which the "consent" of the Cherokees was obtained to their banishment will continue to remain unwritten history. This law freed Georgia forever of their obnoxious presence, though not until eight years after its passage.
Governor Gilmer had a very poor opinion of the "civilization" of these Indians that gave him so much official trouble. He thought them incorrigible savages, brutish as the beasts of the field. Like many of our modern authorities on the Indian question, he held that their only salvation lay in amalgamation with the whites, and he makes no disguise of his lack of respect for a white man who would make himself a personal factor in thus solving the problem. He stigmatized the wealthy half-breeds who owned slaves, cultivated large farms and kept ferries and taverns as social renegades, and declared many of them were refugees from justice. It was this element, to which Chief Ross and the ringleading mischief-makers belonged, that influenced the genuine Indians to oppose the wishes of the Federal government and defy the authority of the state. It will be remembered as an incident of those troublous times that in the late winter of 1830 a party of armed and painted Cherokees raided white settlements within the disputed territory and drove the settlers from their cabins while the ground was covered with snow and sleet, burning the houses and farm improvements. This outrage sealed the doom of the tribe, so far as retaining a home in Georgia was concerned. In closing this chapter, which, it will presently be seen, deals with a phase of Georgia history that directly concerns the foundation and early progress of Atlanta, it is interesting to note that more than sixty years after the Cherokees sought a new home in the West, they are confronted with almost identically the same, to them, dangers, that they abandoned Georgia to escape. The United States, contrary to the letter and spirit of the treaty of 1836, is about to divest the tribe of independent self-government, change its ancient system of land tenure, make American citizens of the Indians, and include their extinguished reservation within the boundaries of a state or territory of the union. Of course, as in the Georgia case, the Cherokees have deemed it the part of wisdom to "consent" to this.
CHAPTER II. NORTHWEST GEORGIA SETTLERS
To understand the spirit characteristic of Atlanta since her foundation — the spirit of pluck and push — one must take into consideration the peculiar character of the pioneers who made the country that made Atlanta. In doing so one cannot but be struck by the analogy of her history with that of the average Western town. While it is true that the portion of DeKalb county which included Atlanta the first few years of her history was outside the disputed Cherokee territory, it was but a few miles from the Indian border — so close that some of the land in the vicinity of the then unborn town was clouded by Cherokee claims. When Georgia finally obtained possession of the great reservation, a considerable portion of it was added to DeKalb county. The rest was added to Carroll, Gwinnett, Hall and Habersham counties. Georgia, it will be borne in mind, was a comparatively old state at the time of the Cherokee emigration. Its desirable public lands were long since taken by settlers, and many of her hardy sons had joined the constantly growing army of pioneers seeking homes on the rich prairies a few hundred miles west. In those days it was a common expression among the restless landless class that "A poor man has no chance in Georgia." The arable lands of the commonwealth were largely in the hands of large landlords who cultivated them by means of slave labor, and the poor white who could not obtain a foothold in the Piedmont hill country and clear a farm from the forest, naturally drifted west. For years before the opening of the Cherokee reservation was accomplished, the eyes of thousands of worthy men with little capital but the will and muscle to do, were turned toward the forbidden land, hoping to ere long be able to find homes there.
Since these men largely laid the foundation of Atlanta's prosperity, it is well to know something about them in this connection. Few of them could boast of aristocratic forebears who received handsome land patents from their English sovereign, or who were members of exclusive colonial society. They sprang from the stock that made possible the patriot victory at King's Mountain — the shaggy wearers of homespun and coonskin caps whose long-barreled rifles made the Hessian dearly earn his hire. Davy Crockett will stand as a representative type of the "backwoodsmen" who cleared the farms of the great Appalachian region, and it was from such ancestors that the settlers of north Georgia came. These indomitable home-makers were for the most part of the matchless strain known as Scotch-Irish, possessing those rugged traits of independence, industriousness and honesty that Burns extols in his verse. Probably the descendants of these pioneers represent today the most distinctive type of American. They have preserved their native blood against the hybridizing effect of foreign immigration, so manifest in all other sections of the country, and their Americanism is as unadulterated.
Speaking of this important element of citizens, the "The Commonwealth of Georgia" thus describes the North Georgians: "The population of Northeast Georgia is largely made up of immigrants and their descendants from the mountain regions of the states lying eastward. These, in their turn, had an unusual sprinkling of Scotch blood, due to another natural law that impels emigrants from an older country to seek the counterpart of their own familiar mountains, dales or plains, as the case may be, in the El Dorado of their future. The rough, hardy Scotch, inured to hardship, accustomed to their cold mountain springs, and their clear streams of water, upon landing on the coast regions of the Old Dominion and the Old North State, would naturally seek the Piedmont