Atlanta And Its Builders, Vol. 1 - A Comprehensive History Of The Gate City Of The South. Thomas H. Martin
region. From thence, along the valleys, they have crossed over into Georgia, still finding a congenial home and a thousand reminders of bonny Scotland. Thus the people of Northeast Georgia are largely of Scotch descent, as is otherwise indicated by the prevalence of the prefix, 'Mac' Northwest Georgia has received considerable accessions of population, by way of reflex, from East Tennessee, whose rich valleys extend into the northwestern counties of Georgia. Many of these were also of Scotch descent. The seacoast counties, on the other hand, received their principal accessions of population from a class who were blessed with mere wealth and corresponding culture — a class more strongly wedded to the traditions of England and France."
There is a good deal of romance associated with the settlement of North Georgia. A history of the period of Cherokee troubles, picturesquely treated, would read very much like a Pike's Peak rush or the Leadville excitement. As has been stated, the existence of gold in paying quantity in several of the counties afterwards formed from the Cherokee nation, had much to do with the coveting of the country by the white man, and was the source of much trouble and no little expense to the state of Georgia. A large adventurer class was attracted to the Georgia mountains while the Indians still retained possession of the country, and crudely mined in the region between the Chestatee and Etowah rivers. Their operations were carried on mainly by the placer process, and, from Governor Gilmer's account, they must have been a lawless lot. They numbered some ten thousand, gathered from the four quarters. Many of them had, or pretended to have, the permission of the Indians to search for gold. The state regarded their presence with extreme displeasure and sent several military expeditions against them to drive them off the reservation. In a communication to the attorney-general of the United States, Governor Gilmer said: ''The state considers itself entitled to all the valuable minerals within the soil of the Cherokee territory, by virtue of its fee simple ownership, and is now permitting itself to be plundered of its wealth from the strong desire of its authorities to avoid any collision with the general government."
Speaking of the motley crew rendezvousing in the mountain fastnesses of north Georgia, the governor continues: "When this letter was written to the attorney-general, a community was forming in the gold regions scarcely ever paralleled anywhere. Many thousands of idle, profligate people flocked into the country from every point of the compass, whose pent-up vicious propensities, when loosed from the restraints of law and public opinion, made them like the evil one, in his worst mood. After wading all day in the creeks which made the Etowah and Chattahoochee rivers, picking up particles of gold, they collected around lightwood knot fires at night and played on the ground and their hats at cards, dice, push pin, and other games of chance, for their day's finding. Numerous whiskey carts supplied the appropriate aliment for their employments. Hundreds of combatants were sometimes seen at fisticuffs, striking and gouging, as frontiersmen only can do these things."
After much importunity on the part of the state of Georgia, the federal authorities took action and drove the gold-hunters out with several companies of infantry, but no sooner were they gone than the Cherokees took possession of the "diggings," mostly through their adopted white citizens, and continued to extract large quantities of gold. The federal troops did not interfere, and indignation among the white people along the border was at a high pitch. Governor Gilmer again wrote the attorney-general, saying: "Very great excitement is said to be the result. There is much reason to apprehend that the Indians will be forcibly driven from the gold region, unless they are immediately prohibited from appropriating its mineral wealth."
The state militia was shortly afterward ordered to the reservation to drive the Indians away from the gold streams, and it was during the first of these expeditions that Col. Harden, in command of the Hall county militia, was put under arrest by the federal commander in the reservation. Time and again the white boomers came back and were driven out. Several times there threatened to be an armed collision between the reckless miners and the military, and there was one riotous encounter that was dignified by the wags of the day by being called the "Battle of Leathersford." The militia had made a number of arrests, when it was set upon by a mob of boomers, who made desperate efforts to release the prisoners. Some heads were cracked with musket butts before the mob was driven off.
It is said that fully twenty thousand men, some of whom were accompanied by their families, had gathered around the Cherokee Nation in regular Oklahoma fashion, to await the departure of the aboriginal occupants. On the northern border the mountaineers of Tennessee and North Carolina were largely in evidence, and the canvas-topped wagons of the Piedmont Georgians clotted the southern border. It was a weary waiting, some of the intending settlers suffering severely for the necessities of life. Some of them lived in camps for seven or eight years before they were allowed to offer their names in the lottery that determined who should go in and enjoy the promised land. The Cherokee craze extended over the whole north half of Georgia and the adjacent region of neighboring states. The popular songs of the time referred to the common hope of obtaining Indian land. There was one, a couplet of which ran:
"I'm goin' for to leave my poor relation
And get me a home in the Cherokee Nation."
Such conditions as have been briefly described may with more degree of truth than appears on the surface be said to have given birth to Atlanta. Not that Atlanta came up like a mushroom, as a supply point for the Indian country or the receptacle of its overflow. It was several years after the Cherokees had removed to their new home before the little hamlet in the woods, destined to be the metropolis and capital of Georgia, contained a dozen shanties. But the opening of the Cherokee Nation had much to do with railroad building in northwest Georgia, and Atlanta was essentially the creation of the railroads. Two years before the Cherokees left, railroad conventions met in Knoxville, Tenn., and Macon, Ga., to project the construction of a railroad between the Chattahoochee and Tennessee rivers, and in the same year the legislature of Georgia passed a bill to build the State road as a main trunk between those important rivers, passing through the Cherokee territory. One of the strong points urged by the state before congress was the impediment of the Cherokee Nation to material progress. The great valley of Tennessee, unable to find an eastern outlet to the seaboard, because of the insuperable barrier interposed by the lofty Appalachian range, was anxious for railroad connection with Georgia to that end. When the Indians departed from Georgia, the bars were thrown down. There was no room for a large town northwest of the center of the state prior to that important event. There were no local resources to invite the railroads, and nothing to invite the people. Once the impediment was removed, the change was almost instantaneous. Less than a year after the federal government had given the Cherokees but two years longer to remain, the chief engineer of the railroad that was to be the connecting link between the Tennessee and Chattahoochee had run the preliminary survey and settled upon the site of Atlanta as a junction point.
At this period, the few settlers along the southern outskirts of the Cherokee reservation carried on a wagon trade with Augusta. The haul was a very long one, over wretched roads, and the round-trip generally consumed more than a fortnight. What little cotton and corn was raised was exchanged by the few merchants for dry goods and groceries of the most staple kind. There were very few families in the entire region that could afford luxuries. The houses were, almost without exception, built of logs, and many of them had dirt floors. Plenty of these rugged settlers had never seen wheat flour. Their commercial wants were exceedingly few. as they "lived at home" in the strictest meaning of the expression. Their boasted independence in this respect was purchased at the expense of great physical effort and discomfort, to say nothing of the waste of time. And yet, from what our surviving pioneer citizens and the printed chronicles of that well-nigh forgotten time tell us, the people were happy and contented in their impoverished isolation. They were hospitable to the few strangers who happened along, and the wayfaring man was never turned away from their humble doors. Among themselves they were highly sociable, often walking long distances to "preaching," dances, "log-raisings" and the other primitive amusements peculiar to remote communities. Life among the mountaineers of North Georgia was wilder then than now. and such exciting sports as bear righting, sometimes witnessed by the whole population of a township, were common. "White's Statistics of Georgia," in describing these counties back in the forties, says of one of them (Hall): "Hunting and rifle shooting occupy a Large part of the time of the people, who are generally temperate and hospitable, but rather shy of strangers."