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• Before contact with the yonegas the Cherokee were given a prophecy. They were told that a white hairy man would appear. He would have gifts that they were not to touch. These were the burning drink, the black book, and the cross (religion). With the bible in one hand and a bottle of alcohol in the other many missionaries approached the Nations. As Walter Posey (2) noted "Distilling and selling was a respectable home industry conducted by laymen and and sometimes by clergy."
• The greed for and theft of Cherokee lands, the wide spread use of alcohol by the whites and spreading this practice to the tribes, the treachery of selling alcohol to the Cherokee's and cheating them while drunk, the desecration of the earth, wanton slaughter of their natural game and burning of their crops, the practice of alcohol selling by preachers, the murders of women and children, the racist arrogance, the tenet that they were the superior race and was their God given right and duty to convert the savages to civilization and Christianity.
• These things often were done in the name of Christ. How could a loving, just God allow these things in his name? He did not! Greedy men used the name of Christ as a means to line their pockets, either by conversion or butchery. The proselytizing of the Cherokee, is one of the better examples of the division of the two Cherokee peoples. Knowing the wrath of the creator the traditionals were careful not to embrace the things the creator said were taboo. To do so was to invite plagues such as the great smallpox epidemic of 1738.
• All of this and much, much more caused the early failure of the conversion of the Cherokee traditionals. Remember, that there are two separate bands of Cherokees. Men like the Vann, the Ridge, and many others embraced missionaries not because of a belief in the Christian religion. Rather, because of the bad blood between the Cherokee's or Aniyunwiya and the Chickamaguans or Aniyuntikwalaski and greed. The Cherokees also believed they were immune from the US policy of using one nation to wipe out another then wiping out any survivors. Dragging Canoe warned them this would happen, but his words fell on deaf ears. Very soon they learned he was correct: the Trail Where they Went Crying (Trail of Tears).

The churches adamant about converting the Cherokees to Christianity were the Society of United Brethren (Moravians), Presbyterian, Baptist, and Methodist. Of course the traditionals resisted this intrusion but the others welcomed them in their bid to use the Americans to avenge themselves against the traditionals of the Chickamaugan blood line. The Moravians were a group of German immigrants who established the first mission in Cherokee lands. They first settled temporarily in Georgia about 1734 and later proselytized to the tribes on the Savannah. Some have suggested they were actually loyalists to the US government sent to further fractionalize the Cherokee. The records of the Moravians mysteriously disappeared and that in itself is suspicious.
• About 1736 the Jesuit 'Black Robe' Christian Gottlieb Priber appeared among the Chickamaugans. His primary mission was to establish a 'utopian government' but was converted to the Cherokee way of life taking Creat, daughter of Emperor Moytoy, as wife. Their daughter was the first wife of Chief Doublehead.
• In 1740 a Moravian mission was suggested to the Cherokees by Johann Hagan. However a small pox epidemic prevented this mission.
• In 1752 Moravians from Bethlehem PA established a communique on the upper Yadkin River in North Carolina, Bethebara, now known as Wachovia. The prime purpose was to Christianize the Cherokee's. In 1759 a conference was held at Bethebara with several Cherokee leaders, but was unsuccessful. (1)
• In 1773 the first Cherokee baptism was performed by the Moravians in Delaware Indian country on two captives. The Brothers at Salem (a new Moravian town on the Yadkin) and Wachovia were encouraged by this early success. Encouraged they sent Martin Schneider to the Over Hill Cherokees to establish a mission. However, the time was not good and they had to flee for their lives. (1)
• To 1799 peace had arrived on the frontier and the Moravian's decided to try the Cherokees again for a mission. They sent Abraham Steiner who found the council's were to disbursed to seek permission to establish a mission. He took the opportunity to consult with American officials who promised corporation in the religious project.
• By around 1800 the Nation had roughly divided into two regions ostensibly under Principal Chief Little Turkey. These were the Upper Towns and the Lower Towns (Chickamaugan Towns). The Upper Towns were of areas in Georgia, North Carolina, and Eastern Tennessee while the Lower Towns were of the area along the Tennessee River from Chickamauga Town to Muscle Shoals Alabama. The Vann (James) was the Upper Town headman at this time. His first important act was to take the Moravians into his protection. In 1800 he and Charles Hicks obtained permission for Steiner and Friedrich von Schweinitz to establish the first permanent mission amongst the Nation in a series of national conferences between the two regions. Principal Chief Little Turkey and council speaker Doublehead, The Vann's arch rival, as well as most other chiefs, had no interest in the mission or missionaries. None had any interest in the Christian religion, but did have an interest for the promise of the missionaries for education and vocational training opportunities and the Chickamaugans were adamantly opposed to the idea. (1)

  In reporting the action Little Turkey told his council:

  "Their desire appears to be good, to instruct us and our children and improve our and their minds and Nation. These gentlemen, I hope will make the experiment; we will be the judge from their conduct and their attention to us and our children, this will enable us to judge properly. Should they not comply as now stated, the Agent will be the judge for the Red people."

  Why was The Vann so interested in a mission? Remember, there are two divisions of the Cherokee, the aniyuniwa and the aniyuntikwalaski. Dragging Canoe in the late 1700's adopted his bands to the original name of the Chickamaugans to avoid confusion. Traditionalists were opposed to the support of the Cherokees for the yonegas, for the US Government, and their ways. However The Vann, who by 1800 was the richest man in the Cherokee nation and a half breed, and his followers did.

• Among the Nation The Vann was regarded as a strange and perverse Cherokee for his murdering of his uncle instead of accepting clan law and meeting his death. Although he treated the Moravians fairly, they never knew what to make of him. He never expressed an interest in their religion and told them he didn't believe their bible stories. He was intemperate and once when sick the Moravians begged him to accept Christ before he died. He "jumped from his bed, seized a bottle and drank as much as he could in one gulp and said in anger, that is was (his) house and he could drink as much as he pleased dance, fornicate and what not and it was none of our business." Not only was his drunken behavior shocking to the missionaries, but he often abused his wife and white visitor. He even lured their young male students to indulge in ball play and drunkenness. Eventually they established a polite but distant relationship with him. (3)
• The Moravians lost no time after the Cherokee approved of their proposed mission, and capitalized on the official approval of the Secretary War. "They sent Steiner to begin the work. A few months later, Gottlieb Byhan and Jacob Wohlfahrt were dispatched as assistants. The brethren and their wives were of course warmly received by the Vann family. James Vann's home was first used as a temporary mission. Later they obtained from a Cherokee named Brown a nearby plantation which they named Spring Place. Religious instruction began as early as July, 1801, when Steiner preached to Indians in the Chickamauga area. During the following year their journal records showed that they conducted services at Vann's home ("Diamond Hill") for "Negroes, Half-Indians, and others who understood English." (1)
• The next few years were hard for the Moravian band at Spring Place. "Despite the support of Vann and other Indian leaders the general native attitude continued to be one of suspicion and hostility Frequently the mission suffered losses of provisions and other supplies. The problem of the strange language, and the small number of Cherokees who understood English, made effective preaching extremely difficult. Furthermore, the Cherokee Council continued to press for schooling at Spring Place. Finally, in 1802 the mission was threatened with banishment if measures were not taken to board and educate young Indians. In short, the Cherokees wanted their children taught "the three r's" rather than the Trinity; and under duress the Moravians complied with the order. They managed, however, to rationalize the decision with these remarks in their journal: "It would be wise to take three or four children, eight to twelve years of age, selected by the Chiefs, partly to content the Indians, and partly to afford our Brethren an opportunity to learn the new language." (1)
• By 1805 the Moravian mission was doing somewhat better after some difficulty getting the school established. On October 8, 1804, the first Cherokee boy was brought to Spring Place by none other than 'Gentleman Tom," a Cherokee who had been most vociferous against Moravian missions at Council sessions. From this promising opening, the school prospered, gaining eight students during the succeeding year. Keeping their original purpose in view, the missionaries early integrated their young scholars into the church services. (1)
• The Moravian mission expanded in the years that followed, especially after the arrival of the Reverend John Gambold and his wife in 1805. They had a remarkable talent for educating what they called heathen children. Nine years passed after the founding of Spring Place Mission before the first conversion of an adult occurred there. This convert was Margaret Anne Scott, widow of James Vann, and soon to be married again to Joseph Crutchfield, Vann's overseer. The Vann had been executed in 1809 for his complicity in the murder under the blood law of the Cherokees not too long before his wife converted . The next Cherokee to be converted to Moravian Christianity was Charles Hicks, who was baptized in 1813 and given the middle name of Renatus, or Re-born. It was not until November 14, 1819, that the Spring Place Church was completed and Consecration ceremonies performed. (1)
• In addition to Charles Hicks, other Cherokees who received training at Spring Place Galagina (or Buck Oowatie), John Ridge ( Major Ridge was another of the perpetrators in the murder of chief Doublehead.." He was executed in Arkansas in 1839.), "and John Vann." (1)
• In 1819 a "powerful revival of religion" swept through the Indian nation, "and the Spring Place missionaries felt its fervor with gratitude. Their small flock increased from two to fourteen and numerous others, many of whom had been extremely hostile, visited and inquired about Christianity. The first of these was Wawli Vann, aged mother of the executed James Vann, who came to the mission in early January for baptismal instruction. After three months of training she was pronounced ready for the ceremony, which occurred March 14. Attired in a white dress which she had previously designated as her burial costume, Mother Vann was baptized "Mary Christiana." Shortly afterwards, this newest Moravian sent a message to her unenlightened relatives: (1)

  "I let you know that God has changed my heart. I have been received by Baptism among the Christians. I am so happy as I have never been all my life. Formerly, for many years and up to within a short time, I thought as you do and lived as you live. God has had mercy on me. May you all make the same experience. Take my words to heart! ...l am much concerned for you." (1)

• One of the first to take her "words to heart" was her white husband, Clement Vann and he was. followed during 1819 by William and Sarah Hicks, Susanna Catherine Ridge (wife of Major Ridge), and nine other Cherokees. After the death of his wife in 1821, John Gambold was transferred to Oothcaloga (about fifteen miles south of Spring Place), where he established a second Moravian mission. Gambold remained in charge of the Cherokee work until his death in 1827. Spring Place continued, and both missions dispensed religious and secular education until 1888. In 1830 Spring Place could boast of a church membership of thirty-two adults and thirty-one school children while Oothcaloga had sixteen adults, twenty baptized children, and fifteen female students. (1)
• In 1758 a Presbyterian missionary from Virginia by the name of John Martin reached the Over Hill Cherokees. For several years he preached to the Indians under the combined auspices of the Hanover (Virginia) Presbytery and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, a Scottish organization. However, Martin had little success. His friend Lieutenant Henry Timberlake noted that one day after Martin had preached until everyone was tired, the Indians told him "they knew very well, that if they were good, they should go up; if bad, down; that he could tell no more; that he had long plagued them with what they no ways understood, and that they desired him to depart the country." Martin's successor was William Richardson, who seems to have had equally poor results preaching to Cherokees. (1)

  Presbyterian missionary activity among the Cherokee Indians was sporadic until the early nineteenth century. The New York Missionary Society, organized largely by Presbyterians in 1796, sent Joseph Bullen to investigate the possibilities of establishing missions among Southern Indians. In 1799 Bullen reported from Knoxville, Tennessee, that "the Cherokees who reside in the vicinity of Tennessee are desirous of having missionaries among them." (1)

• Reverend Gideon Blackburn is credited as being the author of the "first wholly successful work by Presbyterians among Indians in the south." Since 1794 when Blackburn first began preaching in East Tennessee, he had thought about improving the "savage and wretched state" of the Indians of that region. In 1799 he suggested that a mission be sponsored by the Presbytery of Union (Tennessee), but he was unable to take action on his plan until 1803, when as a commissioner to the Presbyterian General Assembly Blackburn persuaded the Assembly to grant two hundred dollars to educate Cherokee children. Supervisory responsibility for the Indian schooling was given to the newly organized (1802) Presbyterian Board of Missions. (1)
• Gideon Blackburn began at once to consummate his plans for civilizing the Cherokees. He approached his task with a practical philosophy, believing that previous attempts had been "abortive" owing to "exalted" instructions given the Cherokees. To his mind, the problem was one of appealing to "ignorance, obstinacy and strong prejudices. " If "rightfully managed," be thought, the Cherokees could become American citizens and valuable members of the Union. His plan was to concentrate on the children, since he had little hope of adult conversions. After obtaining approval of the United States government, Blackburn was successful in October, l803, in persuading a council of "2000 assembled Indians," to accept his mission school. Native sanction must have come quickly, since there was such strong interest among the Cherokees in securing education for their children. (1)
• By the spring of 1804, Blackburn's first school was in operation at a location on the Hiawassee, chosen principally because it was 'in a part of the nation most unlikely to be civilized." Two Moravians who visited the school several months later wrote approvingly: "Between twenty and thirty Cherokee children are now receiving instruction and are also provided with food and clothes." The conduct of schoolmaster Jonathan Black (he was the courageous man who, in an unsuccessful attempt to save Chief Doublehead's life, hid him from his assassins in his attic) received their commendation, as well as the good behavior of the heathen children in the school. A typical day's activities, according to the visitors, included rising, praying, and washing; scriptures, praise, and public prayer; lessons until breakfast; one hour of recreations; three hours of lessons, then lunch; two hours of recreations; spelling lessons before supper; and hymn singing, prayer, and bed. (1)
• In 1806 Blackburn established a second school at Richard Fields' place near the mouth of Sale Creek on the Tennessee River. Robert Denham was the first teacher at the new school, which enrolled thirty pupils on opening day. Blackburn supplemented the meager church appropriations for his two schools by soliciting donations on speaking tours. These and other exertions articles of religious belief, Other mission workers arriving later joined this devout little body, and it became the nucleus of what it was hoped would become a thriving white-red-black Christian organization. (1)

  THE MYSTERY OF PARSON BLACKBURN'S WHISKEY

  However there was another side to parson Blackburn. The years of 1809-1810 were a time of waning providence of Gideon's school. The school on South Sale Creek closed in the summer of 1810. Why did they close when they were far more successful than the Moravian missions? Of note is that the remnant children of Chief Doublehead's band were on their way to Gideon's school in the Sequatchie Valley when they were set upon by Hiram Gregory and his rogues and massacred at Yahoo Falls, near Stearns Kentucky. This act symbolically ended the reign, and their resistance to US government rule, of the Chickamaugan people, where they began. This was the same year Gideon's last school and about the same time. One can only be suspicious of Parson Blackburn's coincidental role of owning the school where they were going and the source of intelligence Hiram had to have to know where they were hiding.

• It was long suspected that Parson Blackburn used others to front his illegal whiskey trade. He is known to have run a distillery in Maryville Tennessee, where he lived and also where the trip began to sell liquor illegally to the Indians that led to his exposure as a liquor peddler. Posey noted in his work 'The Presbyterian Church' that "Gideon Blackburn was at one time a large-scale dealer in liquor." This was confirmed in April of 1809 when the Creeks seized two boats filled with whiskey on the border of their territory. The boats had stopped at Turkey town, home of the Cherokee Chief Pathkiller (installed as principal chief by council in 1808 mostly due to the suggestion of the Vann)where they had temporarily stored their goods. Samuel Blackburn, Gideon's brother, was among the men engaged in this enterprise. Gideon himself was present in Turkey town during this incident. US Government complicity was confirmed in a long letter written by Governor Willie Blount who succeeded Sevier as secretary of war in 1811. Blount sought recompense from the Creeks and exonerated the traders. Not only that, but he insisted the Creeks be punished for interfering with this "honorable and laudable enterprise." (3)
• In July, 1818, Presbyterian membership had been increased by "five Cherokees, three Africans & one white man." But after four years, only nine other Indians had joined the church. The disappointment which the men at Brainerd must have felt at this continued slow progress is minored in this comment recorded in the Brainerd Journal in 1819: (1)

  "While there is reason to hope, that some are edified every day, there is reason to fear that others are hardening more and more. They attend with decency; hear as if they assented to all as true, and yet remain, like so many thoughtless hearers in old congregations, unawakened and unconcerned. But, through the power of divine grace some appear to hear in a different manner. We hope for several, who have not yet publicly confessed-Christ, that they do indeed receive the truth in love." (1)

• In 1817 the Treaty of Turkey-town was concluded. This treaty offered Arkansas Cherokees as much land "acre for acre" between the Arkansas and White Rivers as they would cede in their domain in the east. Coincidentally, two months after this the American Board for Foreign Missions (ABFM) established its first station among the Cherokees at Brainerd Tennessee. "The government aided in the erection of the buildings, which included a schoolhouse, a gristmill, and workshops... There was also a large work farm. The mission prospered and others were established at Willstown, Hightower, and elsewhere by the same board... The missions flourished until broken up by the state of Georgia at beginnings of the Removal troubles..." (4)
• Despite disheartening religious progress in the field, the Prudential Committee of the American Board continued to have confidence in the work and ultimate success of Brainerd. By 1819, appropriations for "outfits, traveling expenses, schools, labor, provisions, and various necessary supplies of the Cherokee mission" totaled $6,956.93. True to its promises, the United States government was also aiding the American Board. The annual federal appropriation to Brainerd reached one thousand dollars by 1821. Further support came from various individuals and organizations who donated money, clothing, religious literature, and other paraphernalia. The reports of travelers and inspecting agents were a continuing source of faith in Brainerd's potential. (1)
• A very important visitor came to Brainerd in 1819 and caught the mission family by surprise. President James Monroe, accompanied by General and Mrs, Edmund P. Gaines, dropped in to inspect the school whose founding he had approved two years earlier. Monroe not only found much to praise, but recommended the construction of "a good two story house, with brick or stone chimneys, glass windows &c . . . at the public expense" for use as a girls' school. Of course the Brainerd men were quick to take advantage of this offer. (1)
• As previously discussed the treaty of 1817 opened they way for emigration to Arkansas for the Cherokees. However, the land was occupied by the Osage to the north of the Arkansas River and the Quapaw to the south of it. So the lands to be occupied by the Cherokees was not the government's to give. This was a common practice, to pit one nation against the other until one emerged victorious. Then the government would step in and wipe them out, claim the lands, and establish missions to assimilate any hold outs. The final battle between the Old Settler Cherokee and the Osage was fought in 1823.
• In 1818 Tollunteeskee (Ata lunti ski) principal chief of the Arkansas Cherokee had become acquainted with the officers ABFM and requested a mission for his nation in the west. His request was granted and in 1819 Cephas Washburn, along with his assistant Reverend Alfred Finney, set off for Arkansas. They established the Dwight Mission in the spring of 1821 adjoining the agency at the mouth of Illinois creek, on the northern bank of the "Arkansas in what is now Pope County Arkansas. Much of Cephas Washburn is like that of the Moravians, non-existent. He seemed to be a Presbyterian minister. Immediately he began the task of orchestrating the war between the Osage and Cherokees. He relayed government instructions and arranged treaty parties, not just missionary work. However, like all missionary activity did, once the Nation was removed to the Oklahoma territory his missionary work ended. This was in the year of 1840 a year after he officiated the funeral services for Major Ridge. (4) (5)

It should be clear that the work of the missionaries among the Cherokee was not just for the greater glory of Christ. The master plan, and before hidden plan, was as an integral part of the mechanism to steal the lands of the Cherokee.

1. Cherokees of the Old South Henry T. Malone The university of Georgia Press Athens 1956
2. Walter Brownlon Posey; The Presbyterian Church
3. The Cherokee Ghost Dance William G. McLoughlin Mercer University Press, 1984
4. Mooney, James. James Mooney's History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. Asheville, NC: Historical Images-Bright Mountain Books,1982.
5. Cephas Washburn Reminiscences of the Indians 1862, Press-Argus 1955, Hugh Park Editor

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