Civil War anniversary: Georgia Cherokees and “The rest of the story”

My two children, Robby and Katie Beth Jenkins, have had to endure growing up in a home where their parents treasure history, geography and culture among other interests, so much so, that when we go out of town, it always takes on more of a field trip than a vacation. But when Katie Beth (16), and Robby (14), discovered that their mother, Kathy, is half Cherokee Indian, and that their mother’s ancestors owned the land on which gold was found in north Georgia over 180 years ago, they wanted to learn more.

As it turns out, their sixth great-grandfather, Chu-nau-wee Briant, or “Bryant,” was an Indian warrior who knew and fought with the famous Davy Crockett. Chu-nau-wee Bryant took on the white name Bryant as the north Georgia Cherokees were fast learning the ways of the white settlers who were coming into the Southern Appalachians during the first two decades of the 1800s. He, along with the Cherokees, banded with the white settlers during this time to repel attacks from foraging Creek Indians, who raided them from central and southern Alabama.

The Creeks, who were also sometimes called Red Sticks, had joined forces with Tecumseh, a Shawnee chief from Ohio. The Creek Indians were concerned with the expansion of white settlers into the Ohio and Tennessee valleys, and they determined to fight back.

By 1814, however, white and Cherokee volunteers who served under Gen. Andrew Jackson had chased down the raiding Creek Indians and trapped them in a bend of the Tallapoosa River. On the morning of March 27, in the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, a number of Creek Indians were killed and this stopped them from ever raiding into north Georgia again. However, Chu-nau-wee Bryant was one of the few Cherokees killed on the winning side of the battle. Bryant left a widow, “Lucy” Au-noo-yo-hee Bryant, and eight children, including Robby and Katie Beth’s fifth great-grandfather, John Bryant Sr.

Soon after the Creek War, the War of 1812, and the other Southern Indian Wars that brought Andrew Jackson and Davy Crockett national fame and prominence, a treaty, known as the Turkey Town Treaty, was entered into between the Cherokees and the United States government in 1817. In it, the Cherokees ceded about one third of their total land holdings, mostly in Tennessee and the Carolinas to the United States.

In exchange, the Cherokees were given the option of owning land in a newly created Indian Territory in Arkansas, or they could remain east of the Mississippi River and be given a 640-acre tract to each family in north Georgia. In addition, Georgia agreed to drop any further claim to lands in Alabama and Mississippi during this time, which paved the way to statehood for the Yellowhammer State and the Magnolia State and their inclusion into the union.

Lucy Bryant, as the widowed head of her household, elected to take the 640-acre tract in north Georgia. That tract was located in the Nacoochee Valley near Duke’s Creek Falls and is part of today’s Smithgall Woods Conservation Park, one of Georgia’s Parks and Recreation Centers.

Lucy and her family called the place “Chu-nan-nee” which is near the town of Helen. In 1826, after gold was discovered along Duke’s Creek on her property, her home was taken from her by the state and the United States who entered a controversial, and illegal, new treaty with some people who claimed to be representing the interest of the Cherokees in exchange for money and land grants. This led to the famous and tragic Trail of Tears in which the remaining Cherokees east of the Mississippi were forced to move to Oklahoma.

Because of her family’s connections to Davy Crockett, who had become a U.S. congressman, and her connection to other white families, Lucy Bryant’s family migrated to western Tennessee where they settled in a community called Skullbone, near Milan, Gibson County, Tennessee.

There, many of her descendants settled and farmed for many generations. Her great-grandson, John Boyd Belew, Robby and Katie Beth’s third great-grandfather, was born in 1829 in Milan, and was 31 years old when the Civil War broke out.

For Belew, as well as for all Cherokees, choosing whether to fight in the war or which side to fight for was a difficult decision. As white settlement into the Southern Appalachians had begun and rapidly expanded during the late 1700s and early 1800s, the Cherokees had welcomed the whites, farmed with them, fought common foes with them, and took to their ways, including creating a Cherokee alphabet, welcoming missionaries and schools to teach religion and academics to their children, and some had even acquired slaves. When the Cherokees were subsequently betrayed under the direction of President Andrew Jackson, they did not know who or where to turn.

For many Cherokees who had adopted the ways of their Southern white neighbors, and who began to intermarry with whites, they looked at the federal government as the evil that changed Andrew Jackson into the man who had turned his back on the Cherokee Nation. Thus, a number of Cherokees, including some in Arkansas under the direction of Stand Watie, who was the last Confederate general to surrender at the conclusion of the war, followed the Stars and Bars of the Confederacy. Other Cherokees, however, chose to fight for the Union.

John Boyd Belew also chose to fight for the South and served with a Tennessee Cavalry Regiment in western Tennessee for the last two years of the war. His reasons were also personal. After two years of staying out of the war, he and his family were tired of federal occupation of Western Tennessee and the hardships brought upon them by it.

Another Cherokee leader, William H. Thomas, led a Confederate Cavalry Legion outside Knoxville, Tenn. Their primary duty was to protect the Alum Cave and harass Union troops that invaded Tennessee. While briefly working around Chattanooga in June 1862, Thomas personally captured a Union soldier, after which each of his men vowed to capture at least one Yankee before the war was over.

To this day, many Cherokees, when given a $20 bill as change, will refuse it and ask for two $10 bills instead, as they do not wish to carry the painful memory of the past when looking at the face of Andrew Jackson who appears on the $20 bill.

And now you know, in the words of the famous commentator Paul Harvey, the rest of the story!

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