“So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart.
Trouble no one about their religion; respect others in their view, and
Demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life,
Beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long and
Its purpose in the service of your people. Prepare a noble death song
for the day when you go over the great divide.

Always give a word or a sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend,
Even a stranger, when in a lonely place. Show respect to all people and
Bow to none. When you arise in the morning, give thanks for the food and
For the joy of living. If you see no reason for giving thanks,
The fault lies only in yourself. Abuse no one and nothing,
For abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of its vision.
When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts
Are filled with fear of death, so that when their time comes
They weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again
In a different way. Sing your death song and die like a hero going home.”

-Tecumseh

Two sites in Western North Carolina — the mouth of Deep Creek on the north side of the Tuckaseigee River in Bryson City and Soco Gap where U.S. 19 passes under the Blue Ridge Parkway - call to mind the often bitter relationships that existed between the Cherokees and the Shawnees.

The Shawnees were certainly one of the most migratory and contentious of the many tribes that inhabited the Southeast during the 18th and 19th centuries. Constantly at odds with their various Indian neighbors, as well as with the Spanish, French and English, they became adept at deception, warfare and (when it suited their needs) diplomacy.

Indian historian James Mooney recorded that the Shawnees “made themselves respected for their fighting qualities, gaining a reputation for valor.” Cherokees interviewed by Mooney in the late 1880s on the Qualla Boundary (present day Cherokee) vividly related stories about the Shawnees, who “from their sudden attack and fertility of stratagem ... came to be regarded as a tribe of magicians.”

Sources differ on the exact course of Shawnee history, but it’s generally agreed that the Shawnee tribe was of Algonquin stock originally situated in the Ohio River valley. In the 1600s the Iroquois drove a part of the tribe southward. They eventually located along the Savannah River and as far south as the Gulf Coast. (The name “Shawnee” is derived from the Algonquin word “shawun” for south.)

This southern portion of the Shawnee tribe developed friendly relations with the Creeks. No doubt this probably had something to do with their bitter relationship with the Cherokees, who often were odds with the Creek Nation.

After 1725, the Shawnees reunited again in the Ohio region. They were allies of the French against England in the French and Indian War (1754-63) and subsequently fought with the British against the Americans in both the American Revolution and the War of 1812. Following the American victory in this last war, they moved westward and settled primarily in Oklahoma, where their population now numbers several thousand.

According to the historical account in Mooney’s Myths of the Cherokees (1901), the Shawnees were among “the most inveterate foes of the Cherokee” with “the ordinary condition” between the tribes being one of “chronic warfare.”

Mooney devoted a number of pages to Cherokee-Shawnee warfare, much of which apparently took place in the Soco Gap area above Maggie Valley in the Balsam Mountains. This entrance to Cherokee lands was crucial, Mooney observed, because the Shawnees usually attacked from “the Pigeon River valley, so as to come upon the Cherokee settlements from behind, and small parties were almost constantly lurking about waiting the favorable opportunity to pick up a stray scalp.”

“Soco” is a corruption of the Cherokee “sa-gwa-hi,” meaning “one place” as applied to Soco Creek. The gap itself was designated “Ahalu-na,” meaning “Where they ambushed,” in reference to the Cherokee ambush there of a large party of invading Shawnees. Mooney’s informants told him that all of the invaders were killed “but one, whose ears they cut off, after which, according to common custom, they released him to carry the news back to his people.”

In an attack on the Cherokee village of Tikwalitsi (situated at present day Bryson City), the Shawnees were led by a chief whose name meant “Punk-plugged-in” in reference to “a red spot” on his cheek which looked as though a piece of punk had been driven in the flesh. A Cherokee conjurer divined that the invaders were in ambush on the north bank of the Tuckaseigee River above the village and advised the Cherokee warriors to circle around from the south and attack them from behind.

“A few foolhardy fellows, however, despised his words and boldly went up the trail on the north side until they came to Deep Creek, where the Shawnee in hiding at the ford took them like fish in a trap and killed nearly all of them,” Mooney noted. This was in the area where the railway bridge now crosses Deep Creek at its mouth about half a mile from Bryson City’s town square. Eventually the Cherokees who had heeded the conjuror’s advice drove the Shawnee warriors over the Smokies, killing a great number in the process.

A persistent legend holds that Shawnee leader Tecumseh spoke to the Cherokees at the Soco townhouse below Soco Gap in 1811 when he was traveling to recruit southern tribes to fight the United States as part of a pan-Indian confederation. According to this legend, Tecumseh’s truly brilliant skills as an orator almost persuaded the younger Cherokee to join his cause, but his arguments were in the end rebuffed by Junaluska, who counseled that friendship with the whites was the more prudent course. The Cherokees joined the American side in the War of 1812 and fought the Creeks, while Tecumseh, whose Indian recruits fought for the British, was killed in a battle in Canada.

Mooney noted that through “capture or intermarriage in the old days there is quite an admixture of Shawnee blood among the Cherokee,” and further, that the mother of Tecumseh “is said to have died among the Cherokee.”

Whether or not Tecumseh - perhaps the most charismatic of all Indian orators - ever actually held forth up on Soco, telling the Cherokees as he did other tribes that it was better to “leave our bones upon the land” than give it away, it’s a fact that his people played a role in our region’s history that is often overlooked.

(George Ellison is a writer who lives in Bryson City. He wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 287713, or at ellisongeorge@cs.com.)

 

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