This NCGenWeb page is presented
as the result of work done by
Sharon Miller Williamson
All rights reserved © 1998 to present

Page 12

Forerunners of Watauga.
 

Likeness of the Indians to the Hebrews.-- The following has been condensed from the Literary Digest for September 21, 1912, page 427: "William Penn saw a striking likeness between the Jews of London and the American Indians. Some claim that the stories of the Old Testament are legends in some Indian tribes. In the Jewish Encyclopedia it is said that the Hebrews, after the captivity, separated themselves from the heathern in order to observe their peculiar laws; and Manasseh Ben Israel claims that America and India were once joined, at Bering Strait, by a peninsula, over which these Hebrews came to America. All Indian legends affirm that they came from the northwest. When first visited by Europeans, Indians were very religious, worshipping one Great Spirit, but never bowing down to idols. Their name for the deity was Ale, the old Hebrew name for God. In their dances they said 'Hallelujah' distinctly. They had annual festivals, performed morning and evening sacrifices, offered their first fruits to God, practiced circumcision, and there were 'cities of refuge,' to which offenders might fly and be safe; they reckoned time as did the Hebrews, similar superstitions mark their burial places 'and the same creeds were the rule of their lives, both as to the present and the future.' They had chief-ruled tribes, and forms of government almost identical with those of the Hebrews. Each tribe had a totem, usually some animal, as had the Israelites, and this explains why, in the blessing of Jacob upon his sons, Judah is surnamed a lion, Dan a serpent, Benjamin a wolf, and Joseph a bough." There are also resemblances in their languages to the Latin and Greek tongues, Chickamauga meaning the field of death, and Aquone the sound of water.

A Study in Ethnology and Philology.-- We have seen that the legends show that the Indians came from the northwest. It must be remembered, however, that although they were of one

Page 13

color, they were of different tribes and spoke different tongues or dialects. There is not a labial in the entire Cherokee language, while the speech of the Choctaws, Creeks, Tuscaroras, Algonquins and many other tribes is full of them. They were nomads, wandering from place to place. The Cherokees were admittedly the most advanced of the Indians since the Spaniards decimated the Incas and Aztecs. They were certainly the most warlike. The name "Cherokee" has, however, no significance in their language, as they call themselves the Ani-Kituhwagi and the Yunwiga, or real people. This is likewise true of most of the names of streams and mountains which bear, according to popular belief, Indian names; for in the glossary, given in the Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1897, Part I, James Mooney, its author, shows that their meanings has been lost, if, indeed, they ever had a meaning in the Indian tongue. A glance through that collection of Cherokee words will dispel many a poetic idea of the significance of such words as Watauga, Swannonoa, Yonahlossee and others as mellifluous. How came this about? He offers no theory. but Martin V. Moore, who once did business in Boone, has published a small volume, "The Rhyme of Southern Rivers,"(1) in chich he makes it apper that most, if not all, of these names of streams and mountains have their roots in the languages of Europe and Asia. He cites an instance when an Indian was asked whether the Catawba tribe took their name from the Catawba River or the river from the tribe? The Indian answered by asking, "Which was here first?" If it was possible for one European or Asiatic tribe or clan to cross into America before Bering Strait divided the two continents, it was possible for many to have crossed also. If one tribe or clan spoke one tongue, other tribes which crossed probably spoke different languages. Thus, American might have become peopled with representatives of many peoples, each speaking a different dialect, and thus giving different names to the several streams and mountains along and among which they for a time abided. If this be so, it is easy to believe that the root or
_____________
Note: (1) This was originally published in Harper's Monthly for February, 1883, but without its introductory. It was published in complete form by M. E. Church, South, Pub. Co., Nashville, Tenn., 1897.

Page 14

origin of many so-called Indian words can be found in the Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Persian, African, Chinese and Japanese languages. That many names of Southern rivers show such possibilities is is made plain by this little volume.

"The Other Way About," as the English say, would make it possible that these Appalachian mountains being the oldest land in the world --older far than that of the Nile, the Euphrates and the Jordan -- were really the birth-place and cradle of the ancestors of the polyglot raaces which now people Europe and Asia; for, if it was possible for people to come to America from those countries, it was equally possible for people to go from America there. So that, instead of being the New World, America is really the Old World. But, to the proofs:

Words Derived from the Hebrews.-- According to Mr. Moore, "te" or "de" in Hebrew means "deep." In its oldest form in Hebrew, it is "te-am," or "te-ho-ma," meaning deep waters --"am" or "homa" denoting waters. "Pertetuity" in Hebrew was denoted by "na." "The fact is illustrated," to quote Mr. Moore's words, "in the Hebrew name 'ama-na' -- the river known in Isaiah,' lviii, v. II (p. 99). Chota, the City of Refuge, as it is called in Cherokee, " was governed by the same laws as those which obtained among the Jewish nations of antiquity" (p.89). . . . Telico, Jellico and Jerico (p. 44) are cognate words, and Pocataligo was the title of the river of that name in South Carolina, "long famed as one of the cities of refuge among the "aborigines." Likewise, he shows that "toath" or "toe" is from the Hebrew "neph-toah," "the name of a water noted in Jewish history" (p. 29).

Latin, Manchu and Persian.-- "The root word of the Mississippi river is traced to the Latin words, 'meto' and 'messis,' whence came our words 'meter' and 'measure,' denoting in the original sense a gathering together , tersely characteristic of a stream which gathers to itself the waters of so many different lands" (p. 77). He also trates the root word of "saluda" to the Latin "salio" to leap (p. 41) or a "stream springing out of high places." In "unaka" the name of the mountains south of the Little Tennessee River, unquestionably "a native Indian word,"

Page 15

he finds a marked likeness to the Latin "unus," and our English equivalent "unique" (p. 92). "Wataug" has the Latin root "aqua," meaning water. Then, too, "esta" or "aesta," in Latin, refers to summer months, or leisure time, which, combined with the Hebrew "toah" or "toe," makes up our "Estatoe" river (p. 29). "Esseeola" is given as the native name of the river now called Linville, "ola" being from the Manchu dialect work "ou-li," meaning river; and if Miss Morley is right in thinking tht it was named for the linden trees on its banks, one cannot help wondering if "esse," in Manchu, means linden! Mr. Moore thinks "catawba" is from the Persian root "au-ba" or "aub," of which the California writing is Yuba, meaning catfish, which is certainly characteristic of our Carolina stream of that name. He also calls attention to the fact that neither the Cherokees nor the Japanese use the letter "r" in their dialects; and that the old Romans used "l" and "r" interchangeably, just as do the Cherokees (p. 50).

The First Settlers of Watauga.-- The Cherokee Indians were the first settlers of this county, but there is no record that white men ever came into actual contact with them in what is now Watauga county. Boone does not seem to have encountered any on his trip in 1769 until he reached Kentucky. Neither did Bishop Spangenburg on his trip in 1752. James Robertson saw none on his first trip to the Watauga Settlement in 1769, nor in 1770, when he brought his family with him to the new settlement on the Watauga River. Indeed, Virginia had concluded a treaty with the Cherokees in 1772 fixing the top of the Blue Ridge as the eastern boundary, and a line running due west from the White Top mountain (where North Carolina, Virginia and Tennessee join), and the general impression then was that this line included the Watauga Settlement near what is now Jonesboro, Tenn. But in 1771 Anthony Bledsoe extended the Virginia line far enough west to satisfy himself that the Watauga Settlement was not in Virginia territory, and, therefore, not within the treaty limits of 1772. This fact caused those settlers to lease for eight years all the country on the waters of the Watauga River. On March 19, 1775, the Watauga settlers bought in fee

Page 16

simple all the land on the waters of the Watuga, Holston and New Rivers. The western boundary of this tract ran from six miles above Long Island of the Holston, south, to the dividing ridge between the Watauga and Toe rivers, thence in a south-easterly direction to the Blue Ridge, thence along the Blue Ridge to the Virginia line. This embraced the whole of Watauga, Ashe and Alleghany counties. So that, from 1775 on, the Indians had no right to be in this territory, and, although Wheeler tells us that Ashe was partially settled as early as 1755 by white people -- principally hunters -- there is nothing to tell us that the Indians ever lived here except arrow heads, broken bits of pottery and so forth.(1)

The Cherokees Kept Faith.-- Up to the commencement of the Revolutionary War there is no evidence that the Cherokees lived north of the dividing ridge between the Toe and Watauga clear up to the Virginia line. Thus, whether the lease and deed to the Watauga settlers near Jonesboro were legal or not, the untutored savage stood manfully to this agreement. It is true that war parties were sent through this territory to make trouble for the settlers east of the Blue Ridge, but they had no abiding place west of that divide. Bishop Spangenberg was here in December, 1752, but he saw no Indians, though speaking of an "old Indian field." There is a tradition in the settlement near Linvillle Falls and Pisgah Church (Altamont), now in Avery County, thaat William White was the first settler in that locality whose name is now remembered and lived where Melvin C. Bickerstaff now resides, but that another had preceded him at that place, and that while hunting one day he saw from a ridge a party of Indians kill two white men who were "lying out" in that locality in order to escape service in the Revolutionary War, and trample their bodies beyond sight in a mud-hole which then stood near the present residence of Rev. W. C. Franklin. This settler did not reveal himself to the Indians, but, hastening to his own cabin half a mile away, escaped with his wife and child to Fort Crider (which, in 1780, Dr. Draper tells us, p. 185, note, was situated on "a small eminence within the present limits of
_____________
Note: (1) Rev. W. R. Savage, of Blowing Rock, and W. S. Farthing, of Beaver Dams, have large ollections of Indian relics.

Page 17

Lenoir", after having been forced to eat while on the journey through the rough mountains the small pet dog which followed them. There is also another tradition that the American forces followed a party of marauding Cherokees to the rodk cliff just above Pisgah Church in that locality, but retreated because the savages were too strong for them. These, however, are the only traditions diligent enquiry had revealed. There is, however, other evidence of forys across the Blue Ridge by Cherokees from their towns on the Little Tennessee.

Some old Forts.-- According to Archibald D. Murphey (Murphey Papers, Vol. II, pp. 385, 386), "there was a chain of forts from Black Water of Smith's River in Rockingham near to the Long Island of Holston: 1, the fort of Bethabara; 2, Fort Waddell at the Forks of the Yadkin;3, Fort Dobbs on the Catawba; 4, Fort Chisholm on New River, and 5, Fort Stalnaker near the Crab Orchard." Just where the fort on New River was locatd it is now difficult to determine, though it was probably at borough to Long Island in the Holston. The Crab Orchard was most likely two miles west of what is now called Roan Mountain, just in the edge of Tennessee. It is now only a flag station, however, the Gen. John Winder road from Roan Mountain station through Carver's gap, three miles southeast of the gap of the Yellow, starting from the latter station to the top of Roan mountain, where, during the eighties, hundreds of visitors spent the "hay fever months" in comfort. The immense hotel there has been abandoned now, however, and the doors and windows are being carried away every day by marauders, the caretaker having left in 1914.

An Indian Incursion.-- The same author says (p. 381, Vol. II) of other forts east of the Blue Ridge: "Forts were erected at Moravian Old Town (Bethabara) by the twelve Moravians first sent out to Wachovia, and by the settlers in the Neighborhood two forts were erected: one in the town, including the forts the settlers in the Neighborhood and even from the Mulberry Fields near Wilkesborough took refuge, about seventy families in all, and here they continued in fort, occasionally, until

Page 18

the general peace of 1763. The people generally went to their homes in the fall or early in the winter, and returned to the forts in the spring, the winter being too severe for the Indians to make such long expeditions for the purpose of mischief. The forts were never attacked. The Little Carpenter, then the chief of the tribe [Cherokees], came at the head of 300 or 400 Indians and killed several of the inhabitants. They [the Indians] remained for six weeks in the neighborhood and then returned. This was in the spring of 1755 or 1756."

Where They Crossed the Blue Ridge.--"They crossed the Blue Ridge at the head of the Yadkin and came down the valley of that river." They killed William Fish at the mouth of Fish's River. One Thompson, who was with him, was wounded with two arrows "while he and Fish wee riding together through a canebrake." Thompson escaped and gave the alarm at Bethabara. The people hastened to the forts, two men, Barnett Lashley and one Robinson, being killed near the block house the next morning. "Lashley's daughter, thirteen years old," went to her father's house to milk the cows. "Nine Indians pursued her, but she excaped by hiding in the canebrakes until after dark, when she went to the fort, and was not surprised to learn of her father's death." This was in March, 1755 or 1756. The Indians came from the Cherokee towns on the Little Tennessee River. None ever lived in Watauga or Ashe since the whites settled in the piedmont country. In 1759 or 1760 another raid was made to the mouth of Smith's River in Rockingham County (p. 383), where they killed Greer and Harry Hicks on Bean Island Creek, and carried Hick's wife and little son back to Tennessee with them. They, however, were recovered when Gen. Hugh Waddell marched to the Cherokee towns later on. A company of rangers was kept employed by the State, commanded by Anthony Hampton, father of Gen. Wade Hampton, of the Revolutionary War, and great grandfather of Gen. Wade Hampton, twice governor of South Carolina (p. 384). Daniel Boone belonged to thi company and he buried Fish, who had been killed by Little Carpenter.

First White Settlers of Watauga.-- A letter from Lafayette Tucker, of Ashland, Ashe County, states that the descendants of

Page 19

the original lewis who settled in that neighborhood claim that he came as early as 1730. Thomas Hodges, the first, came during the Revolutionary War and settled in what is now called Hodges Gap, two miles west of Boone, and Samuel Hix and James D. Holtsclaw, his son-in-law, settled at or near Valle Crucis at that time or before. Some of the Norrid family also came about that time, but which one or ones cannot be determined now. These were Tories. Ben Howard did not settle in thei county, but remained at his home on the Yadkin, though he took refuge in the mountains around Boone during the Revolutionary War, and for ten years prior to 1769 herded cattle in the Bottom lands around Boone. He built what is now know as the Boone cabin in front of the Boy's Dormitory of the Appalachian Training School, marked in 1912 by a monument erected by Col. W. L. Bryan.(1) A quarter of a mile north of the knob, looming above Boone village and known as Howard's Knob, is a shallow cave or cliff, called Howard's Rock House, in which he is said to have lived while hiding out from the Whigs. Howard remained loyal to the British crown till 1778, when he took the oath of allegiance. (Col. Rec. XXII, p. 172.) His daughter, Sally, was switched by the Whigs near her home on the Yadkin because she refused to tell where her father was. She afterwards married Jordan Council, Sr., and settled at what is now Boone, where Jesse Robbins has built a house, called the Buck-Horn-Tree place. Bedent Baird moved to Valle Crucis some time after Samuel Hix went there, but Baird was a Whig. David Miller must have settled on Meat Camp early, for he went as a member of the legislature to Raleigh in 1810. Bedent Baird went to Raleigh as a member of the legislature in 1808. Nathan Horton, ancestor of the large and influential Horton family, was a member in 1800.

Linville Falls.(2)--One often wonders how these beautiful falls get their name of Linville. According to Archibald D. Murphey
___________
Note: (1)Colonel Bryan, however, thinks Howard did not build this cabin, as Jordan Councill the second, Howard's grandson, always called it Boone's cabin. Col. J. M. Isbell, now deceased, told the writer in May, 1909, that Burrell, an old African slave, told him that Howard used it for his herders.
(2)Some suppose that this river takes its name from the lin-tree, or as it is usually spelt, the lyn or linn, but the Linville family is the source of its name. This tree is what the Germans all the linden. It is scarce in these mountains now because of the fact that its branches are among the first to swell and bud in early spring, and great trees were cut whenever found in the forests in order that the cattle might eat the tender limbs.

Page 20

(Murphey Papers, Vol. II, p. 386), "Two men named Linville from the forks of the Yadkin went to hunt on the Watauga River between 1760 and 1770. They employed John Williams, a lad of sixteen, to go with them, keep camp and cook for them. They were sleeping in the camp when the Indians came on them and killed the Linvilles. They shop Williams through the thigh," but he escaped and rode a horse from the mouth of the Watauga "Hollows in Surry" in five days. He recovered from his wound and became a man of influence. It is now almost certain that these falls have taken their name from these two men, who may have visited them before their last hunt and told the people of their location and beauty, for Dr. Draper (note, p. 183) records that the stream itself was named from the fact that in the "latter part of the summer of 1766 William Linville, his son and a young man had gone from the lower Yadkin to this river to hunt, where they were surprised by a party of Indians, the two Linvilles killed, the other person, though badly wounded, effecting his escape. The Linvilles were related to the famous Daniel Boone." It is a matter of record that a family by the name of Linvil---probably an economic way of spelling Linville---were members of Three Forks Baptist Church and lived on what is now known as Dog Skin Creek, or branch, but which stream used to be called Linville Creek. The membership of that church shows that Abraham, Catharine and Margaret Linvil were members between 1790 and 1800, while the minutes show that on the second Saturday in June, 1799, when the Three Forks Church were holding a meeting at Cove Creek, just prior to giving that community a church o its own, Abraham Linvil was received by experience, and in July following, at the same place, Catharine and Margaret Linvil also were so received. Several of the older residents of Dog Skin, Brushy Fork and cove Creeks confirm the reality of the residence of the Linville family in that community. In September, 1799, Brother Vanderpool's petition for a constitution at Cove Creek was granted, Catherine Linvil having been granted her letter of dismission the previous August.