Chapter 8
ITH THE ASSISTANCE OF THE CHEROKEE, Washington had retaken Fort Duquesne from the French and their Indian allies, and Quebec would be taken the following year. An expedition of conciliation was set forth soon thereafter to Cherokee Country, led by Henry Timberlake whose knowledge of the native language and customs was unparalleled. The trader Timberlake was commissioned by the British army as an emissary to the Cherokee who continued to battle with British subjects in the South.
The young Cherokee war chief Oconostota had captured Fort Prince George on the headwaters of the Savannah River, and the tribes over the mountains surrounded Fort Loudoun. Oconostota and his warriors continued to pillage the frontier settlements of the Carolina piedmonts.
In June of 1760, Colonel Montgomery led his army of 1,600 men into Cherokee Country, recapturing Fort Prince George and destroying the Lower Cherokee towns, driving the enemy into the mountains. Asking the Cherokee for surrender of their Middle and Upper towns, he marched his men across the Appalachian Divide to the Little Tennessee, where he continued down the river unopposed until he reached the vicinity of Echoee. Here Oconostota had amassed his forces, and killing one hundred of their soldiers, forced Montgomery’s army to retreat to Fort Prince George. With Montgomery’s defeat at Echoee, the garrison of two hundred soldiers at Fort Loudon surrendered and were released upon condition that they give up their arms. When the Cherokee discovered that most of the ammunition had been destroyed or buried, they recaptured the British troops, killing their commander, and held them as ransom.
The next year, the English with an army of 2,600 men, including Chickasaw and Catawba Indians, set out from Fort Prince George, and crossing Rabun gap travelled along the Little Tennessee, as had Montgomery. This time, however, they repulsed the Cherokee, and sending out detachments, destroyed the Middle towns, fifteen in all, and forced the survivors seventy miles further to the west. The Cherokee were now reduced to less than 2,300 warriors from 5,000 alive a few years earlier.
Simultaneously a force of Virginians had advanced to the Great Island of the Holston and were met by a delegation of Cherokee chiefs suing for peace, and were sent Lieutenant Henry Timberlake who returned with them to the Upper towns, and later would accompany them to England in an effort to cement the peace.HenryTimberlake and the Cherokee Warrior Chief Oconosta were brothers by marriage, and now on opposite sides, but Henry owed his life to him. When the British agent became lost on his return trip to Virginia at the northern part of Cataloochee, it was Oconosta that befriended him and led him to Wayi, an ancient Indian village in the mountains, 50 kilometers south of the French Broad river.
Timberlake had married his sister, but soon after their daughter was born, he was called into service of his country by General Stanwix, under George Washington’s British army command. From Fort Byrd near Pittsburg he was sent to restore peace among the Cherokee towns along the Tennessee River and that’s when he again encountered Oconosta at Fort Robinson.
"Vginili," Oconosta spoke first.
"Aganstata", Henry replied.
"My elder brother, it is unbecoming a warrior, especially a chief to weep like a woman, so with my anger I also hold back my sorrow."
"Oconosta, my sorrow is as great as yours, but my candour is brighter."
"Well, let us see if the white man will honor your general's promises."
"I am Cherokee in spirit as well as marriage and I promise you that our intentions are honorable."
"Yes you are of our kinship, but brothers fight as fiercely as strangers."
"My wife, my child - your sister and niece - rely upon their brothers to stop the war."
"Your generals have defeated us and I’m afraid they may have also defeated you. Your wife was slain and your agwetsi is missing and may also have been killed."
"Anna?" her father stammered.
Oconosta continued, "I was there at the battle of Echoee and we were triumphant, but many of us were killed, including my beloved father and sister who were leading the women and children to the mountains to safety."
"So you don’t know...."
"We can only pray to heaven for Mountain River's well being among our people."
Timberlake held many meetings at Long Island with the chiefs of the Cherokee tribes, earnestly trying to mediate their disputes over land rights and to keep them from aligning with the French. France, in its effort to gain a foothold in North America, had been at war with the British since 1754 and had many Indian allies. Even though the British defeated the French when they captured Quebec in 1759, war continued two more years with most of the Confederate Nations supporting the French.
The Cherokee had aligned themselves with the British in fighting the French and their Indian allies, but Henry knew that their arrangement was tentative at best. The Cherokee had fought with British in defeating their enemies the Creeks and would later support the British against the rebellion, but they distrusted the British militia, who reneged on their peace agreements, treated them as inferior, and were slowly but surely stealing their land.
In 1762 France ceded New Orleans and territory west of the Mississippi to Spain. England now governed all lands east of the Mississippi, from Canada to Florida. For the present, the English victory insured English speech and institutions, a Protestant majority in religion, and self-government in most of North America.
That year, Timberlake would sail to England escorting a delegation of Cherokee chiefs. Rebuffed by the British monarchy, the young Virginian would return to America embittered. He thought it incumbent to map the Holston and Tennessee rivers that ran through Cherokee towns and to write a memoir of his travells through the Upper and Middle towns. A few years later he died, unsuccessful in his attempts at preserving the lands he felt the Cherokee rightly owned and heartbroken that he would never know whether his princess daughter was still alive. His memoirs fell largely upon deaf ears in Parliament, however he had correctly analyzed the problem that the British had had with the Native Americans, and were destined to repeat with the American colonists, when he wrote:"I found the Nation much attached to the French, who have the prudence, by familiar politeness -- which costs but little and often does a great deal -- and conforming themselves to their ways and temper, to conciliate the inclinations of almost all the Indians they are acquainted with, while the pride of our officers often disgusts them."In May of 1775, the Avalon sailed smoothly into the protected harbor on Shawmut Peninsula at Massachusetts Bay. The forty day voyage had exhausted both passengers and crew, and they looked forward to leave ashore. The few ships in the harbor were of the British Navy, young Jakiel counted five ships in all: the Somerset, the Falcon, the Glascow, the Lively, and the Cerebus. Most of the shops on the wharves were closed. The Port Bill, passed by Parliament in retaliation to the Tea Party the year before, had effectively destroyed Boston’s fishing and trade.
The Avalon’s captain gruffly admonished the new settlers with a stern warning - after some minor repairs and the lading of some provisions, the journey would continue in two days - stragglers would be stranded ashore when she set sail to the Carolina's. The English captain, whose brother sat in the House of Commons, had arranged a tribute to a Boston Assemblyman months before and went about his business of smuggling some Irish made linens ashore.
The MacGwyres had arranged to stay with kinfolk living at Dorchester Heights to the south of Boston and embarked upon their journey with deliberate haste. Word had reached the ship that trouble was brewing, across the river to the north, in Charlestown, between the British regulars and the American rebels. Minutemen at Concord, less than thirty kilometers away, were said to have fired upon British Redcoats who quickly retreated to Boston now under military rule ordered by the Royal Governor and British General Thomas Gage.
The boys could hardly hide their excitement, nor could their parents conceal their worry. The altercations between British loyalists and the American merchants protesting the Coercive Acts were well known in Ireland, but the fighting had up until this point been limited to mostly symbolic raids and skirmishes over the course of many years. The presence of such a large number of "lobster backs", said to number in the thousands, even in a large city such as Boston, was ominously foreboding.
Entering the township at Dorchester, Jake inquired at a grocery where he might find the MacDougals farm. The English shopkeeper sneered and pointed, his wife muttering something about the damn Presby patriots as they left.
After the children were put to bed, the MacDougals related to the MacGwyres the ten years of British Parliament’s imperial rule in Massachusetts that had led up to the troops' occupation of Boston: the Stamp Act, the massacre of five civilians, the Townsend Acts, Sam Adam’s rebellious Tea Party, and then the closing of the port. And finally, just two weeks before the MacGwyres had come ashore in America, the insurrections at Lexington and Concord.
In October of 1774, a strongly worded letter to King George III from the Continental Congress, protesting Parliment’s indescretions, implemented a nonimportation bill, effective the following year, prohibiting the importation, exportation, and consumption of goods from England or Ireland, including tea from the favoured East India Company. In addition, the letter, signed by the Adamses from Massachusetts, George Washington and Patrick Henry from Virginia, and delegates from the other colonies, avowed that the colonists would not import, nor purchase, any slave after the first day of December 1775, after which time, they would wholly discontinue the slave trade and prohibit sales of commodities to those who were concerned with it.
Jake sighed, and Jakiel from his loft above heard his father say "These colonies are at war, this is the beginning of the end." "No, no," his host replied, "this is the beginning of our future."
"I’ll have nothing of it," the elder MacGwyre insisted, "we’re farmers not mercenaries, let the rich and powerful fight this war. We have nothing to gain by it."
Young Jakiel, nearly a half year shy of sixteen, had different designs. The next day he composed his carefully worded letter to his parents. It was his intention to join the Sons of Liberty offering his services to the rag tag army that was brave enough to stand up to the British Regulars. He cautioned them not to look for him, but to go on about their journey, and assured that they had done so, he would contact the MacDougals regularly.
Late that evening he slipped out of the MacDougals home, leaving his note at his mother’s side. The full moon in the cloudless sky illuminated the countryside as he made his way to Boston.
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