Man v. Nature: Colonial American Settlers and Wild Animals

by Denise Weimer

While researching for my most recent historical, a romance set on the Georgia/Cherokee/Creek frontier in 1813, I couldn’t do my story justice without portraying just how intensely early settlers struggled against wild animals. In Georgia, those were mainly bears, wolves, and panthers. No doubt this will surprise some current residents, who know that wolves and panthers have long-since disappeared from our state. But through the early 1800s, no foe was more persistent or dangerous.

In fact, The Early History of Jackson County, one of my main sources, described this battle in detail. January of 1795 turned intensely cold. “The ground had been covered with alternate layers of frozen rain and snow for six weeks with no prospect of an early change. Animals and birds became ravenously hungry. Panthers and wolves, troublesome at any time, were more dangerous than ever before. Hundreds of them were shot in the yards around the cabins during the day, and at night they were kept at a respectful distance by roaring fires in the chimneys and by burning pine knots outsides the houses. Sometimes even these precautions did not effect their purpose.”

The account goes on to describe a pack of wolves that responded to a settler’s dressing of a deer by rushing between those fires and besieging the house. The family shot most through portholes created for that purpose, but two attacked the door. The leader forced its head through the shutter, and the other wolf attacked it. As the animals turned on each other and a neighbor climbed a tree to bring firepower to aid the family, the attack finally abated.

A genealogy of Turner County, Georgia, south of Atlanta, confirmed that black bears were frequent visitors, while ammunition was scarce. So scarce the powder was sometimes mixed with coarse sand, as the settlers believed it would perform just as well and maybe travel farther.

According to William Bartram, 1739-1823, panthers in the Southern states were often called “tygers” and were much larger than a dog, yellowish-brown or clay-color with a long tail. Canebrakes along creeks could become panther strongholds in the winter. The Early History of Jackson County gives the account of a young man maimed and lamed in a panther attack, turned down for service in the War of 1812, who went on to fight bravely at the Battle of New Orleans.

Life of Col. David Crockett, Philadelphia, 1859

An 1835 settler’s account from Brushy Creek, Missouri, inspired a scene in my novel. In the true story, a mother whose husband was away protected her crying newborn from a panther’s attack on her cabin. The wily beast climbed onto the roof and was only dissuaded from entering via the chimney by some venison smoking there.

These true tales highlight how desperately early settlers in any state fought to maintain their basic safety. Aren’t we glad a goodly portion of our resources and focus don’t go toward merely staying alive? 

Print: 1859, Western Hunting Old Arkansas  

Represented by Hartline Literary Agency, Denise Weimer holds a journalism degree with a minor in history from Asbury University. She’s a managing editor for the historical imprints of Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas and the author of a dozen published novels and a number of novellas. A wife and mother of two daughters, she always pauses for coffee, chocolate, and old houses!

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Georgia's Two Federal Roads: The Cherokee Trading Path

by Denise Weimer

Traveling around my home state of Georgia as a young person, I noticed numerous historical markers mentioning “The Old Federal Road.” Turns out, there were actually two such roads. Around the time the century turned from eighteenth to nineteenth, the U.S. government used treaties with Creek and Cherokee Indians to widen existing trails. One followed the Lower Creek Trading Path to Alabama, and the other followed the Cherokee Trading Path to Tennessee. 

The Cherokee Trading Path:

Inland-bound travelers from the coast used the road from Savannah to Athens. If they wished to continue north c. 1804, they left the control of the Federal government around present-day Flowery Branch, crossing the Chattahoochee River into the Cherokee Nation at Vann’s Ferry. Cherokee leader James Vann leased the right to run the ferry to various settlers from 1805 until his murder in 1809, when his son Joe took over until 1820.   In current Murray County, the trail climbed past Vann’s 1,000-acre plantation and a tavern where travelers could partake of grog from a walk-up window. 

1804 Chief Vann House

Past Two Mile Creek and Six Mile Creek, Coal Mountain and Hightower (or Frogtown), the house of entertainment ran by Jacob Scudder received censure by the Cherokee. Lewis Blackburn and Thomas Buffington owned taverns on up the trail. 

In the rugged mountains east of Tate, Georgia, in 1836, a man named Henry Fitzsimmons guzzled a little too much moonshine. Evicted from the stagecoach, in a fateful reversal of fortune, the Irish stone cutter noticed an interesting rock outcropping. He stayed to purchase land and start the marble industry in Georgia. 

1920s Tate House of GA Pink Marble

 The northern Old Federal Road continued to Talking Rock and Blalock Mountain to the Coosawattee Old Town and Cherokee Town. At Ramhurst, one fork took travelers north to Knoxville, while the other fork took them northwest to Spring Place, Ross’ Landing/Chattanooga and Nashville.

Do you enjoy rambles along historic highways? Are there any good ones near you?

Creek Indians in Revolutionary War-era Georgia

The research for what will be the final novel of my Restoration Chronicles Trilogy, Witch: 1790 (www.deniseweimerbooks.webs.com) has included learning about the Creek Indians. My Georgia Gold Series featured some late Cherokee history just prior to the Trail of Tears, but until I moved out of the foothills to the Georgia Piedmont, I knew little about this area of the state’s early residents. So who were they? And what were they like? In a series of articles I’ll share some of my findings on Creek Indian towns, appearance, beliefs, Colonial war in Piedmont Georgia and the charismatic half-blood Supreme Chief Alexander McGillivray (by the way, someone needs to write a novel about him). Today’s article will serve as an introduction.

Musgrove & 3rd husband Rev. Bosomworth negotiating for Creek

Before the middle of the 16^th Century, the Creek Indians (Muscogee, Muskogee, or traditional spelling Mvskoke), Mississippian Culture mound-builders, controlled most all of present-day Georgia. Following the battle of Slaughter Gap against their neighbors, the Cherokee, the Creek moved past the Etowah River. Another battle in 1755 determined the later Creek-Cherokee border with the Creek south of the Chattahoochee River in Georgia and west of the Coosa River in Alabama. This began the period of referring to the Upper and Lower Creek tribes. Piedmont or Middle Georgia was the home of the Lower Creek. Mary Musgrove, daughter of an English trader and a Muscogee woman from the Wind Clan, helped her husband John run a fur trading post and became the main interpreter for the first governor of Georgia. Under these favorable conditions, peace and deerskin trade flourished.

 

During the French and Indian War, the Upper Creek sided with the Cherokee against the English. The peace conference in Augusta, Georgia, in 1763, gave the victorious English colonies a large section of Indian lands. White settlement began. By 1773, Georgians demanded payment of the trade debts accrued by the Native Americans. This occurred at a land cessation meeting in Augusta.

Even after the land cessations, many Creek farms remained on open-to-settlement land. True Muscogean speakers sometimes looked down on Yuchi or Hitchiti speaker members of Creek Nation, calling them “stinkards.” Hitchiti considered Muscogees interlopers from the west in the past who had moved closer to traders and trapped and hunted year round to satisfy their desires for white goods. From 1716 on, many Creek Indians fled the land pressures in Georgia for Florida, becoming Seminole Indians. Seminole was a corruption of the Spanish word Cimarron, meaning “runaway” or “wild one.”

On the eve of the American Revolution, the Spanish to the south, French to the west and Cherokee and Creek on the frontier placed Georgia in an insecure position. Even though the Lower Creeks were more a loose confederation of independent towns than a unified people, they could have overpowered the still randomly populated state. Supreme Creek Chief Alexander McGillivray, son of a wealthy Scottish trader and planter whose property had been confiscated by the state of Georgia, pushed the Upper Creek to ally with the British, fighting alongside the Chickamauga (Lower Cherokee) warriors of Dragging Canoe. Meanwhile, McGillivray’s ex-trading partner George Galphin had some success in persuading the Lower Creeks to remain neutral. However, after the capture of Savannah by the British, they became nominal allies. Muscogee warriors also fought with the British in the campaigns of Mobile and Pensacola.

Following the war, a series of treaties between the new U.S. government or the State of Georgia and the Creek Nation led to misunderstanding and frustration on both sides and were not recognized by McGillivray and the main body of Creek Indians. By 1786, war had been declared on the Georgia frontier, one that would rage for many years.