THE HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN INDIANS

Christian Priber and the Cherokee
 By James Adair - 1775

Page 240
The superior policy of the French so highly intoxicated the light heads of the Cheerake, that they were plodding mischief for twenty years before we forced them to commit hostilities. The illustration of this may divert the reader, and shew our southern colonies what they may still expect from the masterly abilities of the French Louisianians, whenever they can make it suit their interest to exert their talents among the Indian nations, while our watch-men are only employed in treating on paper, in our far-distant capital seats of government.


In the year 1736, the French sent into South-Carolina, one Priber, a gentleman of a curious and speculative temper. He was to transmit them a full account of that country, and proceed to the Cheerake nation, in order to seduce them from the British to the French interest. He went, and though he was adorned with every qualification that constitutes the gentleman, soon after he arrived at the upper towns of this mountainous country, he exchanged his clothes and every thing he brought with him, and by that means, made friends with the head warriors of great Telliko, which stood on a branch of the Missisippi. More effectually to answer the design of his commission, he ate, drank, slept, danced, dressed, and painted himself, with the Indians, so that it was not easy to distinguish him from the natives,--he married also with them, and being endued with a strong understanding and retentive memory, he soon learned their dialect, and by gradual advances, impressed them with a very ill opinion of the English, representing them as a fraudulent, avaritious, and encroaching people: he at the same time, inflated the artless savages, with a prodigious high opinion of their own importance in the American scale of power, on account of the situation of their country, their martial disposition, and the great number of their warriors, which would baffle all the efforts of the ambitious, and ill-designing British colonists. Having thus infected them by his smooth deluding art, he easilyformed them into a nominal republican government--crowned their old Archi-magus, emperor, after a pleasing new savage form, and invented a variety of high-sounding titles for all the members of his imperial majesty's red court, and the great officers of state; which the emperor conferred upon them, in a manner according to their merit. He himself received the honourable title of his imperial majesty's principal secretary of state, and as such he subscribed himself, in all the letters he wrote to our government, and lived in open defiance fiance  of them. This seemed to be of so dangerous a tendency, as to induce South-Carolina to send up a commissioner, Col. F--x, to demand him as an enemy to the public repose--who took him into custody, in the great square of their state-house: when he had almost concluded his oration on the occasion, one of the head warriors rose up, and bade him forbear, as the man he entended to enslave, was made a great beloved man, and become one of their own people. Though it was reckoned, our agent's strength was far greater in his arms than his head, he readily desisted--for as it is too hard to struggle with the pope in Rome, a stranger could not miss to find it equally difficult to enter abruptly into a new emperor's court, and there seize his prime minister, by a foreign authority; especially when he could not support any charge of guilt against him. The warrior told him, that the red people well knew the honesty of the secretary's heart would never allow him to tell a lie; and the secretary urged that he was a foreigner, without owing any allegiance to Great Britain,--that he only travelled through some places of their country, in a peaceable manner, paying for every thing he had of them; that in compliance with the request of the kindly French, as well as from his own tender feelings for the poverty and insecure state of the Cheerake, he came a great way, and lived among them as a brother, only to preserve their liberties, by opening a water communication betweenthem and New Orleans; that the distance of the two places from each other, proved his motive to be the love of doing good, especially as he was to go there, and bring up a sufficient number of Frenchmen of proper skill to instruct them in the art of making gunpowder, the materials of which, he affirmed their lands abounded with.--He concluded his artful speech, by urging that the tyrannical design of the English commissioner toward him, appeared plainly to be levelled against them, because, as he was not accused of having done any ill to the English, before he came to the Cheerake, his crime must consist in loving the Cheerake.--And as that was reckoned so heinous a transgression in the eye of the English, as to send one of their angry beloved men to enslave him, it confirmed all those honest speeches he had often spoken to the present great war-chieftains, old beloved men, and warriors of each class.

An old war-leader repeated to the commissioner, the essential part of the speech, and added more of his own similar thereto. He bade him to inform his superiors, that the Cheerake were as desirous as the English to continue a friendly union with each other, as "freemen and equals." That they hoped to receive no farther uneasiness from them, for consulting their own interests, as their reason dictated.--And they earnestly requested them to send no more of those bad papers to their country, on any account; nor to reckon them so base, as to allow any of their honest friends to be taken out of their arms, and carried into slavery. The English beloved man had the honour of receiving his leave of absence, and a sufficient passport of safe conduct, from the imperial red court, by a verbal order of the secretary of state,--who was so polite as to wish him well home, and ordered a convoy of his own life-guards, who conducted him a considerable way, and he got home in safety.

From the above, it is evident, that the monopolizing spirit of the French had planned their dangerous lines of circumvallation, respecting our envied colonies, as early as the before-mentioned period. Their choice of the man, bespeaks also their judgment.--Though the philosophic secretary was an utter stranger to the wild and mountainous Cheerake country, as well as to their language, yet his sagacity readily directed him to chuse a proper place, and an old favourite religious man, for the new red empire; which he formed by slow, but sure degrees, to the great danger of our southern colonies. But the empire received a very great shock, in an accident that besel the secretary, when it was on the point of rising into a far greater state of puissance, by the acquisition of the Muskohge, Choktah, and the western Missisippi Indians. In the fifth year of that red imperial æra, he set off for Mobille, accompanied by a few Cheerake. He proceeded by land, as far as a navigable part of the western great river of the Muskohge; there he went into a canoe prepared for the joyful occasion, and proceeded within a day's journey of Alebahma garrison -- conjecturing the adjacent towns were under the influence of the French, he landed at Tallapoose town, and lodged there all night. The traders of the neighbouring towns soon went there, convinced the inhabitants of the dangerous tendency of his unwearied labours among the Cheerake, and of his present journey, and then took himinto custody, with a large bundle of manuscripts, and sent him down to Frederica in Georgia; the governor committed him to a place of confinement, though not with common felons, as he was a foreigner, and was said to have held a place of considerable rank in the the army with great honour. Soon after, the magazine took fire, which was not far from where he was confined, and though the centinels bade him make off to a place of safety, as all the people were running to avoid danger from the explosion of the powder and shells, yet he squatted on his belly upon the floor, and continued in that position, without the least hurt: several blamed his rashness, but he told them, that experience had convinced him, it was the most probable means to avoid imminent danger. This incident displayed the philosopher and soldier, and after bearing his misfortunes a considerable time with great constancy, happily for us, he died in confinement,--though he deserved a much better fate. In the first year of his secretary ship I maintained a correspondence with him; but the Indians becoming very inquisitive to know the contents of our marked large papers, and he suspecting his memory might fail him in telling those cunning sifters of truth, a plausible story, and of being able to repeat it often to them, without any variation,--he took the shortest and safest method, by telling them that, in the very same manner as he was their great secretary, I was the devil's clerk, or an accursed one who marked on paper the bad speech of the evil ones of darkness. Accordingly, they forbad him writing any more to such an accursed one, or receiving any of his evil-marked papers, and our correspondence ceased. As he was learned, and possessed of a very sagaciouspenetrating judgment, and had every qualification that was requisite for his bold and difficult enterprize, it is not to be doubted, that as he wrote a Cheerake dictionary, designed to be published at Paris, he likewise set down a great deal that would have been very acceptable to the curious, and serviceable to the representatives of South-Carolina and Georgia; which may be readily found in Frederica, if the manuscripts have had the good fortune to escape the despoiling hands of military power.
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