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.