If silk culture failed, it is not a little remarkable that in the
ranks of this same people, one hundred years later, an invention was
perfected which gave rise to a new empire and enthroned as king the
best fibre of the field. The filature on St. Julian Street lost its
distinctive character, and became an assembly hall for the town meeting
and the militia muster; but upon the Savannah River, a few miles above
the city, Eli Whitney, the shrewd Connecticut contriver, worked out the
secret saws of the cotton-gin, and made Georgia and the whole South
opulent and powerful. The Piedmontese still spin their silk under their
own trees at home; but ten million bales of cotton annually whiten in
the suns and frosts, and to-day more than one million bales each year
are exported from Savannah alone. So two New England heroes, Nathanael
Greene and Eli Whitney, aided in protecting the people of Georgia from
a foreign foe and in building up their commercial supremacy.
No sketch of colonial Georgia is adequate which omits the name of
Tomochichi. This aged Creek was over ninety years old when he welcomed
Oglethorpe to his demesne. The loyalty of the venerable mico to his
white friends never faltered. He hailed them with all the grace and
amity of Montezuma, and guarded them against attacks from the tribes of
the interior. In his youth a great warrior, Tomochichi in the evening
of his life was noted for his wit, perception and generosity. When
he died, the colonists buried him with military honors in the public
square. Oglethorpe ordered a pyramid of stones to be erected over
his grave as a testimony of gratitude. It was only during the last
year that the Georgia Society of Colonial Dames of America caused a
granite boulder, rough-hewn from a Georgia quarry, to be placed in the
square where his remains are supposed to lie, commemorating his noble
character and heroic virtues.
[Illustration: THE BURIAL PLACE OF TOMOCHICHI.]
Hon. Walter G. Carlton, in speaking of the history of this city,
exclaimed:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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