Among informants in the western Cherokee Nation the principal was
James D. Wafford, known to the Indians as Tsuskwanûñ'nawa'ta,
"Worn-out-blanket," a mixed-blood speaking and writing both
languages, born in the old Cherokee Nation near the site of the
present Clarkesville, Georgia, in 1806, and dying when about ninety
years of age at his home in the eastern part of the Cherokee Nation,
adjoining the Seneca reservation. The name figures prominently in
the early history of North Carolina and Georgia. His grandfather,
Colonel Wafford, was an officer in the American Revolutionary army,
and shortly after the treaty of Hopewell, in 1785, established a colony
known as "Wafford's settlement," in upper Georgia, on territory which
was afterward found to be within the Indian boundary and was acquired
by special treaty purchase in 1804. His name is appended, as witness
for the state of Georgia, to the treaty of Holston, in 1794. [469]
On his mother's side Mr Wafford was of mixed Cherokee, Natchez,
and white blood, she being a cousin of Sequoya. He was also remotely
connected with Cornelius Dougherty, the first trader established among
the Cherokee. In the course of his long life he filled many positions
of trust and honor among his people. In his youth he attended the
mission school at Valleytown under Reverend Evan Jones, and just before
the adoption of the Cherokee alphabet he finished the translation
into phonetic Cherokee spelling of a Sunday school speller noted in
Pilling's Iroquoian Bibliography. In 1824 he was the census enumerator
for that district of the Cherokee Nation embracing upper Hiwassee
river, in North Carolina, with Nottely and Toccoa in the adjoining
portion of Georgia. His fund of Cherokee geographic information thus
acquired was found to be invaluable. He was one of the two commanders
of the largest detachment of emigrants at the time of the removal, and
his name appears as a councilor for the western Nation in the Cherokee
Almanac for 1846. When employed by the author at Tahlequah in 1891 his
mind was still clear and his memory keen. Being of practical bent, he
was concerned chiefly with tribal history, geography, linguistics, and
every-day life and custom, on all of which subjects his knowledge was
exact and detailed, but there were few myths for which he was not able
to furnish confirmatory testimony. Despite his education he was a firm
believer in the Nûñne'hi, and several of the best legends connected
with them were obtained from him. His death takes from the Cherokee
one of the last connecting links between the present and the past.
V--THE MYTHS
Cosmogonic Myths
1. HOW THE WORLD WAS MADE
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