As is usual where Indians have acted as auxiliaries of white troops,
it is difficult to get an accurate statement of the number of Cherokee
engaged in this war or to apportion the credit among the various
leaders. Coffee's official report states that five hundred Cherokee
were engaged in the last great battle, and from incidental hints
it seems probable that others were employed elsewhere, on garrison
duty or otherwise, at the same time. McKenney and Hall state that
Ridge recruited eight hundred warriors for Jackson, [238] and this
may be near the truth, as the tribe had then at least six times as
many fighting men. On account of the general looseness of Indian
organization we commonly find the credit claimed for whichever chief
may be best known to the chronicler. Thus, McKenney and Hall make
Major Ridge the hero of the war, especially of the Horseshoe fight,
although he is not mentioned in the official reports. Jackson speaks
particularly of the Cherokee in that battle as being "headed by their
gallant chieftain, Colonel Richard Brown, and conducted by the brave
Colonel Morgan." Coffee says that Colonel Gideon Morgan "commanded
the Cherokees," and it is Morgan who makes the official report of
their part in the battle. In a Washington newspaper notice of the
treaty delegation of 1816 the six signers are mentioned as Colonel
[John] Lowrey, Major [John] Walker, Major Ridge, Captain [Richard]
Taylor, Adjutant [John] Ross, and Kunnesee (Tsi'yu-gûnsi'ni,
Cheucunsene) and are described as men of cultivation, nearly all
of whom had served as officers of the Cherokee forces with Jackson
and distinguished themselves as well by their bravery as by their
attachment to the United States. [239] Among the East Cherokee in
Carolina the only name still remembered is that of their old chief,
Junaluska (Tsunu'lahuñ'ski), who said afterward: "If I had known that
Jackson would drive us from our homes I would have killed him that
day at the Horseshoe."
The Cherokee returned to their homes to find them despoiled and ravaged
in their absence by disorderly white troops. Two years afterward, by
treaty at Washington, the Government agreed to reimburse them for the
damage. Interested parties denied that they had suffered any damage
or rendered any services, to which their agent indignantly replied:
"It may be answered that thousands witnessed both; that in nearly all
the battles with the Creeks the Cherokees rendered the most efficient
service, and at the expense of the lives of many fine men, whose wives
and children and brothers and sisters are mourning their fall." [240]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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