55 Cherokees crowd SC Commons House of Assembly
On 19 Oct 1759 the peace train of 55 Cherokees crowded into the South Carolina Commons House of Assembly in Charles Town SC. Governor Lyttelton and his advisors were there too.
It all went bad from there.
It went bad on the previous day too.
The Cherokees first showed up in Charles Town SC (now Charleston) on 17 Oct 1759.
On the next day 18 Oct 1759, Corkran on page 180, writes, "Lyttelton received them in the council chamber [upper house]. He did not offer to shake hands. When asked Oconostota his mission, the Great Warrior replied that he had come only to hear the Governor talk. Lyttelton then said he had no talk to give, that he had merely suggested that the Cherokees come if they had grievances to discuss. The Indians withdrew to consider their reply."
On 19 Oct 1759, they approached again.
Oconostota said, "I am a Warrior but want no war with the English. . . . My desire is have the path clear and open for goods to go to the [Cherokee] nation. Your warriors [meaning the Virginians] have carried the hatchet of war against us, we have done the same against them; and both have acted like boys. I am willing to make clear weather once more and bury the hatchet of my young people."
Deerskins
The Cherokee leader had no white beads of peace so instead he layed down a deerskin as a gesture.
Corkran on page 180 says it was one deerskin.
Tortora on page 73 says it was a pile of deerskins.
Previous Cherokee missions to Charles Town did bring a pile of deerskins as a peaceful gesture, so is there a possibility of mixing up events?
Lyttelton's Response
Governor Lyttleton went little. He was not magnaminous. This is especially because the last several months were marked by many Cherokee attacks on colonial settlements.
With two big groups of Cherokees as hostage he marches his army. This will drag in Virginia.
He has already called for the Virginia Regiment to help. The Virginia House of Burgesses will discuss his letter requesting help in its November session.
The Path of the Expedition
This map of South Caroline is the path Lyttelton will take his army and hostages from Charleston to Keowee Town.
We will track them on this path in the coming weeks.
The Commons House of Assembly was divided.
So was the upper house, the Council, composed of 8 men.
No matter, Gov Lyttelton's mind was made up.
He made them all hostage.
They were duped.
The only concession if you can call it that is Lyttelton promising they would be safe under guard on the expedition to the Cherokee Nation.
He still wanted the Cherokee murderers.
There would be no alternative.
The above map is the path Lyttelton will take his army and hostages from Charleston to Keowee Town.
The Commons House of Assembly - 1757 to 1760. had just completed their eleventh session which ran from October 4th to October 13th in 1759.
Both Corkran and Tortora mention the meetings were held in the Council Chamber which is the Upper House and not in the Assembly, the Lower House, more fully known as the Commons House of Assembly.
We are still investigating if they met in the State House marked as B on this 1773 map. Did that State house formerly hold the 2 old colonial chambers?
This 1773 map also shows defensive walls made much earlier in the 1750s at the top of the map.
Below is a picture of Chartes Town painted in 1774, twenty years later than the time of this story.
That's it.
There's always more.
Skip around.
Read bits and pieces.
Compiled by Jim Moyer researched October 2023, updated 10/29/2023, 11/1/23
Table of Contents
Divided Council
The South Carolina 8 man Council was the upper chamber to the Commons House of Assembly.
The South Carolina Council met twice to review the accounts of Cherokee violence. Four voted to conduct the expedition "as proposed." The four others voted "for keeping a certain number of Indians now in Town as Hostages till the Cherokee Nation should make the satisfaction to be demanded."
That afternoon [21 Oct 1759], the Governor summoned the Cherokees. He harangued them for the violence of the past 11 months. Peace would be restored, and trade goods would flow again, but first he would march to Cherokee country to secure the "murderers."
Oconostota attempted to speak, but [Governor] Lyttelton abruptly terminated the conference. In so doing, he ignored not just the Cherokee but also one of his own: Councilman William Bull II.
Bull had extensive experience in Indian diplomacy and was also the commander of the Charles Town Regiment of Horse. He urged Lyttelton to hear Cherokee "Proposals for Satisfaction, which the Indians then in Town were contriving to propose."
Lyttelton instead sent the Indians away under an armed guard. The Cherokees would march with the army -- as hostages.
Page 75
Carolina in Crisis: Cherokees, Colonists, and Slaves in the American .Southeast 1756-1763 By Daniel J. Tortora, published by the University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 2015.
Sources
These are the main sources used for this blog.
Carolina in Crisis: Cherokees, Colonists, and Slaves in the American .Southeast 1756-1763 By Daniel J. Tortora, published by the University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 2015.
The Cherokee Frontier, Conflict and Survival 1740-1762, by David H Corkran, published by the University of Oklahoma Press 1962).
Maps
Below is a picture of Chartes Town painted in 1774, twenty years later than the time of this story.
1773 map referring to defensive walls made much earlier in the 1750s
Lots of old maps of Cherokees
1730 lower towns
Interesting blog with maps
The Upper House
The South Carolina 8 man Council was the upper chamber to the Commons House of Assembly.
PRO CO 5 474, April 1, 1760, to June 30, 1760: Journal of the Proceedings of His Majesty’s Hon. Council from the 4th day of July, 1759 to the 30th day of June 1760.
SouTH CAROLINA INDIAN AFFAIRS DocuMENTS South Carolina Department of Archives and History (.gov)https://scdah.sc.gov › Documents › Resources His Excellency acquainted the Council that the Cherokee Indians were now arrived, and that he expected them in the Council Chamber, and had given Orders to a ...
The Lower House
(1670–1776). The dominant political institution in colonial South Carolina was the Commons House of Assembly (changed simply to “the Assembly” in 1744). It served as the lower house of the provincial legislature and was the only popularly elected branch of government in the colony. The chief theme in the early history of the Commons House was its transformation from an impotent institution to an imperious political body that jealously guarded its immense authority. Under the Fundamental Constitutions, elected representatives of the people sat together with the nobility and Lords Proprietors in a unicameral assembly (called parliaments). They had the power only to ratify or reject the statutes proposed by the Grand Council. Not until 1692 did the proprietors, responding to increasing complaints by the delegates about their lack of power, allow them to sit as a separate house, to initiate legislation, and to approve tax measures.
Over the next half-century the assemblymen, seeking to make the lower house a mirror image of the English House of Commons, usurped enormous political power from the royal governor and council. By the mid-1700s the Assembly had assumed ironclad control over all aspects of government: initiating laws, appointing revenue officers, establishing courts, supervising the Indian trade, selecting the colonial agent in London, auditing and reviewing all accounts of public officers, overseeing elections, and administering all governmental expenditures. However, the Assembly was not content with just dominating provincial affairs. It intentionally retarded the development of local government by refusing to delegate broad taxing powers to local governmental institutions. Instead, the Assembly appointed commissioners to spend the money it granted and to carry out the minutest details of local administration. In short, the Commons House of Assembly reigned supreme in South Carolina.
Hardest Working
Long Sessions and more of them
The Assembly’s wide use of commissions and its strict control of the expenditures of local government helped to make it the hardest-working legislative body in the American colonies. Moreover, the election law of 1721 required the Commons House of Assembly to meet at least once every six months, usually in the winter and fall when planters were in Charleston for pleasure or business. With sessions lasting several months, coupled with emergency sessions called by the governor, it was not uncommon for the Assembly to sit eight months of the year. No other colonial assembly endured such long sessions. When in session, the Commons House usually met six days a week for at least six hours a day.
The long legislative sessions of the Commons House, along with the fact that members served without pay, effectively prevented all but the wealthiest and most civic-spirited men from serving in that body. Under the Fundamental Constitutions, however, any twenty-one-year-old man with five hundred acres of land could serve in the Commons House of Assembly. Under the king, aspiring assemblymen had to own at least five hundred acres and ten slaves (twenty after 1745) or £1,000 in chattels. Perhaps half the colony’s adult white males met these qualifications for Commons House service. Still, voters, motivated by a negative view of human nature and a desire to control man’s irrational side, elected to the Commons House economically independent (that is, very wealthy), virtuous, and able men. This shared common political ideology (often referred to as “country ideology”), combined with the colony’s unrivaled economic prosperity, the constant threat of a slave rebellion, possible attack by the French and Spanish, the common economic interests between planters and merchants, and extensive intermarriage among them, encouraged a remarkable degree of political harmony to prevail in the Commons House
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