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                              OCCONEECHEE
                      THE MAID OF THE MYSTIC LAKE


                                   BY
                          ROBERT FRANK JARRETT
                 Author of "Back Home and Other Poems"


                         THE SHAKESPEARE PRESS
                           410 E. 32d Street
                                New York
                                  1916







                           Copyrighted, 1916
                            By R. F. Jarrett







PREFACE.


Realizing that the memory of a nation is best kept aglow by its
songs and the writings of its poets, I have been inspired to write
OCCONEECHEE, in order that the once powerful nation known as the
Cherokee may be preserved in mind, and that their myths, their legends
and their traditions may linger and be transmitted to the nations
yet to come.

Trusting that a generous people may hail with delight the advent
of this new work, I now dedicate its pages to all lovers of music,
poetry and fine art.


    When you've read its pages give or lend
    This volume to some good old friend.


The Author.







BRIEF BIOGRAPHY OF THE AUTHOR.


Robert Frank Jarrett was born in Asheville, N. C., on July 21st, 1864,
and while having resided in other states and cities and visited many of
the most important sections of the South, yet has made his principal
home within the shadows of the rugged mountain peaks of his native
and picturesque home land, the Old North State.

He was educated in the field and forest, by rippling stream and
rolling rill, studied in the open book of Nature and recited to the
Master of Destinies where the shadows of the everlasting hills lock
hands with the sunshine of the valley.

He is a reader and student of the ancient writers and poets of all
ages, singer of the old songs, lover of the new;

Servant in official capacity for many years of National, State and
Civic governments; humble worker with the busy toilers, and writer
of prose and verse from earliest childhood;

Author of "Back Home and Other Poems," published in 1911, and many
other manuscripts not yet published.

Married to Sallie C. Wild, of Franklin, N. C., on Dec. 25th, 1892. For
twenty years a resident of Dillsboro, N. C., where orchard and field
and dense deep forests have inspired and impelled him on.







CONTENTS

                                                Page

    Part   I. The Cherokee,                        7
    Part  II. Occoneechee,                        21
    Part III. Myths of the Cherokee,             127
    Part  IV. Glossary of Cherokee Words,        197







ILLUSTRATIONS


    Portrait of Robert Frank Jarrett,   Frontispiece
    Tuckaseigee Falls, above Dillsboro,            9
    Along Scott's Creek, below Balsam,            21
    Sunset from Mt. Junaluska,                    26
    Lake Junaluska, near Waynesville,             26
    A Glimpse of the Craggies,                    37
    From Top of Chimney Rock,                     37
    Graybeard Mountain,                           37
    Chimney Top,                                  37
    Upper Catawba Falls, Esmeralda,               43
    Occoneechee Falls, Jackson County,            43
    In the Cherokee Country,                      43
    Whitewater Falls,                             43
    The Balsam Mountains in Jackson Co.,          51
    North from Sunset Rock, Tryon Mt.,            51
    Balsam Mountains,                             67
    From Bald Rock,                               67
    Lower Cullasaja Falls,                        73
    Mount Pisgah,                                 77
    Indian Mound, Franklin, N. C.,                77
    Tallulah Falls, Ga.,                          81
    Whiteside Mountain,                           91
    Tennessee River, above Franklin,              99
    Lake Toxaway,                                 99
    Tomb of Junaluska, Robbinsville,             107
    Where the Serpent Coiled,                    107
    Harvesting at Cullowhee, N. C.,              117
    Craggy Mountains from near Asheville,        117
    Sequoya,                                     129
    John Ax, the Great Story Teller,             129
    Everglades of Florida,                       129
    Tuckaseigee River,                           139
    Kanuga Lake,                                 153
    Lake Fairfield,                              153
    Pacolet River, Hendersonville,               153
    A Cherokee Indian Ball Team,                 171
    The Pools, Chimney Rock,                     171
    French Broad River,                          185
    Broad River,                                 185
    From the Toxaway,                            191
    Chimney Top Gap,                             191
    Chimney Rock,                                197
    Occonestee Falls,                            237
    Linville Falls,                              237
    Triple Falls, Buck Forest,                   237
    High Falls, Buck Forest,                     284
    Melrose Falls, Tryon, N. C.,                 284







PART I

THE CHEROKEE


    "I know not how the truth may be,
    I tell the tale as 'twas told to me."







THE CHEROKEE.

A brief history of the Cherokee Nation or tribe.


This history has been gleaned from the works of Ethnology by James
Mooney and from word of mouth, as related to the author during the
past thirty years.

In the beginning of historical events, we hear of man in his
paradisaical home, located somewhere within the boundaries known
as ancient Egypt or Chaldea. His home was far away and his former
history shrouded in the darkness of countless centuries of the past,
and when we contemplate the remoteness of his ancestry, we become
lost in the midst of our own research.

When historical light began to flash from the Orient, we find man
emerging with some degree of civilization from a barbaric state into
the advanced degrees of civilized and enlightened tribes.

When the maritime navigator, full of visions and dreams, dared to sail
for those hitherto undiscovered shores, now known as America, there
lived within the realm a wandering, happy, yet untutored, race of men
whom we afterwards called Indians, who dwelt in great numbers along the
whole distance from Penobscot Bay south to the everglades of Florida.

Among the more noted tribes were the Abnaki, Mohawk, Mohican, Huron,
Iroquois, Munsi, Erie, Seneca, Susquehanna, Mamrahoac, Powhatan,
Monacan, Nollaway, Tuscarora, Pamlico, Catawba, Santee, Uchee, Yamasee,
Creek, Choctaw, Seminole, Showano and Cherokee, but of all of these
it is left for us to speak alone of the valiant Cherokee, the most
noble of all Red Men, who inhabited that picturesque country in
the Appalachian chain of mountains in East Tennessee, Western North
Carolina, Northern Georgia, South Carolina and Alabama, and part of
Virginia, Kentucky and West Virginia.

These are the people of whom little has been said and less written
than most of the children of men. Yet of all of the native Americans
the Cherokee tribe was the most noble, humane and intelligent.

Somewhere in the annals of the Aborigines of America, the Cherokee
separated from the great Northern tribe, the Iroquois, and by
preference inhabited the hills of the Appalachian range, and here
we find them early in the dawn of American history, occupying a
country which affords ample environment for the artist, the poet
and the painter. Had Homer seen and Michelangelo traveled among the
towering hills of the happiest land of earth, the song and the chisel,
instead of being draped with the vail of blood, would have inspired
the world to look forward to the time when there will be no death
serenely sitting upon the throne of war.

At one time the Cherokee tribe was the largest and most learned in
art and literature of any tribe in the United States, having perhaps
as many as twenty-five thousand people, and attained, under Sequoya,
whose photograph is herein reproduced, that degree of learning, that
many of the tribe became quite familiar with letters and literature,
printed from the alphabet invented by this noted man, inventor and
devout preacher of the Christian gospel.

Sequoya was himself an untutored half-breed, yet to him are we indebted
for an alphabet of 76 characters which stands third among the alphabets
which have been invented among men, and by which a Cherokee child
learns to read as fluently in six months of study as does the average
English child in three years of study under our system.

The name Cherokee, so far as research reveals, has no meaning or the
meaning has been lost or perhaps Anglicized, but we have authority
for its use, for the past 375 years.

When De Soto's expedition was made through the Appalachian mountains,
in 1540, he encountered this great and friendly nation living
peacefully in their paradise among the hills and mountains, who
received him as they were wont to receive a friendly tribe; so did
they ever receive and treat the white neighbor until treaty after
treaty had been broken and their homes had been destroyed and every
compact violated.

Hostilities were in most cases caused by encroaching whites and broken
promises and intrigues of the foreigners, who were gradually drawing
the cordon around the diminishing tribe.

The battle of Horseshoe Bend, which took place in the Tallapoosa
river, in Alabama, on the 27th day of March, 1814, was one of the
notable events in Cherokee history, where Junaluska, in conjunction
with General Jackson, slaughtered or massacred nearly one thousand
Creeks, which ended the Creek war and brought much honor to Junaluska
and his valiant Cherokee army of more than 500 men.

For the terrors which followed the battle of Horseshoe Bend, we
have only to refer to history to be able to ascertain the facts
concerning the bloody atrocities which were perpetrated upon an
oppressed people. Then came the end, which occurred in the year 1838,
which culminated in the removal of the band to the Indian Territory,
which is now called Oklahoma, (a Choctaw word meaning red people,
Okla, people; homa, red).

This removal was the most luckless and recreant of all the abuses
that had been heaped upon the brave but helpless band of Cherokee.

Junaluska, who witnessed the removal, but was permitted to remain with
the residue, remarked that had he known that General Jackson (who
became President), would have removed the Cherokee in such a brutal
manner, he would have killed him at the battle of Horseshoe Bend.

The history of the removal of the Cherokee, as told by James Mooney
of the Department of American Ethnology, gleaned by him from eye
witnesses and actors in the tragedy, may well exceed in weight of
grief and pathos any other act in American history. Even the much
sung song of the exile of the Arcadians falls far behind it in the
sum of death and misery.

Under General Winfield Scott, an army of 5,000 volunteers and regular
troops were concentrated in the Cherokee country, and by instruction
from Washington, D. C., he was directed and gave orders to soldiers to
gather all Indians to the various stockades, which had been previously
prepared for their reception. From these posts, squads of soldiers
were sent to search out, with rifle and bayonet, every small cabin
which could be found within the ramifications and deep recesses of the
great Appalachian range of mountains, and bring to the forts every man,
woman and child to be found within the gates of the granite hills.

Families, while sitting peacefully at the noon-day meal; others
while performing the matutinal ablution, were suddenly startled by
the gleam of bayonets and with blows, curses and oaths from the men
called soldiers, the Indians were driven like cattle from their humble
homes