21 minute read
Indian Territory
EVEN IN THE PRE-COLONIZATION era, the Cherokee practiced a form of democracy. When it came time to select a new chief, the tribal council would meet and vote new leaders into office. Technically, any member of the tribe could rise to the top leadership position, but as with European and American governments, the results of these elections followed well established patterns. Chiefs were almost always male and usually members of important families. Wealth mattered, as did courage in battle. Even singular acts of generosity played a role. Sometimes charismatic individuals without property or family connections would beat the odds by setting their sights on power and working relentlessly until they achieved it.
And then, there was John Bowles. The mixed-race son of a Scottish trader and a Cherokee mother seemed totally ill suited to become the chief of his tribe. Instead of inheriting or fighting for power in the game of tribal politics, he was pushed into leadership by the relentless forces of history that arrived on the shores of the New World with European colonists.
JOHN BOWLES, THE MIXED-RACE SON OF A SCOTTISH TRADER AND A CHEROKEE MOTHER THAT WOULD GO ON TO BECOME CHIEF OF THE CHEROKEE.
The first push came two years before John was born. The British empire removed his tribe from their rich farmlands near the coast of the North Carolina colony and resettled them in Little Hiwassee, a small village in the Appalachian Mountains.
The tribe expected better treatment from the English. Chief Dragging Canoe had allied his band with the British in the French and Indian War. They’d been promised even-handed treatment in return for their service, but when the war ended, they were forced beyond the so-called proclamation line to an area designated for Indians. It wasn’t surprising that Dragging Canoe would try to remain neutral when talk of revolution spread through the colonies.
Relations between the British Empire and the Americans had never been completely friendly, but they turned considerably worse when parliament decided to fund their military adventures by taxing the colonies. They passed the Sugar Act (a tax on all non-British imports), the Currency Act (a law forbidding colonies from printing their own money), and the Quartering Act (a law requiring colonies to build barracks and support English troops). Finally in 1765, the year John Bowles was born, parliament passed the Stamp Act, a tax on all colonial documents.
Eleven years after the Stamp Act, the colonies declared independence. The Revolutionary War was on, and Chief Dragging Canoe was forced to choose sides in a struggle that would not benefit the Cherokee regardless of who won. He chose the British side but made up his mind to avoid the conflict as long as possible.
John Bowles’s prospects as a half-blood Cherokee whose tribe had taken the wrong side in the Revolutionary War didn’t seem promising. Almost no one in Little Hiwassee spoke English—John never learned—so despite the light-colored eyes, freckled skin, and auburn hair he’d inherited from his father, villagers called him by his tribal name, Di’Wali (Bold Hunter). When he was twelve years old, his father was murdered by white colonists, leaving John Di’Wali Bowles a fatherless child who looked white but had an Indian name.
His striking appearance and dramatic past made him the subject of rumors. The Cherokee fabricated an oral history that featured Di’Wali as a half-blood, antiwhite warrior who single-handedly killed his father’s murderers at the age of fourteen years. White colonists spread equally outlandish tales. They cast John Bowles in the role of white child who’d been kidnapped by the Indians and raised as one of them.
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BEFORE THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR reached Little Hiwassee, Dragging Canoe uprooted his followers and moved them to the town of Running Water (present day Muscle Shoals, Alabama). A number of Cherokee bands had the same idea, and the chief’s new location was one of five sizable villages at the base of the Chattanooga Mountain.
During the long cross country trek, John “Di’Wali” Bowles did everything he could to become a close confidant of Dragging Canoe. By the time they settled into their new community, the chief had become dependent on the half-blood young man, and the band began to associate him with leadership decisions. When the old chief died in 1792, it seemed a natural thing for the tribal council to elect John Bowles to take his place.
The young half-blood’s elevation to principal chief of the Running Water band must have been a great honor, but it pitted him against white settlers who were moving into the area in ever increasing numbers.
The new migrants had plans for the fertile Tennessee River valley where the Cherokee had set up their community, but first they had to find a way to get the Indians out. They complained to government agencies about the five Cherokee villages but were especially concerned about the Running Water band led by the half-blood surrounded by stories of kidnapping and murder that had followed him from Little Hiwassee. By this time, Chief John Bowles was being referred to as “the Bowl” by whites and native peoples alike.
The government grudgingly tolerated the Indians until a group of native men attacked a merchant boat as it passed south down the Tennessee River. Renegades boarded the boat, murdered all the white merchants, and made off with the cargo.
The Bowl denied having any part in the initial conflict but moved quickly to return women, children, and slaves to the boat unharmed and sent them down river with provisions. His act of mitigation was interpreted as a confession of guilt by the settlers.
When it was clear the government intended to take reprisals, the other chiefs in the Five Lower Towns fixed blame for the attack on the Bowl. Government agencies were satisfied to have a scapegoat rather than go to war against the entire Cherokee Nation.
The Bowl couldn’t win a war against federal troops. He followed the example Dragging Canoe had established and moved his band to the formally French Territory of Missouri where American soldiers were unlikely to pursue.
Indian lands had been left largely intact by the Louisiana Purchase, and white settlers didn’t put up a fight when Bowles established a village beside the St. Francis River. Hunting, fishing, and farming were good, and no soldiers came to harass them. Bowles would have kept his people in their Missouri home if a series of intense 7.2 to 8.2 magnitude earthquakes had not struck the region on December 16, 1811. The quakes were accompanied by the Great Comet of 1811, which first appeared in the night sky in October of that year and remained visible for 260 days.
Native mystics interpreted the comet/earthquake combination as a supernatural sign that troubles lay ahead. Shawnee leader, Tecumseh, traveled through the southeastern United States advocating resistance to white incursions into native lands. A large contingent of Muscogee Creek broke from the Creek Confederation and went to war against the U.S. government. The British Empire took this opportunity to arm Native peoples who were willing to take their side in the war of 1812. And once again, international powers were pulling indigenous people into an international struggle.
Many Cherokee chiefs set aside their differences with the U.S. government and supported Major General Andrew Jackson in his fight with the British and the breakaway Creek. The Bowl did not. He believed the earthquake and the comet were an undeniable sign that trouble was on the way, but for him, trouble meant involvement in white men’s wars. He vowed to take his people to a new location beyond the reach of the U.S. government and the British Empire. After a short stop in what would become Arkansas Territory, he led his band into Spanish controlled Texas and eventually settled north of Nacogdoches.
The Spanish were busy with their own political unrest in Mexico and paid little attention to the Cherokee. The seven thousand North American immigrants in east Texas didn’t object to Bowles’s band. They encouraged the so-called Civilized Tribe to settle in the territory between the Trinity and Sabine Rivers and help establish a stronghold against Apache and Comanche.
It didn’t take long for other refugee tribes (Shawnee, Delaware, Kickapoo, Choctaw, Biloxi, Alabama, and Coushatta) to hear the news of the new successful Indian settlement and migrate into the area. They recognized the Bowl as the principal chief of a loose confederation.
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ONE MIGRANT WHO JOINED the Bowl’s group was Richard Fields, a mixed-race Cherokee who fought alongside Andrew Jackson in the War of 1812. Fields claimed to have influential contacts who could aid in negotiations for a formal land title with Spain. He challenged John Bowles’s leadership and replaced him as principal chief in a tribal election in 1820. Western Cherokee typically elected at least two and often three chiefs at a time to assure a continuity of leadership. Bowles was retained as the second ranking leader of the tribe, so he was still held in high regard.
RICHARD FIELDS WAS A MIXED-RACE CHEROKEE WHO FOUGHT ALONGSIDEANDREW JACKSON IN THE WAR OF 1812.
If Fields had any influence with Spain, it disappeared when Mexico won her war of independence from the Spanish Empire soon after the new chief assumed office. Even the informal arrangement Bowles had enjoyed with the Spanish was subject to change. Fields wrote to the mayor of Nacogdoches asking for his support.
When there was no reply, he set out with John Bowles and twenty others to pay a visit to Emperor Agustin de Iturbide in Mexico City.
The new empire was in a state of turmoil from the moment it was established. When the Cherokee arrived in Mexico City early in 1823, a revolution was already in progress. Before the emperor was overthrown, he granted the tribe a convention allowing them to occupy and cultivate specified lands in eastern Texas. Both the empire, however, and its successor government refused any other rights.
When Fields returned to Texas, he wrote to the provincial governor that he had been granted a province sufficient to him and his people. He proclaimed himself master of the Cherokee holdings and threatened to evict anyone who didn’t comply with his orders.
Fields’s actions might have gone unchallenged, but North American settlers Stephen Austin (the founder of Anglo Texas) and Hayden Edwards were successfully negotiating with the new Mexican government. The Austin family’s colonial grant was renewed, allowing him to bring hundreds of white settlers into Texas along with their slaves. Edwards was given a land grant which included the town of Nacogdoches as well as land occupied by the Cherokee.
STEPHEN F. AUSTIN, THE AMERICAN-BORN EMPRASARIO KNOWN AS THE “FATHER OF TEXAS.”
When Hayden Edwards announced his apparently legitimate claim, Fields was incensed. He publicly swore revenge on Mexicans and white settlers who dared trespass. Rumors began circulating that he meant to join forces with the Comanche and even that he planned an attack on San Antonio. Stephen Austin alerted Mexican government officials about the possibility of an Indian war and requested troops be sent to check on the Cherokee.
If Richard Fields had any intention of making an alliance with the Comanche, he quickly abandoned them. He wrote to the Mayor of Nacogdoches and to Jose Antonio Saucedo, the political chief of Coahuila and Texas pledging his military support against hostile Indians. Saucedo thanked him for his offer but asked for proof of permits that originally allowed the Cherokee to emigrate to Texas. There were no documents to produce.
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BEFORE THE TRIBE WAS forced to deliver on the promise of military assistance, a white author, John Dunn Hunter, came onto the scene. He was an internationally famous Indian advocate who claimed to have been kidnapped as a child by the Kickapoo and raised by the tribe. Hunter published a memoir in 1823 describing the experience and became an outspoken supporter of native people.
JOHN DUNN HUNTER, THE AUTHOR AND FAMED INDIAN ADVOCATE WHOEXERTED POWERFUL INFLUENCE OVER CHIEF RICHARD FIELDS.
Several prominent Americans, including William Clark, of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, pointed out factual errors in Hunter’s manuscript and suggested the story was totally fictitious. Despite his prominent detractors, Hunter’s book sold well in the United States and even better in Britain, where it led to his becoming a popular speaker.
Hunter became a powerful influence over Richard Fields. He convinced the chief that, without a formal title to their land, the Cherokee would be ordered out of Texas as soon as Mexico found it convenient. The writer persuaded Chief Fields to send him to Mexico City to negotiate on behalf of the tribe.
The Mexican government had been free with land grants to other white North Americans, but they sent Hunter back to Texas empty handed. The author was incensed. He convinced Fields to declare the Cherokee would fight to hold onto their land. The two men stirred up the tribe to the point they were ready to go to war immediately.
Hunter traveled to Nacogdoches in hopes of establishing an alliance with Hayden Edwards against the Mexican government. He left feeling the two had come to an agreement, but whatever understanding they had reached fell apart when Edwards received a contract from Mexico City to settle 1,800 Anglo families on the land he’d been granted (including land occupied by the Cherokee). Mexico’s only condition was that he honor legal grants of people already there.
In October 1825, Edwards issued a proclamation ordering all persons residing in the territory to present themselves with valid titles. Since Texas had been owned first by Spain and then by two Mexican governments in quick succession, practically no one had land claims that couldn’t be disputed.
The prospect of being evicted by the North Americans angered the Cherokee and all the Mexican settlers in the region. Edwards further aggravated the situation by removing the existing mayor of Nacogdoches, Samuel Norris, and conducting a new election that placed his son-in-law in office.
The locals declared the election void. They removed Edwards’s puppet mayor by force, reinstalled Samuel Norris, and formed a band of regulators to force Anglo settlers into submission.
On November 22, 1826, thirty-six armed Anglo settlers responded by arresting Mayor Norris and the commander of Nacogdoches’s militia. Their actions were certain to provoke the Mexican government. Hayden Edwards saw his colonial empire slipping from his fingers before it had gotten started. He immediately tried to enlist the support of Anglo settlers and the Cherokee to revolt against Mexico. He found a sympathetic ear in John Dunn Hunter.
The writer persuaded Chief Fields to ally himself with the rebels. They drew up a treaty giving the Cherokee formal title to their land and awarding the rest of Texas to the Anglos. They called the independent new land the Republic of Fredonia.
Stephen Austin rejected Edwards’s plan out of hand. He called the revolutionaries “a small party of infatuated madmen” and told his colonists it was their duty to defend the proud name of Texas from the infamy of the Nacogdoches insurgents. He persuaded the Mexican government to offer a full pardon with a promise to investigate the grievances of all rebels who abandoned their plan. He circumvented Richard Fields and called on Chief Bowles to convince the Cherokee to reject the alliance with the Fredonians. Considering the Indian’s experience with Anglo treaties, that was probably not too difficult.
The rebellion degenerated to a couple of hundred armed insurgents who were still willing to make a stand in Nacogdoches until Hayden Edwards fled with his family to Louisiana. After that, the Fredonian Rebellion ended without a shot being fired.
The tribal council met and once again elected the Bowl principal chief of the Texas Cherokee. They also tried Richard Fields and John Dunn Hunter in absentia and condemned them to death. On Chief Bowles’s authority, a posse hunted the two men down and executed them. Richard Fields and John Dunn Hunter were the only casualties of the Fredonian Rebellion.
In appreciation for Bowles’s loyalty, the Mexican Army conferred the rank of lieutenant colonel on the chief. They gave him a military officer’s hat which he wore with great pride for the rest of his life.
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STEPHEN AUSTIN, WHO HAD just allied himself with Mexico to defeat a rebellion, set about promoting his own war of independence. He understood the need for Cherokee alliance, or at least neutrality, if the Anglos were to have a chance of winning. His key to success was to use Sam Houston as his negotiator.
Houston was perhaps the only white man John Bowles would trust. In addition to being a decorated officer in the U.S. Army, the former governor of Tennessee had run away from home as a boy and lived with the Cherokee. He’d been adopted into the tribe and given a Cherokee name, Co-lon-neh, the Raven. He had also married a Cherokee woman in a tribal ceremony.
Houston, in consultation with Bowles, drafted a declaration that was adopted unanimously by the provisional government of the Republic of Texas on November 13, 1835. “We solemnly declare that we will guarantee to them [Cherokee] the peaceful enjoyment of their rights to the lands as we do our own.” They further declared Mexican and Anglo settlers’ claims to land on Cherokee territory null and void. Houston signed a treaty with Bowles that included the details of the declaration. He also presented the chief with a ceremonial sword and silk vest.
After the Republic of Texas won the war with Mexico on April 21, 1836, the treaty negotiated between Houston and Bowles was sent to the Texas senate for ratification. No action was taken.
Mexico’s decisive defeat at the Battle of San Jacinto cost them victory in the Texas Revolution, but they had not given up on the idea of retaking the territory. In the spring of 1837, Mexico sent a delegation to try and persuade Bowles to help them in a war against the Anglo settlers. As usual, they offered the Cherokee a legally binding title to land they already occupied. Some younger members of the tribe, who had more confidence in the Mexican government than the Anglos, were ready to take action. The chief agreed to talk but nothing more.
In August of 1838, six hundred Mexican and Indian troops camped a few miles from the Bowl’s home and conducted daily talks with him. They were outnumbered by the Texas militia, but with Bowles’s help, they stood a chance of winning.
Sam Houston, already elected the first president of the Republic of Texas, wrote the chief calling on his friendship but also threatening to send 2,000 troops into his territory armed with cannon if he didn’t expel the Mexicans and allow the Texas militia to attack them. While Bowles and Houston negotiated, the Texas militia attacked without permission from either the republic or the Cherokee and quickly routed Mexican and Indian troops.
Later that year, a Mexican Indian Agent was intercepted in Texas carrying papers offering the Cherokee land for their alliance. Some members of Bowles’s tribe rode with him. For most Texans that was proof enough that Bowles was conspiring to overthrow the republic, but Houston refused to believe it. Rather than break relations with the Cherokee, he tried to cement the alliance by offering Bowles the rank of brigadier general in the Texas army. The chief would be paid $2,000 a year if he served actively and $1,000 a year if he simply accepted the commission. Houston also proposed hiring Bowles’s warriors into the army at $96 a head.
No formal arrangement was reached concerning
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TENSIONS BETWEEN INDIANS AND Anglo Texans were already running high when the last and largest Indian attack on white settlers pushed things to the breaking point. On October 5, 1838, a group of renegades killed eighteen members of the Killough family who had settled on Cherokee land the previous year. No one seriously believed Bowles orchestrated the attack, but most Texans were quick to hold him responsible.
The Killough massacre happened just as Houston’s term expired and Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar was elected president. Lamar wanted all Texas Cherokee sent to Indian Territory along with U.S. Cherokee relocated by virtue of the Indian Removal act of 1830. He wrote the Texas Minister to Washington urging him to persuade the U.S. government to participate in the forced removal of Indians from the Republic of Texas.
Confident of his ability to secure U.S. cooperation, Lamar appointed a commission to offer the tribes of Texas compensation for their land with the threat of war if they refused. He set an upper limit of $25,000 cash.
Seeing no alternative, Bowles agreed to go. He asked for three months to prepare and promised other tribes (Shawnee, Alabama, Coushatta, and Delaware) would accompany the Cherokee.
The Texans denied the chief his three months delay but promised that ample supplies and time would be arranged. They put a treaty before him, knowing that he could not read or write, and demanded that he sign. Bowles asked for more time to confer with trusted members of his tribe, but he had already decided he wouldn’t sign another treaty with the Texans. A large contingent of troops were camped six miles from his home, and he was beginning to suspect that all this negotiation would eventually end in a massacre. He stalled as long as he could while the Cherokee gathered their families and scattered.
On June 15, 1839, the Texas militia attacked and quickly routed the Indians who remained close by. The following day five hundred heavily armed soldiers pursued the others. Within a few hours they came on a mile long line of warriors near the Neches River led by eighty-three-year-old John Bowles mounted on a sorrel horse. The Chief brandished the sword Sam Houston had given him.
The Texans charged the Indian position across open terrain, then pursued their retreat into the Neches bottom. The Texan losses were two killed and twentyseven wounded (three fatally) to an estimated hundred dead Cherokee and Delaware.
The soldiers were relentless. They shot Bowles’s horse out from under him and shot him in the back as he retreated on foot. The old chief crumpled to the ground but managed to pull himself into a sitting position to face his attackers. Although Chief Bowles posed no threat, Captain Robert Smith walked up to the old man and shot him in the head. Soldiers took the saber from the chief’s hand and presented it to his executioner.
When the sun rose the next morning, the remaining Cherokee had scattered. Some went to Arkansas, some went to Mexico, most went to Indian Territory to join members of their tribe who had been removed from Georgia and North Carolina.
As for Chief John Bowles, the Texans mutilated his body and left it lying where he fell. Bowles’s skull remained on the site for several years after scavengers had scattered the rest of his bones. The State of Texas placed a monument on the site in 1936 to commemorate the short bloody conflict. It is believed that John Bowles died within twenty feet of the memorial. Every year, on the Saturday closest to June 16, the American Indian Cultural Society holds a ceremony there remembering the battle.
—JOHN T. BIGGS is the author of six novels and hundreds of short stories and the winner of the Reader’s Digest Grand Prize. His writing is so full of Oklahoma that once you read it, you’ll never get the red dirt stains washed out of your mind. John lives in Oklahoma City with his wife, and they travel extensively throughout the world with their family.
