Ch. 5 of ONE OKIE'S RACIAL RECKONINGS--draft

¬¬ 8 December 2022 Many 19th century spellings & I need to proof it all § I. "Jefferson, Cocke, Indian Treaties, and the Sims Settlers" In 2007 when I went looking for the site of the Sims Settlement (where my ancestor Parish Sims died) I received almost no little help from the authorities in Limestone County, Alabama, and Giles County, Tennessee. Now, happily, there is a two-sided marker for “Sims Settlement” dated 2012 and another for nearby Fort Hampton. The front side of the Sims marker reads: In the fall of 1806 a group of settlers led by William and James Sims, traveled from east Tennessee on flatboats down the Tennessee River and up the Elk River to this area. They landed near Buck Island and spread out into the surrounding countryside, seeking homesites in what they thought was ‘government’ land that would soon be for sale to settlers. The area they settled, covering several square miles, from Elk River to New Garden became known as ‘Sims Settlement.’ The Federal Government had settled the Cherokee claim to the area north of the Tennessee River in 1805, but the Chickasaw Nation maintained a claim to it until 1816. The settlement by the Sims party and others that continued to come to the area was illegal, and they became squatters of ‘intruders’ on Indian land. The growing number of white settlers entering the area alarmed the Chickasaws who threatened war if the U. S. Federal Government didn’t remove them. To avoid bloodshed and to placate the Chickasaws, the government sent troops into this area to remove the settlers. This first removal was in April and May of 1809. Most of the settlers returned as soon as the soldiers left, and so the problem continued. [The reverse of the Sims Marker reads:] In response, the government sent an ultimatum dated August 4, 1810 to the settlers that if they had not left all land west of the Chickasaw boundary by December 15, they would be removed by force. This boundary was surveyed in the fall of 1807, starting at Hobbs Island in Madison County and running diagonally to a point near Maury County in Tennessee. This boundary was the source of all the settlers problems because they were on the wrong side of it. Faced with the grave threat issued by the military, the settlers took the only action within their means. On September 5th 1810, some 450 of them gathered at Sims Settlement and signed a lengthy letter or petition addressed to President James Madison and congress. In it they stated the honesty of their intentions, the strength of their character and made passionate pleas that they be allowed to stay. Even though they described the terrible condition they would be placed in, especially that of the widows and orphans among them, all their pleading fell on deaf ears however. The soldiers who were now stationed at the newly established Fort Hampton set about removing the settlers, burning the cabins and rail fences. This continued until 1817, and in 1818 land in Limestone County was finally offered for sale by the government. My GGGG Grandfather Parish Sims and his brothers James and William led the family party and a few hundred others down from Hawkins County to settle near the southern border of Tennessee. Among family members were sisters Mary married to Benjamin Murrell and Charlotte married to Simon Foy as well as the widowed dowager, Elizabeth Sims. They knew they were settling in what was still claimed as part of west-stretching Georgia, for when Parish fell ill and made his will in November 1807 he located himself “in the State of Georgia and west of the Indian boundary.” He died soon afterwards, in 1807 or early 1808. Widows, as heads of households, signed the letter to Madison described in the historical marker and probably some grown sons signed too, but not minor children such as my GGG Grandfather Absalom Sims, born in 1793, or his brothers (and sisters). Children were not counted, but there would have been many more settlers than there were signers. The settlers brought their young from Hawkins County and some babies were born in the Settlement. They group probably brought some slaves too, who did not sign. Another new marker describes Fort Hampton as having been built in 1810 “to keep settlers, or intruders, off Indian land, as this area was not ceded to the United States by the Chickasaw Indians until 1816. The fort was one of the few ever built to protect Indian land from white settlers.” The President who first expelled the Sims intruders was Thomas Jefferson, who ordered the torching of the houses of my Sims family (including in-laws) and the others and (temporarily) drove some of them away. One of his last messages to the incoming James Madison in early March 1809 was a brusque command (given as if to a new, small, underling lower-case president). Madison was to burn out the settlers, as Jefferson had. To understand what happened to the Sims Settlement we need to confront the contradictory behavior of Thomas Jefferson toward Indians and intruding settlers. First in this book focused on kinfolks I had to check my blood connections not just to the Sims family but to Jefferson. No matter what squalor your ancestors had descended to by the twentieth century, if any of those ancestors had come to Virginia in the 1600s you are apt to be blood kin and otherwise connected to one President after another, even Obama, through his mother. Jefferson is my 6th cousin 7x through the Sparks family. Jefferson’s grandfather Col. Isham Randolph is a cousin of mine through the Simses. Isham’s daughter Jane, kin the same way, is also a cousin through the Tuckers. Peter Jefferson is a cousin through Branches and different Tuckers. Jefferson’s intimate friend and brother-in-law Dabney Carr (1743-1773) is a cousin through Mary Agnes Mackgehee, the spelling later normalized to McGehee. (DNA shows the name was devised to avoid James I’s decree: we are McGregors, marked by James I for annihilation.) Jefferson is a cousin to me directly from the Sims family he burned out, though you have to look back a couple of generations to see his relation to the family in England, then to the colonial Simses. Geni says that Jefferson and Parish Sims are 6th cousins, once removed (1x), but connected another way as Jefferson’s first cousin Peter Field Jefferson’s wife’s brother’s wife’s first cousin. My multiple-cousin Lois Gore says that if you are Southern you are either kin or connected. I mention “connected” in the book not to boast of tenuous kinship but to show just how complex relationships can be. Jefferson and I are cousins in more than half a dozen ways. Besides, Cousin Thomas Jefferson belongs in a book on racial reckonings if anyone does--for the slave-owner who declared that all men were created equal and was either the father or uncle of slaves whom he left in bondage. (The DNA proves a Jefferson, not which Jefferson, but that proof may come from historical documents showing if Thomas Jefferson was the only male of his family around at times children were conceived by his wife’s half-sister, the almost all white Sally Hemmings.) My GGGGG Grandfather, the father of the Sims Settlement sons and daughters, was alive in Hawkins County until 1793 or so--and I give his name as Bartlett Sims without the usual preliminary “James” which I don’t see documented. In drafting this chapter I had to clarify who my GGGG Grandparents were--Parish Sims and Grizell Sims, who became a widow in the Sims Settlement and some years later married William Cocke, the orator-advocate of the State of Franklin and the only man who served in legislatures of four states. The pitfall for genealogists was a kinsman Parrish (double r) Sims and his wife Kiziah Royster, especially the name Kiziah (however spelled), which well-meaning if lazy family historians seized on to supply Grizell’s missing maiden name and which a State of Mississippi hireling mistakenly put on my GGGG Grandmother’s tombstone, which was an addition at the foot of Cocke’s large stone. Don’t trust anything on the Internet or in a book that says Parish’s wife, my GGGG Grandmother, was named Kiziah or was a Royster. The Sims brothers and their families, including sisters and their husbands, among them the Revolutionary soldier Benjamin Murrell (and others of his family), Simon Foy, and John Maples, were living over the mountains already when the proponents such as William Cocke, the life-long Indian-fighter, came close to creating the State of Franklin out of Indian land. In 1795 (the year before statehood) the population of that Southwest Territory (southwest of Virginia and west of North Carolina) was over 77,000, with more than 10,600 slaves and almost 1,000 free Blacks. By 1787 Parish Sims and some of his brothers and brothers-in-law were living near Cocke, whose 640-acre Mulberry Grove, his home site, was on the Holston River. Like Cocke, they were Virginians and North Carolinians in the new Hawkins County, Tennessee. There Cocke, his hopes for the State of Franklin behind him, was a leading politician, called by Joshua W. Caldwell in Bench and Bar of Tennessee “the great orator of his time,” with “no equal” as a popular speaker. Decades later in Columbus, Mississippi, this warlike man (even in the War of 1812) became the benign stepfather of Parish and Grizell’s grown children. The Hawkins County Sims family were Baptists who saw nothing in their religion forbidding their having slaves--slaves they may have sat side-by-side with during religious services. On 3 August 1787 the Big Creek Baptist Church was formed at the home of Thomas Murrell, apparently my Uncle Benjamin’s father. Present were Thomas Murrell, Benjamin Murrell and wife Mary Sims Murrell (a sister of Parish), Martha Murrell, the parents, Bartlett and Elizabeth Sims, with Negro Sal and others. The punctuation is ambiguous, but “Sal” seems to go with the older Sims couple. On 19 August 1787 the Big Creek Baptist Church met again in the house of Thomas Murrell and after divine service proceeded to receive my Aunt Mary Sims Murrell by a personal religious experience. Religious experience trumped race. Parish owned at least a share in one slave, for on 10 October 1826 his children and some in-laws (John B. Sims, my ancestor Absalom Sims, Bartlett Sims (named for his grandfather), Ovid P. Sims, Lucinda Sims Brown, Elizabeth Sims Daugherty, John Daugherty, James Sims, Martin Sims, George Sims, and Mary Sims) took care of very old business: they conveyed to a Limestone County dweller John Slaughter for $120 “their interest in negro Jane and her children.” These slaves were then in the possession of James Hogan of Hawkins County, Tennessee--and conceivably had been loaned or rented to him for two decades. Uncle Benjamin Murrell was a slave-owner who in the Revolution had moved into what became Tennessee. In the spring of 1782 (months after Yorktown) he understood that Indians “were in league with the British, and whenever an opportunity offered, would steal horses and other property from the whites, and massacre our men, women and children.” There in what became Hawkins County he volunteered “to go on a campaign against the settlement of Cherokee Indians, called the Chickamauga Towns.” The shortage of fighting men meant that they did not engage Cherokees in battle but merely ranged about, on the alert, for three months. Murrell knew the region better than his in-laws did, but all of them would have known the attempts by William Cocke and John Sevier to establish a state named Franklin. Cocke had fought Indians as early as 1774 in Lord Dunmore’s war when the John Roberts family was massacred. Later, to name one incident, he arranged the surrender of Thicketty Fort in South Carolina in July 1780 and may have been with Sever when he led the Over-Mountain men who marched down North Carolina, even if he was somewhere else on the defeat of Patrick Ferguson at King’s Mountain on 7 October. Any new postwar arrivals from Virginia were surrounded by famous Revolutionary heroes, and Murrell as a youth had fought alongside some of them. The Sims family knew all the candidates on 8 March 1790 when William Cocke, John Sevier, and John Rhea stood to represent the Western District of North Carolina (as Hawkins County still was)--voters such as Bartlett Sims and his sons James, John, Matthew, and Parish, as well as his son-in-law Benjamin Murrell and other kinfolks. The Sims men had become Over-Mountain men in their attitudes. That meant that they despised and defied any treaty that limited white access to land occupied or claimed by Indians. After all, what had the Over-Mountain men and southwestern Virginia and northwestern North Carolina men done for many months after the Battle of Moore’s Creek Bridge early in 1776? Why, they had taken advantage of the lull of Revolutionary duties to wage two seasons of war destroying Cherokee towns. In the summer of 1780 Over-Mountain men took Patrick Ferguson’s insults to their masculinity personally and organized long enough to ride down to crush him at King’s Mountain, but that was a big-scale version of their established practice of banding together to kill Indians and track down and hang Tories who had raided their houses. These were militia men, not Continental soldiers who had been herded and bossed around by officers. In 1792 after Cherokees murdered several whites, William Cocke and Alexander Outlaw led 200 State of Franklin whites to battle. They killed the two Indians who had done the most recent murders and forced “The Tassel” and “Hanging Maw” to accept the Treaty of Coyatee. Samuel Coles Williams in History of the Lost State of Franklin says that no act of the State of Franklin is less creditable than this Treaty, and continues: “The white settlements at the time had passed the line established by the treaty of Dumplin Creek [1785] and it was determined that all the Cherokee lands north of the Little Tennessee river should opened to settlement, the treaty of Hopewell to the contrary notwithstanding. Instead of submitting to be removed from that region, the settlers advanced to possess more of it.” The phrasing reveals all: “the treaty of Hopewell to the contrary notwithstanding.” From Mulberry Grove, on 8 September 1792 Cocke, who two or three decades later became my step GGGG grandfather, wrote a letter about treaties which was printed in the Knoxville Gazette, quoted here from the reprint in the Philadelphia Dunlap’s American Advertiser 2 November 1792: “The idea of forming treaties and purchasing peace of the Cherokee Indians, is as absurd to me as the fabulous story of the goat treating with the wolf, for the security of her kids, and I blush to think that the policy of the Indians has so far exceeded that of the enlightened nation in which I live; but it may be, that the great wisdom of our councils have been employed on objects more interesting. I shall not pretend to say that the citizens of Philadelphia have no regard for the inhabitants west of the Appalachian mountains, but I know that things at a distance are often viewed as indifferent, and must think it would be difficult to make a citizen of the western country believe that if Philadelphia was attacked by an enemy that was known to be faithless as the Cherokee Indians, that the inhabitants of the city would think it any protection to them to give such an enemy guns, cloath[e]s, and ammunition.” Cocke concluded: “I do not scruple to say, that the best way to obtain a firm and lasting peace, is to make a sudden, indiscriminate, well directed attack on our enemies--I mean the Cherokee Indians. If we attack the upper towns, they will find that we are determined no longer to stand by as idle spectators, and see our dearest friends and nearest relations murdered, scalped, taken captives, burnt, and butchered by the barbarous hands of the provoked and unrelenting savages.” Philadelphians, or New Yorkers, or even Virginians who had long been away from the newly claimed Indian lands, such as Thomas Jefferson (in Paris 1784-1789), seemed to have “little regard for the inhabitants west of the Appalachian mountains.” Easterners, including Virginians like Jefferson did not understand the reality of life on the frontier. The Cherokee Hanging Maw responded by offering Tennessee printers two pounds of beaver skins to put his own “Talk upon paper, like William Cocke’s.” He asked, “What have you to talk about treaties. You know nothing about them--I have heard your Talks before--they are all like nothing. . . . The Great Man above made us all of the same clay, both red and white people, and gave to some the hearts of men, and to others the hearts of squaws. Yours is of the latter sort, and you would not talk such hard Talks, and say all the Cherokees must be killed, because some of them are bad men, and go to war.” Cocke’s attitude toward Indian lands and treaties with Indians was the normal one for Over-Mountain men. It was not as subtle as Jefferson’s. On 18 January 1803 Cousin Thomas delivered a confidential message to Congress on Indian Policy in which he laid out the way to dispossess Indian Tribes of their territories. That of course had to be done “to provide an extension of territory which the rapid increase of our numbers will call for.” He would encourage Indians to give up hunting and raise stock and perform agriculture instead, as well as make little items that whites might buy. Once the Indians did not need the vast forests, whites could cut down the trees and cultivate the land. Jefferson’s notion of proper treaties with Indians was that any new treaty would secure great tracts of land (say, what became Kentucky) which could be opened ultimately (that is, almost immediately) to the multiplying sons and daughters of Virginians and Carolinians. Jefferson’s long time wishful if not wistful argument was that red men should become small farmers rather than hunters. They should give up their leagues and leagues of hunting grounds and instead cultivate small plots of land and perhaps engage in the pursuits “household manufacture,” not quite making blankets or arrowheads for nonexistent tourists but along that order, cunning little baskets, perhaps. The Indians, Jefferson foresaw, would not make enough from their manufactures to pay for what they bought. They would be in debt, and whites would “be glad to see the good & influential individuals among them run in debt, because we observe that when these debts get beyond what the individuals can pay, they become willing to lop th[em off] by a cession of lands.” Get the Indians to give up hunting grounds, let their incompetence at agriculture or household manufactures or economic fluctuations drive them into debt, which could be paid off only by leaving their little farms and going farther west. Always in Jefferson’s mind was his scheme of driving Indians into debt once they had followed his plan to try small-scale crafts as well as farming. Jefferson succeeded in convincing some that the "savages" had indeed embraced "the comforts of civilization," making "considerable progress in agriculture and domestic manufactures." As evidence, the National Intelligencer (as reprinted in the Richmond Argus of 29 January 1805) cited "several specimens of cloth of a good substantial texture made by Cherokee squaws, which were sent to Mr. Cocke, a Senator from Tennessee, as an evidence of the progress of their improvement, as well as of their regard for a friend and benefactor"--William Cocke. In the address to Congress late in 1805 Jefferson congratulated himself: “They,” the Indians, “are becoming sensible that the earth yields subsistence with less labour than the forest.” This was the stage before their going into debt. And again he had gained a great deal of land. The Philadelphia Aurora on 29 April 1806 looked back a little: “The several Indian treaties entered into during the last year, have been ratified; by which the United States, and the states, of Georgia and Tennessee, have obtained extensive relinquishments of Indian title. Bills making appropriations for carrying them into effect are now under consideration.” For his part, the hero of King’s Mountain, Tennessee Governor John Sevier in 1806 (printed 8 September in the Washington National Intelligencer) was not subtle or cunning the way the President was. While addressing the state senators and representatives Sever focused on “the situation and circumstances of the people” (including the Sims family) “settled on the south sides of French Broad and Holston, and west of Big Pigeon rivers.” These, he said, “are respectable and worthy inhabitants, who have suffered by Indian depredations in a manner too deplorable to relate--they are justly deserving the patronage and indulgence of a liberal and patriotic legislature; and I entertain every hope that the paternal care of the assembly will be tenderly exercised towards such a deserving and worthy class of citizens.” Sevier identified with these new, younger Over Mountain settlers who were to be treasured, not harassed by the United States or Tennessee. Sevier announced the acquisition of lands: “On the north side of the Tennessee large portions of the country claimed by the Cherokee and Chickasaw Indians have been obtained, insomuch that the same will afford considerable settlements, and encourage great emigration into the state.” Furthermore, the national government had ceded land to the state which “inevitably in the course of no distant period” will create a healthier economy. Besides the inhabitants near the rivers he had mentioned, he cited “other occupants and improvers of vacant lands” and suggested “the propriety of their being indulged with a preference of securing . . . their improvements, and thereby prevent persons actuated by avarice and speculation from depriving the poor of their labor.” This was the man who had championed immigration from Virginia and North Carolina from the years of the Revolution if not before. His stance contrasts to Jefferson’s later contemptuous treatment of the Sims settlers just over the Tennessee line in what became Alabama. In 1803, already, by purchasing the vast undefined western stretches of Louisiana from France, Jefferson had begun encouraging Cherokees and then other tribes to cross over into what became Arkansas, and beyond. The Indians who had taken his advice to farm their plots proved to be very annoying to white agents a few years later when whites wanted to expedite the full removal of Indians across the Mississippi. The “Meigs Family History and Genealogy” site tells how bewildered the Cherokees were: “By 1811 nearly two thousand members of the Cherokee tribe had been moved. It should be noted that the majority of the Indians were opposed to the removal. They desired to remain in the land of their birth and could not understand why a few years before the government had sent them plows and hoes saying that it was not good for them to hunt, but they should cultivate the earth. Now they were being told that there was good hunting on the new land and if they would go, they would receive rifles to hunt with.” Jefferson had been making the best deals he could, for the time, but he did not foresee stubborn Chickasaw or Cherokee small farmers as becoming a problem. On white settlers Jefferson was of two minds. He condoned the intrusion by William Wofford into a great hunk of Indian land in northern Georgia. Wofford (often Wafford) is a distant cousin of mine through the Hills and Clarkes; he is also a distant cousin of Jefferson’s through the Willoughby family and finally the Randolphs, and a much closer connection through the Bollings to the Randolphs, whether Jefferson knew of any such relation or connection to Wofford or not. Joseph Tattnall, Jr., wrote to a sympathetic Jefferson on 20 July 1802 from Louisville, Georgia: “The peculiar and distressing situation of a number of valuable Citizens, who were by the running of the dividing line between the Indians and this State in 1798, left out of the ordinary jurisdictional limits, induces me to solicit that the benevolent attention of the Chief Magistrate of the Union may be directed to their relief. . . . Colo. Wafford and about five hundred other white Inhabitants were considered as having settled beyond the line and consequently on ground the property of the Cherokee nation of Indians, altho’ at the time of making their establishment it was the general belief they were within the limits—These persons therefore had not the least idea of either violating the Indian right or the law of the United States, but on the contrary were much astonished to find the line of demarkation such as was delineated.” So, Tattnall argued, the dividing line was run making the Wafford group outside the bounds they thought they knew, the Indians were not complaining about them, and to prevent the suffering of the squatters by depriving them of the products of their labor there should be a new treaty giving them the “spot of Territory” they were on. Jefferson looked kindly on the Wafford petition and allowed them to remain on what might technically have been Cherokee land. In the matter of torching the Sims settlement, was Jefferson displaying rigorous principle toward honoring treaties with Indians or defending an erratic earlier decision? or displaying only partially explicable bad blood? “Pique”? Is pique ever displayed by a man of power? The stretch of territory occupied by the Wafford Settlement was vast enough and significant enough to attract national concern, for much depended on its fate. Yet “small” is what John Milledge, the Governor of Kentucky, strategically called it in his report to the state legislature on 7 November 1803 (as printed in the 9 December 1803 Washington National Intelligencer). Milledge considered Wafford’s example as of great interest to Kentuckians: “It appears that the removal of the people, who were, by the line run in 1798, thrown on Indian land, and who from the settlement called Wafford’s, is required by the Indians, before they will consent to the opening of the road, so desirable, and so much wished for by this state. For a length of time, these Indians have discovered a stubborn unwillingness to sell, or leave, that small spot of country whereon those unfortunate people reside, every effort having in vain been made by the general government to obtain it. In order, therefore, to secure the important object of the road, to preserve the peace of the general government, and to prevent the military force of the nation being drawn out against them, it may be proper, and I recommend to appoint commissioners to visit the citizens alluded to, and use such measures as may be expedient, to induce them to remove within the temporary line. In conformity to the act of the legislature, pointing out a mode for adjusting the claims of the citizens of this state against the Creek Indians, the comptroller general has been, for some time, engaged in making out a schedule of those claims, which will be ready to be laid before you previous to your adjournment.” The Governor reminded his audience that the treaty of Colerain required a governor of Georgia to deliver up runaway negroes and other property to the legal owners. How much better if white claims to land itself could have the force of Kentucky authorities! The difficulty for the whites was always those Indians who manifested “a stubborn unwillingness to sell, or leave” any spot of country that whites had already settled on or wanted to settle on. As it was, boundaries were complex, defined on the ground by references surveying chain lengths between one tree and another. Here is Jefferson in 1804: Know ye, that the undersigned commissioners plenipotentiary of the United States of America . . . and the whole Choctaw nation . . . Do hereby establish in conformity to the convention of Fort Confederation, for the line of demarkation . . . the following metes and bounds, viz. beginning in the channel of the Hatchee Comersa or Wax River, at the point where the line of limits between the United States and Spain, crosseth the same, thence . . . to the confluence of the Chickasaw, Hay, and Buck-ha-tannes rivers . . . thence up the said creek to a pine tree, standing on the left bank of the same and blazed on two of its sides . . . . From this tree we find the following bearings and distances . . . . South fifty four degrees thirty minutes West, one chain one link a Black Gum; North thirty nine degrees East, one chain, seventy five links, a Water Oak. . . . And we the said commissioners Plenipotentiary . . . do recognize, and acknowledge, the same to be the boundary, which shall separate and, distinguish the land ceded to the United States between the Tumbigby, Mobile, and Pascagola rivers, from that which has not been ceded by the said Choctaw nation. That is from the 28 January 1804 Philadelphia Aurora. Here from 22 May 1807 is the Secretary of War Henry Dearborn on land the Cherokees are giving up: . . . to all that tract of country which lies to the northward of the river Tennessee and westward of a line to be run from the upper part of the Chickasaw Old Fields, at the upper point of an Island, called Chickasaw Island, on said river, to the most easterly head waters of that branch of said Tennessee river called Duck River, excepting the two following described tracts, viz. one tract bounds [ck] is southerly on the said Tennessee river, at a place called the Muscle Shoals, westerly by a creek called Te Kee, ta, no-eh, or Cyprus Creek, and easterly by Cu[check], Ice, or Elk river or creek, and northerly by a line to be drawn from a point on said Elk river ten miles on a direct line from its mouth or junction with the Tennessee river to a point on the said Cyprus Creek, ten miles on a direct line from its junction with the Tennessee river; The other tract is to be two miles in . . . . Here from 29 March 1808 is Jefferson reviewing how the Cherokees lost the Elk River: “When the convention of the 7th of January, 1806, was entered into with the Cherokees, for the purchase of certain lands, it was believed by both parties that the eastern limit, when run in the direction therein prescribed, would have included all the waters of Elk river: on proceeding to run that line, however, it was found to omit a considerable extent of those waters, on which were already settled about two hundred families. The Cherokees readily consented, for a moderate compensation, that the line should be so run as to include all the waters of that river; our Commissioners accordingly entered into an explanatory convention for that purpose, which I now lay before the Senate for consideration, whether they will advise and consent to its ratification. A letter from one of the Commissioners, now also enclosed, will more fully explain the circumstances which led to it . . . .” No wonder that the eager Simses and other Over-Mountain families in 1807 thought they had an opportunity to settle far to the southwest, in what was still western Georgia. II. Cousin Thomas in the White House then Monticello; the Widows Sims Frontier Cabins then Huts roofed by great sheets of bark from the old growth trees--Barksville In late 1801 it became “lawful for the military force of the United States to apprehend every person who shall or may be found in the Indian country over and beyond the said boundary line between the United States and the said Indian tribes” and to take them to one of the three “next adjoining states or districts.” Yet soldiers were to treat the settlers “with all the humanity which the circumstances will possibly permit,” and would be punished for “maltreating” a settler. This was still the law when John Smith wrote to Thomas Jefferson on 22 February 1809, just before he went home to Monticello: “On a minute examination of the records in the War Office, it does not appear that any order for the removal of intruders, either from United States or Indian land, has been given by the Secretary of War since the 24th. Feby. 1808. On that day he ordered Capt. Boote, then commanding at Ocmulgee Old fields, to remove intruders from the Cherokee lands, on the frontiers of Georgia, as soon as Col. Meigs should attend and point out the line.—I have the honor of enclosing the press copy of the letter to Colonel Meigs requiring him to give notice to the intruders on the Cherokee and Chickasaw lands, dated on the 29th.Oct. last.” There were complaints from Indians just below the Tennessee border, for on 22 February 1809 the Natchez Weekly Democrat reprinted this from a Nashville Paper: A gentleman of respectability, who arrived in town a few days since, from the Chickesaw [sic] Bluffs, says that when he passed Colbert’s Ferry on the Tennessee river, he saw a party of armed Chickesaws, in number 32, who were on their way to make war upon the settlement, at the lower end of the Muccel Shoals--Geo. Colbert appeared to be much exasperated against the government of the U. States, for not having removed those settlers long since, in consequence of the several remonstrances of his nation--with much difficulty the gentleman above alluded to, prevailed on Colbert to send his warriors home and wait the result of another application to the president of the U. States to redress the grievance of which the Chickesaws complain--They claim the lands which it is understood the U. States agreed to cede to Doublehead and some other Chickesaws, so soon as the Chickesaw claim could be extinguished. Should the U. States not do something in this business soon, it is much feared that the Chickesaws will undertake to redress their grievances themselves. Furious at leaving office with such business unsettled, Jefferson was enraged by whatever trouble the white settlement around the Elk was causing. Why couldn’t the Sims settlers and all the others around them have managed their intrusion more quietly? Was this Presidential petulance? I think again of the word “pique.” Or had frustration pushed Jefferson into something nearer malevolence? Jefferson in March 1809--presumably the days before James Madison became President on 4 March--wrote this urgent memo on the intruders in Tennessee and Mississippi territory. “Wafford’s settlement” was to be protected. His focus was on the western problem: “Information having been received in October last that many intruders had settled on the lands of the Cherokees & Chickasaws, the letter from Genl Dearborne to Colo [Return J.] Meigs was written to have them ordered off, & to inform them they would be removed by military force in the spring if still on the lands, these orders still remain to be given, & they should go to the officer commanding at Highwassee. A very discreet officer should be selected. On the Cherokee lands, Wafford’s settlement should not be disturbed as the Indians themselves expect to arrange that with us, & the exchange for lands beyond the Misipii will furnish a good opportunity for the lands of the Chickasaws all should be removed except those settled on Doublehead’s reserve under titles from him; & they should be notified that those lands having been claimed by the Chickasaws as well as the Cherokees, purchased the Cherokee right with the exception of Doublehead’s reserve, which we did not guarantee to him, but left it as it stood under the claims of both nations; that consequently they are not under our protection that whenever we purchase the Chickasaw right, all their titles under Doublehead will become void; as our laws do not permit individuals to purchase lands from the Indians: that they should therefore look out for themselves in time.” The Internet for Giles on “Intruders” gives a realistic view of what those Americans may have thought: “Some or all of these settlers may have failed to understand the complexities of the treaties (as was later claimed by many), confused by James Bright's poorly-executed survey in 1806-1807, which resulted in both a Congressional Reservation line that was too far to the east and a Tennessee-Alabama land boundary too far to the north.” The section on “A Brief Summary of Giles' Earliest Settlements and Historical Land Boundaries” takes sides: “Irrespective of whether the settlers were truthful in their claims of ignorance as to their legal status, they also had no reason to believe that they would not ultimately be supported by the federal government. American settlers, from early Colonial times right into the 20th [19th? Check] century (remember the Sooners!), were often several steps ahead of the government treaty negotiators, with land cessions often being "after the fact." Both civil and military government had always tended to turn a blind eye toward illegal white settlements in the colonies -- particularly subsequent to the Indian support of the British during the Revolutionary War.” In his will on the Elk River on 26 November 1807 my GGGG Grandfather Parish Sims located himself, as I quoted earlier, “in the State of Georgia and west of the Indian boundary.” Georgia still claimed the Mississippi as her true western boundary, and neither Alabama nor Mississippi was yet a territory. In fact, for several more years the word “Alabama” applied only to the river of that name. Where were the roadside markers? Where were the interstate highways? Grandpa Sims was, he knew, somewhere “west of the Indian boundary.” As soon as he became President James Madison ordered Col. Return J. Meigs, Indian agent at Hiwawassee (says the Giles County, Tennessee article, Part II of II) to expel the “Chickasaw land squatters.” On 13 April Meigs promised to leave soon with his party (30 men and an officer or two). The Sims Settlement area was nearly 200 miles away, and lacked a good road. On 27 May he rounded up 93 squatters for a total of 166. Meigs was far from sanguine about his task, for on 25 June 1809 he wrote to James Robertson: "You have already been informed that every effort in favor of the settlers on the Chickasaw lands proved abortive. I much regret to be obliged to compel them to remove because they are not of the general character of intruders. They were sensible that all that could be done was done and they cheerfully complyed with the requisition to remove. . . . I removed 201 families off the Chickasaw lands, and 83 families off the Cherokee lands--not less than 1,700, or 1800 souls. These people bear the appellation of intruders but they are Americans. Our riches and our strength are derived from our citizens; in our new country every man is an acquisition--we ought not to lose a single man for the want of land to work on." Meigs brushed past the pain he was inflicting. The settlers “cheerfully” left their homes and lands and treked joyfully north in benign weather to the perfectly identified 35th parallel and Tennessee soil. There followed a petition from the Sims Settlers. PETITION TO THE PRESIDENT AND CONGRESS BY BY INTRUDERS ON CHICKASAW LANDS Mississippi Territory, Elk River, Sims'es Settlement September 5th 1810-- To his Excellency James Maddison President of the United States of america and the honourable Congress assembled: We your petitioners humbly sheweth that a great many of your fellow citizens have unfortunately settled on what is now called chickasaw land- which has led us into difficultys that tongue cannot express if the orders from the ware department are executed in removeing us off of said land. However in a government like ours founded on the will of the people we have reason to hope and expect that we shall be treated with as much lenity as the duty you owe to Justice will permit. We therefore wish, Without the shade or colour of falsehood, to leve to your consideration the main object of our setling of this country In the first Place, we understood that all the land on the north side of tennessee river was purchased of the Indians which was certainly the Case, and further we understood that this was congress land as we call it and by paying of two Dollars per acre we should obtain An undoubted title to our lands and avoide the endless law suits that arise in our neighboring states in the landed property under these and many other impressions of minde that appeared inviteing to us to setle here a great many of us solde our possessions and Came and settled here in the winter and spring of 1807 without any knoledg or intention of violating the laws of government or Infringing on the right of another nation and we remained in this peacefull situation untill the fall of 1807 when General Robertson Came on runing the chickasaw boundary line and he informed us that, though the cherokees had sold this land, yet the chickasaws held a clame to it as their right. And now as booth nations set up a clame to this land and Government haveing extingushed the cherokee clame; and we who are well acquainted with the boundarys of this country do think in Justice that the cherokees had undoubtedly the best right to this land we could state our reasons for thinking so, in many cases, but we shall only refurr you to one particular, that is when Zacheriah Cocks made a purchase of parte of this country and came in order to settle it he landed on an island in the Mussell Shoals, and was making preparations to ingarrison himself but when the cherokees Understood his intentions they got themselves together and sent in messingers to him telling him if he did not desist and remove his men out of their country they would certainly imbody themselves and cut him off. And Cocks took the alarme And left the Island in the night. And if the cherokees had not defended this country at that time it may be persumed that it would have been taken from the chickasaws without asking of them anything about their right to it. For the cherokees do say that they have held an antiant clame to it which they never lost by sword or treaty untill extinguished by government. And should this be the case and appeare to your satisfaction that the cherokees had at least as good a right as the chickasaw and you haveing that right invested in you--and you are allso willing to pay the chickasaw for their clame and they refuse to sell it where then can there remain a single doubt In the publick Minde of doing the chickasaws any kind of unjuistice in makeing use of the cherokee clame and saying: if they will not take a reasonable price for their clame we will not remove our fellow citizens off which will bring many women and children to a state of starvation mearly to gratify a heathan nation Who have no better right to this land than we have ourselves. And they have by estemation nearly 100000 acres of land to each man Of their nation and of no more use to government or society than to saunter about upon like so many wolves or bares whilst they who would be a supporte to government and Improve the country must be forsed even to rent poore stony ridges to make a support to rase their famelies on whist there is fine fertile countrys lying uncultivated and we must be debared even from injoying a small Corner of this land but we look to you the boddy of government as a friendly father to us and believe it compleatley within your power Whilst you are administering Justice between us and the chickasaws to say with the greatest propriety that we have once purchased this land and we will not remove our fellow citizens off but let them remain as tennants at will untill the chickasaws may feell a disposition to sell us their clame therefore we your humble petitioners wish you to take our standing duely into consideration and not say they are a set of dishoneste people who have fled from the lawes of their country and it is no matter what is done with them, for we can support our carractors to be other ways and it is our wish and desire to protect and supporte our own native Government we must informe you that in the settling of this country men was obliged to expose themselves very much and the Climate not helthy a number of respectable men have deceased and left their widows with families Of alphan [orphan] children to rase in the best way they can. One of the respectable men who had died and left their widows and children behind in the settlement was of course the brother of James and William Sims, my Great Great Great Great Grandfather Parish Sims. And you might allmost as well send the sword amongst us as the fammin the time being short that our orders permits us to stay on we wish you to send us an answer to our petition as soon as posable and, for heavens Sake Pause to think what is to become of these poore alphan families who have more need of the help of some friendly parish than to have the strictest orders executed on them who has not a friend in this unfeeling world that is able to asist them Either in geting off of said land or supporting when they are off we are certain in our own minds that if you could have A true representation of our carractor the industry we have made. and the purity of our intentions in settling here together with the justice of our cause you would say in the name of God let them stay on and eat their well earned bread. Perhaps our number may be fare more than you are apprised of from the best calculation that we can make there is Exclusive of Doubleheads reserv 2250 souls on what is called chickasaw land and all of us could live tollerabie comfortable if we Could remain on our improvements but the distance is so great if we are removed off that we cannot take our produce with us and a great many not in a circumstance to purchase more will in consequence of this be brought to a deplorable situation We shall therefore conclude in hopes that on a due consideration we shall find favour in the sight of your most honourable Body which will in duty binde your petitioners to ever Pray &c. William and James were the first signers. Others in the family who signed were Benjamin Murrell, Simon Foy, Parish's widow Grizell Sims, and old Bartlett Sims's widow, Elizabeth Sims. States, [need to condense this petition to Madison and make clear where Smith’s letter starts] need to handle signatories Your friend and fellow citizen, ALEX. SMITH. Col. Rifle Regt. Oct. 28th,1810. residing on the tracts called Double-head’s, and Melton’s reserves,” addressing them as “fellow citizens”: You have been informed that the president of the United States has ordered that the Indian lands be cleared of all settlers. . . . You are therefore notified to remove from the Indian lands, (in which description is included the tracts called Double-head’s and Melton’s reserves,) before the expiration of the month of November. The allowance of time is deemed reasonable to enable you to remove with your effects, and crop of the present year. It is hoped. . . . In 1794 the President Washington issued a proclamation describing the Chickasaw boundary line to be “from the most eastern waters of Elk, thence to the Tennessee at an old field, where a part of the Chickasaws formerly lived: this line is to be run so as to include all the waters of Elk river,” and forbidding all persons to purchase, accept, agree, or treat for, with the Indians, directly or indirectly, the title or acceptance of any land held by them. . . . Nevertheless, have hope. If you have rights they will be respected. Your government distinguished for its fidelity, even to the weakest Indian tribe will not be unjust to those who prove themselves faithful citizens. On 6 November 1810 the American citizens on “Doublehead’s Reserve” responded the 28 October message of “Col. Smith commanding at Fort Hampton” with a long message of which this “extract” was printed on 1 December 1810 Wilson’s Knoxville Gazette. What is here foreseen happened to the Sims settlers: The greater part of our crops of every description are yet in the fields; our flocks wandering in the woods, our debts unliquidated and uncollected; your fellow citizens laboring under sickness. There is not one family out of twenty, we will venture to say, is exempt from this affliction,---- Few waggons in the reserve for the removal of citizens; few boats to be got, and none yet prepared, from the recentness of the order to affect the same. Our situation is truly distressing. If there is no mitigation of the orders, in addition to our calamities and sacrifices, we must inevitably lose the labors of the present year which are our principal dependance for support for our families. We shall be turned a drift into the wide world, to seek a scanty maintenance for ourselves, wives and little children. To what extremity, and where the storms of fate will drive us, the God of heaven knows. The foxes have holes, the fowls of the air have nests, but we have not where to lay our heads. To hear the child cry for bread and the parent not to have wherewithal to supply the calls of nature, must be the situation to many of your fellow citizens without an extention of the orders. . . . After receiving this plea Col. Smith gave orders at Fort Hampton on 24 December 1810, as published in Wilson’s Knoxville Gazette, 2 February 1811 (spellings as in Gazette): You will be pleased to select from each company at this post-noncommissioned officers and---Soldiers, & proceed on---next, to remove the intruders on the Indian lands west of Elk river. You have under you Lieut._____ _______ & _________ the contractors agent will attend you with the necessary supplies of provisions. The carriages and camp equipage will be in readiness. You will remove the intruders in a manner as favorable to their persons and property as is compatible with the execution of this order; and with all the lenity and humanity which may be consistant with a full execution of the instructions of the government. You will not take any of them into custody, even the refractory; but leave them at liberty to go forward and compel them to go. To widows, orphans, the sick and the destitute, you will extend all necessary aid in their removal; and be governed by considerations of clemancy [sic] and humanity as occasion may require. But you will make the removal effectual. With that intent you will burn all cabins and fences of the settlers. The farm made by Double head in his lifetime you will spare; removing the white settle[r]s you may find thereon, Indians are not to be removed: but their temporary possession cannot save improvements made by settlers. . . . You go under the orders of the President of the United States to fulfil his obligations to see that the laws are faithfully executed. You are to consider all those who would prevent you, as “enemies and opposers of the United States.” You will do your utmost to defeat them; nor will you yield until overpowered by force of arms. . . . Smith feared the settlers would overwhelm his troops: “We have received orders and are bound to execute them.” The men were not to surrender: “before troops can be made prisoners, their arms must be taken from them.” ] James McCallum in his A Brief Sketch of the Settlement and Early History of Giles County Tennessee says the soldiers from Fort Hampton “were sent out in the month of June to drive all the settlers off the Indian land as it was called, although some of the settlers had grants for their land. They acted very rascally; cut down the corn with large butcher knives, threw down and burned fences and houses and forced the settlers back over the line. In some localities the settlers soon returned, and the villainous work of removal and destruction of improvements as repeated. This was a terrible calamity on the settlers who had struggled against so many difficulties to get places on which to live. In the prospect of r[a]ising corn for their bread, the most of those driven off went back over the line, and built huts and camps on the land of any one who would permit them to do so. They had to do this or anything to shelter their families until they could do better. . . . On the Alabama side the Reduses and Simmses and those who settled Simms’ Settlement, were driven off and they went back over the line and built camps and shanties which they covered with bark which they stripped from the trees like tan bark. A considerable number of these camps were together, and the place was called Barksville for a long time. I saw the camps with the bark covers on them when a boy.” The Widows Sims, Elizabeth and Grizell, survived, thanks to Parish’s brothers, sons, and brothers-in-law, and no one has found where and how they lived in the next years. So far, I have failed to learn more about Grizell's remarriage, even from knowledgeable Cocke descendants. Every Virginian had known every other Virginian in Hawkins County, so it is not astonishing that the next we know of Grizell is that she is the second wife of the long-widowed William Cocke, the marriage occurring sometime in the 1810s. Did he come to Barksville and recognize her and her brothers-in-law? Jefferson ought to have foreseen that any new war with England would deprive the country of the services of the Sims settlers south of the Tennessee line. The War of 1812, in fact, brought new opportunity to William Cocke, the old Indian-fighter. In a letter from East Florida near Camp Pinkney on 24 February 1813 Cocke described himself to President James Monroe not so much an Indian fighter as an Indian slaughterer: SIR, In my last I promised to advise you of the result of the Volinteer Expedition from East Tennessee United with the troops of the United States that march against the Semenolia Indians[--] after a march of near Seven hundred miles with out being retarded by Ice Snow hammocks or Marshes which afforded the Enemy great Oppertunities for advantague we arrived at Paynes Town in the Lochway Settlements with Out Oppersetion on the 8th instant and on the ninth killd two Indians and took Seven Indians Prisonors & one negro on the tenth we proceeded towards Bow leggs Towns and on Our march was attacted near those towns by a large Party of Indians that had Secreted themselves in a thick Hammock, it is astonishing that we receaved no Injury by this fire but geting Major Stevengs wounded[--] his wound is a deep flesh wound but by no means dangerous we had four others Slightly wounded in the Combat and the brave Lieutenant John M Smith lost his life near the end of the action he faught Bravely and died gloriously the Volinteers behaved nobly I am in my Sixty third year but have born the fateagues of the Campaign with out inconveniance in short it has been a feast to me to See the young men of my Country Vie with each Other who Should excell in Noble deeds And to find my Self at least able to perform all the duties of a Soldiar with my children by my Side I think we have Killd about twenty of the Enemy wounded many & on the Second days fighting we drove them a considerable distance into the hammock march to thier town & on the thirteenth beeing the third day of Combat we drove them from the Swamp in every direction we burnt three hundred & Eighty Six houses took about five hundred head of Cattle & horses fifteen hundred bushels of corn & about two thousand deer Skins too much praise Cannot be Given to Colo Williams & the brave men that composed his Core Colo Smith & the regulars have done thier duty I need not now tell you, Mr Maddisson or any of my friends that my best wishes and faithfull indeavours to Serve my Country Cannot be diminished by time or Circumstances yours Sincearly WM COCKE On 28 January 1814, Andrew Jackson wrote to William Cocke: “The patriotism which brought you into the field at your advanced age, which prompted you on with me to face the enemy in the late excursion to the Tallapoose river; the example of order, and your admonition to strict subordination throughout the lines; and, lastly the bravery you displayed in the battle of Enotochopeo, by re-crossing the creek, entering the pursuit and exposing your person, and thereby saving the life of lieutenant Moss, and killing the Indian, entitle you to the thanks of your general and the approbation of your country.” (Philadelphia Aurora 5 May 1814) On 28 January 1814 from Fort Strother William Cocke wrote to Thomas Jefferson : In my last I promisd to advise you of the Occurences that might take place in the Southern expedition against the hostile Creeks on the 22nd Instant we had two engagements near the E Muckfaw & another on the 24th at the hilabies or Enochepoo The brave Genl Jackson has Added new laurels to his former victories; we have fought we have bled we have Conquereed Genl Coffee has covered him Self with Glory his fame is made Rich with his Blood he is wounded Severely but not dangerously. Colo Carrol the intripid the brave Carrol by his great Example gave Courage to all who were near him, none Could excell that valuable1 officer he is worthy of his Countrys first love & highest gratitude, The enemy have been Confounded and defeated; in all their attacks but not with out the loss of Some of the best Blood that ever annimated human nature, Our loss in feild is 22 and double that number wounded among the Slain we have to lament Magr Donnelson Aid to Genl Coffee & the Brave Capt Hill, The enemy Cannot have lost less than one hundred & eighty or perhaps two hundred killed they have not been able to Carry off a Single Scalp—The Cherokees have distinguished them Selves & Some of the friendly Creeks have done well, Colo Richard Brown, Capt John thompson fought Bravely & the Son of the old path Killer Known by the name of the Bear Meat with ten of his Companions fought by My Side—in the last engagement & it is nothing more than Justice due them for Me to Say that they Rendered essensial, among them that were near me I have to lament the death of Mr Thomas Smith Son of Capt Samuel Smith of Maury County a youth not more than Eighteen years of age he fought Bravely and died gloriously Capt William Hamilton of East Tennessee who joind the artillery Company is no more he fought like a heroe and expireed for his Country Capt Leml Childress assistant Quarter Master was wounded early in the action he Seemd to be in Spireed with fresh ardor from the Blood that trickled down his Cheeks, Joshua Harskel deserves the highest applause for his gallant Conduct on this trying occation Much praise is Said to be due to Magr Boid Capt Carr & Lieut Long Capt Geo. W Mar and my Nephew Mr James Cocke was wounded on the evening of the 22nd Capt Marr distinguished him Self and so did the brave men under his Command he set them an example worthy of him Self and they Retaliated tenfold for the blood that they lost the artillery Company Sustaind the heaviest Shock they had to Contend with the Strong force of the enemy Bird Evans of that Company was killed . . . . I feel my self incompetent to do Justice to many Brave and valuable men & officers but Merit has its best Reward in the pleasure that is felt in Concious rectitude I am you well know your old and Sure friend. In the light of these battles in the War of 1812 Jefferson’s determination to destroy the Sims Settlement looks more and more short-sighted. They could have used all the men. Cocke, the great post-Revolutionary orator, now a bloody old warrior, had been appointed by Madison in 1814 as agent to the Chickasaw Indians. Sometime late in this period he had become the husband of Grizell Sims and ensconced himself with her in what he called “a great pile of logs” overlooking the Tumbigbee in the new town of Columbus, Mississippi. This was a two story dogtrot cross-hall house befitting the great orator and fighter. Cocke’s own children were independent and living far away, but he treated Grizell’s grown children as his own, and saw them well placed in the new town. In 1821 Bartlett Sims (named for his grandfather) became the first sheriff of Monroe County, Mississippi. By 1830 he owned six slaves. Martin became an interpreter at the Mayhew Mission to the Choctaws. My GGG Grandfather Absalom went across the Tumbigbee River and helped found a Methodist Church at Piney Grove but by 1830 he was in Pope County, Arkansas, a farmer, still a Methodist. William built a handsome house in Columbus with planed lumber, not logs, and educated his sons at Emory and Henry College, Virginia, in the western corner close to North Carolina and Tennessee. One of William’s sons, Milton Walker Sims (the “Walker” for his mother Rachel Walker) lived a most extraordinary life, accused of Civil War atrocities (the viler of which he was innocent of) but a gallant man, the recipient of a glove from the Empress Carlota which she had dropped and he had picked up and kissed before handing it to her. The unsettled Sims family thrived, some for a long time, thanks largely to William Cocke.