Reading through the comments I have received recently, it seems to me that some recent subscribers do not realized how extensive my website is. Maybe, you have neglected to visit my home page. If you go to Longleafjournal.com, there is a list of categories that will lead you to dozens of other stories, some dating back three or four years. Its a safe zone. I avoid commentaries and stories on today’s politics. So what I write is a break from the often controversial matters that flood our airways. I am least of all interested in celebrities and our contemporary cultural allegiance to them. I try to find inspiration nearer home, among family and friends.
Of late, my stories are about smalltown Georgia in the 1920’s. This decade-so critical to the lives of those with deep roots in Georgia-has been largely ignored (except for racial conflict, the KKK and the antics of Georgia politicians of that era) by both professional historians and popular writers as well.
I am drawn to the twenties because it is the era when my grandparents were in their prime and my parents were children. My family was a rural, middling family of small businessmen, country doctors and their wives who shared their fate in what proved to be the worst decade since the Civil War and Reconstruction. Along with farmers, an emerging smalltown middle class was devastated by what happened in the years following the First World War.
You might have noticed that many of my stories are set in the longleaf pine region-the coastal plain and wiregrass of Georgia. That’s where my memories lie.
Ferreting out the forces that crushed my grandparent’s hopes opened a window of understanding into the lives, beliefs and ambitions that shape my own world view. Our affectionate feelings about our parents (and their parents) can leave us with no real understanding of who they actually were. In the details we find the defining experiences that characterize every life. It may seem disrespectful to delve much into their failures and mistakes. Still, we know from our own lives that they were surely like us in having sometimes fallen into despair and hopelessness, indulged in unrealistic ambitions, and likely ignored realities long enough to find brief enjoyment in those things they could actually afford -a fishing trip, a vacation on the cheap to a beach, a newer used car. Maybe they tested the law out of desperation. Alcohol addiction may explain many tragedies. People sought ways to dull the pain of exiting in a hostile world. To lose sight of their struggles and even mistakes leaves us with only myths and generalizations about our parents. And, it leaves us emotionally and spiritually incomplete in some ways.
These are just a few reasons I am “lost in the Twenties.” If you love the study of history as I do. you know that the past is not dead and is always with us whether we wish to understand it or not. I hope you will find a little time to ramble around in some of my earlier writing and let me know if they awaken the strains of memory that continue to enrich our lives.
If you have a true -or mostly true- story to share that relates to those I tell, I hope you will pass it along. Such stories inspire me and awaken new memories. Maybe you will allow me to publish some or all of what you share. I am the sole editor and promise to respond to your comments.
Did you write an article on George Galphin? I’d love to see it. Also do you have any information on the Yuchi tribe specifically?
Lillian,
I have presented papers on Galphin, including one at the annual Augusta Genealogical workshop-again I will try to lay my hands on it – and there is now a biography out-I will look it up for you. You likely are awar that Galpin’s principle residence was across the Savannah from Augusta. Its now a National Audubon Preserve and archaeology is underway there. Galpin also owned a plantation that was once the site of a large Creek settlement known as “Old Town.” The building there is a much latter structure. I have photos and will send along when I can find them.
The Yuchee are among those peoples referred to on the Georgia frontier as “Creeks.” The dominant ethnic group (out of more than a dozen such ethnic groups within the Creek Confereacy were the Muscogee-speaking tribal group. The Yuchi were much reduced in size by diseases as they were among the earliest encountered by disease- carrying white Europeans. They never fully merged with the Creeks, and maintained neighboring town sites (Euchee Springs for example). You will find online information about the Euchee efforts to maintain their language and identity. There were until recently a handful of Yuchee-speaking tribal members. Again, give me a little time to look through my files. I have a lot going on over the next few weeks so please do not hesitate to remind me by email. Tell me more about your project. I was director of the official Native American Museum for Georgia for nearly twenty years.
Lillian,
A couple of Galphin sources came to mind that you can easily access: The New Georgia Encyclopedia (online) has a bio of Galphin written by my friend Michael Morris (and he has also written a longer- book-length study of Galphin.) The University of Alabama in 2019 published Bryan C. Rindfleish’s book entitled Galphin’s Intimate Empire. Galphin’s career is most interesting because his plantation in South Carolina was a racially mixed community of black, white and Native Americans. and Blacks enjoyed a freedom of work and religion, unprecedented elsewhere in the southern colonies. An intersting coincidence: Mary Musgrove and Galphin’s Indian wife were both members of the influential Wind ClanThe first Black Baptist Church was begun there (and later moved to Augusta). Galphin had a wife in Ireland, but married in South Carolina. He had children of mixed white, Native and Black race and provided for all in his much contested will. If you will go to my home page you will find a review of Maya Jasanoff’s wonderful story (Liberty’s Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World) tracing the Americans who fled the revolting colonies for life in other parts of England’s empire. She covers Galphin briefly but with remarkable insight.
In addition to his key role in the deerskin trade and colonial relations with the Creeks (which I have described elsewhere on my website), he is also remembered as the founder of the Ulster Scots settlement known as Queensboro below the present site of Louisville. The plan collapsed when the colonists arrived to find Georgia on the brink of revolution and fearing they would be targeted by the Revolutionaries and the Crown. Great story. All that remains is the name on a string of banks in the area (Bank of Queensboro). Again, I could be more helpful if I had some idea of your research goals. I will be out of commission for a week or more with surgery coming up.
Joe
Below is my article describing how the deerskin trade worked in colonial Georgia-believe me, it is very different than what casual readers assume.
The Deerskin Trade: How it Worked, Part I
Trade in the southern backcountry was largely based on Britain’s need for hides-deerskins to be specific. That trade flourished in the early eighteenth century in part as a successor to the traffic in Indian slaves-yes, there was a trade in which some tribes satisfied the demand for cheap labor for the tobacco, indigo and rice plantations in Carolina by kidnapping other Native Americans. The victims were often Christianized Indians in the Spanish colonies of East and West Florida. The traffic often passed through the no-man’s region that would become Georgia. With the rise of African slavery, first in the English-settled Bahamas, but increasingly in their North American colonies, the trade in Native American slaves was supplemented, then replaced by the deerskin trade.
An epidemic swept the herding regions of England in the
early 18th century, killing off the source of England’s
leather—critical in a horse-drawn age. While deerskins could not replace the
thicker steerhides used in machine belts and harnesses, it was useful for
riding pants, gloves, light jackets and the popular buckskin pants that were
precursors of snug-fitting, good-wearing denim “jeans” of centuries to come.
Carolina and Virginia traders dominated this commerce and it was the source of
many frontier fortunes, providing the capital for development of the plantation
system in the cash-strapped southern colonies.
The “Indian Trade” required heavy, up-front investment in
the supplies Native People were eager to purchase. Not beads or baubles, but
practical goods, goods that were manufactured in the nascent iron and textile
industries of England -colorfully died cloth, wool blankets, hatchets, scissors,
iron and copper cooking pots, and, most of all guns. Guns in the hands of
tribal hunters meant more deerskins on the market. More guns required more
black powder. Colonial officials
routinely spoke of “gunmen” as an indication of the number of adult
Indian/Native American males engaged in hunting. Owning a musket or rifle made
them potential warriors. Joint stock
companies back in England and Scotland vied for royal charters to enter the
trade. Warehouses had to be procured to store trade goods in Charleston and
later Savannah and Augusta. There was a language barrier that had to be
overcome. Men familiar with the language and ways of the Creeks, Cherokees and
Chickasaws had to be hired or enticed into the trade. Some would have to live
among the tribes.
Many assumptions about how the trade worked are far off the mark. The notion of a rugged white hunter packing up a few trade goods and heading into Indian Country does not begin to describe the complexity or reality of the business. The Davy Crockett stereotype has been conflated with Indian traders in popular media. Crockett was a long-hunter, explorer and often employed by land developers to lead settlement parties or provide on-the-ground information about developers’ lands . Trading with the native tribes often required establishing a store (or storehouse), often referred to as a trading post in the Indian towns where goods could be housed and protected, and where cured hides could be accepted in payment for goods and stored for transport back to Charleston and later Savannah in the new colony of Georgia founded in 1733.
There were trading posts that catered to independent white traders, but such “wildcat” operations could run counter to the interests of financiers and suppliers. Especially in Georgia, the matter of licensing traders was critical. Georgia’s founder, General james Oglethorpe founded the town of Augusta intentionally to interdict the South Carolina’s trade expeditions. Company records of depts unpaid by Native Americans would become leverage in treaty negotiations in effect forcing the Creeks chiefs and other southeastern tribal leaders to surrender vast parcels of land to settle their debts with traders-trading companies were the advance agents of empire in this system.
It was not a
transitory business. There had to be sureties for both parties and marriages
between Indian women and white traders became the best guarantee for all
concerned. Native People were initially showered with gifts to establish good
will. Marriage to these “bringers of gifts” brought prestige to the families
and clans whose daughters married traders or military men -British or French soldiers-stationed
along the frontier.
Marriages were critical because among the southeastern
peoples, property was owned by women in a complex matriarchal social system.
Households were the domain of women and marriage brought husbands-whether white
or Native American- into the wife’s households. In Creek and Cherokee societies,
rigid gender-defined roles prevailed and women effectively controlled the
property. Children were reared in the household of their mother—and, indeed,
descent from a native mother (not the white father) established a child’s
ethnicity. Initially, the Creeks objected to intermarriage with whites if it
meant the wife left a void in the close family and clan relationships by living
in the white husband’s household
It is also helpful to
keep in mind that the trade could not have flourished if the Southeastern
Native People were nomadic or their populations were scattered. The Cherokees
and Creeks were hunters, traders, small farmers, and food gatherers. Villages
and clusters of villages were essential to the trade and coincided with other
needs of tribal societies: mutual protection, shared responsibilities of child
rearing and coordination of military and hunting endeavors. When the Cherokee
become concentrated in Georgia after the American Revolution, US federal policy
encouraged them to abandon village life in favor of the life of the small,
freeholder farmer. Clanship and gender roles were eroded when village life
diminished.
It is unfair to regard these marriages as only matters of
convenience. Hollywood and television stereotypes of these relationships portray
to romantic entanglements or servile dependency by Native women. In the
Southeast , traders were expected t to live in the Indian world and they often
established loving relationships that produced children, a source of mutual affection.
In the
storekeeper/trader’s world, honesty and adherence to Indian ways, customs and
etiquette were indispensable if he hoped to prosper and some profited
immensely. Native villagers expected the trader to serve as a source of
information about Europeans, their practices and expectations. Not
surprisingly, major traders often became the diplomatic agents of colonial
governments.
The children of these marriages sometimes enjoyed
advantages: they were familiar with two universes, the language and habits of
their father’s commercial world and the society and family relationships of
their mother’s extended family. Such advantages could bring them to places of
honor and leadership—one example is William Weatherford (Red Eagle), military
leader of the upper Creeks. John Ross, the great Principle Chief of the
Cherokee, would not be considered Cherokee in a patriarchal society and was in
fact Cherokee entirely because his mother was Cherokee.
We should be wary of generalizations about the roles of
these men of mixed blood however, for there are many stereotypes and racial
assumptions that skew our perspective. Bear in mind that they chose to remain
Native Americans for the most part.
It requires an adjustment in our perspective when we learn that
in early colonial settlements rules were adopted forbidding whites from
choosing to move away from the hardships of poorly adapted European communities
into Indian towns where there was less forced compliance to religious and
political practices and where native savvy of how to exploit natural materials,
hunt and fish, and process readily available food resources such as mast, nuts,
greens and wild potatoes reduced the chance of starving. Native farming
techniques focused on subsistence crops made day-to-day life easier. Instead of
extensive fields which had to be cleared by hand and ox, Native Americans
tended relatively small plots for food. Cash crop economies and practices were
stressful in the colonies. Period literature and records ares full of examples
of whites either running off to join the Native People, or, having been
captured by them, becoming reluctant to return to white society given their
freedom.
How did the trader receive the goods for his business? How did the hides—reportedly in the millions- reach the deerskin factor’s warehouse.? Elaborate pack trains carried the goods in and the hides out seasonally during the warmer months. In the case of the Creeks, this required enduring subtropical heat and annoying insects, as well as fording powerful rivers that still today bear native names: Savannah, Ogeechee, Ocmulgee and Chattahoochee, among others. This had to be done with heavily loaded ponies in trains of 25, 50 and at times 100 animals. Crossings were hazardous even if undertaken where there were shallows, or “fords” as they were known. These main- traveled routes were along the geological “fall line” where waters were thin-but inevitably swift-and the riverbed was firm, if rocky. The British government through its colonial administrators tried to regulate the trade by licensing and setting fair trade values. For example, a trade musket could be had for about twenty tanned deerskins. This proved difficult in a vast country filled with adventurous and sometimes desperate people trying to eek out an existence. But the big trading companies demanded reliability, honesty and initiative. In the next installment of this story, I will introduce you to George Galphin, one of the most remarkable-as well as successful- traders and his native family. And we will discover what happens when the trade eventfully collapses.