Killough Massacre

[Herb]

Last week, in Cherokee county, the burial (Nov 1838) of the 14 victims of the Killough massacre (Oct 1838) was commemorated. This forgotten episode in history, along with the Cordova Revolution, and the Flores' letters were the sparks that ignited the Cherokee War and their expulsion from Texas in 1839.

While Lamar is generally villified for initiating the Cherokee War, this massacre, is generally overlooked, besides the fact that Houston was president when this incident happened, and it was Houston who initially called out the militia and that the first engagement of the war an attack on a Kickapoo village near present day Frankston, took place while Houston was president.

While Cherokee participation in the massacre is often ignored/omitted today, survivors identified some of the Indian participants by name - and Cherokee participation cannot be denied. However, it needs to be noted that there were serious divisions within the Cherokee nation, and while their participation in the massacre cannot be denied, other members of the Cherokee sought out the survivors, hid them, and assisted their return to Fort Lacy (present day Alto) on the Camino Real.

RIP Ford's memoirs describes the passions that this massacre created.

[Allen Wiener]

Again I wonder how many of the Cherokee were forceably removed from their home in Georgia by Andrew Jackson and how many were the earlier arrivals who had moved west as part of an agreement that involved sale of their lands in Tennessee and possibly Georgia. I'm a bit fuzzy on this now, but I recall the land Tennessee acquired in the Hawasee district was unique in that it did not come under the other restricted conditions of public lands in Tennessee that caused Crockett and his constituents grief.

In any case, the Cherokee forced out by Jackson were sent to a far away land that no one had really scouted or evaluated to establish exactly what sort of "home" these Cherokee would be entering. Like other tribes and settlements in the area, they were victims of Comanche raids. There were at least two major Cherokee factions, at least in the early going; one had acquiesed in the Jackson removal policy, while the other, under John Ross, resisted to the very last until they were literally driven out at bayonet point onto the Trail of Tears. There was intense bitterness between the two factions in the relocated territory and the leader of those who gave in was murdered, along with other members of his family, but members of the Ross faction. Not a happy story from any angle.