HIDDEN CHEROKEES OF TENNESSEE: The Story of the Nunley, Hobbs, Stoner, Miller, Smartt, Northcutt, and possibly Wilson, Orr, Earnheart, Powe, and Wren Families.

HIDDEN CHEROKEES OF TENNESSEE – The Story of the Nunley, Hobbs, Stoner, Miller, Smartt, Northcutt, and possibly Wilson, Orr, Earnheart, Powe and/or Wren Families.

Male Adventurers in Early Virginia – The earliest settlers of the Virginia Colony were predominantly male adventurers seeking wealth and land (the two being interchangeable).  The two most direct avenues to profits were trading with the Indians and development of land grants.  For those with wealth and influence, large land grants made the second course feasible.  For those without these assets, the Indian trade offered the greatest opportunity. 

Europeans aspiring to profits from trading quickly learned that marriage to Native American women was advantageous in negotiations. Given the paucity of white women in 17^th century southern colonies, immigrants frequently married Native American women and formed allegiances with their wives’ families, clans, and tribes.  Intermarriage between European men and Native American women remained common through the 17^th and 18^th centuries.  While these early marriages were apparently considered valid and binding in both Indian and European cultures, in later years, European men were often polygamous.  They married and lived with Native American wives in tribal areas, while maintaining white wives in European settlements.  Other European men practiced serial marriage, marrying a Native American woman in their youth, and raising a family with her; and then “settling down” in their later years with a white wife, and raising a white family.  To further complicate this picture, some European men had more than one Native American wife.

Cultural Clash --  Patriarchal Europeans and Matriarchal Native Americans  -- From the beginning, the rigidly patriarchal Europeans had difficulty understanding the matriarchal culture of many Native American tribes, including the Cherokee.  Among the Cherokee, children belonged to their Mother and to their Mother’s Clan.  Property belonged to the Clan, and was controlled by the women.  Marriages between children of the same maternal clan were forbidden, and the leading women of each clan approved marriages.  Otherwise, Cherokee women were free to choose their lovers, to marry, and even to dissolve their marriages. 

Maternal Uncles (brothers of the Mother and members of her Clan) were charged with the education of their sisters’ sons.  Since fathers were not members of the same clan, a Father’s care and influence was supplemented or even replaced by that of the Mother’s brothers (members of the children’s Clan).   Orphaned Cherokee children were raised by their Clan, typically by their mothers’ sisters or aunts.

This pattern was in direct contrast to the European pattern in which children belonged to fathers, who selected husbands for their daughters.  Women were subject to their fathers before marriage and to their husbands after marriage.  Even as widows, they could not own or administer property in their own right, but were assigned male “guardians” to direct their affairs.  Similarly, orphans and the children of widows were assigned male guardians. 

Compared to European women, Native American women enjoyed great autonomy, freedom of choice, and financial security.  Most European men who married Cherokee women lived with the Cherokees or on farms established on Cherokee lands.  European men found that divorce was far easier among the Cherokee, and that polygamy was more widely accepted.  However, European husbands of Cherokee women were often subjected to rough jokes because of their wives’ independence and autonomy. 

 In the vast majority of cases, children of mixed European/Native American heritage were raised by their Mothers in Cherokee traditions.  There are documented stories of mixed Cherokee/European children, whose upbringing included exposure to European culture, including education and religion.  However, even in these cases, most individuals eventually returned to their Native American families and villages.

Patronymics:  One European cultural practice was preserved -- the custom of giving the Father’s last name to the children.  For a variety of reasons, Fathers’ names were given to children and passed down through the subsequent generations.

Prejudice: In the early 17^th century, prejudices against mixed marriages and children of mixed heritage were relatively minimal; however, as conflict increased between Indians and whites, so did hatred and resentment.  By the 18^th Century European prejudice against intermarriage and mixed race children was pronounced.  In contrast, the Cherokees were extremely tolerant of mixed heritage, and included many individuals of mixed European and mixed African heritage among their number.   It is only in recent times that Cherokees have begun to identify members of the tribe according to the purity of their Native American descent.

Challenges to Genealogical research -- Tracing the descendants of European men and their Native American wives is complicated (https://www.familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/Indians_of_Tennessee) .  Most written records are of European origin, and frequently do not contain information on marriages between Europeans and Native Americans.  While the names of children born to these alliances are often listed, the names of Native American wives and mothers are frequently not recorded.  In fact, a European wife, whose marriage was recorded, is often erroneously listed as the Mother of all the children of her husband (including the children born to his Native American wife or wives).  Careful consideration of birth and marriage dates often reveals evidence of these confusions.

            Conflict between European settlers and the Cherokee increased as settlers encroached on Cherokee lands, especially after the French and Indian (Seven Years) War.  As the 19^th Century progressed, penalties associated with being identified as Native American increased dramatically.  Many Cherokee (especially those of mixed heritage) went to great lengths to disguise and hide their Native American roots.  Native American heritage became a deep, dark “family secret” hidden from outsiders and even from younger family members.  Rediscovering Native American roots after several generations of hiding is especially challenging.  Groups of Cherokee who hid their heritage are sometimes referred to as “Hidden Cherokee.”

           

Nunley, Hobbs, Stoner, Miller, Smartt, Northcutt, and possibly Wilson, Orr, Earnheart, Powe and/or Wren Families. – For the reasons discussed above, the tracing of our Cherokee Families is challenging, and many questions remain unresolved.  However, I am sharing this information in the interest of encouraging others to read, critique, research, and help us correct errors and expand our understanding.  This research began with the Nunley and Hobbs families (maternal grandparents of my husband Charles Freeman) and progressed backwards in time to the Stoner, Miller, Smartt, and Northcutt families of Tennessee.   Moving further back in time and to costal settlements in Virginia and North Carolina, we encountered the Wilson, Orr, Earneart, Powe, and Wren Families.  Evidence of the Native American roots for these five families is less clear than for those researched in Tennessee.  However, by the time these families intermarried, it is almost certain they were mixed race families, raised in the Cherokee culture.  

The stories of these families begin in early 17^th century Virginia and lead through modern-day North Carolina to the Tennessee counties of Grundy, Warren, and Coffee (formed in part from White County).   The early stories are remarkably similar – European men married Cherokee wives and fathered mixed race children who were raised in the Cherokee heritage of their Mothers.  These European/Native American children intermarried and participated in the unfolding history of the Cherokee people. 

           

THE WARS --  Native American tribes were drawn into European conflicts.  The Cherokees did not present a united front in their response to European conflicts.  Some Cherokee leaders espoused peace and resisted any participation in White men’s wars.  Others established ties with neighboring colonial settlers and sided with them against the French and then the British.  Still others opposed the loss of traditional Cherokee lands.  They allied themselves with the French and then with the British in opposition to the colonists.

            This last group of Cherokee sided with the French in the French and Indian Wars because they saw the English settlers as land hungry.  The Anglo-Cherokee War (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Cherokee_War#War), considered part of the Seven Years War, represents the beginning of the conflict between the Cherokee and the colonists.  The Chickamauga Wars (1777-1794 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chickamauga_Wars ) represent almost 20 years of raids, campaigns, ambushes and full-scale battles between the British settlers and the resistant Cherokees.  This period represents the longest continuous Native American resistance to European intrusion.  In the Chickamauga Wars, the resisting Cherokees were led by the famous war chief, Dragging Canoe (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragging_Canoe).  As nearly as we can establish, our direct ancestors were all followers of Dragging Canoe and are included among the Chickamauga Cherokee (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chickamauga_Cherokee).    Our Cherokee families[1] moved with Dragging Canoe and his followers across the mountains, and were subsequently called Chikamauga or the Over-Hill Indian Nation (http://www.overhillcherokee.com/index2.htm; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overhill_Cherokee).  With the death of Dragging Canoe and the destruction of Nickajack ( 1794, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickajack_Expedition  ) Cherokee resistance was crushed. 

            HIDDEN CHEROKEES – Many of the surviving Chickamauga (Over-hill Cherokees) literally hid in the valleys (coves), mountains, and caves of Tennessee.  Our families hid in what are now the counties of Grundy, Warren, and Coffee (portions of which were carved from the original White County).  As the earliest settlers, these families gave their names to numerous geographical sites (i.e. Nunley Mountain, Nunley Cove, Nunley Cave, Hobbs Hill, Northcutt Cove, Smartt Mountain, etc.). 

After the Indian Removal Act of 1830 (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2959.html,  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Removal_Act_of_1830), the survival of these Cherokees required denial of their heritage.  As passed down by the Nunleys, the members of their family who “looked white” took land in their names, while their relatives who “looked Indian” hid in the caverns in the mountains.  When Cherokees were rounded up by U.S. soldiers and forced into concentration camps to await deportation, their “Hidden” Cherokee relatives and friends took in their children to protect the little ones from deportation.   In our research we were at first puzzled by intermarriages that appeared incestuous, until we understood that many of the couples in these marriages were not related by “blood” but by “adoption.”  Children saved from the Trail of Tears (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trail_of_Tears ) were “adopted” by Hidden Cherokee relatives and friends.  As adults they married members of their “adopted” families, creating the superficial appearance of incest.

NICKAJACK AND THE CIVIL WAR – The story of Nickajack (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickajack ) illustrates the history of our family during the Civil War.  Many of the Hidden Cherokees resisted involvement in a conflict they considered a White Man’s War.  Others, like the inhabitants of the Nickajack area resisted the secession of Alabama and Tennessee and voted to remain part of the Union.  Some members of our Cherokee families fought for the Union, others for the Confederacy, and still others refused to take up arms in either cause. 

Enmity toward representatives of the U.S. Government appears to have been common among the Hidden Cherokee.  Unpopular laws, especially those related to taxes were regularly ignored.  Among some Tennessee families, their war with the Revenuers was just an extension of earlier resistance to the encroachments of European settlers.

            HIDDEN CHEROKEES AND THE CHEROKEE NATIONS – The “Hidden Cherokees” of Tennessee were never part of either the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherokee_Nation ) or of the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Nation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Band_of_Cherokee_Indians), but they had close relatives in both groups.  There is evidence that our Hidden Cherokees families maintained lines of communication with their relatives in the Nations.  Most persuasively, when our Nunley and Hobbs families migrated out of Tennessee in the early 20^th Century, they moved to Northeast Texas where Cherokee relatives from Oklahoma settled after the Civil War.  

Family names offer additional evidence of kinship.  The family names derived from our Tennessee research appear on lists for both the Eastern Cherokee Band and the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma.  The Hidden Cherokees of Tennessee (Chickamauga or Over-Hill Cherokee) resisted to the bitter end, and can rightfully claim that they never surrendered.  However, these same Hidden Cherokee survived by denying their heritage and in so doing lost much of their culture.  It is a paradox that those who resisted and refused to surrender eventually lost much of their traditional culture, while those who compromised and surrendered were able to preserve their heritage.  

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[1] Not all members of these families were part of the resistance.  Some of their relatives remained in North Carolina.  Thus, some of these family names are still present in the Eastern Cherokee Nation.

“BLACK JACK” JESSE NUNLEY: Warrior of the Hidden Cherokee

“BLACK JACK” JESSE NUNLEY: Warrior of the Hidden Cherokee[1]

KEY WORDS –

Cherokee, Chickamauga, Chickamaka

FAMILIES –

Nunley, Hobbs, Stoner, Northcutt, Smartt, Miller, Wilson, & White

PLACE NAMES –

Nunley Mountain; Nunley Caverns; Nunley Cove; Northcutt Cove; Stoner Mountain; Grundy County; Warren County; Beersheba Springs; McMinnville, Tennessee; Bailey, Texas; Haslam, Texas; Logansport, Louisiana; and Deadwood, Texas; Stanley, Louisiana.

The newspaper in McMinnville, TN. called him “Black Jack” Nunley in their reports of his skirmishes with agents of the U.S. Government (more commonly known as Revenuers).  While the stories were always politically correct, the tone suggested that the editor (and possibly the readers) enjoyed the exploits of “Black Jack” and applauded his successes in frustrating the federal tax collectors.

According to their personal perspectives, the people of Warren and Grundy Counties considered Jesse Claiborne Nunley an “Outlaw Injun” or an heroic warrior in a 100 year war between his people and the US government.  However, Jesse’s “war” with the “Revenuers” was more an economic than an historic enterprise.  The Nunleys of Nunley Mountain and Nunley Cove, and their close relatives -- the Stoners (Stoner Mountain), Northcutts (Northcutt Cove), Hobbs, Smartts, Millers, Whites, and Wilsons – planted and maintained extensive apple orchards on the slops of the mountains of Grundy and Warren Counties in Eastern Central Tennessee.  But, in the closing decades of the 19th Century, (as in the preceding century), there was no practical means of transporting their apples to available markets.  However, as their ancestors had learned, wagons of apples can be reduced to barrels of apple cider, and barrels of apple cider can be distilled into jugs of “Apple Jack Brandy.”  Unlike apples, brandy had a long “shelf-life,” was easily transported to distant markets, and always brought a good price.

As his nickname indicated, “Black Jack” Nunley was expert at “jacking”[2] (distilling applejack brandy from apple cider).  Jesse employed both freeze distillation (jacking) and evaporation distillation in creating fine applejack brandy.[3]  By the year of 1889, Jesse’s relatives had been producing and selling applejack brandy for at least three generations.   It remained their principle “cash” crop, and they had no intentions of sharing their meager profits with their traditional enemy, the United State government.  It also seems that Jesse could, when the crops warranted, transmute corn into white lightening.  However, applejack was his principle product.

In Oct.,1898 (the date of Jesse’s final shoot-out) his family had lived in the isolated Tennessee mountains and valleys for almost a hundred years.  They were among the earliest settlers, and gave their names to the principle landmarks -- mountains, valleys (coves), and cave systems.  Only 50 years earlier (1838), Jesse’s parents and grandparents had successfully hidden here while their relatives were rounded up by government agents, held in a concentration camp at nearby Cleveland, TN, and force-marched to Oklahoma on the trek that came to be called the “Trail of Tears.”  The lands, homes, and even the personal belongings of their departed relatives were given to white settlers by lottery.  “Orphan” Cherokee children, left by their captured parents, were adopted by their Cherokee relatives, and hidden in the hills and caves.   

The Nunleys and their racially mixed allied Cherokee families had practiced survival duplicity since the American Revolution.  To avoid confiscation of their land and deportation to "reservations," the "Indian-looking" family members were kept hidden, while those who could pass as European whites conducted business and held title to the family lands.  The extensive Nunley cave system accessible from Nunley Mountain and Nunley Cove provided protective shelter when enemies searched the hills.  From the late 18th Century until the middle 20th Century personal, economic, and social survival required that these families deny, disguise, and hide their Cherokee and Native American heritage.  The related families stayed close, intermarrying and supporting each other in difficult times.

 While Jesse had been a wild youth, with a string of escapades and close calls, his marriage to Laura Ann Hobbs in May of 1884, and the births of their first four children -- Lucy (1885), James “Jim” Lafayette (1886), Ada Ann (1888), and William “Will” Henry (1889) -- had introduced new responsibilities and restraint.  But Jesse (at age 37) remained a prime target of Revenuers, eager to avenge past defeats.  The story of the final encounter has been handed down through their descendants.  It seems that the Revenuers cornered Jesse and some of his brothers and cousins.  A shoot-out ensued, as Jesse and his crew held off the law officers while members of the group slipped away into the hollows.  One of Jesse’s brothers or nephews (possibly Jonah James, born 1858) was crippled (according to our story by a club foot).  Jesse had always taken special care to protect this brother, and when a shot from one of the Revenuers hit him, an enraged Jesse took aim and shot the officer. 

As the story has been passed down, no one knows the fate of either of the victims (crippled brother or federal agent).  Whether they lived or died, one thing was certain – Jesse Nunley couldn’t stay in Tennessee.  According to tradition, Jesse and Laura and the four babies were boarded on a train that very night, with tickets for Bonham, Texas.   Like so many Cherokee warriors before him, Jesse won his battle with the US government, but was forced to cede his land and resettle in the west.

Located in Northeast Texas just south of the Oklahoma border, Bonham was chosen as their destination because of family ties.  Laura’s widowed Mother, Evelina Hobbs Hobbs (she was born or adopted a Hobbs and married a Hobbs), her younger brother Dock, and two sisters, Sue and Edith had moved to Bailey, near Bonham to join Cherokee relatives who had settled there in the aftermath of the Civil War.  On that long train ride, Jesse and Laura retraced the travels of their Cherokee kin, crossing the mountains, and entering the Great Plains.  When their train arrived in Bonham, the wide-open spaces greeted them; the Big Sky stretched from horizon to horizon.  The Texas relatives had sent letters back to Tennessee extoling the virtues of flat-land farming, telling tales of cotton fields with six-foot high plants, and corn “as high as an elephant’s eye.”  But on arrival, all Jesse saw was a flat, dry, brown-grey land without mountains or even trees.  According to the legend, he was inconsolable.  He bought a jug of white lightening, and sat beneath the only tree he could find, and got rip-roaring drunk.

Jesse and Laura remained in Baily for one or two years.  Their son Charles “Charlie” was born there in 1891.  There are two differing stories of why Jesse and Laura and the children left Bailey and settled in the Deadwood community near Logansport, LA.  The first explanation is that they fled Bailey because of the long arm of the law.  Inquiries in Tennessee apparently directed attention toward Texas and the kinfolks in Bailey.  Jesse and Laura sought a new home where the law would have difficulty finding Jesse.  Deadwood, located on the border of Louisiana and Texas, allowed residents to move easily from one state jurisdiction to another.

The second story is simply that Jesse hated the open plains of North Texas.  He worked long enough to buy train fare to start the long journey back east to Tennessee.  Reserving enough money to get started in a new location, he bought train tickets for his little brood.  They got as far as Logansport, Louisiana (on the Sabine River, just across the Texas border).  North of Logansport, Jesse found a sharecropping opportunity.  While Deadwood was short of mountains, there were plenty of trees, and rich farmland.  Jesse made a crop that year, and when fall came the couple had a new baby, Luther, (born in Nov. 1894 on the Texas side of the border).  Jesse and Laura decided to wait another year before continuing the trip back to Tennessee.  As each year passed, and each new baby was born, their roots reached deeper into the soil of the Texas/Louisiana borderlands.  Cordie Ann was born in Jan., 1898 in Louisiana; Johah was born in May 1901 in Texas; Mary was born in 1902 in Louisiana; and Johnny was born in May, 1904 in Texas.

Mary died as an infant, and Johnny was a sickly child who lived less than 5 years.  Both children were buried in the Cemetery at Mt. Olive Baptist Church in Oak Grove (now Stanley, LA.).   Jesse and Laura had two more daughters, born after Johnny’s death.  Britt Annie “Shug” was born in 1910 and Minnie Ola in 1911 (both in Louisiana where the family had finally settled).  By then the older children had begun to marry, and establish their own families.  When Laura died in 1922, the dreams of returning to Tennessee were long forgotten.   Laura was buried beside the babies.

The widowed Jesse lived with his two youngest daughters, Britt Annie and Minnie Ola.  Several of the older children and their families lived nearby.  The Nunley families were highly respected, church-going people.  They were steady members of local Baptist and Pentecostal Churches.   

Jesse survived Laura by 7 years, dying in Aug., 1929 of injuries suffered in a car accident.  On a Saturday, Jesse, as was the custom among farmers, came into Logansport to visit and shop.  Finishing early, he decided to visit his daughter Britt Annie and see his youngest grandchild, Billy Ray Freeman.  He found a friend on his way to Haslam (across the Sabine River), and jumped onto the running board.  When he approached his destination, Jesse misjudged, and jumped off the running board before the car stopped.  He took a bad fall that led to his death.  

The stories of young Jesse’s alcohol-producing enterprises were closely held within the family.   The legend of the shoot-out and escape from Tennessee was passed by whispers within the family, lest scandal blight the family’s reputation.  The family was so successful in suppressing the stories that I truly do not know if Jesse ever practiced his knowledge of distillation in Louisiana or Texas.  I have never heard any rumors suggesting that he was a bootlegger, or that he drank.  His children, mostly teetotalers and all deceased, would be scandalized to know that I have publicly shared this story. 

The only potential traces of his past are buried in the stories of Jesse’s birthday celebrations.  Jesse was born on the 4^th of July, and thus given a perfect opportunity for big birthday bashes.  Every year, on the 4^th, the Nunley family hosted a big community party with barbeque, watermelons, and some say “strong liquor” of exceedingly high quality (secretly shared by the men).  The 4^th of July birthday tradition (minus the “strong liquor”) has been kept alive by Jesse and Laura’s descendants, unto the 5^th and 6^th generations.  This year, on July 4, 2013, they will celebrate the 160th anniversary of “Black Jack” Jesse Claiborne Nunley’s birth.

Jesse and Laura had 12 children and approximately 60 grandchildren.  At this time, it is estimated that their descendants, who now include six generations, exceed 400.  Among their descendants are a dozen preachers of at least four denominations – Baptist, Pentecostal, Methodist, and Assembly of God.  They also include many talented musicians.  While these descendants know that Jesse and Laura had Cherokee ancestry, the extent and implications of their Cherokee bloodlines have only recently been revealed.

The story of Jesse and Laura’s Cherokee Ancestry and of the HIDDEN CHEROKEES is told in the following blog.

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[1] I’m telling this story as I know it, in sincere hopes that others with additional information will contribute, so a more accurate version can be created. The secrets were so closely kept for so long, by so many that the truth is difficult to discern.

[2] There were two methods for distilling applejack brandy from apple cider – the traditional evaporation method, and freeze distillation, commonly called “Jacking.”  In freeze distillation, the cider is allowed to “freeze.”  The less alcoholic water freezes at higher temperatures than concentrated alcohol.  When the frozen “water” is removed from the liquid cider, the residual is more highly concentrated. 

[3] There is currently only one legal producer of applejack brandy in the U.S.  However, applejack brandy was the favorite drink of colonial America, and remained popular through the 17^th, 18^th, and 19^th Centuries.