Note 126 — AN ACCOUNT OF THE KATAHBA, CHEERAKE, MUSKOHGE, CHOKTAH, AND CHIKKASAH NATIONS:

By way of supplement to and corroboration of Adair, in respect of this very remarkable man, Christian Gottlieb Piber, who declared in a petition that he had a wife and four children in Saxony, the following brief account by Ludovick Grant is given, because not so well known as others. Priber landed at Charles Town, but, it seems, made his way to a district in the country. Grant says that Priber went from Amelia Township on Santee River into the Cherokee nation; that he called himself a German but was certainly an agent of the French; that he lived in the town of Telliquo (Great Tellico); that he trimmed his hair in the Indian manner and painted as they did, going, generally, naked, except for a shirt and flap; that he told the Cherokees that they had been tricked out of a great part of their lands, and in the future they should make no concessions, and should trade with the English and French alike, and they would then be courted by both. He proposed a new system of government, under which all things should be held in common; even their wives should be so, and the children looked upon as those of the public and taken care of as such. Priber urged that the “seat of government be moved nearer to the French at Coosawattee, where in ancient times a town stood belonging to the Cherokees; and that they should admit into their society Creeks and Catawbas, French and English, all colours and complexions; in short, all who were of their principles.” Priber wrote a letter to the South Carolina government, signed by him as “prime minister,” which opened the eyes of South Carolinians to the danger of his continuing longer among the Indians. Grant confirms Adair as to the journey to the Alabama Fort of the French on his way to Mobile and as to his arrest. “His negro who jumped into the river to make his escape, they shot dead.” Grant fixed the length of Priber’s stay as “about three years [Adair says five and the true period was six or seven years] among the Cherokees”—a “most notorious rogue and iniquitous fellow who if he had been permitted to live much longer in that country would undoubtedly have drawn that nation over to the French interest.” Relation, in S. C. Hist. Mag., X, 54. See also letter from Fredrica in S. C. Gazette of Aug. 15, 1743: “The Creek Indians have at last brought Mr. Priber prisoner here; he is a little ugly man, but speaks all languages fluently ... he talks very prophanely against all religions, but chiefly the Protestant; he was for setting up a town at the foot of the mountains among the Cherokees, which was to be a city of refuge for all criminals, debtors and slaves. ... There was a book found upon him in his own writing ready for the press, which he owns and glories in and believes it is by this time printed, but will not tell where, in which ... he lays down the rules of government which the town is to be governed by, to which he gives the title of Paradise. He enumerates many whimsical privileges and natural rights ... particularly dissolving marriages and allowing community of women and all kinds of licenciousness; the book is drawn up very methodically, and full of learned quotations; it is extremely wicked, yet has several flights full of invention, and it is a pity so much wit is applied to so bad a purpose.” A comparison of the “Red Empire” with the Russian Soviet of the present day is more than suggested. See further on Priber: Crane, A Lost Utopia, Sewanee Review, Jan’y, 1919; Mereness, Travels in the American Colonies, 248; Williams, Early Travels in the Tennessee Country, 154 et seq., and Mooney, Myths, 36.