Note 128-4 — Chapter V

Whipple, Rep. on the Indian Tribes, p. 35. I am not sure that this practice was of native growth to the Cherokees. This people have many customs and traditions strangely similar to those of Christians and Jews. Their cosmogony is a paraphrase of that of Genesis (Squier, Serp. Symbol, from Payne’s MSS.); the number seven is as sacred with them as it was with the Chaldeans (Whipple, u. s.); and they have improved and increased by contact with the whites. Significant in this connection is the remark of Bartram, who visited them in 1773, that some of their females were “nearly as fair and blooming as European women,” and generally that their complexion was lighter than their neighbors (Travels, p. 485). Two explanations of these facts may be suggested. They may be descendants in part of the ancient white race near Cape Hatteras, to whom I have referred in a previous note. More probably they derived their peculiarities from the Spaniards of Florida. Mr. Shea is of opinion that missions were established among them as early as 1566 and 1643 (Hist. of Catholic Missions in the U. S., pp. 58, 73). Certainly in the latter half of the seventeenth century the Spaniards were prosecuting mining operations in their territory (See Am. Hist. Mag., x. p. 137).