Blow the tannery whistle: Margaret Siler and the Sand Town Cherokees
The graves of Chief Chuttahsotee and his wife Cunstaih are all that remains ofthe Cherokee settlement once known as Sand Town. Gary Carden photo
By 1818, despite a growing number of settlers in the region west of the Balsams and along the Little Tennessee River, much of the land continued to be identified as “Cherokee land.”
However, when two young men from Sandy Mush in Buncombe County, Jacob Siler and Tom Britton, built a camp in the section that contained the Nikwasi Mound, they felt they were fully prepared to deal with Chief Santeela, who suddenly appeared the following morning and informed the two adventurers they were on Cherokee land and should “be gone immediately to their own homes.”
Due to the sad state of communications between settlers and Native Americans, Chief Santella did not know that much of the land around him had been “sold” the previous year to the white man in the Treaty of the Council of Chiefs.
Further, these two white men came bearing gifts: knives, colored cloth, guns. Reluctantly, Chief Santella agreed to wait for proof and several days later, found that his home now belonged to the White man. In addition, he received reports of villages being burned and an increase in the ever-growing number of whites who could drive the Cherokees from their land. He decided to seek compromise.
At this point, Jacob Siler sent word to his family in Sandy Mush that they should come immediately, for he felt that the land previously owned by the Cherokee was potentially the answer to their prayers. So, it was that Jacob’s brothers, William and John, came to build their homes on the banks of “the Cartoogejay.” However, there is another story here. It is recorded in a book written by Margaret Siler, who married Albert Siler, the son of William Siler (“Cherokee Indian Lore and Smoky Mountain Stories”).
Shortly after her marriage, Margaret discovered that there was over one hundred Cherokee living on William’s land and that they were called “the Sand Town Cherokees” because their homes were located around the sandy banks of Muskrat Creek. She immediately established a friendship with their Chief Chuttahsotee and eventually she would learn to speak their language.
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She and her father-in-law devoted a portion of their lives to recording the history, customs and legends of these members of a diminishing tribe.
What is most notable about this is William Siler ‘s decision to “deed” several hundred acres to the Cherokees. As a result, for a time (about two decades) the two cultures lived in harmony. Margaret learned that a large group of Cherokees had been forced to leave this region in the removal of the Cherokees in the 1830’s. However, in the years after the “Trail of Tears,” some of the Sand Hill Cherokees returned.
In addition, word spread among the Cherokees who had escaped or managed to hide from the forced removal. For a short time, the Sand Hill tribe came to represent a possible refuge for a number of weary and footsore Cherokees. So new arrivals brought a slight increase to the population of the Sand Town Cherokees which still maintained a tribal government and customs despite their reduction in numbers.
William often visited the old Chief Chuttahsotee on Sundays and read and attempted to explain Bible passages to him. As a result, the old chief came one day in 1872 to visit William and to make a request. He announced his intention to die on the next day and asked to be buried “like a White man.” Margaret notes that the old chief said, “Tomorrow, I will sit in the doorway of my home and watch the sun set for the last time.”
With William’s help, the old chief succeeded in receiving “a White man’s burial.” It is not surprising that the old chief’s wife, Cunstaih (Sally) came one day after her husband’s death to make the same request. Like her husband, Sally announced her wish to join him.
Sally died on the following day as she “sat in the doorway of her home watching the sun set.” So it is that the graves of the old chief and his wife are located in the Saint John’s Episcopal Church cemetery and is all that remains of the Cherokee settlement once known as Sand Town Cherokees.
Margaret called the Cherokee language “lipless.” She discovered that the language did not have the sound “b” or “p” and that they had difficulty pronouncing those sounds that required bringing the lips together. For example, they could not say “Albert” but said “Alquert.” I was told that Qualla got its name from Polly who had once owned a store in which the Cherokees traded. “Polly” became “Qualla.”
However, despite the efforts of Margaret Siler and her father-in-law, the Sand Town Cherokees did not survive.
Margaret Siler awoke one morning to find no smoke rising from Sand Town. She asked her father-in-law why is there not a single Cherokee left on the deeded land. She also noted that she had hoped to write a definitive history of the Sand Town Cherokees.
Her father-in-law replied, “I don’t think that is possible. It takes a life-long friendship to know the Indian heart! He is too secretive to ever agree to be talked about from a book.”
William Siler always noted that every race that had contacted the Cherokees (White, Spanish, Black) had all proved to be untrustworthy. “Yes, now it is the White man who has managed to drive them from Sand Town creek!”
In writing this article, I read Margaret Siler’s marvelous book and developed an appreciation for her articles on the myths that she recorded and the subsequent research that she did.
Margaret published a series of newspaper articles and joined several academic organizations devoted to preserving the history, culture and traditions of North Carolina’s Indian tribes.
However, my appreciation for Margaret’s writing goes beyond research. In reading her personal expressions of her love for these mountains, rivers and people, she consistently reveals a personal empathy for her environment. I would like to close with a quote from one of Margaret’s personal appeals to the visiting public … come and see the Great Smokies!
“Ah, Traveler! Pause for the night. Sit on top of the world! Get off the man-made road! Get off the man-made trail!
“Watch the sun slip behind the far blue mountains.
“Watch it cling to the Clingman’s Dome in North Carolina or cap Mt. LeConte with the gesture of a good night kiss.
“The summer may give you the sight of a thunderstorm in the makings in the valley below. I have sat on a mountain top and watched a rain storm rain out while the sun has not left my lofty outlook.
“I have looked down on a rainbow. I have seen lightning set fire to a haystack off in a field down in a valley. I have crawled under overhang cliffs to get out of a hail storm. I have had thunder burst at my feet and roll off in big pieces down the mountain side. I have lain wrapped in a blanket on the top of a bald mountain watching the stars the whole night through on a moonless night in June. If it is autumn, tarry for the night!”
Gary Carden is one of Southern Appalachia’s most revered literary figures and has won a number of significant awards for his books and plays over the years, including the Book of the Year Award from the Appalachian Writers Association in 2001, the Brown Hudson Award for Folklore in 2006 and the North Carolina Arts Council Award for Literature in 2012. His most recent book, “Stories I lived to tell,” is available at City Lights Bookstore in Sylva, or online through uncpress.org.
