Walk in History

[bigtree]

24. you're right, they did hide in those hills, along with the runaway slaves

...and those who weren't forced out re-established ancestral communities, or built new ones. 'Grey Eagle, the name of a tiny town ( sometimes called Gray Eagle) incorporated in 1893 before the railroad came and changed to Black Mountain afterward to match the train station's name.

Cherokees and white settlers together there since the Revolutionary war.

I've also seen Cherokee listed among Indian slaveowners in an old U.S. census book I own from 1863. A large percentage of the mixing of Indian and African blood happened under those unfortunate circumstances, as was the case with white slaveowners who took their captives as wives or bred them like cattle.

My mother's grandmother was the wife of her slaveowner, his sixth.