THE GATHERING

I am Bill J. Chance, a Cherokee Indian, and this is a story passed down by my father, R.D. Chance, from his mother, Mandy Green Chance and from her father, James Monroe Green, and from his father, Joseph Carter Green, and his father, George E. Green and his father Red Wolf Green. The story was told to him by his father, Running Fox.

When Running Fox was a young boy, he was told this story around the story fire. During the middle of the 1500s, just about 1565 to 1570, a runner came to our village. The runner said to the leader of the village, that there was to be a great gathering of all the eastern tribes to talk of forming one confederation. A chief of the Mohawks had begun this movement among the Iroquois tribes of the northeast. A great gathering was to take place in the Gray Blue Mountains, north of the Yellow Creek. The word was sent out to all the tribes, the Creeks, the lower Creeks, the Cherokees, the Catawba, the Chickasaw, the Choctaw, the Tuscarora of North Carolina, all the northeastern tribes , the Mohawks, the Seneca, the Cayuga, the Oneida, Oneida, Onondaga, Huron and the Shawnee were asked to come.

The tribes began to gather. Never had there been so many different Indian tribes in one place at one time. At first, there was much distrust, but the chiefs, sub chiefs and the leaders of the smaller village began having talks. The talks went on for days and into the nights. The women had talks in the longhouses. They fixed food of all kinds; there were great dances to the great spirits. There were problems that could not be worked out. The problems between the Mohawks and the Hurons and the problems between the Seneca and the Catawba. The Cherokee were in this problem because they were friends to the Catawba and the Shawnee, at that time, were very happy with any of the tribes east of them. Later they took up with the Huron Indians.

To the most part, the talks failed. The tribe of the southeast remained together. The tribes to the northeast did form a confederation, made up of the Iroquois nations, the Seneca, the Mohawks, the Cayuga, the Oneida, the Onondaga and for a very short time, the Hurons. Much later the Tuscarora of North Carolina and in an around about way, made the Cherokees a part too, since they were brothers to the Tuscarora.

The Catawba and the Seneca was always getting into fights, which put the Cherokees into it also.

The confederation lasted a long time and for the most part, there was peace among the Iroquois but the Hurons broke away from the confederation and moved northwest which helped keep the peace. The white man talked the Iroquois nation into joining in the fight against the new forming American colonist to the south. The colonists talked the southern tribe into joining them against the English of the northeast. The southern tribe did not know that the Iroquois nations had joined the English and the Iroquois nations did not know that the southern tribes had joined the colonists. The agreement among the tribes was that they would no longer fight against each other. When the two came together next