Sierra Mountain Times

A monument off of Tuolumne Road (across from the Totem Pole) tells of the history of gold rush town of Cherokee.

By Wayne Kirkbride

Our county and surrounding counties are rich in historical events and people. The earliest inhabitants were indigenous people, of which the Me-Wuk tribe is locally the largest and best known. Our history records another Native American People, the Cherokee that populated an area within Tuolumne County in the era of the Gold Rush sometime around the early 1850s.

The Cherokee Nation was one of the five recognized “civilized nations” of American Indians. Located in Georgia, they became early victims of the westward expansion of young America. It began as early as 1802, when “The Compact of 1802” was signed between Georgia and the federal government. It stated that Georgia would relinquish its western land claims (which later became Alabama and Mississippi) to the national government in return that someday the national government would negotiate treaties with the Indians and eventually relocate them outside the borders of Georgia, thus giving Georgia control of all land within its borders. In 1828 gold was discovered in Georgia and Cherokee people began to see their lands trespassed upon. By 1838, the federal government, ignoring the sovereignty of the Cherokee, began a forced relocation out of Georgia to reservations in Indian Territory, which later became Oklahoma Territory, some 1200 miles west. About 16,000 Cherokee, along with about 2,000 black slaves owned by wealthy Cherokee were moved to concentration camps and then along three major routes into the Indian Territory. Approximately 4,000 died along the trail, thus giving rise to the description, “The Trail of Tears”.

History tells of a group of Cherokee that set out for California in 1848, looking for new settlement lands. The expedition followed the Arkansas River upstream to the Rocky Mountains in present day Colorado, and then followed the base of the mountains northward into present day Wyoming before turning westward. The route became known as the Cherokee Trail, or the Rocky Mountain Trail. The group (or at least some) undertook gold prospecting in California.

An early day pioneer in Tuolumne County, Mrs. Lee Whipple-Haslam, wrote of her recollections of her life growing up in Tuolumne County during the gold rush days and beyond and published a book in 1925 called “Early Days in California: Scenes and events of the ‘50s as I remember them”. Her story reflects in part upon a couple of those Cherokee who came West, perhaps in that earlier migration of 1848, two brothers with the surname of “Scott”.
In her words: “Later in the fall of 1855, the Scott brothers, half breed Cherokees, wandered into the mountains, near our place, prospecting. They found good prospects at Cherokee, as they afterward named the place, not much over a mile from our house.” Her memory conflicts slightly with the date given by a State marker placed in 1949 alongside Tuolumne Road that says gold was discovered at this site in 1853 by the Scott brothers. The inscription on the marker reads: “On Confidence/Tuolumne Road, 2 miles north of Tuolumne City, gold discovered here in 1853 by the Scott Brothers, descendents of Cherokee Indians. Scars of placer diggings in every little arroyo in Cherokee Valley, healed by Mother Nature, were later replaced by a quartz mine.”

Whichever date is correct, Lee Ann Summers, as she was known as a young girl, continued her remembrances of the Scott brothers. “They built themselves a comfortable log cabin as quietly as possible, located their claims, and, borrowing father’s rifle, killed some deer and cured the meat. They hired father to move their long tom, cradle, rocker and tools, also some provisions for the winter and were soon ready for the winter snows. They knew they had good claims, and they wrote for their brother, Dick, to join them, locating a claim for him. They would not drink; were the soul of honor. They were gentlemen in the meaning that all the word implied. They wanted my father to join them, but he was clearing land for grain and hay.”

Lee Ann spoke of how the town of Cherokee changed. “Very early in the spring of 1856 the news of a rich gold discovery leaked out, and the country was soon overrun with prospectors. Cherokee soon became a lively, flourishing mining camp with two stores and two saloons. Of course, the saloons were the center of gravity in all camps. Selling vile whiskey to vile men can have only one result…they were ready for anything – robbery or murder, but above all they loved to fight…Cherokee represented the subsequent camps on the East Belt during ’56 and ’57, during the placer craze.

The first murder that occurred was done by Wilse Walkingstaff in May, 1856, in a cabin on Turnback Creek, not far from Cherokee. Walkingstaff was a Cherokee Indian and a very dangerous man. The trouble was caused by jealousy over a woman – a young squaw. He became jealous of James Ham, almost a boy, that was new to conditions then prevailing. He had not been initiated into the gambling class. Walkingstaff met him alone and cut his bowels open so that they protruded to the ground by his dead body; and then fled in terror from the mob that he knew would hang him. Ham was buried under a beautiful live oak tree and laid first claim to what was afterward known as the Summersville (or Carters) cemetery.”
In an article written for the Union Democrat by Lenore Rutherford, September 22, 2005, she says one of the brother’s names was Frances Key Scott, the other brother’s name unknown. Her article continues, “…A large Indian village about two miles north of Tuolumne became known as Cherokee after the brothers in 1853 found gold on what is now Cherokee Creek (Turnback Creek). By 1856, when Italian emigrants arrived there, the town was thriving. It had seven saloons, three general merchandise stores and a population of about 700…Whether the Scotts eventually left the area or lived there the rest of their lives is unknown.”

In 2004, a video of a Tuolumne Band of Cherokees meeting was made in which one of the speakers, Mark Cartwright of Cherokee ancestry; spoke about the history of the Cherokee in the County. He says his research through Bureau of Land Management records shows a purchase of land in the County as far back as 1825 by a Cherokee. “There were Spanish here working mines, there were Cherokee here…there’s lots of Cherokee mining deeds. The town had brothels, gambling houses, saloons, and they all disappeared. There’s a Cherokee cemetery that I’m sure there are Cherokee buried there…the Scott brothers made their fortune and went to San Francisco to lose it.”

In 1859, Lee Ann Summers wrote: “As there was a thrifty growth of population around the newly-discovered quartz mines, the people of Cherokee decided to give a dance. I had never seen dancing…Joe Roper, one of our boarders, played the violin. Of course, I was eager for the fray; never once thinking I could not dance…and after one futile effort to dance, I suppose it will be sufficient for me to say I survived the feverish effort to look, simultaneously wise and happy.”

B.F. Alley in his “A History of Tuolumne County (1882), wrote: “Cherokee, formerly celebrated for its rich placers, which supported a large population in the palmy days, and later on assumed credit for its neighboring quartz veins, is now nearly deserted. A few Italians and Chinese only inhabit the place and no work is being done upon the veins.”
By 1924, Lee Ann (now Mrs. Lee-Whipple Haslam) reflected back on her childhood memory of Cherokee. “I believe one of the early day store buildings still stands in Cherokee, to defy time and scorn the transitory works of man.”

In 1910 the Department of The Interior, United States Indian Service in San Jose, California sent a letter to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs in Washington, D.C. The letter described 289.52 acres being offered for sale by a Mr. and Mrs. Smith to the U.S. Government for $3,500 to be used as a reservation for the Cherokee Indians. It adjoined “The largest Rancheria around the town of Tuolumne…known as Cherokee, which is located on the Laura and North Star Lodes.” It was recommended the agency purchase the property.

The Cherokee, for the most part, later migrated from this area, and the land was eventually deeded to the local Me-Wuk Indians. Today there are no Cherokee land holdings in the County.

Today there are no remains of the town of Cherokee. What remains are a road named Cherokee, the Arastraville School, formerly known as the Cherokee school, and a cemetery adjoining Tuolumne Road that now belongs to the Me-Wuk, which according to Mark Cartwright holds long-forgotten Cherokee people.

The Tuolumne Band of Cherokee as stated in their mission statement “Has Been organized by the residents of Tuolumne County to promote, protect, and preserve our culture and the history of Cherokee Indians in California, especially in Tuolumne County, and to become a beneficial society for ‘people of Cherokee Indian blood’ and their family members.” Currently there are about 70 members with no requirement that a member have Cherokee ancestry, although many do. They meet on the fourth Sunday of each month at the County Library on Greenley St., Sonora to keep alive the traditions and culture of one of America’s greatest Indian nations.