Ramsey's Annals of Tennessee to the End of the Eighteenth Century (1853)

91

TRADITIONS OF TENNESSEE TRIBES.

the ruins of Rome, or the majestic desolations of Greece, are certainly not entirely devoid of interest, but excite a feeling of veneration for the memory of those mighty empires which once flourished where these vestiges of their former greatness are yet found. And the inquiry forcibly presents itself, who were these unknown people? How and when have these nations become extinct? Did some swarm of ruthless invaders from our northern hive, at some far distant period of time, seeking a more genial climate, descend the vallies of the West, and, carrying devastation in their march, Vandal-like, consign them to oblivion? Tradition, a medium of communication between remote ages too much undervalued, is not altogether silent on this subject. At a very noted congress or treaty, held early in the last century, at Lancaster, Pa., Indian delegates in attendance, said their ancestors had conquered several nations on the west side of the Great Mountains, viz: “The Cony-uch-such-roona, the Coch-now-was-roonon, the Tohoa-nough-roonaw, and the Conutskin-ough-roonaw.”

The traditions of the Tennessee tribes on the subject, are indistinct and conflicting. They agree in this, that their forefathers found these vestiges here, or that they were always here, meaning, thereby, to assign to these ancient relics an indefinite antiquity. The several Indian families in America have been well compared to the fragments of a vast ruin. Certain is it, that these remains imply the former existence of a population so dense as to prove that it was incapable of existing in the country of hunters only, and that, possibly, Tennessee and the West were once the theatre upon which agriculture, civilization and peace exhibited their benign influence, or the dreadful battle field, where the lust of dominion, the bad passions of man and his unhallowed ambition, consigned to the grave and to oblivion hecatombs of human victims, and made the fairest part of God’s creation a desert and a waste. Turning from the contemplation of this gloomy picture, we hasten to trace the progress of civilized man, of enlightenment and art over the wilds of Tennessee.