America, Native Americans, Choris, Muskogean

Georgia Trustee
After retirement in 1742, Vernon became the indispensable man. He missed only 4 of 114 meetings during the last nine years of the Trust and supervised the removal of restrictions on land tenure, rum, and slavery. Egmont, the first president of the Common Council and the dominant figure among the Trustees until his retirement, acted as Georgia's champion in Parliament. He strongly opposed Walpole's attempts to conciliate Spain at the expense of Georgia.He had to walk a careful line, however, because the Trustees depended upon Walpole for their annual subsidies. Other Trustees contributed according to their abilities.

Henry L'Apostre advised on finances, Samuel Smith on religion, and Thomas Tower on legal matters, particularly on instructions to Georgia officials. Stephen Hales's closeness to the royal family and his standing as a scientist lent prestige to the body of Trustees. Shaftesbury, a political opponent of Walpole, joined the Common Council in 1733 and, except for a brief resignation, remained faithful to the end. He led the negotiations to convert Georgia to a royal colony. For the entire twenty years the Trustees employed only two staff members, Benjamin Martyn as secretary and Harman Verelst as accountant.

Louis Choris (1795-1828) was a famous German-Russian painter and explorer. He was one of the first sketch artists for expedition research. Louis Choris, who was a Russian of German stock, was born in Yekaterinoslav, now Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine on March 22, 1795.  He visited the Pacific and the west coast of North America in 1816 on board the Ruric, being attached in the capacity of artist to the Romanzoff expedition under the command of Lieutenant Otto von Kotzebue, sent out for the purpose of exploring a northwest passage.

Choris is said to have "painted nature as he found it. The essence of his art is truth; a fresh, vigorous view of life, and an originality in portrayal." The accompanying illustrations may therefore be looked upon as faithfully representing the subjects treated by the artist. After the voyage of the Ruric, Choris went to Paris where he issued a portfolio of his drawings in lithographic reproduction and studied in the ateliers of Gerard and Regnault. Choris worked extensively in pastels. He documented the Ohlone people in the missions of San Francisco, California in 1816.

Examiner: British researchers probe mystery of lost Native American artifact. It is the Rosetta Stone of North America. The English translation of this hand-painted vellum containing a lost Native American writing system, requires eight printed pages.

With the encouragement of His Royal Highness, Charles, Prince of Wales, a search has begun on both sides of the Atlantic to find the original artifact, or at least a copy of the writing system. It has been misplaced for over 230 years. The year is 1733. Growing increasingly fearful of a combined Spanish, French and Indian attack on its vulnerable white population, the Province of South Carolina agreed to renounce claims on territory southwest of the Savannah River so that a new colony of yeoman farmers could be established on its frontier.

Roughly sixty percent of South Carolina’s population was either African or Native American slaves. These suppressed peoples would be highly inclined to assist the French and Spanish. In 1715, without the direct assistance of European powers, the Yamasee Indians had almost succeeded in wiping the southern part Carolina off the face of the earth. Back then there was no North or South Carolina. A new alliance of tribes in the Carolina Mountains switched sides and attacked the Yamasee just at the moment when Charleston faced annihilation. This alliance was now called the Cherokees. The new colony, called Georgia in honor of King George I, would have no slaves.

Its first town, Savannah, had been designed in advance as a military bastion. Its unique plan maximized the defensive effectiveness of artillery. All males in the colony agreed to be members of the militia in return for being given free land. The colony’s Board of Trustees planned to recruit the thousands of Englishmen in debtor’s prisons, plus German Protestants, being persecuted in Catholic regions, to settle the countryside. Unlike Maryland, Virginia, South and North Carolina, there would be no plantation aristocracy. At least, that was the plan.

The key to this colony’s success would be good relations with the Muskogean peoples of the interior.
Prior to the Yamasee War, they had been divided up into provinces of various sizes. The strongest province was itself an alliance known to the British as the Ochese Creek Indians. At about the same time in 1718 that the Mountain Alliance was given the name Cherokees, the Muskogeans formed their own regional confederacy from provinces speaking several languages and dialects. The Muskogean Confederacy was not a tribe at this time, but would eventually evolve into the Creek Indians.

Nevertheless, in 1733, this alliance contained the largest and most culturally advanced indigenous population in North America. It claimed all the former lands of its members, between the Smoky Mountains in North Carolina southward to St. Augustine, FL. Expansion of the Cherokee Alliance into western North Carolina had forced many Muskogean provinces to relocate to Alabama and Georgia. Its members would not be called “the Creek Indians” until the 1740s.