The 14 prisoners were proud and powerful Cherokee chieftains from all four states. They were part of a larger group who had voluntarily gone to Charles Town under a trusted flag of truce to try and settle differences with the British ruling class. Instead, they were outrageously taken as hostages by Governor William Lyttleton, brought back to Fort George and imprisoned until other Cherokees earlier accused of murders in the mountains could be brought in and swapped for the imprisoned men. Our county’s famous Nimmons Bridge would later span Keowee at Fort Prince George.
This slaughter in the fort’s jail was sparked after a frustrated Oconostota, supreme War Chief of the Cherokees, enticed Fort Commander Coytmore out for a talk, only to have Indians hidden in nearby bushes shoot him down. Coytmore’s enraged, out-of-control troops then fell on the hostages and killed them to a man.
This is just one of many exciting adventures awaiting you in a great new book by retired newspaper publisher, Jerry Alexander, entitled “Blood Red Runs the Sacred Keowee,” now in stores all across this area. In 200 pages and 205 vivid photos and illustrations, the 8 ½ by 11-inch, beautifully bound book is a minutely detailed history of the Cherokees and earlier Native American cultures that populated Pickens County. At least a dozen Indian villages in Oconee and Pickens Counties were burned to the ground during that 1760-61 Cherokee war and again 15 years later during the 1776 Revolutionary War. Thousands of Indians were left homeless to starve in the freezing Blue Ridge and Great Smokey Mountains that horrible winter. Many were killed as well.
Those local Cherokee villages survive today only in names we memorialize such as Seconee, Big Eastatoe, Keowee, Jocassee, Sugar Town, Esseneca, Toxaway, Aconee, Cheowhee, and Tomassee. In fact, the burned Cherokee village of Seconee stood within a mile of the western city limits of today’s Pickens. One of our best-known churches--- Secona Baptist, bears that village’s name in honor of the Cherokees who once lived there. Some helped found the initial church in that area. The Pickens County Museum, Stockade Antiques, The Store at Hagood Mill County Park, Aunt Sue’s on highway 11, Michaels’ Restaurant, the Pickens Chamber of Commerce in Pickens all carry the new book. Uncle Sam’s Antiques and Poor Richards in Easley have them as well. The author will even personally autograph books ordered from him at P.O. Box 1233, Seneca, S.C. 20679. The hardback edition sells for $29.95 each plus $3 for shipping and postage. A soft back version is $24.95 plus $3 shipping. Just send him a note as to what exact wording you wish.
“Instead of a necktie, get one as a gift for Mother, Daddy or Grandparents. I would seriously urge all our parents and grandparents to obtain copies for their children and grandchildren while supplies last. Until you read it, you can’t imagine all of the hundreds of historical details it contains. This is truly our own Pickens County history like no other has ever been written, certainly in our lifetime,” Alexander says.
“It is an important, accurate historical account of what occurred here. This entailed a lot of research and exacting work, written as a testament to the bravery of the mighty Cherokee. ” Alexander says. “British authorities from the start intended to subjugate Native Americans. That is exactly what happened, isn’t it?
Exact locations of many local Indian villages are given as is the history of the 1753 Fort Prince George the British built on the Keowee River at what later became Captain R.E. Steele’s farm near Nimmons’ Bridge. Over two centuries later, in 1967, archaeologists from the University of South Carolina uncovered and studied this fort site briefly before the rising waters of Lake Keowee, on Mothers Day, 1968, inundated it forever. Seneca native Marshall Williams, a member of that archaeological team who personally relates all he saw and did, as the old fort was uncovered for the first time in 200 years, contributed a special section to the book. This section alone contains a wealth of information and photographs. It makes you a personal witness directly on the site.
Photos of families who later farmed the land along the river are featured as well, including the Steele and I.C. Few families, the Andrew Fergusons, the William Crenshaws and all the Craigs of Keowee. The book contains photographs of artifacts plowed up in the late Mr. Ed Steele’s fields and on neighboring farms back in 1902, including a steel tomahawk made in England and two actual cannonballs. The farm later belonged to Mr. and Mrs. I.C. Few. Mrs. Few was a daughter of Ed Steele.
“For hundreds of years, vast fields of corn, beans, squash and melons were grown by the Cherokees in fertile Pickens County bottomlands. Their mountainous peach and plumb orchards were so bountiful that one army officer, carrying out the 1761 fiery inferno destroying them, “cried wretchedly within his very soul.” He even later made his distraught feelings public,” the author points out.
Even portions of the old Indian trading path from the Overhills villages in Tennessee to Charles Town on the coast of South Carolina are photographed for the reader to see. One being the part of the trail that crosses 50 yards below the Easley-Central Water District dam on Twelve Mile River about a mile upriver above Cateechee. The ford is easily seen today where wagons crossed the river on a shelf of reasonably smooth rock about two feet under the water. “These are places fixed forever in our history,” Alexander states. Another famous Indian trading path went from Seconee Village up and crossing Ninetimes Creek into Eastatoe Valley to the village of Eastatoe. The Cherokee originally named the stream Ninetimes as their trail crossed it that many times enroute.
Then in the Revolutionary War, in which the Indians tragically sided with the British against the young American nation. Patriot commander Col. Andrew Williamson and his men were caught in a bloody ambush at a spot on today’s Clemson University athletic fields near the Walker Golf Course. “In 1776, this was the site of Esseneca Indian town spread out on both sides of the river and containing 500 Cherokees. Americans got the upper hand after a few minutes hand to hand fighting against the Indians and their Tory friends and burned the entire town and some 6,000 bushels of corn along with it,” he states. ”Tories were local British sympathizers who often led the Indians in raids. Some white Tories often painted themselves and dressed like Indians during raids. One prominent British sympathizer was Trader Richard Paris at Reedy River Falls in the heart of today’s Greenville. American Patriots burned his corn mill, trading post and home there in 1776, all of it recorded in this book.”
“A young American patriot Major Andrew Pickens was in numerous local battles. He was sent to burn Tugaloo and Brasstown Indian villages on the upper Tugaloo River. Among other towns patriots torched were Eastatoe, Quarachee, Jocassee and Tamassee, where Pickens would later build a home, residing there peacefully until his death in 1817. Little Seconee Village near present-day Pickens was burned again in 1776. Most of its population then left this area forever, leaving only a few Cherokee families remaining.”
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