Cherokee Gold: The Settlers of North Georgia during the Gold Rush
The first actual discovery of gold in Georgia is impossible to determine. It is believed that de Soto's trek through this part of the state was in search of the precious metal, and Cherokee records show that these particular natives had been mining the substance since before the encroachment of white men. However, it was the disputable record of discoveries from 1828-29 that spawned the 'gold fever' in the intruding settlers. Many records claim to be the first discovery, but they are in conflict with others that could also be the first. Whichever record is the true, initial discovery is not important. What are important are the events that transpired afterwards. The Cherokee would be put under even more pressure from the State of Georgia and the surrounding settlers. After this, in the early 1830's, the gold hungry whites would move in and create a unique, gold rush society that would last until the profit waned and the lure for quick and easy riches pulled them away from the area.1
Relations with the Cherokee, like most native tribes, had always been a bit
tenuous. However, in the years leading up to the gold rush and the last land
lottery that dispersed native lands to whites, they had become overwhelmingly
pressing. George Gilmer referred to the removal of the Cherokee as being of the
"very greatest importance."2
Seemingly, the availability of such quantities of land made the state unstable.
Georgians clamored for Cherokee land and the state tried to impose its laws over
the people contained therein. Georgia, according to a more contemporary
columnists account, "would never have peace and real progress" if the Cherokee
remained.3
The initial encroachers into the gold country sped up the taking of Cherokee
lands. The conflict over which laws would rule the area created in the newcomers
a sense of lawlessness. There was rampant drinking, gambling and violence. These
vagrants trespassed on Cherokee and white land alike to illegally mine for gold.
In such a situation where ownership was under question, trespassing was not hard
to do. This practice of illegal mining became known as "swindling." The Cherokee
became the main victims of this criminal practice and became united in a voice
of protest. They lodged complaints with a U.S. agent, and the Georgians were
ordered out of the territory. This created more tensions because intruders had
come from other states besides Georgia and since they were absent from the
letter of the law, they stayed. This irritated not just the affected settlers,
but also their fellow Georgians back east as well. Governor Gilmer, I 1830,
complained to the federal government that Georgia would "protect" her property
and authority "by taking possession of the gold country." On July 3, 1830, the
laws of Georgia proper were extended over Cherokee lands, all mines in the
territory were claimed by Georgia, and all digging was ordered to stop. By
December, a guard had been created to enforce law in the territory.4
This new authority came into conflict with the established order of life in
the Cherokee land and put in motion the final steps of the removal of the
Cherokee. In 1831, the Supreme Court decided, in the case of the Cherokee Nation
v. Georgia, that the Cherokee did not constitute a foreign state and that their
requested injunction against the enforcement of Georgia's laws was denied.
However, in Worcester v. Georgia the Supreme Court decided that the State of
Georgia was in conflict with previous treaties with the Cherokee that clearly
lay out the boundaries separating Georgia from Cherokee Country. Despite John
Marshall's decision, Georgia ignored the Cherokee protests and the guard was
ordered to keep control with the intent of preventing trespassing on gold mines.
According to Gilmer, there was a "crisis" in Cherokee Country.5 The
natives had become overly hostile, the Georgians, both in the territory and out,
were aggravated with the delay and irreverence for their State's authority, and
other states' settlers were eager for a chance to claim their share of the
gold.6
Finally, the Cherokee of this territory surrendered all lands to the
government in exchange for land west of the Mississippi River. The mines fell
under the control of Georgia. At this same time, a gubernatorial election saw
Gilmer removed from office in favor of Wilson Lumpkin. One big issue in the race
was over the control of the new gold mines. Gilmer had opted for state control
of the mines. Lumpkin saw this as a monopoly, and thought all the new land,
including the mines, should be open to the people. The legislature decided on a
lottery system for land allotment and it was held from October 1832 to May 1833.
The government of the land was ordered around the establishment of ten new
counties from the old Cherokee land. The land was opened up for the gold rushers
and soon hordes of settlers, legal and illegal, poured in and brought with them
a new society, unique in its creation and relation to its inhabitants.7
Reaching the gold country was the first problem facing the settlers of the
new society. Transportation was lacking and the roads into the areas were rough
and shoddy. In an 1830 letter to Col. H. Brown, William L. Gwyn, an early
settler in the area, wrote that, "the road is such that we are uncertain as to
the extent, and we do not wish to incure (sic) much expense until we examine
further." The influx of settlers would start to change these circumstances
though, as new ways to reach the isolated society became available. A coach
line, the Banks and Longstreet, was created to run from Athens to Dahlonega
three times a week. Another line was set up to reach Gainesville from Pendleton,
South Carolina. The driving force behind the creation of this line was John C.
Calhoun, the former Vice-President, who had a strong interest in the Georgia
gold industry. The coach lines created a need for stop over points, and hotels
and taverns sprang up with great frequency along the lines as well as in the
heart of the gold country. These inns would carry diagrams and maps, which acted
as guides to the mines for the newcomers.8
With the influx of settlers came a shortage in food. The poor transportation
and lack of farming early on only enhanced this. Everyone was so anxious to
strike it rich at the placers that they ignored the basic needs of the people in
the area. The early gold rush saw advertisements trying to lure farmers to the
region to help fight the scarcity of food. Meat was in the highest demand due to
the lack of domesticated animals. Some suppliers developed livestock drives, in
which large numbers of turkeys and hogs were herded into the mining camps. Some
of the more civilized areas, like the boomtowns, saw an attempt at domestic and
profitable solutions to the problem. For example, housewives in Lumpkin County
took contracts to render lard, then sold the resultant in the mining camps for
two and a half cents a pound. For the most part, though, this problem would not
be actively dealt with until the arrival of the yeoman and planters of the
coming years.9
The actual number of people who came in search of gold is impossible to
determine, but estimates put it around 35-40,000. Boomtowns sprang up with the
new population. Two such important towns were Auraria and Dahlonega, both of
which were in Lumpkin County, what was considered the center of the gold
country. The communities started growing at about the same time and seemed to be
in competition with each other for importance. Initially, Auraria had the upper
hand, having a post office built a year before her sister town. However, when
surveying began to build a courthouse for Lumpkin County, a fallacy in boundary
and property lines was discovered in Auraria and the structure was given to
Dahlonega. Despite these early differences though, both towns grew exponentially
with the surge of gold seekers, and thusly, adapted to their demands.10
The type of people that began coming to these towns, and putting the demands
of their vices upon them, was a rough breed. They were very similar to those
original intruders before the Removal, given to the vices typically attributed
to frontier life - especially one driven on avarice like was flourishing in the
gold country. These ruffians were what George Gilmer referred to as the "idle
and profligate." Men panned daily for gold in the creeks and rivers, and as soon
as they made their money they found wretched ways to loose it. They gambled
regularly, usually at dice and cards, and were very much given to drink, often
times getting out of hand. The miners would deal with really drunk comrades by
'checking them in.' As a miner got too out of hand or too sloppily drunk, he
would be taken to the tan yard and thrown in a vat to sober him up, and then the
perpetrators would return to their tables at the saloon. The most popular and
frequented building in town was the saloon, and these houses of inequity were
open all day and night and filled with the dregs of an "unmoral community."11
Fighting was another common feature among the early settler groups. The most
common reason for a fight was a conflicting claim to mine a spot between groups
from different states. Regularly, men from Georgia, the Carolinas, and Tennessee
fought against one another. On one occasion, 60 Carolinians set upon only 20
Georgians over a mine placer. The fight raged for a long time, with the
Georgians finally fending off their attackers. Another renowned conflict was a
May 1831 altercation between groups of Georgians and Tennesseans. They fought
over the mining of a particular creek branch, and the hostilities were so
bloody, the creek has carried the name 'Battle Branch' ever since.12
Having such a rough community with questionable authority to spawn it, it is
no wonder that lawlessness had such a foothold. As the wealth from mining
increased, creating more abundant and easy targets, so did robbery. Gangs of
outlaws roamed the new country, stealing gold. They were brigands and
highwaymen, using poor roads and covered bridges as their favorite havens for
ambush. While the idea of being thusly robbed displeased the settlers, it can be
seen that they were drawn to the romance of the gold robbers. In 1834, a visitor
to Georgia, William G. Simms, became inspired by this. He wrote a novel, Guy
Rivers: A Tale of Georgia, on the basis of the highway robberies. Guy was a
romantic figure, and the book became very popular among the local inhabitants.
People imagined the character was real and living the area. The novel spawned a
legend of a cave where Guy hid his treasure, and as Fanny Wood, a Lumpkin County
reader, remarked, "I don't know what happened to Guy Rivers."13
Judging from these conditions, it can be reasonably assumed that faith and
religion did not play an integral part of this early gold rush society. The
disparity in this can be seen in the fact that in the early 1830's, Dahlonega
had only three churches, and some twenty liquor vendors. For decades before the
Removal, missionaries were common in Cherokee Country. In fact, Samuel Worcester
of Worcester v. Georgia was a missionary. This trend of sending in a messenger
of the Word continued in the early gold rush, but it did so in the form of
itinerate preachers. However, it was found that keeping such a preacher on track
was not an easy task. Many times these "circuit riders" would get into gold
country, hear of the quick profit, and "forget the sinner" and be lead astray to
chase the "yellow mammon." Sometimes, a traveling preacher would meet a girl on
the frontier, and his preaching rotation would become a honeymoon, 'wedding
circuit.' But, more often than not, he met the former fate and took up his spot
at the placers.14
Not every would-be do-gooder was so easily led astray. Recollections of one
Mrs. Agnes Paschal were very fond. The Paschals were some of the early settlers
at Auraria. Agnes, for her good nature and amicability, was known by the people
of her town as 'Grandma' Paschal. When a fever epidemic broke out in 1834, she
worked to nurse the young men of the town back to health. Also, seeing the
Godlessness of the gold country, she led a movement for "religious instruction."
She began a Sunday school for children and began the congregation of Antioch
Baptist Church. To the congregation's dismay, the building was too hastily built
and collapsed the next winter. Agnes resorted to allowing the church to meet in
the common room of her hotel, and the Antioch congregation made due with a
visiting minister. Paschal also attempted to start a temperance movement with
the help of fellow Aurarians, Thomas King and Alexander Pope, but it failed to
really catch on.15
While the early settlers of the Cherokee country were those having the vices
described before, in time, new and legitimate settlers arrived. The violent and
wild group gradually drifted away, or at least toned down as the structure of
society built up around them, and the area was left with a population of miners
and landowners who were mostly native to Georgia, and for the most part
considered good citizens. With the rise of what Fletcher Green called, the
"ignorant but honorable" class came a rise in agriculture. While some extreme
cases record planters selling their plantations to go mining, most landowners
worked their mines in adjunct to farming, creating another unique aspect to the
gold society. When the season called for hard work in the fields, then the
settlers would be there, planting or harvesting, but when their was off time,
they expended their labor with pans in the river placers. Usually, the farmers
followed the profit, as their dedication to either practice fluxed with the
price of cotton. When the rate was high, and safe money was to be made, they
would desert the mines, and if the rate dropped, more concentration was focused
on the placers.
Some farmers resisted the gold fever all together. They found the want of
easy wealth to be the actions of the lazy and viewed mining as financially
unstable. One such example is Edward Williams, better known to the locals as
'Major.' He worked strictly in his fields, not giving in to the lure of cheap
riches. However, his son, George, was not so immune. The young man harangued his
father for a chance to mine, but Edward never gave in, putting George to hard
labor in the fields that left him so tired he never spoke of mining again.16
Slave labor was also common in the new society of the Cherokee gold country.
They were involved with the traditional aspects of agricultural work, but some
were used in the mines as well. Landholders would use slaves in the placers
during the planting off-season. For instance, John C. Calhoun had a reported
twenty slaves tolling away in his gold interest when his concentration was not
required on his plantation in South Carolina. More untraditionally, some slaves
in the territory could work the mine after hours, earning credit towards their
freedom. In addition, some planters, as seen in Western Herald's newspaper
advertisements from the 1830's, would rent their slaves, usually at around a
rate of ten dollars a month.17 Some
slaves would lie about the amount of gold they found, attempting to hide some
for themselves. When discovered, they were punished brutally, as were any whites
discovered being knowingly involved in transactions with slaves. Therefore,
while some aspects of gold slavery broke with tradition, they never strayed too
far from the idea of maintaining society's patriarchal system.18
As the society of the gold country structured itself, political views
developed among its inhabitants. Political rallies were common, though not as
high profile as those in the east. In the gold region there was much excitement
over John C. Calhoun due to his involvement in the fledgling gold industry and
later, his support for the establishment of the Dahlonega Mint. However, despite
this fervor for Calhoun and Nullification, Andrew Jackson's popularity was
secure. Without the President and his Cherokee Removal policy, the settlers
would not be living in the gold country, and they respected that enough to keep
their loyalties in check.19
As time passed, the society of gold grew to national prominence. In 1835,
after much lobbying and legislation, Congress finally agreed to charter branch
mints, with Dahlonega receiving one such facility. The branch mints were
supported by the idea that they could prevent the export of gold to other
countries by keeping the specie local. The Dahlonega mint cost $100,000 and cost
close to $22,000 to run the first year, but it coined $231,000. However, coinage
decreased two years later, and the mint came under fire, with people in Congress
calling for its discontinuation by 1841. The establishment of this mint created
an 'industrialized' mining system, and brought the first chapter of the Georgia
gold Rush to an end. Mining systems changed from placers and panning to new
machine controlled extraction from deep shafts. Outside investment and control,
like Northern capitalists, increased, but the system failed because those in
power had no real familiarity with their labor force. Speculation boomed again,
and the original capitalists escaped, leaving the shareholders wiped out. This
was the beginning of the end, as a new gold rush in 1849 drew attention and
investiture to California, and away from Georgia. Such was the oddity of gold
rush mining, "Georgia's forgotten industry." It faded as quickly as it arrived,
but left a distinctive mark. The industry barely lasted thirty years, but it
still worked to provide labor for the influx of a new society and produce $50
million in gold.20
This industry was the backdrop and economy of the Gold society in Georgia. The discovery of gold and the subsequent rush are rare things in history. Each one is unique in its own way, as are the societies they create. Georgia's gold rush, the first in the U.S., was no different. The development of the society, through Cherokee Removal, settler influx, and the problems therein, molded a unique and interesting society that would change the face of Georgia forever.
Endnotes
1. Fletcher M. Green. "Georgia's Forgotten Industry: Gold Mining" part 1. Georgia Historical Quarterly. (Vol. 19, #3. September 1935).
David Williams. The Georgia Gold Rush: 29'ers, Cherokee, and Gold Fever. (Columbia: University of South Carolina, 1993).
2. George Gilmer. First Settlers of Upper Georgia. (Baltimore: genealogical Publishing Co. 1965).
3.
Hugh Parks. "Grandma Knew the Cherokee." Atlanta Journal. (April
26, 1959).
4.
Williams.
Green. Part 1.
Gilmer.
5. Gilmer.
6. Green. Part 1.
7. Green. Part 1.
Wilson Lumpkin. The Removal of the Cherokee from Georgia, 1827-1841. (New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1907).
8. T. Conn Bryan. "Letters Concerning Georgia Gold Mines." Georgia Historical Quarterly (Vol. 44, #3, September, 1960).
Fletcher Green, . "Georgia's Forgotten Industry: Gold Mining" part 2. Georgia Historical Quarterly. (Vol. 19, #3. September 1935).
- Calhoun had one of the more productive mines in the area. His son-in-law, Thomas G. Clemson, used some of the profit from the mining operation to found Clemson University.
Green, part 2.
9. Andrew Cain. The History of Lumpkin County, 1832-1932. (Spartanburg: Reprint Co., 1978).
10. Cain
11.
Gilmer.
Williams.
-This depravity was not gender exclusive.
According to Williams, the women in the early gold country were as equally "vile
and wicked" as the men.
12.
Green.
- A placer was the most common of the three mining types,
the other two being surface and deposit. Working the placer was simple. One
would simply pan gravel from a creek bed or river in a sluice box, extracting
the gold from the other debris.
- All mining was simple in this early stage
of the rush (1829 - 1837). Mainly basic tools such as pick axes and shovels were
utilized.
13.
Williams.
Cain.
14.
Williams.
Cain.
5.
Cain.
Williams.
16.
Williams.
17. - The Western Herald, which began publication in 1833, was the first periodical in Auraria. It became a major newspaper of the entire region.
18.
Green, part 2.
Williams.
19.
Williams.
Green, part 2.
20.
Green, part 2
- It has been estimated that only one-third of
gold deposits in Georgia's gold country were touched, and from those, only half
the gold was recovered.
Links to More Information Online:
BRANCH MINT AT DAHLONEGA, GEORGIA