Eoneguski, Or, the Cherokee Chief: A Tale of Past Wars

HAVING heard of you as one ever ready to promote the literature of your Country, and to develope its history, I have determined to forward you the accompanying, with a request that you will commit it to the press, if, according to your judgment, it possesses sufficient merits. In writing this manuscript I cannot claim to rank as an , having merely thrown together, with very little embellishment, facts that I have been enabled to collect from a variety of scattered sources. A few years ago I was a traveller through the western part of North Carolina, and having stopped early in the evening at a small village, on the southwestern side of the Tennessee River, in the indulgence of a curiosity common to myself, with most travellers, I inquired if the neighborhood furnished anything to gratify an admirer of the works either of nature or of art. My host, who was, by the way, an amiable and intelligent man, promptly answered, that there was within the limits of the village itself, an “Indian mound,” and that the Falls of the Sugar Town Fork, a few miles distant, were esteemed quite an interesting spectacle to such as loved to see nature in wildness and grandeur. Moved by no love of gain, which might seek to prolong, as much as possible, the stay of a guest where the visits of travellers were like those of angels, he kindly offered to accompany me the next day as far on the way to the Falls as the residence of Mr. McDonald, who was, he informed me, the clerk of the court—a scholar, a gentleman, and one deeply versed in the legendary lore of the country, which he took great pleasure in imparting whenever it was his fortune to meet with an intelligent and interested listener.