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Faculty and students participate in centennial observance of Battle of Etowah Monument
Oct 31, 2001 8:00 AM
By Stefan Eady - Faculty
In honor of the centennial observance of the dedication of the Battle of Etowah Monument, members of the Darlington community participated in the rededication ceremony sponsored by the Xavier Chapter of the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution. This chapter was named in honor of General John Sevier, remembered for his victory over the Indians led by King Fisher.
Judy Summerbell, wife of Jack Summerbell, former academic dean and faculty member, welcomed attendants and Bill King, music appreciation teacher, played, “Taps”. Wil Tucker, eighth grade, was selected to place the wreath on the monument. Darlington students provided flute and percussion music for the event.Darlington President, David V. Hicks, gave his thoughts on the history, and story, behind the monument honoring Sevier.
THE BATTLE OF ETOWAH
October 17, 1793
One hundred years ago this month, the Daughters of the American Revolution dedicated the monument before which we stand today. At that time, this monument was planted on the other side of Myrtle Hill Cemetery. President Teddy Roosevelt was in the White House sending his great white fleet around the world and digging his big ditch in Panama. A trolley passed this very spot every hour and continued to roll past the stately homes lining both sides of East Main Road and overlooking the City of Rome and the Etowah River, all the way out to DeSoto Park on the City’s southern border.
This old monument standing before us, itself a part of history, has seen a lot of history. Who at that ceremony one hundred years ago could have imagined the fabulous contradictions of the Twentieth Century: on the one hand, the ghastly world wars and the soldiers to be added to the cemetery across the street? On the other hand, the extraordinary advances in science and technology? On the one hand, the sad decline in this part of our fair old city? On the other hand, the creation of a secondary school attracting students from all over the world at the old town park on its southern border.
What do you think was in the minds of those who raised this monument and dedicated it a century ago? My speculations are these:
It was a nationalistic era. The deep and terrible wounds of the war between North and South were finally beginning to heal. We had a popular President whose father was a New Yorker and whose mother was a Georgian, yet in our popular imagination, we identified him not with our tortured past, but with our bright future -- with the Golden West and the wild, romantic frontier. He was the American we all wanted to be, we all wanted to believe in. He overcame the long odds of a debilitating childhood disease to lead his Rough Riders up the defended heights of San Juan Hill and plant the stars and stripes in our hearts. He was a fighter in every good cause. He fought cattle rustlers in the Dakotas; he fought Tammany Hall corruption in New York; he fought the monopolies and cartels in Washington. Yet he would also be a peacemaker, persuading the Russians and Japanese to make peace in New Hampshire and winning a Nobel Prize for doing so in Stockholm.
John Sevier, the hero of the Battle of Etowah, was the same kind of man. The quintessential American we all want to be, we all want to believe in. A man who invariably did what he thought was right, no matter the personal cost or danger to himself. A man, as they would have said in the Old South, of honor. But not of an honor that is honored only in the breach or that comes at little personal expense to himself. No doubt, those who stood in our place one hundred years ago were thinking heroic thoughts like these, proud to be Americans at the dawn of a new century that promised to be the American Century
Sevier, like Roosevelt, like the American of our imagination, was a man instinctively most comfortable on the frontier, fighting for something he believed in that we might loosely term “civilization.” Born in Virginia, he laid out the town of New Market before moving on to the western Carolinas. All his life he kept moving West, toward the frontier.
All his life he served, as all American males of his time did, in the militia, the band of citizen soldiers whose active duty began whenever their country felt threatened. In 1780 he assured himself of a place in the hearts of the Daughters of the American Revolution by leading 240 southern pioneers over the Smokies to surprise and defeat the British at King’s Mountain. By 1793 he had fought in over twenty campaigns against the British and the Indians who had assisted them.
In that year, after the terrible slaughter and scalping of thirteen men, women, and children at Cavett’s Station near Knoxville by an invading army of one thousand Creek and Cherokee warriors, Governor Blount called out the militia and ordered General Sevier to use “defensive measures” to thwart the Indian attacks. In characteristic American fashion, Sevier’s idea of a defensive operation was a strong offensive. He gathered over 700 men, many of them related to those who had been massacred at Cavett’s Station, and pursued the main body of Indians across the Little Tennessee into Cherokee country, eventually confronting his enemy at the spot where we now stand today.
Here’s what probably happened on that day almost exactly 208 years ago. The Indians under their famous leader Chief King Fisher, knowing they were being pursued, had taken up defensive positions on this side of the Etowah, all along what is today called Etowah Terrace and on up to the cliffs by the old railroad bridge and Hobo Canyon. They had even cut down trees for this purpose and were heavily guarding a ford somewhere in the vicinity of the bridge. Sevier ordered Colonel Kelly to look for an easier place to ford down river. Colonel Kelly and Captain Evans came down to about this spot and began to swim their horses across the river, no doubt attracted by the Coosa Country Club’s beautiful fairways.
The Indians, seeing this and assuming that this is where the Americans intended to cross, abandoned the high ground and rushed along the southern bank of the river to stop them. Kelly and Evans immediately reversed course, pushing their horses and men up river to cross at the now weakly defended ford, and there they forced the crossing. A mere teenager named Hugh Lawson White shot the great Chief King Fisher through the chest with his squirrel rifle at this crossing. After fiercely fighting Sevier’s men in the open ground behind us and after much loss of life under that old Coca Cola billboard, the dismayed and confused Indians gathered up their fallen chief and retreated. They attempted to make another stand later in the day on the western side of the cemetery where this monument formerly stood, but General Sevier attacked and routed the enemy before nightfall.
This was Sevier’s last military campaign. He went on to become the first Governor of Tennessee, a post to which he was elected not once, but six times.
There are two notes in General Sevier’s official report of the battle that I think bear repeating today:
The first is a note that his army flogged those Indians it had captured who participated in the massacre at Cavett’s Station. Even in the midst of war, there was this over-arching concern for justice.
The other note reads as follows: “Many women and children might have been taken, but from motives of humanity I did not encourage it to be done, and several taken were suffered to make their escape.” There is also this note of mercy, a small one perhaps, but something to distinguish this bloodletting from the massacre of women and children at Cavett’s Station.
At the beginning of this little talk, I asked: What do you think was in the minds of those who raised this monument and dedicated it a century ago? We can, of course, only guess. My guess is that one hundred years ago those who gathered as we do today were probably amazed at how much had changed since that savage battle over a century ago.
But the more urgent question is: What is in our minds today? I can tell you only what is in my mind. I am struck by how little life has changed in the 208 years since General Sevier and Chief King Fisher fought their battle here.
We are still living on the frontier between tribal savagery and civilization, a frontier where even our physical safety cannot be guaranteed or taken for granted. We still need both mental and physical courage to defend our freedoms and to live in peace.
We still face an enemy that has his own reasons for hating us. Whether or not we understand or can sympathize with his reasons, or wish to romanticize our enemy as a “noble savage” or a defender of the oppressed, we must still defend ourselves from his deadly and indiscriminate attacks, and the only way to do that is to take the battle to him.
Every American citizen is still a de facto member of the militia and may find himself, or herself, on any given day on the front lines of this new war. Our enemy makes no distinction between the soldier and the citizen. Nor can we. We are all soldiers in this war. We need to be brave, prepared to lay down our lives if called upon to do so.
We are still tempted to abandon our civilized norms of justice and mercy in the process of defending them, but like General Sevier, we must resolutely resist that temptation.
We are still, for all our education and scientific endeavor, our religious belief and political correctness, a deeply flawed race, full of fear and hate and contradiction, in desperate need of human as well as divine forgiveness.
And yes, we still need men and women like John Sevier and Theodore Roosevelt, who can live effectively, if not comfortably, on this frontier, fighting for something we might loosely term “civilization.”
Judy Summerbell, wife of Jack Summerbell, former academic dean and faculty member, welcomed attendants and Bill King, music appreciation teacher, played, “Taps”. Wil Tucker, eighth grade, was selected to place the wreath on the monument. Darlington students provided flute and percussion music for the event.Darlington President, David V. Hicks, gave his thoughts on the history, and story, behind the monument honoring Sevier.
THE BATTLE OF ETOWAH
October 17, 1793
One hundred years ago this month, the Daughters of the American Revolution dedicated the monument before which we stand today. At that time, this monument was planted on the other side of Myrtle Hill Cemetery. President Teddy Roosevelt was in the White House sending his great white fleet around the world and digging his big ditch in Panama. A trolley passed this very spot every hour and continued to roll past the stately homes lining both sides of East Main Road and overlooking the City of Rome and the Etowah River, all the way out to DeSoto Park on the City’s southern border.
This old monument standing before us, itself a part of history, has seen a lot of history. Who at that ceremony one hundred years ago could have imagined the fabulous contradictions of the Twentieth Century: on the one hand, the ghastly world wars and the soldiers to be added to the cemetery across the street? On the other hand, the extraordinary advances in science and technology? On the one hand, the sad decline in this part of our fair old city? On the other hand, the creation of a secondary school attracting students from all over the world at the old town park on its southern border.
What do you think was in the minds of those who raised this monument and dedicated it a century ago? My speculations are these:
It was a nationalistic era. The deep and terrible wounds of the war between North and South were finally beginning to heal. We had a popular President whose father was a New Yorker and whose mother was a Georgian, yet in our popular imagination, we identified him not with our tortured past, but with our bright future -- with the Golden West and the wild, romantic frontier. He was the American we all wanted to be, we all wanted to believe in. He overcame the long odds of a debilitating childhood disease to lead his Rough Riders up the defended heights of San Juan Hill and plant the stars and stripes in our hearts. He was a fighter in every good cause. He fought cattle rustlers in the Dakotas; he fought Tammany Hall corruption in New York; he fought the monopolies and cartels in Washington. Yet he would also be a peacemaker, persuading the Russians and Japanese to make peace in New Hampshire and winning a Nobel Prize for doing so in Stockholm.
John Sevier, the hero of the Battle of Etowah, was the same kind of man. The quintessential American we all want to be, we all want to believe in. A man who invariably did what he thought was right, no matter the personal cost or danger to himself. A man, as they would have said in the Old South, of honor. But not of an honor that is honored only in the breach or that comes at little personal expense to himself. No doubt, those who stood in our place one hundred years ago were thinking heroic thoughts like these, proud to be Americans at the dawn of a new century that promised to be the American Century
Sevier, like Roosevelt, like the American of our imagination, was a man instinctively most comfortable on the frontier, fighting for something he believed in that we might loosely term “civilization.” Born in Virginia, he laid out the town of New Market before moving on to the western Carolinas. All his life he kept moving West, toward the frontier.
All his life he served, as all American males of his time did, in the militia, the band of citizen soldiers whose active duty began whenever their country felt threatened. In 1780 he assured himself of a place in the hearts of the Daughters of the American Revolution by leading 240 southern pioneers over the Smokies to surprise and defeat the British at King’s Mountain. By 1793 he had fought in over twenty campaigns against the British and the Indians who had assisted them.
In that year, after the terrible slaughter and scalping of thirteen men, women, and children at Cavett’s Station near Knoxville by an invading army of one thousand Creek and Cherokee warriors, Governor Blount called out the militia and ordered General Sevier to use “defensive measures” to thwart the Indian attacks. In characteristic American fashion, Sevier’s idea of a defensive operation was a strong offensive. He gathered over 700 men, many of them related to those who had been massacred at Cavett’s Station, and pursued the main body of Indians across the Little Tennessee into Cherokee country, eventually confronting his enemy at the spot where we now stand today.
Here’s what probably happened on that day almost exactly 208 years ago. The Indians under their famous leader Chief King Fisher, knowing they were being pursued, had taken up defensive positions on this side of the Etowah, all along what is today called Etowah Terrace and on up to the cliffs by the old railroad bridge and Hobo Canyon. They had even cut down trees for this purpose and were heavily guarding a ford somewhere in the vicinity of the bridge. Sevier ordered Colonel Kelly to look for an easier place to ford down river. Colonel Kelly and Captain Evans came down to about this spot and began to swim their horses across the river, no doubt attracted by the Coosa Country Club’s beautiful fairways.
The Indians, seeing this and assuming that this is where the Americans intended to cross, abandoned the high ground and rushed along the southern bank of the river to stop them. Kelly and Evans immediately reversed course, pushing their horses and men up river to cross at the now weakly defended ford, and there they forced the crossing. A mere teenager named Hugh Lawson White shot the great Chief King Fisher through the chest with his squirrel rifle at this crossing. After fiercely fighting Sevier’s men in the open ground behind us and after much loss of life under that old Coca Cola billboard, the dismayed and confused Indians gathered up their fallen chief and retreated. They attempted to make another stand later in the day on the western side of the cemetery where this monument formerly stood, but General Sevier attacked and routed the enemy before nightfall.
This was Sevier’s last military campaign. He went on to become the first Governor of Tennessee, a post to which he was elected not once, but six times.
There are two notes in General Sevier’s official report of the battle that I think bear repeating today:
The first is a note that his army flogged those Indians it had captured who participated in the massacre at Cavett’s Station. Even in the midst of war, there was this over-arching concern for justice.
The other note reads as follows: “Many women and children might have been taken, but from motives of humanity I did not encourage it to be done, and several taken were suffered to make their escape.” There is also this note of mercy, a small one perhaps, but something to distinguish this bloodletting from the massacre of women and children at Cavett’s Station.
At the beginning of this little talk, I asked: What do you think was in the minds of those who raised this monument and dedicated it a century ago? We can, of course, only guess. My guess is that one hundred years ago those who gathered as we do today were probably amazed at how much had changed since that savage battle over a century ago.
But the more urgent question is: What is in our minds today? I can tell you only what is in my mind. I am struck by how little life has changed in the 208 years since General Sevier and Chief King Fisher fought their battle here.
We are still living on the frontier between tribal savagery and civilization, a frontier where even our physical safety cannot be guaranteed or taken for granted. We still need both mental and physical courage to defend our freedoms and to live in peace.
We still face an enemy that has his own reasons for hating us. Whether or not we understand or can sympathize with his reasons, or wish to romanticize our enemy as a “noble savage” or a defender of the oppressed, we must still defend ourselves from his deadly and indiscriminate attacks, and the only way to do that is to take the battle to him.
Every American citizen is still a de facto member of the militia and may find himself, or herself, on any given day on the front lines of this new war. Our enemy makes no distinction between the soldier and the citizen. Nor can we. We are all soldiers in this war. We need to be brave, prepared to lay down our lives if called upon to do so.
We are still tempted to abandon our civilized norms of justice and mercy in the process of defending them, but like General Sevier, we must resolutely resist that temptation.
We are still, for all our education and scientific endeavor, our religious belief and political correctness, a deeply flawed race, full of fear and hate and contradiction, in desperate need of human as well as divine forgiveness.
And yes, we still need men and women like John Sevier and Theodore Roosevelt, who can live effectively, if not comfortably, on this frontier, fighting for something we might loosely term “civilization.”
