[Granville-Hough] 3 Oct 2009 - Cherokee Rose
Trustees for Granville W. Hough
gwhough-trust at oakapple.net
Sun Jan 23 07:04:36 PST 2011
The Wild Rose/aka the Cherokee Rose.
In the sixth grade we had Mississippi history, and we learned that
Mississippi had European settlements well before Plymouth Rock and about
the same time as Jamestown. They were French and Catholic, not English
and Protestant, and early legends of Mississippi are about these French
people, some of whom still lived along the Gulf Coast in my youth. They
are probably long since absorbed. Dunbar Rowland in Vol I, Mississippi,
The Heart of the South, records the legend of Jesuit Father Davion and
the Cherokee Rose. We did have the wild rose in our woods, and it was
more of a small delicate vine than a bush.
Father Davion was a consecrated Jesuit priest who gave his life trying
to Christianize the Natchez Indians. At one time he was making his way
to Fort Louis (Biloxi) when he got lost.
the white Cherokee rose bends
and blooms as sweetly now as it did that night so long ago when its soft
radiance illuminated the path of the good Father Davion. Lost in the
tangled depths of palmetto and swaying reeds, he vainly sought the
pathway to Fort Louis. At last the light from a Cherokee encampment
gleamed upon him, and there he found refuge. That night he prayed long
and earnestly that he might be restored to his people. Sleep came and
In a dream he saw once more his mothers tender eyes bending above him
in the light that fell from Paradise.
Pointing to a snow-white flower, she told him that it would lead him to
his home. In a pathway of light the roses descended from Heaven to
earth, and above them he saw the stars, the Masters crown of thorns.
Walking, he found, with joyous wonder, the flowers blooming around him
and extending far into the depths of the forest. Even before him they
sprang up to mark his pathway. Follow, they seemed to whisper, for we
are leading thee onward and ever onward to the old fort by the sea.
Over the white (sand) and dunes they led him, and when swollen bayous
were reached, they tangled their tiny tendrils into strong bridges upon
which he crossed. On and on they led him until at Fort Louis he heard
the joyous welcome of Sauvolle and his comrades. And in the forest we
still find this Cherokee rose with its snow-flake petals and heart of
golden light.
If I were to encounter Dunbar Rowland, I would want to ask him: Are you
sure Father Davion was a Jesuit? How then, did he happen to be in
service with the French? (I having always associated Jesuits with
Spanish). Then, I would ask: Where had he been? And how did he find a
Cherokee village is Mississippi? (I having placed this Iroquis-speaking
tribe in the corner area of NC, TN, GA, and AL, not close to the Choctaw
and Chickasaw Muscogeans, and the Natchez in Mississippi). I do know,
however, that the Natchez people were conquered and scattered, but that
some joined the Cherokees and their Cherokee descendents rose each day
to worship the sun as it came over the horizon. So there could have been
a Cherokee trading village some place near Natchez, just as there was
later a Chickasaw horse pasturing area in South Carolina where the
Chickasaws drove their horses to trade them with other tribes and with
white colonists for other goods. (After a hard-fought battle with
Hernando de Soto, the Chickasaws rounded up the stray Spanish horses and
began breeding them on the prairie land between what is now Starkville
and Columbus. This became the land of the Chickasaw Horse.)
We tend to forget that we visualize the South as a series of states, and
we think of each with boundaries. The Indians saw no such divisions, but
they did know where they and their kindred peoples lived. They knew
which tribes had access to salt, and what they would accept in exchange
for it. They knew who had sources of flint, and what they would
exchange. They knew who had the horses and what horses were worth. They
knew where to go and how to get all the things they needed for normal lives.
----------------------------------------------
In the present times, we might ponder what Thomas Jefferson is supposed
to have said in 1802: "Banking institutions are more dangerous to our
liberties than 20 standing armies. If the American people ever allow
private banks to conrol the issue of their currency, first by inflation,
then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around
the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children
wake-up homeless on the continent that their fathers conquered."
[My father passed this sentiment on as he received it, but as he suspected
it's not genuine Jefferson. It's always a good idea to check Snopes on
these matters -
http://www.snopes.com/quotes/jefferson/banks.asp
David Hough]
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