[Granville-Hough] 3 Oct 2009 - Cherokee Rose

[Trustees for Granville W. Hough]

Date: Sat, 03 Oct 2009 09:56:41 -0700
From: Granville W Hough <gwhough at oakapple.net>
Subject: CherokeeRose - 3 Oct 2009

  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. ôàthe 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 
ôIn a dream he saw once more his motherÆs tender eyes bending above him 
in the light that fell from Paradise.Æ
ôPointing 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 MasterÆs 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. ôFollow,ö they seemed to whisper, ôfor we 
are leading thee onward and ever onward to the old fort by the sea.ö
ôOver 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 ôwith its snow-flake petals and heart of 
golden light.ö
If I were to encounter Dunbar Rowland, I would want to ask him: ôAre you 
sure Father Davion was a Jesuit? How then, did he happen to be in 
service with the French?ö (I having always associated Jesuits with 
Spanish). Then, I would ask: ôWhere had he been? And how did he find a 
Cherokee village is Mississippi?ö (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.

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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."