Are You
Kituwah’s Son?
The one thing genealogy has shown me is the difficulty in capturing ones history as a timeline of lineage. As a youngster, I was never interested in family trees and the importance of knowing my great-great-grandfather. He was born in 1846 and died in 1879. Keeping track of my aunts and uncles and cousins was tough enough. In the Book of Genesis, Adam’s lineage recorded throughout the millennia. How could this be interesting in a day that most people do not know who their grandparents are? My ancestors, the Cherokee people who survived the Trail of Tears gave me a heritage of alcoholism, diabetes and warriors. My great-great-great-great-grandfather was on that fateful journey probably as a young boy. His name was Gul-Stoohhahskie or Budd Gritts. As I further researched his name, it shows that he was a Baptist minister who began the Keetoowah Society in 1859. This society was opposed to slavery and split off from the group who supported the South. This is just the scratch of an old and deep cut between the Cherokee people. The divide between the United States government and the indigenous people of the America’s is still a seeping wound because of all the racial and ethnic dichotomy. It has manifested human divisions between the sub cultures of the native Indians from Mexico to Alaska, the European settlers and the Africans. Let me not forget about the Asians, and Pacific Islanders. If the truth be known all of the world’s people have been intermingling from the beginning of human evolution.
Chief John Ross had as much as Cherokee Indian blood as me, one-eighth. On most accounts, history shows John Ross as a good leader. John’s father was a scotch trader and was able give John a good education and he spoke Cherokee and could read and write English. At the age of nineteen, he moved from a clerk to trying to help the Cherokee nation in maintaining their independence. In 1913 at the age of twenty-three, he joined the military service in the company of mounted Cherokees (Moulton, 1978). He married a full-blooded Cherokee woman and went on to have six children. By the 1820’s he was committed to the Cherokee way of life and loyalty to their lands.
The Cherokee homelands were in the Appalachians, Blue Ridge and Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina and Alabama from 1819-1838. Anyone who has seen this area would have to marvel at its beauty and majesty of the land. The Cherokees legends say that God gave the land to them, sound familiar? The travesty of the Cherokee Nation was their peacefulness and intelligence did little to save their land and their independence. The Cherokee accepted John Ross as full-blooded and until the white slavery ownership concept became accepted doctrine, they did not distinguish between colors of skin tones. Once accepted into the tribe, you were Cherokee. John befriended Chief Path killer and Chief Hicks, which in turn they took him under their wings and by their tutelage, John understood the ways of the full blood and became a good negotiator. In 1827, both chiefs died leaving John as Principal Chief of the Cherokee Native American Nation (Moulton, 1978). He tried every legal way to stop the encroachment of Indian lands by the European settlers to no avail. They were determined to farm, mine and steal the land. During the early periods to the early settlers, “it was more land than the Indians needed.” Battle lines were the Indians were having their land removed. A group of the earlier Cherokee took an offer to move to Arkansas by a land exchange and it was this group called the Western Cherokees. The rest stayed behind with their land and Chief John Ross joined a delegation to fight for their remaining land. In 1830, Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act. It and all land was to go to the state and there would be a payment and exchange of territory named Indian Territory and later renamed Oklahoma, land acquired in the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. President Andrew Jackson declared not to interfere with states sovereignty and states rights ruled over Indian Law. He would no longer protect Indian Land against the European intruders. The gold-diggers were out to stake their claims and no Indian was going to stop them. John Ross worked tirelessly to protect the Cherokee sovereignty but the constant temptation to sell Indian land by certain individuals began to erode the solidarity of the Indians. In 1838 the rest of the Eastern Indians were rounded up, their property seized and sometimes burned. One account describes how the soldiers came to the homes of these people and gave them no time to prepare and then herded them into horse stalls and left them there for weeks and then walked all the way to Oklahoma, known as the “Trail of Tears.” John Ross divided thirteen groups of 1,000 people who where kept under terrible conditions until the orders were given to move out, his aim was to protect his people from war and violence. There were a few of the Cherokee that ran off from the soldiers and stayed hidden until after the soldiers left and still live in South Carolina.
The Dawes rolls was a commission in 1893 to record the five tribes civilized tribes’ names of its people who had been relocated to Indian Territory. The U.S Congress created the Dawes Commission to record the individual names and family members. This eventually would prove another way to split up the people by dividing their solidarity. By reducing the payments given to the Nation as a whole would create smaller amount of money for the organization and therefore would divide the money promised. Individual payments were a divisive method to erode the strength of Cherokee solidarity. By making a list of each tribal member, they could issue individual checks to the person and further dissolve the power of the Cherokee Nation along with the other Tribes. Chief John Ross was aware that by dividing the payments for the land the U.S. congress would pay was taking away his power to partition the congress regarding Indian matters. John Ross went to Washington with his delegation and President Jackson had refused to see or support the Indians in all matters. In 1935 Chief John Ross had his home and property sold out from under him. He returned from Washington to find another family living in his home (Moulton, 1978). A group of Cherokee landowners owed slaves and most of these were the “thin skinned” Indians who had assimilated into the European-American culture and adapted to this culture. This again created a split in the Cherokee Nation. John Ross had wanted to remain neutral on this idea however, Stand Watie and John Ridge felt different. The Ridge family had set up its own committee and signed the treaty of New Echota without it getting approval by Chief John Ross and the General Council therefore making it a void treaty but the U.S congress had ratified it almost before the ink was dry. Ross was opposed to the treaty as signed and thus setting up an opposing group. This was an agreement to relocate and sell their land for five million dollars. There had been a previous blood law agreed on by the council that no Indian had the right to sell their land without General Council approval. A group of anti-treaty sympathizers murdered John Ridge by ambushing his family home in the middle of the night, dragging him out of his bed. There were ancient Indian laws, known, as “blood laws” which ironically written down John ridge in 1829 (Moulton, 1978).
It is estimated that during the Indian removal, four thousand or one- quarter of the tribe members were lost due to harsh weather, sickness and deliberate genocide by handing out blankets from a local hospital treating small pox. The Trail of Tears cost Ross his first wife who died of pneumonia during the journey. My grandma January was half Cherokee, her name was Fannie Caywood, her mother—my great grandmother, Lizzie Wilson-- was born in 1855. My father was a quite man who did not talk much with a beautiful smile and very kind. He was the youngest son of eight and did not have a lot to say about his family. He and my mother were married and moved to California.
As I was researching my ancestry, I came across some Cherokee writings with the signature of Bud Gritts, secretary. He was Lizzie’s grandfather and my great-great-great-grandfather. John B. Jones, the son of a missionary helped to form the Ketoowah Society with the full bloods who were opposed to slavery and sided with the union. Dr. James Mooney was an ethnologist/anthropologist who studied the Cherokee people and wrote down their myths, legions and culture during the late nineteenth century. Their old ways were dying and Mooney wanted to preserve them for future generations. His writings are hailed as the most genuine accounting of the native Indians ways. He does not make mention of Bud Gritts however, the keetoowah society was a secret organization during Mooney’s research. There is little information found on Bud Gritts in the genealogy records but an interesting article found on the internet, http://www.us-data.org/us/minges/keetoo1.html, describes how the Baptist missionaries approached the native ministers to form the Keetoowah Society. Lewis Downing and Bud Gritts organized this secret society and swore to the code (appendix 1).
Nowhere was this struggle more evident than in an incident in June 1861 in which a Baptist minister who had left the Keetoowah Society was held accountable to his code of honor:
The Native Minister, an inoffensive and pious man, was murdered -- called out of his house at night and shot; he ran -- they followed him and cut his throat. The cause is hard to ascertain. Three rumors here: 1st, Because he would not leave the Southern Baptist Church...2nd, Because he had withdrawn from a secret organization known here by the term `Pins,' he refusing to be united [with them] again; 3rd, Because of his money, of which everybody that knew him knew that he did not have one red cent. [61] (U.S. data.org).
According to my genealogy data the Bud Gritts listed shows a death date of 1867/1868. Therefore, I am not sure if this is legend or fact. My genealogy research seemed to stop there but not surprising under the conditions that the Civil War took precedence over most record keeping which was poor at best. According the Latter-day-
Saints genealogy web site, listed Gul-Stoohahskie (Bud Gritts) lived about 1826-1867. My fathers birth certificate listed his wrong middle name and his wrong birth year and that was a hundred years later. Civil war was dividing the nation and family against family. John Ross supported keetoowah society and the “full bloods,” were opposed to slavery and wanted to stay neutral however Stand Watie encouraged the Indians to support the south. The Confederate army promised protection and money to support the Indians. There were two factions that the tribe members supported, the Freemasons and the common and poorer members. Kituwah society had a secret salutation by tugging on the lapel and making a hand motion of circling the heart. The salutation was to ask, “Are you Kituwah’s son? The fascination with reading the history and knowing that these are my ancestors makes the research interesting and exciting. In my genealogy chart, I find names that replicate the names of the historic figures surrounding the Keetoowah Society. This is a story I only found by having the hours of research to locate my family tree. It was by accident that I came across this information by reading and researching the biography of Chief John Ross.
Appendix 1
The Reverend Budd Gritts, the fullblood Baptist preacher of Peavine Church, detailed the aims of the organization in the The Constitution of the Keetoowah Society:
As lovers of the government of the Cherokees, loyal members of Keetoowah Society, in the name of the mass of the people, we began to study and investigate the way our nation was going on, so much different from the long past history of our Keetoowah forefathers who loved and lived as free people and had never surrendered to anybody: They loved one another for they were just like one family, just as if they had been raised from one family. They all came as a unit to their fire to smoke, to aid one another and to protect their government with what little powder and lead they had to use in protecting it...
Now let us Cherokees study the condition of our government. We are separated into two parts and cannot agree and they have taken lead of us. It is clear to see that the Federal Government has two political parties, North and South. South are the people who took our lands away from us which lands the Creator had given to us, where our forefathers were raised. Their greed was the worst kind; they had no love and they are still following us to put their feet on us to get the last land we have. It is plain that they have come in on us secretly, different organizations are with them and they have agreed to help one another in everything. They control our political offices because our masses of the people are not organized.
We therefore now declare and bind ourselves together the same as under our oaths to abide by our laws and assist one another. There must he a confidential captain and lodges in numerous places and confidential meetings, the time and place to he designated by the captains. But we shall continue on making more laws. If any member divulges any secret to any other organization it shall be considered that he gave up thereby his life. But every time the meet they must fully explain what their society stands for. They must have a membership roll in order to reorganize one another.
... Our secret society shall be named Keetoowah. All of the members of the Keetoowah Society shall be like one family. It should be our intention that we must abide with each other in love...We must not surrender under any circumstance until we shall "fall to the ground united." We must lead one another by the hand with all our strength. Our government is being destroyed. We must resort to bravery to stop it." (U.S. data.org)
References
"Keetoowah Laws - April 29, 1859" in Howard Tyner, The Keetoowah Society in Cherokee History. (MA, University of Tulsa, 1949), 102.
http://www.keetoowahsociety.org/laws.htm
http://www.us-data.org/us/minges/keetoo1.html
Mc Loughin W., 1990 Champions of the Cherokees: Evan and John B. Jones. Princeton University Press
