For The Courant.
Reminiscences of the Cherokees.
The Four Scotchmen Who Became Indian Chiefs.
By Hon. J. W. H. Underwood, of Rome, Georgia

[This is the beginning of a series of articles.  This is a 3 column article.]

…In the early part of the year 1776, four young men, who were born, raised and educated in the North of Scotland, sailed from Glasgow to far distant America.  Their names were McIntosh, McLemore, Ross and Owen…They landed at Norfolk, Virginia.  They rested awhile at a Scotch settlement in Culpepper county, Virginia among the Gaines, Thompsons, Strothers, Hendersons, Slaughters, Saddlers and Underwoods.

They started again and traveled South and West together, until they reached the Savannah river.  There they separated, McIntosh (the ancestor of the Creek Indian chief who executed the treaty of Indian Springs in 1825,) went to the Creek Indian Nation, and in process of time married Yohola, the daughter of Tastenuggee, a leading chief of the Muscogees.  In 1825, the younger McIntosh became the principal chief of the Creek Nation….McIntosh resided on the west side of Chattahoochee river, in what is now the county of Carroll, opposite to Cowetta….Ross, the ancestor of John Ross, the great Cherokee chief, well known to many Georgians yet living, settled among the Cherokees….and married the daughter of Jim Coody, who lived on Silver Creek, two miles south of Rome.  He was a quarteroon, a powerful and leading chief.  Lewis Ross, was the first born of this marriage.  He became an Indian trader, and at first settled himself where the city of Chattanooga is now located.  John Ross, another son, married and settled one fourth of a mile northwest of the junction of the Etowah and Oostenaula rivers….McLemore, another one of the four, settled in what is now known as McLemore’s Cove, on the Chickamauga, in Walker county, Georgia…the fourth Scotchman was Owen.  He married, it is believed, a sister of the “Morning Star” and built a cabin at Crawfish Springs –now the splendid residence of Col. James M. Lee.  Owen died without offspring….