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Chief Amatoya “Water Conjurer”, 11th Great-Grandfather
July 4, 2018
— 1 Comment
Chief Amatoya “Water Conjurer”
Chief Amatoya “Water Conjurer”
My 11th great-grandfather was half British and half Shawnee. He married a Shawnee woman and lived as a leader of her tribe. Natives were treated very badly by the colonists, who normally thought of them as inferior. This is one success story I am pleased to have in my family’s history.
Trader Carpenter (Amatoya / Moytoy I) married a Shawnee named Locha in 1668. Trader’s sister Pasmere Carpenter married the grandfather of Cornstalk Hokolesqua (Shawnee) in 1660. That same year the clan was driven south by the Iroquois. They moved along the Tennessee river, starting the villages of Running Water (where Thomas died in 1675), Nickajack, Lookout Mountain, Crowtown and Chota. Chota was created as a merging place of refuge for people of all tribes, history or color. It became similar to a capital for the Cherokee Nation. These villages had grown to about 2000 people by 1670 when the Carpenter clan moved to Great Tellico. Here Trader (Amatoya / Motoy I) married Quatsy of the Wolf Clan in 1680. Though Amatoya (Trader) was chief of the above mentioned villages, it was his son Moytoy II (sometimes called “Trader-Tom”) most people refer to as Moytoy and who many claim was crowned “Emperor of the Cherokee”.
CHRONOLOGY
1540
Hernando De Soto’s expedition to the Mississippi River is the first time Europeans are seen by American Indians in Kentucky.
1629
British colonists in Virginia establish a trade network with Cherokee living in the Appalachian Mountains.
1690
King William’s War begins.
1697
The Ryswick Treaty is signed at the end of King William’s War. Territories remain the same as before the War.
1702
The Cherokees and Creeks side with the French during Queen Anne’s War.
1716
Cherokee strengthen their alliance with the British.
1717
This date is engraved in a sandstone rockshelter in eastern Kentucky.
1730
Cherokee Chiefs Attakullakulla, Clogoittah, Kollannah, Onancona, Oukah Ulah, Skalilosken Ketagustah, and Tathtowe travel to Great Britain with Alexander Cuming.
1722
The Treaty of Albany is made between the Haudenosaunee and Great Britain. The Haudenosaunee are joined by the Tuscarora and they expand by alliance and conquest to control an area from southern Canada to Kentucky.
Chief Amatoya “Water Conjurer” (Trader Tom CARPENTER) aka MOYTOY I (1635 – 1693)
11th great-grandfather
Aganonitsi Quatsy Woman Wolf ClanTellico Cherokee Tellico (1650 – 1692)
daughter of Chief Amatoya “Water Conjurer” (Trader Tom CARPENTER) aka MOYTOY I
Delaware Indian Fivekiller (1674 – 1741)
son of Aganonitsi Quatsy Woman Wolf ClanTellico Cherokee Tellico
Solomon John Cherokee Kimborough (1665 – 1720)
son of Delaware Indian Fivekiller
Mourning Kimbrough (1689 – 1756)
daughter of Solomon John Cherokee Kimborough
Jane Jeanette Little (1713 – 1764)
daughter of Mourning Kimbrough
Andrew Armour (1740 – 1801)
son of Jane Jeanette Little
William Armor (1775 – 1852)
son of Andrew Armour
William Armer (1790 – 1837)
son of William Armor
Thomas Armer (1825 – 1900)
son of William Armer
Lucinda Jane Armer (1847 – 1939)
daughter of Thomas Armer
George Harvey Taylor (1884 – 1941)
son of Lucinda Jane Armer
Ruby Lee Taylor (1922 – 2008)
daughter of George Harvey Taylor
Pamela Morse
I am the daughter of Ruby Lee Taylor
Amatoya Trader Moytoy was a half white half Shawnee who went on to be a prominent chief and leader for the Cherokee people. His family line would lead the Cherokee for many years to come. This was a testement to the views of the Cherokee people before being abused by the English for many years. They took in a English settler as one of there own, He wed a Shawnee woman and became a member of the tribe.
Eight Years of Genealogy Studies
October 13, 2016
— 1 Comment
1900 Census
My grandpa Ernie
I will soon celebrate my anniversary as a student of my family history. I joined Ancestry.com during the financial crash of 2008. I had just inherited some stocks and bonds when they began to vanish into thin air before my very eyes. I was watching a website following the stock market when I saw an ad for the Ancestry site. I decided to take the free offer of two weeks because I was sure I could learn everything I needed to know in that two weeks. I had not planned to stay on for the paying contract. The first piece of evidence I found was the 1900 census taken on Indian Territory in Oklahoma. My grandfather lived there with his father and step mother. The census taker recorded him and his brother Ed as children of this Cherokee woman who was my grandfather’s second wife. This lady, Annie, turned out to be a relatively famous Cherokee con woman. In this census she says she was born in New Mexico in 1854. That is pretty suspicious since she says her parents were born in Georgia and North Carolina, a place where the Cherokees originated. She would be under very special circumstances to be born as a Cherokee in New Mexico in 1854. Later she says in other census records that she was born in Florida. She did have a reputation within the Morse family as a witch. I did not know any of this when I saw this record of my grandpa on the Cherokee Nation at the age of 10. I started searching madly to learn more about him and all my other ancestors. I became fascinated with all the history I learned and the puzzle of matching up the data with the tree. When the two weeks had passed I signed up for a permanent membership, and never looked back.
Now that I am a relatively sophisticated investigator of my ancestry I would urge beginners to follow some simple guidelines in order to have the best results:
- Be very careful to verify records of all kinds
- Don’t take other people’s research as factual
- Be aware that spelling was a very loose discipline in old records
- Triple check the identity of relatives with common names like John Taylor
- There is specious data printed in many places, including history books
- Travel to the physical places your ancestors lived can be revealing
- Be willing to admit mistakes and go about corrections when you find them
- Read and study about the places and times in which they lived for depth
There are more records available all the time. Since I joined the DNA study at Ancestry I have found new information and connections. My yearly subscription to this vast database is the best entertainment value for my dollar. I thought I would be done in 2 weeks, but now I know I can’t quit until I reach Adam and Eve. Have you ever looked into your own family history, gentle reader? What surprised you?
Nunta, Sun Goddess of the Cherokee
June 14, 2013
— 1 Comment
sunflowers
Nunta, the Cherokee goddess of the sun and health has power to bring healing or illness. Remedy is remembering in her world. Health emanates from the same source as pain. Adversaries carry strong medicine, and sometimes must be faced in order to be free of an affliction. Willingness to meet an adversary for the purpose of healing sounds like fairy tale of fear and loathing. The struggle is full of possible outcomes, including death. Intuitively our bodies know which ones of our patterns is the most harmful. Allowing an accumulation of foggy emotional distraction to cover the truth only leads to more complicated side effects. The enemy of your good health is denial. Nunta is the bright sunlight of awareness illuminating the medicine you need to remember.
- Stop doing the things that make you unhappy
- Start doing the things that make you happy
- Remember the difference
Your personal happiness is unique and known only to you. Taking a big dose of your own medicine is a step towards wholeness and health.
My First Job, Singing and Costuming
December 31, 2012
— 3 Comments
When I was 17 I was quite the singer. I sang in an acapella madrigal group in my high school in Texas. We were super professional thanks to our director, Frank, C “Elephant” Coulter, choir director extraordinaire. This small college town in Texas was all about football, the bonfire, and the war in Viet Nam. Frank came to work every day overdressed like a rooster and somehow instilled pure passion and discipline into high school students who generally wanted to slack. When I graduated Frank got me a job in Cherokee, North Carolina, where he spent the summers with his wife working at a theater company in the Great Smoky Mountains. Frank and Elizabeth ran the canteen, a snack bar and meeting place for the crew after our production 6 nights a week for the public, Unto These Hills.
I was the lowest paid and the youngest member of the company. I was a singer in the choir, which was live with an organ accompanist. I quick changed a few people each night including an eagle dancer into Andrew Jackson. There was much body paint involved in the eagle dance, and the stage is dirt, so costumes needed the weekly deep cleaning we did on Mondays in the costume shop. I sewed and repaired costumes for the first week while we were in preparation to get the show ready. Fittings were needed for actors and dancers, who were true to form, very theatrical. Our head eagle dancer was from the Royal Winnipeg Ballet and could perform an entrechat huit. He also had a glass eye that he used to take out to scare the young Cherokee boys in the dressing room. When I see the above version of the eagle dance the costumes are familiar but the rest has lost quality. I am glad I was there when we sang it in the Cherokee language live and in person. You can never go back, especially if it has been 44 years. I recently visited Margaret Dorn in New York City, who sings for a living. We recorded a technically awful but sincere Eagle Dance Song and sent it to our friends in Raleigh who still know how to sing it too. It was certainly fun while it lasted.
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