The First American Gold Rush

GOLD.—A gentleman of the first respectability in Habersham county, writes us thus under date of 22d July: "Two gold mines have just been discovered in this county, and preparations are making to bring these hidden treasures of the earth to use." So it appears that what we long anticipated has come to pass at last, namely, that the gold region of North and South Carolina, would be found to extend into Georgia.

—Notice in Milledgeville's Georgia Journal, dated 1 August 1829

Two parties of sixty-one families relocated from Burke County, North Carolina, to the Nacoochee River valley of Habersham County, Georgia, in the early part of 1822. Until about 1827 North Carolina had been the only site of gold production in the United States. Prospectors followed the veins southward into the mountains of North Georgia, and found that the further south they went, the purer the gold became. The first American gold rush followed.

It is the universal testimony of those who have worked in the placers of Georgia, that the gold is generally in larger lumps and particles, or is coarser than in the placers of the western parts of North Carolina, in Burke, McDowell and Rutherford counties. Mr. Blake also observes that the quality of the gold is excellent, rarely yielding less than 90 per cent., or 900 parts in 1,000, the difference being silver. The standard of gold of the United States consists of 900 parts of gold to 100 of alloy.

... At that time [1829] Habersham was an organized county, but the rest of the gold region was included in the Cherokee nation, over which the United States exercised a supervisory care. The richness of the newly-discovered mines soon brought together a large number of miners from Georgia and the adjoining States. These commenced mining chiefly on the lands of the Cherokees, and on that portion now included within the limits of Lumpkin county, the Chestatee River then being the eastern boundary of the Cherokee nation. This rush for the mines brought into the country thousands of men of great diversity of character, many of them dissipated and regardless of the future. 

—William Phipps Blake, Charles Thomas Jackson, The Gold Placers of the Vicinity of Dahlonega, Georgia, published 1859

By the late 1820s, on both federal and state levels, white settlement of Indian lands became generally sanctioned, if not outright encouraged. Habersham County, Georgia, had been created from two Cherokee cessions: one in 1817, the other in 1819. By 1830 the General Assembly of the state of Georgia had passed resolutions essentially disallowing Indian self-government, and extended the state's jurisdiction into the Cherokee territory of northern Georgia (as well as into that of the Creeks, further south). The mining of gold in Habersham's Nacoochee Valley also coincided with another new Georgia state law which prevented Indians from bringing lawsuits against white men.

 Sec. 6.  Provides that the laws of this State be extended over the territory, and white persons, residing, within the same, shall be subject to the operation of the said laws, as other citizens of said counties.
 Sec. 7.  From the 1st of June 1830, Indians in said territory, shall be subject to the operations of the said laws, and regulations as the Legislature may hereafter proscribe.
Sec. XV.  No Indian or descendant of an Indian, residing within the Creek or Cherokee Nation, shall be a competent witness, or a party to any suit, in any court created by the constitution or laws of this State, to which a white man may be a party.

Land within what was once Cherokee territory became a destination for thousands of gold speculators. According to Niles' Register, by spring of 1830 there were four thousand miners working along Yahoola Creek (near present-day Dahlonega, Georgia) alone. 

"The news got abroad, and such excitement you never saw. It seemed within a few days as if the whole world must have heard of it, for men came from every state I had ever heard of. They came afoot, on horseback and in wagons, acting more like crazy men than anything else. All the way from where Dahlonega now stands to Nuckollsville there were men panning out of the branches and making holes in the hillsides."

—Benjamin Parks*

So much Georgia gold was being uncovered in Georgia that Congress, in 1837, chartered a branch of the United States Mint at Dahlonega. Soon after the mint began coinage production and the last of the Cherokee were removed, the reason for both maneuvers began to disappear: the gold was playing out. By the early 1840s it was becoming difficult for miners to make a living washing the placer deposits, and hard-rock gold veins were becoming harder to mine. 

In 1849 California became the highly publicized destination for gold prospectors. In 1861 the Dahlonegah mint closed its doors. Its building was destroyed by fire in 1878. The most visible remainder of the Georgia gold rush is the gold-leafed dome covering the rotunda of the State Capitol in Atlanta. 

Some of the early gold prospectors chose to remain in Georgia, and found other occupations. They built homes, married, and raised children in the hills of north Georgia.

* The Atlanta Constitution, 15 July 1894, interview with prospector Benjamin Parks (then in his nineties), excerpt

More, re: Jack's Creek

From Georgia's Landmarks, Memorials, and Legends, by Lucian Lamar Knight, published 1913, Byrd Printing Company, State Printers, Georgia:

The Battle of Jack's Creek. On September 21, 1787, there was fought in a thick cane-brake, near the site of the present town of Monroe, a famous engagement between a party of Creek Indians and a band of pioneer settlers. The principal actors in the drama, on the side of the whites, were distinguished veterans of the Revolution, one of whom afterwards became Governor of the State. The attack upon the enemy was made in three divisions. General Elijah Clarke, the illustrious old hero of Kettle Creek, commanded the center, his son, Major John Clarke, led the left wing, while Colonel John Freeman commanded the right. The story is best told in the language of the elder Clarke. Says he, in his report of the battle, dated Long Cane, Sept. 24, 1787: "I had certain information that a man was killed on the 17th of this month by a party of six or seven Indians and that on the day before, Colonel Barber, with a small party was waylaid by fifty or sixty Indians and wounded, and three of his party killed. This determined me to raise what men I could in the course of twenty-four hours and march with them to protect the frontiers; in which space of time I collected 160 men, chiefly volunteers, and proceeded to the place where Colonel Barber had been attacked. There I found the bodies of the three men mentioned above, mangled in a shocking manner, and after burying them I proceeded on the trail of the murderers as far as the south fork of the Ocmulgee where, finding that I had no chance of overtaking them, I left it and went up the river till I met with a fresh trail of Indians, coming toward our frontier settlement. I immediately turned and followed the trail until the morning of the 21st, between 11 and 12 o'clock, when I came up with them. They had just crossed a branch called Jack's Creek, through a thick cane-brake, and were encamped and cooking upon an eminence. My force then consisted of 130 men, 30 having been sent back on account of horses being tired or stolen. I drew up my men in three divisions: the right commanded by Colonel Freeman, the left by Major Clarke, and the middle by myself. Colonel Freeman and Major Clarke were ordered to surround and charge the Indians, which they did with such dexterity and spirit that they immediately drove them from the encampment into the cane-brake, where finding it impossible for them to escape they obstinately returned our fire until half past four o'clock, when they ceased, except now and then a shot. During the latter part of the action, they seized every opportunity of escaping in small parties, leaving the rest to shift for themselves." White states that in this engagement there were not less than 800 Indians. They were commanded by Alexander McGillivray, a famous half-breed.
Colonel Absalom H. Chappell, in discussing General Clarke's account of the battle, makes this comment. Says he: "It is striking to read his report of this battle to Gov. Mathews. No mention is made in it of his having a son in the battle, though with a just paternal pride, commingled with a proper delicacy, he emphasizes together the gallant conduct of Colonel Freeman and Major Clarke, and baptizes the hitherto nameless stream on which the battle was fought, by simply saying that it was called Jack's Creek — a name then but justly bestowed by admiring comrades in arms in compliment to the General's youthful son on this occasion. Long after the youth had ceased to be young and the frosts of winter had gathered upon his warlike and lofty brow, thousands and thousands of Georgians used still to repeat the name of Jack Clarke, without prefix of either Governor or General and to remember him too as the hero of the well- fought battle of Jack's Creek."

The Yamasee War & The Cherokee Factor

From Jackson's Way, by John Buchanan, New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2001, pp. 18-19:

The Yamasee War came close to destroying South Carolina. Four hundred settlers (6% of the population) were killed. Ninety percent of the traders were killed in the Yamasee and Creek Nations, from South Carolina’s Low Country to central Alabama. Charleston’s defensive perimeter was reduced to a radius of some thirty-five miles and that was not totally secure. In August 1715 several hundred warriors penetrated the outskirts of Charleston before being repulsed. The degree of danger can be measured by the arming of hundreds of black slaves to fight alongside white militiamen. All of the southeastern tribes had risen except two: the Chickasaws on the Mississippi, who stayed loyal and protected their traders; and the Cherokees, who were thinking over Creek overtures. The Chickasaws were too far away and too few to intervene. The Cherokees, however, were quite a different story. They were on the doorsteps of both Carolinas and they could muster 4,000 warriors. If the Cherokees joined the alliance, what could follow? The evacuation of Charleston?
In the late fall of 1715 Colonels James Moore and George Chicken with 300 militiamen were sent up-country to the lower Cherokee towns as a show of force and to negotiate an alliance. At the same time Creek envoys were in the towns seeking their own alliance, and a large force of Creek warriors were concealed in the forests awaiting the signal for a Cherokee-Creek attack on the English force. The Cherokees took their time and negotiated with both sides. Finally, in January 1716, they made their decision. The Creek envoys were murdered by their hosts and a Cherokee-English force did the attacking and sent the waiting Creek warriors fleeing for their lives.
The Cherokee decision saved South Carolina. Historians have given pride of place to the Indian alliances that led to the Pequot War (1636–1638) and King Philip’s War (1675–1676) in New England, and the rising of the northwestern tribes in Pontiac’s Rebellion (1763–1765). This is not unusual, given the general neglect of southern history during the colonial and revolutionary periods. But the alliance that led to the Yamasee War was the “greatest Indian alliance in colonial history with the potential to eradicate not just South Carolina but also North Carolina and Virginia.”

The Yamasee War (1715-1717)

The Yamasee War was a conflict between colonial South Carolina and various Indian tribes including the Yamasee, Creek, Catawba, Apalachee, Apalachicola, Yuchi, Savannah River Shawnee, Congaree, Waxhaws, Pee Dee, Cheraw, and others. Some tribes played minor roles while others launched attacks throughout South Carolina. Hundreds of colonists were killed and many settlements were destroyed.
Causes of the war were multiple, and differed between the many Indian tribes that participated. Commitment differed as well; some groups fought for the duration, others only briefly. Some were divided; some changed sides. Contributing factors included: the trading system, trader abuses, Indian slave trade, depletion of the deer population (for deerskin trade), increasing Indian debts (coupled with increasing colonial wealth), land encroachment, the spread of rice plantation agriculture, growth of French trading power (as an alternative to British trade), established Indian links to Spanish Florida, power struggles between Indian tribes, an increasingly robust inter-tribal communication network, and recent military collaborations among previously distant tribes.
Traders "in the field" were killed throughout the American southeast. Much of South Carolina's settled territory was abandoned as people fled to Charles Town, where starvation set in as supplies ran low. The survival of South Carolina itself was in question during 1715. About 6-7% of the colony's white citizenry was killed, resulting in casualties more severe than King Philip's War, which is often cited as America's bloodiest. The tide turned in early 1716, when the Cherokee sided with South Carolina and began to attack the Creek Indians. The last of South Carolina's major foes withdrew from the conflict in 1717, bringing a fragile peace to a traumatized colony.

(Source: Wikipedia)