In 1907, Brewer's Academy opened as the first school. Before leaving, they burned the town, including Vann's antebellum home. In 1863, Union troops tried to capture Watie, but failed. Civil War Ĭherokee Confederate General Stand Watie established a headquarters at Webbers Falls during the Civil War. Vann put his surviving slaves to work as laborers and coal stokers on his steamboats.
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Five were executed for having killed two slavecatchers they encountered to free a fugitive slave family from the Choctaw reservation. The militia returned the fugitives to Tahlequah on December 8. The militia caught up with the fleeing slaves north of the Red River on November 28. They picked up about 10 slaves in Creek territory along the way, and later freed a family of eight slaves from two slavecatchers, killing the latter.Īfter the first pursuers returned for reinforcements, the Cherokee National Council ordered about 87 men of the Cherokee Militia, under Captain John Drew, to apprehend the fugitives. Their goal was to reach Mexico, where they knew slavery had been abolished. Mostly from Joseph Vann's and his father's plantations, the slaves locked masters and overseers in houses and cabins, stole guns and ammunition, horses and mules, food, and other supplies, then started traveling south. On November 15, 1842, more than 25 slaves revolted in the largest action and escape in Cherokee territory.
This area was within the reservation of the Cherokee Nation.Ī post office opened at Webbers Falls in 1856. At his direction, slaves built a house here that was a replica of his former antebellum mansion in Georgia, the Chief Vann House. He settled nearby and established a plantation, where he worked some of his more than 200 slaves he brought with him. Joseph Vann, a/k/a "Rich Joe" Vann, was among the thousands of Cherokee emigrants forced from Georgia during Indian Removal. According to the Webbers Falls Historical Museum, this is the second-oldest town in the former Indian Territory. In the late 1830s and 1840, the mass of thousands of Cherokee from the Southeast were forcibly moved into Indian Territory as a result of the US policy of Indian Removal. They finally agreed that year, in exchange for an increased amount of land and annuities. The Western Cherokee resisted sharing their territory with immigrants to be resettled from the Southeast, as the US government proposed in 1834. Webber was among the early leaders of the Cherokee in this area, one of their representatives when meeting with US agents and going to Washington, DC for meetings. In the early years when Webber was in the territory, there was considerable conflict with the Osage people, who were forced by the United States government to give up some of their territory to the Cherokee, in a Treaty of 1828. Webber also built a salt works, leasing the land for the latter from the Cherokee government, which held it communally as a tribe. When English-speaking visitors came, one of their African-American slaves and domestic servants would translate. They had adopted many American ways and outfitted their house in European-American style.
Of mixed-race Cherokee-European descent, Webber was married to a full-blood Cherokee. Having acquired a small fleet of keelboats, he was able to stock the post with goods from other parts of the United States, so he opened a trading post and a portage service, as well as building a house. Webber had settled here with some of the first Cherokee to go to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River it was then considered part of Arkansas Territory. They had a treaty with the United States government by 1828, which helped settle some conflicts with the Osage people, who had been forced to give up land to the Cherokee.
He was a leader among the Western Cherokee, also called "Old Settlers".
The name comes from a seven-foot waterfall in the Arkansas River named in honor of Walter Webber, a Cherokee chief who established a trading post here in 1818. The population was 616 at the 2010 census, a decline of 14.9 percent from the figure of 724 recorded in 2000. Webbers Falls is a town in southeastern Muskogee County, Oklahoma, United States.
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