Major
Ridge, a full blood Cherokee Indian, who married a white woman and his
son, John Ridge, who also married a white woman, came to what is now
Delaware County, Indian Territory, from Georgia in the year of 1835.
John Ridge, the son, had a college education and both men were
considered rich men.
They opened
a trading post near the Arkansas State line. (This store may have
been called Ridge’s Store.) They employed one, William Childers, as a
clerk in this trading post. Later they gave William Childers
$8,000.00 to go to New Orleans to buy supplies for this store. He
made the trip by way of the Arkansas and Mississippi Rivers, buying
the supplies and returning to the trading post.
The Ridges,
father and son, were signers of the Treaty of 1835, and which, later,
was the cause of their deaths.
After the
general removal of the Cherokees to Indian Territory in 1838, the two
Ridges (Major and John) were assassinated by their own tribe, the
reason being that because these two men signed the treaty disposing of
the Cherokee country east of the Mississippi River for land in Indian
Territory, the tribe thought they had been betrayed and sold out by
their supposed friends. They were killed in different sections, but
on the same day. Major Ridge was killed somewhere near the Arkansas
State line, on the same day a relative of theirs was killed near
Parkhill, which is about six miles south of Tahlequah.
The wives
of the two Ridges, being white women, feared for their lives after the
death of their husbands and they moved to Arkansas, remaining there
until their deaths.
John Ridge
had a son, John Rollins Ridge, who later came back to that country to
see after his father’s and grandfather’s land and business. On
reaching their old homes, he found that there was a black stallion
missing and he started out in search of this horse. After some time
of searching he rode into the farm yard of a man by the name of Kell.
He asked him if he had seen a black stallion and Kell told him he had
and pointed to where the horse was standing. They had some words
about the horse and the outcome was that Ridge killed Kell, after
which he escaped into Missouri and later joined a party of Indians
that was migrating to California. He later made a trip or two back to
this country and to Washington D. C. but ended his days in
California. While in California, he became a newspaper man and a
writer, later being known as the “Poet of the Sierras of California”.
