Jim Glanville
Part 1 of this column noted that there is much evidence for extensive American Indian occupation during the Mississippian period along the three forks of the Holston River, including at Chilhowie and on the nearby Indian Fields.
In a 2000 article in the “Journal of Middle Atlantic Archaeology,” the current Virginia state archeologist Mike Barber, coauthoring with the late Gene Barfield, wrote: “As we see it, the rise of the Saltville Petty Chiefdom developed through the long distance exchange of salt into the Southeast sometime after AD 1350 … the inhabitants of the Saltville area were not prehistoric Cherokee but an indigenous group which accepted some Southeastern influences.” Barber and Barfield added that the regional gorgets in the rattlesnake style indicated local social wealth and conferred status on persons who wore them.
Stephen Holstein (or Holston) was perhaps of Swedish extraction and gave his name to the Holston River. In the early 1740s, his parents were probable migrants into the Valley of Virginia. The records are not definitive, but it is a fair guess that Holston was living as early as 1746 near the head of what is today’s Middle Fork of the Holston River and perhaps had an occupant claim (corn or cabin rights) to a tract of land there. According to family tradition, Holston later moved further down the valley and made his last home on Holston River in the present county of Grainger, Tennessee.
Samuel Stalnaker was possibly of German origin and reached Virginia via Philadelphia. He was probably situated on the Indian Fields as early as 1747 where he worked as an explorer, trapper, deer hunter, and guide. The explorer Thomas Walker wrote in his journal for the 23rd of March 1750 “We kept down the Holston River about four miles and Camped; and then Mr. Powell and I went to look for Samuel Stalnaker who I had been inform’d was just moved out to settle. We found his camp, and returned to our own in the evening.” The next day Walker wrote: “We went to Stalnaker’s, helped him to raise his house and camped about a quarter of a mile below him.” When Walker wrote these journal entries, Stalnakers’ place was considered the western limit of Virginia.
Samuel Stalnaker’s wife Susanna and son Adam were killed by roving Shawnee Indians in 1755. Stalnaker himself was taken prisoner and apparently remained a captive of the Ohio Indians for a year before escaping and making his way back to Virginia and reporting to the authorities in Williamsburg. Genealogical sources say that Stalnaker married again and lived to the age of 91 before dying in South Carolina.
Indian Fields was the scene of large military operations in 1760 at a time when the French and Indian War was reaching a highly successful North American conclusion from the British point of view.
In 1758, frustrations built up over many years caused the Cherokee nation to go to war against the colonies. The long-standing frustrations included the increasing numbers of English-speaking settlers pushing west into Cherokee land, depleted deer harvests, lower deerskin prices, and dubious and unfair behavior by English traders.
By 1761, the British had determined to end the Anglo-Cherokee war with a two-pronged advance into Cherokee country. James Grant moved with an army of 2,600 men northwest from South Carolina, heading for today’s east Tennessee. Simultaneously a Virginia army moved southwest along the Virginia frontier all the way from Winchester to the Indian Fields and aimed at the Long Island of the Holston (at today’s Kingsport).
The Virginia army was led first by William Byrd III then by Adam Stephen. This army cut the road from the Indian Fields to the Long Island. In November 1761, in an action of global political significance, the Virginia army forced a peace treaty between Virginia and the Cherokees at Fort Robinson. The pro-French Cherokee leader Standing Turkey was replaced by the pro-British Attakullakulla, and Stephen sent Lieutenant Henry Timberlake as an emissary to the Cherokee towns along the Little Tennessee River.
His 1766 account, titled “Memoirs 1756-1765,” that Timberlake wrote about his mission to the Cherokees has become a major historical document of Cherokee life. On his return, Timberlake stopped at the Indian Fields to recover clothes and personal items he had left there. Most of his things had been stolen, but did he did eventually recover “a small trunk with some trifles I found afterwards at the New River.” After his mission, Timberlake sponsored a visit of the Cherokee leaders across the Atlantic to London. It more-or-less bankrupted him.
In January 2009 I visited the late Dixie Farthing Huff and Ballard Buckner Huff at their home on Lee Highway near the Indian Fields in Chilhowie. Dixie and BB at one time owned 1,200 acres of land at the Indian Fields. The highlight of the visit was seeing and photographing a large Indian pot that was recovered on the Indian Fields.
In a later column I will write about my visit to Indian Fields with Lawrence Richardson and the time I got to watch the Ebbing Spring just downstream of the Indian Fields actually ebb and flow.
Jim Glanville is a retired chemist living in Blacksburg. He has been publishing and lecturing for more than a decade about the history of Southwest Virginia.
