Major Ridge
He Who Walks on Mountain Tops
Sarah’s father, Major Ridge, whose given name was Kah-nung-da-tla-geh, was born in 1771 in Great Hiwassee, Tennessee, Cherokee Nation. His father was Tatsi Ogonatota, his mother’s name is unknown. The meaning of his given name is “he who walks on mountain tops” or a man of vision. The English translated it to “The Ridge.” Ridge proved himself as a great warrior at the young age of fourteen and at the age of twenty-one was chosen as a member of the Cherokee council. During his second year on the council, he introduced many useful laws proving himself as a valuable counselor. At this time, he became one of the chief men of the nation.
During the War of 1812, the Cherokee sent a contingent to fight alongside the American forces against the British and the Creek Red Sticks. In 1814, Ridge’s troops were a decisive factor in the defeat of the Creeks at the battle of Horseshoe Bend. Because of his brave role in recruiting and leading the Cherokee, Ridge was awarded the rank of Major by General Andrew Jackson. Ridge would soon begin to use his rank as his first name, forever becoming Major Ridge.
Sarah’s father built a homestead on Oothealooga Creek near present day Adairsville, Georgia, about 1800. He then married Susie Wickett, and moved into a two-story log cabin on his property in 1819. Susie’s mother was Kate Parris and her father was Ah-ta-kon-stis-kee, last hereditary chief of the Five Civilized Tribes composed of Cherokees, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks, and Seminoles.
Growing up in the Indian Nation for Sarah was not the silver screen depiction of tipis and nomadic living, for hers was a life filled with pomp and circumstance. Expensive furniture filled her impressive two-story home, fine china and silver flatware graced the dining table, and an elegant carriage was the family’s mode of transportation. Sarah’s wardrobe was the finest money could provide and household and field slaves attended to the daily needs of the family. The Ridge family and many other Indian families in Georgia, adapted this way of life in order to assimilate into white society and demonstrate their co-operation with the white settlers.
Sarah’s parents, who wanted their children to be well-educated, enrolled them in good schools. As a teenager, Sarah attended Salem Female Academy in Salem, North Carolina. The school was founded by Moravian missionaries. Her brother, John was educated at the Foreign Mission School at Cornwall, Connecticut. The Ridge children converted to Christianity while attending school.
When Sarah was a young girl in her father’s home, she was quite a pet of Sam Houston who was a Congressman from Tennessee at that time. She would see him in Washington when she went with her father to address tribal affairs before Congress. Houston would take her sightseeing in the city.
Friction & Factions
The United States government continued to push into Native American land after the War of 1812 using the treaty system to acquire large portions of land. In 1830, President Andrew Jackson passed the Indian Removal Act which called for all Native Americans in the east to trade their land for land west of the Mississippi River. The discovery of gold deposits in the Georgia Cherokee land in the northern region coupled with the desire to build a railroad throughout the area, opened the door for the state to extend its legal grasp of the tribe in 1828-1830. The Cherokee Nation fought the state through the US court system and in 1831 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Cherokee were a nation separate and independent from the U.S. and neither the federal government nor the individual states had jurisdiction over them. However, Andrew Jackson refused to honor the Supreme Court ruling, encouraging Georgia to take the land. The State of Georgia, emboldened by Jackson, adopted the lottery system, whereby Indian land was awarded to white settlers.
From Resolve to Resignation
I've Signed My Death Warrant
Sarah’s brother, John “Skah-tle-loh-skee” was the Clerk of the Cherokee National Council and participated in tribal delegations to Washington, D.C. to consult with U.S. officials. John, who had been well educated in the Mission school, wrote the Cherokee law and served as an interpreter between government officials and the Indians, his father never learned to speak English. He accompanied the Cherokee delegation led by his father, Major Ridge, to Washington in 1824, becoming exposed to politics and the looming threat of removal. He became one of the first lawyers of the Cherokee Nation and an avid opponent to the Removal Act by 1829 and became the President of the National Committee in 1830. The Treaty of New Echota was presented and the Indian Nation was under pressure to sign it, but John and his father, Major Ridge were in lock-step regarding the sale of Indian land, both refusing to sign the treaty. However, in a meeting with Andrew Jackson in 1832, Jackson informed John that whether they signed the treaty or not made no difference, they would still be expelled from their land. Hearing this, John realizing there was no way to prevail, reversed his decision and with a heavy heart convinced his father to do the same. Ironically, Major Ridge was one of the principal persons writing the Cherokee law making it an act of treason to sell Indian land. As he signed the treaty in December of 1835, he said, “I’m signing my death warrant.” Isaac “Degadaga” (meaning to stand and translated Stand by the white man) Watie and his brother Elias “Kilakeena (meaning deer and translated Buck by the white man) Watie” Boudinot, nephews of Major Ridge, were also signers of the treaty. The treaty gave legal right of the Cherokee land to Georgia and in return the Cherokee Nation promised to give them two years to move, five million in compensation for their land, travel supplies and one year subsistence. About 2,000 of the Cherokee’s left with Major Ridge and his family, the remaining 12,500, under the leadership of Chief John Ross, refused to leave. John Ross and Major Ridge were once close friends, Ross calling Ridge his mentor. They lived side-by-side on the Oostanaula River and had a path between their homes called the ‘Ross to Ridge Trail.’ Once Major Ridge made his decision to sign the Treaty of New Echota, they became sharply divided over their opinions of tribal land. Ridge believed the only chance of survival for their nation was to sell their prime land to the government and relocate west of the Mississippi. Ross felt they should hold their lands and stood in opposition to his old friend.
The Trail of Tears
Malevolence & Murder
By May 1838, the government began its forced expulsion of the remaining tribe. They were rounded up and sent to emigration depots before being herded west. The journey, made in the dead of winter, caused the death of approximately 4,000 from exhaustion, hunger, disease, and freezing temperatures. The journey aptly named “The Trail of Tears,” stirred anger and hatred in the hearts of the survivors. They sought out The Ridge family, who were the signers of the Treaty of New Echota. Just before dawn, thirty armed natives surrounded John Ridge’s home in Southwest City, Missouri. They stormed his home forcing him to walk outside. While two held him tightly the others stabbed him thirty times, he died within minutes. A band of armed Cherokees followed Major Ridge who was traveling by horseback. As he stopped to water his horse by a stream near Dutch Mills, Arkansas, the band fired on him from the tree line killing him with shots in the back. At Park Hill, Arkansas, Elias Boudinot (born Buck Watie), nephew of Major Ridge, was supervising the construction of a house in Park Hill, Oklahoma when three men seized him, stabbed him cutting him to pieces with knives and tomahawks. All three were murdered within a 70 mile radius. A witness to the murder of Elias raced on horseback to Stand Watie’s store and warned him. Watie mounted his horse and sped away to safety. He assassinated one of the men who murdered his brother Elias and his Uncle Ridge. In 1845, his brother Thomas was killed in retaliation. Major Ridge and his son John are both buried at Polson Cemetery in present day Delaware County, Oklahoma.
Stand Watie . . . Vindicated
Stand Watie was the only Ridge family member who signed the Treaty of New Echota to escape assassination. During the Civil War and after, Watie served as the Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation (1862-1866). Watie organized a regiment of cavalry, in October 1861, he was commissioned as colonel in what would become the 1st Cherokee Mounted Rifles. He is noted for his role in the Battle of Pea Ridge, Arkansas, on March 6-8, 1862. Watie was the only Native American to rise to a brigadier general’s rank in the Confederacy during the war.
Stand Watie was brought to trial for the murder of James Foreman on May 15, 1843, with his nephew-in-law George Paschal and a team of other lawyers as his defense team. Watie’s killing of James Foreman was ruled as self-defense and he was declared not guilty. He was the first Indian ever to win a case in a white man’s court of law.
Sarah Ridge
Cherokee Belle
Sarah met George Washington Paschal, a Georgian from Skull Shoals, while he was serving as an aide-de-camp to General George Wool. The general was given the task of driving the Cherokee from their land. Thurman Wilkins wrote in his book, Cherokee Tragedy, “Sally, who had become a charming Cherokee belle, though her coloring, like that of Major Ridge himself, was dark, much darker than John’s. “A full dark Cherokee,” observed Miss Sawyer, the schoolteacher, “…a young lady of superior talent . . . very interesting in her person and appearance.” She was graceful in form and movements. She dressed well, mostly in blue calico, then considered a fine fabric, and more than one white man wanted to marry her. According to the legend that grew up around her: She was a most accomplished rider…Once her lover, the man she at last married, ‘bought from a Tennessee drover a nag for Miss Sally to ride on.’ He presented it to her, saddled and bridled, and begged the pleasure of riding with her. She mounted on the pony gaily, but something about the bridle needed adjusting, the lover slipped it off the pony’s head to fix it. No sooner loose than the pony bounded off unfettered, and he and Miss Sally, for thirteen miles, tried for the mastery of the situation. ‘Miss Sally rode him down’, it is said, and ever afterward the pony seemed a dispirited animal.”
“Sarah and George were married at East Brainerd, Tennessee on the 27th of February 1837. A year later they followed Sarah’s family to Honey Creek in the northeast corner of Cherokee lands. Their daughter, Emily Anderson Paschal was born there on the 18th of May 1838, before the Paschals moved on and settled in Van Buren, Arkansas.
Paschal, who was admitted to the bar in 1832, was a lawyer of commendable intellect. Once he was settled in Van Buren, he and his brother opened a law practice there. In 1842 he was elected to an eight-year term as associate judge on the Arkansas Supreme Court, but resigned within a year, returning to Van Buren to represent the Cherokee Nation in their appeals to the United States Congress. In about 1847, the Paschals moved to Galveston, Texas and he was admitted to practice before the Texas Supreme Court on December 28, 1847.
A Home in Galveston
Forest McNeir, in his book Forest McNeir of Texas, described Sarah and George’s move to Galveston as follows. “In 1848 my grandfather and grandmother with their children moved to Galveston, Texas. He studied Spanish on the ride to Texas, and in six weeks could read, write, and speak the language. (Paschal already knew Latin, which aided him greatly in learning the language.) They brought a number of slaves with them from Van Buren. They built the first two-story house on Galveston Island. Before the move, they had ordered from Bangor, Maine, a two-story house cut complete and put together—doors, windows, and stairways. So we see the pre-fabricated house of today is by no means new. This house was loaded on a sailing schooner, brought down off the beach at Galveston, unloaded just outside the breakers, and rafted together and floated ashore. There the slaves loaded all the parts onto two-wheel drays and hauled them up through the sand hills to the southeast corner of Avenue H and 14th Street. This house is still standing, but it has been moved back onto the edge of the alley between Ave. H and Ave I. It is about eighteen feet wide and forty feet long and the stairway is on the outside. The rooms have ceilings twelve feet high. (some of the street names have changed since McNeir’s book was written. The house is actually at 14thStreet and Ball Street.) The water supply in Galveston at the time was rain water and there was a big underground cistern to hold it. This house was paid for out of my grandmother’s half of the gold brought from Georgia in 1836. The gold was brought under a wagon seat all the way from Georgia to the Indian Territory by Major Ridge and his family, and not long afterwards, was divided between his son John Ridge and his daughter Sarah Ridge.
Broken Heart . . .
. . . Broken Marriage
Once settled in Galveston, Sarah met up once again with her old friend, Sam Houston, by now General Sam Houston and his family. Her little daughter, Emily Agnes and Sam Houston’s daughter, Nettie, became fast friends for the rest of their lives.
While growing up in the Cherokee Nation, Sarah was taught both the Cherokee methods of treating illnesses with herbs and the white man’s medical knowledge in caring for family and slaves. This knowledge served her and her patients well during the 1850 yellow fever epidemic. She sent her slaves to gather all the orange leaves they could in Galveston and made orange leaf tea which stopped the inflammation of the stomach and brought down the fever, enabling her patients to go home in a few days. She never lost a patient and her slaves and children never got sick. (excerpt from a biographical sketch by Kathryn Agnes Paschal McNeir Stuart.
By 1850, Sarah’s husband George Paschal had moved to Austin, Texas to continue his law practice there. His and Sarah’s marriage had deteriorated greatly, due largely to her broken heart causing a strain on their relationship. The displacement from her Cherokee home, the assassinations of her father, brother, and cousin, and having to bury three of her six children had taken a toll on her heart. Sarah and George divorced on the 30th of December 1850 with Sarah retaining the house in Galveston and the dozen slaves. She also was awarded custody of their children. George and Ridge became lawyers and George became his father’s law partner. Ridge was U.S. Collector of Customs at Corpus Christi, Texas and later went back to the Indian Territory where he was once mayor of Tahlequah.
Troubled yet Triumphant
On the 18th of May 1856, Sarah married a second time to Charles C. Sisson Pix in the home of General Mirabeau B. Lamar in Richmond, Texas. Charles, a man twenty years younger than Sarah, was an Englishman whose father had a department store in Galveston. Sarah’s new husband had visions of a big plantation to be worked by his wife, Sallie and her slaves, so she traded her home in Galveston to Mrs. Elianor Frankland for 500 acres at Smith Point, Texas. The acreage had a large two-story house under some cottonwood trees. Mrs. Frankland’s sons, Richard and Charles, were Sarah’s only neighbors when she moved her family to Smith Point.
Sarah and Charles had one child, Charles Forest Pix, who was born at Smith Point. He was idolized by his 10-year-old sister, Agnes who gave him the middle name of Forest. His life was short as he died on the 13th of November 1874 at the young age of 17 after contracting malaria in Galveston. His body was returned to his mother in a wagon, but Charles Sisson Pix would not allow Sarah to bury their son. He remained covered in the wagon for a year. Eventually she was able to bury him under the oak tree he had himself planted as an acorn from the Carroll Wilborn place at Double Bayou.
Charles abandoned Sarah for the 13-year-old daughter of John Monroe Dick of Smith Point. When Sarah’s daughter, Emily Agnes, heard that Pix had abandoned her mother, she insisted she divorce him. In 1880, Sarah filed for divorce in Wallisville, the county seat of Chambers County at that time. When the court ordered all properties to be split equally, Emily filed a fiery appeal and won, a feat normally unheard of in that day. The judge ordered Pix leave the marriage with only the $19 he brought into it. Charles Pix was lost at sea during the great Galveston Storm of 1900.
Laid to Rest in Smith Point, Texas
Leaving a Legacy of Geniality & Kindness
Sarah Ridge Paschal Pix died on the 8th of January 1891, at the age of 77, and is buried in the family cemetery at Smith Point in Chambers County, Texas, beside the grave of her youngest child, Charles Forest Pix. Her grandson, Paschal, in his biographical tribute to her stated: “Sarah was a wonderful woman and died as she lived, respected by all who knew her, as a proud representative of a grand race of the earliest Americans, yet genial and kind to rich and poor alike.”
