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Duncan O'Bryant: pioneer Baptist Missionary to the Western Cherokees.

Article Excerpt
The Cherokees probably arrived in what are now Arkansas and Oklahoma as permanent residents in the 1780s.

By 1809, an estimated one thousand Cherokees lived west of the Mississippi, having emigrated from the Eastern Nation (located in parts of North Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia) under white pressure. As the century progressed, others were reluctantly on the move. Perhaps five thousand were living in Oklahoma by 1835 (with about 16,500 still precariously holding on in the East). These Native Americans were mostly farmers, governed by a General Council, and constantly scrutinized by federal employees. Five years later, the brutal Trail of Tears took its toll, and the total number (all in the West except for perhaps one thousand hiding in the North Carolina mountains) has been estimated at slightly more than thirteen thousand.

Christian missionaries permanently entered the Western Cherokee land in 1821 when the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (staffed by Presbyterians in the West) began sending preachers and teachers. Ten years later the Presbyterians were joined by Methodist missionaries. A third denomination, the Baptists, also provide a sustained witness to the Western Cherokees, and they are the focus for this article. In light of numerous treaties made and broken, court actions that provided a legal facade for unprincipled confiscation of valuable land, and individual acts of violence to persons and property, one might wonder why any white Christians were ever willingly permitted to work among the Cherokees in the first place.

Moving from East to West

Duncan O'Bryant was born in 1785 or 1786, probably in northwest South Carolina. He married Martha (who was sometimes called Patsy) Whitehead, and they had ten children. The extent of his formal education is unknown, but for a time before 1821, he purportedly lived among the Eastern Cherokees, maybe as a teacher. By 1821, O'Bryant was licensed to preach; in 1825 or 1826, he was ordained to the gospel ministry. During the early 1820s, he was a member of churches in Lumpkin and Hall counties, Georgia. Usually under the sponsorship of the Triennial Convention, O'Bryant was pastor of the Tinsawattee Baptist Church, holding services in a meetinghouse constructed in Dawson County, a school building erected in Cherokee County, and various private residences in those areas. From 1821 to 1831, he taught in schools located in Dawson and Cherokee counties, ranging in size from three to thirty-six pupils and eventually reaching about two hundred different pupils. Most church members and students were probably of mixed ancestry or whites married to Cherokees and used the English language with greater or lesser facility.

Facing hostility from President Andrew Jackson and land-hungry Georgians, O'Bryant acceded to state authority. He and his wife, eight of their children (one was married and remained in Georgia and one was as yet unborn), and his congregation of about twenty-eight joined a larger traveling party early in 1832 and headed for "the Arcansaw Contary" (which included territory that is now in eastern Oklahoma). The move was viewed by the vast majority of Eastern Cherokees as being treasonous, temporarily impeding evangelistic efforts among Native American nationalists. By June 6, they reached their destination, the Flint District of Oklahoma (from whence O'Bryant's first letter from the West was written).

John Alberty, a white man married to a Cherokee, had been one of O'Bryant's supporters in Georgia. Alberty emigrated with a large family and five slaves shortly before O'Bryant and was settled rather comfortably by the time the missionary arrived. Alberty moved O'Bryant and his family into...

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