Native Americans play a large role in the history and culture of Euharlee, according to one local genealogist.

Linda Gossett Cochran, a Native American and Bartow County native with 47 years of genealogy experience, has many stories to share about Euharlee, which means “she laughs as she runs” and refers to a creek from the Etowah River running through the city.

“That’s the creek out here and, if you listen close, it does sound like a woman laughing,” she said.

The area proved to be a good spot for tribes choosing to settle in Euharlee, Cochran said. She said the land was rich in resources and provided a good life to its earliest residents.

“The hunting here was great. That’s why they called this Enchanted Land. They had good food, good crops. The land is very fertile,” she said.

Cochran said early fish traps which remain in the creek after 150 years are reminders of those times.

“When the Cherokee lived here, it was an easy way for women and children to catch fish. The fish would always swim into it and wouldn’t know how to get out,” she said, adding that catching fish was a job belonging to women and children while the men hunted.

The area’s primary tribe was the Cherokee, although the Creek were also a fairly significant tribe living close by in and around Alabama and in the Carrollton area. Occasionally, there were disputes between the two and those arguments were usually about land.

The conflict came to a head when the Cherokee and the Creek both wanted to claim the northwest Georgia area for their settlements.

However, Cochran said the two tribes developed a civilized way to resolve the land issue without going to war.

“The Cherokee and Creek played a ballgame to see who would control the land,” she said.

The game was played in an area north of Canton, which was later named Ballground. She said it was a game typical of Native Americans in the late 1700s and compared to the sport of lacrosse today.

“They had a netted loop on a tree and and a clay ball and they had to get the ball in the loop. They had a scoop they used to make the net and put the ball in it,” she said.

By the way, the Cherokee won and the Creeks moved on to settle in Alabama.

The Cherokee flourished in the area. They covered Gordon, Bartow, Floyd, Cherokee, Paulding and Polk Counties. The tribal headquarters was New Echota in modern-day Calhoun.

The headquarters was a place where trading took place along with tribal government, she said.

“The Cherokee set up a system in New Echota where they could do all their trading. In fact, some of the artifacts they found were in Florida. That means they were trading all up and down the coast,” she said.

The harshness of life and greed over land came when the federal government decided to drive the natives out of Georgia and relocate them in Oklahoma. Cochran said the whole purpose of the Trail of Tears to Oklahoma wasn’t out of a fear of a Native American war or any real conflict with the people. Tribes in this area were peaceful, Cochran said.

It was mining. Gold had been found in places like Dahlonega, known as the official first site of the Gold Rush, and perhaps even earlier in Villa Rica. For the federal government to control the mines in this tribal territory, the Native Americans had to go.

“When they were driven out, they were driven to Kingston to Fort Means. There is nothing left of Fort Means except the hole that held the stockade wall,” Cochran said.

“They had no blankets, only what they had on their backs,” she said, adding that the government wouldn’t allow them to take any possessions or supplies with them. “They had no food, no water. The soldiers weren’t from here and didn’t know the people, so they were treated badly.”

Little did the government and soldiers know, the Native Americans took their secrets of gold and silver with them.

Cochran relates the stories her grandfather told. Her grandparents had lived in Bartow County their whole lives and he was a sharecropper in the late 1800s. She remembers him always clad in overalls. She said he could speak Cherokee, but didn’t because he was taught to hide it.

However, the secret place of a silver mine had been passed down to him.

“My grandpa, when he was little, he would sneak off and go down to Pumpkin Creek and pan. He always took silver and go down and pan. He always came back with a nugget,” she said.

Then there was the legend of the gold mine hidden somewhere in the Euharlee-Taylorsville area.

“There was a lost gold mine somewhere along the creek,” Cochran said, pausing before clarifying. “I don’t believe it’s an actual gold mine but a cave or somewhere where gold was hidden.”

She said Native Americans had a map of sorts to find such places. It was a code on trees and rocks that would go unnoticed by white people but obvious to Cherokee. Cochran said that code was destroyed long ago with tree clear-cutting and the changing landscape.

“Grandpa searched and couldn’t find it. One a few knew and it was passed down all orally,” she said, adding others came back from Oklahoma later looking for the lost mine as well.

“There’s not any record of anyone find it, so it’s still lost,” she said.

There is another story of how a man was murdered because he knew of a secret silver mine in the Euharlee area.

“Henry McGee was a half-breed,” Cochran begins. “He had a blacksmith shop down near Raccoon Creek Baptist Church. Raccoon Creek was a small community at that time. He made his own coins.”

Cochran said only one other person knew where the mine was and that was his young daughter.

“He would take his daughter with him and they would take a different trail every time because he was afraid of being followed because everyone knew he had silver,” she said.

McGee’s worst fears came to pass when three white men killed him around 1810 because he would not take them to the mine. McGee’s white wife feared for herself and her two children, her daughter and a son, so she fled to Tennessee with the little ones. The family later moved to Oklahoma.

“They would still come back some later. Mrs. Taft remembered them. I guess they would come get some silver and take it back to Oklahoma,” she said.

She said her research shows they did bring silver back to Oklahoma. Cochran said the family apparently never mentioned the mine again.