l.MS): This Cherokee secret society, which has
recently achieved some newspaper prominence by its championship of Cherokee
autonomy, derives its name — properly Kitu'hwa, hut commonly spelled Ketoowah
in English print — from the ancient town in the old Nation which formed the nucleus of
the most conservative element of the tribe and sometimes gave a name to the Nation
itself i see KUu'hwatfl, under Tribal Synonyms). A strong band of comradeship, if
not a regular society organization, appears to have existed among the warriors and
leading men of the various settlements of the Kituhwa district from a remote period,
so that the name is even now used in councils as indicative of genuine Cherokee
feelingjn its highest patriotic form. When, some years ago, delegates from the
western Nation visited the East Cherokee to invite them to jointheir more pros-
perous brethren beyond the Mississippi, the speaker for the delegates expressed
their fraternal feeling for their separated kin-men by saying in his opening speech,
"We are all Kituhwa people" (Ani'-KItu'hwagl). The Ketoowah society in the
( In rokee Nation west was organized shortly before the civil war by John I'.. Jones,
son of the missionary, Evan Jones, and an adopted citizen of the Nation, as a secret
society for the ostensible purpose of cultivating a national feeling among the full-
bl Is. in opposition to the innovating tendencies of the mixed-bl 1 element. The
real purpose was to counteract the influence of the "Blue Lodge" and other secret
secessionist organizations among the wealthier slave-holding classes, made up chiefly
of mixed-bl Is and whites. It extended to the Creeks, and its members ill both
tribes rendered g