The Real History of the End of the World (25 page)

On September 19, Tecumseh met with Choctaw and Cherokee representatives at Tuckabtchie. The Indian agent, Hawkins, explained the situation regarding the road and then left. The agent to the Cherokees, Return Jonathan Meigs, who was not present, spoke to some of the Cherokee about what happened next.

They told him that Tecumseh had made his plea, warning the others that the United States was not about to stop its expansion. According to some accounts, he also made prophecies, including one in which he warned that, if they did not follow his advice, when he returned home to Indiana, he would “stamp the earth so that it would tremble.”
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On December 16, 1811, the largest earthquake ever recorded in North America hit with an epicenter near New Madrid, Missouri. The Mississippi River changed course, lakes were swallowed up, and new ones were formed. The earth split, leaving chasms running through fields. The earthquake was felt as far east as Boston and Washington, D.C.
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The Moravian missionaries wrote: “Dec. 16, 1811: Early at three o'clock two shocks of an earthquake were felt. The house trembled and everything in them [sic] was in movement. The hens fell to the ground from their roosts and set up a pitiful cry.”
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The aftershocks continued for months, with another major shock on January 23, 1812, and an even harder one on February 7.
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The disquiet caused by continual earthquakes was strengthened by the appearance of the Great Comet of 1811, which was at it brightest at roughly the same time as Tecumseh's travels. It's not clear whether Tecumseh foretold an earthquake, but he was given credit for doing so. It is at this point that the Cherokee visions became apocalyptic. A Cherokee named Big Bear told the Moravians of a vision another Cherokee had had that contained the warning, “Tugalo [formerly a Cherokee town in South Carolina], which is now possessed by white people, is the first place which God created. There in a hill he placed the first fire, for all fire comes from God. Now the white people have built a house on that hill. They should abandon the place; on that hill there should be grass growing; only then will there be peace.” The Moravians thought this was all “silly” and tried to convince Big Bear that God didn't send such visions. Big Bear replied, “The white people know God from a book and we from other things.”
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The visions predicted more disasters, particularly terrible storms with enormous hailstones that would destroy everyone but the traditional Cherokee, who must hide in the Great Smokey Mountains until the danger passed. It was reported that some did so.
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In March 1812, the Moravians reported that a new prophecy stated that there would be three days of darkness, “during which all the white people would be snatched away as well as all Indians who had any clothing or household articles of the white man's kind.”
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By now the Moravians were thoroughly tired of these prophecies. The earthquakes may have been getting on their nerves, too. They had been working among the Cherokee for several years and had made only one convert. They came to the conclusion that the visions were a “new stratagem of the Devil” and the only recourse was to pray harder.
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It may have been their prayers or the combined wisdom of the Cherokee, but the rumors of a new world without white people seemed to have died down by the spring of 1812. While this phenomenon has been called a “Ghost Dance,” it has little in common with the 1890s movement among the Plains Indians. It was caused by a combination of frustration at the encroachment of a domineering foreign invader coupled with startling natural occurrences. There have been various explanations as to why the Cherokee prophecies did not take hold as did those of the Millerites and others. I suspect that there is no one simple reason. The Cherokee became involved with the immediate problems of survival. The comet faded; the earthquakes stopped. Life still held possibility.

As a side note, it was not just the Cherokees who saw a sign in the 1811 earthquake. Many who lived in the area most affected found religion. During one aftershock a Reverend James Finley “jumped to a table and shouted, ‘For the great day of His wrath is come, and who shall be able to stand?' ” gaining several converts at once. It was also reported that the membership in the Methodist Church in the area went up by 50 percent.
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The millennial movement in nineteenth-century America was off to a roaring start.

1
Dwayne Champagne, “Social Structure, Revitalization Movements and State Building: Social Change in Four Native American Societies,”
American Sociological Review
48, no. 6 (1983): 757.

2
Russell Thorten, “Boundary Dissolution and Revitalization Movements: The Case of the Nineteenth-Century Cherokee,”
Ethnohistory
40, no. 3 (1993): 364-365.

3
William G. McLoughlin, “New Angles of Vision on the Cherokee Ghost Dance Movement of 1811-1812,”
American Indian Quarterly
5, no. 4 (1979): 318.

4
Michelene E. Pesantubbe, “When the Earth Shakes: The Cherokee Prophesies of 1811-12,”
American Indian Quarterly
17, no. 3 (1993): 301.

5
Trans. Elizabeth Marx in McLoughlin, 340, from the Moravian records. The Moravians were speaking English with Cherokees and writing in German, but I think the essence of the vision is what they were told.

6
Thorten, 365.

7
Pesantubbe, 308.

8
John Sugden, “Early Pan-Indianism: Tecumseh's Tour of the Indian Country, 1811-1812,”
American Indian Quarterly
10, no. 4 (1986): 275.

9
Ibid., 284.

10
Sugden, 389.

11
Edward M. Shepherd, “The New Madrid Earthquake,”
The Journal of Geology
13, no. 1 (1905): 47. Shepherd includes firsthand accounts of the earthquake.

12
McLoughlin, 340.

13
Margaret Ross, “The New Madrid Earthquake,”
The Arkansas Historical Quarterly
27, no. 2 (1968): 87.

14
McLoughlin, 342.

15
Pesantubbe, 309-310.

16
McLouglin, 344.

17
Ibid.

18
Quoted in Ross, 100.

I was shown in a vision, and I still believe, that here was a shut
door in 1844. All who saw the light of the first and second
angels' messages and rejected that light, were left in darkness.

—Ellen Gould White, founder of the Seventh-Day Adventists
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O
f the many religious movements of the early nineteenth century, one of the most controversial was started by a solid farmer from upstate New York. The Millerites are of special note because of the passionate response of the public to them and because of the after-math to their “Great Disappointment” when the Second Coming did not appear as they expected.

William Miller was born in Massachusetts on February 15, 1782, the son of a Revolutionary War captain. When he was four, the family moved to Washington County, New York, where he grew up.
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Miller's early religious life was typical for the time. His family was Baptist, and his mother, Paulina, the daughter of a minister, encouraged him to read the Bible. In his memoirs, he states that he always felt the need for a personal connection with God, but he seemed ambivalent about religion in his youth, even considering himself a Deist. In 1805, he married Lucy Smith, and they began farming and producing children. He fought in the War of 1812, becoming a captain, like his father. He was active in civic affairs and a member of the Masons.
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Then, in 1816, in response to his war experiences, Miller became deeply concerned about the afterlife. This led to his determination to prove logically that the Bible was accurate and understandable, providing clear answers to life's questions. He embarked on a fifteen-year odyssey through the scriptures in search of those answers. “I found everything revealed that my heart could desire, and a remedy for every disease of the soul,” he later wrote.
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During this time, he became aware of the millennial movements that were springing up all over the Northeast. Many of them taught that the millennium would be a time of universal brotherhood and peace, after which Jesus would return. This bothered Miller. He felt that this belief, called postmillennialism, had it backwards. In Miller's interpretation, first Jesus would return in his Second Advent, and then the millennium would begin with Christ as ruler.
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In his statement of faith, sent in a letter to his brother, Miller wrote:

Miller followed with his understanding of what would happen to those left behind.

Through his belief that the Bible was clear and definite to those who studied it properly, Miller joined the corps of those who tried to work out the time of the Second Coming through mathematical calculations. Like most of the others, including Isaac Newton, he started with the Book of Daniel. He began his computations with the old favorite, Daniel 8:14: “Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed.”
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From that and using other clues in Daniel, Miller was startled to discover that the Second Coming would be around March 23, 1843.

Miller pondered this revelation for some time, confiding it to a few friends. He seems to have known well that most people would laugh at his conclusions. Slowly, however, he began to tell others, prompted, he said, by a sign from God that he could not ignore. Nevertheless, Miller's preaching remained low key until he ran into an evangelical firebrand, then in his late twenties, named Joshua Vaughn Himes.

Himes was the minister at Boston's Chardon Street Chapel. He was a strong supporter of the abolitionist movement, working with William Lloyd Garrison.
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Himes met Miller when the latter spoke in Exeter, New Hampshire. In 1839 he invited Miller to preach in Boston at his church. Himes became convinced that Miller was correct and that his message needed to be brought to as many people as possible before the end, which was fast approaching.

By now, thousands of people in New England and eastern Canada had heard Miller preach. Ministers from many different denominations had asked him to speak to their congregations. Miller was a good draw, and after hosting him, church leaders generally found they had new members. Miller had no intention of starting his own religion. Why bother, when the millennium was nearly upon us? So Baptist, Methodist, and Congregationalist pastors generally felt that his message would not cost them adherents. Many of them were converted to Miller's cause and began preaching it themselves.

Joshua Himes did his part by publishing a series of journals. Starting with
The Signs of the Times
in March 1840, followed by
The Midnight Cry
, first published in New York City in late 1842. Others took up the cry and began printing magazines and pamphlets as far west as Ohio, often brought out to coincide with Miller's speaking engagements. As a consequence, thousands of people accepted Miller's prophecy and began to prepare their souls for the millennium.
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Although Miller had many enthusiastic supporters, most of America, particularly the press, found his prophecies either irritating or laughable. As the spring of 1843 began, newspapers began reporting on Miller and the crowds that attended whenever he spoke. From this, they moved to stories about the antics of Miller's followers. Several cases of insanity and suicide attempts were laid at his door. The penny papers, or tabloids, wrote the wildest tales, such as that of the night watchman at Spring Gardens, in Philadelphia, who “heard three groans which he was certain were Gabriel's preparatory blasts.”
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The same paper told its readers that there was a bill in the Pennsylvania State House to prohibit “Millerites, Mormons, assemblymen, [and] locomotives . . . from riding the tails of comets.”
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This was probably occasioned by the appearance in early March of an extremely bright comet that could be seen even in the daytime. It was described as having two tails.
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This set off apocalyptic fears even among nonbelievers.

However, comets and other outward signs were not of concern to Miller. It was the proof he found in the Bible that established his conviction. He believed that anyone who took that time to study would come to the same conclusions. He even provided a list of terms used that he considered “figurative” or allegorical to help in understanding. Adultery and blasphemy were both simply forms of idolatry. “Woman” could both mean the church and the anti-church. (This is not an uncommon conclusion among male theologians). “Israel” stood for the Christian church.
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