At the foot of one of the highest peaks of Cohuttah Mountains in North Georgia, there stood, one late autumn day, an Indian girl, the daughter of a Cherokee Chief, and her half-breed lover.

As they talked she told him how the young men of her tribe hated him and how they taunted her about her pale faced lover, and told her he would be cruel and false to her. The old chiefs had told her of the great white chief, DeSoto, who had built the fort on this very mountain where they stood, when he rested in his journey from the Indian village, Chiaha (the place where the city of Rome, Ga., now stands). They told her how cruelly his followers had treated her people, tearing down their wigwams, desecrating their graves, in their search for Tau-lan-neca (yellow money) and they warned her that he belonged to that same cruel race.

He answered her, his heart swelling with love for his father's people, that they were not false and cruel but kind and good. He told her of his recent trip to Washington where he had gone as interpreter for their great Chief, Ridge, who loved the white people. He said they had seen the great white father and he had talked kindly to them and had advised them to sell their lands to the white people who would pay them well for it and would give them lands just as beautiful in the far west, which would be theirs as long as "grass grew and water ran."

He told her that if her people should be guided by Chief Ridge, and go to this far away land, he, too, would go with them and try to make her happy among her own people. If they did not go he would stay among them and build her a house like the white people lived in, a house good and strong that would last as long as their love, which would be forever. (It seems a prophecy for it is still standing).

He kept his promise to her and the house he dreamed of was built. What a marvelous thing it was to those savage people to watch the building of this house, with its carved mantels that reach to the ceiling, and the wonderful spiral stairway that excites the admiration of the skilled workmen of today and the hinges of the doors of beaten brass.

This palefaced lover little dreamed of what the future held in store, that he (David Vann) should become a chief of his Nation and go again to Washington with Chief Ridge and bring back to their tribe the purchase money for their lands, how dissensions had arisen among them in regard to the division of the money, how he buried the money near his home and how the wife that loved him begged him not to tell her where he buried it for fear the Indians would come and torture her and make her tell where it was buried.

Little did he dream that he and Chief Ridge would be basely murdered by the Indians.

This house has never been known by any other name but the Chief Vann house. It is impossible to find out the exact time it was built, as there were no white people living here at that time. White, in his Georgia Statistics, says that when the Moravian Mission was started in Spring Place that Chief Vann gave them the land for their buildings near his house and sent his children to their school. That was in 1802, so the house had been built before that date.

Judge George Glenn in a published article has told of Chief Vann's later life, his marriage to an Indian princess, his visits to Washington, his receiving and burying the gold, and his murder by the Indians, all of which is authentic.

The material for the house was said to have been carried on the backs of Indian ponies from Savannah, Ga., but other accounts say that Chief Vann taught the Indians to make and burn the brick there.

Thus ends the romance, mingled truth, and tradition, but the house in fairly good repair is still standing in Spring Place, Ga., today. This little town was the only place of any size at that time. In the jail at this place John Howard Payne was imprisoned, accused of being a spy. The jail is still standing.—Mrs. Warren Davis, Historian, John Milledge Chapter, D.A.R., Dalton, Ga.