The Curious Tale of Osenappa

For more than forty years, whenever I have had occasion to be in the area, I have lingered for a time at the Old Stone Church Cemetery in Clemson, South Carolina.  For a few years in the 1970’s, I lived not many miles away.  I last visited the cemetery earlier this year, 2011.

It is strange how a cemetery can evolve over the years, even without considering the new graves that are filled.

In the 1970’s, there was no “Cherokee Indian” named Osenappa buried at the Old Stone Church.  Or, at least, I saw no sign of such a thing back then.  Now, one finds these words, taken from the Historical Marker  at the Church and duly recorded in the Historical Marker Database:

“One of the oldest graves is that of Osenappa, a Cherokee, who died in 1794. In addition to the marker, a cairn (piled stones) identifies the grave. He is the only Native American buried here. His role in this South Carolina frontier remains undiscovered.”

And, there is a crudely inscribed stone marker, this one, at the end of a cairn:

As you can see, the marker does not appear to be ancient.  Of course, it may have been merely a home-made replacement for an earlier, vanished stone, made by some person of good will.  I do not know who made it or how it got there.

But, it was a replacement for an earlier marker.  The catch is that Osenappa was not a Cherokee Indian.  The Cherokee language does not have any <p> sound at all; it is not a Cherokee name.  My mildly educated guess is that the word is from one of the Muskogean languages, most likely Choctaw, but I would not rule out the Siouan Catawba language as a possibility, either.

Worse yet, the Osenappa lying beneath the ground in the Old Stone Church Cemetery is not an Indian at all.

In January 1935, Mary Cherry Doyle wrote a brief history of the Old Stone Church and Cemetery, apparently for the local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution.  Among her descriptions of the graves and their occupants, we find this mention:

A small stone marks the grave of a child. Osenappa Reese, who was said to have been named in honor of an Indian chief, Osenappa, who was kind to the settlers in this vicinity.

It is not yet clear to me how little Osenappa was related to Reverend Thomas Reese, pastor of the church from 1792 until his death in 1796.  He is said to have been the first, or among the first buried in the cemetery.  Some sources say the child died in 1794.  There are other Reese descendants buried in the graveyard.

Was the child named for some Indian converted by Thomas Reese?  Was there an Indian called Osenappa who befriended the white settlers of the Pendleton District?

Or, was there an Alabama connection?  A few miles to the south of West Point, on the Georgia-Alabama line, Osanippa Creek empties into the Chattahoochee River [or, rather, into the upper reaches of Lake Harding, formed by a dam on the Chattahoochee].   A coincidence of names?  Perhaps.  Perhaps not.  In older documents from the 19th Century, several of them, the creek’s name appears as Osenappa.   Is it the same name?  Is there a direct connection?  I have sought the meaning of the name from people very knowledgeable in Choctaw and other Muskogean languages, but we do not know the history of the creek’s name and we have no idea what it means, or meant.

I do not have answers to these questions, not yet.  If and when I can find them, I will post them here.  If you have information I have not yet found, I will be pleased to hear about it.

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