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552 GBOEGIA AND GEORGIANS
Indians in regard to a western emigration. Following this line of
policy, the Legislature passed an act, December 20, 1828, extending
Georgia's jurisdiction over the Cherokee domain. All white persons in
this territory became at once subject to the laws of Georgia, and, after
June 1, 1830, all Indian residents therein were likewise to recognize
the sovereignty of Georgia. At the same time all laws enacted by the
Cherokee nation were to become null and void. The frequency of
crimes committed in the Cherokee nation made it all the more impera
tive for Georgia to take this action.
Thus matters stood when Governor Gilmer was inaugurated. The
Cherokees, unlike the Creeks, were peaceably inclined and were rap
idly embracing both the civilization and the religion of the whites, as
we shall see in a subsequent chapter. For years, the chief complaint
lodged against the Cherokees was that, in refusing to sell a foot of
ground, they acted as one man and stood as firm as a granite rock.
Until 1828 only moderate efforts had been employed to induce the
Cherokees to vacate these lands and only small cessions had been ob
tained from time to time. But in the year above mentioned an event
occurred the effect of which was to fire the cupidity of the white set
tlers to possess these lands; and what was at first only a normal desire
became all at once an inordinate passion. Men in great bodies began to
rush northward impelled by some strange power hitherto unknown as a
factor in Georgia's expansion. This was the discovery of the yellow
metal around the sources of the Chattahooehee. What sealed the doom
of the Cherokee nation and started the drift of Georgia's population
with a tremendous impetus toward the valleys of the Blue Ridge, was
the lure of Mammon. But to many a disappointed settler it sang the
fatal song of a golden siren.
VILLA RICA—GOLD DISCOVERED.—It was the discovery of gold in 1826 that gave
to the oldest town in Western Georgia the musical Spanish name by which it is today
known: Villa Eiea, or "city of riches." The treaty at Indian Springs was no
sooner ratified than numbers of settlers began to spread themselves leisurely over the
fertile area of country to the west of the Ohattahoochee River; but when the tidings
went forth that in the upper part of the new country there were rich deposits of gold
the feverish influx of population began to resemble an ocean swell. Villa Bica
became a sort of Klondyke, to which the argonauts of the period rushed with pick
in hand to unearth the fortunes which they here expected to find. But the yellow
metal did not exist in sufficient quantities to satisfy the general expectation. It was
profitably mined by some of the new comers, wlio were fortunate enough to strike
rich veins, but most of the gold seekers were, disappointed and in time drifted to
other localities. There was no market or railroad nearer than Augusta, Georgia.
At first the mining industry was carried on by means of panning the dirt from the
surface of the earth in tin or copper cans, but eventually this crude process yielded
to more approved methods. Three years after the discovery of gold in Carroll, the
yellow metal was found to exist in much larger quantities, in the neighborhood of
Dahlonega, and the center of mining operations in Georgia shifted toward the north,
but not a few of the mines in the neighborhood of Villas Rica were worked with
profit until the time of the Civil war, netting substantial dividends to the owners.
In 1862, the Georgia Pacific Railway, now the Southern, reached the place where
Villa Rica now stands, and gradually the old town disappeared.