Christian Priber

Christian Priber , of his complete name Christian Gottlieb Prieber, is a U topist and German adventurer, born with Zittau, the March 21st 1697. He studies with Leipzig in 1718 then in famous the Université of Erfurt. Its thesis of doctorate which it defends in 1722 is a model of scholarship and subversion: Quam of usu doctrinae juris romani, ignorantia juris in foro Germaniae . The project of Priber is to reform Germany by the Roman law. Pursued for its ideas, he flees the courts through Europe. The June 13rd 1735, Priber, candidate with the emigration, is in London or it obtains the authorization to go to America.

An utopian at the Indians

He goes in South Carolina and the February 27th 1736 Priber makes a request to acquire a ground in the town of Amelia. It is at that time that it goes to Great Tellico the capital Cherokee located at of the mountainous chain of Unakas and misty mountains. In a few months it has a command of the tsalagi, the language cherokee, and begins the drafting of a dictionary cherokee. He teaches with the Indians the use of the weights and measures so that they can trade equitably with the British trappers. He undertakes the realization of a communication network river with La Nouvelle-Orléans, but also with the Spanish territories, in order to break the Anglo-Saxon monopoly. For the British tradesmen, it is about an unforgivable crime but Priber knows exactly what he does and he exhorts the Indians more not to yield their grounds to the white and to regard the ground as an inalienable good, working the idea of the “nation cherokee”. In 1738 a terrible epidemic of Variola ten-per-cent tax the tribes cherokees, and the old traditions prove to be unable to adapt to the upheavals of the Indian company.

Humiliated Great Britain

The chief Moytoy then undertakes a political and cultural modernization process under the aegis of its Prime Minister: Christian Priber. The British governor of Charlestown receives an “official” missive of Great Tellico, capital of the “Cherokee nation” which informs it, politely but firmly, that the British must leave the American ground since America belongs to the Indians and that those Ci one it intention to protect their ground and to preserve it. The letter is signed Christian Priber, “Prime Minister”. The head of Priber is immediately put at price and on March 2nd, 1739, the Parliament of South Carolina launches a warrant for arrest against him. The premium is of 402 £. It is colonel Fox and two soldiers who are sent in territory cherokee to stop that one indicates under the title of “Doctor Priber”. The Indians receive the British envoy and assure him that no foreign authority with being able on the Indian ground, and that it would make better return to Great Britain immediately…

L'" Worsen cherokee"

Christian Priber conceives a series of ritual in order to constituting the State cherokee on the “Roman” model. The Moytoy Emperor 1st had thus been crowned, and the tribal chiefs had received a series of honorary titles to the manner of the European nobility. This “republican Empire”, carried out the union of the monarchical form with the parliamentary system of the great council cherokee. One of the first actions of the Red Empire is to issue the territory cherokee “Ground of asylum” for all the men, Britanniques, French and Germans like for the fugitive slaves.

The capture

It is in 1743, “Year five” of the Cherokke Empire, that Christian Priber was captured with Tookabatcha by British officers accompanied by warriors Creek S. the prisoner is immediately led at the height Augusta, then in Frederica in Georgia where he is imprisoned. One makes follow a case filled of the manuscripts of Priber. These documents will seal its destiny. The General Oglethorpe discovers there a dictionary, the first ever written on the language cherokee but also a work ready to be printed in Paris, indicated under the name of “Paradise” and describing the constitution and the “natural rights” of a “Republic cherokee”. For the General and Georgia Trustee, a thing is certain, this prisoner will not have to never leave living prison. Christian Priber died out in his cell the April 21st 1743. The manuscript of the République of Paradise was never found.

External bonds

Article in '' Our Georgia History ''

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