Christian Priber and Clogoittah (the actual name is unknown), daughter
of Moytoy. Daughter was Creat Priber who was born 1737-1742 at Tellico
Plains Tennessee and died about 1790 near Stearns Kentucky. She
married Tsal Su Ska (Doublehead) 1750-1757 near Stearn's Kentucky. 

"Christian Gottlieb Priber, the Black Robe or Jesuit, was from Saxony
Germany. He first appeared arrived at Great Tellico in the land of the
Chickamaugans about 1736. His purpose is said to have been to
establish a utopian government called the "Kingdom of Paradise".
However, he adopted their ways and language and became as one of them.
Priber married a granddaughter of Emperor Moytoy, Creat (born about
1737 at Great Tellico) who later married Tsal Su Ska, Chief
Doublehead. Because of his supposed attempt to sway the Chickamaugans
over to the side of the French, a warrant was issued for his arrest.
On a journey to Mobile he was seized by English in a Creek town and
imprisoned. Not too long after he died. The time he spent with the
nation has been said to have been as little as three or as much as
seven years which places his death between 1739-1742. While living
among the Chickamaguans he invented a dictionary of their language and
an alphabet. This may well be where Sequoia, The Guess, got his
Cherokee syllabary from as only the dictionary is said to have been
found on him when captured."
               
THE HISTORY OF TENNESSEE Folmsbee, Corlew, Mitchell   Pgs. 55-7   

"Although Cumming did not return to America with the Indian, he spent
much of the remainder of his life in a debtor's prison-his work was an
important factor in strengthening British influence among the
Cherokee. This influence has been exaggerated by some writers who
claim that for many years these Indians maintained in general an
increasing attitude of hostility toward the French. Actually, the
English had serious difficulties with the Cherokee within the next
three or four years. The Cherokee, however, frequently sent out
raiding parties against the French which brought back booty, scalps,
and also prisoners. These French prisoners, according to Cherokee
custom, were usually purchased from their captors and adopted into the
tribe. In this position they were able to counteract the influence of
the British traders by arguing in favor of the French cause. One of
these Frenchmen, Antoine Bonnefoy, who was captured along the Ohio
River in 1741, escaped the next year and managed to find his way to
the. French Fort Toulouse, located near the site of Montgomery,
Alabama. A journal of his experiences, kept by Bonnefoy, provides much
information concerning the Cherokee attitude toward the English and
the French, and also is one of the sources of information concerning a
German Utopian socialist, Christian Gottlieb Priber, who was residing
at the Overhill Cherokee town of Great Tellico while Bonnefoy was a
captive there.
     
Priber was considered by the English to be a French agent, but the
leading authorities on the question are of the opinion that he had no
connections with the French government, but was working quite
independently.  He was a well educated native of Saxony, who was
forced because of his communistic ideas to flee to England, and from
there to South Carolina; from that colony he went to the Overhill
Cherokee, among whom he lived for about seven years. According to the
report of the English trader and author, James Adair, he exchanged all
his possessions with the head warriors and thus made friends with
them, and he "ate, drank, slept, danced, dressed and painted himself
with the Indians, so that it was not easy to distinguish him from the
natives." He quickly learned their language, and "by gradual advances
impressed them with a very in opinion of the English, representing
them as a fraudulent, avaricious [sic], and encroaching people: he at
the same time, inflated the artless savages, with a prodigious high
opinion of their own importance in the American scale of power." Using
this psychological approach he attempted to achieve his chief aim: to
introduce his communistic ideas among the Indians by creating a
"Kingdom of Paradise," which strangely enough he also called a
republic. Ludovick Grant, the English trader, described the system as
proposing "that all things should be in common amongst them; that even
their wives should be so and that the Children should be looked upon
as the Children of the Public and be taken care of as such and not by
their natural parents... and that they should admit into their society
Creeks and Catawbas, French, and English, all colours and complexions;
in short all who were of these principles, which were truly such as
had no principles at all."

Bonnefoy also described the plan and recorded that Priber offered to
include him and the other French prisoners in his republic. He made no
mention, however, of the existence of any impression that Priher was
an agent of the French.* Nevertheless, the English were convinced that
he was an emissary of the French and were determined to get him out of
the Cherokee Nation. The Carolina government ordered Ludovick Grant to
arrest him, but when he attempted it Priber laughed at him insolently
and indicated that the Indians would not permit it. When another South
Carolina agent, Col. Joseph Fox, actually did attempt to seize him, he
escaped with his life only because Priber himself intervened to save
him. Later, however, while on his way to Mobile, Priber was seized by
English traders among the Creeks and taken to Georgia, where he was
imprisoned for the remainder of his life. Unfortunately, a mass of
manuscripts, including a book he had written and a Cherokee alphabet,
were apparently destroyed. Even after Priber's removal, his influence
at the Indian town of Great Tellico remained strong. The warriors at
that town for many years adopted an attitude quite hostile to the
English.

*Actually, Priber told the Indians to consider both the English and
the French 'as interlopers'. But since the English had a near monopoly
of their trade, the Cherokee would do well to play off the French
against them. Crane, "Lost Utopia" 56. This author (p. 58) thinks his
chief aim was to create a communistic federation of all the Southern
Indians as "a model for a republic which might later be set up in
France."

ADAIR"S HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN INDIANS pages 252-7

"In the year 1736, the French sent into South Carolina, one Priber,
(126) a gentleman of a curious and speculative temper.  He was to
transmit them a full account of that country, and proceed to the
Cherokee nation, in order to seduce them from the British to the
French interest.  He went, and though he was adorned with every
qualification that constitutes the gentleman, soon after he arrived at
the upper towns of this mountainous country, he exchanged his clothes
and every thing he brought with him, and by that means, made friends
with the head warriors of great Tellico, which stood on a branch of
the Mississippi. More effectually to answer the design of his
commission, he ate, drank, slept, danced, dressed and painted himself,
with the Indians, so that it was not easy to distinguish him from the
natives, he married also with them, and being endued with a strong
understanding and retentive memory, be soon learned their dialect, and
by gradual advances, impressed them with a very ill opinion of the
English, representing them as a fraudulent, avaricious, and
encroaching people: he at the same time, inflated the artless savages,
with a prodigious high opinion of their own importance in the American
scale of power, on account of the situation of their country, their
martial disposition, and the great number of their warriors, which
would baffle all the efforts of the ambitious, and ill-designing
British colonists.  Having thus infected them by his smooth deluding
art, he easily formed them into a nominal republican government -
crowned their old Archi-magus, emperor, after a pleasing new savage
form, and invented a variety of high-sounding titles for all the
members of his imperial majesty's red court, and the great officers of
state; which the emperor conferred upon them, in a manner according to
their merit.  He himself received the honorable title of his imperial
majesty's principal secretary of state, and as such he subscribed
himself, in all the letters he wrote to our government, and lived in
open defiance of them. This seemed to be of so dangerous a tendency,
as to induce South-Carolina to send up a commissioner, Col. Fox, to
demand him as an enemy to the public repose- who took him into
custody, in the great square of their state-house: when he had almost
concluded his oration on the occasion, one of the head warriors rose
up, and bade him forbear, as the man he intended to enslave, was made
a great beloved man, and become one of their own people. Though it was
reckoned, our agent's strength was far greater in his arms than his
head, he readily desisted-for as it is too hard to struggle with the
pope in Rome, a stranger could not miss to find it equally difficult
to enter abruptly into a new emperor's court, and there seize his
prime minister, by a foreign authority; especially when be could not
support any charge of guilt against him. The warrior told him, that
the red people well knew the honesty of the secretary's heart would
never allow him to tell a lie; and the secretary urged that he was a
foreigner without owing any allegiance to Great Britain, that he only
traveled through some places of their country, in a peaceable manner,
paying for every thing he had of them; that in compliance with the
request of the kindly French, as well as from his own tender feelings
for the poverty and insecure state of the Cherokee, he came a great
way, and lived among them as a brother, only to preserve their
liberties, by opening a water communication between them and New
Orleans; that the distance of the two places from each other, proved
his motive to be the love of doing good, especially as he was to go
there, and bring up a sufficient number of Frenchmen of proper skill
to instruct them in the art of making gun-powder, the materials of
which, he affirmed their lands abounded with. He concluded his artful
speech, by urging that the tyrannical design of the English
commissioner toward him, appeared plainly to be leveled against them,
because, as he was not accused of having done any ill to the English,
before he came to the Cherokee, his crime must consist in loving the
Cherokee. And as that was reckoned so heinous a transgression in the
eye of the English, as to send one of their angry beloved men to
enslave him, it confirmed all those honest speeches he had often
spoken to the present great war-chieftains, old beloved men, and
warriors of each class. An old war-leader repeated to the
commissioner, the essential part of the speech, and added more of his
own similar thereto. He bade him to inform his superiors, that the
Cherokee were as desirous as the English to continue a friendly union
with each other, as "freemen and equals." That they hoped to receive
no farther uneasiness from them, for consulting their own interests,
as their reason dictated.-And they earnestly requested them to send no
more of those bad papers to their country, on any account; nor to
reckon them so base, as to allow any of their honest friends to be
taken out of their arms, and carried into slavery. The English beloved
man had the honor of receiving his leave of absence, and a sufficient
passport of safe conduct, from the imperial red court, by a verbal
order of the secretary of state, who was so polite as to wish him well
home, and ordered a convoy of his own life-guards, who conducted him a
considerable way, and he got home in safety.

From the above, it is evident, that the monopolizing spirit of the
French had planned their dangerous lines of circumvolution, respecting
our envied colonies, as early as the before-mentioned period.  Their
choice of the man, bespeaks also their judgment. Though the
philosophic secretary was an utter stranger to the wild and
mountainous Cherokee country, as well as to their language, yet his
sagacity readily directed him to chose a proper place, and an old
favorite religious man, for the new red empire; which he formed by
slow, but sure degrees, to the great danger of our southern colonies. 
But the empire received a very great shock, in an accident that befell
the secretary, when it was on the point of rising into a far greater
state of puissance, by the acquisition of the Muskogee, Choctaw, and
the western Mississippi Indians. In the fifth year of that red
imperial era, he set off for Mobile, accompanied by a few Cherokee.

He proceeded by land, as far as a navigable part of the western great
river of the Muskogee; there he went into a canoe prepared for the
joyful occasion, and proceeded within a day's journey of Alabama
garrison, conjecturing the adjacent towns were under the influence of
the French, he landed at Tallapoose town, and lodged there all night.
The traders of the neighboring towns soon went there, convinced the
inhabitants of the dangerous tendency of his unwearied labors among
the Cherokee, and of his present journey, and then took him into
custody, with a large bundle of manuscripts, and sent him down to
Frederica in Georgia; the governor committed him to a place of
confinement, though not with common felons, as he was a foreigner, and
was said to have held a place of considerable rank in the army with
great honor. Soon after, the magazine took fire, which was not far
from where he was confined, and though the sentinels bade him make off
to a place of safety, as all the people were running to avoid danger
from the explosion of the powder and shells, yet he squatted on his
belly upon the floor, and continued in that position, without the
least hurt: several blamed his rashness, but he told them, that
experience had convinced him it was the most probable means to avoid
imminent danger. This incident displayed the philosopher and soldier,
and after bearing his misfortunes a considerable time with great
constancy, happily for us, he died in confinement, though he deserved
a much better fate. In the first year of his secretary ship I
maintained a correspondence with him; but the Indians becoming very
inquisitive to know the contents of our marked large papers, and he
suspecting his memory might fail him in telling those cunning sisters
of truth, a plausible story, and of being able to repeat it often to
them, without any variation, he took the shortest and safest method,
by telling them that, in the very same manner as he was their great
secretary, I was the devil's clerk, or an accursed one who marked on
paper the bad speech of the evil ones of darkness.  Accordingly, they
forbad him writing any more to such an accursed one, or receiving any
of his evil marked papers, and our correspondence ceased.  As he was
learned, and possessed of a very sagacious penetrating judgment, and
had every qualification that was requisite for his bold and difficult
enterprise, it is not to be doubted, that as he wrote a Cherokee
dictionary, designed to be published at Paris, he likewise set down a
great deal that would have been very acceptable to the curious, and
serviceable to the representatives of South Carolina and Georgia;
which may be readily found in Frederica, if the manuscripts have had
the good fortune to escape the despoiling hands of military power.

126. By way of supplement to and corroboration of Adair, in respect of
this very remarkable man, Christian Gottlieb Priber, who declared in a
petition that he had a wife and four children in Saxony, the following
brief account by Ludovick Grant is given, because not so well known as
others. Priber landed at Charles Town, but, it seems, made his way to
a district in the country. Grant says that Priber went from Amelia
Township on Santee River into the Cherokee nation; that he called
himself a German but was certainly an agent of the French; that he
lived in the town of Telliquo (Great Telico); that he trimmed his hair
in the Indian manner and painted as they did, going, generally, naked,
except for a shirt and flap; that he told the Cherokees that they had
been tricked out of a great part of their lands, and in the future
they should make no concessions, and should trade with the English and
French alike, and they would then be courted by both.  He proposed a
new system of government, under which all things should be held in
common even their wives should be so, and the children looked upon as
those of the public and taken care of as such.  Priber urged that the
"seat of government be moved nearer to the French at Coosawattee,
where in ancient times a town stood belonging to the Cherokees; and
that they should admit into their society Creeks and Catawbas, French
and English, all colors and complexions; in short, all who were of
their principles." Priber wrote a letter to the South Carolina
government, signed by him as "prime minister," which opened the eyes
of South Carolinians to the danger of his continuing longer among the
Indians.  Grant confirms Adair as to the journey to the Alabama Fort
of the French on his way to Mobile and as to his arrest.  "His Negro
who jumped into the river to make his escape, they shot dead."  Grant
fixed the length of Priber's stay as "about three years [Adair says
five and the true period was six or seven years] among the Cherokees"-
a "most notorious rogue and iniquitous fellow who if he had been
permitted to live much longer in that country would undoubtedly have
drawn that nation over to the French interest." "The Creek Indians
have at last brought Mr. Priber prisoner here; he is a little ugly
man, but speaks all languages fluently . . . he talks very profanely
against all religions, but chiefly the Protestant; he was for setting
up a town at the foot of the mountains among the Cherokees, which was
to be a city of refuge for all criminals, debtors and slaves, . . .
There was a book found upon him in his own writing ready for the
press, which he owns and glories in and believes it is by this time
printed, but will not tell where, in which . . . he lays down the
rules of government which the town is to be governed by, to which he
gives the title of Paradise. He enumerates many whimsical privileges
and natural rights .. . particularly dissolving marriages and allowing
community of women and all kinds of licentiousness; the book is drawn
up very methodically, and full of learned quotations; it is extremely
wicked, yet has several flights full of invention, and it is a pity so
much wit is applied to so bad a purpose." Before he was sent in
Ludovick Grant had been commissioned to make the arrest, His Relation
gives the account; "I sometime after went up into the Townhouse to try
what could be done; but I found that be [Priber] was well apprized of
my design and laughed at me, desiring me to try it, in so insolent a
manner that I could hardly bear it, . . .  After which Col. Fox was
sent up on the same service with several persons to attend and assist
him; and, having endeavored by several messages and letters to decoy
and draw him out of Town, but all in vain, he at length laid hold of
him in the Townhouse for which he liked to have suffered, The Indians
took it very much amiss and told him that as the Country was their own
they might do what they thought proper . . . wishing him [Fox] to get
out of their Country directly."

MYTHS OF THE CHEROKEE, James Mooney p. 36-7

"In 1736 Christian Priber, said to be a Jesuit acting in the French
interest, had come among the Cherokee, and, by the facility with which
he learned the language and adapted himself to the native dress and
mode of life, had quickly acquired a leading influence among them. He
drew up for their adoption a scheme of government modeled after the
European plan, with the capital at Great Tellico, in Tennessee, the
principal medicine man as emperor, and himself as the emperor's
secretary.  Under this title he corresponded with the South Carolina
government until it began to be feared that he would ultimately win
over the whole tribe to the French side.  A commissioner was sent to
arrest him, but the Cherokee refused to give him up, and the deputy
was obliged to return under safe-conduct of an escort furnished by
Priber.  Five years after the inauguration of his work, however he was
seized by some English traders while on his way to Fort Toulouse and
brought as a prisoner to Frederica, in Georgia, where he soon
afterward died whle under confinement.  Although his enemies had
represented him as a monster, inciting the Indians to the grossest
immoralities, he proved to be a gentleman of polished address,
extensive learning. and rare courage as was~ shown later on the
occasion of an explosion in the barracks magazine.  Besides Greek,
Latin, French, German, Spanish, and fluent English, he spoke also the
Cherokee and among his papers, which were seized was found a
manuscript dictionary of the language which he had prepared for
publication-the first, and even yet, perhaps, the most important study
of the language ever made. He claimed to be a Jesuit, acting under
orders of his superior, to introduce habits of steady industry,
civilized arts, and a regular form of government among the southern
tribes, with a view to the ultimate founding of an independent Indian
state.  From all that can be gathered of him, even though it comes
from his enemies, there can be little doubt that he was a worthy
member of that illustrious order whose name has been a synonym for
scholarship, devotion, and courage from the days of Jogues and
Marquette down to De Smet and Mengarini."

Volume XXIII (2004) Columns 1132-1138 Author: Claus Bernet

PRIBER (also Prieber, Preber, Pryber), Christian God-dear, * 21.3.
1697 in Zittau. around 1745 in away Frederica, Georgia, North
America. Early reconnaissance aircraft, Gesellschaftsreformer, social
utopian. - Christian God-dear Prieber was born as a son of a wealthy
family in Zittau (Saxonia). Its nut/mother was Anna Dorothea miner
(gest. 1715), the widow of the Zittauer of councillor Gottfried
Mussingang. Its father, Friedrich Prieber, worked as buyer and a
linen manufacturer. Also he was owner of a brewery. - in the first
years the young Prieber was informed by its father. Later it enjoyed
a good education with the teachers Rucker, Zieger, Pitschmann, Mirius
and Wentzel at the urban High School to Zittau. Prieber was a
language genius: Apart from its homeland language he could speak
French, Spanish and Dutch flowing, the English controlled he
reasonablly. Also latin language it was well-informed, and later it
trained itself into several Indian dialects. After it had served in
the Saxonian army, it studied law starting from 1718 in Leipzig and
Erfurt. He listened to philosophy with Mueller anddreas Ruediger
(1673-1731), as well as law with Abraham Kaester (gest. 1747) and
Christian Heinrich free life (1616-1741). He became acquainted with
ideas of Hugo Grotius (1583-1645), Samuel Pufendorf (1632-1694) and
Christian Thomasius (1655-1728) and to estimate. It locked its
studies with a thesis in Erfurt 1722, on 18 October 1722 took place
the Disputation. In the same year he married a Zittauer citizen
daughter of the printer Gottfried hoping man on 17 November
Christiane Dorothea hoping man. From this marriage followed to 1732
three sons and two daughters. Starting from 1722 he worked as an
urban lawyer in Zittau and was active as an upper office government
lawyer at the high court. To its tasks belonged also the
correspondence with foreign territories, which brought it possibly
for the first time in contact with American colonies. According to
Antoine Bonnefoy it took up and publicised subversive social ideas,
which forced it to the escape to England. On 13 June of the yearly
1735 it submits a Petition in London to be allowed to leave the
country with the next ship after Georgia. At the latest in the autumn
1735 it, under leaving its wife and children, had reached America,
where it established itself first in South Carolina. In Purrysbury it
had received the claim to a land plot. Here in America it wrote away
"Priber" to its names. In December 1735 it over the South Carolina
Gazette sells its possession. Still on 27 February 1736 Priber
submits a request for a Sieldungsparzelle in the Amelia Touwnship. It
drew short time later from Charlestown over the river Santee five
hundred miles over the southwest Appalachen mountains, along the
famous Unicoi Turnpike. From its properties it could not carry much
forward, only books, paper and ink carried it with itself. He had
decided, to leave which European culture range and away with the
Cherokees and Chickamaugans Indians in Great Tellico (threshing floor
lake), the capital of the Over Hill Cherokees to live. - Priber tried
to approximate the indianischen way of life. He learned its customs
and also its language. It carried the clothing of the Indians, ran in
sandalen, cut its hair in Indian way and painted its body according
to the kind of the trunk. Among the Indians it must have brought it
to influence and reputation. It was helpful to them in the trade
relations with the Englishmen and Frenchmen, by being able to advise
the Indians in the legal commercial regulations. It particularly
supported the trade relations between Indians and Europeans in new
Orleans. Thus it made the European measuring and weight nature
familiar for the Indianen. Also over social living together makes it
thoughts and sketched yourselves a legal text in the Cherokeesprache.
- Priber married the daughter of the indianerhaeuptlings Moytoy,
which carried the name "Crat Amatoy aluminium Moytoy" (also
Clogoittah). A divorce of its first marriage is not well-known. From
this connection four children followed. One of its daughters, those
around 1740 born Creat, became the woman of the chieftain Doublehead.
- under the southern trunks guidance the settlement with the name
"paradies" (Kingdom OF Paradise) should be established under Pribers.
The area around Cusawatee (Coosawattee, today threshing floor lake)
at the foot of the mountains had been selected for the establishment
of settlement. Here the capital of the Cherokee should be shifted.
Moyoto should become allegedly the first mayor, and Priber its
secretary. The offices were provided, a course of the time, with long
pedantic titles - Priber would have been led as "imperially Majesty's
Principal Secretary OF State". Carolina it had already signed a
letter to the government of South as a prime minister. The settlement
should be city and republic at the same time. In the best case it
should serve as model for Europe. Its tendency was main it, the
Indian trunks northeast Americas, the Cherokee, lain south Creeks,
Choctaw and the trunks around the Mississippi to unite in a
Konfoederation. The supremacy and patronizing of the European
immigrants should find an end. The slaves of the immigrants from
North Carolina, South South-Carolina and from Virginia should find in
"paradies" admission and be safe to their liberty. Likewise was meant
of the admission from fled servants or debtors. - liberty and
equality were the basis of the utopian society vision. There should
be goods community of the houses, clothes and furniture. The European
traditional marriage form was to be overcome in favor of the
polygamie. Also the right of a divorce should be introduced. Men and
women were alike at rights. The children should be drawn up and
educated by the state, special attention the training of their
individual talents were dedicated. The religion should not play a
special role. Priber had grown up in the Luthertum, but at the latest
since its passage to America he had stopped visiting services. On
Kirchentum it was not good to speak, in particular the lutherische
church had itself its criticism to submit. - on 2 March 1739 the
Common House OF assembly of the colony South Carolina issued a head
money of 402 dollar on Priber. It stood under the suspicion to hold
themselves and their agent be possibly to the Frenchmen. To be other
accused of it, a spying Jesuit on behalf of the French of king. First
it succeeded however neither to Ludovick grant nor Joseph Fox to
become haveful Priber. The Indians refused delivering it. 1743 it was
determined by an English troop under general Kent, the commander of
the Forts Augusta, in Alabama. Kent had put with Tallipoose an ambush
to it, with the help of some overcrowded Cherokee. Behind the
accusations of the espionage economic interests stood. Priber had
stopped, not the Indians in addition alone with the Englishmen, to
transact but also with the Frenchmen trade. Priber, which was the
measurement and the jurisprudence well-informed, had obviously
innumerable frauds of the English dealers checks up. Some French
dealers among the Indians tried to incite still 1743 the Upper Creeks
to release Priber which failed however. Priber was brought with his
manuscripts and books after Georgia. Under the documents were a
finished manuscript and an alphabet of the Cherokee. Both was
destroyed. As political prisoners was subordinate it to James
Oglethorpe (1696-1785) and its officers. Oglethorpes of reports of
the Examination Pribers rank among the first sources of its life and
his utopian enterprises. Despite its shank enjoyed Priber some
adhesive easy run gene. It stood in the exchange with further
intellectual ones, thus with the physicist Frederick Holtzendorff and
a lutherischen minister. Priber died around 1745, probably in a
prison in away Frederica on the island pc. Simons in Georgia.

www.bautz.de/bbkl/p/priber_c_g.shtml

BIOGRAPHISCH-BIBLIOGRAPHISCHES KIRCHENLEXIKON
Claus Bernet