Sope Creek: The Name, and the Myth Built Around It

On the pages of a history book from 1935, titled The First Hundred Years: A Short History of Cobb County, is the tale of a Cherokee man called “Old Sope.”

The pleasant relationship of the white children with an Indian in one neighborhood in the county has been told through the years. Out on the Roswell Road, about halfway between Marietta and Roswell, the new settlers could see the cabins of several Indian families. One of these cabins was occupied by Old Sope who had lived there so long that a creek and its branch were named for him.

Old Sope was a kindly person and little boys liked him so much that they ran away from home to visit him. He would tell them stories and teach them Cherokee words, the knowledge of which produced a pleasant feeling of superiority in the little boy and made them the envy of other children. Although a full-blooded Indian, Old Sope managed to remain in Cobb after the Indians emigrated, and such were his relations with his youthful white neighbors that he has left a pleasant memory to this day.

At first glance, the old story has everything a historical tale likes to keep polished. Sope Creek Elementary School, an East Cobb elementary school named for “Chief Sope.” A local creek carrying the name. A tale about a kindly Cherokee elder teaching settler children and somehow escaping removal. You will find the tale in publications from the National Parks Service, local park plaques, and in numerous books and publications. It is neat, flattering, and easy to pass along.

The historic records tell a different story. They point to a Cherokee man named Soap, sometimes listed as Old Soap, who lived near what had become known as Soap’s Creek. They also point to his wife, Quaity Soap, and to years marked by theft, violence, forced moves, and, in the end, removal to Oklahoma on the Trail of Tears. The local legend may be easier on the nerves. The documented story is far harder, and far more worth telling.

A Story Too Comfortable

The familiar version turned Soap into “Chief Sope,” a friendly old figure from local lore. In one retelling, he entertained white children with stories and Cherokee words. In another, local settlers supposedly protected him when troops arrived, allowing him to remain behind while others were driven west.

It is the kind of story people like because it lets the past off the hook. History gets a fresh coat of paint, the sharp edges disappear, and everyone goes home feeling pleasantly historical. The problem is that the paper trail does not back it up. The original maps and land lottery records point to “Soap,” not “Sope,” and the title of chief does not appear anywhere as documented fact. What does appear is a long list of losses.

What the Records Show

Georgia historian W. Jeff Bishop, former president of the Trail of Tears Association, Georgia Chapter researched the tale of Old Sope in depth and found a different story. In claims recorded in 1838, Soap and Quaity described property, crops, buildings, livestock, orchards, and repeated thefts by white men. Soap’s improvement at Standing Peach Tree included a dwelling house, a corn crib, fenced fields, and fruit trees. This was not some hazy folk figure drifting through the woods. This was a man with a home, land under cultivation, and a family trying to live.

Quaity Soap’s claim states that white men stole a bay mare from her around 1824 and later took hogs and cattle. Soap testified that when he pursued the men who drove off the animals, they beat him and sent him back. In another claim, Soap and another Cherokee named Crow accused a white man named William Heard of stealing horses. Quaity, in a separate filing, named Pleasant Jones, Thomas Copeland, and George Hincle or Hinckley in the theft and killing of her cattle. These are not the details of a harmless local fable. These are claims of robbery, violence, and open abuse.

Forced From One Home, Then Another

Soap’s family lived at Standing Peach Tree, in the lower Chattahoochee area. After the boundary dispute tied to what became known as Coffee’s Line, Cherokees living below that line were ordered to move north. According to the source, Soap was among those pushed out. Later census and valuation records place Soap near Sharp Mountain Creek in the Etowah River region, where he again had land, houses, cultivated acreage, and family members nearby.

The 1835 Cherokee census listed Old Soap with a large household, acres in cultivation, and several houses. Nearby was Jackson, thought in the source to be a likely son. Claims from 1838 also describe improvements on Long Swamp Creek, the Etowah River, and Sharp Mountain Creek, including fields, a dwelling, a stable, a corn crib, peach trees, apple trees, and even a fish trap. Soap was not a ghost in local legend. He appears in records as a person building, planting, farming, and starting again after being driven out.

And then it happened again.

The same source states that Soap was removed from Georgia with Moses Daniel’s detachment on the Trail of Tears, alongside family members including Jackson Soap and Chuwee Soap. Muster rolls and ration records place the family on that forced route west. So much for the comforting old tale that local people told the guards to move along and leave him in peace. The legend offered a warm ending. The record offers none.

The Name, and the Myth Built Around It

Even the name changed in the retelling. John Goff, writing on Georgia place names, noted that the original form was “Soaps Creek,” later worn down into “Sopes Creek.” Somewhere along the way, Soap became Sope, then “Chief Sope,” then a school namesake with a better biography than the records allow. That is how folklore often works. It sands down the pain, sweeps out the thieves, and leaves behind a figure people can smile at during a school program in November.

But Soap and Quaity do not need polishing. They need honesty. Their story is already strong enough. They lost animals, land, security, and home. They filed claims because people stole from them. They moved because officials forced them to move. They were removed because the United States decided they would be. No embroidery required. History did the damage on its own.

A Better Ending Than Folklore Usually Allows

The strongest coda arrived years later, when descendants of Soap traveled from Oklahoma to visit East Cobb’s Sope Creek Elementary School. Inside the front office hung a poem, “The Chief Who Loved the Children,” repeating the old legend of a Cherokee chief who stayed by the creek because local children and their fathers would not let him be taken away. The visit brought that polished story face to face with the family history it had blurred for so long.

Chris Soap, his father Charlie Soap, and their family visited the school, where children eagerly approached Charlie and asked if he was the famous “Chief Sope.” Charlie told them he did not go back quite that far, though he and his family were descendants of Old Soap, who had lived on Soap’s Creek and later went west on the Trail of Tears. In keeping with a Cherokee gift-giving tradition, the family brought gifts from Oklahoma, and Principal Martha Whalen returned the gesture with a framed copy of the poem. It is hard to miss the irony there. The family was being welcomed with warmth, while also being handed a verse built on a version of the past that the records do not support. History has a dry sense of humor sometimes.

The visit did something far better than keeping the legend alive. It placed living descendants of Old Soap inside a school that had long carried an edited version of his story, and it tied their presence to the actual places connected to the family’s past. During the trip, members of the Soap family spent time at Sope Creek and also visited sites tied to Cherokee history farther north, including the Ball Ground area and New Echota. That return did not make the old myth true. It gave the story something far better: living people, standing where memory and record finally had to meet.

So the real story behind Sope Creek is not that a charming tale picked up a few wrong details. It is that folklore turned a Cherokee family’s dispossession into something soft and easy on the conscience. The records refuse to cooperate with that version. They give Soap and Quaity back their names, their losses, and their place in history. That may not fit neatly on a park plaque. It is still the story worth telling.

Soap vs. Sope:

The official name and spelling for “Sope Creek” and not “Soap Creek” was formalized by the United States Department of the Interior in their 1962 publication Decisions on Names in the United States: