The Native American Experience

by Dee Brown

  “So once again they are breaking the promises of Oglethorpe’s treaty.” Her voice was high and angry. “For the last time I’ve warned the English that they can have no more of our land. This time we will strike not at the separate invaders of our land but at their town, at Savannah itself.”

  She tried to help Tolchi into his cabin, but he brushed her arm away. His loss of dignity was more painful than the wounds on his back. She found bear’s grease in an earthenware jar and rubbed it gently over the welts. “You must see Checote and have him bathe these cuts with that liquid he makes from tulip-tree bark. As soon as that is done, I want you to take my pony and ride as swiftly as you can to Menewa’s village. Tell Menewa that his warnings of the treachery of white men have come true. Tell him the Beloved Woman of his tribe needs him and his warriors.”

  “I have no time to waste with that old conjurer Checote,” Tolchi replied. “I shall ride straight to Menewa.”

  With Tolchi riding behind, they went on together to the edge of Bluff Village. She dropped easily to the ground. “Tolchi.” She touched his leg gently as he eased into the saddle. “Go bring Menewa and his warriors back to me.” As soon as he galloped away, she strode into the village, her anger still so high that she paid no heed to the greetings of the children playing and laughing in the pathways, and they knew that something was troubling their Beloved Woman.

  John Kingsley’s trading post was a long low building of logs set to one side of Bluff Village on the high riverbank. In contrast to the windowless Creek houses, that half of the building which served as living quarters had several openings in the sides so the log shutters could admit air. They were wide open now to the summer breeze off the river. From earthen tar pots set at strategic points around the building, curls of black smoke drifted in the warm air to discourage mosquitoes. On the river side, Kingsley had built a crude veranda that was roofed with brown palmetto fronds. He was seated there, with his feet propped on an empty rum cask, when Creek Mary came striding across the grass.

  He glanced from her across to the empty enclosure of staked saplings where she kept her pony. “Where’s the Choctaw?” he called out. At the sound of his voice the cry of a child came from inside. Mary neither looked at him nor replied to his question, but crossed the veranda to the post’s entranceway without slowing her steps. Kingsley turned his head as she passed, swearing softly to himself. He was a handsome man with curly reddish hair and a short beard, but he was beginning to grow stout around the middle. When he heard her footsteps again, he stood up. She was carrying a naked child with its head resting against her shoulder.

  “You could have taken him from the cradle,” she said accusingly.

  “But Edward only now started crying,” Kingsley replied.

  “His name is Opothle,” she said firmly.

  He shrugged. “Have it as you will.” He kicked at the rum cask. “Where’s the pony? Did you have trouble?”

  “Tolchi has the pony.”

  “Tolchi! He came in here last night with a few deerskins. He still owes me fifty.”

  Her face darkened with quick anger. “They all owe you, don’t they? You’ve made slaves of all my young men. For you they’ve killed so many deer that now they must travel almost to Cherokee country to find enough skins to trade. To trade for cloth for their women, for rum that should be forbidden, for gunpowder and shot to kill more deer.”

  “Would you and they want to go back to a life without my trade goods?” he asked sharply. “Become savages again?”

  “Savages? Who are the savages? You should have seen that fat-arsed old fussock of a white man I found lashing Tolchi’s back into bloody flesh.”

  Kingsley’s face showed concern. “You did have trouble then. Tolchi must have brought the punishment on himself.”

  She uttered one of those eighteenth-century oaths she had learned from the British. “You’re all alike, you English, and the French, and the Spaniards. It is always we, the people you call ‘Indians,’ who are the wrongdoers. That ruddy pirate was trying to steal Tolchi’s cabin and farm plot.”

  “Did he have papers from Savannah?”

  “Papers be damned! Tolchi’s ground is Muskogee ground. I sent the bloody bastard scuttering back to Savannah. Then I sent Tolchi for Menewa.”

  “Menewa! That troublemaker. The man from Savannah may simply have made a mistake of location.”

  She swung her arms in a gesture of disgust. “He did not come alone. Others of his kind are blazing trees up the Ogeechee.”

  Kingsley sighed, blowing air through his sullen lips. “You could go down to Savannah alone and straighten it all out. You were always able to do that with Oglethorpe.”

  “Oglethorpe has gone back to England, where he should be. When Menewa comes with his warriors, we’ll frighten Oglethorpe’s man Stephens and all the Savannah land-thieves into following Oglethorpe’s example.”

  “William Stephens is an honorable man,” Kingsley said. “You wouldn’t try to use force?”

  The child began crying again, and Mary soothed it with her voice. Disdaining a reply to her husband’s question, she turned her back on him and left the veranda.

  “Your temper’s up,” Kingsley muttered. “You’ll have a cooler head tomorrow.”

  But Creek Mary refused to sleep in his bed that night, and she was never to sleep there again.

  2

  “MENEWA CAME TO BLUFF Village as Creek Mary said he would,” Dane said. “She described for me many times the arrival of his finest warriors from the Creek confederacy, almost three hundred of them, naked and painted for battle. Some came in dugout canoes, some on horseback, armed with a few old flintlock rifles, their war clubs, and their bows and arrows. They filled the town and spread out along the bank of the river. That night Mary’s warriors, fifty or so, joined them in a dance. Some had rum that they mixed with their sagamité and the celebration became quite noisy. John Kingsley locked himself in his trading house and refused to take part.”

  Dane did not know what the full relationship was between Mary and Menewa. Forthright though she was about her past, she was always a bit reticent when it came to that “crazy war hunter,” as she often called him. He was considerably older than she, but handsome and muscular into his later years. Twice more during her life she was to become closely involved with Menewa.

  By first daybreak following the dancing and feasting, Mary and Menewa were pounding on the door of her husband’s trading post, awakening him and young Opothle. After feeding the child, she directed some of her warriors to carry several kegs of powder and boxes of English biscuits, as well as an assorted lot of smoked venison and hams, down to Kingsley’s trading boat at the river landing. Kingsley stood by watching helplessly, trying to calm his nerves by smoking a curved Dutch pipe. Feeling rather sorry for him, she invited him to join them on the expedition to Savannah. After all, they were using his trading boat for transport and supplies. “It’s madness, it’s madness,” Kingsley kept repeating, and then they fell into one of their bitter quarrels that ended when an old Creek woman arrived to take care of Opothle during Mary’s absence.

  At the last minute Kingsley decided to go along. He joined Mary and Menewa on the prow of the trading boat, which was an ingenious adaptation of an Indian barge—a platform set upon a pair of large dugouts with a box-shaped shelter at the center of the raftlike craft. Mary wore elaborately embroidered deerskins and was armed with a foot-long British cavalry pistol fitted into a leather belt that Kingsley had made for her.

  And so the expedition started for Savannah. About forty warriors were crowded onto the boat, propelling with poles and paddles, while a hundred canoes served as escorts. A line of horsemen wound in and out of view along the parallel trail. They faced into a rising sun that tinted the gentle waves of the river crimson and gold.

  Hour by hour the vegetation grew thicker and more viridescent as they floated along on the river that was named for an outcast subtribe of Shawnees—the Shawano—corrupted to Savanna
h by the British. The surrounding curtain of green ranged from dark lacquered magnolia leaves to pale marsh grass. The fragrance of blossoms was overwhelmingly sweet at times, and then the waters widened and darkened, extending into swamps that smelled of mud and decaying vegetation. When they left the high walls of cypress and live oaks, draped with Spanish moss, the sun burned down like fire. Those who were not paddling or poling drowsed in the heat. Late in the afternoon the wind shifted and the stagnant air was replaced by a fresh breeze bearing a faint briny odor of the sea. At the first high bank, they stopped and camped for the night, gathering armloads of long moss that had been blown there by the winds. Mary and Menewa cautioned the warriors to maintain silence through the night. Savannah was only a short distance away by land, and they did not want the inhabitants to know of their coming.

  Afterward she accused Kingsley of slipping away to Savannah during the night and then returning, after warning the authorities of the approach of the Creeks. He denied doing this, yet when the flotilla and file of horsed Creeks came into view of Savannah, lines of scarlet-coated militia, mounted and on foot, were waiting for them on the embankment above the landing.

  “Redcoat soldiers,” Mary said in disgust. “The bloody Jacks!” She raised her cavalry flintlock and fired into the air. From all around the crowded boat a dozen old muskets echoed her example. Menewa’s horsemen coming along the trail halted, waiting for a signal to explain the firing. The dugouts on the river were suddenly motionless. On shore, officers and sergeants began barking orders. The affair was approaching a climax.

  “William Stephens!” Kingsley shouted in a high excited voice. “Mr. William Stephens!”

  “I hear you, Mr. Kingsley,” came a reply from above. “If you wish to avoid the slaughter of your people, have them lay down their arms.”

  “They mean you no harm. We’re coming ashore for a parley, sir.” As the boat edged against a quay, Kingsley caught his wife’s arm and forced her to step ashore onto the landing.

  “Menewa,” she whispered, glancing back at the Creek chieftain, her eyes questioning him.

  “We’ve lost surprise,” Menewa said simply.

  Dane stopped his story and went to attend the logs in the fireplace. “Perhaps I should explain to you the philosophy of a Creek war party,” he said. “They and the Cherokees of the old days, most of the woods tribes, considered surprise to be an essential part of the game. They went to a great deal of trouble to surprise the enemy, but if a war party was discovered before it could attack, there was nothing left to be done but exchange shouted insults before returning home to try again at some later time. If Custer had been a Creek, there would have been no bloodshed that day he came to the Little Bighorn—because he lost surprise. He would have turned his men around and gone back to his fort.”

  “The battlefield is near here, isn’t it?” I interrupted.

  “Yes, I saw some of the fighting.”

  “I’d like to hear about that.”

  He made a shower of sparks with his poker. “We’ll come to it.”

  His thoughts were still another century back in time, recollecting what his grandmother had told him of her day of decision. Mary knew all about the Creek military principle of surprise, but she was not bound by this, and regardless of the attitude of her male counterpart, Menewa, she had no intention of retreating before the redcoated militia of Savannah. After John Kingsley had forced her into a parley, she led the way up the embankment to confront the President of the Georgia Trustees, William Stephens. The latter obviously had dressed in his best for this occasion—a shiny black cocked hat resting on a powdered wig, a light blue long-tailed coat, ruffled sleeves, white stockings, silver-buckled shoes, a ceremonial sword at his side.

  “You come bearing arms, Mr. Kingsley,” Stephens addressed the trader in a grand tone of voice. “I’m waiting patiently for your explanation.”

  “John Kingsley bears no arms,” Mary interrupted. “It is I and Menewa of the Creek confederacy who so challenge you and your soldiers.”

  Stephens raised his eyebrows in mock surprise. “Madam, I am unsettled by what you say. We of Savannah have always counted the Beloved Woman of the Creeks as our truest friend.”

  “No more so,” she retorted. “Friends do not steal from one another. You and your spider-shanked Lords have gone too far this time in sending your beggars out to take our land.”

  Stephens forced a smile. “I assure you, madam, that if illegal land-taking has been done, redress shall be made.”

  “I have heard such words before.” She slipped her flintlock pistol from its leather case, pointing it at his ample belly. “Now step aside, sir. I intend to lead my people into Savannah and take possession of the town.”

  “If you are jesting, madam,” Stephens managed to reply through his tightening jaws, “you show poor taste in drawing that weapon. If you are in earnest, my office forces me to no choice but to order my militia to fire upon your people.”

  “He’s telling you truth, Amayi,” Kingsley cried. He reached for the pistol, but she knocked his hand aside. “The militia are too well armed,” he continued desperately. “They’ll destroy you.”

  “Listen to your husband, madam,” Stephens warned. “Let us not break our long friendship with blood. If you cock that weapon, it will serve as a signal. My soldiers will kill or wound half your warriors in a matter of moments.”

  Although Mary disliked bloodshed, she knew its occasional necessity, and she was not one to flinch from violence when there was no other recourse. Yet at the same time she had no intention of seeing Creek blood spilled when it would gain nothing. She knew that she had pushed Stephens to the brink of some desperate action. His eyes and the throb of his throat muscles betrayed his fear. She also knew that Menewa was right. This time they could not seize Savannah and force the colonists into flight. Yet she was still unwilling to take the traditional course and turn away, as the male warriors would have done, and go back upriver to await another day, another try. She wanted to show William Stephens that the Creeks had no fear of these invaders of their land, that the colonists were there by sufferance only, and that if they wished to stay they must leave their Creek neighbors alone.

  She allowed her husband to believe that it was he who persuaded her to command her warriors to disarm themselves and leave their weapons at the guard post on Bay Street. As this was being done, she tried to find Menewa in the crowd, wanting him by her side for the entry into Savannah. At last she discovered him, far down on the quay, standing very alert in front of the trading boat. She called out to him. He made no reply except to indicate by gestures that he would not disarm his warriors but that he would hold them on the river awaiting her return. As she turned away from Menewa she felt a sense of abandonment, a faint foreboding, and just then she heard her husband accepting an invitation to dine with President Stephens.

  She led her little band of warriors up into the town of many squares, where great live oaks spread black patterns of shade over adjoining houses. The older warriors could remember visiting the place when a Yamacraw Creek village stood there in the time before the British came. She was annoyed at Stephens’s insistence upon accompanying her. What she had visualized as a triumphant procession through Savannah had turned into a mere promenade, and the presence of Stephens, with his authority fully intact, made it difficult for her to keep her composure. When he proudly pointed out several new buildings under construction, she responded: “I share your pride, sir, in these fine houses because this high ground once sited a Creek village. When you have completed the town, we may make it Creek once again.”

  “Ah, madam, in this vast country there is land and land enough to spare for everyone. I’ve heard you say so yourself, to General Oglethorpe.”

  “If I said such words,” she retorted, “Oglethorpe put them into my mouth.”

  Creek Mary was no stranger in the fine house on Telfair Square where she and John Kingsley went to dine with President Stephens. She had lived there for
a time while acting as James Edward Oglethorpe’s interpreter in meetings with the Creeks. With her usual frankness she later told Dane that she had bedded with the founder of Georgia on several occasions, although she felt no particular affection for him and laughed at his remorseful piety after these meetings. She also told her grandson that the great man was afflicted with bad teeth and a foul breath.

  On this evening she was not, therefore, awed by the glitter of power, the waxed flooring, the liveried black servants, the chandeliers filled with candles, the huge dining table laid with expensive china and silverware. In addition to Mary and Kingsley, the President had invited members of the Georgia colony board, and as she quickly foresaw, the dinner developed into an inquisition.

  One of the board members, a bewigged sour-faced man, began it with a whining statement about the original land treaty. His watery pale-blue eyes never once were fixed upon Mary. As she later told Dane, he seemed to be addressing either the ceiling of the dining room or his God. The humorless board member declared that in the general view the lands upriver were never considered to be Creek lands but were a part of the Georgia colony that General Oglethorpe had generously reserved for Creek use until such time as the lands were needed for settlement.

  As the man droned on, Mary felt her fury rising. She squeezed her silver wine goblet hard enough to bend it, then lifted it and drained the contents with one gulp. A servant behind her refilled it immediately.

  “A fig on General Oglethorpe and his treaties,” she shouted, and for the first time the startled board member looked at her. “The truth is the reverse of what you have said, sir. The Creeks through my father ceded this land to you in good faith. If you break that faith, and you have done so many times already, you must leave this land.” She stamped a moccasined foot on the floor. “The earth that this building rests upon is ours.”