by Dee Brown
Although the water was like ice, she bathed Opothle quickly and then undressed and plunged in, forcing herself to stay under until she could feel the cold penetrate her flesh. Then she and the child lay naked in the sun, nibbling at their dry rations and listening to the trickling water and the hum of insects until they felt warm and sleepy.
A roll of thunder brought her wide awake. As she dressed the child and herself, she watched the storm clouds moving toward them, a white scud racing out in front. The only shelter was the ledge, a few feet beneath the slant of rock. She led the horse there and tied him to a hickory sapling, and then turned with Opothle in her arms to watch the wind tearing at treetops on the nearest ridge. The sun was darkened abruptly. Close around her everything turned suddenly still, birds and insects falling silent, and then a burst of wind swept across the hillside, thrashing the great pines. For the first time since leaving Bluff Village she felt fear, and when lightning crashed upon the rocks to create thunder that shook the earth, her imagination fed upon this fear to create terror. She wanted to run, run, but a sheet of rain struck her with the force of an ocean wave, drenching her completely. She turned her back and tried to calm her frightened son and warm his wet body. The pony, beset by its own fears, struggled madly to break away from the rawhide that held it to the hickory sapling.
It seemed to Mary that the ordeal would never end, the hissing of the chill rain against the gray rocks, the shrieking of wind in tortured pines, the sheets of water cascading upon her back. But at last it ended, and she felt the exultation of survival. For a while, rain dripped from thinning clouds and then suddenly the sun was out again, scorching hot, raising curls of steam from the wet rocks. Again she undressed Opothle and herself to dry their clothing before the sun was gone. She also cleaned the child’s cradleboard, and dried some moss and grass to reline it.
Next morning she was awakened by a cheerful mockingbird, which she considered a good sign until she discovered that the tender parts of her body were covered with insect bites. She ignored the itching and was in the saddle by sunrise. An hour or so later she found a branching trail, heading straight away from the rising sun. It was very narrow, and did not appear to be much used, but when she dismounted and studied the hooftracks and half-dry dung she guessed that four horses had passed along it the previous day. As she settled back into her saddle, a dark blue hawk appeared suddenly above her, circling and darting, screaming a piercing call. “Go back, go back!” it seemed to be crying. Her skin quivered and she felt that same terror of the imagination that had gripped her during the storm.
“But where can I go back to?” she asked aloud, and Opothle tried to reply to her question, using the four or five words that he had learned from her. She started the pony forward, and the hawk became more agitated, diving and screeching until at last it sped away in a straight course toward the highest of the distant hills thrusting up beyond the thick forest below.
She soon forgot the hawk; she was entranced by the wild grandeur of the country through which she was passing. In open meadows she sighted large flocks of turkeys and herds of deer. She wanted fresh meat, but her only weapon—the pistol—was useless for hunting.
By late afternoon the trail had shrunk to little more than a pathway covered with green moss, showing no signs of recent passage. It brought her to a wide stream swollen by recent rains, but she could see the pebbled bottom and forced the reluctant pony into the swift waters. About halfway across, its front feet plunged downward, almost throwing her from the saddle, and then the pony was afloat. She had to swim three or four yards with Opothle in the cradle on her back. As soon as she reached the bank, she rushed downstream to catch the frightened pony’s bridle and lead it ashore. She was dismayed to discover that the saddlepack was gone. She searched along the bank but found only the sodden blanket which contained her pistol, extra moccasins, mirror, and knife. Her food supply was gone. Worst of all, the trail she had been following seemed to have ended at the stream.
She found a pine log, recently downed by a windstorm, and used it as a drying place for wet clothing and the blanket and its contents. The child was fretful, being afflicted with numerous insect bites also, and the drying effect of the sun made the red spots itch like fire. She sat on the log with the half-dried blanket around her hips, disconsolate because she no longer had a trail to follow and acutely feeling pangs of hunger. She knew she had nothing to eat and would soon have to search for berries and roots. She was scratching at insect bites under her knees and watching a dragonfly skimming across a pool of water when she heard the snapping of a twig behind her.
Before she could turn, a strong arm encircled her breasts and held her tight. At the same instant a hand covered her nose and mouth. Her first thought was of the hawk keening to her that morning: “Go back, go back!” The next moment she feared for Opothle; the boy was in his cradle, propped against the log, crying himself to sleep.
“Akusa?” a deep voice breathed behind her. “Creek?”
She managed to nod her head. The arm that was crushing her breasts was encircled with a silver band bearing an eagle design.
“Where are the others?” the male voice asked in Cherokee.
She shook her head violently, pulling away as the hand released her. The man’s face came into her view. “Tsalagi, Cherokee,” she said, looking him straight in the eyes. She found no warmth there. His eyes were those of a hunter regarding a captured animal.
4
“YOU MAY WONDER,” DANE said, “how they understood each other, the Cherokee speaking Iroquoian, and the Creek speaking Muskogean. But the two tribes had been making war and making peace for as long as anyone could remember. In peacetimes they traded and visited and played ball games—so they learned a good amount of each other’s language. Creek Mary, as you know, spoke English quite well and the Long Warrior—the Cherokee who had captured her—knew most of the English trading terms. In addition they both knew a mixture of Chickasaw-Choctaw jargon, somewhat comparable to your pidgin English, that was used all over the Southeast at that time. And so they had no trouble making themselves understood.”
Except for the damp blanket around her middle and the coin gorget hanging between her breasts, she was unclothed. “Release me,” she commanded angrily, and to her surprise he obeyed her. She quickly draped the blanket around her shoulders.
“Where are the others?” the Long Warrior repeated. “Your people.”
She knew there was no point in pretending there were others. “My son and I travel alone,” she replied. “We are going to Menewa’s village.”
He laughed scornfully. “Menewa, that sore-arsed old bear of the Akusas?”
“More times than once Menewa and his warriors have sent the Cherokees running like frightened old women,” she retorted.
“He told you that?” The Long Warrior was standing with hands on hips looking down at her with his piercing eyes. He wore a dark red turban with an eagle feather in it over lustrous black hair that was longer than she was accustomed to seeing on male Creeks. She knew he was a Cherokee chief because of the eagle feather and the eagles on his armband. He also wore a sleeveless buckskin waistcoat, English traders’ trousers, and muddy leggings. He was taller than most Creek males. “When I was a boy,” he said casually, “we drove Menewa’s warriors from these hills and built new towns here. I will take you to my town.”
“I am going to Menewa’s village,” she said defiantly.
He turned and whistled, and another Cherokee appeared from behind a screen of brush and vines. He was leading four horses, two of them laden with trade goods—cloth, blankets, axes, and gunpowder. “Akusa,” the Long Warrior told him. “Alone as we thought.”
The other man smiled at her, one corner of his mouth twisting oddly. He had a scar running from his mouth to his left ear. Never taking his eyes from her, he leisurely fastened the four horses to a tree and then walked over to her pony. “Choctaw,” he said. “Good. I like.” Then he came to the pine log, methodically exami
ning the flintlock pistol, the knife, and the mirror. “I like,” he said.
“The woman is mine, Qualla,” the Long Warrior declared.
“And whose is this?” Qualla asked, picking up Opothle’s cradle. The sleeping child awoke and began screaming at the sight of Qualla’s unfamiliar face. “Look, look at this Unega, this paleskin.” Qualla held the cradle up so that the Long Warrior could see. “How ugly it is.”
“We’ll leave the paleskin here,” the Long Warrior said.
Mary pulled the cradle away from Qualla and took Opothle from it. The boy squirmed and kicked. The insect bites on his naked body had swollen into red blisters.
“The little jaybird is spotted,” said the Long Warrior, coming closer. “Not smallpox. Chigoes. He screams because one is in his ear.” For the first time his eyes softened. “We’ll go and see the adawehi, the old healer priest, Bear Killer.” He noticed the same bites on the tender flesh between Mary’s breast and arm. “You also.”
His fingers reached for the gorget. “What is this?” He gave it a jerk, but the silver chain held. With her free hand, she slapped him hard in the face. He did not flinch, but his eyes showed anger. She hated him at that moment because he held power over her, yet as she looked into his face, the olive skin barely scarred with old smallpox marks, she felt drawn to this stranger.
“You are a headman, a chief,” she said.
“The Long Warrior of Okelogee.” He smiled. “A moment ago I wanted to strike you with a warclub. But when you are without anger your speech is like the singing of birds.”
“And yours is as guttural as a bad-tempered bear’s.”
“Who are you?”
“Amayi, the Beloved Woman of the Creeks.”
“Your name is known to us. But you are still my captive. You know what that means.”
“That depends upon the women of your town. They will decide.”
Opothle broke into loud cries again. “Let’s go,” said the Long Warrior in a tone of disgust. “Your mewling paleskin, like his Unega father, wants something of ours.”
Dane stopped his story to refill our coffee mugs. “When Grandmother Mary would tell me these things about Uncle Opothle,” he said, “it was difficult for me to imagine him as a helpless child. When I first became aware of Opothle’s existence, he was a sturdy man of about fifty, with a short beard turning gray, a man who valued his light skin so highly that when he went outside he avoided the sunlight whenever possible, wrapping his neck and lower face in kerchiefs and wearing a broad-brimmed hat. Being my only uncle, Cherokee clan law required him to look after me, but he rarely had anything to do with me. He may have been embarrassed that I had Cherokee blood while he did not—yet he considered himself to be of the Cherokee Nation. Very much so.”
Dane tested the coffee and squinted off across the brightening Montana landscape. “Someone out there, looking for something,” he said. His eyes were sixty years older than mine, yet it was all I could do to see the distant figure on horseback.
“But the first things she told me about her first view of Okelogee, the Long Warrior’s town, seemed very real, because that is where I was born and grew up. The place changed very little, I suppose, during the half century between Grandmother Mary’s arrival and my coming into the world. Except that it was burned by the Carolina militia after the War of the Revolution and had to be rebuilt, long before my time.
“To Mary the town itself was not much different from a Creek village, the windowless houses were solid, and all the families had an asi, a small winter house—I’ve heard white men call them oasts—they’re quite like the sweat lodges of the Cheyennes. I think what most impressed her was the setting of the town, along the Little Singing Stream, and the mountain beyond that they called the Sleeping Woman. It was the first thing that everyone saw when they stepped from their doors in the mornings—that long low mountain shaped like a woman’s body at rest, rounded head at the north end, a hollow for the neck, the swelling breasts and flat belly, and a narrow pinnacle at the south end shaped like a moccasined foot pointing to the sky. The sun always came up late in Okelogee, over the Sleeping Woman. There were bawdy tales about the Sun, the Moon, and the Sleeping Woman.” His voice trailed off, as though he were jogging his memory.
“What did Mary mean when she told the Long Warrior that the women of his town would decide?” I asked. “Decide what?”
“Oh, yes. I’ve been getting ahead of myself. Old man’s wanderings. It was customary then for the women of the Nation to decide what should be done with captives, especially female captives. They might be put to death, sold, ransomed, set free, or adopted into one of the clans. Females were usually sold or adopted. As she rode into Okelogee, Mary expected that the Cherokees would try to ransom her and Opothle to Menewa.
“The first thing the Long Warrior and Qualla did was take her to Bear Killer, the old adawehi who very gently smeared the insect bites with some kind of smelly grease that eased the itching immediately. He then blew herbal smoke into Opothle’s ailing ear and soon had the child laughing instead of crying. By this time it was dark and she was taken to a house for the night.
“She soon learned that the Long Warrior’s wife had died some months before in one of the smallpox epidemics that periodically swept through the villages, usually following a visit by white traders from Carolina. After his wife’s death, ownership of the house was in dispute—Cherokee wives always owned the dwelling houses. The Long Warrior’s sister-in-law moved in, claiming it and perhaps expecting the chief to make her his wife, but instead he brought in his two sisters. There were hard feelings between these women, and Mary took it as a bad sign that all of them resented her presence there. The first night she forced herself to stay awake, and after everyone was asleep she took Opothle and slipped outside to run away. But her Choctaw pony was gone from the hitching post, and she could see someone sitting in the shadows of the house across the way, evidently watching her. So she went back to her bed.
“She slept soundly until dawn, felt much better, and went outside into a beautiful cool morning to bathe in the stream and watch the sun coming up over the Sleeping Woman. She often said that she had a feeling then that she had lived in this place, long before, and had come home after an absence of many years.
“That day the business of deciding what to do about the Long Warrior’s captive woman began to occupy the time and thoughts of all the adults in Okelogee. The women met in the council house, the men met in the council house, the women and men met together in the council house. Mary had no idea what they were talking about, but she was beginning to find out that among the Cherokees everyone was equal, women as well as men, and that no one could force anyone else to take action. Not even the headman. All that the Long Warrior could do was try to persuade, but Mary was not sure what he wanted to persuade them to do. They simply had to keep talking until they reached an agreement, and the debates went on evening after evening, leaving her free to wander around the place, but if she tried to walk outside the town, Qualla was always there, usually mounted on her Choctaw pony, smiling his crooked smile.
“One evening the Long Warrior came to the house, bringing a large watermelon and inviting her to join him under a brush arbor outside. He broke the melon open and handed her a juicy piece of the heart. It was the sweetest watermelon she had ever tasted. He told her then that the people of Okelogee had made a decision. His jealous sister-in-law (who at that moment was peering out at them from inside the door of the house) had wanted to sell her to the Catawbas so that she would be taken far out of the country. But the sister-in-law had been overruled. The Cherokees had agreed to give the Beloved Woman of the Creeks her liberty. At dawn of the next day, she and her child were free to go wherever she chose.
“The Long Warrior suggested that she stay in Okelogee, pointing out that she would have more freedom as a Cherokee woman than as a Creek queen. Mary replied that she was content with the freedom of the Cherokees, but she was Creek and must go back to her peo
ple. He was disappointed, he said, and if this was to be her last night in Okelogee he would consider it as a gift of remembrance to sleep with her and keep her warm against the chill of the night air. The summer nights in Okelogee, she replied, were warm enough already. He then rudely accused her of being afraid the barbarous Creeks would cut her ears off for being an adulteress. They were soon quarreling, she accusing the Cherokees of selling Creek lands to the Georgia colonists, and he boasting that the Cherokees were more clever than the Creeks because they knew how to fool the Georgians. It ended when he tried again to take the Danish coin from around her neck. She fought him fiercely, both rolling on the ground in close embrace until she scratched blood from his face. He strode away, angrily cursing the stubbornness of all Creek women.”
5
BEFORE DARK QUALLA APPEARED with her Choctaw pony, saying nothing, but smiling that sideways smirk of his. He presented her with her pistol, knife, and mirror, and a saddlepack filled with dried corn bread and gahawisita, parched corn ground into a meal which when mixed with water made an instant gruel. She slept little that night and was up before daylight, saddling the pony and preparing to depart. She had just fastened Opothle’s cradle to her back when a horseman rode slowly out of the gray light.
“Siyu,” the Long Warrior greeted her. “Hello.”
“You did not sleep well?” she said with a bite of sarcasm in her voice.
“I brought you fresh anuh,” he said. “Strawberries.” He dismounted and offered her a wild strawberry from a basket. She opened her mouth and he put the berry between her teeth. It was light enough now so that she could see his smile and the dried marks of her fingernails on his coppery cheek.