The Native American Experience

by Dee Brown

  He helped her into the saddle. “I will go with you to the main trail,” he said, “so that you do not become lost again.”

  “Astu.” She used the Cherokee word. “Very good.”

  He led the way out of the town. When they topped the first ridge west, she turned to take a last look at the Sleeping Woman, silhouetted against the brightening dawn sky. She felt as though she were losing something forever.

  It was early afternoon when they reached the Flint Path turning southward toward Creek country. He pulled his horse to one side and motioned down the broad trail. As she passed him, he bowed to her and she returned the gesture, urging the pony to a faster pace and never looking back.

  During the afternoon, whenever she halted, she sometimes thought she heard hoofbeats, but when she looked back she saw no sign of a horseman. Late in the day she came to a small grassy glade beside a clear-running stream, and stopped for the night. She unsaddled and tied up the pony and was feeding Opothle when she heard the hoofbeats again. This time she saw the horseman. The Long Warrior was approaching slowly.

  “Siyu,” he greeted her. “It will be cold tonight under the stars. I meant to give you this bearskin.” He dismounted, unfastening a bundle. “A farewell present.”

  He spread an enormous black bearskin across the grass. “You will need a fire.” He gathered dry sticks and started a fire with flint and steel. He added wood slowly, building up a bed of coals until twilight darkened the glade. She came and lay on the bearskin, looking into the fire.

  “Time for me to go back,” he said, and removed his moccasins, passing them back and forth over the low flames.

  “You believe that will keep snakes from biting you?” she asked.

  “It has always done so for me.” When he stood up, she pulled half the bearskin over her. “Egasinu,” he said. “Go to sleep, Amayi. The fire will keep you warm.”

  “There is a fire in my loins,” she said.

  He kneeled beside her and rolled the bearskin back. She was naked. “Agiya, my beloved,” he whispered.

  “Asgaya, asgaya.” She used the Cherokee. “Man, man.” Then she raised herself, looking him hard in the face. “I will not be your property, but a friend and companion.”

  “Astu,” he said, and took the Danish coin in his fingers. “Asehi, surely—”

  She reached behind her neck, unfastened the silver chain and took the gorget off so that there was nothing between them. Then she rubbed her cheek against the dried scratches on his face and rolled with him into the bearskin.

  6

  “WELL, THE NEXT DAY they returned to Okelogee,” Dane said, “and began the long slow process of getting Mary fully accepted into the Cherokee Nation through adoption by one of the clans. The first thing the Long Warrior did was move his sister-in-law and two sisters out of the house so that it would belong to Mary as his wife. I use the word wife although there were no Cherokee words then for husband and wife. A man and woman simply decided to cohabit and the union was as strong as a marriage, with unwritten rights and duties of sharing. But if one or the other decided the union was unsuitable, he or she dissolved it by moving out, by taking ‘half of the blanket.’ That was the way Mary dissolved her marriage with John Kingsley. She moved out, taking her blanket, and although by the laws of Georgia she was still wedded to Kingsley, by the laws of the Creeks and Cherokees she was not.”

  “Whatever happened to Kingsley?” I asked.

  “She never learned for certain. Some months after becoming a Cherokee she heard that her people had been moved from Bluff Village up to the Double Branch, but another trader replaced Kingsley. She heard rumors that he had fallen into disfavor with the Georgia Trustees and had been returned to England. What happened to him after that she never knew. Although she considered him a traitor to the Creeks, I think no one ever heard her speak ill of John Kingsley after leaving him. And her people did not remain for long at the Double Branch. The soil was poor there and they moved of their own will to one of the villages in Menewa’s Creek confederacy. She was to see them again there on two momentous visits.”

  “What did Mary have to do to become accepted by the Cherokees?”

  “Most of the doing was on the Long Warrior’s part. He had to persuade one of the seven clans to adopt her so that she would have Cherokee rights, and this was not easy. He was Anikawi, the Deer clan, with considerable influence among them, but blood law forbade marriage to a member of his own clan even though they might not be related. His first wife had been Aniwadi, the Paint clan, but his sister-in-law blocked efforts to have the Paints adopt Mary. Finally Qualla, of the Wolf clan, used his sly skills as a diplomat and Mary was adopted and became a Wolf.”

  “And so you must be a Wolf.”

  “No, no indeed. My father was a Wolf, of course, being Mary’s son. But he married a girl of the Bird clan and so I am a Bird.” He laughed. “The Cherokees believe in the power of women. We know who our mothers are but are never certain about our fathers.”

  “You said that the Long Warrior’s sister-in-law opposed Mary’s becoming a Paint. Did she cause Mary trouble in other ways?”

  “For a time. She was jealous because she had wanted the Long Warrior for herself. She spoke ill of Mary and tried to make her an outcast, but her efforts created disharmony in the community and Cherokees cherish harmony above all things. After a while the sister-in-law found that she herself was becoming an outcast, and so she changed her attitude immediately. Cherokees can’t abide being outcasts. After a few weeks the sister-in-law and Mary became friends.

  “Another thing that the Long Warrior had to do was find a ‘brother’ for Mary so that she would have someone to protect her and look after her children. Cherokee fathers had no rights over their children and usually left their guidance in the hands of an uncle, one of the mother’s brothers. Qualla was my grandfather’s closest friend, and so naturally it was he who was pressed into this duty, and he must have served well. My father, Talasi the Runner, often told me that while he was growing up Qualla was his truest adult friend.

  “Not until the Runner was born was Mary accepted by everybody in Okelogee. But she said that what put the crown on her head as a Cherokee was a visit paid by Ghigua, the Beloved Woman of the Cherokees. The War of the Revolution was just beginning about that time. Ghigua journeyed down from the Hiwassee country, visiting the Georgia Cherokees to persuade them to join the colonists in their war against the British soldiers. She happened to be of the Wolf clan, and had heard about Mary, the Beloved Woman of the Creeks. She went to see her first, before going to the council house to make her speech. The two women were of about the same age, and got along like old friends. Ghigua welcomed Mary into the Cherokee Nation and insisted that they smoke together from her long pipe sheathed in speckled snakeskin.

  “But when Ghigua tried to enlist Mary on the side of the colonists, she would have no part of that. She hated British soldiers well enough, she said, but she had no love for the Anglo-Americans either. They were all the same, she said, land-thieves and cheaters and murderers of Creeks and Cherokees and the other tribes. Let them destroy each other. Ghigua must have been disappointed in Mary, but she had no better luck with the Okelogee council. At that time the fighting was too far away for the Georgia Cherokees to be concerned with it.

  “What brought it closer was a company of Scots soldiers that a British commander sent over into the mountains and then must have forgotten about. The Scotsmen built a permanent camp with strong fortifications somewhere east of the Sleeping Woman, but from time to time their supply lines would be cut by the Carolina militia and they had no way of obtaining food except to hunt wild game—which was becoming scarce—and to barter with the Cherokees. Every so often a party of Scots dressed in their splendid uniforms would come over to Okelogee to trade for corn and squash and beans or whatever food the Cherokees could spare. As the soldiers had no coffee or tea, Mary showed them how to make black drink from holly leaves—the Cherokees kept a few bushes transpl
anted from Carolina for that purpose—the leaves contain caffeine stronger than in this coffee we are drinking.

  “One day about a dozen of those foraging Scots came running into the town, their faces red from exertion. They had barely escaped ambush by the Carolina militia, who were in hot pursuit. Almost all the Cherokee men were out hunting that day, but Mary and some of the other women concealed the soldiers in their winter houses, root cellars, corncribs, and lofts. The militiamen surrounded the town, but they found not a trace of those Scotsmen.

  “When the Long Warrior heard about this, he became very angry. The border militia would destroy Okelogee if they found out the women had protected British soldiers, he said. At the council meeting that evening he proposed that no more food be traded to the British soldiers, but the women hooted him down. Since the outbreak of the Revolution, white traders seldom came as far as Okelogee and the women needed the pots and pans and knives and other things they could obtain from the soldiers.

  “North of the Hiwassee River, the Upper Cherokees were having a very hard time of it. Some of the chiefs had been armed by the British and they led their warriors out to fight the Anglo-Americans. Most of the others were neutral. A few like Ghigua were sympathetic toward the colonists.

  “In that time there was no single leader of the Cherokees. Oh, some headmen of a few neighboring towns would band together, one of them acting as leader. Old Tassel was one, but the Cherokees were so opposed to any interference with their personal liberties that they distrusted any strong leader. Consequently the separate towns were unable to defend themselves. When raiding parties of militia would storm out of the white border settlements, they would burn the first Cherokee town they came to, not caring whether the inhabitants were for the British, neutral, or sympathetic toward the colonists. The war, in fact, gave these Anglo-Americans an opportunity to drive all the Cherokees out of lands they coveted for settlement.

  “Only once during the war was Okelogee threatened with destruction. One day a force of mounted border ruffians came dashing into the town, their fur-capped leader brandishing a burning pine torch. He shouted out a warning that if a single British soldier was found concealed in the town he would set fire to every house and outbuilding. Mary had a hard time holding her tongue while the invaders were ransacking her house. They found nothing, and rode off. Not long afterward the Long Warrior came in and admitted that he had helped the Scots soldiers save a pack train of supplies from being captured by the border militia. He had led the Redcoats and their train down a creek bed and into the safety of a cave. The frustrated border raiders, suspecting that Cherokees had been involved, had given up pursuit and tried to find them in Okelogee.

  “Although the town escaped destruction during the Revolution, it was not so fortunate a few years later. For the Cherokees, the war did not end with the surrender of Cornwallis and the colonists’ victorious treaty of peace. With an end to their fighting, the Anglo-Americans claimed all the land to the Mississippi River. They accused the Cherokees of helping the British—although most did not—and forced them to cede great tracts of land. But even this was not enough. The whites kept pushing their settlements westward, crowding upon the Cherokee towns. If the Cherokees made any resistance at all, the border militia would use this as an excuse to burn the nearest town.

  “Those north of Okelogee, along the Hiwassee and the Tennessee, were the first to suffer. Old Tassel was murdered by raiders who approached him under a truce flag. His half-blood nephew, John Watts, who chose the name Young Tassel, tried to organize all the Cherokee towns into one defensive force. He sent the people of Okelogee a bundle of bloody arrows and a scalping knife with a message for them to ‘take up the hatchet’ and join him in a war against the border settlers.

  “The Long Warrior and the Okelogee council were still debating what to do about this when a mob of raiders came riding into the town early one morning. Mary recognized their leader as the same fur-capped ruffian who had threatened them with a pine torch during the war. This time several of the riders were carrying torches and without any warning they began setting fire to the houses.

  “Taken by surprise, there was no way the people could defend themselves. Flight was the only way to escape being killed. About all that Mary saved from the house was that big black bearskin given her by the Long Warrior. He had to force her to leave, dragging her along by one arm while Opothle was carrying Talasi the Runner. They crossed the Little Singing Stream, leaving Okelogee in flames behind them. The raiders took all the horses, including Mary’s beloved Choctaw pony.

  “The Long Warrior led his numbed and dispirited people westward to the Chickamauga country where they found friends in a little town known as Cedar Tree. Other refugee Cherokees had come there from the northeast, and everybody had to work hard to build temporary shelters of poles and bark and to find enough food to keep from starving. Luckily for them, this all happened during the warm months of the year.

  “All the time that the people from Okelogee were struggling to feed, shelter, and clothe themselves, they were planning revenge against the border raiders. Mary’s fury against the whites was so keen that she announced she was going south to seek help from the Creeks. To keep her from leaving her children, the Long Warrior sent a messenger to Menewa. Two weeks later, to his great surprise, more than a hundred Creek warriors arrived at Cedar Tree. Menewa sent his regrets to Mary that he could not come himself. He was too busy fighting off the white settlers. The Creek towns were suffering the same ruthless attacks that the Cherokees were—raiders galloping in to burn houses, trample crops, steal horses, and then dashing away.

  “With the Creek warriors on hand, the Okelogee Cherokees could no longer delay action. They knew that somewhere north along the Tennessee, Young Tassel and his war chief, Taltsuska, had united five towns and were making preparations to retaliate by carrying the war into the white settlements. The Long Warrior and his Cherokees and Creeks packed what food they could find and started north. Mary wanted to go with them, but there was no one to look after Opothle and Talasi the Runner. Her children were of more import to her than following the men to war, and so she remained at Cedar Tree. She watched them depart, the Creeks mounted, most of the Cherokees on foot, shouting and singing their war songs.”

  7

  OF THE EVENTS THAT occurred during the Long Warrior’s military undertaking against the border invaders, Dane was not too assured as to details and chronology. He had heard fragments of incidents told by his grandmother and by others, and he cautioned me that not only were the stories vague by the time they were told to him, but that much more time had passed since he had heard them.

  In the early years of his manhood, the Long Warrior had fought a number of little skirmishes with Catawbas and Creeks, but his big war, the adventure of his life, was the war that he participated in against the border settlements. After it was over, at the Cherokees’ annual Green Corn ceremonies he would join with the other survivors of that ordeal in relating deeds of bravery and superhuman exploits until the incidents became a mythical saga in his memory. This was the part of the Long Warrior’s life that Creek Mary most envied, because she experienced the events only vicariously, resenting the enforced tediousness of her own existence at Cedar Tree with two young sons while he traveled on a path of glory and excitement.

  In truth, as she was to learn eventually, the Long Warrior loathed most of the episodes of that violent undertaking while they were actually occurring. It was only in retrospect that a luster of grandeur grew around them, glowing into legend with the telling and retelling through the passage of time.

  Years afterward, when she would tell Dane of his grandfather’s great adventure, she would laugh while relating his confessed dislike for going into battle naked except for a loin flap. Red and black war paint did not keep off the cold, he said. The fighting began in the Big Chestnut Moon in the chilly foothills of the Smoky Mountains and lasted until the next spring, a time of year that no sensible Cherokee would choose
to fight a war. More than once he took the coat off a dead militiaman to stop his shivering, always discarding it before the next battle. He knew that fighting naked decreased the danger from wounds. A bit of clothing driven into a wound by a bullet or an arrow made healing difficult, was often fatal. He resigned himself to fighting naked in the bitter cold, but he hated it.

  When they left Cedar Tree early in the Moon of Black Butterflies and went up the Tennessee Valley, the Long Warrior and his followers found Young Tassel, or John Watts, camped along a small tributary of the river. A thousand Cherokees were gathered there, almost all victims of border raids, and they were burning for revenge. Young Tassel’s war leader was Taltsuska, who proudly used the name Bullhead, which had been given him by his white enemies. Although only slightly older than Young Tassel, Bullhead was the latter’s uncle, the brother of the murdered Old Tassel. Another of Bullhead’s brothers, Pumpkin Boy, had recently been killed while fighting a raiding party from the Knoxville settlement, and on the day that the Long Warrior met him Bullhead was in a fierce and sullen mood.

  The war leader’s head was shaved except for a narrow frizzed crest beginning at the crown and widening to the back of his head and ending in a long plait ornamented with silver quills. He wore a tiny brass cross affixed to the lobe of his left ear, and carried a pair of silver-mounted pistols that he had taken from a luckless British officer in the War of the Revolution. During the next few days the Long Warrior heard rumors that after slaying the British officer, Bullhead had chopped the man’s body into small pieces and eaten some of them in a savage blood ceremony.

  Bullhead and Young Tassel had decided to prepare for war in the same way their enemies did, by drilling the men to fire by command, and for several days the warriors who had come there from Cedar Tree had to march in formations up and down a rough drill field alongside a creek. It all seemed very foolish to the Long Warrior, but he had committed himself to the war and in council with the leading chiefs he reluctantly agreed to this new way of fighting. Qualla and another veteran warrior from Okelogee, the Stalking Turkey, made strong protests, but they were overruled. The object of war, the Stalking Turkey declared, was to gain honors through individual exploits, and this would be difficult if not impossible to accomplish if the Cherokees marched upon their enemies as the white men did, standing and firing by commands. Bullhead angrily replied that the object of this war was to terrorize the white settlers and drive them out of the Cherokee lands, and this could best be accomplished by attacking them in strong formations.