The Native American Experience

by Dee Brown

  Early in the Big Chestnut Moon, Young Tassel named the day they would march out on the old military trace that led toward Knoxville, giving the warriors three days to make their preparations. All the women who had accompanied their men to camp were ordered to leave during the purification ceremonies, and supplies of gahawisita, dried corn bread, and moccasins and sinew were rolled into blankets. The men stripped to their breechcloths and painted themselves red and black. The adawehi packed live coals in a clay container to ensure good luck on the march.

  On the morning of departure, Bullhead circled the drill field three times alone, beating slowly on a drum, and the thousand warriors then assembled in ranks facing Young Tassel, who addressed them. “My fighting brothers: Our enemies the Unegas, the border settlers, have made the Path bloody between us. Let us leave this place with great courage. Have strong hearts, never shut your ears, have no fear of the cold. Never show fear to the Unegas, our enemies, but let them see that you are men and true warriors. Use all your powder and lead, all your arrows, and then strike and kill until your war clubs are drunk with the blood of the Unegas. Then, if it is necessary to escape, do not hesitate to throw yourselves into the water to conceal your retreat well.”

  Young Tassel raised his right arm and Bullhead began beating again on his drum. They marched out single file, armed with their old trade guns, bows, tomahawks, and war clubs, their supplies rolled in the blankets slung across their naked backs. When they reached the military trace that led eastward toward Knoxville—their main objective—Bullhead shouted them into formations and they marched along like British Redcoats on parade.

  The next morning scouts were sent forward, and when they came hurrying back to report a force of mounted border raiders approaching on the trace, Bullhead sent his warriors wheeling off into the woods to form semicircles on each side of the road. The Unegas, dressed in fur caps and hunting shirts, well armed with long rifles, came riding recklessly along. Hidden behind a clump of sumac bushes, the Long Warrior put his rifle sights on a big bearded man and thought how stupid the raiders were to be riding so close together in the open.

  A moment later the shrill call of a bobwhite sounded from across the road, and Bullhead’s deep voice responded with a quick command to fire. The volley cut into the raiders, lead and arrows hitting riders and horses, the animals rearing and screaming. Bullhead led his warriors out with their war clubs. Less than half of the border men got their mounts turned around and started back down the trace, and for a hundred yards they had to run a gauntlet of fire that took a dozen of them from their saddles.

  Even so, Bullhead considered the ambush a failure because enough of the enemy escaped to race back to the nearest blockhouse and give warning of their approach. When the Long Warrior came out on the road, Bullhead was scalping one of the dead raiders. The war chief’s morose face looked evil under its smear of paint. Although Qualla and the Stalking Turkey joined in the scalping, the Long Warrior had no taste for it that day, and he waited impatiently for the march to resume.

  Late in the afternoon the scouts warned of a formidable blockhouse in the next valley. The chiefs held council and decided to approach it from a forested ridgetop. Filing off into the woods, the warriors resumed their old way of stalking the enemy, keeping well apart, and moving as quietly as possible.

  When they were all assembled on the ridgetop, the Long Warrior and Qualla volunteered to scout the blockhouse below. By the time they worked their way down the rocky hillside, twilight was deepening over the valley, and the white families who lived in the blockhouse were gathering their cattle in from the meadows. Women and children were running nervously about, unlocking and locking gates and shouting at the animals, while the men carried rifles and kept an alert watch all around.

  The Long Warrior counted only twenty men before the gates were closed on the stockade. “They are mostly women and children down there,” he said.

  “Yes,” Qualla replied. “Their men paid today for stealing Cherokee ground.”

  “All the ground is Cherokee to the Knoxville station. But I do not kill women and children even though they be Unegas.”

  “Have you forgotten what they did to us at Okelogee?”

  “Their women and children did not burn our houses,” the Long Warrior said. “And their men did not kill us.”

  “They would have killed us had we not run. They have killed many of our people in the Tennessee country.”

  The Long Warrior shook his head. “At the council I shall speak for passing by this blockhouse station and throwing all our force upon the garrison at Knoxville. Without the goods that come from the Knoxville storehouses, these little stations will wither and die like gourds on a cut vine.”

  During the council, however, only a few of the chiefs supported the Long Warrior’s proposal. Bullhead and Young Tassel both spoke for attacking the blockhouse and burning it to ashes. These Unegas had been too bold, they said, penetrating so far into Cherokee country.

  After collecting several pine knots for torches, they waited until it was late enough for the people in the blockhouse to be asleep and then they crept down the slope, surrounding the stockade. The cattle inside the gates must have sensed their presence, for they began moving restlessly around. A few moments later the quick flash of a gunlock showed in one of the portholes and a warning shot broke the silence. At Bullhead’s command the warriors who carried torches lighted them and rushed the stockade, some trying to set fire to the heavy logs, others throwing their firebrands upon the roof of the blockhouse.

  The Long Warrior was in the second wave of attackers. He ran to a porthole and fired blindly inside. He ducked low, and through a tiny crack between the logs he could see a white man lunging toward the porthole out of the smoke and flames of the burning pine knots. There was no time to reload. The Long Warrior reached for his war club, and as soon as he saw the rifle muzzle thrusting out, he struck the end of it with all his power. He heard the crunch of gunstock against flesh and bone, and then a muffled voice cried out in pain. Kneeling, the Long Warrior began reloading his rifle.

  Down the farthest end of the stockade, one of the Creeks had climbed to the top and was shooting arrows into the defenders below. Rifle fire from inside the blockhouse knocked the Creek to the ground. A volley from the loft of the blockhouse rained bullets into one of Bullhead’s formations, felling half a dozen warriors. The defenders were first-rate marksmen, and they had far better weapons than the Cherokees and Creeks. After another volley from the loft, Young Tassel gave the signal for withdrawal to the wooded ridge. The chief’s arm was bleeding from a flesh wound, and while the adawehi was dressing it and chanting a healing song, the other leaders gathered around him and a fire that someone had started. The casualties had been counted. One Creek and three Cherokees were dead. Several had been wounded.

  “The Long Warrior spoke wisely,” Young Tassel said. “If we fight against all the garrisoned stations between here and Knoxville, we will lose much blood for nothing. I speak now for passing around the blockhouses until we are ready to strike at the Knoxville settlement.” He looked at Bullhead, who was sitting with his long chin pressed against his chest, watching the Long Warrior across the firelight.

  “If this chief who comes to us from Okelogee is so wise a man,” Bullhead said in his deep voice, “then he should lead us to Knoxville.”

  The Long Warrior spoke up. “I am not a war chief. Bullhead has made his name known across the Cherokee land as a leader of warriors. I say that Bullhead is our war chief who will show us the way to Knoxville.”

  Bullhead’s heavy lips parted in a grimace. “I know what they say of me—that I have eaten a great quantity of white men’s flesh, that I have had so much of it I am tired of it, and think it too salty.” He laughed, but the others remained silent.

  Young Tassel, the half-blood, waited a moment. “It is agreed, then? We march around the stations until we reach Knoxville?”

  “So be it,” Bullhead said, his heavy-lidded
eyes still fixed on the Long Warrior.

  As soon as the dead were buried under piles of marked stones—so that their relatives could come and find them after the flesh was gone and the bones had dried—the war party left the ridge and filed off toward the rising sun. All through that day they kept to the forests, avoiding roads and stations.

  At dusk Bullhead held council and it was decided to bivouac until midnight and then move up quietly in the darkness to the Knoxville storehouses, set them afire, and attack the surprised garrison. But Bullhead either misjudged the distance or the rate of movement of his large force. The eastern sky was brightening when the advance sighted a small blockhouse a few miles outside of the Knoxville settlement.

  At about the same time, three white men came out of the blockhouse and saw the approaching warriors. One of them hurriedly began saddling a horse, but Bullhead sent several of the mounted Creeks racing ahead and they killed the man before he had galloped a hundred yards toward Knoxville. The other two Unegas retreated within the blockhouse and closed the portal.

  The Long Warrior went forward to consult with Young Tassel. Almost the entire force was now gathered in a field of corn stubble facing the blockhouse. “That is Cavett’s Station,” Young Tassel said. “Before we can strike Knoxville, full daylight will be upon us.”

  “Then we must conceal ourselves in the woods for another day,” the Long Warrior said.

  Bullhead, who had come striding back, overheard his suggestion. “First we will kill all the Unegas in this station,” he growled. “Or they will warn their Knoxville brothers.” As he finished speaking the sound of a cannon reverberated across the hills from Knoxville. Bullhead grunted angrily. “They have already been warned,” he said.

  “That was only the garrison’s sunrise gun,” said Young Tassel. He glanced at the Long Warrior. “But we must silence the Cavetts.”

  “Should there be heavy firing,” said the Long Warrior, “the Knoxville militia will be warned of our presence. Perhaps if we take cover—”

  Bullhead’s interrupting voice was harsh: “We attack the Cavetts now.” He did not wait for any further discussion. He signaled the warriors to surround the small blockhouse and begin the attack.

  Although the defenders kept up a steady fire from their loopholes for several minutes, killing five Cherokees, they were so far outnumbered that they soon showed a white flag and asked for a parley. Young Tassel, Bullhead, and the Long Warrior approached the stockade.

  “Who are your chiefs?” a voice demanded from inside.

  Young Tassel named the leaders and called on the defenders to surrender.

  “You are John Watts, then?”

  “My white father gave me that name,” Young Tassel replied.

  “I am Alexander Cavett. We will cease resistance if you will allow us to go unharmed to the Knoxville station.”

  “You will be held as prisoners until we have destroyed Knoxville,” Young Tassel declared.

  There was a long silence, and then Cavett answered: “Should you fail in your purpose, will you guarantee the safety of our women and children?”

  “We will not fail in our purpose,” Young Tassel cried. “If you want to live, leave your arms in the blockhouse and come out and surrender to us.”

  A minute passed and then the portal was opened. Two men, three women, and seven children filed out into the morning sunshine. They were without weapons of any kind.

  “These are all?” Young Tassel asked.

  Cavett nodded his head.

  Bullhead frowned, and beckoning to three of his warriors, led them into the blockhouse for a search. They all carried war clubs with sharp metal spikes. When they came back outside, each man brought several long rifles. At a low command from Bullhead they dropped the captured rifles on the ground and rushed upon the backs of the unsuspecting prisoners, using their spiked war clubs to crush their victims’ skulls. The Long Warrior afterward said that he could not believe he was witnessing so foul a deed. He was so sickened by Bullhead’s attack upon the defenseless women and children that for a moment he was unable to move. Then he leaped forward and seized the youngest boy in his arms, saving him from Bullhead’s war club.

  “You are a child killer, a savage!” he shouted into Bullhead’s contorted face.

  Bullhead snarled: “Is not that what the Unegas call us? Is it not better that we savages kill Unegas than let them live to kill us? You are a softhearted old woman, you who ran away from them at Okelogee.”

  The Long Warrior reached for his war club, but Young Tassel caught his arm. “We Tsalagi must not kill each other!” he cried, and there was disgust on his face when he looked at Bullhead. “The lookouts have warned us that militia from Knoxville are marching to fight us. Go and make your warriors ready.”

  Except for the young boy that the Long Warrior had rescued, the surrendered prisoners were all dead, their skulls smashed by the war clubs of Bullhead and his three warriors.

  During that morning there was heavy fighting between the Knoxville soldiers and the combined force of Cherokees and Creeks. At times, the opponents battled at close range, and the Long Warrior tried to find a way to let his young captive escape safely to the militia, but he finally had to conceal the boy in a brush-filled gully, warning him to stay there until the fighting ended. After the soldiers withdrew to Knoxville, the Long Warrior went back to the place of concealment. He found the boy lying there with his arms spread wide, his small hands clenched, his face split open by a tomahawk.

  That night the Long Warrior thought a long time about the meaning of savagery. Once he had argued with Creek Mary about the meaning of savagery. He had believed in the purity of being savage, but she had said that savagery was neither pure nor impure. “We are all savages,” she had said, “down beneath the skin, no matter the color of the skin, down there we are all fierce, cruel, bloodthirsty as the beasts. It is a part of the balance of nature.” Perhaps she was speaking the truth, he thought.

  There was much savagery through the remainder of that autumn and on into the Windy and Duck-Killing moons. Out of the valleys of the Clinch, the Holston, and the French Broad rivers came hundreds of border men led by Nolichucky Jack Sevier, who hated all Indians. When the Cherokees and Creeks set ambushes, they found that their old smoothbore trade guns were no match for the frontiersmen’s longer-ranged and more-accurate rifled guns.

  Driven south to the Hiwassee Valley, Bullhead and Young Tassel divided their forces in a try for entrapment, but Sevier’s militia cut them entirely apart and they never united again. The Long Warrior’s men and the Creeks tried to stay with Young Tassel across the Lower Blue Ridge, but again the border men scattered them. Many a warrior’s bones were left to dry in those high hills. In a close encounter, Qualla received a bad leg wound that would not heal, and the Stalking Turkey’s right eye was blinded. They later became separated from the other Okelogee men and although the Long Warrior led a search for them, he could find no trace of either one.

  The loss of his two good friends darkened his spirits, and he began brooding over the defeats suffered by the Cherokees and their Creek allies. Was this a warning of worse evils to come in the future? Were the tribes doomed by the mighty power of the white men?

  With the coming of springtime the shrinking remnant of mounted Creeks decided to go home. In the Cherokees’ last fight with the border men, a small skirmish along the Etowah, they had no weapons left but bows and arrows. They were badly routed. “We did not run,” the Long Warrior always said of this fight, “we only walked very fast.”

  In the first days of the Strawberry Moon, the Long Warrior decided they could fight no more. They had no food other than what they could find in the forests, and their last moccasins were worn out. And so they started back for Cedar Tree, dreading what they might find there. They had been driven far south of their old home country, and on the way north the Long Warrior suggested that they follow the Flint Trace and see what was left of Okelogee.

  As they came over the
last ridge and faced the Sleeping Woman, for the first time since his childhood the Long Warrior felt tears in his eyes. He held his breath, looking down into that beautiful valley, and then he heard strange sounds coming from the direction of Okelogee—the blows of axes, the crashing of trees, and the shouts of men and women. With his warriors close behind, he ran down the last section of trail, and there all along the Little Singing Stream, log houses were being built on the sites of burned-out homes. He looked toward the place where he and Mary had lived, and to his astonishment saw the new frame of a house—sturdy logs at the corners and crosspieces connecting them. He hurried along the pathway beside the stream. A red-bearded white man in linsey-woolsey trousers was using an ax to bevel a log end.

  “Who are you?” the Long Warrior demanded in English.

  The man looked up at him and was startled by this apparition of a long-haired wild man in a dirty tattered deerskin mantle. “I am Hugh Crawford,” the man replied in a thick Scottish accent.

  “And why did you come here to Okelogee?”

  “I am here to assist in taming this wilderness,” the man answered boldly.

  “What wilderness?” demanded the Long Warrior with rising anger. “This is no wilderness. By what right do you build a cabin on this place?”

  The red-bearded man drew himself erect, balancing his ax as a weapon. “By the rights of that woman yonder,” he said, pointing down the Little Singing Stream.