The Native American Experience

by Dee Brown

  The coming of the War of 1812 brought an urgency to these aims, but there were bitter disagreements over what action the Cherokees should take. Should they remain neutral, or offer aid to either the British or the Americans in hopes of being recognized as an independent nation by the victors when the war came to a close?

  14

  “IT IS ALWAYS DIFFICULT,” DANE said, “for two Cherokees to agree about anything for very long. When Mary heard that both Tecumseh in the North and Menewa in the South had allied themselves with the British against the Americans, she began urging the Cherokees to follow the two leaders. She visited several towns, speaking in the councils for a British alliance. The Long Warrior, influenced by Andrew Jackson, took the opposite view. General Jackson, he said, was raising an army of thousands, and wanted the Cherokees and Creeks to send their warriors to fight under his command. With such a leader and such a force, the Americans were certain to defeat the British, and the Long Warrior was sure that when the war was over, the Cherokees would be recognized as a nation equal to the United States and would no longer have to worry about any more land seizures or intruding settlers.

  “The Runner and Opothle, however, both distrusted Andrew Jackson. Opothle had continued to prosper, building up a large trading business. In partnership with his father-in-law, John Rogers, he also operated a large farm, planted a thousand peach trees, obtained several plows and mules to pull them, and began raising corn and cattle and hogs to sell. To get the work done, he went up to Nashville and bought a few black slaves. He and the Runner had many quarrels about those slaves. The Runner wanted Opothle to set them free; he detested slavery and never forgave Opothle for bringing them to Okelogee. About the only thing the brothers agreed on was absolute neutrality for the Cherokees in the War of 1812.

  “So you see, the family was divided, bitterly divided for a time. Opothle visited Nashville often enough to learn a good deal about Andrew Jackson, and whenever the Long Warrior would praise the man and urge Cherokee warriors to join his American army, Opothle would say that Andrew Jackson was responsible for more stolen Indian lands than any man in Tennessee, and that the Cherokees should have nothing to do with him and his war.

  “During this time Opothle built a big new house out near his farm—eight or ten rooms it was, with a front veranda and whitewashed walls. The day it was finished he invited Mary and the Long Warrior to come and see it. The Long Warrior wandered around through the empty rooms, climbed the winding staircase, peered out the windows of glass, and asked Opothle if he had not become so much like a white man that he thought he was going to live forever.

  “ ‘I know I will be dust someday,’ Opothle replied in his dignified manner, ‘but I want this house to prove to white men that Cherokees can live as well as they do. If they see that we are as civilized as they are, they will stop telling us to move west across the Mississippi.’

  “Mary shook her head. ‘You will only make them jealous,’ she said. ‘The Unegas will want to take this house away from you. By God, Opothle, this house is big enough for twenty children and you have only three. You and Suna-lee work so hard at getting things, you never have time to make me more grandchildren.’

  “She was always quarreling with Opothle about the English names he gave his children—William, Priscilla, and Jotham. Mary gave them all Creek names, but I have forgotten what they were except Priscilla’s. Telassie, Mary called her, and for a time Priscilla seemed to prefer that to Prissie.”

  “They were your cousins,” I said. “Much older than you?”

  “William and Prissie always seemed like grown-ups to me, although they could not have been more than eight or ten years older. But Jotham was only a year older. Jotham and I became close friends, even though we were always rivals.”

  Dane chuckled quietly, and I thought he was recalling some amusing incident from that long-ago time, but he was watching the horseman outside, who had come within a hundred yards of the cabin and was beginning to circle it. “That young Crow boy out there—he knows I have a visitor and he’s looking for the horse, but there is no horse.” He sat rocking back and forth, continuing to smile until he heard his name called.

  “Come to the door with me,” he said, getting out of his chair and stamping the stiffness from his legs. “Seeing a stranger who might be a rival will give him something to think about.”

  A rather handsome young Indian sat astride a spotted pony. “You seen anything of my old man’s Hereford bull around here?” he asked Dane, but his eyes studied me.

  “No bull been around here,” Dane replied.

  “Must’ve gone off some other direction.”

  Dane nodded.

  “He come over this way, you corral him?”

  Dane said he would.

  The young man touched the brim of his high-crowned hat. “See you.” He gave me one more hard look, and rode off down the dirt road toward Dundee.

  Dane closed the door against the cold morning air, and then laughed gleefully, like a mischievous child. “He wasn’t looking for a bull. He was hoping to find Mary Amayi here. We’ll see if he’s smart enough to find her, that young man of visions.” He went over to the fireplace and took a long-stemmed Indian pipe from the mantel and tamped tobacco into the slanted bowl. “Visions,” he said. “We Indians live on visions.” He plucked a small orange coal from the hearth with his bare fingers and deftly dropped it into the pipe bowl.

  “Illusions, I suppose you would call them. Grandmother Mary began having visions one day after a blue hawk came crying from the north and told her Tecumseh had been killed in a battle with the Americans. A few days later the event was confirmed by a messenger from Tennessee. She was not one to spend much time grieving for those she loved or admired. The Maker of Breath had claimed Tecumseh and no one could bring him back. She turned her thoughts to the living, to Menewa, whom she thought would take Tecumseh’s place.

  “The Long Warrior, of course, would not listen to her pleas for an alliance with Menewa, especially after they heard from the Creek country that Menewa had raised the Red Sticks of war in several Creek towns, and was fighting those of his own people who would not follow him in his war to the death against the Americans. Nor would Opothle give her any support. Finally she went to the Runner and told him that she wanted him to go south with her to find Menewa and bring him back to the Cherokee country. She was sure that she and Menewa together could make the Cherokees understand that they were in great danger unless they united with the Creeks in their fight for survival.

  “When the Runner realized that he could not persuade his mother to abandon her vision, he offered to accompany her if she would delay the journey until Sehoya gave birth to their first child. Sehoya was having a difficult time.

  “Mary was sympathetic but she feared delay would be fatal to her plan. One night after everyone had gone to sleep, she slipped out of the house and rode off alone on her arch-nosed pony to find Menewa—just as she had ridden away many years before, except this time she was not burdened by a young child and was no longer a youthful woman. She must then have been close to sixty years. Afterward of course she knew it was all a vision, an illusion as you would say, but Grandmother Mary never cared much for a sensible and safe life. Without visions—or illusions—life had no flavor in it for her.

  “Next morning they all knew where she had gone. The Long Warrior held a mild discussion with Qualla about riding after her, but Qualla advised against it. She would return only when her vision told her to return. Opothle offered the opinion that she must have been struck by senility, but the others only laughed at him for so foolish an observation. The Runner worried about her safety, and promised to go and bring her home as soon as Sehoya gave birth.

  “A day or so later, Mary’s departure faded into the background with the arrival in Okelogee of General Andrew Jackson and a company of militia. Jackson was desperate for more soldiers. He had been down the Coosa River butchering Creeks on the pretension that all Creeks were fighting for his
British enemies. Most of his militiamen, however, had marched home to Tennessee at the end of their term of voluntary enlistments, some of his cavalrymen were deserting, and the Regular soldiers promised him by the United States Army were late in arriving.

  “At that time, my father later told me, Jackson looked like Death himself, taller than six feet but thin and bony, one arm in a sling from an old wound, his cheeks hollow, his eyes glassy and feverish. ‘We are all brothers fighting in one cause,’ he told the Okelogee people, ‘against the Red Stick Creeks armed by our British enemies. If the Red Sticks prevail, they will burn your Cherokee towns as they have burned peaceful Creek towns. Join with me in destroying them and you will gain the gratitude of your American brothers. The time will come when you will need powerful friends. Win the friendship of your American brothers now by your bravery.’

  “He promised the Long Warrior he would give him the rank of a major of volunteers if he would raise companies of Cherokees from four towns and bring them to a stockade near the Ten Islands on the Coosa. As soon as Jackson rode off to the south, Opothle and the Runner confronted the Long Warrior and begged him not to help Jackson, but the Long Warrior had made up his mind. After securing the promises of most of the young men in Okelogee to follow him as warriors, he went off to recruit in three other towns.

  “If Mary had been there, most likely she would have got out her old flintlock pistol and shot General Jackson out of his saddle, and a blessing it would have been for the Cherokees in the end. God knows what she would have done to the Long Warrior.”

  15

  AFTER LEAVING OKELOGEE, MARY rode long and hard each day so that she reached Tallagalla late on the fourth day. The nights were cold, the year being in the Little Spring Moon before the swelling of buds. As she approached the town through the last grove of bare trees, she wondered at the quietness. No barking dogs, no laughing children, no sounds of activity announced the presence of life in Tallagalla. When the trail brought her out upon a level bench of gravel, she saw only devastation where the town had stood only a few moons ago.

  Instead of houses there were heaps of ashes, blackened skeletons of buildings, ruined fences. She rode on to where Menewa’s great house had stood. Only the broken half of a mud chimney remained. His herds of cattle and horses had vanished. In a temporary shelter she found an old man and two old women. They told her that a great number of white soldiers and half-blood Creeks had come without warning while the town was undefended, and they destroyed everything. Menewa, his warriors, and the survivors of Tallagalla were said to be fortifying themselves at the Great Bend, a day’s journey up the Tallapoosa.

  Near sundown of the next day Mary found Menewa, a thousand warriors, and as many women and children, all hard at work building breastworks of logs across the neck of a peninsula surrounded on three sides by the Great Bend of the river. They had named the place Tohopeka, the fenced fort.

  If Menewa was surprised to see Mary there he gave no sign. “Where are your sons, where is the Cherokee chief of Okelogee?” he demanded. “We need fighting warriors, not more women.”

  “My men are blinded,” she answered. “Come back with me to Okelogee and help me open their eyes.”

  He shook his head. “There is no time for washing stupor from the eyes of the Cherokees. Tohopeka is the last stronghold of the Red Stick Creeks. We have been driven from Tallagalla, from Hillabee, from Artussee, from all the towns that would resist the march of the white conquerors. Here we can gather strength to carry the fighting once more to our enemies. Go back to the land of the Cherokees, Beloved Woman, and tell them of Tohopeka where there are men and warriors who are not afraid to die.”

  “Not until I have worked beside you in building this fort. When it is finished I will go, and bring you Cherokee warriors to help defend it.”

  At the Great Bend with Menewa was Red Eagle, a half-blood Creek known to his white enemies as William Weatherford, and it was he who was directing construction of the stockade. Pine logs had to be floated across the river and rolled into place, ends fitted, and portholes cut. For several days Mary worked with an ax until her hands were blistered and her muscles and bones ached. At last the barricade extended across the isthmus from water’s edge to water’s edge. It was taller than any man, with upper and lower ranges of portholes, and it curved to the center so that a frontal attacking force would meet fire from two sides and two levels.

  On the day before Mary planned to start back to Okelogee, Creek runners came in from the west to warn Menewa of an approaching force of soldiers led by the Sharp Knife, Andrew Jackson. Their line of march was longer than the eye could reach, hundreds of walking soldiers, some in blue uniforms, and hundreds of mounted riflemen. Most disheartening of all were the many Cherokee auxiliaries led by chiefs who had once claimed friendship with the Creeks.

  “They have been bought with Sharp Knife’s false promises,” Menewa said, his voice bitter as he turned to Mary. “What will you do now, Beloved Woman of the Creeks?”

  “My place is here,” she told him. “I will live or die at Tohopeka.”

  But the next morning she was provoked to anger when Menewa ordered her to accompany the women and children to a place of safety across the river. “I can shoot as well as any warrior,” she protested.

  “Go with the women and children,” Menewa said sternly. “The seed of this tribe must be preserved.”

  “At my age,” she replied, “seed lie sterile within me.”

  “Go. They have need of you. You are their Beloved Woman.”

  And so she went with the other women, crossing the river in canoes, and then wading through a muddy swamp to a mound of high ground concealed by thick brush. They had to wait there in silence, without fires to dry their moccasins and leggings.

  Before midday she heard the first rattle of musket fire, followed by the continual crashing of small cannons. Although Mary saw none of the terrible scenes at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, two members of her family were there, and one lived to tell her of what he saw.

  Two days after Sehoya gave birth to a son, the Runner left Okelogee to journey into the Creek country in search of his mother. As she had done, he followed the old trail that led to Tallagalla, but on the third day somewhere along Chockelocko Creek he found a broad track left by a passing army, Andrew Jackson’s army. He knew that the Long Warrior and his Cherokees were with these marching men. Reasoning that Jackson would be in pursuit of Menewa’s Red Sticks, and that Mary would be wherever Menewa was, the Runner decided to follow the army—which he judged to be no more than a day or two ahead of him.

  The Runner did not overtake Jackson’s army, but he was close enough to hear the same clamor of opening battle that Mary heard. Crossing a narrow stream, he came out upon an open slope and was astonished to see masses of men drawn up in ranks before him. Two cannons, placed on a knoll facing the Red Sticks’ formidable rampart, were firing alternately but the balls sank harmlessly into the soft pine logs. From portholes in the stockade, Creek sharpshooters occasionally scored a hit on the gunners or on the blue-uniformed Regulars who were trying to furnish protective fire.

  After a few minutes of this futile exercise a bugle sounded and drums began to beat. Three horsemen came cantering to a halt on the Runner’s right, and he recognized the center man as Andrew Jackson. The general wore a sour expression upon his long emaciated face, and he held his unhealed arm against his chest. Shouted commands echoed across the field, and several formations of foot soldiers began moving toward the log barricade. Frontiersmen in coonskin caps and deerskin jackets joined the Regulars in blue to make a sudden charge upon the stockade. Before they could reach it, the Creeks opened fire from the portholes, and the attackers quickly withdrew with their casualties. The cannons also were being pulled back up the slope.

  Jackson was cursing and shouting. He sent one aide galloping down to his left, the other to his right. The Runner watched him as he painfully dismounted, holding to his bridle with his crippled arm while he u
rinated beside his horse.

  In the brush behind Jackson, the Runner saw a sudden blur of movement, and then a Creek warrior came racing out with uplifted tomahawk. Reacting instantly with a shout of warning, the Runner turned his horse toward Jackson, who had spun around and was fumbling for his sword. It fell to the ground. A second later the Runner was out of his saddle, catching up the weapon. When he swung its point toward the crouching warrior, the Red Stick jerked to a stop. A pistol fired then, so close to the Runner’s head that it made his ears ring. The Red Stick fell. Jackson strode forward, pistol in hand, and with the toe of his boot turned the body over. “Goddamned skulker,” he said, and stared hard at the Runner, who was handing him his sword. “Who are you? You have no deer tail on your head.”

  “Talasi the Runner. The Long Warrior’s son.”

  Jackson frowned. “Your people are over there across the river.” As he pointed to the bend of the Tallapoosa, his aides came galloping back, and Jackson turned toward them with a burst of profanity, not bothering to thank the Runner for saving his life.

  By the time the Runner got his horse across the muddy river, the staccato of musket fire was increasing in intensity behind him, and when he came up onto high ground, he saw that the cannons were firing over the stockade into the Creeks’ stronghold. He saw that the Red Sticks were completely surrounded. All around the bend of the river facing the peninsula were Cherokees wearing deer tails to distinguish them from the Red Sticks. And scattered along in the trees at their rear were mounted riflemen from Jackson’s Tennessee militia.