The Native American Experience

by Dee Brown

  “Jerusha and I continued to see each other secretly. Some nights we would meet in the asi, and some nights in the schoolhouse. Her condition did not show, but she would make me put my hands over the rounding of her belly where our child was growing. We could not stay away from each other. We could not breathe for long without each other. We prayed for time to stand still.

  “One night we were in the asi, half asleep in each other’s arms, when we heard shouts and the pounding of running feet. The sounds went on and on. Jerusha was sure the Pony Guards were raiding Okelogee. I went to the entrance of the asi and looked out. I could see a dim glow of firelight far up the Little Singing Stream, and the smell of smoke was on the wind. The sounds of loud voices came from the direction of the light. A hundred paces down the pathway I could see the silhouettes of Mary and Walina.

  “I went back inside and dressed and told Jerusha to stay there while I went to see what was happening. She was trembling with fear, still certain that the Pony Guards had come again.

  “I soon found out what had happened. Someone had set fire to the McAlpin house. Turpentine had been doused and pitch pine piled along one side, still burning when I got there, but most of the house was gone. The nearest neighbors had come in time to pull Isaac and Harriet out. Their bed was afire. They were not badly burned but they were both dead. It was later decided they had died from breathing smoke in their sleep before the flames reached them. Everyone was sure that Jerusha had been burned up in the fire. My father told me that. I did not know what to say. I stammered out that she had escaped and was safe at our house. He gave me a strange look, but said nothing.

  “At the first chance I slipped back to the asi. I had to tell Jerusha what had happened, and then dragged her across the yard to the house screaming and sobbing. Walina and Mary met us at the door, and I told them what had happened. They tried to comfort Jerusha, but she was out of her mind by that time, I think.

  “During the next few days she spent most of the time in bed weeping. Whenever I found a chance to be alone with her she would tell me that her sins had caused the deaths of her brother and Harriet. Her God had punished her by killing them, she said. It did no good for me to tell her that someone had set the fire, that everybody in Okelogee was sure that Moonherrin’s son-in-law had done it. I kept telling her that if she had not been ‘sinning’ with me in the asi, that she would be dead, too, but that did no good either. I was sure she was going to die, but she did not.

  “While she was recovering, either Walina or Mary discovered that she was soon to have a child. Jerusha did not tell them I was the father, but Mary knew well enough. I was frightened nearly out of my wits when my grandmother began scolding me for not heeding her warnings about Jerusha, but before she was finished with me she was laughing. She knew I would not dare make Jerusha my wife.

  “But when my father learned of the situation he said that I was now responsible for Jerusha and her child, doubly so because she was Unega and had no clan. If she were Cherokee, he said, that would be a different matter because a clan family would take care of her if I did not choose to marry. I told him I had sworn to Grandmother Mary that I would never wed a Unega, and could not do so. ‘If the family tries to force me to marry her,’ I said, ‘I will run away to the West rather than do so.’ Well, you remember the old Cherokee way; it is the uncle, not the father, who has power over the son. As angry as the Runner was at Opothle for favoring removal of our nation to the West, he went to see him, and Uncle Opothle soon sought me out to give his advice.

  “ ‘The girl must have a man to protect her,’ he said, stroking his gray beard and giving me an occasional darting glance.

  “I told him why I could not be Jerusha’s husband. I also made it clear that Jerusha knew from the beginning that I could not marry her.

  “ ‘Yet you swived with her,’ he said accusingly.

  “ ‘She came to my bed first,’ I answered.

  “He shook his head, sighed, and shook his head again. ‘We’ll see, we’ll see what can be done.’ I knew that he was as afraid of Grandmother Mary as my father and I were.

  “In the midst of all these family trials, a letter came down to Jerusha from the Cherokee agency at Hiwassee. The missionary society that had supported Isaac McAlpin offered to transport Jerusha to a Methodist orphanage in Pennsylvania.

  “The only person in our family who was pleased by that letter was my father. For him it offered an end to all our obligations. Neither Mary nor Walina made any immediate comment, but I could see they were both disturbed by the letter. As for Jerusha she took to her bed again, weeping as though all hope of life had ended. And I? That all happened a long, long time ago, but I can still feel the wrench at my heart when I faced the realization that Jerusha might vanish from my life forever. What a prideful young fool I was not to take her then for my wife!

  “After a fit of crying, Jerusha begged Mary to let her continue to live with us, and to my surprise both Mary and Walina agreed that she could do so if she wished. Soon afterward my father got Grandmother Mary out in the yard and faced up to her. Why on earth did she want that yellow-haired Unega, heavy with child, staying on with us? ‘Because,’ my grandmother answered sharply, ‘her child will have my blood.’

  “So that was that. The only problem left was the way Jerusha followed me around whenever I was in or near the house. She began imitating the way I moved, the way I talked. She went beyond the limits of the heart.

  “It was my cousin Jotham who solved that problem, probably at the suggestion of Uncle Opothle. With the closing of the school after Isaac McAlpin died in the fire, Opothle arranged for Jotham to become an apprentice blacksmith with the nephew of his father-in-law. Mr. John Rogers’s nephew, Timothy, had set up a smithy near the Rogers farm, and Jotham was fast becoming skillful at shoeing horses.

  “When Jotham invited me to learn blacksmithing with him, and share his room in Uncle Opothle’s big house, I jumped at the chance to get away from Jerusha. At first I felt like a traitor to her, and especially to my family, because of their feelings toward Opothle and his pro-emigration friends. I not only deserted a young woman who was going to become the mother of my child, but I joined the camp of the enemy. Not very admirable, was it?

  “At the time, however, I could see no other way out, and I was soon busy enough learning how to use a bellows and tongs, how to hold a horse’s foot steady, how to clean and pare a hoof with a knife and file, and char it with a red-hot iron shoe that I had shaped to make a smooth fit.

  “Mr. Tim Rogers’s speciality was wagonmaking, and both Jotham and I favored that sort of work over shoeing horses. In building the wagons we made everything except the wheels, which were brought down from a wheelwright’s place at Hiwassee Garrison. I was mightily pleased one day when Mr. Rogers told Jotham and me that he was sending us up to Hiwassee on a wagon to bring back a load of wheels. Neither of us had ever been that far from Okelogee before, and it was a great adventure. We were gone about three weeks, waiting for the wheels to be made ready. When we got back to Okelogee one day about dark and drove into Uncle Opothle’s place, Priscilla came running out to meet us. ‘Dane, you better hurry over to Grandmother Mary’s,’ she called to me.

  “ ‘What’s the matter?’ I asked.

  “ ‘Jerusha’s had her baby.’

  “Now, I could not exactly describe to you my feelings—scared, happy, outlandish. All I wanted was to be where Jerusha was. I ran all the way—it was like I had dreamed myself from one world into another, dancing maybe all the way to the house and through the doorway. Grandmother Mary, the Runner, and Walina were sitting by the fire, their heads raised up facing me in surprise. Mary was holding a naked baby that looked no bigger than a skinned squirrel, spooning something into its mouth. All around the fire were cracked hickory nuts; she was feeding the baby hickory milk.

  “ ‘Where’s Jerusha?’ I demanded.

  “ ‘In bed where she should be,’ Mary replied. ‘Look, sogonisi, here is the first great-
grandchild in which flows the blood of Creek Mary.’

  “ ‘Is she all right?’

  “ ‘This is a man child, not a she.’

  “ ‘I mean Jerusha.’

  “ ‘She is well. Except that her milk flows poorly.’ She offered me the light-skinned child, my son, but the little creature began spitting hickory milk, crying and squirming, and I handed it back to her.

  “ ‘Has she given a name for it?’ I asked.

  “Mary made a face. ‘I wanted to give him a Creek name, but Jerusha calls him Pleasant.’

  “ ‘Pleasant McAlpin,’ my father said, giving me a cold look.

  “ ‘Ah, well,’ said Mary, caressing the pale skin of her great-grandchild, ‘It is a better name than John Ridge gave his new-born son.’

  “ ‘Andrew Jackson Ridge.’ My father spat the names out angrily. ‘The Ridges are traitors truly, seeking favors now from old Sharp Knife—who would drive us from our homes—by giving his hated name to one of their young.’

  “I went on into the back room to see Jerusha.”

  23

  IN 1835, THE YEAR THAT Dane became twenty-one, the Congress of the United States—which viewed the inhabitants of the Cherokee Nation as vassals subject to the whims of that majestic body—appropriated funds for a head count. The number was needed by bureaucrats employed by the War Department’s Office of Indian Affairs so that estimates could be made of the costs of removing the tribe from its eastern homeland to a distant tract somewhere beyond the Mississippi River. The census takers reported that within the states of Georgia, North Carolina, Alabama, and Tennessee 16,542 Cherokees resided, although undoubtedly there were considerably more than that.

  In an effort to cloak with legitimacy this enforced removal of an entire nation, the War Department appointed a special commissioner, the Reverend John F. Schermerhorn, to arrange a special treaty in which the Cherokees themselves would voluntarily agree to abandon their homeland. Schermerhorn was a bombastic man, capable of considerable deceit in his dealings with those who held less power than he. Because of his booming voice as well as for other reasons, the Cherokees named him the Devil’s Horn.

  The Devil’s Horn let it be known that those who supported the removal treaty would be well paid for their property, and that the American government would also provide funds for transporting their goods and persons to the Cherokee Nation West. Dealing only with the Ridge-Boudinot pro-removal group, the Devil’s Horn announced a treaty council at New Echota on the third Monday of the Big Winter Moon. Using typefaces designed for Sequoyah’s syllabary that were purloined from the office of the Phoenix, he arranged for broadsides to be printed and distributed throughout all the Cherokee towns. The Devil’s Horn promised that each Cherokee attending his council would be given a mackinaw blanket of the finest quality of wool, and would be issued funds to cover subsistence costs. Furthermore, his broadside decreed, those Cherokees of voting age who failed to attend the council would be counted as giving their consent to whatever was decided at New Echota.

  A few weeks before the date set for the convening of the council, Georgia authorities banned any further publication of the Cherokee Phoenix. A unit of the Georgia Pony Guard crossed the Tennessee line, made an unlawful arrest of the Nation’s principal chief, John Ross, and carried him off to a Georgia jail. He was charged with plotting an insurrection among black slaves, a completely false accusation but one that would prevent Ross from interfering with Commissioner Schermerhorn’s plans during these crucial days.

  Not long afterward at New Echota, the Ridge-Boudinot group and a few of their friends and followers gathered in response to the call of the Devil’s Horn. They totaled scarcely three hundred, only eighty of them being eligible to vote, or less than two percent of the official population of the Cherokee Nation. The council itself had no tribal legality; it had been called by a representative of the American government, not by the Cherokee chiefs. Yet most of the Cherokee leaders who were there believed themselves to be patriots, their aim being to save their Nation. Among them was Opothle Kingsley, but no other member of Creek Mary’s family was represented.

  None of the usual good-natured banter and familiar reminiscing accompanied the proceedings. Old Major Ridge, his once curly dark hair now faded to a flaxen yellow, set the solemn tone with his oration: “This land came to us from the Maker of Breath, but the Unegas are now stronger than we. We cannot remain here in peace and comfort. If we stay here, we will lose everything, the eternal land, our lives, and the lives of our children. We must give up this land and go over beyond the Great River.”

  One by one most of the council members rose to speak. “I have spent more than sixty summers and winters in the Cherokee Nation,” Opothle said. “Although my blood is Creek, I have lived as a Cherokee from infancy. I love the hills, the valleys, the forests and waters of their sweet country in which I have prospered well. Yet it is with the people, the Nation, that we must be concerned. To save the Nation we must move the Nation. Our lives have been threatened by our own people if we sign this treaty. My own blood kin, my mother, my brother, have turned against me. We can die, but the great Cherokee Nation will be saved. Who is there here not willing to die if the great Nation can be saved?”

  The signing of the Reverend Schermerhorn’s treaty was an even more solemn occasion than the speech-making. The Devil’s Horn read the treaty to them one more time, and a committee of twenty signed their names to it. “I may be signing my death warrant,” Major Ridge said. Opothle, one of the last to sign, had tears in his eyes. “I may die for this, but I see it as the only way to save our Nation.”

  Next morning the Devil’s Horn gave them the promised subsistence money and the blankets, and they started back to their different homes.

  In the meantime Chief John Ross, having been released from jail, was already spurring his followers to gather signatures to a document denouncing the Schermerhorn treaty and declaring it null and void. Ignoring her aching bones, Creek Mary rode off on her pony to nearby towns to persuade those who had not done so to add their names to the John Ross declaration. The Runner rode even farther into the hills only to find dozens of others engaged in the same task. Within a few weeks the chief was in Washington with the names of twelve thousand Cherokees, two-thirds of the Nation, almost all the eligible voters, protesting the illegal Treaty of New Echota. Many members of the United States Senate—that arm of Congress empowered to determine the fate of all the native Indian peoples through treaties—were impressed by this display of democratic unity from a people who had placed their faith in the white man’s courts and laws.

  In the Moon When the Mayhaws Were Ripening in the hills of Georgia, the all-knowing senators, reflecting their constituents’ greed for land, ratified the Treaty of New Echota by a margin of one vote. The Cherokee Nation East no longer existed. With what it considered unusual generosity toward these dispossessed people who had tried to live in the culture of their oppressors, the American government allowed them two years to abandon their homeland to the hordes of land-hungry border settlers who were already invading their country.

  While the Cherokees were still stunned by the shock of realization, news came from the south that soldiers were herding thousands of their former friends and enemies, the Creeks, toward the Indian Territory beyond the Mississippi. Those who resisted were driven off in manacles and chains.

  Mary wept when she heard of these things, but when she learned that the Chickasaws and Choctaws were suffering the same fate, she began preparing herself and her family for the inevitable. But even before she foresaw their coming, a company of blue-uniformed United States dragoons armed with sabers and carbines rode suddenly into Okelogee and began a methodical search of homes for weapons. She had time enough to conceal her old flintlock pistol in a basket of Pleasant’s dirty baby-clothing, but the family’s two rifles were in plain view on their wall pegs when four dragoons stormed inside without a word of explanation or apology. They took the rifles from the wall, turned
all the beds inside out, searched the root cellar, opened Jerusha’s trunk, lifted Pleasant from his cradle, dumped the dirty clothing from the basket and found Mary’s pistol. Similar searches and confiscations were in progress in every town in the Nation, and within a short time the Cherokees were left with only a few old bows and arrows with which to hunt wild game or defend themselves.

  One day early in that spring of 1837, Opothle visited his mother and half brother in a final effort to persuade them to travel west with him. Although the Runner would neither talk with Opothle nor look upon his face, he sat on the bench beneath the brush arbor listening politely. “If you go now, Talasi,” Opothle said, “you will be well paid. If you wait until the soldiers force you to go, and that will be sooner than you think, you and your family will have nothing but what you wear upon your backs when you reach Indian Territory.”

  Mary looked hard at her oldest son. “Talasi the Runner cannot be bought by the Unegas, Opothle. His flesh and his bones are of this land, this Cherokee Nation. His heart cannot betray the earth of which he is a part.”

  With his fist, Opothle struck one of the arbor posts with such force that it set the covering of branches to trembling. “Can’t you see that the only way we can save the Cherokee Nation is to go to the new land? Land is land. What does it matter if my flesh and bones turn to dust here or in the Indian Territory? But I wish to live yet a good while. I wish to live on account of my children. That is why I am going.”

  “If my Creek blood was stronger in you than your Unega blood,” she said, “you would stay here beside us, Opothle.”

  He reached for her, but she drew away from his hand. When he spoke she refused to look at him. “Mother Amayi, it pains me to leave you and Talasi. But I must follow my course.”