The Native American Experience

by Dee Brown

  For the new arrivals nothing else could be done but go into camp. Afterward, no one could remember how many days they stayed there, praying for the ice to clear from the river. Food for themselves and fodder for their horses ran low and had to be severely rationed. “Every day I seemed to be hungrier than the day before,” Dane recalled. “Jotham and I would go down into the river bottoms to strip bark from trees for the horses to eat, and we would dig up any kind of roots we could find for our family. A thousand others were doing the same thing, so that each day we would have to go farther. We were always cold, our feet aching from the cold, because our moccasins had worn to holes.”

  Then the sickness began, first among the children. Measles and whooping cough spread rapidly through the wagons. And then pneumonia struck the old people. All through the bitter nights from almost every wagon came the sounds of sickness—constant hacking coughs, the cries of children, rasping struggles for breath, the moaning of old men and women.

  One morning Pleasant’s hound was missing. Dane searched everywhere for the dog, but he was certain that someone had killed and eaten it. Chief Salali had given the commissary permission to kill one horse each day, but there was never enough meat for the thousand suffering campers, and the dogs disappeared one by one.

  Pleasant must have sensed what had happened, perhaps had heard someone speak of the missing dogs and the reasons why. He cried through the morning, and in the afternoon was coughing almost continuously, his body burning with fever. The train’s medicine man, old Jukias, who was exhausted and ailing himself, finally came and dosed the little boy with extracts of snakeroot and chinquapin leaves. The fever went down but the rattling cough continued.

  The next morning the Stalking Turkey was unable to rise from his blankets under the wagon, and the young men had to lift him inside. Two of the smaller McBee children were crying fitfully; the mottled rash of measles covered their faces and necks. The wagon had become an overcrowded hospital, with Griffa and Jerusha devoting most of their time to nursing the sick.

  That night, without saying anything, Mary took her two blankets and joined the men and boys under the wagon. “You’ll freeze here, Grandmother,” Dane said. “We’ll find room for you in another wagon.”

  “No,” she answered, “they’re all the same. Everybody has thrown out kettles and cooking things to make room for the sick.” She refused to be taken elsewhere, but when the cold began creeping from the frozen ground, Dane and Jotham made her lie between them, their bodies close to hers to share their youthful warmth.

  “I am old and good for nothing,” she grumbled. “I am but a burthen to my grandchildren.”

  “You keep us warm, Grandmother,” Dane said.

  “I have lived long enough,” she answered sleepily. “My children have loved me and I have loved them. I have laughed my way through this fine world since the Long Warrior found me, but there is no time for laughter now. The time has come to let my spirit go. I want to see the friends of my youth in the Land of Spirits.”

  “No,” Jotham protested. “We need you with us in our new land.”

  “To show us the way,” Dane added. He could not imagine a world in which there was no Grandmother Mary. Yet her body was frailer than he had ever known it. He could feel her bones through the blanket. Always he had thought of her as robust, indomitable, forever enduring. As sleep came on he remembered the long summer days under the arbor when she held him in her lap, her breasts naked, telling him stories of her youth while the Little Singing Stream burbled musically along.

  At daylight they were awakened by the hoarse whistle of the ferryboat. The ice had left the Mississippi! Recommending haste, the ferryman warned his passengers that more ice might come down the river, and all day the wagons rolled steadily aboard for the monotonous crossings, the bony half-starved horses barely able to pull the loads.

  In Cape Girardeau they found the expected supplies of fodder and cornmeal, but there was no meat of any kind. Chief John Ross’s representatives waiting there told them they would have to live off what wild game they could find across Missouri. They were advised to follow a northern route because so many wagons had already moved over the southern road that most of the deer had been killed or frightened away. From the Cherokees at Cape Girardeau they also heard the sad news that John Ross’s wife, Quatie, had died in Arkansas on the way west.

  Led by a guide who had already traversed the upper trail, they started northward, and now the dying began. Instead of two or three each day, five or six had to be hastily buried at every stop for night camp. The Stalking Turkey was one of the first of the old warriors to die. They found him one morning frozen in his blanket, and buried him beside the trail. Mary did not weep for her old friend, but she refused to let the wagons move out until her grandsons had cut and trimmed a pole to mark his grave.

  Not until after they passed the town of Farmington and turned westward into thick forests did the hunters, using only bows and arrows, find deer enough to supply everyone with venison. Yet the deaths continued among those weakened by exposure and illnesses. Pleasant recovered slowly, but two of the younger McBees died on successive days and were buried near the town of Springfield.

  Each day of travel became an ordeal, a struggle to survive the endless miles. Somewhere after they left Washburn’s Prairie and entered Arkansas, so many were afflicted with a violent dysentery that one morning there were scarcely enough men able to harness the teams. Neither John McBee nor his wife had the strength to sit erect, and after Dane and Jotham hitched the horses to the wagon, Griffa and Jerusha took turns handling the reins. So many horses had gone lame and so many wagons were at the point of total disintegration that the two young men were in constant demand along the length of the slow-moving train. Fifteen died that day, and there were barely that many left who were strong enough to dig graves in which to bury them. Jukias, the medicine man, had exhausted his supply of astringent remedies and could offer the sick nothing more than prayer songs. During that night Jotham fell ill with griping pains in his abdomen, and at dawn they discovered so many others had been similarly afflicted that it would be impossible to move the wagons.

  Griffa got the morning fire going until water was boiling in the pot, and then Mary showed her how to soak an old cloth to press against Jotham’s belly, keeping hot water dripping upon it from a pan. “Black drink would ease the hurting,” Mary said. “But we have none, nor any coffee. All I can offer my grandson to stop his misery is hot water.”

  Jerusha brought Pleasant to the fire to warm him while she sifted part of their wagon’s daily ration of cornmeal into a pot and poured hot water over it. This would be their breakfast. Dane rolled out from under the wagon and began saddling his horse.

  About this time Chief Salali and the Cherokee guide came riding up to the fire. “What are we to do, Salali?” Mary asked. “If we must stay here we shall all die.”

  “I do not know, Amayi,” he replied. “The guide tells me we are very near the Cherokee Nation, that in three or four days of travel we can reach Park Hill, where there will be medicine and better food and shelter.”

  “There are not able drivers for half the wagons,” she said.

  “Yes, but I have been thinking that those who are able should go on,” the chief said, uncertainty in his tone.

  She frowned at him. “We cannot leave any of our people here without food, no one to hunt venison for them.”

  “Jukias has nothing to give them.”

  “Last night through the trees I saw lights.” Mary pointed toward the west. “There is a settlement not far from here.”

  “Cane Hill, they call it,” the guide said. “The Unegas there could do nothing for us if they would.”

  “Most settlements have a Unega doctor,” she went on. “He would have medicine for running bowels.”

  The chief shook his head. “He would sooner give us poison.”

  “Dane!” she called to her grandson. “I want you to ride to that town and bring a Unega doct
or back to me. Not one wheel of this wagon train will turn until you come back.”

  “Amayi, Amayi,” Salali muttered. Dane glanced at the chief, who shrugged and motioned for him to do what his grandmother wanted.

  “Wait!” Jerusha cried. “I’m going with you.”

  “Why?” Dane turned and stared at her in surprise.

  “Look at you. With your dirty hands and face, your bushy greasy hair and filthy clothes, you would frighten a catamount. No doctor would come with you.” Jerusha ran a comb quickly through her hair, pulled a faded red ribbon from the pocket of her apron and banded it around her head.

  “She is right, sogonisi,” Mary said. “Saddle Jotham’s horse for her.”

  Jerusha had to ride astraddle on Jotham’s saddle, and when she and Dane came trotting into Cane Hill’s single street, half the inhabitants stopped what they were doing to watch the strange pair ride into their town. At the end of the street was a small shed built of slabs, with a crudely lettered sign on the front: BLACKSMITH. Scattered around the building were several wagons in various stages of disrepair.

  “Look!” Dane pointed at a man who was pounding away at a wheel spoke.

  “Mr. Tim Rogers!” Jerusha exclaimed, as amazed as he was.

  Hearing his name called, Rogers looked up and recognized them at once. When they rode up to the blacksmith, Dane dismounted and grabbed Rogers’s offered hand. Both began talking at once, each trying to explain to the other how chance had brought them together in Cane Hill.

  “Is there a doctor in this town?” Jerusha interrupted. She was still in the saddle.

  “There is a doctor of sorts.” Rogers looked up at her, a faint smile forming on his lips when he noticed the way her black dress billowed to the stirrups. “You want to trade for a sidesaddle, Miss Jerusha?”

  “No,” she replied impatiently. “This is Jotham’s horse. Where is the doctor?”

  “See that barbershop down the street? Most likely you’ll find a female herb doctor, name of Saviah Manning, in there or upstairs over it.”

  “A woman doctor? Is there no other?” Disappointment showed on her face, but she turned the horse and looked back over her shoulder. “You coming, Dane?”

  “Go on. I’ll be there.” He wanted to know why Rogers had opened his blacksmith shop in Arkansas instead of in the new Cherokee Nation.

  “Things are bad over there, Dane. Soon there’s bound to be real trouble between the Cherokees who supported the treaty and came out here first—the Ridge-Boudinot people—and John Ross’s followers like you and me who were forced to come. So many of our people have died on the long march—”

  “Don’t tell me about dying, Mr. Rogers. We’ve buried over two hundred. I didn’t know the other trains had lost many people, too.”

  “It’s been terrible. My wife and I came with one of the first removal parties, traveling crowded on boats most of the way, sickness and death day after day. Measles took the children and bilious fever took the old. Some of the strong went, too. We lost a third of our party, buried along the riverbanks from Tennessee through Arkansas.”

  “We were told about that,” Dane said. “For us, it’s been no better in the wagons.”

  They exchanged more information, and Rogers again warned Dane that conditions were bad in the Cherokee Nation. “They’re starting to build the new capital. Tahlequah, they’ll call it. I thought some of putting my smithy there, but I don’t like the looks of things. The new arrivals have nothing, they could give me nothing for my work. And the treaty people, although they’ll soon be far outnumbered, have the upper hand right now because they came out here with plenty of government money.”

  “Like my Uncle Opothle,” Dane said.

  “Opothle’s doing well for himself, indeed. His trading post is the best around the Park Hill community. He wanted me to blacksmith near his place, but no, I told my wife we’d move over here in Arkansas where we’d be safe if a showdown comes. Look, I’ve been rebuilding these old wagons that wore out coming from Tennessee and selling a few.”

  Jerusha’s high thin voice was calling Dane from the front of the barbershop. “I see she found the herb doctor,” Rogers said. “You married that girl yet, Dane?”

  “No.” He put his foot in the stirrup and mounted.

  “Well, she acts like it for sure. Why don’t you marry her and settle down and work with me?”

  “I might do that, Mr. Rogers, after we get the wagons into the Nation. Good-bye.”

  “Good luck, Dane. Give my good word to Creek Mary and tell Jotham I wish him restored to health.”

  Dane trotted his horse on to the barbershop, where a tall black-haired dark-skinned woman mounted on a black mare was waiting with Jerusha. The woman wore men’s jean trousers, a fringed buckskin jacket, and a wide-brimmed flat-topped black hat with a yellow-dyed feather in the band. There was something Indian about her that reassured Dane. “The doctor will go with us,” Jerusha said.

  “Who is he?” the woman asked, staring briefly at Dane and then turning her attention to the adjustment of a saddlebag that was so badly worn Dane could see surgical instruments poking through cracks in the leather.

  “Dane’s his name,” Jerusha replied flatly. “Dane, this is Dr. Saviah Manning.”

  “Is he your husband?” Dr. Manning asked.

  “That dirty no-account Indian, most certainly not.” She slapped her reins and started her horse down the muddy street. “Let’s go.”

  The three rode abreast as they left the town on the crooked road. Dane kept glancing at Jerusha, who was gazing straight ahead with no expression on her face. She had changed somehow. She had never behaved in such a manner. Always before she had deferred to him. Now she was acting like—well, like his grandmother, ordering everybody about in a most independent manner.

  When they came to a steep hill the horses slowed and Jerusha broke the silence. “Dr. Manning, may I ask you a question?”

  “Ask it.”

  “If he,” she said, indicating Dane with a scornful jerk of her elbow, “had come to you instead of I, would you have agreed to bring medicine to our wagons?”

  The tall woman gave Dane a searching look. “To be honest, I probably would not,” she said, and her white teeth showed in a quick smile.

  “Because he’s Indian?” Jerusha continued.

  “I’m half Indian myself, miss. No, because looking at him I might’ve feared he meant to rob or rape me.” This time she laughed and Jerusha joined in.

  “I told you, Dane.” There was a triumphant note in Jerusha’s voice. Her face was turned toward him when he looked at her. For the first time in many days, their eyes met and he saw an unfamiliar radiance in the blueness. He could not tell whether it was love or hate. When the horses reached the top of the hill, Jerusha urged her mount into a quick trot, racing away from him and the doctor.

  Waiting for them at the wagon with Mary and the others was Jukias. After shaking hands with Saviah Manning, the medicine man studied her face with grave interest, and then asked what manner of remedies the female doctor gave to her patients.

  “You should be pleased to receive remedies of any kind from me, Cherokee,” she replied quickly. “Your people are invaders of my people’s lands. I am half Osage.”

  “Ah.” Jukias’s expression revealed his apprehension. “But we do not come into Osage lands of our own will.”

  “I know that.” She kneeled to open the worn medicine bag. “My father was a white physician who lived among the Osages. My mother was Osage.”

  “You will help us even though we are—”

  “Before he died my father made me take an oath. ‘Whatsoever house I enter, there will I go for the benefit of the sick.’ I have doctored Cherokees before this. I know the white man’s medicine, but I also am an herb doctor as you are, Jukias. My extracts and distillations come from plants gathered in the hills around here. With one exception. My laudanum I must buy in St. Louis.”

  “Does that come from a plant?” Juki
as asked.

  “From the opium poppy. Mixed with an infusion from dried persimmons and wild cherries, it will stop the bloodiest flux, easing all pain.”

  Jukias bowed. “We welcome you with our hearts, Osage doctor.”

  For three days, Dr. Saviah Manning stayed with the wagon train, leaving only occasionally to return to Cane Hill to refill her medicine bag. On the third day the dying stopped, and most of the sick were sufficiently recovered for the wagons to resume the journey. Chief Salali offered to pay the doctor from his diminishing reserve of treasury notes, but she would take only enough to replenish her stock of laudanum. When the wagons moved out, she rode with them as far as the Cane Hill cutoff, and there Mary ordered John McBee to stop the wagon while she climbed out to give Saviah Manning a present. It was the treasured hourglass that the Long Warrior had brought her from Nashville a quarter of a century past. “I give you a Cherokee name,” Mary told her. “Suyeta, the Chosen One. From this day you are one of us.”

  “I am also Osage and white,” Saviah whispered to her. “I live in that lonely place between the light and dark races.”

  Next day they crossed the border into the Cherokee Nation West. Winter still held the land, but the cold had lost its bite, and for the first time in weeks the sounds of laughter and banter could be heard as the wagons creaked westward.

  Before the exiles left their camp of sickness near Cane Hill, Timothy Rogers had come out to visit old friends among those from Okelogee. For Jotham he drew a rough map indicating the locations of Opothle’s house and trading post. On the morning of the third day after leaving Cane Hill, the wagons reached a road fork, and Salali ordered the train halted. Creek Mary, Dane, Jotham, Jerusha, and Pleasant transferred their scanty belongings to one of the empty commissary wagons, and after tearful good-byes and promises of early reunions they set out for Opothle’s house.