Beyond the Quiet Hills

by Aaron McCarver

  Rhoda did not move, but from where she stood, she suddenly began to sing softly the folk hymn What Wondrous Love Is This?—a favorite of the Appalachian frontier. She sang the first verse in Cherokee, which brought a smile to Sequatchie’s lips, and she sang the second verse in English. As the words rang out over the crowd, reminding them all of what Christ endured so that all might be forgiven, there was a sweetness and purity, not only in her voice, but in her eyes, as she stood there singing:

  What wondrous love is this, O my soul, O my soul,

  What wondrous love is this, O my soul!

  What wondrous love is this that caused the Lord of life

  To lay aside His crown for my soul, for my soul,

  To lay aside His crown for my soul?

  The sound of her voice rose over the clearing, and everyone stood transfixed, listening to the minister’s wife. Elizabeth, especially, was pleased. She’s come so far, she thought, and now I know at last she’s found her place.

  After Rhoda sang, the congregation sang several songs together, and then Paul began to preach. His sermon was very simple. He quoted the scripture “Prepare to meet thy God” from the Old Testament. Then he continued to speak of making preparations. He first of all repeated what he had said about how many worldly preparations there were to be made, then he paused as he looked over the group. Finally he said, “But I want to remind myself and to remind you, friends, that there are other preparations, too, that are far more important than buying land or building a house. We must prepare for the day when we will stand before God. One day you will be there as I will be there, and we will look into the face of God, and He will look into our hearts, and only one question is important: What did I do with the Lord Jesus Christ?”

  The sermon was simple but powerful, and finally, when Anderson said, “If there is one here who is not prepared to meet God, who does not have Jesus Christ and His precious blood covering his sins, now is the time to do that. Is there anyone who wants to meet the Lord and be converted?”

  A sound of sobbing came, and Iris looked around with shock to see her daughter go forward. Tears filled her eyes as she saw Amanda greeted by Rhoda and Reverend Anderson. The two wrapped their arms around the young girl, and Iris could see Amanda weeping as the two prayed for her.

  Abigail was happy to see Amanda go forward, then she whispered, “Look, Philip’s going, too, Sarah!”

  Sure enough, when Sarah turned to look, she saw Philip Baxter go forward, and she was happy. She whispered back, “Isn’t that wonderful?”

  Abigail suddenly turned and watched Jacob. The two of them had not said much about God. They were both always at every service, of course, but as she watched Jacob’s face, she saw it reflect some sort of a struggle. Why, he’s under conviction! Abigail thought. She began to pray for him, but then she saw a hardness come to his face. He dropped his head, bit his lip, and stood there staring at the ground.

  As the others began to go forward to wish Amanda and Philip well, she saw Jacob turn and walk away quickly, as if fleeing the place. A troubling thought sent a chill through Abigail. This man would be her husband, and yet he was not sharing in the joy of seeing others come to Christ. What if I’ve made a mistake? she wondered. She had no time to think on it, for she was caught up in the celebration, but the thought would not go away. The happiness that had been hers when she had risen that morning now fled, and she felt alone and disturbed.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  The Transylvania Purchase

  Richard Henderson had moved very quickly after Lord Dunmore’s War. Late in January 1775, he loaded six large wagons with trading goods and took them to Sycamore Shoals, where he stored them in specially built huts. The settlers and the Cherokee began to gather during the middle of March. After several days of festivities and talks, the underlying business of the meeting began to surface.

  It was Henderson’s determined proposal to buy outright the whole Cumberland Valley and the southern half of the Kentucky Valley. He offered to pay ten thousand pounds of English money, two in cash and eight in merchandise. Not everyone approved of Henderson’s plan, for the land had already been sold by the Iroquois in 1768 and had been claimed by Virginia. Many said it would be foolish to pay the Cherokee for land already relinquished by the Iroquois. Still, the leaders in the area knew that it was the Cherokee who would have to be pacified.

  During the preliminary period, Hawk and Sequatchie watched carefully so that there would be plenty of food for the gathering. The settlers contributed generously, and as the two of them stood talking on the day of the most important meetings, Hawk said, “I’m glad it has gone so well.” He looked around at the food that had been prepared and at the women who were working so cheerfully, then added abruptly, “I’m glad Crabtree didn’t show up.”

  “Probably miles away,” Sequatchie shrugged, “like Zeke Taylor.”

  “I’m not so sure of that,” Hawk replied reluctantly. He looked over at the Indians who were watching the preparations carefully and shook his head. “I just want this meeting to go well—no one to get hurt.”

  “I don’t think they’re in this part of the country. Boone has been looking for them, and he says he hasn’t even heard anything about them.”

  “I wish Boone were here,” Hawk remarked. “But he’s working on that trail to Kentucky. He’s so sure that this is going to work he wants a road ready.”

  “I believe he likes Kentucky best.”

  “I think so. If this land deal goes through, I think he’ll settle there.” Once again he looked around at the crowd of settlers and Cherokee and shook his head. “We’d better pray that this thing goes all right.”

  All of the great Cherokee chiefs had come to Sycamore Shoals, including Oconostota, the Little Carpenter, and others. Most of them did not wear their native dress but were wearing matching coats with ruffled shirts above their leggins. Several of them wore British medals, or more than one. Dangling from their earlobes were bangles, while around their necks gadgets of metal or beads hung low. It was a crowded gathering, for over twelve hundred braves, marked with colorful tattoos, some with slashes on their cheeks or forehead, crowded as closely as they could. Many of them, like Dragging Canoe, the son of Attacullaculla, were pockmarked from the ravages of smallpox.

  The settlers poured in from everywhere so that over six hundred Wataugans gathered for the meetings. Finally Henderson and his associates brought out the merchandise that had been carried by wagon over the mountains, but it was not yet time.

  Festivities and games had to take place first with much feasting, but finally the heart of the matter was reached. The Little Carpenter eloquently spoke for the merger. At the age of eighty he still had power in his voice and in his eyes and he swayed many.

  As soon as he finished, Chief Oconostota vehemently spoke against the sale, but it was Dragging Canoe who was by far the most hostile of all the Indians. He began by depicting the ancient glories of the Cherokee before the advent of the white men. Finally he cried out, “Where are all our grandfathers, the Delaware?” A murmuring went around the many braves, and he cried dramatically, “Will all of these goods satisfy the white men? No! They will simply want more, and sooner or later they will have all of the land that is ours!”

  Finally the Indians demanded time to speak among themselves, and it was at this meeting that Attacullaculla persuaded the older chiefs to comply with the sale.

  Dragging Canoe stood up abruptly. “I will never yield another foot of our land to the white men!” He turned and moved his hand to encompass the land, and his voice was loud and clear as he said, “A dark cloud will hang over this land. It will be a dark and bloody ground for those who come to settle in it!” Whirling, he turned and stalked away, leaving the council.

  Hawk said quietly to Sequatchie, “We will hear from him again. It will be bloody indeed, my friend.”

  Sequatchie shook his head sadly. “He is a man of blood, and your people will pay the price for coming over the mountai
ns.”

  Finally the sale was done, and on March 19, Elizabeth and Hawk made their way back toward their homestead. They had come in a wagon, bringing as much food as they could spare, and now as Hawk slouched, holding the lines easily, he was thinking over what had taken place.

  “Is the land really ours, Hawk?”

  Turning to Elizabeth, he nodded. “Yes. It’s ours.” He smiled at her then, put his arm around her, and drew her close. “You were worried about it, weren’t you?”

  “Yes, I was.”

  They rode on for a while saying nothing. The children were in the back of the wagon, exhausted from their long days, while Jacob had ridden home with Abigail, and Andrew had disappeared.

  Elizabeth suddenly turned and put her hand on Hawk’s arm. “It’s all come true—Patrick’s dreams.” When he looked at her with a slightly puzzled expression, she said, “It was back over the mountains that he first told me he wanted a place for me and for his children. He’s not here now, but the place is here, and Patrick’s dreams are coming true.”

  “That’s good,” Hawk murmured. He held her close then, but he was thinking not of Patrick MacNeal’s dreams but of the bitter words of Dragging Canoe: “It will be a dark and bloody ground.”

  Part IV

  The Young Lions Roar

  July 1775-July 1777

  The young lions roar after their prey,

  and seek their meat from God.

  Psalm 104:21

  Chapter Thirty

  Revolutionary Fervor

  Ever since the end of the French and Indian War, trouble had been brewing between England, and her colonies spread out along the eastern seaboard of America. These colonies were vastly different in many ways. In effect, the southern planter on a tobacco farm in Georgia had very little in common with a merchant in Boston. They were, however, united in one respect—they were all Englishmen who had become accustomed to having a firm say in their own destiny. Somewhere between the time that Queen Elizabeth I drew her last breath as Queen of England, and King James I drew his first as Sovereign of England, the British people lost their taste for absolute monarchy. And so it was in America. As England pressured the Colonies to pay what they considered their fair share of the French and Indian War, more and more of these transported Englishmen felt they were being turned into a community of serfs and slaves.

  Firebrands such as Samuel Adams began to proclaim the injustices that England manifested toward the Colonies and to agitate for a united country separate from England. England, however, was far away and the Hanoverian king, George III, was determined to rule under divine law. He felt that God had appointed him to draw the kingdom of England together, and any evidence of a revolution was enough to touch off his rather placid temper.

  In effect, most of the colonists understood little of the political and philosophical struggles that moved the English nobility and the leaders of the Colonies. Years after the beginning of the struggle, one of the men who took part in the first battle at Concord, Captain Preston, was asked, “Did you take up arms against intolerable oppressions?”

  “Oppressions?” the old man replied. “I didn’t feel them.”

  “But certainly you were oppressed by the Stamp Act.”

  “I never saw one of those stamps. I certainly never paid a penny for one of them.”

  “What about the tea tax?”

  “Never drank a drop of the stuff. The boys threw it all overboard.”

  “Then I suppose you have been reading John Locke, about the eternal principles of liberty?”

  “Never heard of him. We read only the Bible, the Catechism, Watts’ Psalms, and hymns, and the almanac.”

  Rather perplexed, the interviewer asked, “Sir, what was the matter? What did you mean in going to the fight?”

  Captain Preston replied, “Young man, what we meant in going for those Redcoats was this: We always had governed ourselves and we always meant to. England didn’t mean that we should.” Captain Preston was typical of the men who touched off the American Revolution. They had always had some hand in governing themselves—and they always meant to.

  The English Parliament and King George could not seem to grasp this spirit of autonomy. Even Governor Gage of Massachusetts, who had spent many years in America, should have known that America would rather fight than submit. He did feel apprehensive enough in early April of 1775 to send out a spy to feel out the temper of the colonists. John Howe made a long ride and found that the temper, indeed, was high. Stopping on his way back, Howe records in his diary how he stopped at a small house beside the road and spoke with an elderly man, who was cleaning a gun. “I asked him what he was going to kill. As he was so old, I should not think he could take sight in any game. He said there was a flock of Redcoats at Boston that he expected to be coming along soon. He also said he intended to hit one of them, and he expected they would be very good marks.” Rather shocked at the old man’s fiery words and obvious intentions, Howe asked if there were any Tories in the neighborhood.

  “Aye,” the old man replied. “There’s one Tory house, and I wished it were in flames.” Then turning to his wife, the man said, “Old woman, put in the bullet pouch a handful of buckshot, as I understand the English like an assortment of plums!”

  Gage did not heed the warning of his own spy. He decided to destroy the patriots’ munitions at Concord, and on one night in mid-April he dispatched a strong detail under Major John Pitcairn to perform this duty.

  The patriots, however, were watching every move Gage made. That night Paul Revere and William Dawes galloped along the countryside, stopping only to inform their fellow patriots and minutemen that the British were coming, and by the break of day, minutemen were on the march as far away as New Hampshire and Connecticut.

  By the time Major Pitcairn had marched his Redcoats all night and reached Lexington, he found a grim band of men lined up on the village common parallel to his line of advance. They were armed, and when the British halted, the major cried out loudly, “Disperse, ye rebels! Disperse!”

  No one knows who fired the first shot of the American Revolution, but it was fired, and when the action was over and the minutemen had faded away, eight men lay dead on the green.

  The British advanced and discovered that the munitions had been moved. After they were stopped at Concord by a body of determined patriots, they started back on the long march toward Boston. It was a long march indeed for the English. The Americans gathered now and stung them like wasps. From behind trees and stone walls they sent shot after shot into the orderly ranks of the British grenadiers. The march became a nightmare, and only the arrival of a relief party stopped the American forces from completely obliterating Major Pitcairn’s forces.

  All the news of the revolution filtered slowly to the inhabitants of Watauga. They were cut off by trackless forest over which there was no regular mail, and only bit by bit were they able to piece together what was happening. Some of them had even ceased to consider themselves as Englishmen and were doubtful of their true identity.

  ****

  Hawk paused and wiped the sweat from his brow and grinned over at Andrew and Jacob, who were caulking the sides of the new addition to the cabin. “Now that the babies are getting older,” he said, “I reckon we’re going to have to keep on building.”

  Andrew grinned abruptly and took a deep breath, causing the heavy muscles of his chest and arms to stir. “How many more young’uns you intending to have, Pa? Seems to me like you’re trying to repopulate the earth.”

  Hawk merely smiled and shook his head. “That’s up to you, Andrew—and to you, Jacob. I’m kind of looking forward to being a grandpa.”

  Jacob picked up a gourd and filled it with spring water in a wooden bucket, took three swallows, then threw the rest of the water out. He, too, managed to smile and said, “I’ll keep that in mind, Pa.”

  The three worked steadily for thirty minutes, then Hawk said, “I reckon that’s enough for a while.”

  “It’
s enough for me,” Jacob said, looking down at his hands. They were tougher now, of course, than they were when he had come to Watauga. He thought about how soft he had been and was suddenly proud of his strength and endurance.

  Andrew had been quiet all morning, but now he suddenly said, “Pa, what do you think we should do? About the Redcoats, I mean? Are we going to get in this war?”

  Hawk shook his head and a weariness passed across his face. “I never thought it would come to this,” he admitted. “I think the colonists are right in wanting to govern themselves. We know how they feel out here in Watauga. I guess we’ve gotten so used to doing for ourselves that we want everybody to have that privilege.” He picked up a straw from the ground, put it in his mouth, and chewed it slowly. “Better be careful, though. Samuel Adams may be biting off more than he can chew.”

  “Oh, Pa, that ain’t so!” Andrew protested. “We can whip them British. All I want is a chance, and, Pa, you heard about how down in Fincastle County in Virginia they already formed their own committee of safety. And the North-of-Holston settlements in Virginia, but they’re way off, just like we are.”

  Indeed Hawk was aware of the Fincastle movement. Evan Shelby had been made chairman of this “Pendleton District,” named after a Virginia patriot and statesman, Edward Pendleton. He had owned a large tract of land in the vicinity of the Long Island of the Holston River, and now it appeared that this district was aligned with Virginia in the revolution.

  “What about you, Jacob?” Andrew asked abruptly. “Don’t you want to get off a shot or two at them Redcoats?”

  “I don’t see that the fighting will come out here in these hills.”

  “Well, that could change fast, Jacob,” Hawk replied quickly. “The British will probably try to get the Cherokee and the other Indians to fight with them, and that will mean they’ll be coming against us here on the frontier.”