Heart's Surrender

by Rosanne Bittner

  “Adam, what happened…to him? Are you sure he’s dead?”

  “I am very sure!” he hissed. “He died as horrible a death as such a man deserves.”

  She felt a chill at his words. Something was wrong. How was he so sure? Yet for the moment it didn’t matter. Everything hurt too much. The memories were too ugly and painful. She didn’t want to know right now just how Douglas Means died—only that he really was dead. She didn’t have to be afraid of him any longer.

  “Adam, at least lie down. You can lie next to Andrea if you wish. She needs you to hold her, and you need to rest.”

  He finally straightened, threw his head back, and whispered a prayer in the Cherokee tongue to the Maker of Breath. Then he turned to his mother. “He is dead!” he told her through gritted teeth. “And I celebrate his death!”

  She frowned. “Who are you talking about?”

  His eyes were wild and gleaming. “Douglas Means,” he answered.

  Her eyes widened. “How do you know this?”

  He was tempted to shout out that he had killed the man, but no one must know, not even his family could know until they were safely West. “Militia men came this morning. They tried to accuse me of killing him, but I was chained to that post all night. I do not know who did it, but he is a good man!”

  Adam’s mother watched him carefully, her eyes dropping to his black, swollen wrists. It couldn’t be. Surely he really had been chained all night.

  “Do not let the hatred I see in your eyes eat at you, my son,” she told him. “Always you have been my fine son, a good man who—”

  “Good?” He turned and spat. “What did being good do for me, Mother?” He waved his arm around, indicating his family. “It got me this—a tortured wife, terrified children, an abused mother and sister, poverty! I am tired of being good, Mother, and when we get to the hated land where they are sending us, there are some traitors who will die for not standing with us!”

  He was different, as though the beating had kicked meanness into his blood. She could not know that there was a thing that fed his hatred. He had tasted blood himself, another man’s blood. He had killed, and it had felt good and right. His wife and family had been cruelly used, and there were more to blame than Douglas Means. They would all pay.

  “Lie down beside Andrea, my son. Speak no more of hatred and killing for now. Neither she nor your sons need to hear such talk. We are told that John Ross is yet in Washington, pleading for a postponement of our trip West until the autumn when it is cooler. In this heat it is bad enough just to sit here. It would be worse on us to be traveling.”

  He looked up at the hot sky, then around at the withered, hopeless people who sat in little bunches, tending to their own. “They deliberately chose a hot, open place for us.” He swallowed. “Look at them. They fought so hard, remained peaceful, obeyed the laws, made no trouble for anyone; yet look at them now. And this is only the beginning. We have a long journey ahead of us.”

  She reached out and hesitantly touched his hand. “Yes, son. For now you must rest. I have a special ointment the doctor gave me for Andrea’s back. Later more must be put on her wounds. I will let you do it. She would be soothed by your touch.”

  His heart tightened. “My touch? I can only hope the day will come when she will want me to touch her again.”

  Rose’s eyes teared. “She will want you to touch her. Love can overcome many things, Adam.”

  His stricken look tore at her heart. “I will lie down beside her. There is nothing more I can do for now.”

  Adam’s mother studied the badly bruised ribs, then frowned. “Where are your gauze wrappings?”

  He met her eyes. “What wrappings?”

  “The doctor told us you had injured ribs and that he had wrapped them.”

  Adam looked down, ran a hand over his stomach. “I…took them off.”

  “Why!”

  “I just did!” he snapped. “What does it matter why! I wanted to hurt! I did not want any help!”

  She sighed deeply. “I do not understand. There is something you are not telling me, my son. But it does not matter for now. I am glad they released you so we could be together. Please make no trouble. It would be hard on Andrea if they took you away again. She has cried so much for you, was more worried for you than for herself.”

  Adam turned back to his wife, smoothing her hair again. “It was the same for me.” His eyes teared again. “My poor Andrea! Everything is so different than when we used to talk under the oak tree…isn’t it?” He leaned down and kissed her forehead. “I promise you that one day you will again live like a queen, Andrea Chandler. You’ll have a fine home and servants, and we will be free to go and sit under the oak tree. I swear it to Esaugetuh Emissee.”

  Andrea trained her thoughts on the oak tree, on being fourteen again and lying in the arms of her sixteen-year-old Cherokee boy. “Adam,” she whimpered. How she loved him! Yet she wondered if she would ever again be able to lie beneath him and enjoy that sweet kind of love. Before she had been only his. Now Douglas Means had soiled her and she wanted to die, for Adam Chandler was the only man she had ever loved or had ever wanted. And the terrible journey west was before them. Could things ever again be the same between them?

  He lay down beside her then, gently slipping one arm under her face so that she could rest her head against his shoulder. Adam, her sweet, beautiful Adam. It was a start.

  Recovery was not easy in the hot, unsanitary camp. Insufficient provisions had been made for such a large number of people. Water was scarce, and the outhouses, overused, were hot and swarming with flies. All dignity had been stripped from the proud Cherokee, as had most of their belongings. As Andrea and Adam slowly recovered from their physical afflictions, they worried about the children, for cholera was beginning to strike the camp. There was not time to talk about each other, about Andrea’s ordeal; there was no privacy for touching and holding and finding one another again. The heat was oppressive, the food half-spoiled; and despondency prevailed, as they all sat waiting in the hated prison camp for cooler weather for traveling.

  The cholera spread. Many died, including Ruth’s and James’s four-month-old son. Little Charles Adam was buried in the hills behind the camp, and there was no consoling Ruth. Throughout the camp the wailing of other mothers could be heard, the crying of hungry children, and the constant hymn singing.

  The most dangerous disease, however, was not cholera or measles or dysentery; a much more dangerous disease was among them, an emotional disease—hopelessness and depression. To be so confined is the greatest destroyer of the Indian, and it was destroying the Cherokee. Many of the old ones or sick ones willed their own deaths, refusing to eat or drink, choosing to die on their beloved mother soil rather than to leave it.

  And through it all Andrea saw a part of her own husband dying. In his attitude toward her he remained steadfast, his sweet affection and gentle understanding the only things that helped her keep her sanity. But she felt a hardness growing in him, a bitterness that made him constantly talk about getting revenge for what was happening to his family and his people. The focus of his hatred began to shift from the government to those who had given up early and had turned tail to run to Indian Territory, those who had not stood with him and John Ross and the majority of the Cherokee who had so bravely fought to stay in their beloved land. Often she saw him talking in little groups with some of the other rebellious young men. James had joined them, his sorrow over his lost son bringing to him frightening changes that made him seem like a different man. Adam seldom spoke of John Ross anymore, but turned his attentions to the traitors—men like John Ridge, Elias Boudinot, and Luke Cloud. He especially talked of Luke Cloud, and of how he would finish what he’d started with the man once they got to Indian Territory.

  “He will pay for my sister’s rape and my mother’s, too—and for my father’s death. That snake sank a knife into me, and there is no doubt in my mind that he intended to kill me.” He spoke the words more t
han once, often after drinking the whiskey smuggled into camp by white traders. Andrea wanted to object to the whiskey and to his growing thirst for revenge, for both frightened her. They threatened his safety. Yet she loved him so, knew how he was suffering; and after her own horrible rape, she wanted only his acceptance and love. How could she start chastising him, turn into a complaining woman? Life was bad enough in this horrible camp. Why should she make things more miserable for him? If the whiskey helped him in some way, she would let him drink it.

  Finally the night before departure came. It was nearly October. Many had already died, and many more were sick. It would be a long, hard journey, and all knew that great numbers would die on the way. Thousands were in other camps like their own. Most were destitute. The government had waited until they had used up most of their own money for food and supplies before giving out rations. A few had been allowed to take along some cattle and horses, and Adam had managed to locate two of his own horses. He and Andrea would ride, a son riding with each of them. They would pull their meager belongings on the travois Adam had made. Luckily James had a wagon. Ruth and Rose would ride in that, along with whatever old and feeble ones could fit into it amid their belongings. Many more would not be as fortunate. Many would walk. And Andrea knew that she and Adam would both spend a lot of time walking while they let others ride for a while.

  Now she and Adam lay together, looking up at a full moon and listening to night sounds. She felt his body jerk suddenly, and she started to sit up, but he grabbed her close and broke into quiet but bitter sobbing. There was nothing she could say to him, nothing she could do for him but let him hold her. Her own tears would not come. She would save them until they were settled in Indian Territory. They clung to one another, each thinking it would have been impossible to survive this without the other. Andrea held Adam tightly and looked past him to Rose, who was standing at the fence, looking out. Her heart ached to think of what must be passing through that woman’s mind—thoughts of the happy, prosperous, and loving years here in the land of her people, of her fine home and happy family. Tomorrow Rose would not only leave her beloved homeland, but she would probably never see her husband’s grave again. At least Jonas Chandler would stay behind.

  It would someday be called the Trail of Tears. History books would touch on the subject only lightly, and in the years to come many Americans would not even hear about it or ever learn the tragic story of the Cherokee. Close to a thousand miles were covered, during the bitterest cold experienced in Illinois and Missouri in many years. The Cherokees struggled through icy waters and thick mud, dust choking them or cold rain soaking them to the skin. Pneumonia took many, cholera and measles took more, and others died of dehydration caused by violent dysentery. Rose Chandler died of pneumonia, and Adam buried his mother somewhere in Illinois. It worried Andrea that he did not weep. He was turning away from feelings now, his hardness becoming more evident.

  They had not made love since the night before the militia had come to their home and Douglas Means had dragged her away. There had not been the time nor the opportunity, nor had they even had the desire.

  Sometimes that frightened her. She knew that in some respects she needed to make love—to know she could be a woman for him again, to know he still wanted her, to remind herself that Adam was her first man and that Douglas Means had not really touched her at all. Wasn’t that what Adam had told her once? Long before Douglas Means had so brutally taken her Adam had told her if a man ever touched her that way, she should never feel soiled, for without her willingness, she had not been touched at all. And surely by now Adam needed to make love to her, not out of a man’s need for the physical pleasure, but to reclaim her for himself.

  But it would be a long time before such a thing could come to be, and she was terrified that perhaps they could never recapture the innocent happiness they had once known. He was so changed that sometimes it was difficult to remember the Adam she had married—the young Cherokee boy swinging in the great oak tree and teasing her, the young man who had touched her in secret places so that she wanted to surrender all to him and to be used however he chose.

  On and on they trudged, some falling in their tracks and dying there. Federal troops accompanied them part of the way. Sometimes state militia men took over. Almost no aid was offered. No doctors were provided. But along the way a few concerned citizens offered food and shelter. Wagons broke down and people had to double up. The cold was hard on them, for the Cherokee were accustomed to the mild, humid Georgia winters. Most did not even have the proper clothing for a truly cold winter. They spent the nights in tents and under wagons, some just lying on blankets on the cold ground. By the time they began to trickle into Indian Territory in the spring of 1839, four thousand Cherokees had died along the Trail of Tears.

  But the journey of the Cherokee to a new land was historically important. The controversy stirred by their long and proud fight had created a division between North and South. Bitterness had been seeded, and would grow. Northerners regarded Southerners as people who took advantage of the oppressed, used them for their own gain; people who considered the white man superior and counted those of another color worth no more than animals. The South viewed Northerners as pious hypocrites, who would treat the Indian and the Negro no better if the opportunity arose. The North had factories, but the South had only its plantations and its cotton. Its economy required land, and so the Indians had to go. In the South slavery made growing cotton more profitable. The rumbling dissatisfaction on both sides would grow to a roar twenty years later, then explode into a Civil War.

  But for now the Southerners considered the book closed on the Cherokee. By the time the Indians reached their new “home,” their beloved land in the northern mountains of Georgia had been overrun by whites who had taken over homes and buildings of the Cherokee, their land and their fine, fat cattle. And while these whites enjoyed a green, lush spring in Georgia, amid tall trees and cool mountains, the Cherokee were enjoying a different spring—the days too hot for so early in the year, the trees scarce, the soil new and unturned. They would be starting over again, with few, if any, advantages. But to start over takes spirit, and they had no spirit now. They stared, dumbfounded, at the wide, open prairies of Indian Territory, having little idea as to what to do next. Most of them were still too full of grief over loved ones lost along the way.

  Part III

  “…a crime is projected that confounds our understandings by its magnitude, a crime that really deprives us as well as the Cherokees of a country, for how could we call the conspiracy that should crush these poor Indians our government, or the land that was cursed by their parting and dying imprecations our country anymore? You, sir, will bring down that renowned chair on which you sit into infamy if your seal is set to this instrument of perfidy, and the name of this nation, hitherto the sweet omen of religion and liberty, will stink to the world.”

  —Ralph Waldo Emerson, letter to President Van Buren regarding the signing of the questionable treaty permitting the removal of the Cherokee from Georgia.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  The rain poured down, and the roof of their little sod house dripped. They lived on approximately fifty acres near the new Cherokee town of Tahlequah. Adam hated it, hated the land, the town, hated himself. He sat on the bed with a bottle of whiskey, watching Andrea, who was stirring the rabbit stew atop a wood-burning stove. Jonas and John played near the doorway, taking turns standing under a water drip and letting it hit their heads. Adam was beginning to wonder how his wife could possibly love him enough to stay with him now. She could have a much easier life. All she had to do was take the boys and leave him for some white farmer in the North.

  He swallowed more whiskey. He didn’t feel like going out into the rain to check on the few head of cattle the government had been so kind as to provide. He hardly cared whether or not the potatoes were sprouting or the corn was growing. This was not really his land. If the government gave him the whole of the West,
from the Mississippi to the Pacific Ocean, he could not call it home. Home was in Georgia. Hard as he struggled to make it work here in this barren land, he could not find the spirit to pick himself up and start over. What he had done so far had been only for Andrea and his sons, to put food on the table and to earn the pitiful amount they might get for a few cattle and some corn and potatoes on the market come fall. He had managed to save and hide enough money to buy Andrea the stove and a decent bed. And he had some left, but he kept it buried for emergencies. If this first year brought drought or a wave of crop-eating grasshoppers or disease among the cattle, that emergency could mean the end of what was left of the once-wealthy Chandler family.

  He took another swallow of whiskey. All he cared about right now was the warm, strong feeling the whiskey gave him. It relaxed him and made him feel good in spite of what had happened. And there was at least one thing to look forward to on this night. The meeting. Andrea didn’t know about them. Perhaps she suspected, but she didn’t say anything. At the meetings he was happy, powerful, a leader. The young full-bloods spoke of many ways to get even with those who were already here when they arrived—men like Luke Cloud, who now ran a trading post in Indian Territory. Adam was sure he’d built the place on government money—money he’d gotten for being a traitor.

  Luke Cloud would pay! Adam had tasted blood once, and it was sweet. He would taste it again. It was important now to stay together, to be strong. If this was where they were to live out their lives, then they would protect this new home. They would keep out the white man; they would chase out the Cherokees who had betrayed them. And if anyone came to this place and told them they must leave, they would no longer be nonviolent. They would fight! Here they would make their own laws. If this was to be Indian country, then it would stay Indian country, and the old Cherokee Blood Law would be followed.