After many difficulties the little Water Beetle reached the World. He swam and he swam, but he found nothing but water. Finally, in despair, he dived, to see if there was anything down there. And, lo and behold, he found mud.
He brought this mud up to the surface. It grew and grew.
But it was still too wet for anyone to live on. Finally, the sad Water Beetle had to return to the Sky Rock and report that he had found nothing satisfactory.
The council was very upset at the Water Beetle’s bad news. But the Grandfather Buzzard, who is the father of all buzzards, announced that he would go down to the World, because with his huge wings he could cover a much greater area than the little Water Beetle. So off he went, down to the World, and around he flew. He found the muddy place the Water Beetle had reported. He flew and he flew over the muddy parts, looking for a suitable place for the creatures to live; he flew until he was so weary that his giant wingtips dipped into the mud, and then his giant breast also. So enormous was he that, where his breast and wingtips touched, great holes were formed that became valleys, and the ridges became mountains. Thus the Great Smoky Mountains were made.
Finally the mud began to dry out, and the Grandfather Buzzard flew back to the Sky Rock and told the council. Soon the mountains were dry enough to live upon, and all the creatures came down from the Sky Rock. All the mammals and birds and the insects and reptiles, and Man, came to live in the Great Smoky Mountains, with the blessing of the Great One; and they were happy, and they multiplied.
That is how the World began.
‘This is where the world began? …’
It was a beautiful day. They were camped in the valley below Indian Knob, and now that they were actually here, now that they were safely across that Pigeon River, it almost seemed like a holiday to Elizabeth. They were having a day’s rest; the spring noon-sun was beautiful, and they did not have to move until tomorrow: at least for today they were safe, and her relief was so intense she felt almost gay. It was wonderful just to let her aching body sit around the little fire with big amiable Charlie and drink whisky. It was also a relief that David Jordan was not here, that she did not have to try to argue with him. She was enthralled with Big Charlie’s story about the Sky Rock. ‘So Adam and Eve were Cherokees?’
Big Charlie nodded.
‘So this is the Garden of Eden …’ She did not want to ask him if he believed it; she did not want to spoil the moment. ‘And Adam and Eye were punished by the Great One for trying to be too clever. Were they ever banished from the Garden of Eden, like our Christian Adam and Eve were?’
Charlie looked into the fire, then gave a little smile.
‘Yes. But not by the Great One.’
She waited. ‘By whom, then?’
‘The White Man.’
‘Oh … I see.’
It changed the whole atmosphere. While he had been telling her the Cherokee legend, with the glow of the whisky and the knowledge that they had arrived at last, it had seemed as it had been back at the glen. But she had no time for this type of thing—zoo-jack in the name of politics.
‘I see … You’d better tell me what happened.’
Then she had a flashback of the expression in David Jordan’s eyes as he had looked at his animals, the birds fluttering about him in the glen. And Big Charlie’s deep brown voice held no bitterness; he told her what happened—simply, almost shyly: she wasn’t even sure that he wanted to tell her.
‘The first white men came with friendliness. And in small parties. So the Indians were friendly too. They were … inquisitive. Hospitable. Then the white man came in bigger numbers. More and more … by the shipload. With their plows. And axes. And fences. With each shipload they hacked their way deeper and deeper into the wilderness. Into the Indians’ hunting grounds. Just taking the land they found. Because it only belonged to … savages?’
He glanced at her, the firelight flickering in his brown eyes, then looked away again.
‘But they were the Indians’ hunting grounds. Where they got their food, because they didn’t farm much. The game was retreating, you see. And being shot out. And all this caused all kinds of trouble. They tried to petition the colonialists to hold back to boundaries. But the white men kept breaking their promises. So finally the Indians went on the warpath. Just as they did with neighboring tribes, when there were boundary disputes.’
He glanced up at her and held her eye. She nodded.
‘It was pretty bad. The Indians know how to fight. And, of course, the colonists fought back just as fiercely. They were better armed. They even declared a bounty on Indians. To claim the bounty the frontiersman had to have the scalp of the Indian, to prove he killed him.’ He paused. ‘That’s how scalping started. Did you know that?’
She shook her head. ‘I thought it was the other way round.’
Big Charlie nodded soberly. ‘No, the Indians were shocked. Treating us like … vermin. So … they started doing the same thing back.’
He looked back at the tire and took a deep breath.
‘Well, there were all kinds of treaties. Establishing new boundaries. They were all broken … as each shipload of white men arrived from the Old World. Hungry for land. And the Indians were forced back. And fought back. Then …’ He gave a wisp of a smile. ‘There came a bit of trouble between the New World and the Old World … “No Taxation, Without Representation.” All that stuff.’ He looked at her inquiringly. ‘The Boston Tea Party? And the War of Independence?’
Elizabeth nodded. That much American history she knew.
‘Well, whose side do you think the Indians were on? The British—or the colonialists, who’d been stealing their land and scalping them for a dollar a head?’
Elizabeth nodded.
‘I guess the Indians were delighted,’ Big Charlie rumbled. ‘And, of course the British were very pleased to have the Indians on their side against the Rebels. The Rebels were as mad as hell.’
Big Charlie’s hooded eyes were alive with the story now.
‘So, the Red Coats and the Redskins joined. And all around here …’ he waved his hand at the sunset— ‘Tennessee … South Carolina, Georgia … and the coast, we socked it to ’em, the Cherokees and Red Coats, between us. And of course the Rebels socked it back to us. They got up a big combined army. Then they came at us from four sides, to cut us down to size. And …’ Big Charlie shook his head ruefully, ‘they really whammed into us. Whole villages—whole towns were burned to the ground. Women and children. So we retreated. Back to the French Broad River …’ he jerked his thumb over his shoulder ‘toward Hot Springs.’
‘We met up with some Red Coats there,’ Big Charlie continued glumly. ‘But we knew we didn’t stand a chance. We had to retreat again. So … the Rebels marched into our territory in Tennessee. We had to abandon everything. And they set fire to the lot. Then the Cherokees asked for peace. The British were defeated too, after that. And that was the end of the South. The beginning of the United States.’ He looked at her. ‘But now the Cherokees were at the mercy of the frontiersmen.’
He looked away, then sighed and took a long sip of his whisky. A trace of bitterness entered his deep voice.
‘Okay. So we lost a war … So, we have to take the consequences. But …’ He shook his head bitterly. ‘We only joined the war because they were stealing our land in the first place. If it’s wrong to steal, I don’t see why it’s lawful to steal at the point of a gun.’ He turned to face her. ‘Do you, Dr. Johnson?’
She looked him in the eye, and shook her head slightly.
‘But what definitely wasn’t lawful was what happened after that. Not by anybody’s law.’
She waited. ‘What did happen?’
‘I guess I can’t expect you to understand, Dr. Johnson,’ he muttered. ‘How can you? You see … I’m not just talking about all the treaties. The Government made a peace treaty, saying our land is here, then they change their minds and there’s another battle and they take our land again and make a new tre
aty. But, hell, that happened to all the Indian tribes in America, right up to the last Battle of Wounded Knee, when the last tribe was finally wiped out. I mean … that was terrible, that was … awful, a massacre of defenseless people. But, I mean, that’s happened, and I don’t want to give you the wrong impression.’ He looked at her hopelessly. ‘I guess what really matters is … the Sky Rock. And … life. The Garden of Eden …’ He sighed. ‘And,’ he said, ‘the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. A man called Andrew Jackson. And the Trail of Tears.’ He looked at her. ‘Do you know about that?’
She shook her head. Charlie nodded and took a deep breath.
‘Andrew Jackson was the frontiersmen’s leader. They made a new treaty with us after they whipped the British. Then they went to war against the Creek Indians. The Cherokees joined forces with the frontiersmen because we were also having trouble with the Creeks. At the famous battle of Horseshoe Bend. And we won … but the frontiersmen only won because of the Cherokees. And because one of our Cherokee chiefs, who was called Junaluska, saved Andrew Jackson’s life … a Creek was about to kill Jackson, and Junaluska drove his tomahawk through the Creek’s skull.’ Big Charlie looked at her. ‘Andrew Jackson eventually got to be president of the United States.’
Big Charlie’s hooded eyes widened dramatically. ‘Then the white man discovered gold in Cherokee country … and you know how important gold is.’ He stared at her. ‘So they decided to annex us … the remainder of the Cherokee lands.’
He frowned as if amazed all over again. ‘They just sent an army in, and conquered us all over again, Dr. Johnson. Just broke the treaty … all over again …’
He stared at her across the fire, and she looked back, fascinated; then his chest swelled in a sigh, and he looked away. He picked up his tin cup and took a long pull of whisky. Then he continued flatly. ‘You know what happened next. The Government wrote a new treaty of surrender again. And that treaty said that the Cherokees surrendered all their lands in exchange for an Indian Reservation in Oklahoma.’ His broad face took on a studied frown. ‘In Oklahoma? Where is Oklahoma?’ He waved his hand to the west. ‘A thousand miles over there. What Cherokee had even heard of Oklahoma in those days, let alone been there?’
His voice became scornful. ‘Of course, the Cherokees refused to sign the treaty. They even refused to go to the powwow. The Government sent their soldiers out to round up the chiefs, but most of them refused, and only a handful turned up. But those people’—he shook his head at her—‘had no right to make a treaty for the whole Cherokee Nation!’ He made a cross in the air with his finger. ‘But they made their marks on the treaty. And the Americans got all hotted up to move into the last of the Cherokee lands, to get at all that gold.’ He paused,.then went on dramatically. ‘But the Cherokees got themselves some lawyers. They appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States. And,’ he ended triumphantly, ‘the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in the Cherokee’s favor.’
She waited. Big Charlie looked at her with big eyes, then said softly, ‘And what do you think the president of the United States said? Andrew Jackson, the man whom the Cherokees had fought alongside at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend? The man whose life Chief Junaluska saved?’
‘What?’ she asked.
Big Charlie took a breath. ‘President Andrew Jackson said, “The Court has given its decision. Now let them try to enforce it.”’
Charlie stared at her in wonder.
‘That was a president of the United States of America speaking, Dr. Johnson … about the Supreme Court. About his own people. All President Nixon did was cover up Watergate. He didn’t defy his own courts.’ He looked at her, and his eyes seemed to melt. ‘And Nixon wasn’t stealing a whole nation’s land.’
He looked into the fire, and blinked away his tears.
‘Chief Junaluska went up to Washington to plead with him. And Andrew Jackson just said: “Sir, your audience is over; there is nothing I can do for you.”’
He looked at her, then repeated grimly. ‘“There is nothing I can do for you.”’
And the Presidential order was given that the Cherokee people were to be removed, on 26 May 1838, so that the white man could have their land. An army of seven thousand men was raised under General Winfield Scott, and the dragnet began through Cherokee country.
They rounded up the people, an entire nation, and herded them into assembly stockades at bayonet point. They were allowed only the possessions they could carry; many were driven out without even a blanket. Children were often separated from their parents, husband from wife, old people from their families, hurried along with prods in the back. Chief Junaluska wept as he saw what was happening to his people. And he lifted his hat and cried up to the sky, ‘O God! If I had known at the Battle of Horseshoe what I know now, American history would have been differently written.’
In the assembly stockades the people slept on the ground, under the sky. Many of them became sick from the rations, weak from hunger, and sick from the white man’s ailments. Altogether it took four months to round up all the people and herd them into the stockades.
Then, on a cold and rainy October morning, the Cherokee people were herded into six hundred and forty-five wagons. The Chief led his people in prayer. The bugle sounded, and the wagons began to roll, down that long terrible journey, that is called the Trail of Tears.
It was a trail of death. For six long months, through freezing blizzards and rain, the flimsily covered wagons rolled. The Cherokees were without blankets, without fire, without enough to eat. The soldiers and teamsters had blankets and heavy coats, boots and proper food. But not the Cherokees. Every night people died of pneumonia, exposure, malnutrition, exhaustion. In the mornings the soldiers organized burial squads. Then the bugle would sound, the whips would crack, and the terrible cavalcade would start again. From October to March. From Cherokee, down in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains, into Tennessee, then to Chattanooga. Then northeast to Athens; then northwest, through Clarksville, and across into Kentucky. And across Kentucky into the state of Illinois, and across the Mississippi, into Missouri. Then in a big arc, into the state of Arkansas. And across the Arkansas Mountains, into Oklahoma …
Altogether, four thousand Cherokee people died in those six months, between Cherokee and Oklahoma, on that shameful Trail of Tears.
Elizabeth was completely absorbed in the story now.
The whisky had gone to Big Charlie’s head, and he had a grim gleam in his eye. But he was enjoying telling her the tale.
‘A handful of Cherokees did escape the dragnet. A few managed to hide out in caves and in these forests, right here in the Great Smoky Mountains, while the white man swarmed over our country. First the gold hunters.’ He shook his head at her. ‘But there was no gold, Dr. Johnson. So the whole Trail of Tears had been for nothing. Then came the lumbermen, chopping down the trees, and the hillbilly homesteaders, hacking clearings and building their log cabins …’ He breathed deep, and his face was flushed. ‘Then the Cherokees who had hidden came creeping out. And they began to scratch a living on the few bits and pieces of land which the white men didn’t want. And after a while they were sort of allowed to stay.’ He smirked bitterly. ‘But they had to buy those bits of land they squatted on, Dr. Johnson. They had to buy back bits of their own land. Eventually even the Government agreed to let us stay, in that small area down there …’ He pointed through the forest down in the direction of Cherokee. ‘They called it the Qualla Boundary Reservation of the Eastern Cherokees …’
His eyes were suddenly moist; and his face flushed.
‘And the white man shot out all the game. The deer … the bear … the mountain lion.’ He waved his hand in appeal. ‘These mountains used to be paradise, Dr. Johnson … full of all the animals. It’s … where the World began …’
thirty-seven
But this spring there was new life in this Garden of Eden, where once upon a time the World began.
Afterwards Elizabeth had lain on top of
her sleeping bag, still in the thrall of the story of the Sky Rock. She had asked him: ‘Is this why you’re doing this, Charlie—because of that Trail of Tears?’ He had looked at her with such weary surprise that she had not understood, that she had said, ‘Okay, forget it.’ It would have been the wrong moment to argue. He had not told her the story to convert her; he had told her because he wanted to—to make her feel … liked. And she was too full of relief that they had made it across the river without further bloodshed, that they were safe for the time being, in a National Park where game rangers kept the peace …
Where once the World began …
When she woke up she no longer felt quite the same.
Lying on top of her sleeping bag, the evening chill waking her at her lowest ebb, half hungover, she woke with the sinking dread: what happens now? Gone was the triumph of crossing the river, the euphoria of being safe, the thrall of the Sky Rock and the Grandfather Buzzard. Then suddenly a rifle thudded in the distance. She sat bolt upright, heart pounding.
‘It’s all right,’ Davey’s voice said behind her. ‘Only Charlie getting some meat for the lions.’
She breathed again. But she was further depressed by the return of the unsmiling David Jordan. He was sitting by the tumbling stream, feeding twigs into a small fire. The lions and Sultan were clustered near him, staring at her, hunched, intent. She felt the old quake of naked fear.
‘Did you find Sally?’
‘No.’
She stared at him. He had failed. … Despite everything, she had had complete confidence that he would find her, that there was nothing he could not do in the wilderness.
‘She’s all right, Dr. Johnson.’
‘Rubbish! She’s a sitting duck for hunters.’
He said quietly, ‘She’s in the sort of place she should be, Dr. Johnson. She’s in the Smokies, by a river. But I’ll probably go back and find her—after we get there and settle down.’
Fear No Evil Page 21