by Jean Fischer
“After Nunna daul Tsuny, there was much anger and sadness among the people who remained here. Like King Solomon had written, life went around and around in a circle without any meaning.”
She returned to the table and sat with her guests. “For many years, the people were sad and without hope.”
She stared up at the ceiling rafters, looking at nothing. “I don’t know where Mrs. Coody lived when she was young, but she was among our people, watching all the sadness. She grew up with sadness. First, losing her parents, and then having to give up the ways of her people to live the settler’s ways.”
Mrs. Hummingbird sighed. She lowered her head and looked at the flame in the oil lamp. Again, she adjusted the wick.
The room was silent. Sydney, Elizabeth, and Galilahi were eagerly waiting to hear what else the old woman would say.
“Is that it?” Billy John asked loudly. “Is that all you know, or is there more?”
Sydney was surprised when he spoke up. All the while, he had been sitting there, barely saying a word.
Mrs. Hummingbird looked at him, and then slowly she shook her head yes. “There is more.”
“Then tell us!” Galilahi exclaimed. “I want to know all of it.”
The light from the oil lamp played shadows on Mrs. Hummingbird’s face. “I was a young woman when my mother told me about Galilahi Adair Coody. Mother said that after Nunna daul Tsuny, white missionaries came here and lived among the Cherokee people. The missionaries tried to get the Cherokee people to give up their beliefs in gods and spirits and to believe in the one true God instead.
“But the missionaries came and went, and when they left, there was no one to lead the people in worshipping God. Many of them fell back to their old ways.”
Mrs. Hummingbird rocked hard and continued. “My mother said that, one day, a young missionary man arrived here. He was half Cherokee. His father had been taken from here by the soldiers and sent on Nunna daul Tsuny with the others. The father, who was a young brave then, had survived the long journey. When he grew up, he married an English girl. Through his wife’s Christianity, the missionary’s father came to know the God of the Bible, and they raised their children in the Christian faith.”
Galilahi couldn’t help herself. “But, how does all this fit with Grandma Hisgi?” she interrupted.
“I think I know,” said Sydney. “The missionary’s last name was Coody—Galilahi Adair married him.”
“I think you’re right,” said Elizabeth. “Galilahi, the missionary was your great-great-great-great-great-grandfather. Are we right, Mrs. Hummingbird?”
“You are correct,” the old woman said.
Galilahi’s face brightened. “Please, Mrs. Hummingbird, tell us more,” she begged.
The rain had stopped, and the sun was out. The light streaming through the open front door was much brighter. Billy John got up and opened the door all the way. The room flooded with late-afternoon sunshine.
“Galilahi,” the old woman said sharply, “your ancestor grandparents remained here in Cherokee, and they lived among the people. They went into the homes and taught people God’s Word. They prayed over the sick, and they baptized as many as were willing. In fact, the river that you walked along to get here is the river where the baptisms happened, all those many years ago.”
“The river Grandma Hisgi mentioned!” Sydney exclaimed.
Mrs. Hummingbird didn’t seem to notice Sydney’s interruption.
“Do not think it was always easy for your grandparents, my child,” she said. “At one stage, the Cherokees were very resistant to the message of the Bible, the white man’s Christianity. My mother told me that for a time they had to live in caves, to hide from a Cherokee brave and his friends who swore to kill them for dishonoring the Cherokee religion.”
“What happened?” Elizabeth asked breathlessly.
“They grew tired of hiding. They returned to their home. As it should be. They were willing to die to bring their people the Truth.”
“I bet during that time is when they wrote the letter,” Sydney whispered to Elizabeth.
“What about the brave who swore to kill them?” Galilahi asked.
“He met them on their porch,” she said. “Instead of killing them, he dropped to his knees, begging to know the God whom they were willing to die for.”
“Wow!” Galilahi whispered.
Scriiitcch! Bak-ka-kak!
The loud screech from the front porch startled the girls. A rooster strutted into the cabin and made himself at home.
“Oh, don’t worry about him,” said Mrs. Hummingbird. “The chickens are out now that the rain is gone.”
“You have chickens!” Sydney exclaimed.
The stern look filled Mrs. Hummingbird’s face again. “Of course, I have chickens, and an old goat too. Where do you think I get my milk and eggs?”
Sydney didn’t answer. She tried to hide a grin. She’d noticed that Billy John had jumped higher than all of them when the bird had announced its presence.
Mrs. Hummingbird went on. “My mother said none of the people around here could read the Bible because it hadn’t been scribed into the Cherokee language yet. So, your ancestor grandparents started having church services outside on Sunday mornings. They’d translate to Cherokee from their English Bible and explain what the scriptures meant. Before long, they had a crowd there on Sundays. They decided to build a church. It was the first church in these parts. It was near the Oconaluftee River off of what they now call the Bureau of Indian Affairs Highway—”
Sydney was sorry to interrupt, but she just had to. “That’s near where we were when we met you!” she told Galilahi. “Right by the pancake restaurant. Is the old church still there, Mrs. Hummingbird?”
“No, it is not,” she answered. “And that’s what I was about to tell you.”
She shooed the rooster away from the table and then sat for a minute or so, saying nothing.
“The Reverend Coody died in a smallpox epidemic,” Mrs. Hummingbird finally said. “Mother said it swept through here like a windstorm, and many people died. Your ancestor grandmother and her daughter, by the will of God, didn’t get sick, and they helped nurse and minister to the people during that terrible time. Many Cherokees turned to God through their sickness, and it made the church grow even stronger.”
Mrs. Hummingbird got up, checked the pot, and then returned to the table. “Mrs. Coody kept that church going all on her own after her daughter got married and moved to Tennessee. Even in her old age, she kept right on preaching, every Sunday morning, just like her husband did when he was alive. But then something awful happened—”
“What?” Galilahi gasped.
“Shhh!” said Billy John. “Let her finish!”
“There was a fire.”
“Oh no!” said Elizabeth. She put her hand up to her mouth.
“The old church was on fire, and your grandmother ran inside to save whatever she could. She made several trips in and out of the burning building, even though folks tried to stop her. The last time she went in, she didn’t come out.”
Galilahi’s eyes filled with tears, and this time they were for her great-great-great-great-great-grandmother.
“My Grandma Hisgi died in the fire,” she said softly.
Elizabeth wrapped her arm around Galilahi’s shoulder.
“Galilahi,” the old woman said. “I have something else to tell you, something that will dry your tears.”
“What?” Galilahi asked, her voice cracking.
“Your grandmother’s church had a name. It was called the Church of the—”
“Rising Sun!” Sydney blurted it out.
Mrs. Hummingbird straightened in her chair, folded her hands on the table, and nodded. “Son, spelled s-o-n.”
“Like God’s Son, Jesus Christ, rising from the dead,” said Elizabeth.
Sydney sat there dumbfounded. She had never expected the story to end that way. “So, Galilahi’s great-grandmother was wrong about the nam
e,” she suggested. “It was the Church of the Rising Son, and not the Cabin of the Rising Sun.”
“Maybe she was wrong, and maybe she wasn’t,” the old woman replied. “I don’t know about that. But the word sun, in the name of the church, was spelled s-o-n to mean the resurrection of Christ, the risen Son of God.”
Galilahi sat quietly, her mouth slightly open. She was trying to take in everything she had just learned about Grandma Hisgi.
“I feel so strange.” The words seemed to stick in her throat. “I’m sad that Grandma Hisgi died in the fire, but I’m proud of her for all of the wonderful things that she did here. Wow, the very first church in Cherokee was built by my ancestors! I’m so happy that I didn’t give up looking for her, and thanks to all of you for helping me. I do still wish we could find her house, though.”
Mrs. Hummingbird reached with one hand toward Galilahi and patted her arm. It was a soft, caring gesture that Sydney had not expected from the crabby, old woman.
“Never stop looking for your ancestors,” Mrs. Hummingbird said. “Look at the stars tonight and think of them as pinholes in the curtains of heaven. There are thousands of ancestors waiting for you just beyond the stars.”
Elizabeth felt that the Lord had worked a miracle by bringing them to Billy John and, through him, to Mrs. Hummingbird.
“What do you think that the letter meant?” she asked. “Do you think that Grandma Hisgi ever connected with her family?”
“I don’t know,” Sydney answered. “We may never know, but I’ve been wondering, Mrs. Hummingbird, do you remember where Galilahi Adair Coody’s grave is?”
The shadows were growing long on the cabin’s floor. “I do,” Mrs. Hummingbird answered. “It’s in the Old Church Cemetery, and if my memory serves me, it’s up near the top of the hill.”
“I know where that cemetery is,” said Billy John. “I’ll take you girls there tomorrow. It’s too late to go there now.”
Mrs. Hummingbird got up and walked toward the door. “I have things to do,” she said. The girls and Billy John got up and followed her. “You promise me, now, never to tell anyone about me or this place.”
“Yes.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Except the other Camp Club Girls,” Elizabeth confessed.
After hearing about the Camp Club Girls and making Sydney and Elizabeth promise that they wouldn’t tell either, Mrs. Hummingbird agreed that Alexis, Bailey, Kate, and McKenzie could know the story too.
The corners of Mrs. Hummingbird’s lips curled upward into the slightest of smiles.
“I choose to live here quietly and peacefully with the old ways.” Instead of shaking their hands or saying goodbye to them, she raised her right hand. “The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make His face shine upon you and be gracious unto you. The Lord lift up His countenance upon you, and give you peace.”
Sydney had one more question. She couldn’t leave the cabin without asking it. “Mrs. Hummingbird,” she said. “The symbol of the sun that’s etched on the back of your door, what is that?”
Galilahi and Billy John looked at the back of the door, wondering what Sydney was talking about.
“Oh my goodness!” Galilahi exclaimed. “It’s the same symbol that was on the letter and in the margins of Grandma Hisgi’s Bible.”
“Yes. I noticed it on the letter too,” said Mrs. Hummingbird, “But I have no answer for you. That etching has been on this door for as long as I can remember. And I’ve lived here all of my life.”
Completing the Circle
That night Sydney and Elizabeth couldn’t wait to tell the Camp Club Girls all that had happened. After they had separated from Galilahi, they had formed a theory, and they wanted to share it with their friends. It was too much to type, so they used the webcams.
“Do you think Galilahi knows?” McKenzie asked after they’d explained their theory. “It took me awhile to figure it out, but then, as you were talking, I got it.” She pulled back her hair and plopped her favorite baseball cap onto her head.
“I don’t think she does,” Sydney said. “And Beth and I have decided not to tell her. It’s only a theory, after all. We could be wrong.”
Elizabeth sat cross-legged on her bed in the guest room. “I don’t think we’re wrong, but if the story got out, it could get in the way of Mrs. Hummingbird’s privacy, and we don’t want any part of that.”
Bailey’s face popped onto the screen. “What did I miss while I was in the bathroom?” she asked.
“You missed the best part,” said Alex. She sat near her computer, polishing her nails. “What do you think, girls, should we tell her?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Kate teased. “It’s a gigandamundo secret, after all.”
Bailey frowned. “Come on, guys! What did I miss?”
Sydney wished that she didn’t have to repeat the last part of their story, but she didn’t want Bailey to be left out.
“Well,” she said. “After we left Billy John and Galilahi at Indian Village, Beth and I got to thinking about all the Bible clues. The other day, when you guys read Ecclesiastes 1:5 through 7, the part that says, ‘The sun rises and sets, and hurries back to where it rises,’ you thought it was a clue that we needed to head east to find the cabin. Today, we walked east when we went into the woods with Billy John. Then, we made a little jog to the right, so that meant we were heading south.”
Kate chimed in, “Remember, Bailey? That’s what I thought when I read, ‘The wind blows to the south and turns to the north; round and round it goes, ever returning to its course.’ I told Syd and Beth, ‘After you’ve gone east for a while, you have to turn south.’”
Bailey shrugged her shoulders. “I’ll take your word for it.”
“And then,” Elizabeth continued, “Alex mentioned the part about the stream. ‘All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full, and to the place the streams come from, there they return again.’ She thought that we needed to find a stream and discover where it comes from. That’s what happened today. We came to a stream and discovered that it merged with a river.”
Bailey’s eyes widened. “Okay, I’m starting to get goose bumps—”
“Are you cold, dear? I can get you a sweater.” Bailey’s mom was in the kitchen behind her computer, getting something out of the refrigerator.
“I’m okay, Mom,” Bailey said. “We’re just chatting.”
“Tell the girls hello,” said Mrs. Chang as she left the room.
“So then what happened?” Bailey asked.
“So then,” Sydney continued. “Billy John said that we were walking along what used to be an old wagon road. It ran right along the river, and the settlers went that way when they traveled to their homesteads.”
“And,” Kate added, “that fits with the clue: ‘As they traveled along the road, they came to some water.’”
“Ooo, more goose bumps!” said Bailey. “This is getting good.”
“You haven’t heard the half of it yet,” said McKenzie. “Just wait.”
“While we were walking,” said Sydney, “Beth and I saw some uprooted pine trees in the woods.”
“‘Trees without fruit, uprooted, twice dead,’” said Kate. “But wait. It only takes, at most, around a hundred years for a tree to decompose.”
“Decom-what?” asked Bailey.
“Decompose,” said Kate. “A fallen tree will eventually be eaten up by insects and will become nothing but a pile of dust and chemicals returning to the ground. Any groups of trees that had fallen in Grandma Hisgi’s time would be long gone.”
“True,” said Sydney, “they couldn’t be the same trees. But get this—“
“That area is called the Gulch of Fallen Trees,” Elizabeth exclaimed with a squeal.
“It’s an area known for trees falling,” Sydney explained. “Braves used to go get the trees and make canoes of them.”
“Twice dead!” Kate said.
“Then we came to that wall of rocks,” Sydney continued
. “Billy John said that there was a cave nearby.”
“‘Every slave and every free man hid in caves and among the rocks of the mountains!’” said Bailey. “Hey, you matched all the clues!” A blank look swept across her face. “Okay, so you matched all the clues, but you still didn’t find the Cabin of the Rising Sun. So, it was another dead end, wasn’t it?”
“We don’t think so,” said Alexis.
“Okay, I give up,” Bailey conceded. “I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about.”
“The next part is the secret,” said Sydney. Then, with a very serious expression, she asked, “Do you, Bailey Chang, solemnly promise never to reveal to a living soul what I am about to tell you?”
“Of course I do!” Bailey complained. “I suppose that you didn’t make the other girls promise.”
McKenzie laughed. “Don’t worry about it, Bailey, we were just teasing you.”
“So what’s the secret?” Bailey asked.
“Well,” said Sydney. We think that Mrs. Hummingbird is living in the Cabin of the Rising Sun, and she doesn’t know it.”
“What?” Bailey squealed.
“Think about it,” said McKenzie. “She’s lived in that cabin all her life, and she’s almost a hundred years old. She said that the sun symbol has been on the back of the door for as long as she can remember. The cabin is older than the settlers’ cabins. We know that because it looks so much like the cabin in Indian Village. It was built with the same kind of stuff, and it has no windows.”
“Our theory,” said Sydney, “is that Grandma Hisgi lived in that cabin with her adopted family. Maybe she moved out when she married the missionary, or maybe at some point her adopted family moved out and she and her missionary man lived there.”
“And she’s the one who carved the sun symbol on the door?” Bailey asked.
“We don’t know,” Elizabeth answered. “It could have been put there by whoever built the cabin. That’s a part of the puzzle that only God knows for sure. And a family or two might have lived there between Grandma Hisgi and the Hummingbirds.”
“But it’s only a theory,” said Sydney. “We can’t prove any of it. We also don’t know why Grandma Hisgi wrote the letter, or if it really was in code, but in theory, it all seems to fit.”
