by Dee Brown
“To Grandmother Mary’s great distress, Opothle went over to the side of the Ridge-Boudinot people. Not long after the Georgia surveyors marked off his farm, he began trying to convince everybody in Okelogee that they should move across the Mississippi River. ‘The sooner the better,’ he said. ‘Let us not stay here and be driven out by offal such as Suggins and his Pony Guard. Only by moving the Cherokee Nation can we save the Cherokee Nation.’
“ ‘That is John Kingsley’s blood talking!’ Mary would shout back at him. ‘Not Creek Mary’s!’ She and my father, the Runner, had sworn to each other they would never leave Okelogee. Because of these different viewpoints, the family split apart again. For a long time Mary would not acknowledge the presence of Opothle at councils, would not speak to him when he visited her, and the two half brothers became silent enemies. The same thing was happening in many other Cherokee families. A great rift divided the Cherokees just at a time when they needed unity to survive.
“If Opothle had not supported the American government’s removal law, however, we all would have been driven out of Okelogee much soon than we were. Because neither my grandmother nor my father would listen or talk to Opothle, they did not know that he had been given permission to remain in his house until the American government set a date for all the Cherokees to be moved to the West. Not until long afterward did we learn that Opothle had persuaded the government agents to delay claims of Georgia lottery winners upon Okelogee land plots so we could all move west together.
“Some lottery demands were allowed on plots nearby Okelogee, and one of the first to be claimed was the McAlpin house and the land around it. The holder of the lottery ticket was a red-haired lout that Jack Moonherrin brought home with him after one of his trips to the settlements. This red-haired fellow married the oldest Moonherrin daughter, and the fact that he somehow obtained a lottery claim on the nearby McAlpin house showed us how dishonest was that whole Georgia scheme to take our lands away from us. Moonherrin’s red-haired son-in-law and his ruttish bride moved into the McAlpin house in midwinter, and, being too lazy to cut wood, he broke up all the benches in the schoolhouse and burned them in his fireplace.
“The McAlpins? Well, Harriet and Jerusha had no place to go, so Mary convinced Walina and my father to make room for them in our house until the state of Georgia let Isaac out of jail. It’s strange, is it not, how a single happening like that can change the course of entire lives—Jerusha’s life and my life, I’m thinking of.”
21
WHEN ISAAC MCALPIN RETURNED to Okelogee—after the missionaries were at last released from Georgia imprisonment—he found his house in the possession of a “lottery winner,” his schoolhouse plundered of its benches, windows, and doors, and his wife and young sister refugees in the home of Creek Mary’s family. He reluctantly accepted the invitation of Walina and Mary to share their crowded quarters, promising that it would be for only a short time.
“I shall inform my missionary board at once of the state of affairs here,” he assured Mary. “I am certain that funds will be forthcoming to repurchase the house and repair the schoolhouse. In the meantime I shall hear the children’s lessons out of doors in good weather, and if Chief Talasi will permit, in the council house during bad weather.”
Isaac’s bitterness over losing his house was somewhat allayed when he heard that Chief John Ross not only had lost his home to a Georgia lottery winner but had been forced to flee to safety across the Tennessee line. He repeatedly apologized to Walina and Mary for his family’s intrusion upon them, and when he found that Dane had given up his bed to him and was sleeping out in the asi, the winter house, he offered to use the winter house himself.
Dane, however, preferred the privacy of the asi to the overcrowded main house. He was accustomed to sleeping without clothing of any kind, but after Harriet and Jerusha had moved in with them, Walina made him wear a long shirt for sleeping and he detested it. Although the nights were beginning to chill with frost, the round conical-roofed asi with its thick plastering of clay was so cozy that he needed only a thin blanket. The Long Warrior had built the structure well, but no one had slept in it since his death, and Walina used it for storing pumpkins and squash.
On the day that Isaac joined the crowded household and it became necessary for Dane to sleep in the asi, Mary built a fire in its center pit to smoke out the insects and then brought in a cane mat from the main house to cover the oak-splint couch upon which she and the Long Warrior had spent many a winter night rolled up in the old bearskin he had given her.
As Mary was coming out of the four-foot-high entrance of the asi, her head bent low, she heard a hawk crying. She raised up quickly, her eyes searching the sky, and was not surprised to see a blue hawk circling overhead. Its cry was exceedingly mournful, like the wailing of a grieving human being. “What are you telling me? What do you warn me of, blue hawk?” she called to the bird.
At the sound of her voice, Walina stepped out of the main house. “What is it, Mother Amayi?”
“That blue hawk. It is warning us of some bad thing.”
Walina looked at the circling bird of prey. “It is hungry, perhaps,” she said, and went back into the house.
Late that afternoon a party of Creeks dressed in little more than rags, and led by an old man, appeared suddenly in Okelogee. The old man was none other than Tolchi, Creek Mary’s childhood friend when they had lived at Bluff Village, and those with him were his children and grandchildren. They were fleeing from the turmoil and starvation that had overcome their people, and were hoping to escape being transported to the West by seeking a haven among the Cherokees.
For a long time Mary had heard nothing of her Creek relatives, and she was saddened by what Tolchi and his sons now told her. Twenty moons or more ago, they said, at the urging of agents of the American government, Menewa and the other Creek chiefs had given up most of their remaining land to the state of Alabama for white settlement, on the promise that they could live as a free and independent people on what land was left to them. In this treaty the American government promised to protect the lives and property of the Creeks and keep out white intruders.
None of these promises had been kept. As soon as the government agents departed with their signed treaty, the Unegas began preying upon the Creeks, stealing their livestock, burning their homes, raping the women, and killing the men. To find enough food to stay alive, Tolchi and his family had to leave their town and go into the white settlements, begging for scraps to eat. The whites treated them like wild dogs, hurling stones and curses at them. In desperation, they had turned north hoping to survive among the Cherokees.
That evening the Runner opened the Okelogee council house to Tolchi and his relatives, and every family in town brought food and clothing for them. This was during the Falling-Leaf Moon, a clear and crisply cold night, a night that Dane would forever remember. He was leaving the council house with his grandmother, supporting her with his arm, when the entire sky seemed to explode into a million fragments of fire.
“All the stars of heaven are falling!” Mary cried out. “The blue hawk tried to tell me that a bad thing was going to happen. Now the Maker of Breath is throwing his stars upon us to warn us of disaster.”
For a minute or so the meteor shower diminished, then renewed itself in continuous streaks of light. All the people coming from the council house stopped, and stood watching the fiery skies in awe.
Old Stalking Turkey gripped one of Dane’s shoulders with a clawlike hand. He no longer cut his white hair, and it fell like a drift of snow over his bent neck. “I saw the stars spin like that when I was a young man,” he said in a feeble voice. “We were traveling from Charles Town, where we went to trade deerskins with the Unegas for the first time. The fall of stars was a warning to us, but we were young like you, boy, and paid no heed. When I was a young man we had no iron hatchets, pots, knives, or guns. We made use of our stone axes, clay pots, flint knives, bows and arrows. We had no fear in that time. The first tr
ade goods I carried on my back from Charles Town, a distance the Unegas measure as four hundred miles from Okelogee, all the way on foot, for then we had no horses amongst us. But neither did we have fear in that time. The Unegas gave us many things, the worst of them being fear.”
“Yes,” said Mary in a husky voice, “for the first time in my life I have fear of what is to come. First the blue hawk, then poor Tolchi and his family, and now the falling stars. My bones ache, sogonisi, child of my son. Take your old alisi home to her bed.”
Dane guided her along the wide pathway beside the Little Singing Stream, keeping a watchful eye on the sky, but now only an occasional meteor skimmed across the star-sprinkled expanse of blackness. As they came up the gravel bank into their yard, he saw Jerusha rise from the bench under the arbor. “Thank goodness, you’ve come,” she called to them. Although she was wearing a heavy coat, her teeth were chattering. “I was so afraid of the falling stars!”
“Where are Harriet and Isaac?” he asked.
“Asleep. I was frightened by noises in the woods behind the house and could not sleep. When I looked out to see if you were coming home from council, I saw the stars falling.” She extended a hand tentatively as if to touch Dane for reassurance, but was restrained by the presence of Mary. “I wanted to run I was so frightened.”
“Go on to bed now,” Mary said. “The stars were only a warning.”
“A warning of what?” Jerusha asked.
“I cannot tell, but we will know soon enough.” Mary waited at the doorway until Jerusha went inside. Then she whispered to Dane: “Watch out for that yellow-haired girl, sogonisi. Her eyes glitter like a raccoon’s when she looks at you.”
“Sleep well, Grandmother.” He turned and went straight across the yard to the asi, ducking his head for the low entrance and twisting his body adroitly through the L-shaped passageway that the Long Warrior had built to keep out cold winds. He welcomed the solid darkness where he could be alone with his thoughts. Jerusha was too often in his thoughts, he knew. Since she and Harriet had come to live with them, she was always near, her eyes always watching him in the evenings although he deliberately avoided speaking with her. She and Harriet spent much of their daytime hours now at the Rogers place helping with the chores, and bringing back milk and rich butter and cornmeal which they gave to Walina. If only Jerusha were an Indian. How often had he thought of that! He stripped off his clothes, placing them carefully at the foot of the oak-splint couch, and rolled himself into his blanket. The aroma of Walina’s pumpkins stored beneath the bed drifted around him as he fell asleep.
How long he had been asleep he did not know, but he was suddenly wide awake, aware at once of a spicy body scent now mixed with the fragrance of pumpkin. Someone else was in the asi. Close by in the blackness he heard a soft exhalation of breath. “Dane.” His name was a whisper but he knew Jerusha’s presence.
He sat up, freeing his hands from the blanket roll. “Jerusha! What troubles you?”
“I’m scared of the popping sounds in the woods. Could they be the Georgia Pony Guards?”
One of her hands touched the blanket over his chest. She sat on the edge of the couch, and he could feel the round curve of her buttocks against his thigh.
“The Pony Guards would not stay in the woods,” he said.
She was shivering, and her words were half formed through clenched teeth: “It’s so dark in here. Don’t you have a candle?”
“No.”
“Why don’t you go and see if the Pony Guards are out there?”
He gently touched the back of her neck. She was wearing only a thin nightdress. “The Anisgaya Tsundi, the thunder boys, have come out of their rock caves in the hills,” he said, treating her now like a frightened child. “They come out on clear cold nights and dance to warm themselves. They would be angry if I disturbed them.”
“I’ve never heard you speak of these thunder boys before.”
“We don’t talk about them. If they heard me now they might put a curse upon me.”
“Have you seen them? Are they horrible like the Pony Guards?”
“They’re little people, no higher than your knees, with long hair reaching to the ground.”
“You’re teasing me.” He could feel her flesh quivering. “You have no heart, teasing me while I freeze to an icicle.” She pulled at his blanket. “Let me have some covering around me, and walk me back to the house, please, Dane.” She was shuddering so violently that he flung half his blanket over her shoulders. “Warm me, you are so warm, warm me,” she said through chattering teeth, and lay with her back against his naked flesh. Her feet were icy against his shins.
They lay there for a long time until she was warm again, breathing like a sleeping child. He pulled slowly away from her, and she rolled to face him, her thin nightslip opening with the turning of her body. She was not asleep and she was not a child. As they came together he remembered that she was a year older than he.
On other nights that autumn Jerusha came to the asi, and if several nights passed without a visit from her, Dane would find a way to beg her to come so that they could renew their lovemaking. On black nights she would ask him to walk back with her to the main house, and once they came out of the asi to face a thin crescent of a moon that seemed as close as the treetops. “The moon is almost dark,” she whispered, clinging to him, unwilling to leave him.
“Grandmother Mary always says that a moon like that is hiding her face because she is ashamed. After sleeping with the sun two or three nights, she is ashamed to show her face.”
Jerusha drew away from him, looking him straight in the eyes. “Do you think I am ashamed of sleeping with you?”
“No.”
“I should be because we are not married. When will you marry me, Dane?”
He shook his head slowly. She put her arms around him, holding her body tight against his. “I don’t care. Even if you marry up with one of your full-blood girls, I’ll keep loving you until the day I die.”
Sometime late that winter she told him she was carrying his child. “Now you must marry me, Dane.”
22
SEVENTY YEARS LATER IN a Montana cabin, Dane was yawning and stretching his arms. He picked up our dirty dishes and carried them into the calico-curtained pantry. “I once met a Blackfoot song-singer over at Miles City,” he said, coming back to the window seat and suppressing another yawn. “You might call him a poet. He would sit on a bench at the livery stable and recite songs out of his head. One of them caused me to think of Jerusha. It was about a young girl who went beyond the limits of the heart, so far beyond the limits of the heart in her feelings for a young man that she sickened and died. Going beyond the limits of the heart is perilous for a woman, or a man. Maybe Jerusha McAlpin went beyond the limits of her heart.”
“You did not marry her after she told you she was going to bear your child?”
He sighed. “I had given my word to Creek Mary that I would not.” He closed his eyes. “Pride of one’s race is a foolish thing—although my people had an excuse for it then, as they have an excuse for it now. Your people are still trying to make us feel that we are of a lower order than you. The human heart constantly wounded grows scars of pride. Creek Mary made me believe we were better than the Unegas. But I have grown wiser now. This pride of race is without meaning. What is a full-blood? Look at me. Some people say I look like an old Chinaman.” His laughter was broken by a wide yawn. He leaned his head against the windowpane, searching the sky for the placement of the sun, and I realized that he had no timepiece on his person or in his cabin. “An old man must have a short daytime sleep.” He bowed mockingly and went into his bedroom. “Make yourself at home,” he said, and closed the door.
I walked to the front door, opened it, and stepped out into the Montana landscape. In the early afternoon it was a washed watercolor of grays and yellows and browns smeared in wide brush strokes under a blinding sun in a blue dome of sky. Over the distant range a dark smudge of clouds had fo
rmed, and I wondered if it was raining over there.
How was it that Dane had come to this place, so alien and so far from the gentle green-wooded hills of Georgia? He had not yet told me. I knew that the government of our people had driven out his people in a diaspora more cruel than the Babylonian exile of the Israelites. But here—a Cherokee-Creek here among the wild Cheyenne? And what had happened to Jerusha, to his unborn child? How long had Creek Mary endured?
We were dealing with human survivals while somewhere to the west my evening passenger train was rushing toward that little brown-stained depot at Dundee. Time was flying and my oracle chose to spend it in sleep. Impatient and somewhat resentful, I left the landscape with its bone-chilling wind and went back inside to warm myself in one of the big rocking chairs before the fireplace. I started to set down a few notes, but was dozing off when Dane popped out of his bedroom as spry as a young colt.
He took a tin pitcher from the mantel. “Sleep,” he said briskly, “and a long drink of melted snow-water renew the spirit.” He was outside the door and down to the racing stream and back before I was fully awake. He handed me a glass of water so cold it made my teeth ache.
“Have I told you more than you want to hear about Amayi and her children?” he asked, turning his head to one side and half closing his bright eyes.
“No, no. While you were asleep I was wondering what Jerusha’s brother, Isaac, had to say to you when he found out about you and his sister.”
Before he replied, his thin lips twisted as though he were in pain. “Isaac never knew about us, I think, although Harriet must have suspected something. You see, they got their house back about that time, a fatal thing it was for them. I don’t know exactly how it was done—I recall some talk about the Georgia Methodists. Anyway, Moonherrin’s daughter and the red-haired son-in-law were forced out of the house against their will. A sheriff’s man came up from Lawrenceville and put them out. Then we all went over and helped clean their filth from the house.
