The Native American Experience

by Dee Brown

  By Tim Rogers’s map they had only about three miles left to travel, and Jotham, who was driving, cracked his whip impatiently above the backs of the weary horses. Mary sat beside him, holding Pleasant in her lap, singing snatches of songs and humming to herself. The rocky trail ran through thick leafless woods, and she began naming familiar trees in Creek, Cherokee, and English—dogwood, wild plum, walnut, mulberry, persimmon, sycamore, hickory, oak. Then they swung up over a rise in the land and there in front of them across a river bottom was a low ridge, a reduced image of the Sleeping Woman. “Look!” Mary cried, but they all had seen it at the same time. “A little Sleeping Woman!”

  “Her stomach is swollen,” Jerusha said.

  “Yes,” Mary agreed, and her laughter filled the wagon. “We’ll call it the Sleeping Girl with Child.”

  A few minutes later they came to a ramshackle cabin set back from the road among scrubby brown-leaved blackjacks. The logs were poorly chinked, its corners were unaligned, and the roof consisted of a few strips of bark.

  “Is that the house?” Dane asked.

  “No,” Mary said. “Opothle would not live in such a place.”

  A mile farther on they came to a double cabin, larger but not much better than the first, the yard filled with stumps. On the unroofed porch a woman in a sunbonnet was shaking out a straw broom. She looked up at the sound of the wagon, and then dropped the broom, flinging her hands into the air. “Oh, Prissie, come running,” Suna-lee shouted. “They’re here!”

  27

  RETURNING TO DANE’S CABIN from the sandhill, we had to face a strong chill wind as well as a blinding sun that was more than midway down the sky. Neither of us spoke until we reached the shelter of the willows.

  “That was the Trail of Tears,” I said.

  “Yes, the naming of it came afterward,” Dane answered quickly. “In Cherokee it would be the Trail Where They Cried, but long before we survivors reached the Indian Territory we had no tears left to shed. Too many died too fast. Not until after we were at the end of the trail did our dry eyes refill with tears of remembrance.

  “Each of us in our detachment of wagons, our moving village of wagons, thought that what was happening to us was a torment peculiar to us only. We did not know until later that hundreds of others were dying in the same cruel way—not only Cherokees but Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Seminoles from the South, and Shawnees, Ottawas, Delawares, Hurons, Miamis, and many more tribes from the North, thousands and thousands of people being driven from their eastern homelands to die because they were Indians.

  “For the Cherokees, though, I think the suffering was the most piercing. After the chiefs made counts of people from their old towns, they found we had lost four thousand by death from the time we were herded into stockades until the last wagon reached our new Nation. The bones of one of every four of us lay scattered between the Tennessee River and Indian Territory. What made the suffering worse for us was the bitter feeling between those who were forced to come, Chief John Ross’s followers, and those who had signed the treaty and taken government money, the Ridge-Boudinot people, including my Uncle Opothle.

  “Yes, Mr. Tim Rogers measured matters well. He felt the hatred in the air, and being one of us only by marriage he was independent enough to get clear of the violence before it came. I don’t think the Ridge family or Elias Boudinot and his brother Stand Watie, or many of the others suspected how deep was the hostility toward them, the rage in so many hearts.

  “Uncle Opothle knew, however. He was very busy at his trading post, a mile up the road from his house, but I’m sure he bore a burden of guilt because he had left Grandmother Mary behind to suffer the journey on the Trail of Tears, and he feared some retribution from the Maker of Breath for the deaths of my father, the Runner, and my stepmother, Walina.

  “I was with Grandmother Mary when Opothle came riding down from his trading post to greet the arrival of we survivors. He had just learned of the deaths, and he clasped Mary in his arms and begged her to forgive him.

  “ ‘Words change nothing, Opothle,’ she told him. ‘We go on living.’

  “ ‘The Maker of Breath made me for some purpose,’ he cried out. ‘I have not yet fulfilled the purpose. By coming here first, I have managed to acquire a quantity of goods. I will do what I can for the people who have but few blankets and little clothing.’

  “ ‘Your father John Kingsley had some kindness in him,’ she said as if talking to herself. ‘But he had no heart to feel either love for him or hatred directed toward him.’

  “ ‘I have felt the hatred,’ Opothle admitted. ‘I can only beg forgiveness. I fear the future, Mother Amayi.’

  “He was insistent that Grandmother Mary, Jerusha, Pleasant, and I stay with his family. He had built his house larger than most, intending to use half of it for his trading post, but the opening of the crossroads led him to put his trading place there. And so we lived for a time in Uncle Opothle’s house.”

  We were at the cabin door. Dane held it open for me, the warmth from the fireplace welcoming us. He added two logs to the coals, and sparks exploded like firecrackers.

  He warmed his hands for a few minutes. “You must understand the feelings of John Ross’s followers. All had suffered in the stockades and many had lost relatives and friends in the dying. They knew their misery had been brought upon them by the American government, but that was something without shape, far away beyond reach. Closer at hand they could see every day those people who had signed away our homeland by treaty and had come comfortably to the new land and were living in solid houses instead of in tents or lean-tos, or in the wagons that had brought them there. But to me, this division of our people at that hard time for us was a sad and disgusting thing.

  “Yet I could not help being drawn into it. Some of the full-bloods started a secret society whose aim was to create a new independent Cherokee Nation just as it was before the white men came. No one with white blood could be a member of the secret society. A few men from Okelogee were members, and as I was the son of a headman they kept after me until I joined. The very existence of the society had to be kept secret; we could not even speak of it to our families. We held our meetings at night in a cabin down in the woods near the Illinois River.

  “Most of the speakers were older men who made strong talk against the treaty signers. Some also spoke against Chief John Ross. They said he was too weak in his leadership against the treaty signers, and that we should have a full-blood chief. They began urging us to return to the old Blood Law, which they said had been broken by those who signed away the eastern Cherokee Nation.

  “One night a secret council was called and I slipped away from Uncle Opothle’s house and rode down to the cabin with Turtle Catcher, a young man of my age I had known in Okelogee. Summer had come on, and bullfrogs were bellowing along the river. I suggested to my companion that we hunt bullfrogs instead of going to the council, but he said the meeting was too important. ‘Tonight they are going to name the ones to be killed by the Blood Law,’ Turtle Catcher told me.

  “We went on to the cabin, which was dimly lit by a few candles that had attracted swarms of moths. I had just stepped inside the crowded room when one of the leaders of the secret society came and said to me in a quiet voice that I should leave before the council began. ‘Ask no questions,’ he said, ‘but leave this place. If your father were living, he would be asked to go. So I ask you to go. And remember your oath. Say nothing of this meeting to anyone.’

  “I went back outside and mounted my horse. Half the sky was filled with stars, but a low cloud bank was crawling out of the west and the smell of rain was on the air. Whippoorwills were calling down in the bottoms and the deep-voiced frogs sounded like the continuous beat of faraway drums.

  “On this night the secret society was going to name the condemned, and the leaders did not want me there, nor would they have wanted Talasi the Runner. I knew then of course that my uncle, Opothle, was one of those to be named for execution unde
r the old Blood Law.

  “The back of my neck went cold as if ice had formed on the hairs. For a while I could not think. I let the horse walk slowly along, certain in my mind that I could not let Uncle Opothle die without a warning. But I had taken the oath of secrecy and I did not know how I could save him. Only one person could tell me what to do. I whipped the horse into a gallop until I came to the crossroads. Opothle’s trading post was dark, but a light showed in the adjoining house where my cousin William and his recent bride, Tatsuwha, lived. I knew that sometimes when Opothle worked late he took supper with them before he went home. I could not bring myself to stop and find out if he was there. So I galloped on to the double cabin, slowing my horse so that it came up quietly to the hitching posts.

  “The front door was open to the summer night, and I could see all the way into the candlelit back room where Prissie and Jerusha were clearing away the supper dishes. I went inside and there was Grandmother Mary sitting in a straight-backed chair looking straight at my shadow.

  “ ‘Dane?’ She spoke my name softly.

  “ ‘Yes,’ I whispered. ‘Come outside, Grandmother.’

  “She limped as she came to the door, and I helped her over the rough boards of the unroofed porch, walking with her to the hitching posts. A sprinkle of rain blew past us. ‘Where is Uncle Opothle?’ I asked her. ‘At William’s,’ she said. ‘He may come soon.’

  “I put my hands on her shoulders, looking through the darkness into her beautiful aging face, and told her everything.

  “ ‘I saw a hawk today,’ she said, ‘circling over this house. Not a blue hawk, but a brown hawk. I have not seen a blue hawk since we came to this country.’

  “ ‘What am I to do?’ I asked, shaking her gently.

  “ ‘The Creeks are south of us.’ She seemed uncertain of her own words. “That is true, is it not? The same as it was in the old Nation?’

  “ ‘The Creeks live now to our west, Grandmother,’ I told her.

  “ ‘Opothle could go to the Creeks,’ she began slowly, ‘but they are in more misery than we.’

  “ ‘We have little time, Grandmother.’ I could feel her body shuddering under my hands. “They will do it tonight.’

  “ ‘Opothle should not have signed the treaty,’ she said. ‘But he is of my blood, my firstborn.’ She drew a deep trembling breath. ‘You are forbidden to warn him, so I must do it. Help me into your saddle.’

  “ ‘It’s beginning to rain,’ I said.

  “She pulled away from me and went to my horse and tried to mount. I lifted her into the saddle.

  “ ‘The happiest times of my life,’ she said, ‘were whenever I had a good horse under me.’ She turned toward the road. ‘Go on in the house, sogonisi, and wait for me.’

  “Waiting for her in the half darkness of the front room of the cabin was one of the longest times of my life. I wished Jotham was there, but he was away at the McBees. Anyway, since the beginning of the full-bloods’ secret society Jotham and I had grown apart. I sat in the straight-backed chair looking out the open door at the damp night, listening to the murmur of voices—Jerusha and Prissie in the back room and Suna-lee with Pleasant in the loft room. On the night before this I had climbed quietly to that loft room to be with Jerusha, but she had refused me entrance to her bed, threatening to cry out if I forced her. Since we had come to the Indian Territory, she had spun an invisible web around herself and Pleasant, tolerating only Grandmother Mary and Priscilla, rarely speaking to anyone else. On Sunday mornings now, Jerusha and Priscilla went to one of the Christian missionary meetings. They read together every night from their Bibles and took turns offering prayers over our food. Priscilla had grown plump and was almost past a marriageable age. She did not like it when Jotham teased her for being an old maid. Everything was changing. I would go out sometimes at night with one or another of the full-blood girls at Park Hill, but when I would be with them I was always thinking of Jerusha. Most of my days I spent hunting alone in the woods for deer, turkeys, squirrels, bee trees, anything to bring food to Suna-lee’s table. We were allowed to have guns again, in our own Nation, and as I sat there waiting for Grandmother Mary I could see Opothle’s two new rifles resting on wooden pegs against the rough cedar-log wall, with powder horns, knives, and catamount-skin shot pouches below them. Alongside these weapons, Suna-lee had hung a dozen drinking gourds.

  “After what seemed a lifetime, Grandmother Mary returned. When I heard the slow hoofbeats, I went outside and helped her from the saddle. A fine mist was falling and her dress and hair were beaded with raindrops. ‘It’s done,’ she said. ‘We’ll say no more of it.’ She limped into the sleeping room she shared with Prissie to change her damp clothes.

  “Late that night I was awakened when Jotham slipped into the shed room where we had floor pallets. I said nothing and he lay down on his straw-filled quilt. Half awake, half asleep, I listened to his breathing until I knew he was asleep, and not long after that shrill cries and hoarse shouts and the pounding of horses’ hooves broke the silence of the night.

  “Shaking Jotham awake, I led the way through the house toward the front door. It was open and Grandmother Mary was standing there peering out at the shadows of milling horsemen. A faint red glow shaded the whirls of mist, and out of them came my cousin William and his young full-blood wife. They were dressed in their nightclothes. Mary’s arms opened to them, and then as she stepped back to let them inside, I heard her ask: ‘Is it the trading post?’

  “ ‘Yes, and our house too,’ William replied. He was trembling with shock and anger.

  “Jotham and I both hurried to the door. The misty sky over the crossroads was stained with the color of fire. From the crowd of horsemen somebody called for Opothle. Suna-lee came to the door, holding a candle, and told them he was not there. ‘Where is he?’ the voice demanded.

  “Suna-lee turned toward her elder son. ‘I thought he was with you, William.’

  “ ‘He went somewhere tonight,’ William said. ‘Rode away with Bibbs.’ Bibbs was the last black slave owned by Opothle. The others had been traded off to raise money for the trading post which at that moment was burning to the ground.

  “Fingers gripped at my arm, and Jerusha in her nightdress was there beside me in the doorway, her eyes wide with fright when she saw the fire reflected in the sky. Like me she was remembering another fire on a night when we were naked together in the asi at Okelogee, the night her brother, Isaac, and his wife, Harriet, died in that other fire of vengeance. ‘Dane!’ she said in a loud whisper. ‘Opothle may be dead in the fire!’

  “ ‘He is not,’ Mary said, just as one of the leaders of the secret society loomed out of the mist in front of us, demanding that Opothle show himself.

  “ ‘Opothle is not here,’ Mary told him. She was holding one of Opothle’s new rifles.

  “ ‘Where is he?’ the man asked.

  “ ‘Opothle is a trader,’ she said, anger rising in her voice. ‘He must travel to buy goods. Now take your gaping fussocks out of our yard before I fire this gun into them!’

  “ ‘I’m coming in,’ the man said.

  “ ‘You’ll lie dead if you do!’ Her voice was suddenly as strong and deep as it had been in my childhood.

  “ ‘Let him come,’ Suna-lee broke in quickly. ‘He’ll soon find we are telling truth and then they’ll go away.’

  “The men of course found no trace of Opothle in the house or anywhere around the place, and they rode off. I realized then that Grandmother Mary and I were the only members of the family who knew the full meaning of what was happening. But neither of us could vision the bloodiness that was yet to come during that black night.

  “None of us slept any more in the hours before daylight. Jotham and I went up to the crossroads, but by that time the flames were dying out and there was nothing to see but a few pots and twisted metal utensils in the embers of the trading post.

  “In the early daytime our community began stirring with wild rumors of violent dee
ds. First we heard of the deaths of Major Ridge and his son, John. The assassins trailed the old man to the house of a friend, set an ambush, and filled his body with bullets. They then stormed into his son’s house, dragging him from his bed, and out into the yard, where they stabbed him to death with knives. It was daylight before they found Elias Boudinot in Park Hill, boldly tricking him into ambush, one man stabbing him in the back with a knife while another split his skull with a tomahawk. We learned afterward that Boudinot’s brother, Stand Watie, received warning of the Blood Law pact and escaped to Fort Gibson, an army post near the border of the Creek Nation.

  “Meanwhile Jotham and William were desperately trying to learn where their father was so that they might warn him of the danger. At the first opportunity I asked Grandmother Mary if she knew where Uncle Opothle had gone, but she shook her head. ‘He told me we would hear from him,’ she said. ‘Opothle always keeps his word, and Bibbs is with him to look out for him. We’ll hear from Opothle.’

  “I suspected that he might have gone to the Creeks, but I was wrong, and Mary was wrong, because we never heard from Uncle Opothle. Not from him directly, that is. From Bibbs we heard of the bloody way in which Opothle Kingsley died.

  “About duskfall the following evening Bibbs came riding up to our doorway on a sweated gray gelding. He was in such terror that he could hardly speak, and after he managed to impart to us the dreadful truth that we would never see Opothle again, we were drawn into his state of panic and grief. You may be assured that he was grieving. Back in Georgia, Bibbs may have regarded Opothle as his master, a barrier to his freedom, but in the strange wild Indian Territory he had come to look upon Opothle as his protector, and he was beset by genuine sorrow.