American Struggle

by Veda Boyd Jones

  “Leave it here.” The lieutenant pointed at the porch again.

  “It would be safer in the shed,” Nellie said.

  “It won’t matter,” Lieutenant Seward said. “Scavengers will take it.”

  A wave of resentment washed over Nellie, followed by a wave of intense sadness.

  “Drive around front, Nellie,” Edoda said, his voice hard. “Hurry.” “Hee-ah!” Nellie shouted at the team, and they strained against the yoke. She did not often drive the wagon, but Edoda said that everyone must know how to handle stock, so he had taught her the commands for the animals and the way to jerk on the reins or pull them tight.

  Nellie pulled the wagon next to the front porch and tied the team to the front rail. She jumped off and ran inside, up the stairs, where Etsi and Sarah were tossing clothes into another trunk.

  “Hurry,” she said. “What else goes from here?”

  Etsi turned dark, soulful eyes to her. “Is Lewis back?”

  “Not yet. Any minute, though. Let’s get this downstairs.”

  They pushed, pulled, and tugged the big trunk to the stairs, where it thumped from step to step as they guided it down.

  Edoda loaded it onto the wagon and then came into the parlor, where Nellie was looking around for what other small items they could take in the packing crate.

  “There’s no more room,” Edoda said. “We’ll have to leave that crate here.”

  “We must take the clock,” Nellie said and fished it out of the crate, along with the clock weight. On a shelf, she spied the glass bottle with the silver inlay that Edoda had brought back when he went to Washington to meet with the government people. She was unsure what it had held at one time but thought it was probably perfume. It had been empty since she could remember, but the lacy silver on the glass had fascinated her, and she had played with it many times, twirling it to see the lovely patterns. She carefully wrapped it and the clock and the weight in a blanket and stuffed them in a corner of the wagon.

  “What about the crops?” Edoda asked.

  Even though there had been no rain lately, the corn was knee-high due to the early spring. They had already picked two varieties of beans, and the squash and cucumber vines had flowered and now reached across the rows.

  Nellie asked the lieutenant about the beans.

  “Leave the crops for the next family,” he said, looking Nellie straight in the eyes, then shaking his head and looking down at the ground. “We’ve got to go.”

  “My brother isn’t back from our neighbor’s house,” Nellie said.

  “We can’t wait. He may already be rounded up and sent along. You’ll catch up to him, or he’ll catch up to you.”

  “Surely we can wait a few more minutes,” Nellie said, but the soldier ignored her and climbed on his horse, motioning for the other men to mount their own horses.

  “We’ll pass him on the road,” Nellie assured her mother, whose tears flowed silently down her angular cheeks.

  Etsi helped Sarah climb to the seat of the covered wagon, and then she climbed up.

  “The lamps,” Edoda said and went back into the house.

  Of course, they would need lamps. They weren’t thinking. None of them was thinking of all the things they would need in the new place. Buckets. They’d need the well bucket.

  Nellie ran to the kitchen and got the bucket and ladle, spilling water in the front room as she hurried back to the wagon. Edoda was tying the kerosene lamps to the side of the wagon. He tied the bucket on the other side, then climbed on board. Nellie untied the team and tossed the reins to Edoda.

  “I didn’t lock the door,” Edoda said.

  “It won’t matter,” Lieutenant Seward said and shook his head. “Someone would just break it down.”

  Nellie declined when Edoda offered her a hand to climb on the wagon. “I’ll walk a ways,” she said. The team already had a heavy burden to haul. No use adding to it.

  They formed an odd parade. Lieutenant Seward led the way with another soldier riding beside him. Then came the wagon, followed by Nellie. A mounted soldier brought up the rear. He led two ponies, which belonged to Nellie and Sarah. Nellie felt she should be riding her pony, Midnight, but a new stubbornness inside her—or was it fear?—wouldn’t let her ask the soldier for the right to ride her own pony.

  Where was Edoda’s horse? Probably in the far pasture and not by the barn. How could Edoda bear to leave his horse? But a glance at Edoda’s hard face made her decide he was thinking of much more than his horse.

  Every few steps, Nellie looked over her shoulder. Was this the last she would see of the house that Edoda had built with such pride? They had lived in the old log cabin while Edoda had worked on this house. It was modeled after the houses he had seen on his trip east, where white people lived. Now would other people move into their fine house, sleep in their beds? Cook in their kitchen? Why was this happening to them? These were the lands of their forefathers. Why were the whites driving them out at gunpoint?

  Nellie picked up a small white stone from the lane, then another and another. She tucked five stones into her dress pocket. One for every member of the family. This was a part of her homeland she would take with her.

  As she looked ahead, she heard a moan, a moan from her mother that rose in pitch and strength and echoed in Nellie’s heart.

  “Lewis!” Etsi cried. “Lewis!” Fresh tears of grief flowed down Etsi’s cheeks. Sarah was gripping her doll, her shoulders shaking with sobs. Edoda turned for a look back, and Nellie saw a silent tear snake down his cheek. She put a hand to her face and swiped at her own tears.

  CHAPTER 2

  The First Step

  Nellie’s family was not yet out of their own lane when they met three white men with two wagons. Lieutenant Seward did not give an inch but made the white scavengers take to the side and drive their wagons into the pasture.

  Nellie was glad they were around the big curve of the lane so she couldn’t see the men go into the house. Would they take her four-poster bed? Would they take Edoda’s special chair? Hatred gripped her heart, and it was not a good feeling. She clamped her jaw, her teeth grinding together.

  What had happened to her in the last hour? She was a Christian girl who valued peace in her heart and pleasant thoughts for others. But she didn’t feel like that girl anymore. She tried to smile to change her thoughts, but her mouth felt fixed in a frown.

  They came to the main road, and she was stunned to see other Cherokee and soldier parades as odd as their own marching by. No, not marching—stumbling, shuffling, hobbling along. Old women were crying and carrying bundles on their backs. Young children who weren’t on wagons walked alongside their mothers without a sound, as if they knew the importance of saying a final good-bye to their homeland.

  She knew these people. They were neighbors, but no one stopped to talk. No one waved a friendly hand.

  Lieutenant Seward dashed off to talk with the lead soldier, leaving them to watch the procession. At least seven different households passed by, stirring up the dust of the road behind them, before Lieutenant Seward motioned to Edoda to fall in line.

  “Hee-ah!” Edoda yelled to the oxen, turning them onto the main road.

  Nellie would have waited for the dust to settle, but the soldier behind her told her to get moving. She walked on the side, away from the slight June breeze that carried the dust to the north.

  Lieutenant Seward yelled back that he was going on to another farm, and he left only the soldier with the ponies to guard them. For just an instant, Nellie thought of running to the woods behind the house and hiding. Back to her old life and away from what she sensed was going to be a hard time full of problems. But that would mean deserting her family, and right now the problem that made a sob catch in her throat was Lewis. Where was he?

  Would he take the road back from Old Rivers’s place or ride his pony through the woods on the animal path down by the creek? She should have left a note for him, but would he even go in the house if he saw men st
ealing their furniture? Would he try something foolish, as he was known to do—act without thinking of the consequences? Demand that the men put their things back? What would happen then? She tried to turn her mind from bad thoughts to good ones, but that was hard to do. After all, it was her fault that Lewis wasn’t with them.

  She should have taken the medicine potion to Old Rivers, but she had wanted to work on her poem, and she had asked Lewis to take it to the old man who lived two farms away. Besides, there was a special tie between Old Rivers and Lewis. She had seen it before in the silent way they seemed to communicate. And Lewis had jumped at the chance to go see the old Cherokee. But where was he now?

  At the next farm lane, another wagon joined them, and Nellie hung back to talk with John Deerborn, who was a boy her age and in her class at school. They had been friends for as long as she could remember. She would be of marriageable age soon, and in the privacy of her fanciful thoughts, she had wondered if John would be her future husband.

  He was astride a pony, but he jumped down and walked alongside her, leading his pony by the reins. The soldiers who ordered the Deerborns to fall in line rode quickly to the front to talk with the soldier in charge.

  Nellie explained about Lewis, but John had not seen him.

  “We had no time to grab many things,” John complained. “They just appeared and said to come now.”

  “Were you already packed?” Nellie asked, nodding at the wagon.

  “We had an hour, they said, but we were rushed out before the time was up. Oh,” he wailed, “I forgot Grandfather’s feathers!”

  “The eagle feathers?” She had heard John speak of the special collection that his grandfather had given him before he died. They had ceremonial medicine, his grandfather had told him. Nellie didn’t believe that for a moment, but she knew John did.

  His wail grew louder. “We will have hard times.”

  “You can get more feathers,” Nellie said. “The land we’re going to must have many eagles.”

  “Are there fine mountains like these?” he asked and pointed at the ridge to the east in the forest highlands. “Eagles must have high mountains for their nests.”

  “We will find some along the way,” Nellie said. “I’ll help you climb to their aerie.”

  “But Grandfather’s feathers had special powers,” John said.

  “Remember what the mission teachers said? Only God has special powers.”

  John hung his head. “I believe that, but I also believe there is something in the feathers. Can I not believe both?”

  It didn’t seem reasonable to Nellie that both could be true, but how could she disagree with a boy whose face was streaked with dust and tears?

  “The feathers only have the powers that God puts in them,” she said. “I think He gave the eagles such a powerful wing spread so they could soar high. And He gave the feathers special meaning to you so you could soar, too. They are a symbol, like the Christian cross is a symbol.” She felt good about her explanation. And she thought the teachers at the mission would approve.

  “That sounds right,” he said. “And God knows where Lewis is and will bring him this way.”

  “Yes,” Nellie agreed, but it was easier to think about the feathers than it was to think that Lewis was on his way to join them.

  They walked on and on. Another wagon joined them. Old Rivers’s son drove it, and Old Rivers sat beside him, even though the old man looked tired and sick from his cold. He bent over with a hoarse cough. Nothing worse than a cold in the summer, Etsi often said. But where was Lewis? There was no sign of Lewis or his horse.

  Nellie hung back and shouted, “Where is Lewis?”

  “He went home,” Old Rivers said, “right before the soldiers came.”

  Nellie shook her head to say he had not arrived. Had he seen the soldiers and hung out in the woods?

  The line of wagons grew longer, and as they passed through an area where the poorer Cherokee lived, the number of walkers grew. Some families had only what they could carry. How would they start over with nothing?

  Some of the Cherokee men wore red turbans. Others wore blue, and still others wore nothing atop their coal black hair. Some were dressed like the whites, but many wore traditional deerskin leggings and embroidered hunting shirts. The women wore long skirts that dragged in the dirt as their postures slumped and their sad heads hung low from their shoulders. The sounds of moans and sobbing rose over the clanking of the chains on the wagons, the creaking of the wheels, the neighing of the horses, the grunts of the oxen, and the shouted orders of the soldiers to keep moving.

  Nellie’s stomach growled. The sun was high overhead, past straight up. It had already started its way toward the west. The soldiers did not pause for something to eat. Only once did they halt the group by a spring so they could get water.

  Nellie joined her family, and they drank all they could, then filled the gray water bucket to the brim. As the wagon lurched along, water splashed over the sides of the bucket until it reached a level where it sloshed back and forth but didn’t leave a wet trail.

  The dust grew thicker as their wagon train caught up to the one ahead, and the shuffling feet of the people and the animals stirred up the ground. Nellie watched her step as the animals left their droppings on the road.

  She had drunk so much water, she had to relieve herself. At first it was just a normal full feeling inside her, but as she walked and walked, the feeling intensified until she could hardly put one foot in front of the other. She could go behind a tree in the woods beside the road, but would the soldier shoot her if she left the group?

  Shouting out the question to the soldier with the ponies was the only way to solve this problem. She was glad that John had fallen back with some other boys and wouldn’t see her humiliation.

  She made her way to the soldier and spoke in English, hoping the Cherokee around her wouldn’t have a clear understanding of her words.

  The soldier smirked but motioned her to go to the woods. Without waiting to tell Etsi, she made a break for the woods. She didn’t stop at the first trees but went deep inside the woods for privacy, and still she was uneasy that someone would see her.

  What a relief! When she made her way back to the road, the soldier with the ponies had fallen toward the back and was waiting for her to rejoin the marchers.

  She hurried, half-walking and half-running, to her place next to their wagon. Sarah was squirming on the seat by Etsi, who still shed big tears of fear and sadness. Walking as close to the wagon as she dared, Nellie called to her mother. “I can take Sarah to the woods if she needs to go!”

  Etsi nodded, and Edoda slowed the team. Sarah jumped into Nellie’s arms, and the two girls walked into the woods.

  Nellie stood lookout for Sarah and listened to the caws of two crows crying out to each other. Were they sharing the news that the Cherokee were leaving their beloved homes? When the girls emerged from the woods, Nellie could see the line of wagons and her people stretching all the way back to the big curve in the road.

  “Hurry,” she told her sister. “We don’t want to be away from Etsi and Edoda. We might lose them in all these people.”

  “Is … Lewis … lost?” Sarah asked breathlessly as they ran to catch up with the Starr wagon.

  “God … will bring him … to us. Just give him … some time. He will … catch up … with us.”

  The girls slowed to a walk to catch their breath.

  “Lewis is on his pony,” Sarah said. “Blaze can run as fast as the wind. Etsi is so sad for Lewis.”

  “I know, but there is nothing we can do. We must pray for Lewis to join us and pray that this trip does not take too long. Are you hungry?”

  “Etsi gave me some corn bread. There’s more. You want to ride now? Walking is too hard. Too hard to keep up with the wagon.”

  They walked faster. When they reached the Starr wagon, Edoda slowed down, and Nellie helped her sister aboard. Sarah said something to Etsi that Nellie couldn’t hear. Then E
tsi reached into a satchel and handed a square of corn bread to Nellie.

  She ate greedily as she walked along. It tasted wonderful—not as good as fresh-made corn bread, but even better because she was hungry. With that need satisfied, her thoughts turned once more to Lewis. Where was he?

  He was a good boy, really. Nellie squabbled with him some, but that was just because he was a boy. He had privileges that she was not allowed, and he was a year younger. He could run in the fields, go on overnight hunting trips, and ride his pony to Edoda’s general store almost anytime. She was stuck in the house, which was where she liked to be most of the time, but not doing chores like cooking and sewing. She liked her books and her writing materials. And she couldn’t think of a place she’d rather be than in her room at the writing desk Edoda had made for her.

  But Lewis? He didn’t like to read much, even though he could read Cherokee. He hadn’t taken to the mission school the way Nellie had, hanging on to every word of the teachers, and he hadn’t taken to English like she had. He liked playing stickball, which got brutal with the boys hustling for the ball and sometimes resulted in broken bones. And he liked hunting with his blowgun. He also liked riding Blaze. His pony had a flame-like white streak on its long face, which is why Lewis picked the name. Lewis was the best rider in the family, even better than Edoda, really.

  Oh, no. She hadn’t packed his blowgun. Well, he’d just have to make another when they arrived at the new land. The white men who had headed for their house probably took it. And they had probably taken Nellie’s writing desk for some white girl to use. A huge sob shook Nellie’s shoulders at the thought that she would never again sit at her desk and write a poem.

  The mission teachers had read some poetry of Phillis Wheatley, and although most of it had to do with someone dealing with death, the poems had touched Nellie. She had written some of her own and had named them like Phillis had named hers: “To Edoda on the Death of Old Roany, Our Cow,” “On Imagination,” “On the Day of the First Corn.” She had been working on that last one when the store worker arrived and told them the soldiers were coming. Now Lewis was gone, and the house was gone, and their life as they knew it was gone. What would happen to them?