American Struggle

by Veda Boyd Jones

  Nellie’s thoughts tumbled along as she put one heavy foot in front of the other. She was tired, and the sun was moving down the western sky. Where would they make camp for the night? Where were they going? And where was Lewis?

  How far had she walked? Much farther than to the mission school, which was around three miles. That walk took about an hour, and they had been on the move for much longer than that. She thought they had covered at least twelve miles, and if her estimate was right, by the time the lead soldier finally called a halt for the night, they had covered around fifteen miles.

  CHAPTER 3

  The First Camp

  We’re less than six or seven miles to the Hiwassee,” one soldier said. He and another soldier had ridden close to Nellie. “But it will be dark in a few minutes,” the second soldier said. “This camp is as good as the one by the river. The spring is good.”

  Nellie thought that soldier must have some Cherokee in him. He recognized the time of silence—sunset—when the wind lay down and day creatures settled in their nests and night creatures stirred before venturing out. It was the time when people needed a deep rest.

  In the twilight, Edoda followed the other wagons onto pastureland beside the dirt road. He unhitched the oxen and staked them not far from the wagon. This was the first rest the poor animals had had all day.

  In all, Nellie thought there were maybe two hundred Cherokee in the camp, but there were only some twenty wagons. Many who had joined their caravan during the long afternoon were on foot without their belongings. How would they start over without some keepsakes from their homes?

  She knew the government had promised supplies for a year in the new territory, but she was glad her family had packed the fine dishes that Etsi cherished, to add a touch of home in the new house. Looking around at some of the other Cherokee, she felt guilty for even thinking of the glass dishes.

  There were some mighty poor Cherokee on this wagon train. Some of the children were thin, too thin, and their clothing was dirty. She looked down at her gingham dress and saw that it was also dirty from the dusty road.

  Soldiers carrying flaming torches escorted those Cherokee who were fortunate enough to have water buckets. The clear spring is marvelous, Nellie thought, when it was her turn to walk down in the shallow valley to fill the water bucket. She splashed cool water on her face. Never had water felt so good. It revived her sagging spirit.

  Nellie carried the full bucket to the top of the hill and shared the water with the Cherokee around the campfire Edoda had built. Then she went back down the hill to refill the bucket.

  Etsi poured part of the second bucket in one of the pots she dug out of the wagon and put it on the fire. Edoda secretively whittled chunks of meat off a shoulder ham that he had rescued from the smokehouse, hiding his knife the moment he had enough ham for the soup. Nellie wondered how he had slipped it by the soldiers.

  Etsi added the meat to the water. While it cooked, she went from group to group, looking for Lewis. No one had seen him. She returned to the campfire with tears in her eyes.

  “Old Rivers,” Etsi said to the aged Cherokee who sat next to the fire, “when did he leave your cabin?” She had asked him that as soon as the wagons had stopped, and she could make her way to his side. Now she asked it again.

  “He gave me the potion and left,” Old Rivers explained once again with a shake of his head. He coughed before he was able to continue. “He is out there, waiting, watching.” He raised a gnarly finger and pointed away from the road. “Watching for what?” Sarah asked.

  Old Rivers shrugged his shoulders and glanced at the soldier who stood nearby. His eyes glinted in the firelight, and the dancing flames made his lined face seem not so lined, but the cough continued.

  “Should I get the bowls and spoons?” Nellie asked. “Which box are they in?”

  “Under too many things,” Etsi said. “We’ll drink the soup.”

  Edoda dug out three metal cups from under the wagon seat. Etsi asked a prayer of blessing over the food, and the Cherokee sitting around their campfire took turns drinking their supper.

  “Is there corn bread?” Sarah asked.

  “We’ll save what little there is for morning,” Etsi said. With the soup gone, she put more water in the pot. When it was hot, she added herbs to make a healing drink for Old Rivers.

  Although the June night was warm, Nellie was glad she’d grabbed the blankets to make a soft bed on the grass. She climbed in the wagon and handed them down to Etsi. Carefully, she unwrapped the clock and silver-laced glass bottle. She put the prized possessions under the wagon seat to rewrap the next morning.

  For a long time, Nellie lay on the pallet beside Sarah, staring at the fire. When the last ember died, she stared at the sky and the bright stars that twinkled overhead. She had never slept outdoors before. Before the big house, home was the old cabin. There had never been a reason not to sleep in a bed.

  Now the night sounds seemed louder than ever before, even though she had slept many a summer night with the window as wide as it would open to let in the night breezes. She liked hearing the chirping crickets and the lonely whoo of the owl in the woods behind their house. But now, the sounds were close and seemed threatening without the protection of a roof and a floor.

  She knew many of the Cherokee around them had kept the old ways, traveling some and camping away from their cabins, but her family had stayed at home. Edoda rode to town each afternoon to check with the men who worked in his general store and to do accounts, but he preferred country living to town living, so they had always lived away from town.

  Old Rivers had taken Lewis on overnight hunting trips. Edoda had said that a Cherokee boy must learn the ways of the hunter, but he seemed glad that Old Rivers had been the one to teach Lewis. That was really the Cherokee way. Male relatives of young boys taught them fishing and hunting and fighting. Edoda hunted with a gun, while many Cherokee, including Old Rivers, were experts with a bow and arrow.

  Lewis knew the stars that were twinkling down on Nellie. He called groupings by names that Old Rivers had taught him. One evening, he had shown the Bear to Nellie, but she had a hard time seeing a bear in the sky. She was much better with words. She could read something about a bear and be taken to a forest in her mind, seeing the bear stand on its back legs, reaching for honey in a tree—or with its cubs.

  She hoped there was no bear around here. Bears didn’t come around big groups of people, did they? She dreamed of bears when she finally fell asleep. She dreamed of Lewis chasing a bear up a tree.

  At first morning light, the camp came to life. Edoda carried water from the spring and gathered firewood.

  “No time for fires today!” a soldier yelled, and another echoed the command around the camp. “Load up!”

  The soldiers chewed on beef jerky, but the Cherokee ate only what they had with them. Etsi passed out the last of the corn bread to the family and to Old Rivers and his son.

  “What will we eat later?” Sarah asked.

  “We’ll make a fire again tonight,” Edoda said, “and cook more stew.”

  Old Rivers coughed, and oddly enough, it didn’t seem as harsh as it had the day before.

  “You make more medicine tonight,” he said to Etsi. “Yes. We’ll have a fire then.”

  Nellie held the oxen while Edoda put the yoke on them. This was a job for Lewis or one of the hired men, not for her. Edoda had three Cherokee hired to work the fields. Other men that Edoda did business with had black African slaves for that type of labor, but Edoda said it was not Christian, even though there were slaves in the Bible. He said it was no more fitting that someone dominate a black person than it was for a white person to dominate the red-skinned Cherokee.

  Their hired men had hurried to their homes the moment the store worker had shouted that the soldiers were coming. So here her family was, with no one to help with the oxen except her. That made Lewis’s absence echo in Nellie’s mind, and she ground her teeth in anger for what was happening t
o them. Where was Lewis?

  With the oxen in place, Nellie helped load the blankets and once again wrapped the clock and the bottle so they wouldn’t break.

  A soldier shouted for the Cherokee to fall into line on the road. Nellie waited beside the Starr wagon until Edoda’s turn to urge the oxen into the road. Right behind them this time was Old Rivers and his son.

  The morning started out the same as yesterday’s forced march had ended. Clouds of dust formed by the time Nellie’s group got on the road, choking her with fine powder. Again, she walked downwind of the slight breeze and along the edge of the dirt road. Grasshoppers jumped on her as she walked along and disturbed their resting places.

  “Nellie, you can ride with us,” Old Rivers called down to her.

  “Thanks, but I want to walk,” she said. That something stubborn in her made her want to defy the soldiers by walking as they rode along. It was a long way to the new territory, eight hundred miles or so, and she was quite sure she wouldn’t walk the entire way. But for now, she wanted to walk, to turn around when she wanted and walk backward to see what she was leaving.

  Old Rivers smiled at her as if he understood what was going on in her mind. He was like that. Lewis said Old Rivers could read minds, but Nellie didn’t think so. She thought he read expressions on the faces of those around him that betrayed their true feelings. The way they looked away after they spoke, the falseness or genuineness of a smile, the slump of the shoulders, or the wave of a hand. Those things told what people were thinking unless they were very good at disguising their emotions.

  Old Rivers sure could hide his feelings. She had never seen such an unexpressive face. The many lines told he was old, but she didn’t know how old. He could be sixty or seventy or eighty, although she had never known anyone that old. The lines around his eyes showed he had smiled a lot at one time, or he had squinted a lot at the sun. She had never known Old Rivers to smile, never once seen it in her twelve years on this green earth.

  Maybe he didn’t have reason to smile. He lived with his only son, Smoke Cloud, just the two of them. They were much alike. Both had been married, and both had lost their wives in childbirth, although many, many years apart. Etsi had told Nellie about Old Rivers once long ago when Nellie was young and didn’t understand why these two men had such sad eyes and lived without a woman around.

  Nellie had been inside their cabin only once—and that was on much the same type of errand that she should have run yesterday—to take an herbal medical cure to Old Rivers. He could fix almost any potion better than she, Etsi said, but when a person was down with a fever, he should not have to take care of himself.

  If Nellie had taken the herbs to Old Rivers yesterday, would she be the one missing today? Where is Lewis, where is Lewis? Her footsteps echoed the recurring thought in her mind. Where is Lewis, where is Lewis? The muted sound of her moccasins against the dusty earth beat the rhythm of the refrain.

  She had been wearing her comfortable moccasins yesterday when the soldiers came and had never once thought of changing to her school shoes or her Sunday shoes. That was a good thing, since both pairs squeezed her feet. She had outgrown them, but she had not been fitted for new ones by the cobbler, a Cherokee who had recently opened a shop in town. He made heavy shoes like white people wore, not the lightweight moccasins that any Cherokee woman with some good hide and a quill needle could make.

  Nellie could make moccasins, but she didn’t have the skill or quickness that Etsi had. If she walked the entire way to the new territory, she would probably need another pair of moccasins. Edoda would have to kill a deer or cow along the way. Or would the soldiers have shoes for all the Cherokee?

  She walked along, kicking up more dust, twirling around to see the world behind her, see to the side, see everything. She wanted to memorize every blade of green grass, every crook in the trunk of every tree, every bird that sang its song from the branches of the trees. She bent down and touched the earth, just to feel the land of her forefathers.

  The sun was not yet straight up when a soldier yelled, “Hold up!”

  In the distance, Nellie saw hundreds and hundreds of Cherokee. Wagons were lined up along the log walls of a stockade. Campfires blazed for cooking in the warmth of the June sun.

  A soldier rode out from the stockade. “Take them over this way!” he shouted. “Past this stockade! We’ll put this group near the river.” He rode along their wagon train, pointing his finger at people and moving his lips silently, obviously counting them.

  “Why aren’t they going inside?” a nearby soldier asked.

  “There’s no more room,” said the soldier doing the counting. “The campgrounds run from stockade to stockade for forty miles. We’ll have to guard them outside. Harder for us, but they know the law. They know they have no choice but to relocate.”

  CHAPTER 4

  The Stockade

  As their caravan passed the open door of the stockade, Nellie glanced inside. Quite a few roofed cabins squatted along the sides, but there weren’t nearly enough for the number of Cherokee the stockade kept prisoner.

  Hundreds, no, thousands were camped near the stockade, Nellie estimated as her wagon train passed more and more Cherokee. She wrinkled her nose at the smell. Were there no outhouses around? Here she was, forced from her home by soldiers with guns, and all she could think about was how to relieve herself!

  “We have tents and food,” one soldier told another soldier near Nellie, “but the Indians are refusing both. What’s wrong with these people? I’ve never seen so many people be so quiet.”

  “Quiet?” Nellie murmured. The noises she heard were low murmurs broken by sobs. Her people stood, squatted, walked, and tended to others lying on the ground.

  “Lewis?” Etsi rose from her seat on the wagon, hope in her voice. She held onto the lurching wagon with one hand, her other hand outstretched as if reaching for him.

  Nellie saw the boy Etsi had called to, but when he turned around, he was not Lewis. He walked like Lewis, and he wore a black hat like Lewis, but it was not her brother.

  Etsi collapsed on the seat, her face contorted in agony—not physical pain but a much deeper emotional pain. Where was Lewis?

  It was a while before the lead wagon stopped. The one after that went to the next area past the first one; the next one went a little farther and stopped, until the entire line of wagons was halted.

  As soon as the oxen were staked out to graze, the fire was built for cooking, and water was carried from the creek, Edoda said, “I’m going to look for Lewis. He’s got to be among all these people.”

  “I’ll look, too,” Nellie said.

  Edoda took her hand. “Good. Two of us will cover twice the territory, but mark where we are so you can find your way back here. We don’t want to lose you, too.”

  “I’ll count wagons until we reach the stockade,” Nellie said. “That will be our number, and I won’t forget.” Together they walked back toward the stockade. As soon as they reached wagons that weren’t in their group, Edoda asked if anyone had seen Lewis Starr and described him. While he was talking with that group, Nellie went to the next, and they crisscrossed, hopping from campfire to campfire, spreading the word about Lewis.

  They also were given a long list of others to look for as they scouted through the camp. Fathers who were hunting or in far fields when the soldiers came were left to be rounded up by other soldiers. Other children on errands at the mill or in town were thought to be with other groups.

  Since the campfires weren’t in a long row but were spread out, Nellie soon lost sight of Edoda. But that didn’t stop her from continuing on her quest.

  “Morning Sun,” she called when she saw a friend from the mission school.

  “Nellie, when did you get here?”

  “Just a few minutes ago, but my brother Lewis isn’t with us. Have you seen him?”

  Morning Sun shook her head, her long dark braids whipping back and forth. “We have been here two days, and I’ve not s
een him yet.”

  Nellie described what had happened the day before, and Morning Sun gave an account of their roundup. “Like cattle,” she said, “except one soldier was very nice. He kept saying what a shame this was to make us leave our land and that it wasn’t right.”

  “That doesn’t help,” Nellie said. “We’re over past the stockade. I counted eighty-four wagons. We’re eighty-five. Come over later. I’ll be back there after we find Lewis.”

  “Which way are you going? I’ll search the other way,” Morning Sun offered.

  They went in opposite directions, each shouting for Lewis as they walked.

  Nellie saw other girls she knew from school. Dancing Wind, Green Leaf, Night Wind, and Annie. Nellie had once asked Etsi why she had an English name and not a Cherokee name. She was told the Starrs felt that if their children had English names, they would better fit into this new world that mixed the white men and the Cherokee.

  “If you wish a Cherokee name, it can be earned,” Etsi had said. Nellie had no idea what name she would earn. What would be her strength? Or what would she remind others of? So far, she had remained plain Nellie. Her friend Annie was called Flower Petal in Cherokee, but she went by Annie.

  “Edoda!” Nellie called when she saw her father a few wagons away. “Nothing?”

  He held out his hands, palms up. “No one has seen him. I’ve not been in the stockade. Have you?”

  “No.”

  They went inside together, with Nellie explaining to the soldier at the gate that they were looking for Lewis. Once inside, they split up and went along different walls.

  The stench of human and animal waste was much worse inside where the wind couldn’t blow it away. The heat was more oppressive, too. Nellie was thankful their wagon train had arrived later and they weren’t contained within the fortification.