American Struggle

by Veda Boyd Jones

  “Etsi’s real sick,” Sarah said. “Real sick.”

  “The baby’s coming,” Nellie said. “And you and I are going to help it come.”

  Sarah’s mouth flew open, and her eyes widened. “How?”

  “I don’t know. Etsi, you will have to tell us what to do. I brought twine and wood for a fire.”

  “No place … for a fire,” Etsi said. “No smoke hole.” She panted in pain, and Sarah placed the flute in her mouth, obviously a sign they had settled on while Nellie was in the blizzard.

  Etsi moaned even while biting on the flute. “It is coming fast,” she said when she spit out the flute. A moment later, she was panting again, and Sarah held the flute for her to bite.

  “It’s coming,” Etsi said a moment later. Sweat ran down her face.

  “What do I do?” Nellie asked.

  “Help me up.” “Up?”

  “I need to squat and push,” Etsi said between gritted teeth.

  “Sarah, grab this arm,” Nellie said. “Now.” Between the two of them, they got Etsi into a squatting position. “Sarah, stay behind her; let her lean on you.”

  “Feel … the … baby,” Etsi gasped.

  Nellie knelt in front of Etsi and instinctively reached under her. “I can feel its head. Push, Etsi, push.”

  Etsi took a deep breath and pushed. In a whoosh, Nellie felt a sticky weight in her hands. She looked in wonder at the bloody baby as Etsi collapsed back on Sarah.

  “Lay her down,” she yelled at Sarah, who was desperately trying to keep Etsi upright.

  Nellie used a corner of a blanket to dry off the now-screaming baby.

  “Here, Etsi. Praise God. He is alive,” Nellie said. She laid the little boy on Etsi’s still swollen belly.

  “The afterbirth is coming,” Etsi said. “And you will need to cut the cord.”

  Their sharp knife was with Edoda. With no other way, Nellie took the ax, placed the baby and the long cord that connected the baby to the afterbirth on the floor, and with one hard swing, cut the cord. She wiped the baby’s end of the cord with the blanket, wrapped the baby in her gingham dress, and handed him to Etsi.

  “I’ll be right back,” she said. She slipped outside, carrying the afterbirth. She cleared the snow in front of the flap with the ax, chopped a hole in the frozen earth, and buried the afterbirth. She washed her bloody hands in the snow, shook snow off her head and shoulders, and went back inside.

  Etsi was smiling. “The baby is perfect,” she said. “Girls, you did a wonderful job. Thank you.”

  “Can you feed the baby?” Nellie asked.

  “I will try. Do we have any water?”

  Nellie broke the ice on the top of the water bucket and filled the dipper. Etsi drank.

  “It is so cold,” she said and shivered. “We need a fire,” Nellie said.

  She rearranged the bed for Etsi, and covered her and the baby with all the blankets in the room except the one Sarah was bundled in.

  The baby needed warmth. A flame, even a tiny flame would help. Too bad they had long ago used up the kerosene in their lamps.

  “Etsi,” she cried. “Did you pack any candles? Any at all?” In the back of her mind she remembered Etsi packing the candle molds.

  “I’m unsure,” Etsi said. “We have used none.”

  There were some. Nellie knew it. They’d been in the kitchen when Etsi had mentioned them. She would go look.

  “Watch them,” Nellie told Sarah. “I’ll be back.” The snow was not so thick this time, but Nellie still took every precaution against losing her way. In the back of the wagon, she dug through the box of good dishes and found the candles. Six of them. Not many, but it was a start.

  When she finally made it back to the tent, she lit a candle by sparking the flint rock next to an issue of the Cherokee Phoenix. Too bad about the treasured papers, but they were nothing when measured next to her little brother’s life.

  With the paper afire, she lit the candle, and then stomped out the paper fire, saving what she could. She took off a shirt and held it next to the flame. It wasn’t much, but the fabric was warmed. She unwrapped the baby and wrapped him in the warmed shirt, and she held the gingham dress to the flame.

  Stomping outside warned her an instant before Edoda and Lewis came inside the tent, carrying a sack of provisions and letting in the wind-driven snow.

  “What is this?” Edoda said.

  “You have another son,” Nellie announced proudly.

  Edoda and Lewis made their way over to Etsi and the baby.

  “We must find a way to build a fire to keep him warm,” Nellie said, “or he will …” She couldn’t complete her thought. But in her mind she knew the baby could die. “We will be out of candles soon.”

  “The main cooking fires have blown out from the storm, so building a fire will probably not work. But we can warm the baby ourselves.” Edoda took off his layered shirts, held the baby next to his warm skin, and put the shirts back on. “Lewis, get Old Rivers and Smoke Cloud. And be careful.”

  While Lewis was gone, Edoda explained how the whiteout kept them trapped at the supply wagon. “The snow has let up some,” he said.

  “I know,” Nellie said and explained about her trips to the wagon.

  Old Rivers and Smoke Cloud came into the tent. The heat from the candle and the body heat from so many in the tent raised the temperature a bit. They took turns holding the baby inside their shirts. Then they gave him back to Etsi to nurse.

  By the end of the day, the storm had blown through. The temperature was frigid, but the men made a short lean-to from the canvas flap on the wagon and built a fire to keep blankets warmed. They chopped up more boxes for firewood.

  “Nellie,” Old Rivers said, “you have done much today. You are brave.”

  Nellie, tired to her bones, smiled.

  CHAPTER 14

  The New Land

  The Bushyhead group spent nearly a month beside the Mississippi River before the members were ferried across at Moccasin Springs. It was a month of hunger and cold, but Nellie and the others were busy keeping little Snow Bird alive. He was given a Cherokee name because it had not helped them to name the other children with English names, Etsi said.

  “I would like a Cherokee name,” Nellie said. “You have one,” Old Rivers said. “She-Who-Is-Brave. Nellie the Brave.”

  “That is exactly the one for you,” Etsi said. “You have earned it.”

  Many Cherokee died in the camp. Jesse Bushyhead’s sister was buried by the river. He named his own baby daughter, born just after the crossing into Missouri, Eliza Missouri Bushyhead.

  “Snow Bird and Eliza will be in the same class in school,” Nellie said when they heard of the birth.

  “Yes,” said Edoda. “Now we have to get to the new land and build that school.”

  The trip across Missouri was not as long as the first part of the journey. Even though the bitter winter took its toll on all of them,

  Nellie took joy from holding Snow Bird’s little fingers and listening to his coos and watching for his smiles.

  The roads varied from bumpy to muddy to deeply rutted to no road at all. Day after day after day, Nellie walked, fixed meager meals from sometimes wormy cornmeal, fell asleep in the tent that now had rips in it, and always was cold and hungry and tired, so tired.

  What got her through each day was the number of miles they made, sometimes just five, sometimes ten, each taking them closer to the land where they could build a new house and she could go to school again.

  She longed for a bath. She washed her hands and face daily, but her clothes and the rest of her hadn’t seen hot water and soap in months. She was actually daydreaming about soaking in a washtub with hot water steaming around her when she heard a shout from Old Rivers in the wagon behind her.

  It all happened in slow motion. One moment she was walking beside the wagon, and the next the right wheel of the wagon was coming straight at her. She had no time to dodge it, but she put her hands up to def
lect the blow from her face, although it knocked her to the ground. At the same time, she saw the wagon tip dangerously to the side, and she thought it was going to turn over and kill her parents and her sister and new brother. Edoda’s quick actions, turning the oxen in the opposite direction, kept the wagon upright.

  Etsi screamed, Sarah in her little spot inside the wagon screamed, Snow Bird wailed. But no one was really hurt. Except Nellie. She lay on the road with the heavy wheel on top of her foot, which was twisted at an odd angle.

  Old Rivers got to her first and lifted the wheel. He immediately took off her high moccasin, revealing an ankle that was already starting to swell. He carried her to his wagon and somehow managed to place her on the driver’s seat. She knew she was no help at all in climbing into the wagon.

  Behind them, the wagons stopped, but walkers went around on the side of the road. Smoke Cloud helped Etsi and the others out of the Starr wagon on the side with two wheels. Etsi hurried to Nellie.

  “Where are you hurt?”

  “My ankle.” It really didn’t hurt, but the growing size of her ankle told her it was badly injured. Blood trickled from scratches on her forearms.

  “The baby?”

  “He is fine. We are not hurt, but we must take care of you. Put your foot up on the seat. We will have the doctor look at it.”

  That the white doctor was being summoned meant it could be something really bad. He was not much good at stopping the illnesses that raced through the Cherokee, but he was knowledgeable about broken bones. Surely she had not broken her foot. It was starting to ache now, but that was all.

  Lewis had been riding farther back in the line with a friend, but he now rode up to see what the delay was. Etsi sent him for the doctor.

  Smoke Cloud and Edoda righted the wheel and rolled it to the axle. They used a wagon jack to raise the wagon until they could slip the wheel back on, and then they repaired the hub to keep the wheel attached.

  “I don’t know how that came off,” Edoda said. “It’s fortunate the wheel wasn’t broken.”

  The doctor rode back with Lewis, and he examined Nellie’s foot.

  “Sprained,” he said. “Not broken. Don’t walk on it for a while.”

  “How long?” Nellie asked. Even in her pain, she was glad to practice her English with the doctor. It had been a long time since she had spoken her second language.

  “A week, ten days,” he said.

  Nellie passed the long hours riding on the driver’s seat next to Old Rivers. For a Cherokee who believed silence was golden and that words gained much power once they were spoken aloud, he turned into a regular chatterbox beside her.

  He had found eagle feathers during the month they had been camped beside the Mississippi and before the great blizzard came. He was going to give them to Lewis when they reached the new land.

  He talked to Nellie about the balance she needed in her life.

  “Right now, the physical has taken over because your foot needs care,” he said, “but you must also think of your mind and your spirit.”

  “I think of those things,” Nellie said. One evening she showed him the journal that she had kept sporadically. Too many times she was too tired at night to write in the journal, and riding in the wagon and writing was impossible.

  “What did you write about Morning Sun?” Old Rivers asked.

  “I wrote about our time in the camp all summer and about us walking together on this horrible trail. That is all.”

  “You did not write about her death?”

  “I could not.”

  “Nellie, you must not hold the bitterness inside.” “I am not bitter.”

  “Remember our talk about the bad voices, the bad thoughts of hate in our minds that rob us of inner peace?”

  “I remember. And I remember you said that it takes little steps to still the voices.”

  “But are you trying to still the thoughts at all? Or are you letting hatred build inside? In your mind and heart?”

  Nellie was silent for a long time. She lowered her head and sighed a sigh that came from deep inside her heart. Nothing would bring back Morning Sun.

  “The white men killed Morning Sun by forcing us on this horrible trip.”

  “That may be true or may not be true. She may have caught the disease in the old land.”

  Again Nellie was silent for a long moment. “Maybe.”

  The next day on the wagon, Old Rivers brought it up again. Nellie didn’t want to talk about it, but he would not let her be silent.

  “Yes, you are right that she might have died anyway.”

  “Death is the end of living as we know it. That is all. We should celebrate Morning Sun’s life here with us, and we should celebrate that she was a Christian who has gone to her reward. We should remember her with pleasure, which honors her, not think of her and let hate for others take over.”

  “Don’t you believe the Cherokee way is not to talk? Not to give power to words?”

  “That is true, but the words come when the right person is here to share the words.”

  “And you are that right person?”

  “No. You are that right person for me,” Old Rivers said. “I must also still the bad thoughts. It helps me to talk to you about your feelings because they are much like my own.”

  Nellie’s eyes widened. No matter if a person was old or young, they shared the same feelings. And they had to overcome the same bad feelings.

  “Not having forgiveness in your heart hurts you. It causes real damage. Not forgiving someone is like building a stone wall around your heart and mind so you cannot move forward.”

  “How do you forgive?”

  “I pray to the one true God for the strength to silence the bad thoughts and to let me forgive those who have harmed me.”

  “I will do that, too,” Nellie said. She bowed her head and prayed for strength to still the bad thoughts, the strength to forgive the white men, and the ability to find inner peace.

  She smiled at Old Rivers. He smiled back. It was the first honest-to-goodness smile she had seen on his lined face—ever.

  “Remember, the thoughts sometimes come back, so we must pray daily for the strength.”

  “I will,” she said. She had listened to Reverend Bushyhead’s services, and she had recited some prayers by rote, but this one had come from her heart. It gave her new peace.

  “You must write about Morning Sun in your journal,” Old Rivers said.

  That night, Nellie wrote a long letter to Morning Sun, telling her how empty and angry and bitter she’d felt when Morning Sun had died. It made her feel better to share her inner thoughts with her friend, even though her friend would never read the words.

  After a week on Old Rivers’s wagon seat, Nellie began walking a little bit each day. Three weeks later, she was walking like normal again. She was walking when the group crossed into Arkansas.

  “It won’t be long now,” Edoda said. “Maybe a couple more weeks.”

  Cherokee spirits seemed to lift at the thought of journey’s end. They traveled longer each day, covering more miles but fighting the gray skies of winter. The temperature was warmer than when they had camped that miserable month near the Mississippi. And the snows did not last as long before the sun melted them.

  Even so, some Cherokee did not finish this part of the long journey but were buried alongside the road. Those times were hard for Nellie, and she prayed especially hard for strength to fight bitterness.

  The day came when Lewis galloped from near the front of the long train.

  “We have crossed into the new territory,” he said. “Are we there?” Nellie asked.

  “Not exactly where we are headed, but we’re in the new land,” he said.

  Nellie looked at the landscape with new interest. The road was barely a path, and it still had deep ruts where the wagons traveled but with the gray grass of winter in between. The hills gently rolled. Some were wooded, and others were already cleared for fields. Pines and cedars were
the only green trees, but they were enough to set off the gray and brown winter skeletons of the ash, oak, hickory, and elms. Wild grapevines curled among the limbs.

  Nellie hitched a ride with Old Rivers when they came to a creek. Crystal clear water gurgled around the stones. Along the bank, willow trees leaned toward the water.

  They camped for the night and rode farther into the new territory the next day. On February 27, they made their last camp as a group. They had arrived. Nellie could hardly believe she had thought they would make the journey in less than three months. It had taken double that time, and the suffering along the trail had been great.

  Reverend Bushyhead held a prayerful service. He announced that by his calculations, they had lost thirty eight of their number to death. Nellie thought of She-Who-Sings and Morning Sun. Reverend Bushyhead said on the happy side, there had been six births on the journey. Snow Bird was among that happy number. And out of the original 950 Cherokee to begin the journey, 148 had deserted. Nellie counted John and the Deerborn family among that number, and she added a special prayer for their safety and happiness.

  Where to build a house? Who was in charge? There were so many things to consider, but Edoda said they would build a log cabin not too far from the Cherokee Baptist Mission where Reverend

  Bushyhead’s family was going to live. When the settlement money from Edoda’s old store came in from the white government, he hoped to start another store. He picked a building site for their cabin not far from a creek, and wasting not a moment, he, Smoke Cloud, Lewis, and Old Rivers began sawing down trees.

  March blew in, and with it, signs of spring were everywhere. Spring was in the warm breeze that came from the south on days when the sky was the blue of a new robin’s egg. Green buds appeared on trees, and wild crocus bloomed yellow and pink.

  By summer, the Starr family lived in a small cabin, Old Rivers and Smoke Cloud with them. It was not at all like the nice house they had had in Tennessee, but it was a new home. On a shelf, Nellie placed the glass bottle with the silver inlay she had rescued from their old front parlor. Next to it ticked the mantel clock from the old house. They used the good dishes for meals, which reminded her of the old life.