American Dreams Trilogy

by Michael Phillips

  “It is so heartbreaking to see what the European influence has done to native tribes like yours. And yet… I am part of that—I am white myself. I am so sorry!”

  “I do not know how we will keep our heritage and culture alive for our children,” said Chigua, “and for their children. The old ways are disappearing. That is why I tell our four young ones about those who came before, about Chief Moytoy and Tame Doe and Attacullaculla and Nancy Ward, and all my ancestors. And I tell them about the five rivers—”

  Suddenly Nancy’s voice interrupted in astonishment.

  “What dat you say! What five ribers?”

  “It is a legend I heard as a child,” replied Chigua. “I have always remembered it. I don’t know where it came from. It is mixed in my mind with many legends from the past.”

  “What it say?”

  “It tells of an ancient king from long ago, from a land across the sea. I don’t know if I am descended from him, but I was told of the legend of the five rivers from before I can remember, and about an old king.”

  “But I been tol’ dat same story!” said Nancy with wide-eyed excitement. “Malachi’s mama tol’it jes’ like you said! She made me promise ter tell our young’ uns, an’ we ain’t no Indians, an’ dat’s da truf. She said he was an’ ol’ black king. You got nigger blood in you, Miz Leflur?”

  “I don’t know, Nancy,” replied Chigua. “Perhaps I do. Look—” she said, holding out her arm next to Nancy’s“—my skin is nearly as dark as yours. There are stories of an ancient one called Magoda just like the Cherokee chief Moytoy, who came from the king who knew the five rivers and whose son married one of my tribe and went to live with the Cherokee. Perhaps my dark skin comes from him. Do you know this name?”

  Nancy shook her head. “I neber heard ob dat, Miz Leflur. My kind don’ talk dat much ’bout da ol’ days—we’s always singin’ ’bout da new times, ’bout freedom an’ da promised lan’ an’ such like.”

  “And for you here, that freedom has come it seems.”

  “Dat it has, Miz Leflur, thanks ter Mister an’ Miz Dab’son.”

  “My people are very particular to keep the legends of the old days alive,” Chigua went on. “But over the years they cannot but fade from one generation to the next.”

  “What dat legen’ ob dose five ribers mean, Miz Leflur?” asked Nancy.

  “I don’t know everything about it,” replied Chigua. “I remember someone saying to look at our hands to remember, and to use the lines in our hands to think of the five rivers, to look to the land for strength and to take what strength it gives, and to remember the past for the wisdom of its heritage, and to remember that the blood of kings flows in our veins. But I don’t remember who told me. It couldn’t have been my own mother, and I remember nothing like that from my father.”

  She turned to Nancy and smiled. “I’m afraid that is all I know of it.”

  “But dat’s right fine, ain’t it, Miz Leflur. Hit makes my heart feel warm jes’ hearin’ you say it like dat.”

  “Just imagine—this must mean the two of you are related!” said Carolyn.

  “Not me, Miz Dab’son,” said Nancy. “I ain’t come from dose ribers—dat’s Malachi.”

  “Your children might still be distant cousins to Chigua’s. How exciting!”

  “If dat don’ beat all!” said Nancy. “You reckon dat’s really so, Miz Dab’son?”

  “It seems like it could be—don’t you think, Chigua?”

  “I don’t know, but why not, if we both are descended from the same ancient king.”

  “I am curious about what you said about the caves a while ago,” said Carolyn. “There are local legends here associated with Indians and caves too—Cherokees, actually.”

  “There were Cherokees here!” exclaimed Chigua.

  “We are going to the former home of a man named Mr. Brown who was Cherokee. I don’t know if his real name was Brown, but that’s what he was always called.”

  “What was he doing here?” asked Chigua.

  “He came from the South. He was a friend of Richmond’s father.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “No one knows. He disappeared.”

  “This is the most amazing thing to hear!” said Chigua, now as surprised as Nancy had been before. “When I was young I heard about a man who left North Carolina years ago for the north. But his name wasn’t Brown, it was Long Canoe, great-grandson of Attacullaculla, from another line than my descendants.”

  “What do you know of him?” asked Carolyn.

  “Nothing really. He was a mysterious figure by the time I was born. I used to hear my father talk about him. Some say that when he left a boy accompanied him. It is said that he took the boy away to protect him. Did the Mr. Brown you speak of have a boy with him?”

  “He was always alone as far as I know,” replied Carolyn. “What do your legends say became of the boy?”

  “Nothing at all. Nothing more was ever heard about him. No one knows what became of him, and I have heard nothing about my people since my capture.”

  “I wonder what became of him. Is it possible he could still be alive?”

  “I don’t know, Mrs. Davidson,” replied Chigua. “That was many years ago and I was very young. So much time has passed. Even if there were such a one, and even if he did return, it is now too late. It seems likely that the secrets Long Canoe took with him may never be known.”

  They arrived at the Brown house. Chigua felt a wave of chill as she walked in even though it was a warm day. Most of the black women were already present, having arrived by different routes and at different times, and were waiting in relative silence inside. Though they had been meeting with Carolyn for several years, they were still aware enough of the danger, especially to their mistress, that they were watchful and wary whenever they ventured too far away from the precincts of the Greenwood plantation house.

  “Hello, ladies,” said Carolyn as she walked in. “You all, I think, have by now met our guest Chigua LeFleure. I asked her if she would like to join us today.” Carolyn and Richmond had not specifically told their blacks what was the situation with Chigua and her family. From their speech and Chigua’s distinctive features, most assumed them free guests of their master and mistress, as they still thought of them, and asked no questions. Judging it best for everyone concerned, thus it remained.

  Gradually more women arrived. They sat down and Carolyn got out the supply of a dozen or so Bibles she had brought here and kept in a chest for just this purpose. She passed them around the group of women.

  “I wuz in town, Miz Dab’son,” one said as Carolyn came to her. “I wen’ by Rev’ run’ Jones an’ he said ter tell you he wuz ailin’ sum an’ ter pray fo him. He didn’ seem too good, Miz Dab’son.”

  “Thank you, Wilma,” nodded Carolyn. “I will pay him a visit this afternoon to see if he needs anything…. Now, shall we open to where we were before, to the sixth chapter of the book of Luke—do you remember where that is? If not, it is on page 937.”

  She waited while the women, sharing the Bibles as needed, found their place. Even so simple a task, for those who were still learning to feel comfortable with a book in their hands at all, took some time.

  “I will begin by reading again what we talked about last time,” said Carolyn at length. “Follow my words and see if you can see and hear them at the same time. I will start at verse twenty.”

  Again she waited a few seconds.

  “And he lifted up his eyes on his disciples,” Carolyn began, speaking slowly and enunciating each word with emphasized clarity, “and said, ‘Blessed be ye poor: for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are ye that hunger now: for ye shall be filled. Blessed are ye that weep now: for ye shall laugh. Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man’s sake. Rejoice ye in that day, and leap for joy: for, behold, your reward is great in heaven: for in the li
ke manner did their fathers unto the prophets.’”

  Carolyn stopped and glanced around the room with a smile.

  “For you who have been slaves and have been treated badly during your lives,” she said, “what do you think when you hear that you should leap for joy because people hate you and do terrible things to you?”

  “I ain’t neber leaped fo joy at no whuppin, an’ dat’s a fact, Miz Dab’son!” said the outspoken Mary Sills.

  “I can understand why!” laughed Carolyn. “How many of you have been whipped before you came here?”

  About half the women nodded and mumbled and made comments in the affirmative.

  “What do you think—can you forgive the men who whipped you?”

  More comments followed, with several shaking heads.

  “Yet just imagine—Jesus tells us that when we forgive, and when we are kind to those who treat us badly, that we will be rewarded in heaven. Listen to what he says: ‘But I say unto you which hear, Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you, Bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you.’ That means that you are to pray for your former masters that whipped you.”

  “What ’bout you, Miz Dab’son?” asked Mary. “You ain’t neber been whupped, has you?”

  “No, Mary, I haven’t.”

  “Den what you gots ter pray an’ forgib like you say we has to?”

  Carolyn smiled. “Right now, Mary, I am praying for some people who are treating my husband badly.”

  “What kin’er people? Who wud do dat ter him?” she asked, incredulous that anything critical could ever be said of Mr. Davidson.

  “Believe it or not, some of his own relatives,” replied Carolyn. “Sometimes those closest to us can be the most cruel of all. But you’re right, I don’t have anything like whippings that I have to forgive. But people can hurt us in many ways, with words and accusations as well as whips. Those kinds of hurts have to be forgiven too. Some of you might have those kinds of things to forgive too—hurt feelings and cruel words and unkindnesses of many kinds. All hurts have to be forgiven—so, Mary, why don’t you begin our reading, there at verse thirty-one.”

  Mary squinted down at the Bible in her lap, and then began to read.

  “An’ as ye wud dat men,” she said, each word coming out slowly, one at a time, before she moved on to the next, “shud do ter you—”

  She stopped and glanced up.

  “Dis mean women too, Miz Dab’son?” she asked. “Or jes’ men?”

  “No… men and women, Mary.”

  “Why don’ it say dat, den?”

  “Because the word man in the Bible can mean men or it can mean mankind, or both men and women together.”

  “Humph—seems a mite confusin’ ter me.” Mary bent down, found her place again, and again, slowly and deliberately, continued: “Do ye also ter dem likewise.”

  For the following forty minutes, with questions and interruptions and many pauses and fresh starts, Carolyn guided and encouraged and helped the ladies, reading in turn, through another seven verses.

  “Very good, ladies!” Carolyn said enthusiastically when they had completed the section. “You are doing so well. I am very proud of you all. That portion Nancy read a moment ago is one of my favorite verses in the whole Bible. ‘Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom.’”

  Carolyn paused and looked around the room at the gathering of simple and humble women whom she loved with all her heart.

  “To give you an idea of what I mean,” she went on, “imagine if you came and asked me for a container of flour to make bread. Now I could go to my bin and take out a meager scoopful and put it in your container and give it back to you. Or… I could fill it as full as I possibly could, then set it on the table and shake it about so that it would settle and make room for more. Then I could put another scoop in because of the settling.”

  Again she paused, allowing her image to settle into the women’s imaginations just like the imaginary flour.

  “But what if I still wasn’t through. Because then I might set it on the table again and squash and press it down with my hands as tight as I could so that it would still hold even more. Then I could get my scoop and add more flour yet again. By now there would be so much more than the simple scoopful I had begun with. But I could even go further yet. I could scoop out more and put it on the top, and keep piling the flour so high that it was running over the edges as I handed your container back to you! Just imagine, that’s how Jesus says God will bless our lives if we give to others so generously.”

  “Dat’s how you an’ Mister Dab’son is ter us,” said one of the ladies. “You’s always givin’ ter us more’n we cud eber repay. Ef we ax you for sumthin’, you always gib us more dan we ax for.”

  “That is very kind of you to say, Harriet. Maybe that is our way of repaying in some small measure how we feel God has blessed us,” smiled Carolyn. “But more than that, we consider you part of our family.”

  “But we ain’t really, Miz Dab’son,” said Mary. “Look at us—we’s black, you’s white. Dat ain’t sayin’ we don’ apresheate all you dun, cuz we do. But we’s still black folks, an’ you’s still white.”

  “Of course,” nodded Carolyn. “But we are all human beings together. That makes us brothers and sisters in an even deeper way than the color of our skin. In a wonderful way! Do you remember the verse Chigua read a few minutes ago, when she said, ‘ye shall be the children of the Highest’? We are all God’s children together, and God doesn’t see what color our skin is, only what is in our heart.”

  Carolyn paused thoughtfully a moment.

  “That reminds me,” she said after a moment, “of what Nancy and Chigua and I were talking about on our walk up here. They were talking about an old legend of an ancient king and five rivers, and wondering if they were both descendants of that same king. But you ladies are descended from another king—Christ the king. And so am I. The Bible calls us heirs with him and children of the Father. Just imagine, we are children, not just of an earthly king, but of God himself who made the world and everything in it. He loves us as his children. I am a white lady. Most of you are black. Some of you probably have mixed blood. Chigua is a Cherokee Indian. She is married to a man who is half black and half white, so all three bloodlines run in her children. We in this room right now have within us the blood of all three races of America. Yet here we are together, true sisters because we are all children of the same Father. Isn’t it wonderful! In God’s eyes, I am not white and you are not black or brown or anything. We are simply children of God’s heart.”

  “I have never heard anyone speak of God so personally as you do, Mrs. Davidson,” now said Chigua, contributing for the first time to the discussion, “as if he were actually a Father who loves us and whom we could love back. Many Indians have converted to Christianity. Yet in our culture, God remains more like a spirit than a human being. He is nature, he is in the clouds and the sun and the water and the earth. He is over everything and in everything… but he is not the same as a person.”

  “He is God and Creator, but impersonal… is that something like it?” asked Carolyn.

  Chigua nodded. “I would say so. Now you describe him as personal. This is new to me.”

  “I believe with all my heart that he is personal,” said Carolyn. “Christianity says that God created the clouds and sun and earth and water and every plant and animal as well as mankind… but that he is distinct and separate from them. He created the sun, but he is not himself the sun.”

  Again Chigua nodded. “I think I see,” she said slowly.

  “But because we are unable to see God, even though he is personal, Jesus came to earth to tell us who God is… and to tell us that he is our Father—a personal Father.”

  Richmond had devised a plan to get Sydney’s family the rest of the way to the North. It was not without risk—perhaps great risk. Yet it was s
o bold and daring that Richmond thought that it just might work.

  Richmond had chanced to hear in town that Denton Beaumont would be traveling by train to the nation’s capital in three days. The news set the wheels of his mind in motion. Manufacturing some business of his own in Philadelphia, which was in truth to visit an old friend whom he hoped might find a job and housing for Sydney’s family, he told Carolyn, Sydney, and Chigua of his scheme. Carolyn was concerned for the danger. But as he listened, Sydney’s glistening teeth gradually spread into a wide smile.

  Richmond’s plan, however, involved keeping Silas on at Greenwood temporarily, lodging with several other of the black workers. The possibility of his opening his mouth and saying more to their own blacks than they wanted was a risk they would have to take. But it would be far less than the risk of his blabbing something untoward in the presence of a federal commissioner sworn to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law by any means possible.

  Then Richmond went to the young single man who still occupied the small room in their basement.

  “Silas,” he said, “I would like to talk to you a minute.”

  “Yes, suh, Mister Dab’son.”

  “I know you have been traveling north with Sydney’s family—what is your goal when you get there?”

  “Ter be free, Mister Dab’son… an’ git me a job.”

  “How would you like to work for me—for wages?”

  “But I’s still a runaway as long as I’s here, ain’t I? I wants ter be a free man, dat’s what I wants. Dis ain’t da norf, is it, Mister Dabson?”

  “No, Silas, this is Virginia. But there are no slaves at Greenwood, and you would be treated as if you were free. I think you will be safe here, as long as you say nothing to anyone. If you tell anyone that you are a runaway, I will have to send you away. You will simply be another black man I have hired to work for me.”

  “Dat soun’s all right, I reckon,” said Silas slowly, turning the thing over in his mind. “But I won’t be no slave?”