“What should I do with them? Where should I keep them?”
“Where they will be safe. Perhaps they are best left here for now. No one knows of this place but we two. When time comes for a change, you will know it. The sacred trust is now in your hands. In time you too must pass them on as I am passing them on to you. We must preserve the legacy of peace.”
“But, Nanye’hi,” he said, “there are six here—I thought there were seven, the sacred number of our lodges and clans.”
“Yes, the remaining one has been lost through one of our war chiefs. But,” she added, her voice becoming distant, “the great chief told me that he would go to his fathers longing for the day when all seven rings would be united again, when our people would be united as one, again to rise to greatness—not by conquest but by the character that makes them who they are, the real people, the Ani-Yunwiya of a new time, The People of Peace. When you are old, it will be you who will preserve the legacy of the rings, and who will preserve the heritage of our people.”
They returned from the mountain several hours later. Long Canoe was somber, with many things to think about.
“What of your brother Swift Water?” asked Nanye’hi. “Is it true what is being said, that he may join those in the West?”
“I do not know,” replied Long. “He has spoken of it. He too wants to preserve the old ways and thinks that may be the best way to do so.”
“It is dangerous to talk of it openly,” said Nanye’hi. “My heart grieves for the division that has come to the Ani-Yunwiya.”
Secret Mission
1819
Holding the secret of his sojourn up the mountain with the aging Ghigua in his heart, a year later, along with Major Ridge and David Watie, Long Canoe was added to the tribal council as a sign of the growing esteem in which he was held. That he had no wife or family meant that he had time to devote to matters of the troubled nation. Nanye’hi was not able to attend all meetings of the council because of her age. But whenever she was present and their eyes met, the powerful secret that bound them together sent chills down Long Canoe’s spine.
Still hopeful that the Cherokee would be able to maintain their national sovereignty within the greater U.S., as had been promised many times by American leaders, plans were made for a new Cherokee constitution, modeled after that of the United States. Long Canoe helped draft the document.
By the end of her life, seeing that whites were continuing to pour into their land and showing the Cherokee little respect, Nanye’hi moderated her views on friendship with the whites and advised against giving up any more land. Nanye’hi’s daughter Cata’quin, or Catherine and known as Katy, took up her mother’s crusade on behalf of their people. With her mother and several other Cherokee women, they presented a memorial to Cherokee delegates in 1817, urging that no more land be ceded to the United States.
When it came time for the ratification of the constitution by the full council in 1819, the eighty-one-year-old Ghigua was unable to attend. Her daughter Katy Harlan appeared in her stead, wearing Nanye’hi’s gold ring as a symbol of her proxy, and voting in favor of ratification, as she had done at times in the past, by means of Nanye’hi’s fabled walking stick.
Long noted the ring on Katy’s finger. Did Katy, he wondered, know of the other five rings? And where was the ring of Oconostota at this moment? Had it passed out of Cherokee hands altogether?8
Only two weeks after ratification of the new Cherokee constitution, Swift Water came to Long Canoe late one night in secret.
“It is done,” he told his brother.
“What is done?” asked Long.
“The constitution decided it for me,” said Swift Water. “It is a white man’s document. It is a betrayal of our people. We will never live as Cherokees again.”
“It is for the best, Swift,” said Long Canoe.
“That I do not believe, my brother. That is why I am taking my family West. We will follow Tahlonteskee and Oolootskee and the other brave settlers. It is the only way to preserve what is being lost. The deal I told you about before has at last been made.”
“But, Swift—”
“Do not try to dissuade me, Long. I believe the council has betrayed our heritage.”
“They say the same of those who sell their land to whites to go West.”
“I see that as the best way to preserve our heritage. I know you are following the path you think best. But I must follow what I think best. Perhaps you, and even Nanye’hi, would feel differently if you had the charge of the next generation. I must look after my family.”
“You heard the Ghigua and Cata’quin and the other women pleading that we give up no more land.”
“Yes, but the whites will take all the land eventually. Do you not see it? Even Major Ridge is softening his view. I think even he will come around to seeing things my way eventually. The next generation of leaders, like John Ridge and the two Watie brothers, surely will. I hope for my own son, Swift Horse, to be one of them. I want to start him toward leadership among our people where he can do the most good—in the West.”
“You may be right,” replied Long Canoe. “I have myself heard the Major say that he may have been wrong in killing Doublehead. But there are still many who believe in the old blood law that tribal lands cannot be sold under penalty of death.”
“Nevertheless, I must cast my lot with the future,” said Swift. “The American Jackson will see that all the tribes are brought to ruin, not merely the Creek and Seminole. You and the others who believe in the promises and treaties will see their deception in time. All Cherokees will have to go West eventually. The intermarriage here is rampant. Before long no one will know a Cherokee from a white. To move West is the only way to preserve the purity of our race.”
“I fear for your safety, my brother,” said Long Canoe. “But I wish you the best. May the Great Spirit protect you wherever you go. When will you leave?”
“Soon. As soon as my business is concluded.”
“And Swift Horse and Rose Blossom?”
“They know nothing yet. Swift Horse is young. Rose Blossom is afraid. It is best that they not know until we are away.”
The two brothers embraced with deep affection, then parted.
Long Canoe lay awake long into the night pondering his brother’s words. How to know which side was right in this difficult dispute? One thing was certain: passions ran high on both sides. He prayed his brother knew what he was doing.
Three nights later, Long Canoe awoke suddenly. A sound had disturbed his sleep. He lay and listened intently. Gradually he became aware of light outside… an unnatural, orange, flickering light. Panic seized his heart. He jumped from bed and grabbed shirt and trousers and boots.
He rushed into the night. In the distance flames leapt high into the blackness. He knew it was his brother’s home. He ran toward it. Halfway there, he suddenly stopped abruptly. A voice called his name. He glanced about.
Again came the frightened cry. “Uncle… Uncle, is that you?”
He ran to the edge of the wood. There stood twelve-year-old Swift Horse, trembling in terror. He questioned the boy briefly but could get nothing out of him other than that his father had thrown him out of a low window and told him to run as fast as he could.
He asked a few more questions. The boy opened his mouth, but no words would come. He could only tremble in terror.
“You know my house, Swift Horse,” said Long. “Run to it… run now. The door is open. You will be safe there until I return. Go… go now. I will see to your father and mother.”
The boy dashed off through the night. Long Canoe continued toward the blaze, fearing the worst.
By the time he reached it, the house was engulfed in flame, surrounded by a band of six young warriors.
“Is this your idea of justice!” cried Long Canoe angrily.
“He sold the house to the white man,” replied the leader of the group. “He was a traitor. This is the penalty as demanded by ancient law.”
“You are murderers. I will bring you all before the council!”
“You may do what you like, Long Canoe. You would not be wise to raise objection. Your home could be next.”
Tears rising in his eyes at this horror that had infected the Cherokee nation, Long Canoe stared another few minutes at the house. It was long past the time when escape was possible. It was clear his brother and Rose Blossom were dead.
He turned and walked away into the night, leaving his murderous kinsmen to ponder their hideous deed. As he walked, he had much else to ponder. Suddenly his own fortunes had changed. He had no time to waste. It was possible they had seen young Swift Horse escape and may come for him next. His first thought was not for his own safety, though that too had to be considered, for he had made a sacred vow to the Ghigua and could not carry it out if he was dead. Treachery had come to the tribe. He must protect its heritage, and protect his suddenly orphaned nephew. Swift Horse was great-grandson to Chief Attacullaculla. Who could tell what might be his destiny one day, or that of one of his offspring. He must be protected from those who would kill him as Swift Water’s son. Now at last he understood why his brother had been compelled to leave. The words were seared into Long’s brain with the flames of the burning house: “If you had charge of the next generation…”
Before he reached his home again, Long Canoe had reached the decision that would change his life forever. None doubted that he was one destined to rise among the new generation of leaders alongside Major Ridge and Stand Watie and John Ross, even perhaps one destined to be chief of all the Cherokee one day. But that would never happen. It was time for him to leave his homeland… for the good of his Cherokee posterity… to protect and preserve a heritage that would always be in danger as long as he remained in this place.
But he would not sell his land. He would do all he could to maintain unity and peace with all his people.
Two hours later, Long Canoe and Swift Horse made their clandestine flight through the night. Though there were rumors of the boy’s escape, most assumed he had died in the blaze that had taken his parents.
Nanye’hi Ward died in her home at Womankiller Ford in 1824. Those at her bedside vowed that they had seen a light rise up from her body, take the faint form of a dove, and disappear through the window and fly toward the sacred town, Nanye-hi’s birthplace of Chota.9
Two aging Cherokee chiefs, Pathkiller and Charles Hicks, died in 1827 within two weeks of each other, prompting the new government of the Cherokee nation to hold its first formal election for chief. Major Ridge by this time held such prestige as elder statesman of the Cherokee that he was appointed acting chief until the election could be held. But Ridge saw the need for change among the Cherokee. He felt a chief was needed with more formal education and familiarity with the white man’s world than he possessed. Though his son John was rising rapidly in influence, he was yet a young man, as were John’s two cousins. Thus Ridge supported the predominantly white John Ross for the position of chief, a well-educated son of a Scottish planter and part Cherokee mother. Though Ross was but one-eighth Cherokee, he was wholeheartedly committed to the Cherokee cause and seemed to be a man representative of the changing times who would be respected and would be able to deal effectively with Washington.
Ross was elected chief in 1828. In that same year, the Cherokee’s old adversary Andrew Jackson was elected President of the United States. The fate of the Cherokee nation was sealed the moment the results were announced.
A major discovery of gold at Dahlonega on Cherokee land in North Carolina the same year as the two elections set in motion a course of events that would doom any hope that the Cherokee nation could remain an autonomous entity. The first gold rush of the new country was on.
Meanwhile, Long Canoe continued to support his nephew’s education in the North. A few of his tribesmen, trusted friends, came to know his whereabouts. Through the years, by means of secretive travel and midnight meetings, he managed to keep contact with a handful of close friends and, aware of the changes taking place among his people, seeking joint counsel with them what course they should all pursue in the white man’s world.10
Trail of Tears
1846
By the mid 1830s it was clear that Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Act would eventually be carried out. The New Echota Treaty of 1835 gave the government the legal cover to do so. A deadline was set for the last voluntary Cherokee migration as May 23rd, 1838. All Cherokee who did not comply would be rounded up by force and sent to camps where they would await their time to be herded west.
The Ridges and Waties were not the only Cherokee to attempt to preserve the heritage and wealth the land had given from its rivers and streams and caves. Almost from the moment the New Echota Treaty was signed, plans were made, led by Chief Rising Fawn, to hide as much treasured wealth from each clan as possible. A sympathetic white man, Jacob Scudder agreed to act as caretaker and guardian of the treasure after the Indians were gone, in hopes that one day they would return to recover what was hidden.
Over the following two years, clans and families hid gold and other valuables, in clay pots and leather bags and beneath rocks in numerous caves spread over 250,000 acres of forested mountain terrain. Additionally, a great tunnel was begun deep into the earth from one of the largest of the caves. Work on the tunnel continued for two years, mostly at night, in preparation to become the most massive secret depositories of wealth in American history. But no gold was placed inside the tunnel until it was certain that Andrew Jackson’s order would be carried out.
Meanwhile, hundreds of Cherokee families set about marking oak and birch trees and boulders with ancient mystic symbols, creating sign trails to the caves where their gold had already begun to accumulate, as well as marking directions to the great tunnel under construction. Many paper and leather maps were drawn with further directions. All over the area the traditional signs of the triangles were notched into trees and hammered into stones—a carved triangle with a dot in the center—each showing a third of the clue, one corner, needed to locate the entrance to the hidden center of the triangle.
When the grim inevitability of the removal bore down upon Cherokee leaders with a crushing weight of despair, their people began bringing their treasures into a multitude of hiding places. All through the Cherokee nation, gold was secretly transported to the caves and the great tunnel. During the week before the final deadline of May 23rd, tremendous activity took place every night, hundreds of bags carried by foot and on horseback, packs loaded on sledges and sleighs pulled by oxen or horse, and small boats and barges gliding silently down the Etowar River. On the last night, a huge stone was placed over the tunnel entrance, sealing away the Cherokee gold in its permanent vault of hiding, never to be opened again.11
Thousands of Cherokee left on their own. But those who refused, or who vainly hoped that a negotiated settlement would be reached, finally faced the reality that had long been feared. To the very end Ross tried to forestall a forced removal. And as he was trusted by so many thousands who remained where they were, the majority of the Cherokee tribe ultimately lost their chance to move West on their own.
Finally Andrew Jackson’s ruthless victory over the once-proud Cherokee nation was complete. Having allowed its gold to be plundered, its lands to be stolen, the final legacy of Jackson’s political life was about to be realized in one of the most heartless, humiliating, degrading episodes in the young nation’s history.
In May of 1838, suddenly the army troops arrived. Any hope for voluntary migration was gone. They did not even allow the Cherokee to pack or gather clothes or blankets, but broke into homes to drive men, women, and children like cattle to Fort Campbell. There they were kept for months in the outdoor stockades, enduring dreadful conditions until all had been gathered. Almost as if intending to make the journey as cruel as possible, the army kept the captives in the stockades through the warm and stifling summer months and did not begin the march until the month of October, when
weather and traveling conditions were far worse.
As they finally set out, many of the 16,000 who began the journey were already sick and dying from exposure, disease, and malnutrition from the dreadful conditions in the stockades.
A twenty-eight-year-old army private, who had spent years in Cherokee lands as a trapper and counted many Cherokee among his dear friends, was among the company to arrive at Fort Campbell that fateful day in May of 1838. He had played with Cherokee friends as a boy, and as a young man had saved a wounded Cherokee man from a band of hunters.
What young John Burnett was forced to do, the humiliating duty of driving men, women, and children from their homes, and the sights he witnessed, seared his conscience for the rest of his life. Never again would he consider the white man “civilized” and the red man a “savage.” During those dreadful months he saw true dignity and true cruelty at work, and they were not as many supposed.
They reached Tahlequah in the Oklahoma Territory at the end of March in 1839, four thousand of the Cherokee dead from unspeakably cruel conditions and buried on the side of the trail. Whatever most of the soldiers felt at what they had been ordered to do, Private John Burnett quietly wept inside as his detachment finally turned away and began to retrace its steps home. For the next several weeks he worked alone at night beside the light of his campfire on a long letter to his father and mother, attempting to explain the terrible things he had seen. He knew that if his commander learned of it, or if his letter was discovered, it could be used to bring charges of treason against him. But his conscience was too troubled, and his anger had been too stirred, not to tell what he had seen.
“Dear Mother and Father,” Burnett wrote,
“At last it is over and I am bound for home. But I must write of what I have seen, or go mad.
“In the year of 1828, a little Indian boy living on Ward Creek had sold a gold nugget to a white trader, and that nugget sealed the doom of the Cherokees. In a short time the country was overrun with armed brigands claiming to be government agents, who paid no attention to the rights of the Indians who were the legal possessors of the country. Crimes were committed that were a disgrace to civilization. Men were shot in cold blood, lands were confiscated. Homes were burned and the inhabitants driven out by those gold-hungry brigands.
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