American Dreams Trilogy

by Michael Phillips

  Cherity walked into the house. Chigua greeted her warmly.

  “Would you feel like a ride today, Chigua?” asked Cherity.

  “Yes, certainly.”

  “We need to have a long talk,” said Cherity. “I want to know everything you remember—as a girl, you know, before you were taken away—as much as you can tell me of what it was like back then, what the people were like, before the Trail of Tears, and during it.”

  “That was so long ago,” said Chigua. “My memories are distant and faint.”

  “I know. But I am hungry to know anything. Your memories may be the only link I have left to my father.”

  Chigua saw the look of entreaty on Cherity’s face, then smiled. “Of course,” she said. “I will tell you whatever I can… everything I remember. Where do you want to go?”

  “There is only one place where it seems fitting to talk about the old times.”

  Chigua nodded. “I’ll meet you up at the stables in… ten minutes?”

  “Thank you,” said Cherity. “I’ll go start saddling the horses.”

  As Cherity walked back toward the main house, she saw Seth in the distance with Alexander where the two were training a year-old colt with a rope and halter. She hesitated a moment, then turned toward them. It was because of Seth that she knew what little she did of her heritage. If it was possible for her to learn more, she wanted him with her when she did.

  The journey from the West had not been difficult in spite of his age. He had never ridden a train before and found the experience exhilarating. He had always been able to blend into his surroundings when he needed to, and he hardly attracted a second look.

  Now that he was here, the past rushed back upon him like it was yesterday. He tied his horse in the rear and dismounted. What he had anticipated, he wasn’t sure… that the house would be occupied, even perhaps torn down? But he had not expected it to be so unchanged, in such good repair, so clean. Hardly a chair or table had been moved. Yet inexplicably… the painting above the mantel was now bright and vivid. What could account for it?

  But sacred business had brought him here. He must not tarry. He had no idea who might be the rightful owner of the place now. The passage of years and the recent war had surely changed much. Whether he would recognize the young man who had survived that fateful night so long ago was doubtful. But of one thing he was certain—if the young man was still here, and had he not found what was hidden with such care, he would not hesitate to kill to lay his hands upon it now. He had already killed once for it.

  But what this traveler had come to do, he would not do in disguise, but in the dress of his people whose legacy he had come here to preserve. Dangerous though this final earthly mission might be, he would not let fear rule his steps.

  He opened the carpetbag which contained his few earthly possessions of value, then slowly unbuttoned and removed the white man’s shirt from his chest.

  As Cherity and Chigua and Seth rode up in front of the familiar house and dismounted, they had no inkling that they were not alone. They had not spoken much on the ride into the hills from Greenwood. Both Chigua and Seth sensed the solemnity of Cherity’s mood.

  Cherity sat a moment longer in the saddle than the others, looking about quietly, almost reverently, then climbed to the ground, tied Cadence’s reins to the hitching rail, and slowly walked toward the door. Seth and Chigua followed.

  Seventy-Six

  Cherity stopped in her tracks before she had taken three steps inside, Seth at her side, Chigua just behind.

  The unexpected stranger turned to face them. Their eyes met momentarily. He revealed nothing by his expression, only glancing down momentarily at Cherity’s hand and the ring that glistened on her finger. He then looked back and forth between the three, his eyes—indeed, his entire expression—full of mystery. His gaze penetrated their very depths. As they became accustomed to the thin light inside the house, they were able to observe his features.

  His dark face, wrinkled with years, bore the characteristics of leather, hardened and cracked in the sun. It was a strong, expressive face, with high prominent cheekbones, piercing black eyes, a straight nose, slightly wide in the nostrils but well shaped above a wide mouth. His lips remained closed, revealing little, though were downturned at the ends reflecting the sadness he felt for the fate of his once proud nation. Despite his years, his hair was plentiful with the hue of a rich brownish gray. Two thick braids fell across the front of his ears down below his shoulders to his chest. A small cluster of short fine white feathers adorned the back of his head. A tight beaded necklace circled his neck, from which hung two claws of what must once have been a giant eagle. He was clad in a brown leather tunic, fringed at the sleeves and neck. The mere sight of the man, though simple and of a world and time fading into the bygone mists of history, was august and imposing.

  Cherity was the first to find her voice.

  “Who are… what are you doing here?” she asked in surprise.

  “I did not know who might now be the owner of this place,” the old man replied. His voice, though gravelly with age, was firm with calm authority. “The door was unlocked and I entered.”

  Now Seth spoke.

  “This house belonged to a friend of my grandfather’s,” he said.

  “Who was this… friend?” asked the man.

  “I did not know him, sir. He disappeared many years ago. Not knowing his true name, my grandfather had no way to make inquiries. My father has been keeping the house and its land for him ever since. That is the reason it is not locked.”

  “Why does he keep it?” asked the stranger.

  “Because he did not feel it rightfully his,” replied Seth. “My grandfather retained it unchanged, as has my father, in hopes that some claim would one day be made upon it by the man’s posterity.”

  The faintest hint of a smile crept to the man’s lips. “It is no more than I should have expected. You remind me of your grandfather.”

  “I’m sorry…,” began Seth, “I am afraid I don’t understand.”

  “And you, young lady,” said the man, turning toward Cherity, “you possess your father’s eyes. They are the eyes, as we would say, of a beloved woman among our people.”

  Cherity stared back as perplexed as Seth. Then the old man looked deeply at the face of Chigua. “You carry the sorrow of our people in your spirit,” he said.

  “I am still confused,” said Seth. “What are you doing in Mr. Brown’s house?”

  Once more silence followed. Then again the man spoke.

  “Young Davidson… I am Brown.”

  Seth and Cherity and Chigua gasped in a single breath. Their eyes widened in speechless astonishment.

  “And in fact,” the old man went on. “Brown is my true surname. At birth I was given the name Long Canoe by my mother Nakey Canoe, daughter of Dragging Canoe, son of the great chief of our people, the Chief of the White Feather Attacullaculla, who is my great-grandfather. My mother married a white man called Alexander Brown. I am, therefore, Long Canoe Brown.”

  Seth’s brain was spinning. He could not believe what he was hearing!

  The old man looked toward Cherity. “Though you do not know me, young lady,” he said, “the moment I laid eyes on you, I knew you. Unless I mistake, you are the daughter of a certain man from Boston known as James Waters.”

  Cherity nodded.

  “Your father was my nephew,” the old Cherokee went on to Cherity. “How much of your father’s history you may be familiar with, I do not know. His given name was Swift Horse Brown, son of my brother Swift Water Brown and your grandmother Rose Blossom.”

  “I had a grandmother called… Rose Blossom?” said Cherity with awe in her voice.

  “Indeed you did. When my brother was killed in the treacherous conflicts that consumed our people early in this century, I escaped with his son, my nephew, your father, and left North Carolina in order to protect our lives and, I hoped, the heritage we represented. The year was 1819. Young Swift
Horse was twelve. We fled north, I to Virginia where I purchased this land and built this house and went by the name Brown. I enrolled Swift Horse in a boarding school in Boston where I listed his family name as Water after his father, and called him James. Somehow the family name became Waters. You are my great-niece. You too are in the line of your great-great-great-grandfather, Chief Attacullaculla. Nakey Canoe was your great-grandmother.”

  Cherity found her way to a chair and sat in stunned silence. She had still only begun to absorb what Seth had told her a few days ago. Now this wise man was telling her that she was in the line of a chief!

  Seth beckoned Chigua forward. “This is our friend Chigua,” he said. “She also is Cherokee. She and her family found their way to us on the Underground Railroad and have been at Greenwood ever since. She was on the Removal Trail but was captured by Seminoles on the way.”

  “Ah, I am sorry, my daughter. You must tell me all. Of what family do you come?”

  “My grandfather was Eaglefeather,” replied Chigua softly, as awed by the man’s presence as was Cherity.

  “Eaglefeather! Then you are from the Kingfisher and Harlan line.”

  He paused and stared at Chigua intently. “I remember you,” he said slowly, “though you have changed from the little girl of my memory.”

  “You were on the Trail?” said Chigua in a voice of astonishment.

  “I was,” nodded Brown. A look of pain passed over his features. Then he motioned for them to sit.

  Seth and Chigua joined Cherity and took chairs beside her in Brown’s former home.

  “Cherity only recently learned of her Cherokee roots,” said Seth to Brown. “We came here today, to your house, to learn more, if we could, from Chigua about her past and the removal from the East. But they… all of us, would be eager to learn whatever you might want to tell us.”

  “I see. But, if you could answer me one question, young Davidson… my friend, your grandfather, you say, Grantham Davidson, had two sons. One left for England and the other, the elder who remained, died… I believe, an untimely death. He had no sons I do not think. How do you then come to be here?”

  “My father is Richmond Davidson,” Seth replied. “He returned to Virginia from England after my uncle’s death.”

  “Ah,” said Brown, nodding, then turned toward Cherity. “How much did your father explain to you?” he asked.

  “Nothing at all, Mr. Brown,” she replied. “He died four years ago, almost exactly as the war was breaking out.”

  “Ah, I am deeply sorry to hear of it. I had hoped that someday it might be possible to see him again. I am truly sorry.”

  “I knew nothing about my Cherokee roots,” Cherity went on. “What little I know he told Seth, who only told me recently. My father was concerned for my safety.”

  “As he well should have been.”

  The house fell silent. At last Brown also sat down. The four remained in deep contemplation for several minutes.

  “Then let me tell you… both of you young women,” said Brown at length, looking first to Cherity, then to Chigua, “about the Ani-Yunwiya—the people who are your people.”

  He paused. His eyes narrowed slightly and seemed to gaze far into the distant past.

  “The story of our people began,” he went on, “with the ancient great man of the Great Telliquo in the region of the waters of the Tannassy. His name was Moytoy and his woman’s name was Quatsy. From their seed you both have sprung….”

  As they listened, Cherity and Chigua were transported back, not mere years, but generations, indeed centuries, to a time and place and culture that existed before the eyes of any white man beheld the wonders of a land that had been the birthright of the Ani-Yunwiya already longer than memory.

  An hour went by, then two, as if they had been mere moments. They sat listening to the voice as of wisdom itself tell of the ancient times and then of the coming of the Spaniards and the English and the French, and of the great Chief of the White Feather and of Nanye’hi Ward, the Ghigua from whom Chigua had derived her name, and then of his own forebears of the Canoe line.

  “Then came a day,” he went on, “when a child was born to Nakey Canoe. The moment she saw him, aging Nanye’hi Ward knew that it would be through him that she would fulfill her pledge to Chief Attacullaculla. She kept the secret of his legacy in her heart, and the secret of the rings in an ancient hiding place of the Cherokee, high on the sacred mountain where she was certain they would not be found. The words the great Attacullaculla had spoken on the mountain had long remained with her: ‘You must pass on the legacy as I am passing it on to you… to one who will preserve the heritage and will treasure the unity of our people.’

  “Ever since that day, Nanye’hi listened to the young boy’s every word as he grew into manhood. Much had changed among our people. His brother Swift Water took Rose Blossom as his wife and became one of those who urged our kinsmen to sell their land while there was still time to profit by it. But speaking out placed him in great danger with those who intended to stop westward migration.

  “Secretly Swift Water confided to me his intention to take his wife and son, Swift Horse, your father,” he added, turning to Cherity, “to Arkansas when the time was right. I tried to dissuade him, knowing of the blood law and that there could be reprisals. But his mind was made up.

  “A day arrived when aging Nanye’hi appeared at our home in her finest deerskin robe and the same feathers in her hair she had worn on the similar sacred occasion so many years ago. She gazed at me as if piercing my very soul with her deep black eyes and said she must talk to me… alone… on the mountain.

  “We left the town together on horseback. The eyes of our friends and neighbors followed us with curiosity. Nanye’hi led the way up the familiar trail to the top of Ooneekawy Mountain. Not a word was spoken between us. We stopped at the summit of the sacred mountain, and dismounted from our horses.

  “‘I too was brought to this place, though I was older than you are now,’ Nanye’hi told me. ‘I was brought here by the great chief Attacullaculla, your own great-grandfather, and told many things about the heritage of our people. That is why I have brought you here, because I have chosen you to pass on what was given to me. I have chosen you, Long Canoe, to preserve a sacred and secret legacy of our people.’

  “‘What legacy, Nanye’hi?’ I asked.

  “‘This legacy,’ she replied, holding up her thumb.

  “‘Your ring?’

  “‘It is not merely a ring—it is one of the sacred council rings that came from the king across the water, a lasting symbol of peace and the unity of our people. Now come, there is more I have to show you.’

  “She led the way to a great oak about three hundred yards from the summit.

  “‘You see this mark where the bark has swollen around the cut of the knife. I enscribed my own sign here thirty-eight years ago as a marker. You know the secret of the triangles. This oak is the first of the three corners. To find the location of the secret, you must find the other two corners, then, with the midpoints of each line joining them, locate the center. That is where I will take you now.’

  “She led the way a little further pausing often to glance at the tree trunks around them. I followed, noting carefully the signs carved on the trees.

  “Within minutes we approached the center. The roar of a waterfall became audible and I saw the falls. The cascade poured over the lip of the rock and fell twenty feet before descending to the valley. A cave was hidden in the rock behind the falls. We entered from behind a pile of boulders which would have been impossible to find without knowing the center of the triangle. We crouched low as we went, and finally Nanye’hi stopped and handed the torch to me. She removed one large rock from the wall, and thrust her hand into a cavity in the wall. When she removed her hand she held a small deerskin pouch.

  “She turned to me, took one of my hands, then opened the pouch and into it poured five rings of pure gold.

  “‘The council rings
!’ I exclaimed. ‘I thought they were a legend.’

  “Nanye’hi’s eyes grew even more serious. ‘You must learn to understand what the rings mean, Long Canoe,’ she said. ‘You must protect what they symbolize, and, as I have done, when your own time comes, pass them on so that the legacy will be preserved. 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.’

  “Not long thereafter, Swift Water came to me late one night to tell me that he had sold his house and was preparing to move west. But the retribution fell swiftly upon him. Only three nights later I awoke suddenly. Terrible sounds had disturbed my sleep. I jumped from bed and rushed into the night. In the distance flames leapt high into the blackness. I knew it was my brother’s home. I ran toward it. Halfway there, I suddenly stopped. A voice was calling me.

  “‘Uncle… Uncle!’

  “I ran to the edge of the wood. There stood twelve-year-old Swift Horse, trembling in terror.

  “‘You know my house, Swift Horse,’ I said. ‘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. I continued toward the blaze, fearing the worst.

  “By the time I reached it, the house was engulfed in flame, surrounded by a band of six warriors.

  “‘Is this your idea of justice!’ I cried 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 cried tears rising in my eyes at the horror before me.

  “I felt hands on my shoulders. It was my friend Eaglefeather,” he added, glancing at Chigua. “He was gently pulling me away from the fray, for he knew my efforts were no use.

  “‘Come, Long Canoe,’ he said. ‘You must leave this place. This battle is lost. We must win peace in another way. My family is not involved, but now you are. You will never be safe here again. You must disappear.’

  “I clasped my friend one last time arm in arm, then turned and ran away to my own house. I had no time to waste. My first thought was for the safety of my nephew, and also of my sacred vow to the Ghigua. I knew I must protect our heritage, and protect my suddenly orphaned nephew. 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.