On This Long Journey

by Joseph Bruchac

  The Tennessee soldier removed his hat and bent his head. Then, in a soft voice, he told my mother it grieved him to have to inform her that her husband had been killed.

  My mother listened with her chin raised and her eyes wide open. She did not cry while he was there, though she reached out to take my hand. The soldier related how my father had been murdered in broad daylight by a gang of white men who rode up to our plantation and shot him dead right next to the trellis of white rambling roses he had planted for my mother.

  I stood there feeling as if I were drowning in deep water. I could hear anger in the soldier’s voice. I remember wondering why I did not feel angry. I felt only emptiness.

  The soldier told my mother that there were witnesses. A white woman was being driven by in her rig. She and her driver had seen it all. Because of that, the men who did it were arrested. The courts would not pay attention to an Indian’s testimony, but a white woman’s was another thing.

  The soldier paused. My mother’s deep silence touched him more than any tears. I could see the emotion filling his face and choking his voice.

  My mother held her hand out to him. “Thank you,” she said. “We know that you are men of honor.”

  Tears filled the man’s eyes as he took my mother’s hand. “God forgive us all, ma’am.”

  He turned, climbed back on his horse, and rode away, his shoulders bowed by a weight he would carry all his life. When the last sound of his horse’s hooves on the red dirt road had faded away, my mother began to weep.

  The men who killed my father were never tried. The white woman who witnessed the killing was found dead in her own house with her throat cut. The black slave who had been driving her that day vanished, along with her horse and buggy, never to be seen again. Today those same men live in the house that once was ours.

  November 8, 1837

  Another of our hens was missing today. I fear that a fox has been raiding our hen coop.

  News from Washington. John Ross remains in Washington, pleading that our Removal should, at the very least, be delayed another two years. With each delay we hold on to the chance that we may yet remain on what is left of our lands.

  However, in Congress, the Georgians now warn that we Cherokees will soon go to war as did the Seminoles. A strong military force must be sent to overpower us, for we have 4,000 warriors ready to take up the scalping knife. This is a bold-faced lie. Every Cherokee who can take up a rifle has sworn to John Ross that we will not resist by force of arms. Our fight shall be in the courts, not upon the field of battle. We could resist and soak the earth of the South with blood, but we know that we would sacrifice our lives and the lives of our families to do this. We do not fear to die, but we have vowed to seek a better way in peace.

  November 9, 1837

  I received news today of a lighter sort. The ball team of our town has been challenged by the team of the town next to ours. Our elders think a game of ball is a good idea at this time. Stickball is not just a game but also a prayer for good health. I am a member of the team of young men who will play. My friends, especially Bear in the Water, Snake Killer, Crow Caller, and Otter, tease me when I play ball. None of them can read or speak much English. They sometimes call me “Mission Boy.”

  “Can a Mission Boy still play stickball?” Otter asked.

  My friends say that my studies have made my feet soft and my arms weak. Maybe they do this because they know it makes me play harder. Of all the boys on my team, I am almost the fastest runner and I have never been afraid of getting hit with a stick.

  “Remember the story of the Bat,” I said to them.

  Long ago the birds and animals played ball against each other. One little tiny mouse asked the Bear to be on his team. But Bear just laughed at him because the little mouse was so small. So the mouse went to the side of the Birds. They made wings for him out of the skin of an old drum. Thus he became the Bat. In the big ball game between the birds and animals, Bat scored all the goals for the side of the birds. The animals lost because they left him out.

  “It is true,” Bear in the Water said, “that you are very tiny. Also your eyes have grown weak from reading so many books. Maybe we should call you Bat instead of Mission Boy. Maybe —”

  He didn’t finish what he was saying because I grabbed him, and we started to wrestle. My other friends jumped in. We rolled around together in the red dirt of our yard while the dogs barked and the chickens scattered in all directions. But we stopped when my mother threw a pail of water over us. We were all laughing, my mother the hardest of all. I realized then how long it had been since I had heard my mother’s laughter.

  We will have a ball dance tonight. The Feeler will get us ready. We will meet around the fire and go down to the river. He will use the red and black beads to see what will happen. He will bring us good luck. Then we will sing and stomp dance. We will be well prepared for tomorrow’s game.

  November 10, 1837

  Difficult to write. Two fingers broken on my right hand during ball game. A grand game! I scored four goals. I believe our team won, though we lost track of final score. Very good game, indeed. All who played were pleased, though much bloodied. Will write again when fingers hurt less.

  November 20, 1837

  News has arrived of the emigrant party that set out by water for Indian Territory on March 3 — 466 Cherokees were loaded into eleven flatboats and taken down the Tennessee River. Led by General Nathaniel Smith, their party included Major Ridge and Stand Watie, as well as a number of families tricked into leaving their homes by promising them expense money. Many of them used up their money even before embarking, by drinking and being cheated by white men who lured them into gambling as they waited at Ross’s Landing to embark. At every turn in the river, every port, more whiskey was for sale. Whiskey boats even plied the river, ready to sell spirits to any Cherokee on board who yet had money.

  The flatboats loaded with drunken Cherokees floated down to Gunter’s Landing in Alabama. There they were hitched to the steamboat Knoxville and towed to the head of Muscle Shoals. Then they were loaded into railroad cars, all of them wet and cold. Thence they were taken to Tuscumbia, Alabama, and crowded into two keelboats that went down to the Ohio and Mississippi past Memphis to the Arkansas River. They arrived at last at Fort Coffee, Indian Territory, on March 28. Despite their great discomfort, much sickness, and continual drunkenness, none perished.

  The man who related that tale to me is one of those Cherokees. He gave his name as James Smith. He stopped to ask us for only a drink of water, but my mother and sisters insisted that he spend the night. It took him four months to make the long walk back here. Sometimes he was given shelter by sympathetic white families. Other times he hid in a hay pile or a copse of trees through the day to travel by night. James Smith has vowed to never drink again and never again be taken west by any means, whether on land or by water. He ate a great deal of food at the midday meal with us, praised my mother’s cooking, and then set out again by early afternoon. He did not say where he was going.

  Hearing this sad story of the journey to Indian Territory makes me wonder and worry about the fate of the larger party that left by wagon from Calhoun, Tennessee, one month ago. Among them are some of my former schoolmates and friends from Mission School.

  Fingers hurting greatly now. Will write more tomorrow.

  November 24, 1837

  The Feeler came by today to look at my broken fingers. He has visited almost every day. He seems eager to hear what I have written. I must confess that his visits do my heart good. I never knew my own grandparents. As you know, my father’s father died at the Horseshoe Bend. His wife passed on soon after from a purulent fever. Two years after that, an epidemic of influenza carried off both my mother’s parents. So the Feeler has been the only grandfather I have known, sharing with me such things as a grandfather might share with a favored grandchild.

  Today, as morni
ng was just breaking and I sat about to mend a horse harness, the Feeler appeared in the door of the barn. He held an ear of Cherokee corn in his hand. He placed it in my injured hand, telling me that I must hold on to it.

  Then he turned, motioning for me to follow.

  He led me down to the creek and bathed me in its cold waters. As I sat there half-naked and shivering from both cold and excitement, he proceeded to tell me the story of Selu, the Corn. It is a story all Cherokees know well, but hearing it from his ancient voice gave it new meaning. It is one of our most sacred tales, so sacred that in the old days no one could hear the story without first going through a special purification.

  First Man Kanati the Hunter and First Woman Selu (whose name is also our name for maize) lived together. Selu would go into their storehouse each day and produce corn from her body. One day, while Kanati was out hunting, their two sons looked into the storehouse. They saw Selu making corn from her body and thought she was a witch.

  Selu knew she had been seen. She knew that her sons felt that they must kill her because they believed she was a witch. So she told them to drag her body seven times around on the soft earth. Then corn would grow up and always be there for the people to harvest. But the boys only did so two times, and so there are only two corn harvests each year.

  When the Feeler was done with his tale, he simply rose and walked away. I waited for him for some time and finally decided that I should take his lead. I dressed and returned to work. The ear of corn he gave me is here on the table beside me as I write.

  It has been a very good day.

  November 30, 1837

  I find it difficult to write this evening. In part it is because of the pain in my fingers. Napoleyan caught my injured hand between his rump and the stall as I put him into the barn last night.

  Fortunately, the Feeler had bound my fingers together with sticks to keep them straight. It protected me from real injury. The sticks have made writing most awkward, but the Feeler has assured me that my fingers are healing well, despite the mule. He has urged me to take a rest from my writing for a time. I shall do as he says after I finish this entry.

  Spent much time repairing one side of the pigsty that the blasted mule kicked in. Pigs are the cleverest of the animals about a farm and will find the weak point in any fence and force their way through it. They are especially fond of doing so when it is slaughtering time, seeking to escape into the hills.

  Always much to be done around the farm, even a small one such as our own. It is almost two months since our final corn harvest. Our storehouse is full, and many braided strings of corn hang from our rafters. But it will be planting time soon enough. Once again the seeds will enter the earth, and Selu’s great gift will return to our people.

  January 2, 1838

  How have I allowed this much time to pass without writing in my journal? It is now a new year. It is the fatal year when the final deadline for our Removal will be reached.

  I have been writing letters and receiving them, yet my journal has sat gathering dust here upon the shelf. At times it has seemed to look at me rather accusingly. “Why are you neglecting me?” it has seemed to say.

  I do not know. My fingers healed long ago. Perhaps it is that I am afraid to write because writing makes all that is happening seem too real and too frightening. Terrible things happened to that party of Cherokees who went west by land last October.

  In the spring it is said that the army will send more parties of our people west by the water. The soldiers have begun building forts with stockades about them like cattle pens. Even now, I feel there is so much, too much, to put down. My head is spinning. I will try again tomorrow.

  January 3, 1838

  Those who do not know us may wonder why it is that we Cherokees have been called a “civilized” tribe. I believe, as Reverend Samuel Worcester told me, that civilization is in the spirit of a nation and not in worldly goods. Also, according to the Feeler, we Cherokees were civilized before we ever met a white man. But I think the material possessions of our nation are proof of how hardworking and industrious a people we have been now that we must live in this world by the white man’s rules.

  So, I will try to wake my sluggish pen by making a list. I have before me my treasured pile of past issues of the Cherokee Phoenix, from the very first issue dated 21 February 1828 to the last. Here, from the Cherokee Phoenix is a list taken from the 1826 Census of the Cherokee Nation regarding those items associated with civilization that were possessed by our people. To wit:

  22,000 Cattle

  7,600 Horses

  46,000 Swine

  2,500 Sheep

  762 Looms

  2,488 Spinning Wheels

  172 Wagons

  2,943 Ploughs

  10 Sawmills

  31 Gristmills

  62 Blacksmith Shops

  8 Cotton Machines

  18 Schools

  18 Ferries

  A Number of Public Roads

  January 5, 1838

  Spoke to the Feeler about the bad dreams of drowning that have troubled my sleep. His opinion is that someone jealous of my learning, another Cherokee, has been trying to work a spell against me. The Feeler will now take certain measures to kill the dream. He has shown me the page in his own book that contains the formula he will use. He has also shown me how he has protected his formulas in an ingenious way. Though each page is headed by a title that describes the formula’s use, those titles are spurious. Thus a chant designed to drive away a storm may be falsely titled as “To Find a Lost Child.” In every case, the true title is on the following page. He has also cleverly mixed up certain of the “ingredients” in his magical recipes. Thus, as he explained carefully to me, when he has written “red,” the true color is in fact black, and so on. Thus if his book falls into the wrong hands, it will not avail a rival to use it.

  The Feeler has also, as always, given me useful advice. I have been trying to write every day and failing at that aim.

  “Only write,” he told me, “when your pen wants to speak.”

  I shall attempt to do that.

  January 8, 1838

  Enjoyed the untroubled sleep of a baby for the last few nights. Clearly the Feeler’s work has succeeded. Unlike a white physician, a Cherokee doctor does not charge money for his good work. It is not considered right to pay money to an Indian healer who has lifted you up. So I gave him the tanned skin of the deer I had shot and mentioned earlier in this journal.

  Before he accepted the skin he asked me if I had placed the Ancient Red One upon the trail on my way home.

  I was quick to answer yes. Awi Usdi, the Little White Deer, is the undying chief of all the deer. When one of his people is killed by a human, he will pursue them, seeking to give them rheumatism so that their fingers can no longer draw a bow. Only a fire built in the trail will confuse him. To the Cherokees, fire is the Ancient Red One. Fire is not merely the combustion of a flammable substance. It is a being, an ancient Grandfather who helps look out for the Cherokees. Ancient Red One. Red is the color of victory and success.

  This is all my pen wishes to write on this day.

  January 15, 1838

  Preacher Tsan visited with good news. He has such faith and optimism that he is like the return of the sun. Tsan delivered the several newspapers I asked him to obtain for me as well as some letters from my Cherokee Mission School friends. Of course, it is not only through articles and letters that I remain informed. News travels through our Cherokee Nation by word of mouth almost as swiftly as smoke rising from a fire. Here is the news Tsan brought to me.

  The new president, Martin Van Buren, has an inclination to favor the Cherokees. He is not filled with that same animosity that has always characterized the Devil. “The Devil” is how Preacher Tsan and many others refer to Andrew Jackson. The Devil’s horns have now been polled. His term as president has end
ed, and he has retired to his home in Tennessee, the Hermitage. Perhaps Van Buren will not show such fear of the southern states. Jackson took seriously Georgia’s threats to secede from the Union if her demands regarding our removal were not met.

  But it was not just to preserve the Union that Jackson pursued our destruction. Some part of Jackson’s unfavorable attitude toward us was likely because of our great Chief John Ross.

  Though he is short in stature, Tsan Usdi has never feared that tall grim old Indian fighter. Indeed, John Ross has been David to Jackson’s Goliath, defeating him again and again and allowing us to remain while all the other tribes have been harried from their lands like flocks of sheep.

  Moreover, Tsan told me, John Ross has made friends with the man most likely to be the new military commander to replace General Wool. He is General Winfield Scott, “Old Fuss and Feathers” himself, late of the Seminole Campaign. Chief John Ross, it seems, has earned Scott’s respect.

  Our great chief still urges us to hold firm, despite the fact that such men as the Ridges have sold their property and moved, taking their black slaves with them, to the best of the land in the Indian Territory where they have set up palatial homes and plantations rivaling their former holdings.

  “We must remain,” John Ross said to us, “unanimous in sentiment and action. We are not like the Ridges, who, as you may remember, went through four entire revolutions in their politics within as many months, varying as often as the moon, without the excuse of lunacy for their changes.”

  His words resulted in a laughter that gradually increased as those of us who understood English translated his remarks into Cherokee for the benefit of the larger number who did not. Though his words were not spoken in Cherokee, he used them as did our old people. One of the reasons why speaking is so important to our people is that it may be used as a form of punishment, shaming wrongdoers.