The Native American Experience

  10

  IN THE YEARS AFTER the first white men began pushing westward across the Appalachian Mountains, the Cherokees saw their wide domain shrink generation by generation. First they were driven from the rich grasslands and forests of Kentucky and western Virginia, and then by the end of the War of the Revolution they had lost the valley of the Cumberland in middle Tennessee and most of their Carolina territories.

  For a decade after the Long Warrior returned from the war in which he had joined Bullhead and Young Tassel against the border settlers, the Cherokees lived in peace while the white men turned their westward march toward the lands of other tribes. But then with the coming of the century numbered nineteenth by Christians, the invasion began once more—this time not by force of arms but through the deception of agents representing the government of the United States, through the twisting of laws, and the bribery of corrupt chiefs. Like rodents nibbling at corn, the land-thieves ate away what is now eastern Tennessee in small bites, a strip between two streams here, a mountain valley there. These quiet cessions were accomplished by clever lawyers using money from the United States treasury for payment of annuities and bribes that went into the pockets of Cherokees who gave themselves the name of chief. The first warning of loss reaching Cherokees who lived within these ceded lands would be the arrival of a government agent armed with legal papers ordering them to move out.

  After the white men formed the state of Tennessee, a state encompassing thousands of square miles of Cherokee and Chickasaw lands, with Indian-hating Jack Sevier its governor, the nibbles increased to huge bites. For the first time in their history, the Cherokees were forced to realize that if they meant to survive as a nation they must sacrifice their cherished individualism for a powerful center—with one chief over all. Leaders from the towns north and south agreed that Little Turkey, from one of the lower towns, should serve as principal chief in dealings with the outside world. Little Turkey, however, was soon overshadowed by Taltsuska, the swaggering Bullhead. Not long after returning from the wars, Bullhead became Speaker of the Nation. As Little Turkey was no orator, Bullhead took the lead during the early years of the new century in dealing with agents from the United States government seeking permission to build roads through Cherokee country, or sites for government trading factories, or additional small cessions of land for white settlement. When a conference was held in Nashville or Washington, Little Turkey would relinquish the role of tribal representative to Bullhead, who would sometimes return with slight increases in annuities, but always report large losses of more Cherokee lands. And very little of the annuity payments ever seemed to reach the Cherokees after entering Bullhead’s hands.

  Claiming to be “the mouth of the nation,” Bullhead paid no heed to protests from headmen of the Cherokee towns. The government agents named him chief of the tribe, and in rapid succession he ceded land in Carolina, Tennessee, and Georgia to white speculators, reserving private tracts of acreage for himself and his relatives. Soon he was living like a king in the wilderness. He became the owner of a plantation. He bought slaves and fine horses. And when a few of the town chiefs opposed him openly as a tyrant, they died mysteriously and violently.

  Finally after he accepted bribes for some of the best hunting grounds between the Hiwassee and Tennessee rivers, a group of town chiefs secretly met to decide how to rid the Cherokee Nation of Bullhead. They gathered at Hickory Log, and among the leaders was the Long Warrior.

  The council meeting was brief. Not one chief spoke for Bullhead. He had betrayed the Cherokee Nation. He must be put to death. To choose his executioners, a piece of old yellowed cloth was cut into many small squares, one for each member of the council. An adawehi then marked a black X on three of the squares and put them all into an earthenware jar, stirring and shaking them. As each member passed from the council house, he took one of the squares out of the jar. The three men who drew those marked with an X were to carry out the execution as silently and quickly as possible.

  When the Long Warrior looked at the tiny square of cloth in the palm of his hand and saw the black X mark, he was not surprised. He had been seeing visions of Bullhead ever since leaving Okelogee—Bullhead challenging him with his eyes across the council fire on the ridge above the blockhouse, Bullhead strutting in front of his warriors with two silver-mounted pistols hanging at his waist, Bullhead smashing the skulls of the defenseless Cavetts. The thought of taking a human life, the life of a Cherokee clansman, was repugnant to the Long Warrior, but the Blood Law had been invoked. He had been chosen; it was his duty to send Bullhead to the Darkening Land.

  He was back in Okelogee the next day, arriving to find Mary preparing to bake hominy bread. She had a deep bed of coals ready in the yard and was mixing the dough in a flat-bottomed pan. After telling her that he had had a good journey from Hickory Log, he sat down cross-legged in front of the fire. Although it was midsummer his hands felt like ice and he held them over the coals, knowing that she was watching him with curiosity. When she turned toward her dough pan for a moment, he fingered from his turban the tiny square of cloth with its X mark, glanced at it briefly, and dropped it into the coals where it flared into white ash.

  “What was that?” she asked.

  “Death,” he replied, and stood up.

  “Something troubles you, Long Warrior. Let it out of your heart by telling me.”

  He shook his head. “Nothing.”

  She moved toward him, but he drew away. “If you are near menstruating,” he said roughly, “don’t touch me. Don’t get upwind of me.”

  “You’re going to kill,” she said.

  “Don’t meddle.” He hurried off to the council house, hoping the men would have a pot of black drink ready there. A man had to keep some things from the women, but then, he thought, he could not tell the men about it either. He never spoke to anyone about the killing except Mary, and he did not tell her until the year of their bitter quarrel, the last year of his life. Long before that time she knew everything except the details.

  He made some sort of excuse, a pretense of trading for horses in one of the northern towns, to take his leave of Mary and Okelogee. On the morning of his departure, she watched him ride splashing across the Little Singing Stream and disappear through the full-leaved sweetgum trees. Out of the gray rainy sky, a blue hawk dived, circled, and screamed “Come back! Come back!” Then it streaked off in the same direction the Long Warrior had gone. She remembered that time so long ago when she was riding north from Bluff Village in search of Menewa, and a dark blue hawk had warned her to turn back. If she had turned back, everything would have been different, and she wondered now if the Long Warrior was riding on a new trail in his life, perhaps toward an ending. She shivered, looking toward the sky for the hawk, but it did not return.

  When the Long Warrior reached Hiwassee Garrison rain was falling steadily, and as nightfall was near he sought shelter in the stables. Five or six other Cherokees were there, all travelers, and as soon as he unsaddled and fed his horse, he climbed into the loft and joined them. One face was familiar—a town chief who had been present at Hickory Log. Neither man gave any sign of recognition to the other. “Siyu,” the Long Warrior greeted all of them, and gave his name and town. Then he spread his blanket on the hay, and through the open loft window watched the warm slanting rain until darkness made it invisible. He slept badly that night, his dreams filled with recurring visions of Bullhead.

  He awoke facing a clear dawn sky. The other town chief, who had come to Hiwassee Garrison for the same reason as he, was gone.

  That afternoon a crowd of Cherokees, mostly males of all ages, began gathering on the grounds nearby the old Hiwassee blockhouse for a stickball game. Some yards back from the playing field, the Long Warrior sat in the shade of an oak, with his back against the trunk, watching the arriving spectators. As he expected, a few minutes before the game began Bullhead and several of his friends arrived on horseback. Bullhead was riding one of his blooded horses, a shiny black ma
re richly saddled and bridled. He was dressed in white man’s clothing—a tan broadcloth waistcoat, ruffled white shirt, tight trousers, and boots. He hitched his horse to a small tree and strutted into the spectators’ arbor, going about from one man to another placing bets.

  When play began, the Long Warrior opened his deerskin bag and drew out a flintlock pistol, priming it with gunpowder and then concealing it in his sash. He strolled over toward the arbor. Bullhead was sitting in the midst of the group he had arrived with, protected like a king by his guards. From time to time he drank from a flask, laughing, applauding the ballplay, and carrying on animated conversations. The Long Warrior decided to wait until the game ended and the crowd began milling about.

  Late in the afternoon, a player sent a high ball spinning between two goalposts for the twelfth point and the game ended, with half the spectators swarming upon the field. In the commotion, the Long Warrior lost sight of his quarry, and when he found him again, Bullhead was already mounted, with his escorts close around him. Bullhead led the way upon the field, shouting congratulations to one of the players, and then suddenly out of the thinning crowd an old man appeared on foot to grab the bridle of the black mare. The Long Warrior recognized him instantly. He had been at Hickory Log. He was the third man who had drawn a black X.

  “Stand out of my way!” Bullhead shouted at him.

  As the Long Warrior pushed closer, he could see that the Third Man held a pistol. “You have betrayed our people!” the old man cried out. “The Unegas have bought you!”

  He’s going to do it, the Long Warrior thought, and then beyond the immobile scene of the horse, the rider, and the accuser, his eyes met those of the Second Man, the one who had slept in the stables loft, and he knew that each of them read the horror in the other’s face. As though driven by some power over which he had no control, the Long Warrior’s fingers closed over the pistol hidden in his sash, and his legs began to move.

  He heard the snap of the Third Man’s pistol, saw the dim flash of his misfire, and then Bullhead raised a tomahawk as he spurred the black mare forward, bringing the bladed weapon down against the side of the falling man’s face. The pistol rattled against the ground, the man collapsing upon it with blood gushing over his outflung mass of gray-streaked hair. Before the Long Warrior could draw his own pistol, Bullhead was galloping away, his mounted cohorts closing around him.

  “Who is he?” someone asked of the man dying on the ground.

  “I know him,” a young man answered. “He is a chief of a town to the west. Of the Deer clan.”

  The Long Warrior drew his sweating fingers from his sash. That will make it easier, he thought. By the Blood Law it is my duty as a Deer to avenge a clansman. He turned and went straight to the stables. After saddling his horse, he mounted and started up the road taken by Bullhead.

  Before he reached McIntosh’s Tavern, the sun was down and yellow candlelight glowed in the windows. A dozen horses were hitched to the railing. One of them was the glossy black mare. Pulling his turban low over his forehead, he entered, keeping to the shadows of the tavern room. A few minutes later someone else entered; it was the Second Man. He chose a seat only a few feet away, placing himself so that he could watch both the Long Warrior and Bullhead.

  Bullhead and his followers were at the largest table, drinking rum, gambling with peachstone dice, filling the low-ceilinged room with bursts of raucous laughter, and occasionally breaking their mugs by hurling them into the empty fireplace. From time to time the tavernkeeper, McIntosh, would mildly admonish them, but they ignored him until he warned them that they must leave if they did not cease their loutish behavior.

  Bullhead raised his long chin and glared at the tavernkeeper. He fondled the tiny brass cross dangling from his ear. “You live among us by permission, McIntosh,” he said hoarsely. “Be silent and interfere no more.”

  “I try to keep an orderly tavern,” McIntosh replied.

  Bullhead laughed, that hateful laugh the Long Warrior had so often heard during the border war. “You have said enough.” He snarled at the innkeeper: “Go away or I shall kill you.”

  The Long Warrior exchanged glances with the Second Man. He had counted four candles in the dimly lit tavern room. He arose and walked to the nearest one, extinguishing it with his fingers. The Second Man followed his example. The tavernkeeper, noticing the fading light, backed away from Bullhead. The Second Man picked up a wet towel from the counter and dropped it over the candle on Bullhead’s table. At the same instant the Long Warrior knocked the last light from a barrel top and the room was suddenly dark.

  Bullhead swore angrily out of the blackness, his voice a target. A pistol fired, the flash lighting the room for a second, and the doorway filled with fleeing patrons. Bullhead was moaning. Someone relighted the candle on his table, and his friends crowded around him.

  The Long Warrior sat motionless. He pushed his unfired pistol farther down in his sash and waited. Other candles were lighted. The Second Man was gone.

  Some of Bullhead’s men ran outside, shouting at those who had fled, but only one had mounted, and the hoofbeats were fading away in the night. They helped Bullhead outside and lifted him into his saddle, one of his friends riding behind to hold him erect, and started back toward Hiwassee Garrison.

  Returning to the garrison stables, the Long Warrior spent a second night there, but he did not sleep. Bedded down in the loft were several of Bullhead’s companions, and throughout the night horsemen came and went below. He listened carefully to the talk, learning that Bullhead was not dead, but was wounded in the shoulder. An adawehi came, and then a doctor from the white settlement. Bullhead was somewhere near, but no one said in which building he was staying.

  At the first gray light of dawn, the Long Warrior left the sleeping men in the loft and went outside, nibbling at the last of the hominy bread that Mary had put in his saddlepack. He walked to a well beside the old blockhouse, drew up a bucket of water, drank from a gourd dipper and washed his face, using his turban for a towel. Adjoining the blockhouse was a new trading post, and two or three Cherokees were seated on the steps waiting for the trader to open the door. A few paces beyond the trading post was a small schoolhouse, and a hundred yards past it were two dwelling houses side by side. Bullhead would be in one of these buildings.

  Strolling up to the trading post, he greeted the seated Cherokees, climbed the steps, and walked casually along a wooden sidewalk past the doorway of the schoolhouse. He noticed something then on the weathered gray planking of the sidewalk, tiny brown spots no larger than a thumbnail. The line of dried blood spots turned to the right at the sidewalk’s end and continued up an outdoor stairway to a loft above the schoolhouse.

  The Long Warrior stopped and glanced back at the Cherokees on the steps. They were paying no attention to him. Nor was there any sign of life at the stables. He climbed the steps quickly and silently. The door at the top was open slightly, probably for ventilation; when he opened it he saw only one small window beyond a pallet on the floor where someone lay completely covered by gray sheeting.

  As there was no one else in the room, and no guard posted inside or out, the Long Warrior wondered if Bullhead had died during the night. He crossed the room, the loose flooring creaking under his moccasins, and pulled the sheet away. As though released by a spring, Bullhead sat erect, naked except for his drawers, his eyes opening wide, his right hand grasping for a tomahawk that lay beside him. His left shoulder was covered with torn strips of bloody cloth. “Who are you?” he demanded. “Where are my boys?”

  “They’ve deserted you, Bullhead,” the Long Warrior said quietly. “They know you are condemned.”

  “You!” Bullhead exclaimed. “The chicken-hearted chief from Okelogee.”

  “You’re a hard man to kill.”

  “They sent you?” Bullhead’s belly muscles tightened, and before the Long Warrior could aim his pistol, he sprang from the pallet, tomahawk raised. The Long Warrior ducked, but Bullhead’s knees st
ruck the side of his ribs, knocking the pistol from his hand and leaving him breathless for a moment. With a loud grunt of pain, Bullhead fell heavily to the floor. Before he could rise, the Long Warrior leaped upon his back, fighting for the tomahawk.

  When Bullhead tried to throw him off, his grip on the tomahawk loosened and the Long Warrior seized and lifted it, bringing it down with all the force he could summon into the back of Bullhead’s shaven skull. The chunking sound of sharp metal tearing flesh and bone and brains apart would disturb his dreams for the remainder of his life.

  Later he was puzzled as to why he felt bound to remove the tomahawk. It was so deeply embedded that he had to put one foot on the dead man’s back and use both hands to pry it loose from the skull. But he did so, wiping it on the sheet. He then picked up his pistol and left the room, closing the door behind him. Halfway down the outside stairs, he dropped to the ground and circled behind the buildings until he came to the well. For the first time he noticed that his hands were bloody and that he was still carrying Bullhead’s tomahawk. He dropped the weapon into the well, washed his hands in the water he had left in the bucket, and then went on to the stables. Two young men, former companions of Bullhead, were saddling their horses.

  “Siyu,” the Long Warrior said, barely glancing at them.

  “Do you have tobacco?” one of them asked.

  He gave the men two pipefuls. “Wadan, wadan,” they both said. “Thanks, thanks.”

  While they were smoking he finished saddling, and then mounted and rode away from Hiwassee Garrison.

  11

  “FOR MONTHS AFTER MY grandfather slew Bullhead,” Dane said, “there was much uneasiness among the Cherokees. Bullhead’s relatives and friends feared there would be more killings, but there were not. The reasons for his execution were known, and most Cherokees approved of it. However, when President Jefferson sent an agent to visit the Cherokee towns to persuade the people to move west of the Mississippi River, one of Bullhead’s brothers-in-law, who feared for his life, decided to go, the government taking his land in exchange for that given him in the West. He and his family and friends were the first Cherokees to move to the Arkansas country, but no one else of course would even listen to the agent. They did not dream that within a few years almost all of them would be dragged without their consent from their beloved country to the dark land of the setting sun.