On This Long Journey Page 10

  While some prepare the corn, filling the camp with such a thumping, it is as if a hundred drums were being beaten all at once, others gather wood for fires. Men on horses, our police among them, drag in dry wood behind them with ropes fastened to their saddles as children pick up twigs and small sticks. If we are lucky, there is enough dry wood. If we are very lucky, it is not a day when it is cold or raining or snowing — though such days are precious and few. Then, when the fires are made and our lodges all set up, some with blankets or canvas tied up as lean-tos next to the wagons, there is some time for relaxation.

  Then, at times, the children begin to play. They play our old game of chunky, in which spears are thrown toward a rolling target. They play stickball or shoot arrows at marks set up on tree trunks. They pass the intricately woven strings of a cat’s cradle back and forth between their hands. There is a little laughter as they play, but only a little, and their play is brief, for all are exhausted after another day on the trail.

  Visitors wander through our camp, stopping now and then by our fires to speak with us. Some are the tradesmen who have brought us supplies. They are often courteous to us. Some are ministers or kindly intentioned people who donate clothing or food. Others are merely curious white people who wander through looking at us as if we were forest animals dressed in clothing. Our Light Horse keep a close watch to make sure that none are selling whiskey. Sadly, at each place we stop, those who have given themselves to drink usually find some way of purchasing more.

  Night falls, early and dark. Those who have come to our camp to visit must leave. We allow none but our own people to remain with us after 9 O’C P.M. The people fall into an exhausted slumber. Yet their rest is no rest from the pain they must always bear with them. To them, in their sleep come the dear faces of those who have died, those whose touch they will not know again on this side of the grave. Many cry out in the night as dreams and memories come to remind them of the pain they have endured and the trials that still lie ahead.

  November 6, 1838

  Crossed the Cumberland River on Nashville Toll Bridge. Two days behind Situwakee and Jones. As always, overcharged with not a thank-you from the toll collectors. Rations and supplies waiting for us in Nashville procured by Lewis Ross. Corn and fodder and oats. Also warm clothes, which will be greatly needed as the weather has quickly grown colder. Blankets, cloaks, bearskins, overcoats, thick boots, heavy socks.

  Camped near Mr. Putnam’s. We are not far from the Hermitage. Several men in our party also fought at Horseshoe Bend. But none rode out to make a courtesy call on Old Hickory as did a number of our people led through here by the army a year ago in October of ’37. Among them were James Starr and Charles Reese, two Cherokee men who served under General Jackson in several battles during the Red Stick Rebellion. Both of them, Starr and Reese, rode out to the Hermitage to visit their old commander and were received graciously by himself and joined Old Hickory for tea.

  It is said that Old Hickory is not well. When he learned that John Ross had been given the contract that we should conduct our own removal, the ex-president wrote an angry letter of protest to U.S. Attorney General Felix Grundy. “Why is it that the scamp Ross is not banished from the notice of administration?” he wrote. He urged (to no avail) that the contract be arrested. His words were totally ignored. That is one of the few things in the story of our removal that brings a smile to Cherokee faces.

  November 9, 1838

  Camped near Long Creek.

  These are the chores that our policemen must undertake on a typical day:

  Confiscate whiskey (of which, sadly, there is always a new store to be found, sometimes hidden in such clever places as the false bottom of a trunk or tied into a sack beneath a wagon);

  & receive the food and fodder waiting at various stops and junctions;

  & find drinkable water and see to the orderly watering of teams as well as the filling of water casks;

  & order the slit trenches dug and see that the task is adequately done;

  & see to the gathering of firewood that is increasingly scarce;

  & get a few fires built and ensure that cooking is taken care of;

  & assist our doctor in identifying those who are sick and seeing that they are cared for;

  & burn the blankets of those who have contagion and died;

  & when clothing or footwear is available, distribute it to those who are shoeless or whose clothing has worn to rags and tatters;

  & patrol the camp at night to ask those who cry out to be quiet that others might sleep and see that no ill is done and that no thieves have crept in to steal from our people;

  & wake the camp the next morning, though many have no wish to waken and sometimes there are those who will never wake again;

  & dig graves to bury the dead;

  & mound over the slit trenches with earth and bury the garbage to keep the rats and wild dogs from invading our camp;

  & confiscate whiskey yet again;

  & before we move on, take the roll of all to see that none are forgotten, to note those who have deserted, of which there are at least one or two each week, although there are also those who have grown confused and wandered off and become lost and so we must search for them to try to save them from harm.

  I have not yet found time to speak to Reverend Foreman and ask that I might borrow a book from him. There has been, as you might imagine, little time for reading.

  November 10, 1838

  Passed through Port Royal, Kentucky. Excessive rain today made the travel miserable. Our fires sputter from the rain. The wind blows freezing rain in through our tents. I will cease writing now and put my journal back into my pack to protect it from this rain.

  November 11, 1838

  Among our party are two families of Creek Indians. The removal of the 20,000 of their nation to the western lands took place in 1836. Like others of their people, they sought refuge among the Cherokees and are counted now as Cherokee.

  This evening, around the fire, I sat with one of those Creek Indians, a man of thirty-seven named Jim Tiger. He was one of the regiment of Creek warriors who fought under American officers in Florida against the Seminole while their families remained in the Creek concentration camps in Alabama.

  Jim Tiger’s Story

  When removal came, the Creek soldiers who helped the Americans were packed onto steamboats at New Orleans along with their families and all the others and shipped west. This river travel frightened them greatly. Their fears were well founded. The boat on which Jim Tiger and six hundred others had been placed, a steamer called the Monmouth, was poorly captained. Late at night on the wide Mississippi, it collided with another boat and was cut in two. More than three hundred Creeks drowned, Jim Tiger’s aunt among them. He and his remaining family fled back to our Cherokee Nation rather than continue that dreaded journey.

  Now he found himself forced west again. “But at least,” he said, “there is earth beneath our feet on this trail, not water.”

  November 12, 1838

  On the move again after pausing yesterday for Sunday devotions. I wonder if we should also be traveling on Sundays. Our progress has been too slow, and the weather is worsening. Snow has fallen all day — wet, driving snow pushed into our faces by a cold northern wind. We are grateful for the warmer clothing provided us in Nashville, but wish there had been more. Many of us are still thinly clothed.

  Reverend Foreman had a rather lengthy conversation with me yesterday after religious services. He knew some of my teachers at the Mission School and said he heard I was a promising scholar. I replied that my Latin was good but that I have only small knowledge of Greek, and almost none at all of Hebrew. I confessed that though I had owned a small library — now sadly lost to me — I had little knowledge of the classics and had read through the Bible from cover to cover no more than six times at most. For some reason he smiled at that.

  He u
rged that I should continue my studies in the west. There, he promised, we will soon have schools set up, including seminaries for both girls and boys. Though we have lost our homeland, we have not lost our spirit. We shall remain Cherokee and rise again. “Nova ex veteris,” he concluded.

  I nodded my head. “The new must come out of the old.”

  Reverend Foreman appeared to approve my weak translation of his Latin.

  “Not only students will be needed, but also those of our people educated enough to become teachers,” he said, his hand upon my shoulder.

  Then, even before I asked, he offered to lend me one of his books. Imagine my surprise when the volume he chose to hand to me was the very one I had begun to read but never finished. It was my old friend and fellow castaway Robinson Crusoe!

  I have read twenty more pages of it this evening! My sad surroundings quite faded away as I became lost in the story. I must confess, however, that it seems to me the good man Friday might be a Cherokee, a younger version of the Feeler. Also I find myself picturing the cannibals in the story as members of the Georgia Guard!

  November 13, 1838

  This morning, as I went to the water, I felt I was not alone. I looked up from the flowing stream after having washed my forehead. To my surprise I saw the Feeler standing on the other side, downstream from me. He stared at me so intently that it seemed as if he were looking through me. I made as if to cross over to him. He held up his right hand, motioning me to stay where I was.

  “Grandfather,” I said to him, “are you coming with us to the west?”

  He smiled and went down on one knee to put his hands upon the soil. I understood. He was staying in our old land.

  He stood up again. I saw he was no longer carrying his book in the pack that had always been slung over his shoulder. Was his book what he had placed in the hollow tree in my dream? I suddenly realized the Feeler’s motions were less stiff than the last time I saw him. He no longer used a staff. My great-great-grandfather placed his hand on his heart and then swung it out, palm opened, toward me. I did the same in return. My eyes filled with tears as I did so. His image blurred in my sight, and then, like mist blown away by the wind, he was gone.

  I know that I shall never see him again in this lifetime.

  November 14, 1838

  We are camped near Hopkinsville, Kentucky. Several parties have already passed through here before us and they have excited the pity of the local townsfolk. Their newspaper, the Hopkinsville Gazette, contained an article urging the good people of the town to help us. Though we had been driven from our homes by whites, we found the white people here sympathetic with our distress. They have brought food and clothing to our encampment and made generous donations for our comfort.

  November 16, 1838

  One child died today of whooping cough. Her smallness made the burial easier, for it was not so hard to find the boards for the coffin or to dig the hole.

  Sat again with Jim Tiger. I spoke with him of how hard it was to see the sickness among our people.

  “At least,” he said, “it is not smallpox.” Then he related another tale of the removal of his Creek people.

  Jim Tiger’s Second Story

  A friend of Jim Tiger’s who went by the name of Talledega Joe told him this story. Talledega Joe was also making his way back from the west to hide among the Cherokee. It was late December and it was very cold and he had lost the trail. Then, at midday, Talledega Joe saw a cabin on a hilltop with a wisp of smoke coming from the chimney. Though it was far away from him, Talledega Joe, who was blessed with great eyesight, could make out the figure of a thin, stooped Indian man with a blanket about his shoulders, sitting on the gallery porch.

  But as Talledega Joe started up the hill toward that cabin, the man who sat there saw him. That man stood shakily and waved at him to stop. The man, who was dressed in Creek fashion, pointed with his hand to a roughly fashioned flag that flew above the cabin. It was white with red spots painted upon it. Then the man made signs indicating that he was not alone, that sick people were inside the cabin.

  Talledega Joe understood. The flag meant smallpox was there. That Creek man was one of a party of scouts who had stumbled upon the cabin and found that the people within had that awful disease.

  They knew, as do all of our Indian people, that to return to their people would mean they would bring the terrible sickness — for which we have no cure — back among them. So the Creek scouts decided to stay in that cabin and wait for death. They had raised that warning flag and were keeping watch to warn others away.

  His eyes moist, Talledega Joe turned his face away from that hilltop of self-sacrifice and continued on. When he had climbed another hill he looked back across the valley and saw a pillar of smoke rising. Rather than take a chance that someone else might come upon them and not be warned away soon enough, the dying Creek scouts had set fire to their cabin.

  November 17, 1838

  We have passed Salem, Kentucky, and are approaching the Ohio River. There we shall cross over by flatboats to Golconda, Illinois. The weather is very cold. Ice has formed in our water kegs each morning. It seems that the rivers will freeze early. Some worry we will be caught between the two rivers we must cross — the Ohio and the Mississippi. If there is floating ice, the ferries cannot run. We will then be forced to make camp until the ice clears from the river. I pray this will not happen, but the progress of our long line of detachments has been painful and slow.

  This morning, before sunrise, I went to the water, a creek that is said to flow down to the Ohio. I spoke to the old Long Man in Cherokee as the Feeler taught me. I asked that the Ohio take pity upon our people and that we be allowed to cross over.

  This was not, I think, a bad thing to do. Did not Moses himself ask that the waters of the Red Sea be parted to allow the Israelites to pass to the other side? Still, I did not tell Reverend Foreman of my actions.

  When I came walking up from the stream I found Elizabeth at the top of the bank. The sun was rising behind her. She took me by the hand, and we walked together without speaking back to the wagon where my mother and my sisters had already harnessed up the team.

  With the cold weather, even more people are becoming ill. Never enough blankets. Never enough fuel for the fires, and the detachments behind will find even less after we pass.

  November 19, 1838

  Broke camp at 7 O’C A.M. At 10 O’C A.M. arrived at Berry’s Ferry. Ice at the river’s edge, but the flatboat ferry was running. The wind was calm, and the river was not at all rough. Our crossing was a smooth one, though many of the people were very afraid while out on the broad river. All wagons had been taken over by 6 O’C P.M.

  We moved on an hour farther beyond the river to make our camp for the night. It has been decided we will make camp for several days here. Everyone in our party is too exhausted to press on quickly. The three detachments ahead of us have sent word back that they expect to cross the Mississippi within the next few days.

  We will also wait to see how the Bushyhead group fares in crossing the Ohio. We passed them by on the road three days before our own crossing.

  November 21, 1838

  Snow upon the ground. Reverend Bushyhead’s party took two days to cross the Ohio, but it is now on its way, about ten miles behind us. We are also on our way again. It is our hope that the Mississippi will allow us to pass over its dangerous waters without incident. But the other couriers tell me that there is ice upon the Great River and the weather has grown ever colder.

  November 25, 1838

  We are camped southeast of Vienna, Illinois. It is again Sunday, and so we are not traveling. The three parties ahead of us have crossed the Mississippi, a perilous crossing with ice floating in the river. There are still eight detachments behind us. The last of our parties to take this route by land is the one led by Richard Taylor and Daniel Butrick. They departed only three weeks ago.

&nb
sp; Our faithful chief, John Ross, like the captain who will not leave the bridge of his ship until the last are in the lifeboats, still remains in the Nation. He is packing up the papers of our Nation. He will engage a steamer to take him and his family, along with those few remaining Cherokees who are too infirm or ill to go by land. They will go by the river route to Little Rock.

  December 2, 1838

  Our progress is agonizingly slow across the narrow neck of Illinois between the rivers. To the east and south of us is the Ohio, which is joined by the Tennessee before the two rivers flow into the Mississippi. There is no way out of this arc of land except to cross the river.

  Once again we are stopped and shall not travel because it is Sunday. But it seems that hurrying now will be of no avail. I scouted ahead today with our Light Horse and saw the Mississippi River. Great blocks of ice are flowing down. The Great River is growling like some huge and hungry beast as the ice scrapes the shore. Three of our parties have crossed, but it seems that we shall not. The ferries are not running. We are trapped.

  December 4, 1838

  There are two ferry crossings. The northern one is to Cape Girardeau, Missouri. The second crossing is at Green’s Ferry. Both are closed and will remain so until there is a thaw.

  We are now all encamped and will remain so until the Mississippi sees fit to allow us upon her. It is very cold. Much snow. Many are becoming ill in all seven of our detachments held here by the ice. Five died on our way to this encampment, and it was hard to dig the graves in the frozen earth. We finally covered the shallow burials with logs and stones.