On This Long Journey Read online

  Here are the words with which he ended:

  I shall not cease my effort to prevail on the United States government to turn aside from the ruin they would bring upon our native Country; yes, the ruin — and for what? Have we done any wrong? We are not charged with any. We have a Country which others covet. This is the only offense we have yet been charged with.

  He left us with much to talk about.

  October 11, 1837

  Unable to write the last two days because of so much work about our small farm. Among other things, had to take Napoleyan to John Iron to get shod. We are not like those of our Cherokee Nation who are wealthy and have Negro slaves to assist in their labors. Reverends Worcester and Butler have openly questioned slavery. I agree with their views, but many Cherokees cannot see what is wrong with slavery as long as the slaves are well treated and content.

  Noted that our hens are very nervous.

  October 12, 1837

  Many in our Indian Nation have been to school here and in New England. We have our own written language. I myself even have a small library, and some of the books are written in Cherokee.

  I have a pile of Reverend Worcester’s tracts here. None of them are as well written as Milton or Shakespeare. However, the passages from the Bible do read beautifully. These books and pamphlets deal with such things as proper behavior and finding the light of Christianity. These are some of their titles:

  Ten Commandments, & A Poison Tree & Sin

  Irreverence in the House of God, & Pray for them which persecute you

  Translations of the Book of Jonah — Naaman & Gehazi, Patient Joe, & Psalms 116

  Troublesome Garden, & Parents’ neglect of their children

  Poor Sarah, Am I a Christian, & the Bible

  On one shelf in my room are my morocco-bound Testament, Shakespeare, Milton, and other books of poetry.

  My hands have become so calloused and rough from the work I have constantly engaged in since returning to our farm that it is hard for me to hold a book in them. Much as I value the education given me, it was poor preparation for the labor of farming.

  October 13, 1837

  Counted the chickens this morning. One of them is missing. We can ill afford to lose even a single one. Nothing else of note occurred today.

  No farmer worth his salt can survive without an almanac. So I rejoiced when today I received a package from Reverend Worcester. It contained a copy of the almanac prepared by him for 1838. Printed with Cherokee on one page and English on the next, the Cherokee Almanac contains:

  The number of months in the year and their names

  The months in each of the seasons

  The number of days in each month

  The names of the days of the week

  The division of days into hours, minutes, and seconds

  The uses of an almanac and the manner of using it

  The visible eclipses in the present year

  Religious matter at the head of each calendar page

  Useful hints on agriculture, domestic economy, industry, etc.

  Reverend Worcester plans to publish many more books from the new press he has set up in the west. It is now two years since Reverend Worcester and his family departed from the Cherokee Nation. He left after the Georgia Guard seized the press that had once published our Nation’s newspaper. I think I would enjoy being a writer and publisher of books. But I will not do so if it means I must betray or desert my people, as some have done. I do not mean Reverend Worcester, for he is not Indian but a white man. I mean other Cherokees who have not stood by us as has our Chief John Ross.

  October 14, 1837

  One of my friends from Creek Path Mission came by and spent two days. His name is John Cloud, but all call him Preacher Tsan. Tsan is Cherokee for John. Preacher Tsan has never learned to speak English. He was a grown man when he came to Creek Path. But he accepted the teachings of the Bible so strongly in his heart that he became a wandering evangelist. He travels through all eight of the Districts of our Republic, spreading the word.

  The Bible was translated from Greek into Cherokee soon after Sequoyah gave our Nation the syllabary in 1825. That translation was done by David Brown, whom I never met. He died in one of the influenzas that prevailed at Creek Path from time to time. He died in September of 1829, the year before I arrived at Creek Path.

  Miss Delight Sargeant, of Pawlet, Vermont, was my first teacher at Creek Path. Her eyes filled with tears when she spoke of David Brown. She said that he was one of the most educated Indians ever, having gone to Andover to study Greek and Latin and having even devised his own way of writing Cherokee, which was put aside, of course, when Sequoyah came up with his alphabet. Only one other Cherokee, she said, was ever more educated than David Brown. She has now married that man since his first white wife died. She is now Mrs. Elias Boudinot.

  Preacher Tsan would laugh if he read what I just wrote. It proves the point he made to me when I read him my first entries in this journal. When I finished, he shook his head and asked who I was writing it for.

  It was a good question and it brought me up short. Was I doing it for Reverend Worcester? Was I writing for myself? Or was this for people I had never met?

  “Anyone,” I said.

  That made Tsan smile. He said that “anyone” will not understand my story. He said that I must start at the beginning.

  He reached out a hand and put it on my shoulder. He could tell that his words had troubled me. “Tell more stories as you fill your talking leaves. At that you are good.”

  “Where would I start?” I asked.

  “At the beginning,” Tsan said.

  I will do that tomorrow. Once more it has grown late.

  Tomorrow I shall start at the beginning as we Ani-yunwiya see it. I shall begin with our own Book of Genesis.

  October 15, 1837

  Our Creation Story

  Back in the beginning, the old people tell me, the Earth was not here as it is now. All the beings lived in the sky, and there was water where Earth now is. So Beaver’s Grandson, Water Beetle, was sent to dive down to the bottom of that water. Water Beetle came up with mud on his feet. That mud was put on the back of Big Turtle, who floated in the water to hold it up. That mud became the lands of the Earth, all surrounded by water. That mud was too soft and wet for anyone to walk on. So Great Turkey Buzzard came down and flew over the wet land, drying it with his wings. He dried the land, but he also shaped it. When Great Turkey Buzzard’s wings came down, they made a valley and when they lifted up, they made mountains. That is how this land was made, all these valleys and mountains, etc., where the Ani-yunwiya live. We are the original children of that land. We remember what it was like before the Earth was here. We are the ones who live between the Above Land and the Below Land.

  October 16, 1837

  I read my last entry to Tsan. He thinks it’s adequate. It shows how we feel that we are part of this land, rightly ours. But he said maybe I should give a short history of how we came to this point where the white people, especially the Georgians, want us to leave. Since he must attend a sacramental meeting at Brainerd, he will not be able to respond to what I shall write. But I will try to get this as right and clear as is possible.

  October 17, 1837

  Today I spent most of the day drawing in logs. Some are for firewood, and others split for more rail fencing. Being a mule, Napoleyan had other ideas. I spent as much time enticing him to move as I did engaging in any real work. Yet I know that he has a fondness for me. When at last I sat and put my head down in despair, he came over and nuzzled me. From then on he worked twice as hard as a team of horses would work. However, as I put him into the barn this evening, he kicked the side of his stall so hard that he broke one board and dislodged three others.

  Tonight I will try to tell another story. I shall relate the history of our dealings with the Yo-ni-ga-we.
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  Our History with the White Men

  Back in the old days our lands included what is now Virginia and Kentucky, North and South Carolina, and Georgia. We lived in villages, some big, some small. Every one of our towns had its own chiefs and its own council. We did not have one chief or a king back then. Sometimes we made war, but mostly we were at peace.

  Then the Spanish came through. They were the first of the Yo-ni-ga-we, the strange new people with pale faces. But they continued going and stayed not, leaving behind some dead and even an iron helmet or two of the sort inherited by the Feeler from his great-grandfather.

  Next were the Virginia settlers, who stayed. When they attacked our villages, we defeated them and for more than a hundred years the British traded with us. They also built forts. When they took some of our chiefs captive in one of those forts in 1759, it started a war. This time the British were too strong for us. They drove our people into the hills. Some of our chiefs signed a treaty giving up land. But it was not sufficient.

  More and more white settlers came in like a flood of water through a broken beaver dam. It was no longer the British, but the United States with whom we had to deal. Some of our leaders took up the hatchet. Tsiyu Gansini, or Dragging Canoe, and his Chickamauga Cherokees did not give up the struggle, even after Kentucky was sold to white men.

  We had hoped, Dragging Canoe said, the white men would not be willing to travel beyond the mountains; now that hope is gone. The whole country, which the Cherokees and their fathers so long occupied, will be demanded, and the remnant of the Ani-yunwiya, once so great and formidable, will be compelled to seek refuge in some distant wilderness. Should we not therefore run all risks, and incur all consequence, rather than submit to further laceration of our country? Such treaties are all right for men who are too old to hunt or fight. As for me, I have my young warriors about me. We will have our land.

  A long and bloody war ensued, ending in 1794 when peace was signed at Tellico Blockhouse. We Cherokees promised to never again make war with the United States. We now had a Principal Chief. We set up a capital for our nation at New Echota, holding on to a small part of our homeland where the new states of Georgia, Tennessee, and North Carolina came together. But the aim of the United States is to move all Indians west of the Great River, the Mississippi. Now, just as Dragging Canoe feared half a century ago, we are told we must all leave our homeland.

  Some of our people have given in. They have gone to the Cherokee Agency at Calhoun, Tennessee, where the troops are gathering parties of Cherokees to move them west.

  October 18, 1837

  It took me all evening to write last night’s entry. It was slow going. I felt as if I were pushing a plow without a mule to pull it and only finished one furrow from running into stumps.

  Also, in the writing of our history I did not mention the many friends we have had among the white people. Many white men and women have married Cherokees and have thrown their lot in with us. I have before me a newspaper containing the resolution signed by hundreds of good Christians in Philadelphia who condemn the order for our removal to the west. Even General Wool, the soldier sent to oversee our Removal, resigned his post rather than carry on the onerous and unfair duty assigned to him.

  Yet, even as I write this, another party of Cherokee émigrés are ready to leave under military escort from the Cherokee Agency at Calhoun, Tennessee. Too many things are happening. Who can untangle all these twisted threads? It is too much for me. I can write no further. I shall give up this task.

  November 3, 1837

  The Feeler has seen 110 winters. It is not uncommon for people in our Nation to enjoy a great old age, but he is the oldest man I know. Yet his hair is still thick and black, his eyes are keen, and he still walks as much as twenty miles each day, plants and hoes his own cornfields, and often leads the songs at ball dances, dancing all night about the fire. He has outlived seven wives and fourteen of his children by his own count. Despite his age, he was one of the first in our town to learn Sequoyah’s writing. He uses it to record the Sacred Formulas, powerful chants that can bring health or destroy an enemy. This, he feels, is the most worthy use of writing. His distrust of other ways of using it stems from a century of watching white men solemnly write down agreements upon their talking leaves. The Feeler has concluded that the white men take such pains to write down their promises to the Indians to make certain that they will remember to break them all.

  Since his own age is almost ten times that of my own, his wisdom is that much greater. We Indians believe that wisdom grows with age. Our old people are the ones who advise us. So I went to my great-uncle for advice. I told him how discouraged I was about my journal.

  His response was to ask me to read it to him.

  I started to translate my words into Cherokee. He held one hand to his ear as I did so and shook his head.

  “What is wrong?” I asked.

  He then asked me if I had written my words in Cherokee or in English.

  “English,” I replied. I am ashamed to say that after my years of schooling I can write easily only in English. If I try to write in our Cherokee syllabary, I move slowly as a measuring worm going up a stick.

  “Then read it in English,” the Feeler said. “I will not speak that language, but I have learned to understand it.”

  This surprised me, but anyone who has contact with the Feeler must grow used to surprises. I did as he said.

  We both sat without saying anything for a long time after I was done. I held the journal in my hands as the Feeler stared at it. It felt as if it were growing hot, and I thought it would burst into flames. It was probably my own nervousness.

  At last he spoke, telling me that what I was doing might become a good thing but that I was using too many words.

  I asked, “What can I do?”

  Then, again, I waited. When an elder speaks, he often pauses as does a deer about to enter a clearing. It first looks about and sniffs the air before going further. At such pauses, a white man talks instead of listening. Then the deer turns and goes back into the forest. So I waited and listened.

  Finally the Feeler cleared his throat and spoke. “Write more stories into your talking leaves,” he said. “Do not worry. There will be plenty of stories for you to tell as the days go on.” Then the Feeler sighed deeply. “Too many stories.”

  As I close this journal for the night I have resolved that I shall try to take his advice and I will keep writing.

  November 5, 1837

  Saw several bearded and roughly clad white men on the road this morning. They were on the other side of our pasture fence, staring across the field toward our cabin. This worried me. Though we are not wealthy, we are still better off than some of those white men who are neighbors to us just over the state line to the south. There is the belief among some white men that many of the Cherokees now living here, some of them families forced to desert their homes in Georgia or Alabama, have hidden wealth. These white men, who are no more than banditti, believe we have stores of gold that we have taken (against the laws of Georgia) from our own lands.

  Made it a point to sit on the front stoop and clean my grandfather’s musket in plain view of the white men who stared over our fence at me. They finally drifted away. Though we are in Tennessee and not in Georgia, such men, who often are members of the Georgia Militia, pay little attention to any boundaries. Seeing their hungry faces reminds me how far we have fallen and how far we may yet fall. I fear greatly for our dear Nation.

  However, as I sat on our porch writing these words this evening, three members of our Light Horse, the Cherokee mounted police, came galloping by. It is likely they were alerted to the presence of that dangerous band of white men. They are patrolling to see to the safety of our homes and farms. Once, they had the power to drive away whites illegally settled on our lands. Now they only serve as watchmen. I did not recognize them, but one of them waved at me and I
waved back. It has lifted my heart for the moment.

  November 6, 1837

  Today as I survey our little two-room cabin, our small acreage of land, and our few animals, I remember how things were for us three years ago. We had a larger farm, a modest plantation with a small herd of cattle west of New Echota. My father employed people to work the land. We had no slaves. My parents felt that such practices were wrong, even though we Cherokees tend to be kinder to Africans than the white planters are.

  But Father feared for us. He had received threats from Georgians who first tried to buy his land for a pittance and then threatened his life. So he moved us here to this smaller farm. Then he went back to get our team of horses and to see about selling off our cattle to a Cherokee neighbor.

  A few days after my father went back to see to our plantation, a soldier came to our door. Like many of the white men under General Wool’s command, he was a Tennessee Volunteer. Also, like most of Wool’s men, he showed not only politeness to our people but even respect and liking. Despite conflicting orders from President Jackson, Wool strove to be fair to white and Indian alike while making matters ready for the emigration of our people. More than once, he had jailed white men or punished them for offenses against Cherokees, even though each such action resulted in angry communications from Old Hickory.