Ensign Raymond was no polemic nor versed in the Hebraic analogies rife
at that day among those who ascribed a Semitic origin to the American
Indian and sought to recognize in them the “lost tribes of Israel.”
When at last he set foot on the “ever-sacred” soil of the city of
refuge and opened his sealed orders, it was less a resemblance to
ancient Jewish customs that appealed to him than an appreciation of the
prudence of his commander in choosing this site for the delivery of his
mission. For he had that to say to the head-men of the Cherokee nation
which elsewhere might cost him his life. Here, however, at the horns
of the altar, had he, himself, been the shedder of blood, he was safe.
Here his blood could not be shed. He was under the shadow of the “wings
of peace.” The “infinitely holy” environment protected him and his.
When he drew up his command and addressed the soldiers, ordering them
on no account to venture beyond the limits of the “beloved town,” the
amazement and flouting ridicule on their florid Irish and Cockney faces
marked the difficulty which the ordinary mind experiences in seeking to
assimilate the theories of eld. With the heady severity characteristic
of a very young officer, he replied to the nettling surprise and
negation in their facial expression.
“It may sound like a fool notion to you, but you must remember that you
are only a pack of zanies, and don’t know a condemned thing but the
goose-step. They had this same sort of immunity ’way back in the Bible
times,”--he was himself a trifle vague,--“cities of refuge, where, in
the case of involuntary manslaughter, the slayer might find protection,
and in this ‘old peaceable town’ of Choté no hurt may be done even to a
wilful man-slayer, no blood may be shed here,--now, do you understand?”
The heads were all erect; the position was the regulation “attention”
with “eyes front,” but so round were these eyes with amazement that
“the greasy red-sticks” had aught similar to customs “’way back in
the Bible times,” that the caustic young commander was moved to add:
“You are a set of heathen, too, or you would have learned all that
long ago,--about holding to the horns of the altar, as an effective
defensive measure. Anyhow,” he summed up, “if you choose to go off the
‘sacred soil’ and get yourselves slaughtered, you cannot say that you
have not been fairly warned. You will disobey orders, you will be put
under full stoppage of pay, and--_your_ bones will not be buried.”
The parade was dismissed and they marched away, much marvelling at his
strange discourse.
The allusion to their bones remained rankling in his mind. For there
was a fence of human bones at Choté, very grievous for a British
soldier to look upon,--a trophy, a triumphal relic, of the massacre
of the British garrison of Fort Loudon after its capitulation. It
had been difficult for Raymond to control the righteous wrath of his
soldiers in the presence of this ghastly mockery,--notwithstanding
their scanty number and the realization that any demonstration would be
but the sacrifice of their own lives the moment they should quit the
soil of immunity. The assurance of their commander that he would report
the indignity to the government, when doubtless some action would be
taken, was necessary to avert disastrous consequences.
Raymond, himself, had great ado to contend with the storm of anger
a-surge within his own breast when the Cherokees ceremoniously received
him, beating the drums of the late Captain Demeré, who had marched out
of Fort Loudon with the full honors of war, with flags and music and
their assurance of safeguard.
“This is not well,” Raymond could not refrain from saying, as he stood
in the centre of the “beloved square” in the midst of the town, with
the head-men, splendidly arrayed in their barbaric fashion, gathered to
greet him. “The articles of capitulation reserved to Captain Demeré the
colors, drums, and arms of the garrison--he had the solemn assurance
of the Cherokee nation,--and--” Raymond was very young; his face
turned scarlet, the tears stood in his eyes, he caught his breath with
something very like a sob, “the remains of that honorable soldier are
entitled to Christian burial.”
He was sorry a moment later that he had said aught. The Indians’
obvious relish of his distress was so keen. They replied
diplomatically, however, that all this had happened long ago, nearly
three years, in fact, and that if they had done aught amiss, the
British government had amply avenged the misdeed in the distressful
wars it had waged against the Cherokee nation, that had indeed been
reduced to the extremity of humiliation.
Raymond, breathing a sigh of solace, was accepting this logic with the
docile rudimentary reasoning of youth, when one of the chiefs, with a
countenance at once singularly fierce and acute, the great Oconostota,
added blandly that he, himself, had known Captain Demeré with something
of intimacy and desired to withhold naught of advantage from him. If
Ensign Raymond was sufficiently acquainted with his bones to select
them from out the fence, he would be privileged to remove them. But
this applied to none of the other bones, for the consent of other
warriors controlled the remainder of the structure.
When he paused a ripple of mirth, like a sudden flash of lightning on a
dull cloud, appeared on the feather-crested faces and disappeared in an
instant. They all stolidly eyed Raymond, standing with his hand on his
sword, his heart swelling as he realized the fleer with the ludicrous
ghastliness of the dilemma it presented. Then it was that Raymond
showed the soldier. The cub, despite its immaturity, has all the
inherent mettle of the lion. His eyes still flashed, his cheek glowed,
his voice shook, but he replied with a suavity, which was itself a
menace, that being only a subaltern he did not feel authorized to take
the initiative in so serious a matter, but that he would report the
offer to Captain Howard, commanding at Fort Prince George, with whom
Oconostota was also acquainted, and with, he believed, some degree of
intimacy.
That the Indians were adepts in every art of propitiation was amply
manifest in the urbanities that Raymond enjoyed after this apt
suggestion, and if aught could have obliterated its provocation
from his mind, this would have been compassed by the courtesies
and attentions showered upon him and his men during the days that
intervened between his arrival and the time when etiquette permitted
the business of his mission to be opened.
Raymond seemed to have brought the spring to Choté, that lovely vernal
expectation which holds a charm hardly to be surpassed by the richness
of fulfilment. Soft languors were in the air, infinitely luxurious. A
large leisure seemed to pervade the world. The trees budded slowly,
slowly. At a distance the forests had similitudes of leaflets, but as
yet the buds did not expand. It was evident that the grass was freshly
springing, for deer were visible all a-graze on the opposite banks
of the Tennessee River. Far away the booming note of buffalo came to
the ear, and again was only a soft silence. A silver haze hung in the
ravines and chasms of the mountains, austere, dark, leafless, close
at hand but in the distance wearing a delicate azure that might have
befitted a summer-tide scene.
After the long, toilsome, wintry march Raymond found a sort of luxury
in this interval of rest, despite the unaccustomed barbaric manners of
his hosts. He sought to make due allowance for the differing standards
of civilization, but there was much that was irksome notwithstanding
the utmost endeavors of his entertainers to win his favor. From
morning to night he was attended by an obsequious young warrior called
“Wolf-with-two-feet” with half a dozen braves who tried to anticipate
his every wish, and when he was relegated to his repose at night in the
“stranger house,” a guard was placed before the door to protect the
guest from intrusion or harm. Raymond thought this cordon of braves was
also effective in preventing on his part any reconnoitring expedition
thence, when Choté, old town, lay asleep and at the mercy of the
curiosity of the inquisitive British officer. This suspicion, however,
seemed contradicted by the disposition of his cicerone during the day.
He was dragged hither and thither over every inch of the “sacred soil”
as it appeared, and every object of interest that the town possessed
was paraded before him to titillate his interest. The Indians of Choté,
an ancient and conservative municipality, yet retained a certain pride
in their national methods despite the repeated demonstration of the
superiority of the Europeans both in war and manufactures. Had Raymond
possessed a theoretical interest in such matters, or were he skilled
in anthropological deductions, he might have derived from them some
information concerning the forgotten history of the people. But it
was only with the superficial attention of the desperately idle that
he watched the great weaving-frame on which they made their cloth, of
porous quality--few yards indeed now being produced since the Indian
trade had brought English textile fabrics to the Tennessee River. He
had never seen a better saddle than the one a leisurely wight was
finishing--lying down in the sun at intervals and sleeping an hour or
so to reward some unusual speed of exertion. Raymond committed the
solecism of laughing aloud when told that a year’s time was necessary
to complete a saddle to the satisfaction of the expert. He took more
interest in their pottery--a wonderfully symmetrical pattern, in deep
indentations in checks or plaids, baffled his conjecture as to how
it was applied in the decoration of jars and bowls of the quaintest
shape imaginable. His guide, philosopher, and friend challenged him to
a dozen guesses, breaking out in guttural glee and ridicule at every
untoward suggestion, till at last Raymond was shown the baskets, deftly
woven of splints or straw or withes, which were lined with clay, and
set to bake in the oven, the plastic material taking not only the shape
of the mould but the pattern of the braiding.
Raymond thought it was his interest in this primitive art that had
defied his conjectures which influenced his attention toward another
plastic impression different from aught he had seen in the Cherokee
country. Still accompanied by Wolf-with-two-feet he had left the
main portion of the town, and the two were idly strolling along the
river-bank. Raymond was thinking that Wolf-with-two-feet was not a
poor specimen of a host considering his limitations, his strange,
antiquated, savage standards, and his incapacity for civilization in
a modern sort. He had kept the shuttle-cock of conversation tossing
back and forth for two days. He had gotten up a horse-race and a
feather-dance to entertain the guest. He had fed him on his choice
of an imitation of British fare and appetizing Indian dainties, and
of the latter Raymond partook with distinct relish. He had shown the
town and descanted on the value of its methods of government and
its manufactures, and save that now and again he turned his sharp,
high-featured face, with its polled head and feather crest, toward him
with a fiery eye, his upper lip suddenly baring all his narrow white
teeth set in a curiously narrow arch, the officer could see naught of
the wolf in him.
The sky was beginning to redden; the air was bland and filled with the
scent of the spring-tide herbs; some early growth of mint was crushed
under their feet and sent up a pungent aroma; the ground was moist and
warm, as it had been for several days; Raymond noticed on the shelving
shore the mark, still distinct, of the prow of the canoe in which he
had landed at Choté,--for during the last stages of the march the
Indians of the various riverside towns of the vicinity had come forth
and proffered their boats for the remainder of the journey. He now
spoke of the circumstance and identified the spot and the canoe, for
there was the print of his London-made boot distinct amongst the tracks
of a dozen Indian moccasins. His men had followed in a pettiaugre,
formerly belonging to Fort Loudon, and had landed a little below the
town.
Perhaps it was this idle interest that kept him still looking at the
ground,--for, as they skirted a point and came again on a marshy level
beneath a row of cliffs, he suddenly paused and pointed out a different
impression on the earth.
“But what is that?” he said, thinking first of some queer fish or
amphibious animal, for the natural history of America was of vast
interest to Europeans, and there were many fables current of strange
creatures peculiar to the new world.
The Wolf-with-two-feet turned and looked down at the spot at which
Raymond was staring.
“Where?” he asked in Cherokee, for the British officer spoke the
language with enough facility to enable them in casual conversation to
dispense with an interpreter.
The impression was of a deep indentation in the centre, surrounded at
the distance of some inches by a ring, plainly marked but less deep,
and this had an outer circular imprint very symmetrical but still
more shallow. Raymond saw that for one moment the eyes of the Indian
rested upon it, but still saying, “Where?” he stepped about, looking
now in every direction but the one indicated; all at once, as if
inadvertently, he pressed his foot deeply into the marshy soil, and
the water rushing up obliterated forever the impression of the deep
indentation and the two concentric circles.
Raymond called out to him pettishly that he had spoiled the opportunity
of discovering the cause of so strange a mark.
“’Twas the track of a snake, perhaps, or a tortoise,” the Wolf
suggested.
When he was assured that this was something circular and symmetrical,
he said he did not know what it could have been, but some things had
big hoofs. Perhaps it might have been Mr. Morton’s Big Devil, whom he
was so fond of preaching about!
“In Choté?” asked Raymond.
“Oh no--not in Choté,” the Wolf made haste to say--“Mr. Morton could
not preach in Choté. Cunigacatgoah has a sacred stone, an amulet, that
belongs to the Cherokee people, and it would not suffer a word about
Mr. Morton’s very wicked Big Devil in the city of refuge.”
“An amulet against evil,” said Raymond sarcastically--“and yet the
Devil walks along the river-bank of the ‘ever-sacred’ soil and leaves
his big footprint in defiance!”
“True,--true,”--said the Wolf, doubling like his own prey, “then it
couldn’t have been the Devil. It must have been a buffalo,--just a big
bull buffalo.”
“A big bull buffalo with one foot,” sneered Raymond, logically, “there
is no other track near it,--except,” he continued looking narrowly at
the earth, “the imprint of a number of moccasins of several sizes.” He
was merely irritated at the balking of his natural curiosity, but he
noticed with surprise that Wolf-with-two-feet was very eager to quit
the subject, and digressed with some skill and by an imperceptible
gradation from the character of this spongy soil, so plastic to
impressions, to the alluvial richness of the whole belt along the
watercourses and thence to the large yield of the public fields that
lay to the southwest of Choté, and which were even now, early as it
was, in process of being planted. And then, as if suddenly bethinking
himself, he changed the direction of their stroll to give Raymond an
exhibition of the primitive methods of agriculture practised with such
signal success at Choté Great. At this hour the laborers had quitted
the fields, leaving, however, ample token of their industry. For in the
whole stretch of the cultivated land the fresh, rich, black loam had
been turned, but with never a plough, and daily large numbers of women
and girls repaired thither under the guidance of the “second men” of
the town to drop the corn. Though the world was so full of provender
elsewhere, the birds took great account of this proceeding, and
thronged the air twittering and chattering together as if discussing
the crop prospects. Now and again a bluejay flew across the wide
expanse of the fields, clanging a wild woodsy cry with a peculiarly
saucy intonation, as though to say, “I’ll have my share! I’ll have my
share!”
But birds were builders in these days, and he could hardly see a beak
that was not laden with a straw. Oh, joyous architects, how benign that
no foreknowledge of the storm that was to wreck these frail tenements,
so craftily constructed, or of the marauder that was to rifle them,
hushed the song or weighted the wing! Human beings have a hard bargain
in their vaunted reason.
There was none of the delight in the spring; none of the bliss of
sheer existence in days so redundant of soft sheen, of sweet sound,
of fragrant winds, of the stirring pulse of universal revivification;
none of that trust in the future which is itself the logic of gratitude
for the boons of the past, expressed in the hard-bitten faces of the
head-men and in the serious eyes of the young officer when they sat in
a circle around the fire in the centre of the council-house at Choté.
They were all anxious, troubled, each determined to mould the days to
come after the fashion of his individual will, only mindful enough of
the will of others to have a sense of doubt, of poignant hope, and a
strenuous realization of conflict. Thus the young officer was wary, and
the Indian chiefs were even wilier than their wont as he opened the
subject of his mission.
The interpreter of each faction stood behind his principal, for a long
time silent as the official pipe was smoked. The council-house of the
usual type, a great rotunda built on a high mound near the “beloved
square,” and plastered within and without with red clay, was dark, save
for the glimmer of the dull fire and the high, narrow door, through
which could be seen the town of similar architecture but of smaller
edifices, with here and there a log cabin of the fashion which the
pioneers imitated in their earlier dwellings, familiar to this day, and
the open shed-like buildings at each side of the “beloved square.”
The river was in full view, a burnished steely gray, and the further
mountains delicately blue, but more than once, as Raymond glanced
toward them, his eyes were filled with a blinding red glare, sudden,
translucent, transitory.
Only the nerve of a strong man, young, hearty, well-fed, enabled
him to be still and make no sign. The first thought in his mind was
that this was a premonition of illness, and hence it behooved him to
address himself swiftly to the business in hand that no interest of
the government might suffer. As he pressed his palm to his brow for
a moment, it occurred to him that the strange feather-crested faces
were watching him curiously, inimically,--but perhaps that was merely
because they doubted the intent of his mission.
And so in Choté, in the unbroken peace of its traditional sanctity, he
began with open hostility.
“You signed a treaty, Cunigacatgoah,” he addressed the ancient chief,
“and you Oconostota, and other head-men for the whole Cherokee
nation,--in many things you have broken it.”
Several chiefs held out their hands to receive “sticks,” that they
might reply categorically to this point when he had finished. But
he shook his head. He did not intend to conform to Indian etiquette
further than in sitting on a buffalo rug on the floor, with his legs in
their white breeches and leggings folded up before him like the blades
of a clasp knife. He gesticulated much with his hands, around which
his best lace frills dangled, and he wore a dress sword as a mark of
ceremony; his hair was powdered, too, and he carried his cocked hat in
his left hand. He did not intend to be rude, but he was determined to
lose no time in useless observances, because of that strange affection,
that curious red glare which had seemed to suffuse his eyes, portending
some disturbance of the brain perchance.
“No,” he said firmly, declining to receive or to give the notched
sticks, “I am not going to enter into the various details. There is
only one thing out of kilter about that treaty which I am going to
settle. It relates to the cannon which you brought here after the
capitulation of Fort Loudon. They were to be delivered up to the
British government according to the last treaty. Eight of these guns
were taken down to Fort Prince George, one was burst by an overcharge
at Fort Loudon, but others you have not relinquished. You have evaded
compliance.”
A long silence ensued, while the chiefs gazed inscrutably into the
fire. Their pride, their dignity suffered from this cavalier address.
All their rancor was aroused against this man,--even his callowness was
displeasing to them. They revolted at his incapacity for ceremonial
observance, save, indeed, such as appertained to his military drill,
which they esteemed hideous and of no value to the British in the
supreme test of battle. They resented his persistence in having
ensconced himself here under the protection of the sanctities of Choté
until after his offensive mission should be disclosed and answered.
He had evidently neither the will nor the art to disguise it with
euphemistic phraseology that might render it more acceptable to a feint
of consideration. It was not now, however, at the moment of the French
withdrawal, that the Cherokees could resist by force an English demand.
Diplomacy must needs therefore fill the breach. In some way Captain
Howard had evidently learned that the three missing cannon were not
sunk in the river by the garrison of Fort Loudon as the Cherokees had
declared. With this thought in his mind, Cunigacatgoah said suddenly,
“Only three cannon failed to be relinquished,--they had been in the
river, and they were all sick,--they could not speak.”
“Sick,--are they? I have a sovereign remedy for a sick cannon,”
declared Raymond. “They shall speak and--” Once more as he glanced
mechanically through the open door toward the brilliant outer world,
with the gleam of the river below the clifty mountains and a flight of
swans above, that curious translucent red light flashed through his
eye-balls.
This time he was quicker,--or perhaps accident favored him, for as,
half-blinded, his glance returned, he saw the red light disappearing
into the ample sleeve of one of the Indians who sat on the opposite
side of the fire.
Raymond’s first feeling was an infinite relief. No illness menaced
him, no obscure affection of the nerves or brain. Some art of
conjuring,--some mechanical contrivance, was it?--they were employing
to distract his attention. In their folly and fatuity did they dream
that they might thus undermine his purpose, or weaken his intellect, or
destroy his sight, or work a spell upon him? He marked how they watched
his every motion.
He looked vaguely, uncertainly, about the shadowy place, with its
red wall. The decorated buffalo hides suspended on it showed dully
against its rich uniform tint. The circle of the seated Indian
chiefs in the shifting shadow and the flickering light, with their
puerile ornaments of paint and feathers and strings of worthless
beads about the barbaric garb of skin and fur, was itself vague,
unreal, like a curious poly-tinted daub, some extravagant depiction
of aboriginal art. Each face, however, was expressive in a different
degree of power, of perspicacity, of subtlety, and many devious mental
processes, and he marvelled, as many wiser men have marvelled since,
that these endowments of value should fail to compass the essentials
of civilization, theorizing dimly that the Indians were a remnant
of a different order of being, the conclusion of a period of human
development, the final expression of an alien mind, radically of an age
and species not to be repeated.
There was absolutely no basis of mutual comprehension, and Raymond
was definitely aware of this when he said, “I can cure a disabled
cannon,--show me the guns,”--and a sudden silence ensued, the demand
evidently being wholly unexpected.
“Tell me,” he urged, his patience growing scant, “where are the guns
now?” Then catching the shifty expression of the chief, Cunigacatgoah,
he was moved to add, disregarding the interpreter, “_Gahusti tsuskadi
nigesuna._” (You never tell a lie.)
Now and again his knowledge of the Cherokee language had enabled him
to detect the linguister for the British force softening his downright
candid soldierly phrases. The interpreter was seeking to mitigate
the evident displeasure excited by the commander’s address, which he
thought might rebound upon himself, as the medium of such unpleasant
communication. There was something so sarcastic in this feigned
compliment that it might well have seemed positively unsafe, even more
perilous than overt insult, but as Raymond, with a wave of his cocked
hat in his left hand and a smiling bow of his heavily powdered and
becurled head, demanded, “_Haga tsunu iyuta datsi waktuhi?_” (Tell
me where they are now?) a vague smile played over the features of
Cunigacatgoah, and he who was wont to believe so little, found it easy
to imagine himself implicitly believed, the model of candor.
He instantly assumed an engaging appearance of extreme frankness, and
abruptly said, “Now, I, myself, will tell you the whole truth.”
Raymond looked at him eagerly, breathlessly, full of instant
expectation.
“The cannon are not here,--they have all three sickened and died.”
The soldier sat dumbfounded for a moment, realizing that this was no
figurative speech, that he was expected to entirely believe this,--so
low they rated the intelligence of the English! He experienced the
revolt of reason that seizes on the mind amidst the grotesqueries of a
dream. He had no words to combat the follies of the proposition. Only
with a sarcastic, fleering laugh he cried aloud, “_Gahusti tsuskadi
nigesuna!_” (You never tell a lie.)
The next moment he felt choking. He was balked, helpless, hopeless,
at the end. He knew that Captain Howard had anticipated no strategy.
The savages could not by force hold the guns in the teeth of the
British demand, and the commandant of Fort Prince George had fancied
that they would be yielded, however reluctantly, on official summons.
They were necessary to Captain Howard, to complete his account of the
munitions of war intrusted to his charge, upon being transferred from
Fort Prince George. And this was the result of Raymond’s mission,--to
return empty-handed, outwitted, to fail egregiously in the conduct
of an expedition in which he had been graced with an independent
command,--Raymond was hot and cold by turns when he thought of it! Yet
the guns had disappeared, the Indians craftily held their secret, the
impossible checks even martial ardor. Raymond, however, was of the type
of stubborn campaigner that dies in the last ditch. The imminence of
defeat had quickened all his faculties.
“_Ha-nagwa dugihyali_” (I’ll make a search), he blustered.
But the threat was met with sarcastic smiles, and Cunigacatgoah said
again with urgent candor,--“_Agiyahusa cannon._” (My cannon are dead.)
As Raymond hesitated, half distraught with anxiety and eagerness, the
red light suddenly flashed once more through his eye-balls from its
invisible source. He was inherently and by profession a soldier, and
it was not of his nature nor his trade to receive a thrust without an
effort to return a counter-thrust.
“Hidden!” he cried suddenly, with eyes distended. “Hidden!” he paused,
gasping for effect. “I know the spot,” he screamed wildly, springing to
his feet; for he had just remembered the peculiar track he had noticed
on soft ground near the river, and he now bethought himself that only
the trunnion of a dismounted gun could have made an imprint such as
this. It suggested a recent removal and a buoyant hope. “The cannon are
in the ravine by the river. I know it! I know it!”
In the confusion attendant upon this sudden outburst they all rose
turning hither and thither, awaiting they hardly knew what in this
untoward mystery of divination or revelation. Making a bull-like rush
amongst them, actually through the fire, Raymond fairly charged upon
the conjurer, felling him to the ground, and ran at full speed out into
the air and down the steep mound.
“Fall in! Fall in!” he cried out to his “zanies” as he went, hearing in
a moment the welcome sound of his own drum beating “the assembly.”
He led the way to the locality where he had seen the track, followed by
all his score of men at a brisk double-quick. In a ravine by the river
a close search resulted in the discovery of the guns ambushed in a
sort of grotto, all now mounted on their carriages. Not so sick were
they but that they could speak aloud, and they shouted lustily when
the charges of blank cartridges issued from their smoking throats. For
the giddy young officer had them dragged up to the bluffs and trained
them upon the “beloved town” of peace itself, and by reason of the
Indians’ terror of artillery hardly five minutes elapsed before Choté
was deserted by every inhabitant.
Raymond found his best capacity enlisted to maintain his authority and
prevent his twenty men flushed with victory, triumphant and riotous
with joy, from pillaging the city of refuge, thus left helpless
at their mercy. But the behests of so high-handed and impetuous a
commander were not to be trifled with, and the troops were soon
embarked in the large pettiaugre belonging to the British government,
which chanced to be lying abandoned at the shore. In this they
transported the three guns, which they fired repeatedly as they rowed
up the Tennessee River, with the echoes bellowing after all along the
clifty banks and far through the dense woods,--effectually discouraging
pursuit.