Stuart seemed utterly vanquished--his spirit gone. In silence he was
conducted back to his quarters in Demere's house at Fort Loudon. And as
there he sat in the spare, clean room, in the single chair it contained,
with one elbow on the queer, rough little table, constructed according
to a primitive scheme by the post carpenter, he stared forward blankly
at the inevitable prospect so close before him. He had not now the
solace of solitude in which he might have rallied his faculties. On the
buffalo rug on the floor Atta-Kulla-Kulla reclined and smoked his
long-stemmed pipe and watched him with impenetrable eyes. Once he spoke
to him of the preparations making without, selecting the men for the
gunners of the expedition. Stuart lifted his head abruptly.
"I will not go!" he cried in sudden passion. "So help me, God! I will
die first!--a thousand deaths. So help me, God!" He lifted his clinched
right hand in attestation and shook it wildly in the air.
[Illustration: "He stared forward blankly at the inevitable prospect."]
He had a momentary shame in thus giving way to his surcharged
feelings, but as he rose mechanically from his chair his restless eyes,
glancing excitedly about the room, surprised an expression of sympathy
in the face of the Cherokee as he lay coiled up on the rug.
"Atta-Kulla-Kulla!" Stuart exclaimed impulsively, holding out both arms,
"feel for me! Think of me! The poor remnant of the garrison! My 'young
men'! My own command! I will die first, myself, a thousand deaths!"
Atta-Kulla-Kulla began to argue, speaking partly in Cherokee and now and
again in fragmentary English. Neither the one nor the other might be the
victim. The commandant at Fort Prince George would yield under this
strong coercion.
"Never! Never!" cried Stuart. "His duty is to hold the fort. He will
defend it to the last man and the last round of ammunition and the last
issuance of rations. For his countrymen to be tortured and burned in his
sight and hearing would doubtless give him great pain. But his duty is
to his own command, and he will do it."
Atta-Kulla-Kulla seemed doubtful. "And then," argued Stuart, "would such
torturing and burning of the surrendered garrison of Fort Loudon before
the eyes of the garrison of Fort Prince George be an inducement to them
to surrender too, and perhaps meet the same fate? Be sure they will
sell their lives more dearly! Be sure they will have heard of the
massacre of the soldiers under the Cherokees' pledge of safe-conduct on
the plains of Taliquo."
"_To-e-u-hah!_" Atta-Kulla-Kulla broke out furiously. "_To-e-u-hah!_ It
is most true!"
His countenance had changed to extreme anger. He launched out into a
bitter protest that he had always contemned, and deprecated, and sought
to prevent this continual violation of their plighted word and the
obligations of their treaties on the part of the Cherokee nation. It
invariably hampered their efforts afterward, as it was hampering them
now. It took from their hand the tool of negotiation, the weapon of the
head-men, and left only the tomahawk, the brute force of the tribe.
_Wahkane, wahkane!_ Was it not so when the treaty of Lyttleton was
broken and Montgomery, the Terrible, came in his stead? And when the
Cherokees had driven him out, and had taken their revenge on him for the
blood which had been shed in his first foray, of what avail to massacre
the garrison evacuating Fort Loudon, the possession of which had been
for so long a coveted boon, and thus preclude a peaceful rendering of
Fort Prince George and the expulsion of all English soldiery from
Cherokee soil!
Stuart, cautiously reticent, let him dilate upon all the wrongs wrought
in council by the disregard of his advice, only now and again dropping a
word as fuel to the flame. Cautiously, too, he led to the topic of the
regard and the admiration which the acute mind and the more enlightened
moral sentiment of this chief had excited in the English authorities,
and the service this official esteem would have been to the headstrong
nation if they had availed themselves of it. For was not Montgomery
instructed to offer them terms on _his_ account only? Their cruelty
Atta-Kulla-Kulla was brought to perceive had despoiled them of the
fruits of their victory; they might have, for all their patience and all
their valor, and all their statecraft, only a few more scalps here and
there; for presently the great English nation would be pressing again
from the south, with Fort Prince George as a base, and the war would be
to begin anew.
Deep into the night Atta-Kulla-Kulla dwelt on the treachery toward
him,--for he had known naught of the enterprise of the massacre--that
had so metamorphosed victory into disaster. The moonlight was coming in
at the window, reminding Stuart of that night when he lay at length on
the rug and consulted with Demere and anxiously foreboded events, the
news of Montgomery's departure from the country having fallen upon them
like a crushing blow. How prescient of disaster they had felt--but how
little they had appraised its force! Paler now was the moon, more
melancholy, desolate to the last degree as it glimmered on the
white-washed walls of the bare, sparely furnished room. His attention
had relaxed with fatigue as he still sat with his elbow on the table,
his head on his hand, vaguely hearing the Indian councillor droning out
his griefs of disregarded statesmanship and of the preferable attitude
of affairs, so rudely, so disastrously altered. Suddenly his tone
changed to a personal note.
"But it was ill with you, starving with your young men, in this
place--long days, heap hungry."
"They seem happy days, now," said Stuart drearily, rousing himself.
"And to-morrow--and yet next day?" asked Atta-Kulla-Kulla.
Stuart stirred uneasily. "I can only die with what grace and courage I
can muster," he said reluctantly. He glanced about him with restless
eyes, like a hunted creature. "I cannot escape."
He looked up in sudden surprise. The Indian was standing now, gazing
down at him with a benignity of expression which warranted the character
of bold and forceful mind, and broad and even humane disposition, which
this Cherokee had won of his enemies in the midst of the bloodshed and
the treachery and the hideous cruelty of the warfare in which he was so
much concerned.
"John Stuart," he said, "have I not called you my friend? Have I not
given all I possess of wealth to save your life? Do I not value it, and
yet it is yours!"
Stuart had forgotten the chief's words that Christmas night at the great
gates, but they came back to him as Atta-Kulla-Kulla repeated them,
anew.
"I know your heart, and I do not always forget! I do not _always_
forget!"
In Stuart's amazement, in the abrupt reaction, he could hardly master
the details of the unfolded plan. The Cherokee declared he had made up
his mind to a stratagem, such as might baffle even the designs of
Oconostota. He doubted his own power to protect his prisoner, should the
king learn that Stuart still refused his services in the expedition to
Fort Prince George. Oconostota's heart was set upon the reduction of
this stronghold, and so was that of all the Cherokee nation. And yet
Atta-Kulla-Kulla could but perceive the flagrant futility of the
expectation of the surrender of the garrison on the coercion that
Oconostota had devised, especially as Fort Prince George was so much
nearer than Fort Loudon to communication with the white settlements. "I
contemplate the fact before it happens, they only afterward," he said.
On the pretext of diverting Stuart's mind after his glut of horrors, and
in affording him this recreation to secure an influence over him,
eminently in character with the wiles of the Cherokee statesman, he gave
out that he intended to take his prisoner with him for a few days on a
hunting expedition. The deer were now in prime condition, and Captain
Stuart was known by the Indians to be specially fond of venison. In the
old days at Fort Loudon they had often taken note of this preference,
and stopped there to leave as a gift a choice haunch, or saddle, or to
crave the privilege of nailing a gigantic pair of antlers to vie with
the others on the walls of the great hall. Stuart himself was a famous
shot, and was often called by them in compliment _A-wah-ta-how-we_, the
"great deer-killer." The project created no surprise, and Stuart saw
with amazement the door of his prison ajar. One might have thought in
such a crisis of deliverance no other consideration could appeal to him.
But his attachment to the British interest seems to have been like the
marrow in his bones. He demanded of Atta-Kulla-Kulla the privilege of
being accompanied by two men of the garrison of his own choice.
The chief cast upon him a look of deep reproach. Did he fear treachery?
Had his friend, his brother, deserved this?
"I ask much of a friend--nothing of an enemy," declared Stuart, bluffly.
"You know my heart--trust me."
Atta-Kulla-Kulla yielded. If he experienced curiosity, the names of the
two men which Stuart gave him afforded no clue as to the reason for
their selection; one was a gun-smith, an armorer of uncommon skill, and
Stuart knew that he was capable of dismounting and removing the cannon,
without injury, through the tangled wilderness to Fort Prince George,
should coercion overcome his resistance to the demands of the savages;
the other, an artillery-man of long experience and much intelligence,
himself adequately fitted to take command of the guns of the expedition,
with a good chance of a successful issue. The massacre had swept away
most of the cannoneers, and Stuart was aware that the infantrymen left
of the garrison would be hardly more capable of dealing with the
problems of gun service than was Oconostota, their careless and casual
observation being worth little more than his earnest, but dense
ignorance. Nevertheless, with his exacting insistence on the extreme
limit of demand, he begged Atta-Kulla-Kulla, whose patience was wearing
dangerously thin, to let him see them, speak to them for one moment.
"You can hear all I say--you who understand the English so well."
As he stepped into the old exhausted store-room, where the soldiers were
herded together, squalid, heart-broken, ill, forlorn, Atta-Kulla-Kulla
outside closing the door fast, a quavering cheer went up to greet
Stuart. For one moment he stood silent while their eyes met--a moment
fraught with feeling too deep for words. Then his voice rang out and he
spoke to the point. He wanted to remind them, he said, how the action of
the garrison had forced the surrender and left the officers no choice,
no discretion; however the event would have fallen out, it would not
have happened thus. "But I did not come here to mock your distress," he
protested. "I wish to urge you to rely upon me now. I have hopes of
securing the ransom of the garrison by the government,"--again a pitiful
cheer,--"and as I may never be allowed to see you again this is my only
chance. _Be sure of this_,--no man need hope for ransom who affords the
Cherokees the slightest assistance in any enterprise against Fort Prince
George, or takes up arms at their command."
He smiled, and waved his hat in courteous farewell, and stepped backward
out of the door, apparently guarded by Atta-Kulla-Kulla, while that
quavering huzza went up anew, the very sound almost breaking down his
self-control.
The next day Stuart, accompanied by Atta-Kulla-Kulla, the warrior's
wife, his brother, the armorer, and the artillery-man,--the
supposititious hunting party,--set gayly and leisurely forth. But once
out of reach of espionage they traveled in a northeastern direction
with the utmost expedition night and day through the trackless
wilderness, guided only by the sun and moon. What terrors of capture,
what hardships of fatigue, what anxious doubt and anguish of hope they
endured, but added wings to the flight of the unhappy fugitives. Nine
days and nights they journeyed thus, hardly relaxing a muscle.
On the tenth day, having gained the frontiers of Virginia, they
fortunately fell in with a party of three hundred men, a part of Bird's
Virginia regiment, thrown out for the relief of any soldiers who might
be escaping in the direction of that province from Fort Loudon, for
through Hamish's dispatches its state of blockade and straits of
starvation had become widely bruited abroad. With the succor thus
afforded and the terror of capture overpast, the four days' further
travel were accomplished in comparative ease, and brought the fugitives
to Colonel Bird's camp, within the boundaries of Virginia.
Here Stuart parted from Atta-Kulla-Kulla, with many a protestation and
many a regret, and many an urgent prayer that the chief would protect
such of the unhappy garrison as were still imprisoned at Fort Loudon
until they could be ransomed, measures for which Stuart intended to set
on foot immediately. So the half-king of the Cherokees went his way back
to his native wilds, loaded by Stuart with presents and commendations,
and in no wise regretting the radical course he had taken.[14] Stuart
had instantly sent off messengers to apprise the commandant of Fort
Prince George of the threatened attack, and to acquaint the governor of
South Carolina with the imminence of its danger and the fall of Fort
Loudon, for Governor Bull had expected Virginia to raise the siege of
Loudon, unaware that that province had dropped all thought of the
attempt, finding its means utterly inadequate to march an army thither
through those vast and tangled wildernesses carrying the necessary
supplies for its own subsistence. Provisions for ten weeks were at once
thrown into Fort Prince George, and a report was industriously
circulated among the Indians that the ground about it on every side had
been craftily mined to prevent approach.[15]
Stuart found that Hamish MacLeod, after performing his mission and
setting out for his return to the beleaguered fort with the responsive
dispatches, had succumbed to the extreme hardship of those continuous
journeys throughout the wild fastnesses, many hundred miles of which
were traversed on foot and at full speed under a blazing summer sun, and
lay ill of brain-fever at one of the frontier settlements. There Stuart
saw him--still so delirious that, although recognizing the officer in
some sort, he talked wildly of pressing dispatches, of the inattention
and callous hearts of officials in high station, of delays and long
waitings for audience in official anterooms, of the prospect of any
expedition of relief for the fort, of Odalie, and red calashes, and
Savanukah, and rifle-shots, and Fifine, and "top-feathers," and
Sandy--Sandy--Sandy; always Sandy!
Later, Stuart was apprised that the boy was on the way to recovery when
he received a coherent letter from Hamish, who had learned that Stuart
was using every endeavor--moving heaven and earth as the phrase went--to
compass the ransom of the survivors of the garrison still at Fort Loudon
or the Indian villages in its neighborhood. Hamish had heard of the fall
of the fort and the massacre of the evacuating force, and still
staggering under the weight of the blow, he reminded Stuart peremptorily
enough of the services which Odalie had rendered in venturing forth from
the walls under the officer's orders, when he dared not seek to induce a
man to volunteer nor constrain one to the duty, and to urge upon his
consideration the fact that she might be justly esteemed to have earned
her ransom and that of her husband and child. Hamish had an immediate
reply by a sure hand.
If it could avail aught to Mrs. MacLeod or any of her household, Stuart
wrote with an uncharacteristic vehemence of protest, every influence he
could exert, every half-penny he possessed, every drop of his blood
would be cheerfully devoted to the service, so highly did he rate the
lofty courage which had given to Fort Loudon its only chance of relief,
and which under happier auspices would undoubtedly have resulted in
raising the siege. Whatever might be forgotten, assuredly it would not
be the intrepid devotion of the "forlorn hope" of Fort Loudon.
Hamish, left to his own not overwise devices, decided to return to the
country where he had quitted all that was dear to him, dangerous though
that return might be. And, indeed, those wild western woods included the
boundaries of all the world to him--elsewhere he felt alone and an
alien. It seemed strange to realize that there were other people, other
interests, other happenings of moment. He long remembered the sensation,
and was wont to tell of it afterward, with which he discovered, camping
one night at the foot of a tree--for he journeyed now by easy stages,
keeping sedulously from the main trail through the forest--the traces of
a previous presence, a bit of writing cut on the bark of the tree.
"Daniel Boon," it ran, "cilled a bar on tree in the year 1760."
That momentous year--that crucial time of endeavor and fluctuating hope
and despair and death--a hunter here, all unaware of the maelstrom of
mental and physical agony away there to the south in the shadow of the
same mountain range, was pursuing his quiet sylvan craft, and
slaughtering his "bar" and the alphabet with equal calm and aplomb.
Perhaps it was well for the future career of the adventurous young
fellow that he fell in with some French traders, who were traveling with
many packhorses well laden, and who designed to establish themselves
with their goods at one of the Lower Towns of the Cherokees; they urged
that he should attach himself to their march, whether from a humane
sense of diminishing his danger, or because of the industry and
usefulness and ever ready proffer of aid in the frank, bright, amiable
boy, who showed a quality of good breeding quite beyond their custom,
yet not unappreciated. They warned him that it would be certain death to
him, and perhaps to his captive relatives, should he in a flimsy
disguise, which he had fancied adequate, of dyeing his hair a singular
yellow and walking with a limp, which he often alertly forgot, venture
into the villages of those Cherokees by whom he had been so well known,
and against whose interest he had been employed in such vigorous and
bold aggression. The traders showed some genuine feeling of sympathy and
a deep indignation, because of the treachery that had resulted in the
massacre of the garrison of Fort Loudon,--although the English were
always the sworn foe of the French. The leader of the party, elderly, of
commercial instincts rather than sylvan, albeit a dead shot, and
decorated with ear-rings, had a great proclivity toward snuff and tears,
and often indulged in both as a luxury when Hamish with his simple art
sought to portray the characters of the tragedy of the siege; and as the
Frenchman heard of Fifine and Odalie, and Stuart and Demere, and all
their sufferings and courage and devices of despair--"_Quelle
barbarie!_" he would burst forth, and Hamish would greet the phrase with
a boyish delight of remembrance. Two or three of the party made an
incursion into Chote when they reached its neighborhood, and returned
with the news that the ransom of such of the garrison as were there had
taken place, and they had been delivered to the commandant of Fort
Prince George, but certain others had been removed to Huwhasee Town and
among them were the French squaw, the pappoose, and the Scotchman. In
his simplicity Hamish believed them, although Monsieur Galette sat late,
with his delicate sentiments, over the camp-fire that night, and stared
at it with red eyes, often suffused with tears, and took snuff after his
slovenly fashion until he acquired the aspect of a blackened pointed
muzzle, and looked in his elevated susceptibility like some queer
unclassified baboon.
But at Huwhasee Town Hamish heard naught of those his memory cherished.
He was greatly amazed at the courage with which Monsieur Galette urged
upon the head-men that some measures should be taken to induce
Oconostota to remove that fence, of which they had heard at Chote, which
had been built of the bones of the massacred garrison, and give them
burial from out the affronted gaze of Christian people. This was not
pleasing, he said, not even to the French. He was evidently growing old
and his heart was softening!
Lured by a vague rumor expressed among the party that those he sought
had been removed to a remote Indian town on the Tsullakee River, Hamish
broke away from Monsieur Galette, despite all remonstrances, to seek
those he loved in the further west--if slaves, as Monsieur Galette
suggested, he would rather share their slavery than without them enjoy
the freedom of the king. And, constrained to receive two snuffy kisses
on either cheek, he left Monsieur Galette shedding his frequent tears to
mix with the snuff on his pointed muzzle.
And so in company with a French hunter in a canoe, Hamish went down the
long reaches of the Tsullakee River, coming after many days to their
destination, to find only disappointment and a gnawing doubt, and a
strange, palsying numbness of despair. For the French traders here,
reading Monsieur Galette's letter, looked at one another with grave
faces and collogued together, and finally became of the opinion that the
members of the family he sought were somewhere--oh, far away!--in the
country where now dwelt the expatriated Shawnees, and that region, so
great an Indian traveler as he was must know was inaccessible now in the
winter season. It would be well for him to dismiss the matter from his
mind, and stay with them for the present; he could engage in the fur
trade; his society would be appreciated. With the well-meaning French
flattery they protested that he spoke the French language so well--they
made him upon his proficiency their felicitations. Poor Hamish ought to
have known from this statement what value to attach to what they said
otherwise, conscious as he was how his verbs and pronouns disagreed, and
dislocated the sense of his remarks, and popped up and down out of
place, like a lot of puppets on a disorganized system of wires. These
traders were not snuffy nor lachrymose; they were of a gay disposition
and also wore ear-rings--but they all looked sorrowfully at him when he
left them, and he thought one was minded to disclose something withheld.
And so down and down the Tsullakee River he went, and after the
junction of the great tributary with the Ohio, he plied his paddle
against the strong current and with the French hunter came into the
placid waters of the beautiful Sewanee, or Cumberland, flouted by the
north wind, his way winding for many miles in densest wintry solitudes.
For this was the great hunting-ground of the Cherokee nation and
absolutely without population. His adventures were few and slight until
he fell in with Daniel Boon, camping that year near the head waters of
the Sewanee, who listened to his story with grave concern and a sane and
effective sympathy. He, too, advised the cessation of these ceaseless
wanderings, but he thought Stuart's letter evasive, somehow, and
counseled the boy to write to him once more, detailing these long
searches and their futility. Hamish had always realized that Stuart's
sentiments, although by no means shallow, for he was warmly attached to
his friends, were simple, direct, devoid of the subtlety that sometimes
characterized his mental processes. Life to him was precious, a
privilege, and its environment the mere incident.
He now replied that he had not dared divulge all the truth while Hamish
MacLeod was in the enfeebled condition that follows brain-fever, and had
been loath, too, to rob him of hope, only that he might forlornly mourn
his nearest and dearest. But since the fact must needs be revealed he
could yet say their sorrows were brief. In that drear dawn on the
plains of Taliquo the mother and child were killed in the same volley of
musketry, and afterward, as he ordered from time to time the ranks to
close up, he saw Sandy, who had been fighting in line with the troops,
lying on the ground, quite dead. "You may be sure of this," Stuart
added; "I took especial note of their fate, having from the first cared
much for them all."
The terrible certainty wrought a radical change in Hamish. From the
moment he seemed, instead of the wild, impulsive, affectionate boy, a
stern reserved man. In the following year he enlisted in a provincial
regiment mustered to join the British regulars sent again by General
Amherst to the relief of the Carolina frontier; for the difficulties in
Canada being set at rest, troops could be put in the field in the south,
and vengeance for the tragedy of Fort Loudon became a menace to the
Cherokees, who had grown arrogant and aggressive, stimulated to further
cruelties by their triumphs and immunity. Nevertheless, Atta-Kulla-Kulla
went forth to meet the invaders, and earnestly attempted to negotiate a
treaty. It was well understood now, however, that he was in no sense a
representative man of his nation, and his mission failed.
Lieutenant-Colonel James Grant, on whom Colonel Montgomery's command had
now devolved, at the head of this little army of British regulars and
provincials, preceded by a vanguard of ninety Indian allies and thirty
white settlers, painted and dressed like Indians, under command of
Captain Quentin Kennedy,--in all about twenty-six hundred
men,--continued to advance into the Cherokee country. At Etchoee, the
scene of the final battle of Colonel Montgomery's campaign in the
previous year, they encountered the Cherokees in their whole force--the
united warriors of all the towns. A furious battle ensued, both sides
fighting with prodigies of valor and persistence, that resulted in
breaking forever the power of the Cherokee nation. Three hours the rage
of the fight lasted, and then the troops, pushing forward into the
country, burned and slew on every side, wasting the growing crops all
over the face of the land, and driving the inhabitants from the embers
of their towns to the refuge of caves and dens of wild beasts in the
mountains. They stayed not their hand till Atta-Kulla-Kulla came again,
now to humbly sue for peace and for the preservation of such poor
remnant as was left of his people.
After this the colonists came more rapidly into the region. A settlement
sprang up at Watauga, the site of one of Hamish's old camps as he had
journeyed on his fruitless search for those who had made his home and
the wilderness a sort of paradise. But the place, far away from Loudon
though it was, seemed sad to him. The austere range of mountain domes
on the eastern horizon looked down on him with suggestions which they
imparted to none others who beheld them. He and they had confidences and
a drear interchange of memories and a knowledge of a past that broke the
heart already of the future. He was glad to look upon them no more! His
mind had turned often to the trivial scenes, the happier times, when,
unbereaved of hope, he had hunted with the Frenchman on the banks of the
beautiful Sewanee River. And he welcomed the project of a number of the
pioneers to carry their settlement on to the region of the French Salt
Lick, which other hunters had already rendered famous, and with a few of
these he made his way thither by land while the rest traveled by water,
the way of his old journey in search of his lost happiness. And here he
lived and passed his days.
He heard from Stuart from time to time afterward, but not always with
pleasure. It is true that it afforded him a sentiment of deep
gratification to learn that the Assembly of South Carolina had given
Stuart a vote of thanks for his "courage, good conduct and long
perseverance at Fort Loudon," with a testimonial of fifteen hundred
pounds currency, and earnestly recommended him to the royal governor for
a position of honor and profit in the service of the province; the
office of Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the South having been
created, Stuart's appointment thereto by the Crown was received with the
liveliest public satisfaction, it being a position that he was
pronounced in every way qualified to fill.[16] For some years this
satisfaction continued, failing only when, in the growing differences
between the colonists and Great Britain, Stuart, wholly devoted to the
royal cause, conceived himself under obligations to carry out the
instructions which the British War Department sent to him and the four
royal governors of the southern provinces to use every endeavor to
continue the Indians in their adherence to the British standard as
allies against all its enemies; even concocting a plan with General
Gage, Governor Tonyn, Lord William Campbell, and other royalists,--which
plan happily failed,--to land a British army on the western coast of
Florida, whence, joined by tories and Indians, the united force should
fall upon the western frontiers of Carolina at the moment of attack on
the eastern coast by a British fleet, in the hope that the province thus
surrounded would be obliged to sue the royal government for peace.
Hamish had had some opportunity at Fort Loudon to observe the tenacity
with which Stuart at all hazards adhered to his "instructions and the
interest of the government," but in this crisis it ceased to appear in
the guise of duty. In such a time it seemed to Hamish an independent,
enlightened judgment partook of the values of a pious patriotism. A
permanent breach in their friendship was made when Stuart wrote to
Hamish to call his attention to the fact that the MacDonalds of
Kingsburgh and the MacLeods and other leal Scotch hearts in the southern
provinces were fighting under the royal banner. Hamish replied
succinctly that "on whatever side the MacLeods fought, with whatever
result, be sure the thing would be well done." As if to illustrate the
fact, he himself some time afterward set forth with the "mountain men"
to march against the royalists under Ferguson, and was among the victors
in the battle of King's Mountain.
In the earlier times of the settlement of the State, fraught with
troubles with the Indians, who, more timorous than formerly, were yet
more skulking, Hamish was wont to take with hearty good-will to the
rifle, the knife, the pistol, and the firebrand. He was with Sevier on
more than one of those furious forays, when vengeance nerved the hand
and hardened the heart, for many of the pioneers avenged the slain of
their own household. But as he grew old, the affinity of his hand for
the trigger slackened, and he liked only the blaze of the benignant
fireside; sometimes he would laugh and shake his gray head and declare
that he reminded himself of Monsieur Galette, with his theories of
sweet peace in that fierce land, and his soft heart and his sinewy old
hand that could send a bullet so straight from the bore of his flintlock
rifle. And so great a favorite did Monsieur Galette become in Hamish's
fireside stories, so often clamored for, that he would ask his
grandchildren, clustering about him, if they would like him better with
a muzzle of snuff and a pair of ear-rings and a tear-discoursing eye,
and declare that he must take measures to secure these embellishments.
And so, gradually, by slow degrees, he was led on to talk of the
past,--of the beautiful Carolina girl who had been his brother's wife,
of the quaint babble of Fifine, of Stuart and Demere, of Corporal
O'Flynn, and the big drum-major, and the queer old African cook, and the
cat that had been so cherished--but he never, never ventured a word of
Sandy, to the last day of his life; Sandy!--for whom he had had almost a
filial veneration blended with the admiring applausive affection of the
younger brother for the elder.
When he had grown very old--for he died only in 1813--he had a
beneficent illusion that might come but to one standing, as could be
said, on the borderland of the two worlds. It came in dreams, such
perhaps as old men often dream, but his experiences made it the
tenderer. Sometimes in the golden afternoon of summer, as he sat in
placid sleep, with his long, white hair falling about his shoulders,
one of his wrinkled, veinous hands lying on the arm of his chair would
tremble suddenly and contract with a strong grasp, and he would look up,
at naught, with a face of such joyous recognition and tender appeal,
that the children, playing about, would pause in their mirth and ask,
with awe, what had he seen. And it seemed that he had felt his hand
caught with a certain playful clasp such as years ago--more than half a
century--Odalie was wont to give it, when she had been waiting for him
long, and would wait no longer. And looking up, he could see her
standing there, waiting still, smiling serenely, joyously as of yore;
and so she would stand till the dream vanished in the reality of the
children clustering around his knees, besieging him once more for the
story of Old Fort Loudon.
NOTES
1 Page 8. In addition to luring an enemy within shot by the mimicry of
the voice of bird or beast the Indians' consummate art of ambuscade
enabled them to imitate the footprints of game by affixing the hoofs of
deer or buffalo or the paws of bear to their own feet and hands, and
thus duplicate the winding progress of these animals for miles with such
skill as to deceive not merely the white settlers, new to the country,
but Indian enemies of other tribes, expert woodmen like themselves.
2 Page 18. The name of this famous town is variously given. Adair spells
it as Choate. Bancroft inclines to Chotee. Bartram has it as
Chote-Great. Some of the old maps show it as Chotte. Modern historians
of Tennessee, Hayward, J. G. M. Ramsey, Putnam, and others make it
Chota, but most of the earlier writers concerning this region adopt the
French rendering and call it Chote; Hewatt, however, David Ramsey, and
others use the _accent grave_, Chote. This town, seldom alluded to
without the phrase "old town" or "beloved town," to distinguish it from
another Indian village of the same name among the Lower Towns, was a
veritable "city of refuge," and the only one of the Cherokee nation. A
murderer, even if a white man and the victim a Cherokee, might live for
years here secure from vengeance. Although there is an instance known of
a malefactor, who sought an asylum here and was prevented from landing,
being held down in the Tennessee River until drowned, still the rule was
inviolable that if the refugee could but gain a footing on the
ever-sacred soil, he was as safe as if clinging to the horns of an
altar. This fact contributed, with other confirmatory circumstances of
usage and tradition, to continue the speculations touching the identity
of the American Indians with the lost tribes of Israel. Humboldt says
that from the most remote times of the Missions the opinion has been
entertained that the languages of the American Indians and the Hebrew
display extraordinary analogies. He ascribes this fact to the position
of the personal and possessive pronouns at the end of the nouns and
verbs, and the numerous tenses of the latter, a characteristic of both
the Indian and Hebrew tongues which naturally struck the attention of
the monks. An analogy, however, does not go far to prove an identity of
origin. He refers to Adair as among travelers "somewhat credulous who
have heard the strains of the Hebrew Hallelujah among the Chickasaws and
Choctaws of North America,"--and he might have added the Cherokees also.
James Adair, however, could hardly be called a traveler. He published in
London in 1775 the results of his observation during a residence of
forty years as a trader among the Chickasaws and neighboring tribes. He
adduces many analogies of their languages with the Hebrew, and calls
attention to many customs for which he seeks to discern precedent in the
Mosaic dispensation. How much he had read of previous speculations it is
impossible to say. He protests that he is but a trader and not "a
skillful Hebraist," by his vocation obliged to write far from all
libraries, literary associations, and conversation with the learned,
compelled even to keep his papers secret from the observation of the
Indians, always very jealous of the enigmatical "black marks" of the
traders' correspondence, but he quotes largely from many writers both
English and foreign--the Reverend Mr. Thorowgood, Don Antonio de Ulloa,
Acosta, Benzo, etc., and shows considerable aptness of logic in adapting
his theories to his investigations into the structure of the Indian
languages. Such nice verbal distinctions, such order and symmetry, such
a train of subtle and exact religious terms, he argues, could not be
invented by a people so ignorant and illiterate as the modern Indian,
and contends that they obviously bear all the distinctive marks of a
language of culture. He further declares that one of the Chickasaw
prophets, _the Loache_, assured him that they had once had an "old
beloved speech," which in the course of time and national degeneration
they had lost. In this connection, but entirely apart from all Hebraic
analogies, one is moved to wonder if there were also among them a
reminiscence of an "old beloved character," and if the extraordinary
invention of the Cherokee character of the "syllabic alphabet" by the
Indian, Guest, early in the present century, partly partakes of the
nature of tradition.
3 Page 22. The high value which the French government placed on the
services of these allies may be inferred from a remark which has come
down from a council of state, in reference to their conduct in this
battle: "_Quoique je n'approuve pas qu'on mange les morts, cependant il
ne faut pas quereller avec ces bonnetes gens pour des bagatelles._"
4 Page 38. Among others bearing witness to these strange relics, Timothy
Flint says, in his _History and Geography of the Mississippi Valley_:
"In this state [Tennessee] burying grounds have been found where the
skeletons seem all to have been pigmies. The graves in which the bodies
were deposited are seldom more than two feet or two feet and a half in
length. To obviate the objection that these are all the bodies of
children, it is affirmed that the skulls are found to have possessed the
_dentes sapientiae_ and must have belonged to persons of mature age. The
two bodies that were found in the vast limestone cavern in Tennessee,
one of which I saw at Lexington, were neither of them more than four
feet high; the hair seemed to have been sandy, or inclining to yellow.
It is well known that nothing is so uniform in the present Indian as his
lank, black hair. From the pains taken to preserve the bodies, and the
great labor of making the funeral robes in which they were folded, they
must have been of the 'blood royal' or personages of consideration in
their day." (Hayward, in his quaint and rare _Natural and Aboriginal
History of Tennessee_, referring to the curious method of interment, in
a copperas cave, of two mummies, both of full size, however, arrayed in
fabrics of great beauty, evincing much mechanical skill in manufacture,
also mentions the hair on the heads of both as long, and of a yellow
cast and a fine texture.) Webber, in his _Romance of Natural History_,
gives the size of the diminutive sarcophagi of the supposed pygmies
found in Tennessee as three feet in length by eighteen inches in depth.
Hayward also mentions the pygmy dwellers of Tennessee, and another
writer still, describing one of these singular graveyards of the "little
people," states that the bones were strong and well formed, and that one
of the skeletons had about its neck ninety-four pearls. The painfully
prosaic hypothesis of certain craniologists that such relics were only
those of children is, of course, rejected by any person possessed of the
resources of imagination.
5 Page 40. This name is also given in one or two instances as Dejean,
and several dates both earlier and later have been assigned to the
disastrous visit to Chote to which reference is here made.
6 Page 82. Washington readily recognized the futility of the cumbrous
regular military methods in a rough, unsettled country. On the Forbes
expedition, to counteract the French and their Indian allies, Washington
continually sent out small parties of the Cherokees under his command.
"Small parties of Indians," said he, "will more effectually harass the
enemy by keeping them under continual alarms than any parties of white
men can do." However, "with all his efforts," says Irving, "he was never
able to make the officers of the regular army appreciate the importance
of Indian allies in these campaigns in the wilderness." But the fact has
been taught elsewhere, both earlier and later than Washington's day.
General Gordon, in his journal, says of the Soudan: "A heavy lumbering
column is nowhere in this land. Parties of forty or sixty men moving
swiftly about will do more than any column. Native allies, above all
things, at whatever cost. It is the country of the irregular, not of the
regular. I can say I owe the defeats in this country to having artillery
with me, which delayed me much, and it was the artillery with Hicks
which in my opinion did for him." And as if he himself merely turned
back a leaf instead of the pages of centuries, he here inserts an
extract from Herodotus: "Cambyses marched against the Ethiopians without
making any provision for the subsistence of his army or once considering
that he was going to carry his arms to the remotest parts of the world,
but as a madman ... before the army had passed over a fifth of the way
all the provisions were exhausted, and the beasts of burden were
eaten.... Now if Cambyses had then led his army back he would have
proved himself a wise man. He, however, went on ... the report was that
heaps of sand covered them over, and they disappeared." Gordon comments,
"Hicks' army disappeared. The expedition was made into these lands."
7 Page 137. This pride flourished probably too far on the frontier to be
deteriorated by the knowledge of the gradual decline in the popularity
of the periwig then in progress, for only a few years later the
wig-makers of London found it necessary to petition the king, setting
forth their distresses occasioned by the perversity of the men of his
realm in persisting in wearing their own hair. The most definite outcome
of this proceeding was the sprightly travesty of the petition, appearing
in the _Gentleman's Magazine_ on behalf of the carpenters, entreating
his majesty to wear a wooden leg himself, and to require this of all his
subjects, since otherwise the advent of peace bade fair to ruin the
joiner's trade in wooden legs.
8 Page 148. The Duke of Cumberland has never been considered what is
prettily called a "lovely character." His temperament, which would not
even brook that certain gentlemen, whom he denominated with a profane
adjective "old women," should talk to him "about humanity" (and it may
be said in passing that these hopeful "old women" were most obviously
condemned to disappointment at least), his rigid discipline of his own
troops, and his unparalleled brutality to the enemy, leave the devotion
exhibited for him by his soldiers to be accounted for only by the
admiration which they felt for his personal courage, which was very
great, and of which Walpole tells a good story about this time,--of
course before the days of anaesthetics: "The Duke of Cumberland is quite
recovered after an incision of many inches into his knee. Ranby [the
surgeon] did not dare to propose that a hero should be tied, but was
frightened out of his senses when the hero _would_ hold the candle
himself, which none of his generals could bear to do: in the middle of
the operation the Duke said 'Hold!' Ranby said, 'For God's sake, Sir,
let me proceed now--it will be worse to renew it.' The Duke repeated, 'I
say, hold!' and then calmly bade them give Ranby a clean waistcoat and
cap; 'for,' said he, 'the poor man has sweated through these.' It was
true; but the Duke did not utter a groan."
9 Page 168. It is with a renewal of confidence in the better aspects of
human nature, and the genuineness of such sanctions as control civilized
war that we realize that the French and English officers encountering
dangers so far transcending legitimate perils as those pervading Indian
fighting manifested individually, now and again, a true and soldierly
sympathy with one another, and sought to protect the helpless in their
power, often liberating those exposed to torture at the hands of their
savage allies. For the methods of the Indians were by no means
ameliorated by association with their civilized comrades, and they could
scarcely be held subject to any control. Washington himself, whose
capacity in authority amounted to a special genius, even when only a
young provincial officer, could not restrain his Indian allies from
scalping the slain, and in several instances it required his utmost
exertions to prevent a like fate from befalling his own living
prisoners.
10 Page 217. Governor Lyttleton on the request of Atta-Kulla-Kulla
released Oconostota, Fiftoe, the chief warrior of Keowee Town, and the
head warrior of Estatoe, who the next day surrendered two other Indians
to be held as substitutes. Although it has been generally said that
there were twenty-two hostages, only twenty-one seem to have been
detained, and it is therefore possible that Oconostota was liberated
without exchange, on account of his position and influence in the tribe,
being always known as the "Great Warrior." The names of the hostages
detained are as follows: Chenohe, Ousanatanah, Tallichama, Tallitahe,
Quarrasatahe, Connasaratah, Kataetoi, Otassite of Watogo, Ousanoletah
of Jore, Kataletah of Cowetche, Chisquatalone, Skiagusta of Sticoe,
Tanaesto, Wohatche, Wyejah, Oucachistanah, Nicolche, Tony, Toatiahoi,
Shallisloske, and Chistie.
11 Page 236. Bancroft says this detached force comprised six hundred
Highlanders and six hundred Royal Americans. Adair says it consisted of
twelve hundred Highlanders. Other historians add to this number a body
of grenadiers. Hewatt, who writes almost contemporaneously, publishing
in 1779, and who was a resident of Charlestown, where the force landed
and whence it departed, states that it consisted of a battalion of
Highlanders and four companies of the Royal Scots, and it was there
joined by a company of South Carolina Volunteers. He further mentions
that upon Colonel Montgomery's return to New York he left four companies
of his force in Charlestown, upon the urgent request of the governor and
assembly, to aid the defense of the Carolina frontier, and that these
were of the royal regiment under the command of Major Frederick
Hamilton. The Royal Scots, being one of the oldest and most celebrated
of military organizations, has the peculiar claim on the consideration
of all the world, that having been the body-guard of King Louis XI. of
France, the renowned Scottish Archers, it must surely bear on the
ancient and illustrious rolls the ever-cherished name of Quentin
Durward, for are we not told that the venerable commander of the guard,
Lord Crawford, entered it there himself? And if it is not now to be
seen, why--so much the worse for the ancient and illustrious rolls!
12 Page 261. The personal vanity of the Cherokees was so great that
after discovering the functions of a mirror the men were never without
one. Even in their most unimpeded war-trim they carried a mirror slung
over one shoulder and consulted it from time to time with pleasure
doubtless. When the small-pox broke out among them, those whose
appearance had suffered from that disease could not endure to survive
their disfigurement, and promptly took their own lives, although
suicides were buried without the highly esteemed honors usually paid to
the dead.
13 Page 366. The temperament of Atta-Kulla-Kulla seems far more complex
than the simple traits attributed usually to untrained character. Apart
from his savage craft, courage, and a sort of natural eloquence which he
shared with his tribe, the close discernment shown in some of his
speeches still extant, his magnanimity, his capacity to receive and
assimilate new impressions, his diplomatic talents, all suggest a
versatile mind, and he also possessed a caustic wit to which he was wont
to give rein touching the oft-broken promises of one of the governors of
South Carolina, from whom it is related he had received many letters
which he said "were not agreeable to the old beloved speech." He kept
them regularly piled in a bundle in the order in which he had received
them, and often showed them. "'The first,' he used to say, 'contained a
_little_ truth,' and he would devise fantastic excuses for the failure
of the rest of it, urging the governor's perplexing rush of official
business which had occasioned him to forget his strong promises. 'But
count,' said he, 'the lying black marks of this one'--and he would
descant minutely on every circumstance of it." His patience, he would
declare, was exhausted, and he felt that the letters were "nothing but
an heap of broad black papers and ought to be burnt in the old year's
fire." The old year's fire was a symbol of departed values, the new
year's fire being kindled with great ceremony by the Cheera-taghe, or
prophets, "men of the divine fire."
14 Page 386. It is pleasant to know that this strong friendship suffered
no diminution by reason of time and distance. Bartram relates that when
he traveled in the Cherokee country in 1773 he met descending the
heights a company of Indians all well mounted on horses. "I observed a
chief at the head of the caravan, and as they came up I turned off from
the path to make way in token of respect, which compliment was accepted
and gracefully and magnanimously returned, for his highness, with a
gracious and cheerful smile, came up to me and clapping his hand on his
breast offered it to me, saying, 'I am Ata-Cul-Culla,' and heartily
shook hands with me, and asked me if I knew it. I answered that the
good spirit who goes before me spoke to me and said 'that is the great
Ata-Cul-Culla.'" The chief then asked him if he came direct from
Charlestown, and if his friend John Stuart were well. Mr. Bartram was
able to his great pleasure to reply that he had seen John Stuart very
recently, and that he was well.
15 Page 386. French emissaries were shortly in the vicinity of this
fort. At a great meeting of the Cherokee nation the indefatigable Louis
Latinac struck a hatchet into a log, crying out, "Who will take up this
for the king of France?" Saloue, the young warrior of Estatoe, instantly
laid hold of it, exclaiming, "I am for war!" And in indorsement of this
compact many tomahawks were brandished, already red with British blood.
16 Page 397. As an interesting example of the appropriate and successful
method to address barbarous peoples, the historian Hewatt gives entire
the text of a speech to several tribes of Indians which Stuart, in his
capacity of superintendent of Indian affairs for the South, delivered at
a general congress at Mobile, attended by Governor Johnstone and many
British officers and soldiers. It is strikingly apt, and despite the
figurative language for which the Indians had so strong a preference, it
is direct and simple, bold yet conciliatory, dignified in tone, but with
a very engaging air of extreme candor, and it may be that Stuart's
influence over them lay chiefly in fair and impartial measures and the
faithful performance of promises. Among the writers of that date he is
rarely mentioned without some reference to his mental ability, which
seems to have been very marked, or to the exact and strict fidelity with
which he followed the letter and spirit of his instructions. A certain
fling, however, by one who had wanted the office to which Stuart was
afterward appointed is so deft a bit of character-drawing in few words
that, regardless of its obvious spite, it is worth repeating,--"a
haughty person, devoted to parade, and a proud uniform."
* * * * *
Transcriber's note
The following change has been made to the text:
Page 290: "or such people" changed to "of such people".