country of the Cherokees, embellishing his account with unrecorded
particulars of their stay, especially in their digging for gold and
silver, in which enterprise he himself seemed to have actively
participated--only some two centuries previous!
Tscholens, listening, looked about absently at the "beloved square,"
which was vacant, with its open piazza-like building on each of the four
sides. Two or three men were talking in the "war cabin," painted a vivid
red. On the western side of the square the roof of the "holy cabin"
showed dark against a lustrous reach of the shimmering river; despite
the shadows within the broad entrance, the "sacred white seat" and the
red clay transverse wall that partitioned off the _sanctum sanctorum_
were plainly visible, but all was empty, deserted--the cheera-taghe had
departed for the night.
As Tsiskwa paused to cough, the Delaware, suddenly taking heart of
grace, observed that it had always been the boast of the Lenni Lenape
that they were the first tribe to welcome the European, the Dutch, to
the land that they now called New York.
Whereupon Tsiskwa retorted in a tempest of racking coughs that, whoever
welcomed the Europeans here or there, it was no credit that the Lenape
should be so forward to appropriate it! The white people were not the
friends of the red man. They wanted the whole country. Finally they
would have it.
"_Mattapewiwak nik, schwannakwak_!" (The white people are a deceiving
lot!) said Tscholens, seeking some common ground on which they could
meet with a mutual sentiment.
And at once Tsiskwa was all animation and as aggressive as at twenty.
Well, indeed, might the Lenape say that! They were forever an easy
prey--not only of the astute Europeans, but of the simple Indian as
well. For a hundred years they had been the dupe of the Mengwe! As the
mind of Tsiskwa dwelt on the various subtleties of the diplomatic
attitude of the Mengwe toward the Lenape, its craft so appealed to him
that his lips curved with relish; a smile irradiated his blurred eyes
and intensified his wrinkles; his cough, shaking the folds of his outer
fur garments above his wasted chest, mingled with his gay chuckle of
merriment, as young as a boy's, while he cried, "Iroquois!
Iroquois!"--the characteristic exclamation of the Mengwe confederation,
whence they take their modern and popular name, and signifying, "I have
spoken! I have spoken!"
At the familiar and detested sound the Lenape suddenly smote his breast
with his braceleted arms, and a strong cry involuntarily broke from
him--so poignant, so bitter, so shrill, that it sounded high above the
bleating flute, the guttural drone of the drum, the vibratory throb of
the dancing feet, and brought the pastime to a sudden close. In another
moment the "beloved square" was filled with crowds of the Cherokees and
their huddling shadows, all a medley in the last red suffusions of the
sinking sun. To the tumult of eager, anxious, polite questions,
Tscholens faltered to Savanukah, who had hastily returned:--
"_N'schauwihilla! N'dagotschi! Lowanneunk undchen_!" (I am fainting! I
am cold! The wind comes from the north!)
He looked ill enough, but Savanukah's sharp eyes scanned suspiciously
the aged countenance of Tsiskwa of Citico. Tsiskwa was, however, the
image of venerable and respected innocence. His aged lips mumbled one
upon the other silently. He hardly seemed to take note of the tumult.
When the afflicted "grandfather" was being led away from the scene,
Savanukah loitered to ask, with well-couched phrase and the show of deep
reverence, what had been the tenor of the discourse, and it was with a
galvanic jerk that the old man appeared to gather his faculties
together.
"Of what did he talk?" Tsiskwa fixed august eyes upon Savanukah as he
repeated the query. "Am _I_ to remember of what young men talk?--the mad
young men?--mad, mad--all quite mad!"
For not to Savanukah, surely, would he confess; and although because of
this reticence that discerning party believed that Tsiskwa had wittingly
wounded their emotional "grandfather" in his tenderest pride till he
roared like a bull, Savanukah afterward had cause to repudiate this
opinion in a conviction which was less to the credit of the acumen of
Tsiskwa than a full confession of his breach of etiquette in tormenting
his young "grandfather" might have been. At the time Savanukah felt a
certain, malicious pride in the old man's keenness and poise and
capacity, and he said apart to the inquisitive bystanders that, as might
have been expected, the big bird, Tsiskwa-yah, had pounced upon the
little bird, Tscholen-tit--for the name of each signifies a bird in
their respective languages, and the suffixes imply great and small. And
mightily pleased was Savanukah with his own wit.
That night came a sudden change. A keen frost was falling soon after the
sun went down, for the wind was laid, and such a chill glittering white
moon came gliding out of the mists about the dark Great Smoky domes that
it seemed the winter incarnate. All adown the desert aisles of the
leafless woods the light lay with a flocculent glister like snow, so
enhanced was its whiteness in the rare air and the blackness of the
forest shadows--spare, clearly drawn, all filar and fine like the
intricacies of a delicate line engraving. Something that the daylight
might have shown, blue and blurred, was about the mountains; it followed
the progress of that wintry moon westward. Presently, drawn up from
across the ranges, it proved to be a purple cloud, and despite the broad
section of the heavens still clear and the glittering whorls of the
constellations, that cloud held snow.
As the loitering southern winter had been long in abeyance, many of the
Cherokees of Citico Town were still in their airy summer residences, but
in one of the conical "winter houses," stove-like, air-tight,
windowless, plastered within and without with the impervious red clay of
the region, after the fashion of the great rotunda, Tscholens, in view
of his sudden seizure and complaint of the gentle breeze of the south as
freighted with the chill of the north, was consigned to rest. Half a
dozen Cherokee braves were detailed to accompany him, nominally as a
guard; but, there being no menace, this was in recognition of his
importance and distinction, his escort of Delaware Indians having been
billeted about in the town. There was no chimney, and although the fire
which burned in the centre of the clay floor exhaled but little smoke,
it hung in the air for the lack of the means of escape, and seemed to
add to the warmth which the fuel sent forth. Now and again the
superfluity of ashes encroached on the live coals. Whereupon one or
another of the occupants of the restricted apartment, silent and
recumbent upon the cane divan, which served now as bed and extended all
ground the room between the walls and the row of posts that upheld the
roof, would reach out a long stick, furnished for the purpose to each
sleeper, and touch off the incumbering ash from the glow of the embers.
As the night wore deeper into the dark hours these intervals of waking
were rarer.
Tscholens, muffled in bed draperies of otter furs and feathered mantles,
his cane-wrought couch softened with panther and wolf skins, heard the
wind going its rounds, and he realized that the direction of the
currents of the air had veered and it came straight from the north. With
the mere suggestion his heart sank. How should he return whence it
came?--baffled, denied, empty-handed!--from these specious Cherokees,
who yet called the Lenape "grandfather."
The young war-captain had divined since he had been among them that the
Cherokees were making ready for war against the British government; they
would attack the South Carolina colonists, and for this reason, if for
no other, they would do nothing to anger the Mengwe, the Iroquois, whom,
however, they had often fought: for they loved war--they loved war!
Gradually the room grew less warm. A sudden stir sounded under the
divan, and a dog presently crept out to the fire, stretching lengthily
and yawning widely as he went. He bestowed himself in an upright posture
by the coals and looked down with drowsy gravity at the glow. His
pendant ears, his long, pointed muzzle, his upright, rotund body, and
his pose of solemn pondering made a queer shadow on the wall. He was no
Cherokee, so to speak, but was the property of a French officer, and,
following his master here from Fort Toulouse, _aux Alibamons_, had been
left in the care of a Cherokee friend to await his owner's return from a
mission to Fort Chartres and other French settlements "in the Illinois."
The dog spoke any language, it might seem; for when one of the braves,
half-awakened by his loud, unmannerly yawn, called out a reproof to him
in Cherokee, he wagged his tail among the cold ashes till he stirred up
a cloud of gritty particles; then he made his way across the room to the
speaker, wheezing and sniffing, and bantering for a romp, till he was
caught by the muzzle and, squeaking and shrilling, thrust under the
divan anew.
Once more silence, save for the patrol of the wind again on its rounds.
Once more the flare of the fire, dying gradually down to a smouldering
red glow, akin to the smothered red tone of the terra-cotta wall. Once
more the hot, angry eyes of the young war-captain, staring hopelessly,
sleeplessly into the red gloom and the dull mischance of the future,
sequel of the past.
Suddenly a thought struck him. It seemed at first to take his breath
away. He gasped at the mere suggestion of its temerity. Then it set his
blood beating furiously in his veins. After a space, in which he sought
to calm himself, to still his nerves, to tame his quivering muscles, he
rose slowly to a sitting posture, then stepped deftly, lightly to the
floor. Standing motionless, he glanced keenly about in the dull red
gloom. All silence--no stir save the regular rise and fall of the
breathing of the slumbering Indians. Nevertheless, with his keen
perceptions all alert and tense, he felt an eye upon him. He looked back
warily over his shoulder through the lucid red gloom, like a palpable
medium, as one looks, through a veil or tinted glass.
It was the eye of the dog! The animal lay under the couch, his muzzle
flat on the clay floor. A serious yet doubtful vigilance was in his
aspect. Tscholens was already at the exit, which was a narrow winding
passage serving as a wind-break, and with a sudden turn leading to the
outer world. He heard the abrupt patter of the dog's feet on the clay
floor, and a drowsy voice calling to the animal in Cherokee, admonishing
him to be still. Tscholens waited without, and, as the dog issued and
with half-aroused suspicions sniffed dubiously around him, he stooped
down and patted the creature's head. It was well, after all, that he
should follow; the noise of the dog's exit and return would serve to
cover his own absence.
He sought craftily to make friends with the dog. "_Mon chou! Mon
cochon_!" he said, aping the endearments addressed to dog or horse which
he had heard from the French officers at Fort Chartres, where he had
recently been. Then suddenly in agitation: "_Tais toi! Sois sage_!"
For the animal was indeed no Cherokee. At the sound of his native
tongue, as it were, he demonstrated how little he cared to be in his
skin, for his joyous bounces almost took him out of that integument.
Luckily his gambols were noiseless,--for the ground was covered with
snow.
Tscholens stood for a moment motionless, his brain still afire with the
imminent emprise, but his hot heart turning cold, and failing; for the
snow--oh, treacherous cloud!--the snow would betray his steps and the
trail disclose the mystery.
"Oh, _Lowannachen_!" (Oh, north wind!) he moaned, holding up both hands
outstretched to the north. "Oh, _wischiksil! Witschemil_!" (Oh, be thou
vigilant! Help me!)
Then suddenly lowering his head, he sped like the wind itself through
the town, along the river bank and into the sacred precincts of the
"beloved square." Ah! here he had stood this evening with what different
hope and heart. Here in front of the eastern cabin he had sat beside the
wily Tsiskwa of Citico, who might hardly make feeble shift to sway a
reed, and yet with sharp sarcasms had stabbed him again and again to the
very heart.
"_Pihmtonheu_! Oh, _pihmtonheu_!" (He has the crooked mouth! Oh, he has
the crooked mouth!) Tscholens muttered between his set teeth as he
crossed the open space and paused before the western "holy cabin."
But for his rage, perhaps, but for his smarting wounds, Tscholens might
have labored with some deterrent sense of sacrilege. But no! With one
elastic bound he leaped upon the "holy white seat," whence he surmounted
the tier of places still behind and higher; then he lightly swung
himself down into the intervening space in front of the inner partition
formed by a red clay wall.
A momentary pause--a monition of caution. He looked back over his
shoulder at the pallid world without, visible across the barrier of
seats through the broad entrance of the loggia-like place. With the
reflection from the drifts on the ground and the tempered radiance of
the moon behind the tissues of cloud, the scene seemed more wan, more
illumined with ghastly light, because of the density of the gloom
wherein he stood. The conical-shaped winter tenements had each a thatch
of snow; the great circular council-house, with its whitened dome,
glimmered as stately as some marble rotunda, on its high mound, distinct
against the blurring blue shadow of the night and the gray clouds and
the bare boughs of the encompassing forest. No living creature was to be
seen, save the dog that had followed him, and that had paused to
investigate some real or fancied find beneath the snow,--a bone,
perhaps, flung out from the feastings of overnight; perhaps some little
animal, young or hurt, whelmed in the drift. Now the dog thrust down a
tense, inquiring muzzle, sniffing tentatively, cautiously, and again he
plied alternately his forefeet and his hindfeet, digging out the snow
from the quarry; then once more, with a motionless body and a straight,
quivering tail, he applied his sensitive nostrils to the examination.
Tscholens with gratification noted his absorption. This was indeed well.
The animal's persistent following further might have hampered his plans
and revealed his intrusion. The next moment, as the _illau_ turned to
his purpose, densest night seemed to have encompassed him. The shadows
cloaked all, save only the blank wall of clay and, down close to the
ground, an arched opening into the _sanctum sanctorum_,--an opening so
limited that it might barely suffice to admit a man's body, creeping
prone upon the earth, and so whelmed in night that it seemed to give a
new and adequate interpretation of the idea of darkness. Could he hope,
all unaccustomed here, to turn in that restricted space to retrace the
way? Could a ray of guiding light be caught from without across this
high, guarding barrier of tiers of seats? And what perchance might lurk
within instead of the object of this search?
At the mere thought of this object of search all fear, all vestige of
anxiety vanished. Tscholens felt his heart beat fast. His blood throbbed
in his temples. He dropped upon his knees--a sinuous, supple motion, a
vague rustle, and he had passed into the unimagined dark precincts
beyond the aperture.
Absolute quietude now reigned in the "holy cabin." The darkness filled
it with a solemnity and awe that made a compact with silence and
accounted the slightest sound, the softest stir, as a sacrilege.
When an owl--a tiny thing, the familiar little "wahuhu" of the
Cherokees--flitted down with its noiseless wings from out the sky and
sat, a mere tuft of feathers and big round eyes, on one of the eaves,
its shrill cry and convulsive chatter smote the night with a sudden
affright--all the breathless listening spaces of the "beloved square"
seemed to shiver at the sound, and the keen sleety lines of snow were
tremulously vibrant with it as the flakes came slanting down once more
from the north.
For as Tscholens plunged out from the sanctuary his first consciousness
of the world without was the chill touch of the falling snow on his
cheek, its moist, icy breath on his lips beating back his own quick,
agitated respiration. The little "wahuhu," all startled by his sudden
exit, rose with a sharp, cat-like mew from the eaves above his head,
dislodging a drift upon his hair, and fluttered away to a branch of a
tree, still gazing after him as he sped swiftly, joyously, to the winter
house where he lodged,--the descending snow would soon fill the trace of
his light footsteps and none be the wiser.
All danger of discovery, however, was not over-past. One of the braves
in the winter house experienced a vague intimation of an entrance into
the building, that peculiar chill which accompanies even to the warmest
fireside an intruder from the outer air. It seemed explained when he
roused himself and saw standing by the fire the French officer's dog,
now gazing at the glow with meditative eyes, now diverted to
industriously licking his sides. As the long cane of the waking Indian
threw off the summit of the ashes and touched up the embers to a more
cordial warmth, the dog, always relishing companionship, repaired to the
side of the divan, and the young Cherokee, pushing him off, noticed the
dripping sides of the animal where the snow had melted on the hair.
"It must be raining," he said to himself, all unaware that aught had
entered except the dog, coming and going after the manner of his
restless kind. The incident recurred no more to his mind save for a
vague recollection of his error when he perceived in the morning that it
was snow that had fallen in the night and not rain.
A new sensation pervaded the town upon its awakening. The "grandfather"
announced the termination of his visit.
"_N'matschi_!" (I shall go home) he said. And in explanation of this
sudden resolution, "_N'matunguam_." (I have had a bad dream.)
Now a dream among the Indians was of hardly less significance than among
the Hebrews of old. It was sufficient justification for the undertaking
of any enterprise or for any change of intention. Thus the departure of
the Delaware delegation was shorn of all surprise or imputation of
discourtesy. The head-men among the Cherokees felt it very definitely a
relief to be freed from the importunities of their "grandfather."
"Good speed to the journey of the _illau_ Tscholens!" Atta-Kulla-Kulla
said that evening after the departure, as the head-men of several towns
sat discussing the matter around the council-fire in the great
state-house of Citico.
"A turbulent 'grandfather' has a stormy voice and makes the heart of a
young man like me very poor for fear!" the aged Tsiskwa coughed out, and
they all greeted the great man's jest with a laugh of appreciation, and
felt it was well that one so old could at once be so sage and so merry.
But there came a time when they were of a different mind.
A most important crisis had supervened in the policy of the Cherokee
Indians toward the British government when their attention was diverted
from their projected demonstration against the South Carolina colonists
by a sudden attack from their ancient enemy, the Mengwe (the Iroquois,
as the colonists called them). It was an altogether unprovoked attack,
it seemed. The martial Cherokees, however, always eager to fight,
demanded no explanations, but at once took the war-path with a great
array of their brisk young braves, and because of this interruption, it
was said, the war of the Cherokees against the British was long delayed.
When at last the _casus belli_ of the Iroquois was disclosed it struck
the Cherokees of Citico Town like a thunderbolt. The Cherokee nation,
said the Mengwe, had presumed to recognize the independence of the Lenni
Lenape, whom they knew to have been conquered by the Mengwe more than a
century earlier.
This, of course, elicited from the Cherokees a denial of any such
recognition. Whereupon the Lenni Lenape themselves produced in
counter-asseveration the official belt of the Cherokees, given in
exchange for their own, and brought to the hand of their chief sachem by
their young _illau_ Tscholens, from Citico Town, the residence of the
Chief Tsiskwa.
A deep amazement fell upon the Cherokees of Citico--the sort of
superstitious consternation that a somnambulist might feel in
contemplating in broad daylight the deeds he had wrought in
sleep-walking. As to the rest of the nation, it was in vain that Tsiskwa
denied; for there were many confirmatory details in support of the
incontestable fact of the official belt openly shown in the possession
of the Lenni Lenape. The gossips recapitulated the long and solitary
audience with Tsiskwa to which Tscholens had been admitted--that strange
wild cry with which it had terminated seeming now a cry of joy, not
pain; and this interpretation was borne out by the obvious affectation
of illness by which he had sought to hide the true import of the
interview. More than all, the matter was put beyond reasonable doubt by
the discovery of the official belt of the Delawares in the _sanctum
sanctorum_ of the "holy cabin" in the "beloved square" among the
treasures of the blended religion and statecraft which pertained to the
government of the Cherokees. That Tscholens could have surreptitiously
exchanged the belts, as Tsiskwa of Citico, dismayed, overwhelmed, yet
blusteringly contended, was held to be preposterous; for there was not a
moment, sleeping or waking, when the Delawares were not in the company
and close charge of the Cherokees, who must needs have been cognizant of
any such demonstration.
Only one explanation was deemed plausible: the old man, doubtless in his
dotage despite his seeming mental poise, had lost sight of the political
significance of the bauble; he had bestowed it after the manner of the
presents that all were unofficially heaping upon the "grandfather," and
had mechanically, unthinkingly, received in exchange the Delaware belt.
After one reeling moment of doubt the town of Citico recovered its
balance and loyally supported its prince, but the rest of the nation was
unanimous in the acceptance of the popular interpretation.
How far extended the influence of this recognition by the Cherokees of
the independence of the Lenni Lenape it is impossible to say, but it is
well known that they acted independently in the American phase of the
Seven Years' War and fought on behalf of the French, and in the
Revolution they took the part of the Americans against the British,
contrary to the policy of the Mengwe. About the time of the treaty of
the United States with the Indians in 1795, the Mengwe, who had been
greatly cast down by the defeat of their allies, the British, came
forward of their own accord and desired publicly to acknowledge the
independence of the Lenni Lenape.
The masterly political machinations of Tscholens and the mystery in
which they were enveloped did not permanently impair the cordial
relations existing between his tribe and the Cherokees, for so late as
1779 a delegation of fourteen Cherokees is chronicled as appearing in
the country of the Lenni Lenape at their council-fire, to condole with
them on the death of their head-chief; but neither before nor since is
there any record of another visit of the turbulent "grandfather" to the
banks of the Tennessee River.
NOTES