Chapter 16
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
1. _Page_ 6. The annals of the southwestern settlements commemorate many instances of daring hearts in delicate frames, and the pioneer woman who perhaps under softer and safer circumstances would have screamed at a mouse often shouldered a rifle and bravely joined the frontiersmen in the defense of the stockade against the most cruel, most wily, most warlike savage foe that ever a civilized force encountered. Courage, of all the qualities of the moral panoply, is the least to be reckoned with by logic. Perhaps after all it is not inherent, even in the nobler organisms, but evolved by a conscientious sense of responsibility and the dynamic potencies of emergency. La Bruyère says: "_Jetez-moi dans les troupes comme un simple soldat, je suis Thersite: mettezmoi à la tête d'une armée don't j'aie à répondre à toute l'Europe, je suis Achille_!"
2. _Page_ 114. The chungke stone of this favorite game of the southern Indians bears a certain resemblance to the ancient discus of the Greek athlete. This, it will be remembered, fashioned of metal or stone, circular, almost flat, was clasped by the fingers of one hand and held in the bend of the forearm, extending almost to the elbow. The genuine chungke stone is solid and discoidal in shape, beautifully polished, wrought of quartz, or agate, the most distinctive being concave on both sides, beveled toward the flat outer edge, and having a depression in the centre of both surfaces for the convenience of holding it with the second finger and thumb, the first finger clasping the periphery. Its usual dimensions are about six or eight inches in diameter. There are several varieties of these archaic relics, some flat, others lenticular or of a wedge-shell shape, and others, still, concave on one side and convex on the other. An absolutely spherical stone, bearing the extraordinarily high polish that distinguishes these unique objects, found in an ancient mound and supposed to have relation to the same or a similar game, calls to mind the globular quoit of the classical athletes and that "enormous round" described by Homer, "Aëtion's quoit"--to hurl which bowl they vie, "who teach the disk to sound along the sky."
The exquisite finish of the chungke stone was compassed without the aid of a single tool, merely by the attrition of one stone upon another, "from time immemorial rubbed smooth upon the rocks, with prodigious labor," resulting in an object of such symmetrical beauty that even in the museums of the present day, out of which it is rarely seen, it challenges admiration. Antiquaries variously contend that it was hurled through the air and that it was bowled on the edge along the ground, its equilibrium being so perfect that on a level space it will roll a great distance, falling only when its impetus is expended.
The chungke stone is often confounded with the Indian quoit, likewise circular and fashioned of smoothly wrought stone, but with an orifice in the centre, rendering it in effect a ring to be flung over a stake at a distance, or to be caught on the point of a lance.
It has been inferred that Adair is mistaken in his assertion that by the Indian law the chungke stones were exempt from burial with the effects of the dead, since certain of the most perfect specimens known to modern archaeological collections were found in the exploration of mounds in the valley of the Tennessee River. By many these mounds are supposed to be prehistoric, and the game is doubtless of an unimaginable antiquity. As late as his day, among the Cherokees; 1736, the stones were kept with the "strictest religious care," and were the property of the town where the game was played.
Adair, despite his roving life, had evidently scant sympathy with athletics. He may have been growing old and indolent when he speaks of the game as a "task of stupid drudgery" and opines that instead of a sport it might "with propriety of language" be described as "running hard labor." Other eye-witnesses, however, vaunt the great beauty and grace of the game. Captain Bernard Romany chronicles with relish the dexterity requisite, the great strength and skill displayed by the participants in the violent exercise, although demurely moralizing the while on its perilous fascination to both players and spectators, by reason of the inordinate temptation presented by its doubtful chances to the reckless gambler. Lieutenant Timberlake alone calls it "_nettecawaw_."
As there are moot points concerning the stones themselves and the conduct of the sport, so the chungke spears differ in the accounts of the early adventurers in this region. The length is variously given as eight, ten, twelve feet. The shape is sometimes represented as a lance or pole heavy in the centre and tapering at both ends to a blunt point, and others describe an implement resembling a magnified golf club of the present day.
3. _Page_ 114. This choice decoration, popular though it was, could not be attained without a penalty commensurate with its valuation. It is stated by early travelers among the Indian tribes that thirty days were required to properly heal an ear thus distended _à la mode_. The patient, if one so prideful might be so called, could only have one ear in the painful process at a time, in order that he might be able to lie in sleeping on the other side until such time as his embellished ear should be again serviceable for this prosaic purpose, and permit the like decoration of the opposite member.
4. _Page_ 142. An illustration of how the Choctaws profited by these earnest labors may be given in the fate of a chapel erected for their benefit at Chickasaha by the French and placed in charge of a Jesuit missionary. The Choctaws so far accepted Christianity as to be able to travesty the services and mimic the priest with surprising humor and verisimilitude when the English came in, and were wont to go to the old chapel for this profane exhibition to the mingled delight and reprobation of the military new-comers. The chapel was soon afterward destroyed, but Captain Romans records that in 1771 he saw the cross still standing on the site, a melancholy memorial of futile missionary endeavor.
All the Indians, however, were temperamentally averse to the services and tenets of the Christian religion, and Timberlake gives an instance among the Cherokees in 1760 in which a missionary was balked by a unique interruption. "Mr. Martin, who having preached Scripture till both he and his audience were heartily tired, was told at last that they knew very well that if they were good they would go up; if bad, down; that he could tell no more; that he had long plagued them with what they no ways understood, and they desired that he would depart the country."
The epitome of theology thus deduced was so far a just conclusion. But doubtless the Indians labored greatly with imperfect comprehension. Humboldt describes a service among a South American tribe, in which a missionary preaching in Spanish was at his wits' end to make his audience differentiate between _infierno_ and _invierno_. They persisted in shivering with horror at the picture of the hell of his warnings in which the wicked were supposed to be subjected to everlasting winter. One is tempted to think that the end might have justified the means if the good padre had fallen in with the prejudice against the rainy season and adopted, in lieu of the fire-and-brimstone of Scripture, as a future state of punishment, the icy Ninth Circle of Dante's Inferno, where
"_Eran l' ombre dolenti nella ghiaccia, Mettendo i denti in nota di cicogna_."
5. _Page_ 151. The cultivation of personal pride was an essential element of training among the Indians. They held the lower ranks of white people in great contempt, and Timberlake records that in some athletic diversions at which he and other members of the Virginia regiment were present they refused to play or to hold conference with any of the troops except the officers.
6. _Page_ 179. The primary and somewhat complex significance of the word _ada-wehi_ is suggested by the idea of sorcery,--a man, or animal, or even element endowed with uncontrolled superlative and supernatural powers. It has been stated that since the introduction of Christianity and the printing of the New Testament in the Cherokee typographical character the word has been utilized with its subtleties of signification to express spirit or angel. In this story, however, the scene of which is laid in a period long previous to the conversion of the tribe, or even the accepted date of the invention of the Cherokee alphabet, the word is used in its early and original sense to denote a magician of special and expansive gifts of sorcery.
7. _Page_ 186. Although this officer's name was regularly incorporated into the Cherokee vocabulary as a synonym of disaster, he seemed to revolt at the unhappy plight of the people whom in the discharge of his duty he had succeeded in reducing to so abject a condition of despair and woe, and has left on record expressions of compassion incongruous with his deeds and his position as a professed soldier of long experience. He had served in Flanders and Ireland in his youth as captain in the Royal Scots before he first came to America as major in Montgomerie's regiment of Highlanders.
Some adequate idea of the desolation and destitution of the Indians may be gleaned from the reports to the British government: "The Cherokees must certainly starve or come into terms, and even in that case Colonel Grant thinks it is hardly in the power of the provincials to save them. He proposed in a few days to send for The Great Warrior (Oconostota) and The Little Carpenter (Atta-Kulla-Kulla) to come and treat for peace, if they choose to save their nation from destruction. Till he receives their answer he will endeavor to save the small remains of the Lower Towns. In the mean time Colonel Grant intends to put Fort Prince George into repair, and to wait there or at Ninety-Six till he receives orders from Sir Jeffrey Amherst."
The idea of the pangs of hunger and the sight of starvation and deprivation may have been the more repugnant to Colonel Grant since he was himself famous as a _bon vivant_ and gourmet. Indeed, even yet, in turning old pages we come upon records of his dinners. Bartram, the Philadelphia botanist, whom the Muscogee Indians quaintly called _Puc-Puggy_ (the Flower Hunter) details the great size of a rattlesnake, "six feet long and as thick as the leg of an ordinary man" which he chanced to kill in his bosky researches near Fort Picolata in Florida, and not the least surprising feature of the incident was a message from the commandant inviting both combatants to dinner, "Governor Grant being very fond of rattlesnake flesh." This officer, at that time Royal Governor of East Florida, was holding a congress with the Creek Indians hard by the fort, having come from St. Augustine with a detachment of its garrison for the purpose. Bartram, dining in company with Grant that day, saw his enemy served up in several different styles,--and he, too, must turn softhearted!--he could not partake of the dish,--and "was sorry after killing the serpent, when coolly recollecting every circumstance of it." However, neither the rattlesnake nor the Cherokees were in condition to profit by these belated graces of magnanimity.
Through Grant's scattered correspondence there is a flavor of "vivers." Frederick George Mulcaster, still with the garrison of St. Augustine, in a letter addressed to Grant, then in Boston, laughingly alludes to his constant good cheer. "Captain Urquhart writes to his brother officers here that '_General Grant lives like a General_!'" And later, in piteous contrast, "His Excellency (the new Royal Governor) gave a dinner yesterday to the officers of the Fourteenth and some others. It is the only dinner he has given since the one he gave to John Stuart (famous as the survivor of Fort Loudon) upon his arrival here,"--a matter of two months. He further notes as a point of interest, "Your black man, Alexander, was with me this instant to inquire after your health, and has loaded me with _beaucoup de complimens_. He wishes much to come to make your bread." Doubtless it was well made, for Grant, prospering, went on from dinner to dinner, from promotion to promotion, attaining the rank of General in the army and great corpulency, representing Sutherlandshire in the British Parliament many years, and dying at the age of eighty-six at his birthplace, Ballindalloch, in the north of Scotland.
8. _Page_ 212. The "Annual Register" in giving among State Papers the text of a treaty between Governor Lyttleton of South Carolina, Captain-General, etc., and Atta-Kulla-Kulla, "deputy for the whole Cherokee Nation," dated at Fort Prince George, Dec. 26, 1759, adds in a note: "Atta-Kulla-Kulla, the Little Carpenter, who concluded this treaty in behalf of the Cherokee Indians, was in England and at court several times in the year 1730."