Red clay running waters, p.53
Red Clay, Running Waters, page 53
Expectation crackled in the air, the leaders already taking positions at the front of the arbor. John saw Ross, Lowrey, Martin, Taylor, and Elijah Hicks, all looking sober and completely in command. Agent Currey stood on one side, surrounded by the regalia of other government officials. John knew it mattered little to those men if it was Andrew Ross’s rejected treaty, or one from another alliance that would end this standoff.
After opening prayers, Chief Ross gave his annual address, passing quickly over John’s report from the Committee, made at the previous assembly. John focused on breathing to slow his heart when Ross all but admitted there was no alternative for the Cherokee but to treat. Next to him, David’s foot tapped staccato on the dirt. Ridge’s face lay in shadow, but John read his looks clearly, especially when Ross addressed Jack Walker’s murder.
The chief looked with great solemnity over his people, putting his hand over his heart. “If differences of opinion, if excitement or strife have arisen between individuals,” he intoned, “or murder been committed upon each other from any cause whatsoever, while we lament the deplorable occurrence, we have the consolation of knowing we have neither perpetrated, nor instigated, or approved of them.”
John’s eye fell on David’s white knuckles. Ross had not condemned or called the guilty men to account before everyone’s eyes.
The chief then continued painting a bleak picture of the terrain in the West, though those who had been there were not asked to speak. What was this nonsense Ross was spouting, that if they did not keep their rights where they were, it would lead to their national extinction? It was the opposite that a treaty would secure.
John hoped his disgust did not show when Ross concluded his speech with lofty aspirations for reinstating the Phoenix. Were it but for want of talent, Ross lamented, a supply of paper and money, the nation’s voice would be restored. John was glad Elias stayed home, so as not to receive this swipe.
Just as Ross took his seat, John stood up to be recognized, something clearly unexpected. He walked down the aisle, before the great body of the people, a weightlessness taking hold of him, a separation from his body he had only known once before. The creaking of branches and the forward press of bodies on benches calmed to quiet.
“At our previous assembly, charges were laid against Major Ridge, David Vann, and myself,” he announced. David and his father moved to his side. “We wish our names to be cleared. We demand a trial to know the charges made to impeach us, and to exonerate ourselves of these claims.”
Heads swiveled in staccato consultation, the chiefs and leaders thrown into disarray. Documents on the clerk’s table shuffled. Ross looked at Lowrey. John saw Agent Currey’s lips turned upwards at the corners. In the rumble of uncertainty, voices of encouragement in their defense rose from one corner. Across the crowd a member of John’s district rose asking to speak. Ridge shot a querying eye at John.
“We claim a right to change our representative,” the member shouted.
John’s breath hissed. Noises from the crowd grew louder. The man who shouted came forward. “John Ridge has ceased to maintain the principles on which he was elected, one of patriotism, and firmness to our cause. We wish to be represented by a person whose views are more in accordance with ours.”
Patriotism! The insult made his cheeks burn. When had any of his actions ever been otherwise? David’s hand gripped his arm.
“They mean to strip us of our positions, so a trial becomes moot!” David hissed. “Our statements are to be left unspoken.”
A dark hole opened at John’s feet, as the chances for clearing their names draining away. Speaking the truth evaporated in the cold-blooded stares of the Council elders,. John Ridge, Major Ridge, and David Vann remained under censure and therefore were not to be recognized to speak. Their time for talk had been severed. There was no longer any reason to remain.
It was some time since she heard his horse pass the house in the fading dusk. At first, Sarah thought she was dreaming, caught drifting in her pregnant slumber. But as the minutes went by, she began to doubt her senses.
“Pleasant, was that Mr. Ridge come home?”
“Yes, but I haf not seen him come out da barn.”
“Bring the lantern and come with me, will you?” she said, prying herself out of her chair. The two walked in the darkness, one treading carefully, the other holding the lantern high. From under a gap in the barn door, light spilled on to the ground. Sarah stopped to listen. Voices murmured.
Inside the stables, the subdued pool of the lantern light showed Henry Clay’s arm draped about her husband’s slumped shoulders.
The utter dejection in John’s frame filled her with terror. “Pleasant,” Sarah said, keeping her voice even, “take Henry to the house. See he gets whatever he wants to eat.”
The lantern in the stall was enough to see John had not moved since she entered, his head bowed, hands clasped tight around his skull. Was he praying? She stood as close as she dared, close enough to see the whiteness of his trembling hands. His dark hair obscured his face. When he spoke, it was in a voice unconstrained from grief.
“We . . . we were not permitted to defend ourselves before the Council.”
Was it the child kicking that made her lose her balance? Steadying herself on a beam, she said, “But I thought this was . . .”
“All of us were censured. We have been removed from office.”
The swiftness of the precipitous fall from grace took the wind out of her. Knowing the consequences of opposing the majority, her blood chilled. What John prepared in defense was never to be heard. They would be forced from their home by the ill will of Whites and Cherokees alike.
John raised his head, the anguish of his face crushing her heart. “Our relation is severed with Ross,” he said. “I doubt it can ever be restored.”
Once before she had seen him look this way, the time he was carried away from her house in Cornwall, thinking he would die. This agony she witnessed was his soul being torn from every truth he held dear. She shut her eyes, turning her head away from the suffering she saw. In the darkness, her anger flared at him, at his steadfastness, his principles, his faith placed where it did not belong. Why had she done without him all these years if this was the result? How were they to face another shunning from people who once held their trust?
“We have the means to remove ourselves from this.” His words were weighted with regrets.
She opened her eyes and came to her knees, reaching for his hands, cradling them between hers. “Being homeless, ostracized from our people, and strangers in an undeveloped land with a wife and six children does not concern you?” She meant for her words to sting.
“Sarah!” His wounded gaze locked on hers, then dropped to his growing child. “Giving birth to our child is a tremendous struggle, but you know you can bear it. No one but you can bear it. Who is left to defend our nation from destruction?”
Sarah’s anger flashed to the chiefs for forcing this conflict, for demanding submission, for the public humiliation and threats heaped upon her family and those seeking a treaty.
“You and I, our families, we can bear the journey and build a new home, even if it causes us great pains to leave this one,” he said. “But what will be left for the people here? Those who will suffer the most are blinded by loyalty to a man who deceives them. I cannot accept our nation would die so young at the hands of so much cold injustice.” She knew what was coming next. “We could not live with ourselves, knowing we failed in this struggle.”
Then her rage aimed its searing ire on her own kind, for their complicity in this oppression, for the betrayal, the hypocrisy. But when her anger washed away, she was left with cold dread. She knew John and his cousins and father. Their belief would not waver. Now their path had been chosen; behind them lay their eroded aspirations of a safe harbor.
“Either way,” he muttered, “we are dispossessed.”
She wanted to scream but knew it would only have broken his heart further.
CHAPTER 61
It only took two days after their expulsion before Benjamin Currey requested a meeting.
First, John had to swallow his anger at the agent’s most recent despicable action before he could accept they were forced to negotiate with the man. After John’s party had departed the Council, Currey had the audacity to press for the terms from Andrew Ross’s treaty, the one Ridge and David had gone to Washington to stop.
John struggled not to cringe in Currey’s presence the day Hanna showed him into John’s office. Currey was a wiry, dark-haired man, solicitous to a fault, and completely transparent. The sweat on the agent’s upper lip belied the ease of his manner, the tension twitching his fast-moving mouth.
“I come to assure you that after the president’s response to Walker’s recent killing, Governor Lumpkin and our neighboring governors have sworn support and protection for members of your Treaty Party,” Currey announced, pleased with himself. Such protection marked them, a threat, but removing the need for constant vigilance and allowing for a modicum of peace.
Currey’s eyes darted, assessing the room while he talked. “We all see Ross is unreasonable and will not face facts,” he said, as though it were a secret. “The president, as you know, is eager to deal with credible representatives of the Cherokee people who wish to emigrate, men who understand the forces in operation, who understand negotiation, men the president respects. I wondered if a Ridge Treaty Party would be willing to put forward such men, considering Andrew Ross will already be part of a delegation?”
Whatever is done must be done in full light of day, but it must be done now.
“Should we be able to obtain acceptable terms in Washington,” John replied, “we will present what is offered to the people at a Council of our own after we return. At least then, we can be heard by those who wish to know what we face.”
Winnowing winter winds stripped last season’s leaves from the trees, a cyclone of swirling phantoms, rising in gusts on the road ahead. John shielded his eyes with one arm, his other hand holding a tight grip on the reins of the carriage, the horses liable to bolt from stray missiles. A short distance behind him rode his shadows, hovering guardians sent by Governor Lumpkin to ensure his protection, the only reason Sarah allowed him to make this trip to Vann’s Valley.
John’s sense of foreboding increased as he rode, stemming from a finality that permeated his friend’s message. David had written, Brother, I am exhausted from this resistance, as is my family. I am torn, and the choice is theirs’ as well.
John recalled being censured and stripped of their positions, how David’s erect posture had crumbled as soon as the three were out of sight of the crowds. At John’s touch on his shoulder, a haunted grief had burned on David’s face.
John handed his carriage off to one of David’s slaves. David waited for him, just as he had on that first day after John’s return from Cornwall, as the soul of stability standing on his wide porch, only now it was from a much grander house overlooking his prosperous plantation.
“It is most likely my association with you that keeps this place in my hands,” David laughed when John stepped from the carriage, “and yet here you and I are.”
David was tearful when they sat by the fire. “And here I am. trying to come to terms with our situation, and make the right choice for us, for everyone, a choice between love and loss.”
John had only to look to David’s cousin Joe’s fate to remind himself of the jeopardy they faced. Joe’s polished and painted walls, soft rugs, and the floating banister were now memories. Colonel Bishop of the Georgia Guard, and twenty-armed guardsmen arrived at Diamond Hill with an eviction notice, claiming Joe forfeited his house for hiring an unlicensed White man, a flimsy excuse with near fatal consequences for Joe and his family. While Bishop’s men shot the place to pieces and set a fire to smoke them out, Joe was forced to put out the fires himself to save his own house for another man. In the space of a few days’ time, one of the richest farms in the nation was lost, and Joe, forced to take his family over the line into Tennessee.
“It is everything to us,” David admitted, when John spoke of the implications. “The censure, the expulsion, the principle, the murders, the need to protect what I have, the need to repair the damage done to my family and my reputation. All these stands connected to the fate of our people in any decision I make.”
“As it does with each of us,” John replied.
David grabbed his arm so hard, John’s bones cracked. “Why do you do this?” he blurted. “I am just as interested in having a choice as the next man, but not at this cost.”
“You of all people know the answer,” he said. “I will accommodate the Whites only as it benefits us, but I will never see our people extinguished at their hands.”
“Perhaps you have learned their lessons too well, my friend,” David said, to which John pulled away.
“What lesson is that?”
“John 13:15,” he said, then he looked away. ‘Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friend.”’
Instead of despair, John felt the power and peace of acceptance in the scripture David quoted, and his admission.
An embrace of compassion sent John into David’s arms at their parting. “It may not come to such an extreme,” John said. “Promise your final decision will stay open until I return from Washington? And promise you will stop in on Sarah while we are away.”
Young voices, tender and sweet, trailed off with the fading notes of the hymn. Raising her eyes from the keyboard, the angelic scene Sarah witnessed, just like the hymn, masked what was happening outside her house in the murky fog.
Messengers sent in haste to announce the Treaty Party meeting returned with few replies. Less than a hundred now huddled in the bleak winter meadow where rough shelters stood. Orbs of glowing bonfires, and the rise and fall of bickering penetrated the window, a striking contrast to the harmony inside.
The promise made to Sarah and Miss Sawyer had been fulfilled. Their front room now served as a school until one could be built in the spring. The Reece’s, Fields, and Adair’s still had children to educate, and the school mistress’s presence in her house came at a most welcome time. The entire household rejoiced at the prospect of the teacher being there, lifting much depressed spirits, and bringing light back into faces.
If they were left nothing else, I will give them this . . . a thirst for knowledge.
The house had been surprisingly calm since Sophia arrived, the extra work undertaken with good humor, yet looks and whispers between the servants often spoke to Sarah’s own fears. While Sarah had qualms about being challenged by the opinionated teacher, it was more a question of cramped quarters and putting enough food on the table that worried her. At least the house would belong to them once John, Ridge, and Elias were in the Capital, and with a babe due, she told herself.
Miss Sawyer called the children to gather in the corner to study the globe she held, but Rollin chose to sit beside Sarah. “Why are those men fighting?” he asked, pointing out the window to where his father and grandfather stood in front of a crowd of agitated men.
She drew her son towards the tall window. There was Currey, at hand to see the Treaty Party views were encouraged, its members protected. She saw Elias, David Vann, John Bell, Andrew Ross, John Gunter standing close to John. Ridge gestured to cool tempers.
“They feel strongly about something that is very important to all of us,” she said, her hand stroking Rollin’s hair. “The people come to hear how to reconcile their differences, and how a compromise might end our troubles,” she replied. “They wish to make the best decision for many, many people, and it is not always easy.”
Rollin’s earnest face told her he had grasped the nature of what his father did. “Is the place Papa wants us to live a long way on Miss Sawyer’s globe?” he asked.
“Not so far,” she reassured him. “Not even so far as your father will travel when he leaves for Washington soon. I will show you later. Go see what Miss Sawyer wishes to teach you.”
Everyone would be leaving soon. Elias, Harriet, and their children would be traveling north with John and Ridge to the Capital, with one prevailing hope—to craft a treaty for a sovereign state, one with Cherokee laws, free of the United States interference, a treaty presented by the Treaty Party before the Council, so all Cherokee could vote for or against it.
After Rollin sought out the globe, Harriet joined Sarah by the window, her toddler Sarah on her hip. “I have been trying to teach her some words for when she meets her grandparents,” she said. It was bittersweet for Sarah to consider the Boudinot family’s reunion with the Golds in Connecticut, an escape to an understanding family. There would be no escape for Sarah, even if she wished it, until after her child was born, and the delegation returned. Small consolation came from knowing John would spend time with her family, and endeavor to persuade them to visit Running Waters before they were forced to abandon it.
Harriet placed the baby down, watching as she crawled toward her siblings. Then she took Sarah’s hand, pulling her away from the classroom and into the hall.
“Elias says the press may lie rusting, but his contacts will publish anything he wishes in the Northern papers,” Harriet whispered. “He has already sent the Treaty Party’s resolutions onward to show clearly what the Treaty Party proposes. If they are to be denied a voice at Council, the Cherokee are free to read our intentions in the newspaper over their morning coffee.” Her cheeks were flushed. The possibility of salvation for the community she loved fired a spirit long absent in Harriet. Sarah threw her arms around her, and held tight, as though to draw that spirit into herself.
“John believes a majority would agree to move if they knew the nation cannot be reinstated here,” Sarah said. “Unfortunately, the path for relief is through the government, not through Ross.” She peered through the mullioned panes beside the entry door, watching her husband at a distance. His face was serious but at ease, shaking hands with other members.
