“FOR MONTHS AFTER MY grandfather slew Bullhead,” Dane said, “there was much uneasiness among the Cherokees. Bullhead’s relatives and friends feared there would be more killings, but there were not. The reasons for his execution were known, and most Cherokees approved of it. However, when President Jefferson sent an agent to visit the Cherokee towns to persuade the people to move west of the Mississippi River, one of Bullhead’s brothers-in-law, who feared for his life, decided to go, the government taking his land in exchange for that given him in the West. He and his family and friends were the first Cherokees to move to the Arkansas country, but no one else of course would even listen to the agent. They did not dream that within a few years almost all of them would be dragged without their consent from their beloved country to the dark land of the setting sun.
“It must have been a stirring time, those years just before I was born. All along the frontier between the Appalachians and the Mississippi River from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, the tribes were becoming more determined to resist any further land seizures by the whites. For many Indian people the great hero of the time was the Shooting Star—Tecumseh of the Shawnees—who worked to form a confederation of all the tribes. Without such a union, Tecumseh said, the Indians would never stop the westward march of the white men.
“His strongest ally in the South was my grandmother’s old friend, Menewa of the Creeks. Late one summer a party of Shawnees and Creeks visited the Cherokee towns, inviting the chiefs to attend a great council for Tecumseh at Tallagalla, the town on the Tallapoosa that Menewa had built after being driven from Georgia by the border raiders.
“By this time the Cherokees had decided it was impossible to have one chief, and so they formed a Committee of Thirteen to deal with matters concerning the whole nation. The thirteen chiefs were sworn to cede no more land and to resist all efforts of the United States to move the tribe to the West. As the Long Warrior was one of the Committee of Thirteen, the Tecumseh delegation was especially eager to have him attend.
“When they came to Okelogee, the Long Warrior gave them a friendly welcome, but he told them he was too busy with other matters to make the five-day journey to Tallagalla. Well, Mary was outraged, of course. She was a great supporter of Tecumseh, even claiming blood kinship through his Creek mother.
“ ‘The council will choose someone else to go in my place,’ the Long Warrior assured her that night after she gave him one of her scoldings.
“ ‘This would be an insult to the greatest leader of our people,’ she shouted at him. ‘You must go yourself.’
“ ‘They say in Nashville,’ the Long Warrior answered, ‘that the Shooting Star is a spy, an agent for the British who are preparing to fight another war against the Americans.’
“ ‘Who says that? The Unegas? Those horse-trading white friends of yours that you complain about for lying, cheating, and stealing?’
“The Long Warrior did spend a lot of time those days horse trading. Grandmother Mary told me that it took the place of gambling for him, and at the time set for the Tallagalla council for Tecumseh, he had arranged to accompany several horse dealers, white men, all the way to Natchez to trade for Texas mustangs. She partially forgave him after he presented her with a gentle little arch-nosed pony that reminded her of the Choctaw she had ridden from Bluff Village.
“But they had another quarrel when Mary decided that she was the one who should represent Okelogee at the Tecumseh council. Because of her status as a Beloved Woman, she was highly respected by the Okelogee men. Also by this time she had passed the menopause, which gave her the right to take part in councils and ceremonies forbidden to menstruating women. The Long Warrior, however, protested that both the Creeks and Tecumseh might take offense at a woman delegate.
“ ‘Menewa would welcome me,’ Mary declared, ‘with his arms opened in friendship.’
“That may have been the real reason why the Long Warrior was so opposed to her going to Tallagalla. He had always been jealous of Menewa’s place in Mary’s memories. But in the end Mary got her way, as she usually did. With her younger son, Talasi the Runner, as her escort she set out joyously for the Creek country.
“All through my boyhood I was to hear much about this event from both my father, the Runner, and from Grandmother Mary. She memorized the speeches made by Tecumseh, wrote down the words, and often would quote from them at council meetings. Even after all the years that have passed, I can remember some of the words of Tecumseh as if I had been there.”