OLD DANE’S BEEF STEW was balanced with exactly the right amounts of tender cubes of meat and juices and herbal flavors, surpassing anything in that line the renowned chef at Willard’s Hotel in Washington ever offered his admiring public. On the other hand, the buffalo tongue was a bit tangy for my overcivilized palate, and my wise host somehow knew that. “Tongue is better eaten raw, fresh after the kill,” he said almost apologetically as I nibbled at what was meant to be a rare epicurean treat. “I can barely remember now how my Cherokee stomach revolted at raw tongue and liver when I joined the Cheyennes for my first buffalo feast.”
We dined at a folding table that extended ingeniously from beneath the cabin’s east window, giving us a splendid view of the enormous landscape, the distant flat-topped butte, and the high blue sky. “It’s strange what a person remembers from days long gone by. Little snatches of words said by others, sudden expressions on people’s faces, scenes in the mind like frozen pieces of time. In those days when I was more sensitive to blooming life, I was aware of great events taking place around me, but I did not think of them as affecting me. They were things to be dealt with by my elders, leaving me free to roam the woods, compete at ballplay, learn the secrets of the flesh.
“There was much talk about the building of a capital for the Cherokee Nation. New Echota, it was called, and the Cherokee leaders saw it as their Washington City. The new town was only a day’s journey from Okelogee, and I remember my father’s enthusiasm for its future, how he described its broad streets and predicted a day when New Echota’s crude log buildings would be changed into the permanence of brick and stone. I remember Grandmother Mary’s keen excitement when my father brought home from New Echota a first copy of the Cherokee Phoenix. Buck Watie, or Elias Boudinot as he called himself then, was the editor, and the newspaper was printed in both English and Cherokee, from type especially made to use Sequoyah’s syllabary. This was the first newspaper published by any Indians in America, and it contained news of our nation, texts of new laws passed by our legislature, and occasional pieces meant to whet our interest in learning, civilization, and politics. We all were very proud of the Cherokee Phoenix because it symbolized more than anything else the success of our efforts to become so much like the Anglo-Americans that they would stop thinking of us as being savages. We thought they would want us to stay where we were on our ancestral lands, a good-neighbor nation exactly like them, and that there would be no more talk about moving the Cherokees west of the Mississippi River.
“Many full-blood Cherokees began changing their names, so as to have first and last names like the Anglo-Americans. Uncle Opothle started using Kingsley for his last name—Kingsley was his father’s name as you know—and my cousin made me envious at school when he signed his name as Jotham Kingsley. For a while I called myself Dane Warrior, but Grandmother Mary always laughed uproariously at me for such false show and I soon dropped it.
“It was at about this time that Andrew Jackson became President of the United States, and if the Cherokees had been allowed to vote, almost all would have voted for him. As you may recall, many of our leaders helped him win that battle at Horseshoe Bend, and they believed that as President he would now show his gratitude by protecting the Cherokees from ever increasing intrusions on our land by Georgia settlers.
“To encourage President Jackson’s support, Chief John Ross led a delegation to Washington, and my father was one of those chosen for the journey. I found out afterward that Ross had first asked Grandmother Mary to go, but she had formed such a dislike in her heart for Andrew Jackson because of what he had done to the Creeks at Horseshoe Bend that she feared she would not be able to hold her tongue and thus do harm to the Cherokee cause. And so the Runner, my father, went in her place. At the time, I was so busy hunting after deer in the forest and girls in the town that I don’t even recall my father’s leavetaking, but I well remember the sullen anger that hung about him for days after he returned.
“Grandmother Mary tried to get him to talk but he would say little more than that President Andrew Jackson was a betrayer of the Cherokees. In strong words Jackson had told the Cherokee delegation to move their people west before the whites of Georgia overran their towns and caused bloodshed. I think that what annoyed my father most was Jackson’s manner toward the Cherokee delegates, most of whom had been so loyal to him during the war. He called them ‘my children,’ as though they were unworthy of being treated as equals. And then when they went to seek help from congressmen, they met with the same patronizing talk. ‘The Congress has always aimed to own the Indian tribes,’ the Runner said to Mary, ‘and if they get away with that, someday they will think they own all the whites, too.’
“But the most crushing blow of all came soon after my father returned from Washington. I could sense from the words and faces of the adults in Okelogee that we were under some great danger after the government of the state of Georgia declared there was no longer any Cherokee Nation. All lands claimed by Cherokees were now a part of the state of Georgia, soon to be opened for settlement by whites. In other words, the Cherokees no longer had any title to the land on which they lived. Furthermore, all our own Cherokee laws were wiped out. Whites no longer had to honor contracts made with Cherokees, and Cherokees could no longer testify against whites in any court, no matter the grievance. And what seemed harshest of all, we were forbidden to hold meetings.
“I remember Grandmother Mary saying that the Georgia politicians were trying to frighten us into fleeing our country, but that we should refuse to be frightened. Every town in the Cherokee Nation held a forbidden meeting as soon as they heard about the Georgia law, and Chief John Ross was soon on his way to Washington to use the white man’s courts to challenge the law.
“As you must know, it has never been easy for our people to be heard in your courts, and John Ross was not surprised to find doors being closed in his face everywhere he turned. The chief of the Supreme Court, a man named Marshall, claimed to be sympathetic toward the Cherokees, but he said his court could not hear our case against the state of Georgia because we were a foreign nation! It was as if we had no right to be in America. Ross and his delegation came home, believing that the United States recognized us as a nation, and hoping maybe that would keep the Georgia whites from invading our lands.
“A few months later, however, all hope of aid from the United States was crushed when the Congress passed the Indian Removal Law. It was late spring, I believe in the Moon of Violets, with leaves full green on the trees, the air filled with blossom fragrance, birdsong, and insect buzzings, the Little Singing Stream running over its banks, when the news came to Okelogee.
“Grandmother Mary had foretold this black day when all the tribes east of the Mississippi would be banished from their homelands. This was something that land-greedy old Andrew Jackson had wanted for a long time, and now he had used his power to get it written into law.
“At the Okelogee council that my father as headman called immediately, Mary scolded the warriors unmercifully. I can remember some of her words, coming strong like a chant: ‘You refused to listen to Tecumseh. Instead you turned upon the very people who could have saved us. Now the sun has gone down on all that. We will not look behind us. Now we must face the Unegas who would drive us from the lands of our ancestors. I leave it to our leaders to tell us what we must do. If they tell us to fight and die here, Creek Mary will fight and die. My own feet will never willingly take me from these hills and waters that I have learned to love as I love my children.’
“For several days the councils continued, and then one afternoon a runner came to our house from New Echota with a message for my father from Chief John Ross. President Andrew Jackson had summoned the leaders of Indian tribes east of the Mississippi to gather at Nashville. Jackson wanted to meet there to discuss conditions for immediate removal of their people to lands west of the Great River.
“I could tell from my father’s face as he read the message that he was both angered and pleased. He called Mary to come and see it. ‘Little John Ross is going to defy the Sharp Knife Jackson,’ he shouted. ‘Not one Cherokee will attend the President in Nashville. Instead our nation will gather at New Echota to make our own decisions.’
“For the first time in many days, Mary’s deep laughter came booming out in the house. ‘A national council in defiance of Georgia law,’ she said. ‘Hear, now, only the Maker of Breath can keep Creek Mary from speaking at that council in New Echota.’ ”