“DURING THE THREE OR four days I was in the Cherokee Nation,” Dane said, “getting the boys into Mr. Ebenezer Keys’s seminary, I kept hearing talk on all sides about a war between the northern and southern states of America. I could not understand why the Cherokees should be interested in this war. Indian Territory was not one of the states. But it was soon made clear to me that the fight was over the slavery of black people. The northerners wanted the southerners to free the black people, and the southerners wanted to keep their slaves.
“As a good many of the half-bloods and treaty Cherokees still had black slaves they had brought from Georgia and Tennessee, and very few of the Ross followers owned any, the treaty people sided with the South and the full-bloods with the North. I could see that old wound which had almost healed since the time of Uncle Opothle’s death beginning to open up again.
“Not long after I returned to Fort Carrothers, the War Between the States began in earnest. While spring came on the next year I was waiting to hear from Big Star about his hunting plans for the summer so that Sweet Medicine Woman and the girls and I could join the Cheyennes. But the Plains were suddenly filled with Bluecoat cavalry marching in all directions. Wagonloads of white men from the mines began moving east to join one or the other of the armies. It was no time for Indians to be on the move, and so we did not hear from the Cheyennes.
“Pleasant brought us most of the news we heard about the war. He listened to all kinds of stories told by the Bluecoats at Fort Laramie, and every time he came back from there, he and Jotham argued for hours about the fighting in the East. As far as I was concerned the Unegas could shoot away at each other forever. It was nothing for either Cherokees or Cheyennes to bother about.
“Every letter that Jotham received from William told of the commotion in the Cherokee Nation. Old John Ross, who was still chief of the Cherokees, was strong for neutrality, but after the Confederate government declared Indian Territory to be a part of their new country, Ross had to give in and become an ally of the southerners. Soon after that Stand Watie was made a general in the Confederate army, and as he and William had long been friends, William’s letters soon showed that his sympathies had turned toward the South. William began urging Jotham to come home and help defend the Cherokee Nation from its enemies. It all seemed senseless to me.
“Then suddenly one day Pleasant came in from Fort Laramie to tell us he had made his last ride for the Pony Express. The talking wires had reached California and all the mail would now go on the stagecoaches.
“ ‘We can use you here at the trading post,’ Jotham spoke up. ‘Tending the stage horses or working with Bibbs in the smithy.’
“Pleasant shook his head. ‘I signed papers for the army last night,’ he said proudly.
“ ‘The army!’ Jotham cried. ‘Which army?’
“ ‘Missouri cavalry,’ Pleasant replied. ‘The recruits are coming through here in stagecoaches in a day or so. I’ll join them here.’
“ ‘Missouri Confederates or Missouri Union?’ Jotham wanted to know.
“Pleasant grinned. ‘The recruiter was wearing a blue uniform.’
“ ‘God damn you!’ Jotham cried, and began limping back and forth on his healing leg. ‘You’re a traitor to your people!’
“ ‘What people?’ Pleasant tried to put on a defiant look. ‘Hell, I don’t have any people. If the Missouri Confederates had come for me first I might’ve signed their papers. I just want some excitement.’
“Jotham was far more upset than I was, even though living as a Cheyenne I’d grown to hate the sight of a blue uniform. Blue or gray, to me they both meant trouble and I was sorry to see my oldest son drawn into the madness.
“A few days later two big Concord coaches rolled in from the West, rocking under the weight of the army recruits who were shouting and laughing and singing. The stagecoaches stopped only long enough for Pleasant to board one of them. He gave me a quick handshake and kissed the girls and Sweet Medicine Woman goodbye. ‘When you see Rising Fawn tell her I’ll be back soon,’ he said and then climbed inside the coach. A recruit handed him a bottle of whiskey. He took a long swig, waving the bottle from the window as the coach rolled away. He was young enough then to think he would live forever. Sweet Medicine Woman was crying, but all I could do was stand there in the dust and wonder if there was a curse upon Creek Mary’s blood.
“The next to leave was Jotham. I think it was about the time of the Deer Rutting Moon when a stagecoach passenger left a St. Louis newspaper, some days old, and in it was an account of fighting in the Cherokee Nation. General Stand Watie’s Confederate Cherokees and some Texans had battled Union Cherokees, driving them into Kansas. ‘It says the fighting was at Round Mounds and Shoal Creek,’ Jotham said excitedly. ‘I think I’d better go to Tahlequah and bring our boys home. Mails must be cut off or we’d have heard of this from William.’ He was eager to see William and his family, and talked about bringing them back to the safety of Fort Carrothers.
“Griffa and Meggi wanted to go with him on the stagecoach, but he feared the horseback journey from Westport to Tahlequah would be too dangerous because of the war. ‘I’ll stay no longer than necessary to get the boys and see William,’ he promised. ‘We’ll be back here before the first snow.’
“Although Sweet Medicine Woman had been looking forward to our rejoining her people on Sand Creek for the winter, nothing on earth could have moved her from Fort Carrothers until she saw her sons return. She began counting the days.
“For the next several weeks the trading post was very quiet. The few freighting wagons going back and forth to Denver usually stopped for water and to rest horses, but there were no more immigrant wagons, and only one eastbound stagecoach in the morning and a westbound in the afternoon. For many weeks no Indians had come to trade buffalo hides. Since the ending of the Pony Express, the stock tenders and riders had left. The family, which at times had numbered more than a dozen, was now reduced to Griffa and Meggi, Sweet Medicine Woman, Amayi, Susa, and myself, and of course we counted Bibbs and Wewoka. With all the spare room in the living quarters, Griffa kept urging Sweet Medicine Woman and me to abandon our tipi for the winter and move into the trading post. It would have been much handier for me. Except when I was out hunting rabbits or game birds for meat, I spent much of my time in the trading room helping Griffa, but Sweet Medicine Woman would not give up her tipi. ‘I favor my tipi,’ she would say firmly, ‘because it is easy to keep clean, is warmer in winter and cooler in summer. Amayi and Susa all the time have fresh air and sunshine. It would not be good for them to live inside walls like a big cave that shuts out the sun.’
“Nonetheless when I was working in the trading room, Sweet Medicine Woman often came there to sit in a rocking chair by the window, sewing beads on moccasins or quilling dresses for the girls. Whenever the stagecoach from the east came, she would go to the door and look to see if Jotham and the boys were on it.
“Weeks went by, the first snow came and then blizzards, but we received no news from Jotham. I wrote two letters to William, and we waited anxiously, hearing nothing. Then one day in spring the stagecoach driver from the east handed me a letter. The covering was streaked with rain spots and a smear of dried clay, but I recognized Jotham’s scrawl and opened it at once. He was writing to me, he said, because his letter contained the saddest words he’d ever penned, and he wanted me to be the shield between the sadness and Griffa. I would have to bear my own blow and comfort Sweet Medicine Woman as best I could.
“Jotham had endured great difficulties in making his way to Tahlequah, having to pass through two armies, and was delayed for many days. When he arrived there he found the seminary closed. Most of the boys had enlisted in one of General Stand Watie’s Confederate Cherokee companies, but Little Cloud was at William’s place, he being too young for the army.
“After leaving William’s, Jotham tried to find the company that Swift Eagle and Young Opothle joined, but no one could tell him in which regiment it was, so he had to travel from camp to camp, up the Arkansas and down the Verdigris until he learned that Stand Watie had taken all his soldiers over into Arkansas to prepare for a big battle. Jotham reached the Cherokees’ baggage camp only a day after they marched north toward Fayetteville. The next day he heard cannon firing all through the afternoon, and a courier he met along the road told him a battle was raging around Elkhorn Tavern.
“Before Jotham could get there, he was stopped by thousands of Confederates—Texans, Arkansans, and Cherokees—retreating from the Union soldiers. He finally found a Cherokee officer, an old acquaintance, who took him to Stand Watie. Not until after the Cherokees reassembled at their baggage camp, and company counts were made, was Jotham told that Swift Eagle and Young Opothle were probably among the dead. Their commander, a lieutenant who had been wounded, said the Cherokees were trying to hold a hill called Pea Ridge when they came under heavy cannon fire. Many of his men had been torn to pieces, their bleeding bodies scattered over the slope. If the two missing boys were not among the wounded, they were surely dead.
“Jotham could not rest until he went to Pea Ridge and looked over the place where the cannon fire had torn up the earth, but Union soldiers had already buried the bodies and pieces of bodies of the Cherokees who died there. He then went back to William’s and to Tahlequah, hoping the boys might have found their way back to the Nation, but no one had seen or heard of them.
“He closed the letter by saying that he was joining Stand Watie’s army himself to avenge his son and my son, and that he hoped I would take care of his family and the trading post until he returned. He was sure the Union soldiers could be beaten by summer.”
Dane stopped, laughing a bitter laugh at the remembrance of that long-ago time. “What fools we humans be!”