Sarah Ridge
Running Waters
October 1829
I
f cold enough, October was the month to slaughter hogs. Honey and Peter prepared by sharpening long knives and gathering boiling kettles. The sun set while they worked, so Peter lit a small fire and gathered a chair from his smithy so Honey could press the petals while he sharpened knives against the spinning grindstone.
She shook her head. “I like da sweetmeat. Sarah drips maple syrup over the ham. But don’t get me wrong now, I like them beans salty.”
He took the knife off the blade and blew across its sharp edge before touching it with his thumb.
“Miss Honey, if’n you add salt to the fatback in dem beans, you’ll have to make more trips to the well for da thirst it brings. Cookin’ green beans with fatback makes ‘em salty enough.”
My mouth watered from listening to their hum. I continued churning butter on the porch, smiling. I wondered if she’d let him kiss her again. None of my business, so I didn’t ask, but I couldn’t help but notice how at ease they argued, all the time, agreeing with one another. Together, Honey and Peter were the same savory blend of salty and sweet.
The following morning, Walking Stick began the tremendous and time-consuming task of butchering. One of the newer hands at Running Waters, Walking Stick arrived with the Major shortly after we moved our belongings to our new house. Major led a cattle herd on horseback, driving eighteen heads the six miles from his fields to ours. Major stopped to round up a straggler, but he intercepted a roaming Walking Stick riding toward him with a lasso around the stray. As the story goes, Major talked with him from one end of the massive beasts to the other, and they instantly took a liking to one another.
When John and I met Walking Stick, he remarked how he preferred the company of cows to most people. He said his wife’s mother regretted allowing her daughter to marry him, and shortly after, both women shunned him and placed his tools outside. He didn’t seem troubled by the separation. If he was, he never said.
Walking Stick stayed on as a cowhand and brought firewood to the kitchen door every morning. He worked in exchange for shelter, bacon, and biscuit. Most times when he brought wood, he’d walk in and walk out, saying nothing.
Honey was skeptical and scrutinized the Cherokee cowboy. She studied him when she crunched red apples straight from the tree or picked green beans off the vines. She watched him cross pastures, tracking him by the sunlight reflecting off his metal armband or the turkey feathers embedded into braids, towering over his head like a church steeple.
Last July, on a blinding bright day, Honey and I held our hands above our eyes to shade the sun, staring at him in the field across from the house. She said, “He just tell them cows where to go, and they go. He just ask politely, and they gather.” She reentered the house, walking down the narrow hall beside the stairs. She said, “He must be a-talkin’ through the Holy Spirit to them cows.” Afterward, Honey threw her hands to the ceiling and resolved that Walking Stick perhaps wasn’t “… as knotted up as I thought.” After that, Honey stopped tracking him and included him in her circle of worry. She’d punch her fists into the dough and say, “I don’t understand why his wife didn’t want him. Walking Stick ain’t lazy. Least slackin’ man as I’ve ever seen.”
I said, “Maybe they had words with no feelings.”
Honey said, “Two folks should warm up first, before they talk the vows. Don’t make no sense in the other direction.”
Heavy with child, I sat through much of August’s heat when Laughing Water and his son, Will, arrived, asking for work. Will and his mother suffered from smallpox last winter. She passed, but Will recovered, with scars across his cheeks and throat. After her death, most of his mother’s clan emigrated from Tennessee to Arkansas territory. But the father and son didn’t follow. Instead, they traveled southeast, seeking work in New Echota with their wagon full of farm tools. We were lucky they passed Running Waters.
Rollin took an instant liking to Will, a young man who didn’t think it unmanly to play with a toddling boy. He put Rollin on his shoulders and walked through the tassels of the summer corn. It was a beautiful sight, hearing Rollin shout “Mama,” with his head bouncing above the golden silk bursting through green corn husks. Even though Rollin’s hair was dark and thick, among the corn tassels, the sight reminded me of his Cherokee name. His warbles mixed with belly laughter, trilled high from Will’s shoulders.
Today, I’d risen before the sun, before John, too uncomfortable to sleep beside his tossing and turning. He’d woken me, speaking Cherokee, still asleep. So, still dark, I went downstairs to occupy my mind.
The downstairs parlor became my refuge through many dawns. Clarinda and Rollin were still dreaming in Paradise’s colors, with heavenly names their souls still remembered. At dawn, God spread His golden glow onto the raspberry-red textured wall coverings, with matching toile de Jouy draperies depicting romantic courtship scenes. The circle of my spinning wheel made its own shadowed sun, slanting across the wooden floor. Pearlware stretched its blue-eyed chinoiserie, gleaming in the sunlight from behind the corner cabinet’s walnut-framed glass doors.
Shortly after my morning’s solace, John dressed and came down the stairs, still mumbling in Cherokee.
“Do you want something to eat?” I asked. He shook his head and fixed his tie. I said, “Stop worrying. It will follow as God intends.”
He cocked his head. “Why are you up so early? Go back to sleep.”
“Don’t go yet. I have something for you. Ordered it months ago. Walking Stick picked it up for me in town the other day.” I handed a cane to my husband. “I know you hate to lean, but since they are so distinguished, I thought you might not mind.”
His eyes traced the dark cherry wood and brass handle in his hand. “Even if I lose today, I’ve won more than I deserve, Ani, Gvgeyui.”
“Gvgeyui, Skahtlelohskee.” I straightened his lapel. “Worrying about the vote won’t change it. You’ve done your best. What else could the council ask of you?”
He studied the cane in his hand and tilted his head. “They could think I took bribe money from the Creek and sold their land from underneath them.”
“Yoholo wrote to Ross. He knows what you told him was the truth. Slandering you and Vann was part of McKenney’s plan to get the acreage. It was a lie meant to persuade the Creek and prevent you from helping them. McKenney couldn’t manipulate them when you and Vann were there.”
“I know you’re right. Regardless, I never want to feel such shame again.”
He walked to the end of the room using the cane. He turned around and said, “If I must make a tough decision regarding our land, I don’t want other council members to think I’m motivated by greed.”
“Those who know you—couldn’t.”
I followed him to the stables in my dressing gown while he readied his horse. Once he strapped the saddle around the horse’s girth, he slid his walking cane through one strap. He mounted, rode outside the barn doors, and studied the trees at the edge of the woods.
“Tell Walking Stick, although he’ll know, to expect rain later today. They’ll have to work hard to finish the butchering before it comes.”
I looked up. “The sky doesn’t look so now.”
Atop his horse, he said, “The poplars are showing their silver.”
“I wish I could go with you. Without word, I’ll worry.”
“I’ll be home tonight if I am unelected. But if I am appointed secretary, I’ll be home tomorrow. For once, Ani, pray I’m late.” He smiled with his characteristic one-sided grin and donned his hat.
“I know,” I said, squinting up at him with daylight in my eyes. “You said so in your sleep.”
He touched my face. “I leave my heart to beat for you and the child growing inside you.”
I gripped his hand and held my growing womb with the other. “Take care of mine while you’re gone. I’ll guard yours with my life.” I stayed until his horse found the trail northward to New Echota. He didn’t look back, only around him, seeking advice from the bent trees he knew like the lines on his palm.
It was then I realized how much I loved him. My husband sowed the fertile ground under my feet, washed me with the waters of the Oostanaula, and cooled my head by blowing his breath through my hair. I could stand still because he moved.
After seeing him go, Honey and I woke and dressed the children. Honey arranged a quilt on the floor in the kitchen for them to play while we awaited Quatie’s arrival. I’d written to her, asking for a recipe for cracklings and pig liver. She returned a note, saying she would come herself and spend the day with our hands in raw pork, rosemary, and thyme.
I leaned against the kitchen doorway while the men gathered near the fire. Peter filled each vessel with rainwater from the barrels and placed it on the iron grate above the white coals. Steam poured and blossomed into the blue sky above the smokehouse. Quatie rode into the barn when Clarinda and I were headed toward the henhouse.
Quatie blocked the light coming from the doorway of the chicken coop. She wore orange, with her black hair in braids over her shoulders. She put her hands on her hips and took a deep sigh. When Clarinda saw her, she pulled on my skirt and made a crown, separating thumbs from her joined fingers in a circle, and placed the shape on her head. I put the eggs inside Clarinda’s basket and met my trusted friend, holding the strain from the backache with both hands.
We embraced outside the chicken coop. She looked surprised, placing her hands on the child in my womb. Quatie tilted her head and looked questioningly at me. She didn’t know. In my weakness, I didn’t have the strength to tell her.
“I didn’t want to cause you any more heartsickness. The baby is due this month.”
“Been too long since we’ve seen one another. I am glad for you and John. That man loves you.”
“He better. And Ross? How are you both?”
Quatie didn’t speak but bent to see Clarinda. She touched my daughter’s nose and imitated a child in her arms, saying, “You’ll be a big sister again soon.” Then she reached behind her to give Clarinda a peacock feather. Clarinda waved the teal and golden plume before us as we took hands and walked to the kitchen. When we passed under the shade of the broad oak trees, I glanced at Quatie’s changing face. She dropped any forced effort to smile.
Peter shot the pig, and we jolted, hearing the report while Clarinda continued unfazed, taking careful steps not to crack the fresh eggs laying in her basket.
From the kitchen corner, Rollin stacked blocks on his blanket. Quatie scooped him from the floor and rested his weight on her hip. She kissed his nose. She placed him back on his feet to hand him another peacock feather. He rubbed the kiss away before it dried and waved the feather in the air.
Quatie said, “He still smells like a baby even though he walks.”
I chuckled at her remark. “He runs. He’s only been awake for half an hour. Give him a few minutes, and he’ll either smell like he’s worked in the fields or rolled in cow dung. As you know, it doesn’t take long.” I redirected my attention from her to Rollin, who reached for buckets on hooks beside the kitchen doorway, intentionally placed higher than he could reach.
I looked down at him. “Yes, it’s your turn now, Rollin. Let’s go milk the cows.” I asked Quatie, “Come with us?”
When we walked outside, Walking Stick stepped away from the circle to lift an iron pot of boiling water and douse the pig carcass. After, the men removed the animal’s hair with metal scrapers. Large swatches and tufts of brown hair gathered around each of their feet.
“The smell sours my stomach,” I said, pointlessly turning my head in the opposing direction.
Quatie said, “You look pale. You must eat.” It was the same advice I’d heard from all I’d encountered in the last few days. Without stating the obvious, I was paler than everyone around me.
“I have little appetite,” I said.
Rollin announced our entrance into the barn by stating the obvious. “Cow. Cow.” He pointed his little fingers toward full udders swaying in the stalls. Quatie grabbed a stool near the doorway and hoisted her skirt to sit.
“I’ll do it,” she said. “You’ll tip over if you sit on a stool.”
Rollin wiggled between her legs. She reached around him to place the bucket under the cow. The first squirt spread cow milk on Rollin’s face and made him laugh.
I asked her, “What is the news from town? John only tells me of the men’s business, not the women’s affairs.”
“Harriet Boudinot and Sophie Sawyer have become fast friends. They both talk of little but book learning and saving everyone’s souls. Harriet ministers by playing hymns all afternoon on the piano forte her parents brought her.”
“Yes. We dined with them when they were here.”
Quatie smirked. “Not everyone needs saving, Sarah.” She settled on the stool under the second cow. “Speaking of being saved, Ross aligned himself with the Methodists.”
What might John think of Ross crossing politics and faith? Man’s history records more wars fought by their union than by their separation.
“Does he think doing so will persuade Christian Cherokee not to leave for Arkansas?”
“I could only assume. Ross didn’t say. I overheard Reverend Worcester and Elias Boudinot speaking about their New Testament translations, and one of them said Ross’ name. By the way, they’ve translated through Luke.”
She was so cynical today. I guessed rather than knew its cause. “Is Ross’ eternal soul on your mind, or are you upset because he didn’t tell you?”
She held her breath, then exhaled. “He should have talked to me before making such a decision. Now, I hear it from others. He must be losing the war, asking everyone and anyone to help the Cherokee cause—but me.” She chuckled under her breath to add, “And I wither under his heat.”
Curiosity overwhelmed me with candor. “Why, do you think?”
She looked me in the eye. “Because he’s terrified of being ordinary and unremembered. He’s too Cherokee to be respected by whites and too white to be respected by all Cherokee.”
Rollin sang a squealing song, experimenting with his voice in long and high-pitched moos. Indifferent cows swatted rogue flies with their tails. He reeled backward, falling into Quatie’s chest. When she caught him, I heard her laugh for the first time this morning. Quatie imitated my child’s invented music, straightening her back and shoulders and lifting her chin to moo as loud as Rollin had.
She squeezed him and spoke in his ear. “You will be a speaker someday.”
We returned up the hill to the kitchen with full buckets. Clarinda sat on Honey’s lap at the table, writing on her slate. Clarinda showed me her work when Quatie and I placed the milk buckets beside the door. Clarinda’s English letters for horse was missing the silent “e”. Clarinda pointed to her word with one hand and made a gesture, signaling the flap of the horse’s ears.
Quatie asked, “What is she signing?”
“The same word she’s writing.”
“What a wonder.” Then, Quatie wiped her hands on her dress and asked, “How does she think? She wouldn’t attach meaning to words like other children.”
Honey spoke in my stead. “Clarinda turns her thoughts to pictures. She understands all she sees and fixes da row of letters in her mind to name da thing.”
I said, “John teaches her when he’s home. She sees in both languages.”
“So, Clarinda understands she has two clans,” Quatie gasped, astonished.
“Why wouldn’t Clarinda know she is both Cherokee and English?”
I grabbed a sack of corn ears from the floor and lifted it to the end of the table. The strain pulled my belly muscles, and I wrapped one arm around my stomach, hunching over. It took me a quiet moment before I replied. “Clarinda is more like John than me, with so many gifts of understanding.”
“What don’t you understand?” Quatie asked.
“Most Cherokee talk too fast for me.”
Walking Stick entered the kitchen to hang an iron pot full of skinned pork fat on the hook above the hearth fire.
When he left without a word, Honey said, with sarcasm, “Good morning, Walking Stick.” I imagined she wanted to ask him how he could walk through a room and not greet those standing inside.
She looked at me with wide eyes. “He may not be lazy, but he won’t use what’s in his head. Did he not see us all standin’ here?”
After Honey’s remark, Quatie followed him to the doorway as Walking Stick joined the sounds of grunting men and rattling chains. Looking toward them, Quatie said, “The slaves must be ready to brine.”
“Not slaves,” I clarified.
She faced me with eyebrows raised and shook her head in bewilderment. “How can this farm profit without slaves?”
I passed behind her and poured three cups of cider from the jug. I handed the first to Honey and the second to Quatie. After sipping mine, I said, “Each person at Running Waters is here by choice, earning their wages in trade or coin. They profit from the same sun, water, shelter our family does.”
“The Cherokee have taken slaves as far back as I remember.” Then, thinking but saying no more, Quatie grabbed a hickory paddle to stir the cracklings.
I said, “The poorest—those separated from family and land, including freed slaves—deserve the liberty God has given them. It is not my will to take it from them.”
Quatie raised her tone and her eyebrows, adding pepper to season the boil. “Is this John’s way or yours? His father owns slaves. Thirty, I believe.” She continued, “Your John listens to you?”
I said, “At first, there was nothing we could do to change anything while we lived with Major and Susannah. But after meeting Peter, he saw slavery from a different perspective.”
She replied, “But my husband decreed no freed slaves could live on Cherokee land. Permitting so would only cause more to come and anger whites at losing such property.”
“People aren’t property, Quatie. You know that. Let people believe what they choose.” I began shucking corn, placing the husks inside a muslin sack to dry.
Honey snapped beans in her lap into a wooden bowl. She kept her head bent over the work of her hands. Quatie hadn’t addressed Honey during the conversation, and I couldn’t fault Honey’s need to speak.
“No one says I can’t lives where I want or says what I want. I stay at Runnin’ Waters with Peter, Brother John, Sarah, and des chillern, ‘cause I’m needed. They love me, and I love them. Been taken ‘fore. So’s has Peter. We looks out for one another, keepin’ the lot of us safely in each other’s sights.”
I dropped more husks in the sack and placed another ear of corn on the growing pyramid. “Quatie, no one can stand alone.”
Quatie didn’t stop stirring. She said, “Even if I wanted to advise him, Ross would not listen. I’m the woman who could not bear him a breathing child.” Quatie’s voice wavered, making light of what she said. “He neither forgives nor forgets. Perhaps the Methodists can teach him.” Then, she faced us with the hickory paddle still in her hands, dripping melted fat on the floor. She shrugged her shoulders. “He doesn’t eat or sit at my table. He loves his children and writes to them when he’s away but closes every door to me. Punishment, I suppose.”
The fat crackled behind her, so she returned to stirring while I shucked corn.
I couldn’t see her face. She said, “I miss my mother’s time when women decided important Cherokee matters and attended council to talk to their warrior husbands away from battle. Or they took up guns and fought beside them, like Ghigau, the blessed woman, Nanyihi.1
“Her name meant ‘wanderer’.2 After her husband, Kingfisher, fell to a Creek bullet in a battle, she took his musket and fought in his stead. Some thought her actions were treasonous, but most respected her as a war woman, a blessed woman. Our elders asked Nanyihi to distribute the black drink and advise councils at Old Chota.3
“My mother attended one council where Nanyihi sent a letter. Her daughter came with her mother’s cane and spoke on her behalf. Nanyihi was old by then. They listened to her words like a sacred mother. She advised them not to part with our lands but to enlarge our farms. Grow cotton, and after the harvest, women could weave cloth. Her desire was for our people to make peace with the whites. I don’t know that I agree with that.”4 She apologized over her shoulder. “I’m sorry. The memory is in Cherokee.”
“I understood enough.”
Quatie stared into the fire beneath her. Her dreamy tone stirred her thoughts, searching the iron for generations of Cherokee women past, staring into the firelight for further advice from the matriarch, Nanyihi.
“And da menfolk listened to Nanyihi?” Honey brought Quatie back to the present with her question.
Quatie answered, “It’s an old way, but better. Ross would listen if I were stronger.” She faced me, twisting her neck over her shoulder. “Whites own slaves, so Ross does. His law says no freed slave can hide on Cherokee land. If more knew, they might overrun farms like Running Waters, with too many seeking food and shelter.”
“We try our best to serve all who come to our table.”
“Nanyihi dreamt of a future, one I hope will never come to pass. She saw a great line of our people walking. Babies in their mother’s arms, fathers with small children on their shoulders, and elders with bundles on their backs. In her vision, they marched west with white soldiers behind them, tears dripping onto a trail of corpses.”
The hypothetical tragedy she spoke of invigorated her resentment, and she stirred with renewed fervor. “What would Nanyihi say now about making peace with the whites? What would our living mothers advise? Those who bake, cook, sew, and garden? What would they do if their husbands fell? Are they courageous enough to pick up the guns and fight, as Nanyihi did? Or sit idle and wring their hands and pray. Our mothers’ wisdom cannot be ignored behind closed doors.”
I had no answers to offer. I walked to her and stopped her hands. I held her for as long as it took to feel her arms around me. I wouldn’t let her suffer her trials alone.
I said, “Our husbands will keep that from happening.”
She held me at arm’s length. “Your compassion doesn’t come by force, making others believe as you do, like Harriet Boudinot or Sophie Sawyer.”
When we separated, her tearful eyes found my quiet daughter sitting beside her noisy brother. Quatie knelt beside them and touched Clarinda’s red hair. She looked at me, saying, “It comes to you like Clarinda’s words—by sight. You shelter the squash, so its leaves don’t shrivel from heat. You allow bean vines to wind your stalk, so they don’t rot, lying on the ground.”
Rollin chose this inconvenient moment to toddle toward the open door. He tumbled headfirst down the single step out. I doubted he was hurt, but I hurried to the doorway when he cried. I raised him above my head and into my arms and felt piercing pain. My ears rang. I felt dizzy and swayed on my feet.
Quatie rushed to take Rollin from me.
Honey dropped her bowl of beans to the floor and came to my side. She grabbed my arm and touched my forehead. Her touch was so much warmer than I felt.
Quatie took charge. “Honey, get Sarah some water?”
Honey bent over me and said, “You’re paler than white corn. Stood too long today.”
The kitchen walls were spinning. Quatie spread her fingers along the tightness of my belly.
“We’re fine,” I told the hovering room. “I just moved too quickly, is all.”
I drank Honey’s water and waited for the pain to ease after each quiet sip. It didn’t.
“We have so much to do today,” I said.
Quatie’s natural smile returned. “I believe we’ve added a task only you can finish.”
Honey called Walking Stick, who came to the doorway, wiping his hands on a cloth. After surveying the room, he and Quatie lifted me to stand. Then, with one on either side, they placed their arms underneath mine as we walked toward the stairs.
When I picked up my skirts to step up, the water sack surrounding the child burst, and its liquid soaked my petticoat and stockings. The pool wasn’t clear. Red streaks smeared my white stockings. I closed my eyes and bent forward, gasping with breathtaking pain.