Williams dismissed the militia but did not personally get back to Nashville until five days later—Thursday, April sixteenth. He rode directly to the Nashville Inn.

"Have you heard the news ?" inquired Dan Carter, the clerk.

"What news?" the Sheriff asked.

"General Houston and his wife have separated and she has gone to her father's house." 1

3

Up-stairs Williams found the Governor alone with Dr. John Shelby. Doctor Shelby was a Sumner County man, old enough to be Sam Houston's father. He had known Eliza Allen all her life. Houston looked very tired and very troubled. He had little to say. The separation had occurred, but the cause was something he would never disclose "to a living person."

Williams plead for a word of explanation. He was an old friend, and loyal, but Sam shook his head. The Sheriff withdrew leaving the Governor with Doctor Shelby. Confidences are a part of a doctor's profession.

The Sheriff crossed the street to the court-house. His office was filling with people, as were the other offices and the corridors. Knots of men gathered in the square, every one asking what had come between the Governor and his wife. Reports, hearsay, rumor; hints, whispers, insinuations. The scandal-mongers were feeling their way. Willoughby Williams passed from group to group, and enigmas began to fill his mind.

The thing was serious. From the general drift Williams gathered that Sam Houston had "wronged" his bride. There were no particulars, not one detail that any one knew. But a lady's honor was concerned; if Houston did not furnish particulars, they would spring from the ground.

The Sheriff contrasted the mounting excitement of the crowd with the incomprehensible scene in Houston's apartment.

Willoughby Williams had never seen Sam so shaken before, and they had been boys together in East Tennessee. Together they had gone to the recruiting rally in 1813 when Houston joined the Army. Eighteen months later Willoughby had gone down the wilderness trail to meet the stretcher-bearers who were bringing the wounded Ensign home to die. Williams walked back to the inn to report on the temper of the crowd. His friend must talk, defend himself. The fortunes of the campaign might hinge upon it.

The Governor was with Doctor Shelby as before. He was greatly agitated and striving to control himself, but had revealed nothing.

Williams reported on the state of affairs outside. "I said to him, 'You must explain this sad occurrence to us, else you will sacrifice your friends and yourself.' He replied, 'I can make no explanation. I exonerate this lady [Eliza] freely, and I do not justify myself. I am a ruined man; will exile myself, and now ask you to take my resignation to the Secretary of State.'

"I replied, 'You must not think of it' when again he said, 'It is my fixed determination, and my enemies when I am gone will be too magnanimous to censure my friends.' " 2

The resignation showed careful attention to penmanship. It had been written, written slowly, in Houston's round, readable script. The signature was in a bolder, quicker hand. Williams delivered it to "Genl William Hall"—as the superscription styled him—"Speaker of the Senate, Tennessee."

"Executive Office, Nashville, Tennessee 16 April 1829. "Sir,

"It has become my duty to resign the office of Chief Magistrate of the State, & to place in your hands the authority & responsibility, which on such an event, devolves on you by the provisions of the Constitution.

"In dissolving the political connexion which has so long, & in such a variety of form, existed between the people of Tennessee & myself, no private afflictions however deep or incurable, can forbid an expression of the grateful recollections so emen-

ently due to the kind partialities of an indulgent public.— From my earliest youth, whatever of talent was committed to my care, has been honestly cultivated & expended for the Common good; and at no period of a life, which certainly has been marked by a full portion of interesting events, have any views of private interest or private ambition been permitted to mingle in the higher duties of public trust.—In reviewing the past, I can only regret that my capacity for being useful was so unequal to the devotion of my heart, & it is one of the few remaining consolations of my life, that even had I been blessed with ability equal to my zeal, my country's generous support in every vicissitude of life has been more than equal to them both.

"That veneration for public opinion by which I have measured every act of my official life, has taught me to hold no delegated power which would not daily be renewed by my constituents, could the choice be daily submitted to a sensible expression of their Will;—and although shielded by a perfect consciousness of undiminished claim to the confidence & support of my fellow citizens, yet delicately circumstanced as I am, & by my own misfortunes more than by the fault or contrivance of anyone, overwhelmed by sudden calamities, it is certainly due myself & more respectful to the world, that I should retire from a position which, in the public judgment, I might seem to occupy by questionable authority.

"It yields me no small share of comfort so far as I am capable of taking comfort from any circumstance, that in resigning my Executive charge, I am placing it in the hands of one whose integrity & worth have long been tried; who understands & will pursue the true interests of the State; and who in the hour of success & in the trials of adversity has been the consistent & valued friend of that Great & Good man, now enjoying the triumph of his virtues in the conscious security of a nation's gratitude.

"Sam Houston" 3

In his trial draft of this difficult letter Houston had written, "Overwhelmed by sudden calamities, which from their nature preclude all investigation"* but was sufficiently rational to strike out the inhibitory clause. Powerless to "preclude in-

vestigation," he could nevertheless strive to confuse it by concealing the secret of the "private afflictions . . . deep . . . incurable," which "by my own misfortunes rather than by the fault or connivance of anyone," had precipitated the present extremities.

This resolution Sam Houston sustained through life, whatever the occasion, whatever the cost.

The news that the Governor and his bride had parted flew from tongue to tongue in Nashville, from county to county in the important state of Tennessee. William Carroll's steamboats bore the intelligence down the Cumberland. Pony expresses posted over the mountains to Richmond, Washington and the East. Then came the thunderclap of the resignation by a sensational, enigmatical, vaguely self-accusative letter which concealed more than it disclosed.

Rumors multiplied, but after three weeks the responsible Niles' Register, of Baltimore, could vouch for no dependable "information as to the allusions made in the . . . letter [of resignation]—which while it shows a deeply wounded spirit, manifests a lofty patriotism." The Richmond Inquirer discovered "rumors about Gen. Houston . . . too unpleasant . . . to be repeated. They relate to his domestic misfortunes" and in consequence "he has not only left the governor's chair of Tennessee—but . . . the state . . . forever!" While these stories spread, the Register found "the public curiosity . . . much excited. The papers rather increase than dissolve the mystery, by saying that Gen. Houston has left Nashville and that his destination is the Cherokee Indians."

This uncertainty was more than Tennessee could bear. Rather than believe nothing, under the impulse of careful stimulation it believed the worst. The tongues of scandal hesitated at nothing. Tales of the marriage-bed were bawled from the roof-trees, and Sam Houston was burned in effigy before a howling crowd in the court-house yard at Gallatin. In Nashville there was a great running to cover. Friends of

yesterday, basking in the favor of a favored man, were among the most punctual in their repudiation of the same man, inexplicably ruined.

There was one who seemed to be in a position to obtain an answer to the questions that were on every lip. The prerogatives of the cloth favored Dr. William Hume, who eleven weeks before had joined the Governor of Tennessee and Eliza Allen in marriage. He retained the confidence of both parties to the controversy, and, moreover, his personal curiosity was excited. He was one of the few admitted to the chamber where Houston, in one of his rare allusions to the subject, said he endured "moments which few have felt and I trust none may ever feel again." 5 "I am sorry for him," the clergyman wrote in a private letter after this visit, "and more sorry for the young lady he has left." Doctor Hume also received the latest tidings from Gallatin. Yet, "I know nothing that can be relied upon as true. Tales in abundance . . . but which of the two is the blame I know not." 6

Doctor Hume's visit to the Nashville Inn was by invitation. Sam Houston was not a member of a church. He was called a worldly man, but he believed that "in the affairs of men . . . there must be a conducting Providence." Trouble inspires more reverent thoughts than preachers, but Sam Houston had expressed this belief in Providence when his fortunes were on the rise. "I am more satisfied of this fact when I . . . behold the changes that have taken place with myself. But this advancement is not by the consent of all parties or persons. . . . They smile at me, and seem kind, but like the rose there is a thorn under it." 7 The thorns were now tearing his flesh, and Sam Houston asked Doctor Hume to administer the rite of baptism.

The clergyman promised to take the matter under advisement. He consulted Obadiah Jennings, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, and together they surveyed the situation, "The respectable connections of the lady in Sumner County are much offended." So, taking it all in all, "Mr. Jennings and

myself, to whom he applied to be baptised . . . declined on good grounds, as we think, to comply with his wishes in relation to that ordinance." 8

However, there remained those who were loyal and who believed in the integrity of the man from whom was withheld the consolation of the church. To their entreaties for one word or sign upon which to erect a defense, Sam Houston answered as before: whatever the price of silence, he was prepared to pay it. The suffering man's friends protested that the public could not be satisfied with scruples of conscience. Houston must explain.

"This is a painful, but it is a private affair," replied the ex-Governor. "I do not recognize the right of the public to interfere in it, and I shall treat the public just as if it had never happened." 9

Houston's supporters pointed out that the "respectable connections" of Mrs. Houston were making the affair distinctly a public matter. The growls of the mob in the square could be heard from the windows of the Nashville Inn. Houston was told that the most important moment in life was at hand.

"Remember," said Sam Houston, "that whatever may be said by the lady or her friends, it is no part of the conduct of a gallant or a generous man to take up arms against a woman. If my character cannot stand the shock let me lose it." 10

In the beginning the matter had worn an aspect of private retaliation directed by the Allen family against the man who had "wronged" their daughter. Particulars of the transgression were not forthcoming, but it was enough to understand that the Aliens' white anger was real: this brilliant marriage, upon which a proud family had erected such hopes, a shambles after three months—an Allen woman, pale and trembling at the door of her father's house.

This feudal phase did not last long. The first stirrings of

rumor had been a windfall to the political camp of William Carroll. With the quickness of thought, the "vindication" of Eliza Allen assumed broader proportions, as twin swords in the hands of an enraged family and an embittered politician flashed and fell. Then came the effigy burning. No story was too base. Every fault, every weakness, Sam Houston had ever indulged was magnified into a grave crime, and the silence of the accused was proclaimed to confirm everything.

The news was two weeks reaching Washington. While it was on the way the President decided that the time had come to insure the reelection of Sam Houston as governor of Tennessee. He wrote a letter calculated to remove Carroll from the race and save his face with the offer of a diplomatic post in South America. "It is all that can be done for him." 11 Jackson made the offer, 12 but at that moment Sam Houston was on his way to a place of banishment more remote politically than the Amazon, and his rival declined with thanks the opportunity to represent his country abroad. 13 The triumphant Carroll was feeling comparatively mellow. "That fate of Houston," he wrote to Jackson, "must have surprised you. . . . His conduct, to say the least, was very strange and charity requires us to place it to the account of insanity. I have always looked upon him as a man of weak and unsettled mind . . . incapable of manfully meeting a reverse of fortune." 14

After Doctor Hume had rendered his decision on the baptism, Sam Houston remained locked in his room. A letter phrased with the simplicity of despair indicates his thoughts. "I . . . do love Eliza. . . . That she is the only earthly object dear to me God will bear witness." 13 The Man of Des tiny wished merely to be alone. In the public square outside the whipped-up tempest grew. It swept out of hands, and the mob cried out that Houston was afraid to show himself. Houston ignored it, and after a custom of the day supposed to represent the ultimate insult, he was "posted" as a coward.

The dazed man walked into the square. A few of the steadfast rallied about him, but no one approached to make

the placarded denunciations good. If they had, Sam Houston, who was not a braggart, said that "the streets of Nashville would have flowed with blood." 16

On the twenty-third of April, 1829, Sheriff Williams and Doctor Shelby emerged from the Nashville Inn. Between them walked a tall stranger who had spent the night burning letters in a room. A few others silently fell in behind. The procession descended the steep thoroughfare to the steamboat landing. With one companion the tall stranger boarded the packet, Red Rover, The name he gave Ins fellow voyagers has been forgotten.

"Sic transit gloria mundi" Doctor Hume wrote on the following day. "Oh, what a fall for a major general, a member of Congress and a Governor of so respectable a state as Tennessee !" 17

6

Two men of the Allen family, 18 heavily armed and much excited, boarded the Red Rover at Clarksville. Houston met them and listened to their story that his unexplained departure had given rise to the rumor that he had been "goaded to madness and exile by detecting our sister in crime." The shoe was now on the other foot. Houston was asked to give his written denial to this accusation or to return "and prove it."

He declined to do either, but dropping his pretense of incognito, "in the presence of the captain and these well-known gentlemen," requested his callers to "publish in the Nashville papers that if any wretch ever dares to utter a word against the purity of Mrs. Houston I will come back and write the libel in his heart's blood." The Aliens departed, and had the good sense, for the present, to refrain from giving the newspapers anything more to write about.

That evening Sam Houston patrolled the deck of the Red Rover, "reflecting on the bitter disappointment I had caused General Jackson and all my friends, and especially the blight and ruin of a pure and innocent woman who had entrusted her

whole happiness to me. I was in an agony of despair and strongly tempted to leap overboard and end my worthless life, At that moment, however, an eagle swooped down near my head, and then, soaring aloft with wildest screams, was lost in the rays of the setting sun."

The incident caught the wonderfully sensitive imagination of Houston. "I knew then," he said simply, "that a great destiny waited for me in the West." 19

BOOK TWO

Exile

"My son Gen 1 Houston or The Raven has walked straight. His path is not crooked. He is beloved by all my people." — Oo-loo-te-ka, Head Chief of the Western Cherokees

CHAPTER VIH A Wall to the East

The ex-Governor and his traveling companion left the Red Rover at Cairo. Houston had resumed his incognito and was growing a beard he vowed never to cut. The two bought a flatboat and employed a flatboatman who had two big bear dogs. The dogs would be "company," Houston said. The raft was stocked for a long trip, a young free negro engaged and the four men and two dogs shoved off down the Mississippi.

The companion of Sam Houston's journey into exile is an indistinct figure. Nashville knew him as a roving Irishman with the dust of half Europe on his shoes, who had come temporarily to rest in Tennessee a few months back, charming his way into the select and convivial circle at the Nashville Inn bar. He signed himself H. Haralson, and not until he had gone did Nashville reflect on its meager knowledge of the attractive stranger. En route Houston told his new retainer that he had changed his mind about stopping among the Cherokees and was bound for the Rocky Mountains. This seemed to suit Mr. Haralson, to whom one destination was the same as another.

The travelers took it easily, delaying to fish and hunt in the cane-brakes, as the mood struck the head of the expedition. They avoided towns until reaching Memphis, a scraggling hamlet on the Chickasaw Bluffs, where Houston went ashore. He was recognized, and Nashville received a bulletin on his

P9

progress. At Helena Sam Houston was introduced to James Bowie, of Texas.

The flatboat ascended the Arkansas River to Little Rock, seat of the territorial government and westernmost of American capitals. There Houston discharged the flatboatman and wrote several letters. "I will accept no situation under the Government, nor do I wish anything of you but a continuation of your friendship, and that arises from the proud consciousness that it is merited." 1 This to the President of the United States.

Houston and his servant left Little Rock on horseback. Haralson stayed behind to bring the baggage to the head of navigation on the Arkansas.

Twenty miles from Little Rock was a collection of log houses called Louisburgh where the traveler put up at the residence of John Linton. Like Houston, John Linton was a lawyer, a Virginian and a brooding exile. He spoke Latin like a priest and flattered illiterate frontier magistrates with classical allusions. Whisky helped to blunt memories of a romance connected with his early life and a term in an eastern penitentiary.

When Houston left Louisburgh Mr. Linton, in the performance of a simple courtesy of the frontier, mounted his horse Bucephalus, and escorted his guest one hundred and twenty miles to Fort Smith, the last outpost of civilized life and the principal base for whisky running in the Indian country. Sam and John had enjoyed each other's society and were reluctant to part. They camped in an abandoned hut on the edge of the settlement and stayed for a couple of days, to feast and roll the classics on their tongues. When it came time for John to go, Sam said the occasion should be made memorable. After an exchange of ideas, "a sacrifice to Bacchus" was agreed upon. The decision was to sacrifice the clothes they wore, and Sam's servant built a fine fire in the hut.

Sam opened the ceremony by shying his hat into the flames. When it was consumed the celebrants were, under the rules,

entitled to a drink. John shied his hat in, which made them eligible for another swig. Sam's coat went next, then John's coat, and so on until Sam had nothing more to sacrifice. John stripped off his remaining garment—an undershirt. He threw it in, but almost immediately snatched it back, beat out the fire and started to put it on again. A storm of denunciation from Houston stopped him. John had repudiated a vow. He had angered Bacchus.

Tearing the undershirt from the astonished Linton, Houston dashed it on the sacrificial pyre. Then he turned to his companion to announce that, thanks to his presence of mind, the god had been appeased, but Lawyer Linton was not listen ing. He was asleep.

Whereupon, General Houston composed himself for a nap While he slept, the servant put a fresh outfit of clothing on his master and aroused him sufficiently to get him to mount his horse. The pair were miles beyond the Indian frontier before Houston appreciated what had happened. He declared it a great joke on Linton, a conclusion concurred in by nearly every one else, including Mrs. Linton, one helpmeet who understood a talented husband. 2

2

A rough military road penetrated as far as Cantonment Gibson, but Houston took the old trail following the wild and winding Arkansas River Valley. This path was traveled mostly by Indians. White men used the military road or the snorting little steam packets that made four or five trips a year. The packets towed supplies for Cantonment Gibson and its redoubtable sutler, John Nicks. They carried stocks to the traders about the Three Forks and returned laden with pelts from the "magazins" of the interesting Chouteau brothers who lived in a wilderness because they liked it, and were the chief props in those parts of John Jacob Astor's American Fur Company.

A steamboat picked up Houston and carried him to the

clearing at Webber's Falls near where "Colonel" Walter, or Watt, Webber, a wealthy half-breed trading-post proprietor and official of the Cherokee Nation, had one of his places of business. Cherokee runners outstripped the packet with news of the visitor's identity and a gathering of notables of the Nation was on hand at the Falls.

A stately old Indian advanced and embraced the traveler. "My son," said Oo-loo-te-ka, "eleven winters have passed since we met. ... I have heard you were a great chief among your people. ... I have heard that a dark cloud has fallen on the white path you were walking. ... I am glad of it—it was done by the Great Spirit. . . . We are in trouble and the Great Spirit has sent you to us to give us counsel. . . . My wigwam is yours—my home is yours—my people are yours— rest with us." 3

Oo-loo-te-ka conducted his son over a trail leading to the crest of a knoll that separated the Arkansas River from the Illinois. Here the Chief had built his wigwam in a grove of sycamores and cottonwoods. "Houston has often been heard to say," he wrote in later years, "that when he laid himself down to sleep that night, he felt like a weary wanderer returned at last to his father's house." 4

3

Oo-loo-te-ka did not speak irreverently when he said that Providence had sent The Raven to help his adopted people. He-Puts-the-Drum-Away was an old man now, and a trifle stout. He felt the weight of his years and of his responsibilities. His ablest counselor, the fiery old Ta-kah-to-kuh, had recently died, leaving him alone to grapple with problems that seemed beyond his powers.

These difficulties had their origin in East Tennessee, the heart of the Cherokee homeland, where Oo-loo-te-ka was born. In his youth the Nation had been at peace. Cherokees were neither nomadic nor warlike, as Indians go, and perhaps they

were the most intelligent of all the North American tribes. Their formal relations with the white race began when they welcomed Oglethorpe and his respectable paupers to Georgia in 1733. With unaccustomed tact the British recognized the independence of the Cherokee Nation and received its ambassador at the Court of St. James's. This attention gained the Crown an American ally in 1775.

Oo-loo-te-ka was a boy of ten when his older brother, Tah-lhon-tusky, took the war-path on the British side of the Revolution. At the close of the war, the United States negotiated separately with the Cherokees. The young white republic was in serious straits and needed peace on its frontier at almost any price. The price the Cherokees set was reasonable. They ceded a small amount of territory and their political status remained as before, the United States recognizing the sovereign character of the "Cherokee Nation of Indians." Boundaries were fixed to include most of what is now Middle and East Tennessee, the northeastern corner of Alabama, northern Georgia, a small bit of the western Carolinas and a pocket in south central Kentucky; with the provision that "if any citizen of the United States . . . shall attempt to settle on any of the [Cherokee] lands ... or having already settled and will not remove from the same within six months after the ratification of this treaty, such person shall forfeit the protection of the United States, and the Indians may punish him or not as they please."

But when the white nation began to get on its feet, confident settlers overran the Cherokee border and usurped the Indians' lands. The Cherokees forebore exercising their right to punish whites "as they please," and conscientiously protested the invasion. Washington negotiated again; the Cherokees yielded, and a new boundary was fixed farther back in the woods.

Whites poured over the new boundary. A cry of protest again came from the wilderness, but all except the highest national authorities winked at the violation. The Cherokees

began to put white intruders to death. The whites retaliated by pushing their blockhouses farther into the invaded territory. The Indians crossed the United States boundary and raided settlements. In 1788 Jim Houston's Fort in East Tennessee repulsed a foray with the loss of one white man who imprudently exposed himself above the stockade. A few weeks later the Cherokees killed Jim's son, Robert, along with seventeen other settlers who had ventured outside the confines of the fort to pick apples. This was the Apple Orchard Defeat famed in East Tennessee frontier history. Sam Houston had heard the story of it many times—from both sides.

The Cherokees appealed to the United States to help them stop hostilities. Secretary of War Knox said that the Indians were in the right and the whites in the wrong, but nothing was done.

4

More treaties, "final" cessions and "solemn" guarantees, And the Cherokees lost by each negotiation. The time came when the Indians could no longer fight to establish their rights, the whites having become the stronger party.

In 1809 Oo-loo-te-ka's brother, Tah-lhon-tusky, decided on a radical policy. With a few hundred followers, he crossed the Mississippi and, to be out of the white man's reach for ever, marched westward for thirty days through the uninhabited wilderness and constructed his lodges on the banks of the Arkansas. There he enjoyed a few years of comparative tranquillity.

But there was no tranquillity in the East. Settlers continued to invade the Indian domain. Agents of the Federal Government appeared among the chiefs and headmen, bribing, intimidating and distributing whisky. The treaty of 1816, by which they relinquished extensive holdings in Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama, was followed by the treaty of 1817, by which additional land in Tennessee was exchanged for territory in the West adjacent to that settled by Tah-lhon-tusky.

There was more than the usual resentment over the cession of 1817, and Lieutenant Sam Houston, First Infantry, played an important role in the program of duplicity that sent his foster-father on his way and temporarily mollified Tah-lhon-tusky, whose days of serenity in his self-sought western paradise were at an end.

In the West Oo-loo-te-ka tussled with one difficulty after another. An impoverishing warfare was kept up with the Osages. The hunting-grounds to the westward were disputed by the savage Pawnees and Comanches. The government had failed to run lines that would settle these questions. Its agents grew rich at their wards' expense. The American Fur Company interpreted treaties as it pleased. The Territory of Arkansas was organized, the Cherokee lands being included in the territorial domain and a white justice of the peace given authority over the sovereign tribesmen.

Tah-lhon-tusky died, and Oo-loo-te-ka was elected principal chief of the western Cherokees. The local whites clamored for the eviction of the Indians from Arkansas. Government agents pressed Oo-loo-te-ka to consent to another treaty and remove still farther west. The old Chief pondered the matter. What use to remove or to make paper talks when the white brother's word was never kept? Why not stay and settle the issue here?

Oo-loo-te-ka was assured that this move would be the last. The Cherokees would not be disturbed again. The United States would bind itself to give "the Cherokee Nation of Indians ... a permanent home, and which shall, under the most solemn guarantee of the United States be and remain theirs forever . . . never, in all future time . . . embarrassed by having . . . placed over it the jurisdiction of a Territory or State." Oo-loo-te-ka's people were to get fifty thousand dollars indemnity cash down and two thousand dollars annually for three years. But still Oo-loo-te-ka hesitated. He sent The Black Fox to Washington to negotiate for the fulfillment of past treaties, but the white diplomats

got around him and the Indian negotiator signed the removal treaty in May of 1828.

5

However embarrassed by the unauthorized action of The Black Fox, Oo-loo-te-ka accepted the compact as binding and prepared to fit the new situation into a scheme which he had been cautiously maturing.

The eastern Cherokees were in the throes of a controversy with the state of Georgia to prevent their deportation to the West. In the voluminous history of intercourse between the Indian and white races, nothing reflects so little credit upon the latter as the case of the Georgia Cherokees. Indifferent as the sentiment of the day was to the rights of an Indian, there was a popular outcry of sympathy for the Cherokees. This, however, did not hinder the Georgia Legislature, which annulled federal treaties and, in effect, licensed the murder of Indians.

Oo-loo-te-ka had lost much of his earlier naivete. He accepted bribes without compunction when by doing so he was that much ahead. He thought his eastern brethren unwise not to follow his example. The whites would have their way anyhow. He sent James Rogers to the Old Nation with a message.

"I am now advanced in years & . . . have studied a great deal to find out a plan to save our people from wasting & destruction. . . . We are now to be settled beyond all the settlements of white people, and there is no reason to fear that the whites will ever penetrate beyond us in consequence of the grand prairie, unless they go beyond the Rocky Mountains. My plan is to have . . . our brothers of the old nation . . . remove to this country. ... If they wish to become independent . . . now is the time and the only time. . . . Let us unite & be one people and make a wall to the east which shall be no more trodden down or ever passed by whites. . . . Thus may we plan for our posterity for ages to come & for the scattered remnants of other tribes. . . . Instead of being

remnants & scattered we should become the United Tribes of America . . . [and] preserve the sinking race of native Americans from extinction." 5

This interesting appeal excited' no enthusiasm among the idealistic easterners. The ambassador was coldly received. He was informed that the Cherokees had a right to keep their Georgia homes and meant to keep them. Oo-loo-te-ka was denounced as a deserter of the fatherland.

Envoy Rogers returned to the Arkansas Valley to find that his wife, Susy, had eloped with the hired man.

CHAPTER IX

The Indian Theater

With an Irishman's impulse to tell somebody something, Mr. Haralson reported the postponement of Houston's Rocky Mountain expedition to the Secretary of War, 1 thus innocently sharpening the concern that Jackson already felt over his old lieutenant's presence in the West. Washington had not been without intimations of the imperialistic notions of Oo-loo-te-ka. In view of the reckless state of Houston's mind and his known attachment for the plotting Chieftain, Jackson took steps to learn something more of the ex-Governor's activities. But whatever measures he might take to contravene Sam Houston, the suspected conspirator, the staunch heart of Jackson ached for his friend. "Oh, what a reverse of fortune," he wrote to him. "Oh, how unstable are human affairs !" 2

The arrangements Sam Houston made for his sojourn in the Cherokee country did seem rather elaborate for the simple seasonal stop-over mentioned to Mr. Haralson. He had destroyed his civilized clothes, changed his name and renounced the English tongue. As an instrument of the gods, The Raven, in breech clout and turkey feathers, was a more plausible figure than a general in broadcloth and a cravat. But irrespective of the political significance that might be read into the transformation of the man who six weeks before had been considered an aspirant for the presidency, it represented an essentially personal desire to shut another door against the past.

Runners carried the news of The Raven's return to the remotest creek within the bounds of the Cherokee Nation, West, as Oo-loo-te-ka called his domain. Barely had Sam Houston time to correct the superficial details of his reincarnation before visitors began to ascend the trail and fill the cluster of log huts that comprised the residence of Oo-loo-te-ka. From each of the seven clans came distinguished men: Big Canoe and Black Coat, Watt Webber, Little Tarrapin, Young Elder, Old Swimmer and many others, some with their squaws and children, perhaps recalling The Raven's popularity with such society.

Oo-loo-te-ka's means were equal to costly house parties. "His wigwam was large and comfortable, and he lived in patriarchal simplicity and abundance. He had ten or twelve servants, a large plantation, and not less than five hundred head of cattle. The wigwam of this aged chieftain was always open to visitors, and his bountiful board was always surrounded by welcome guests. He never slaughtered less than one beef a week, throughout the year, for his table—a tax on royalty, in a country, too, where no tithes are paid." 3

During the week of the celebration of The Raven's homecoming many beeves were slaughtered—not that this mattered to the host, who had other affairs on his mind. Oo-loo-te-ka was concerned with the impression The Raven should make upon the tribal leaders, and on this score the chief must have been pleased with his son.

The Raven presented himself extravagantly arrayed in the raiment of the "blanket and rifle party" as old Ta-kah-to-kuh had christened the wing of the Nation that stood for the preservation of the ancient traditions. He had shaved his face except for a mustache and goatee. His chestnut hair was plaited in a long queue. He wore a white doeskin shirt, brilliantly worked with beads. Leggings of elaborately ornamented yellow leather extended to his thighs. On his head was sometimes a circlet of feathers, sometimes a turban of figured silk. Over his shoulders was negligently thrown a bright blanket, more decorative than needful in the soft June air. 4

The tall and commanding figure of The Raven moved through a gallery of tall, commanding men, saluting the elders with deference, embracing the younger ones with whom he had hunted and played as a boy on Oo-loo-te-ka's island. He flattered his former sweethearts on their good looks, their pretty shawls and the aptitude of their children. The Chero-kees were a lively and warm-hearted race, fond of colors and dearly loving a fete such as this. Groups laughed and sang and strolled about the shady grove on the bluff, the vivid reds and yellows of their garments flinging animated patterns against the foliage. An army of dogs bedeviled the negroes who did the cooking. Tethered horses switched flies and ate grass.

A note of gravity tempered the merrymaking. The fiesta was to dissolve into a meeting of the General Council of the Nation, before which serious matters would come for consideration. Already, while the young ones frolicked, the headmen of the seven clans sat apart in a circle and passed the ceremonial pipe. The Raven sat with them and heard politics discussed with little reserve. He listened attentively and said very little. Not even to Oo-loo-te-ka did he confide all that was passing in his mind.

2

There was much for The Raven to absorb and to reflect upon. If they were to stem the tide of adverse fortune which had run so perseveringly against them, the time had come for the Cherokees to formulate a national policy and to follow it. Oo-loo-te-ka's daring proposal to unite the western Indians and build a wall to the east was one suggestion. A dream of empire fetched from the resolute past made glorious by Pontiac and by Tecumseh! And why not? The Indian deserved to live. To preserve him by these means entailed a desperate hazard, but The Raven was in a desperate mood, with little to lose and forgetfulness to gain.

The success of this plan, or of any plan, required a degree of harmony in the tribal councils which did not exist. The Cherokees were divided, first, on their Osage war policy, and second, on a general question of culture—whether to study more carefully the white man's arts, or to discard them altogether in favor of a vigorous renaissance of the ways of the fathers.

The two issues were interwoven. The primary migration to the West under Oo-loo-te-ka's brother, Tah-lhon-tusky, had been for the stated purpose of evading the influences of civilization. His minister of war, Ta-kah-to-kuh was the soul of this policy. This snorting old reactionary had kept the Osage war going for years, and Indians who favored missionaries, schools or civilization in any particular were targets for his delicious satire.

When first Tah-lhon-tusky and then Ta-kah-to-kuh died, many Cherokees, freed from the influence of such strong personalities, began to reflect that the advantages of the Osage war were hard to discover. The war party, therefore, considered abandoning the cause against the Osages, preferring to make allies of them and, with the Creeks, the Choctaws, Shaw-nees and Delawares, swoop upon the Comanches and Pawnees, the wild plains Indians to the westward. The prize in the new war program was a portion of the western prairie, an excellent hunting-ground, which the United States had promised but had not delivered to the Cherokees. Oo-loo-te-ka opposed this projected tribal war as disastrous to his larger design of an Indian confederation.

On the question of culture, the old Chief had weighed the gains derived from civilization against the losses. The gains were cloth, gunpowder and some notions of agriculture. The losses were whisky and a tendency to forget the weapons and the ways by which the Cherokees had become one of the proudest of Indian peoples, to decline within living memory, dependent upon the white man, the author of all their woes. Despite his cross affixed to the policy letter written in 1817 by

Lieutenant Houston or some other white official connected with the diplomacy of the Cherokee exodus, Oo-loo-te-ka was no evangelist of civilization.

But the old gentleman possessed a great deal of tact. He had adopted the English name of John Jolly, which he used in his intercourse with white officials and with his pro-civilization brethren in Georgia. This concession worked two ways, however. An old-time Cherokee regarded his name as a part of his person, as much as his eyes or his teeth—consequently, the great respect for his pledged word or for treaties he had signed. His religion taught him that by calling maledictions upon his name, an enemy might injure him as surely as by shooting an arrow into his flesh. Indians got around this by giving themselves additional names that did not count with the gods. It may be for this reason that Powhatan and Pocahontas are known in history by assumed names.

He-Puts-the-Drum-Away was a shrewd old man, and his people profited by his shrewdness. He trimmed his sails on the civilization issue so as to satisfy the majority of his people and the United States Government as well. The Cherokees no longer painted their faces or wore the scalp-lock, but the personal example of their western leader, their isolation and the revival of the fall hunt, had a tendency which all the good works of the missionaries failed to overcome.

Yet there were gaps in the successes of Oo-loo-te-ka. Much had been staked on the treaty of 1828 wherein -the United States had made such unambiguous pledges of fulfillment. The Cherokees had carried out their pledges and removed into the unorganized wilderness beyond the western border of Arkansas. But with the United States it was the old story of promises unredeemed: the indemnity had not been paid; boundaries delineating the Cherokees lands had not been run; rations to tide the people over until they could make a crop and organize their hunts had not been distributed. The United States agent was growing rich, and white settlers refused to vacate Indian lands.

The Cherokees felt baffled and bitter, and the dramatic ap-

pearance of The Raven seemed to them genuinely an act of Providence. There was a disposition to forget family differences and accept his leadership.

As the celebration at Oo-loo-te-ka's progressed, word of the arrival of Houston, the protector of oppressed Indians, spread among the other tribes. This interested the Indian agents, the white traders and squatters, the Army officers at Cantonment Gibson and the Governor of Arkansas. The trusted few who were in the secret endorsed the action of President Jackson, who had ordered a surveillance of Sam Houston's* movements.

Consequently the session of the Grand Council that was to follow Oo-loo-te-ka's hospitality became a matter of more than local interest. Colonel Arbuckle, the Commandant at Cantonment Gibson, accepted Oo-loo-te-ka's invitation to attend. But nothing happened for all this anticipation. When the council met, The Raven did not even appear. He was, indeed, many miles away. Possibly for this reason, Colonel Arbuckle remained away and sent Captain Bonneville and Lieutenant Phillips of the garrison.

"My Young Friends," read the memorandum that Oo-loo-te-ka handed the officers, "I invited my son Governor Houston here to listen to what I had to say on this subject but my son had promised to attend a council of my Neighbors the Osages and could not come. I must do the best I can without him." 5

For the rest, the council proved a tame affair, being merely a recital of tribal suffering due to the non-fulfillment of the treaty of 1828. Two bored junior officers retraced their way toward the dreary palisades of Gibson.

The Raven's withdrawal from the festival in his honor and his disappointing absence from the council had what one will recognize as the Houstonian touch. Much of the glamour

that followed Sam Houston through life arose from the simple fact that he seldom stayed too long in one place.

What had happened now? To provide a suitable climax for Oo-loo-te-ka's entertainment was simply a matter of seizing an opportunity to do the right thing at the right moment.

Into Oo-loo-te-ka's garden party had ridden an Osage scout. Mounted on a pony whose rawhide bridle was? innocent of the least decoration, he presented a striking contrast with the volatile Cherokees in their fete attire. His head was close-cropped, save for a bristling ridge that stood up like the crest of a helmet and a scalp-lock hanging behind; arms bare and body bare to the waist; breech clout, leggings and moccasins well-worn and without ornament. There were ladies present who had never seen an Osage scout before, but they had heard dark stories of what rakes they were—they and their half-breed Creole squaws.

With an economy of words the haughty newcomer identified himself as a courier of Auguste Chouteau, who sent his respects to John Jolly and a message to General Houston. Before the crowd could grasp it, The Raven and Mr. Haralson had ridden away with the arresting stranger.

They followed him into the heart of the Osage country, more than one hundred miles by horse-path up the wooded Arkansas and Six Bull River Valleys, where the hills left off, disclosing a "pleasant country—looks like park land." Here stood a large "white log house Piazza surrounded by trees." In front of the house ran a "beautiful clear river. Groups of Indian nymphs half naked on the banks." Visitors to the solitary estate were rare. "Old negro runs to open gate— mouth from ear to ear—Group of Indians round trees in court yard roasting venison—Horses tether[ed] near—negroes run to shake hand and take horses. Some have handkerchief around head—Half breed—squaws—negro girls running & giggling. Horses, dogs of all kinds—hens flying and cackling, wild turkeys, tamed geese. Piazza with Buffalo skin thrown over railing. [Powder] Horns with guns—rifles." 8

Thus the discovery of the wilderness abode of Monsieur Chouteau as penciled on the spot by Washington Irving, who made its acquaintance three years later. At the gate, or somewhere along the trail, General Houston was met by Monsieur Chouteau, a dark-skinned man in linen riding breeches who spoke the faultless English of a well-educated foreigner.

Twenty years in the wilderness and on the plains had not altered the salon manners of Auguste Pierre Chouteau, who was then only forty-three. His father was one of the founders of the French outpost of St. Louis. The subsequent rise of the house of Chouteau to the dominating position in southwestern trade illustrates the truism that the Indian regarded the French as his natural friend and the English as his natural enemy. Auguste became the most influential man, white or red, beyond the frontier south of the Missouri River and west to Spanish territory. His ascendency over the Osage Indians was complete, and his influence with the other tribes stronger than that of any white man until Sam Houston came. He was one of the founders of the Santa Fe Trail. His alliance was sought and gained by John Jacob Astor. Monsieur Chouteau had one wife in St. Louis and two wives in the Osage country who presided over the domicile Mr. Irving dismissed as a "house formed of logs, a room at each end. An open hall with staircase in the center. Other rooms above. In the two rooms on ground floor two beds in each room, with curtains. Whitewashed log walls—tables of various kinds, Indian ornaments &c."

Mr. Irving was too new to the frontier to be sufficiently impressed. The residence of Auguste Chouteau was the most imposing one between the Missouri border and Santa Fe. Sam Houston enjoyed it there and returned often.

"Supper, venison stakes—roast beef, bread, cakes, coffee. Waited on by half breed sister of Mr. Chouteau's concubine Adjourn to another room, pass through open Hall

in which Indians are seated on floor. They come into the

room—two bring chairs—the other seats himself on the floor with knees to his chin—another Indian glares in at the window. . . . Dogs & cats of all kinds strolling about the Hall or sleeping among harness at one end of the piazza. In these establishments the world is turned upside down—the slave the master, the master the slave. The master has the idea of property, the latter the reality. The former owns, the latter enjoys it. The former has to plan & scheme and guard & economize—the latter . . . cares nothing how it comes or how it goes." 7

Mr. Irving was somewhat right about that, for Auguste Chouteau had adopted a fashion of living that in ten years was to send him to his grave practically a penniless man. A career of profitable adventure had suddenly palled and Auguste had surrendered to a passion for ease. Preferring life beyond the frontier to other modes of living he had known, he built the comfortable house on the Six Bull River for his Osage helpmeets, Rosalie and Masina. He brought out a carriage from St. Louis. He built a race-track. He engaged a tutor for his half-breed children, gave them his name and had them received into the church by the Jesuit missionary to the tribe.

Nominal leadership is a bright toy, the delights of which only the nurseries of civilization know. In three years the unique domain that Auguste Chouteau had gathered into his capable hands had begun to fall away. There was still time to recoup by energetic action, but Monsieur Chouteau had no thought of deserting his country seat for fields of energetic action. He had seen enough of that for any ten men. He might, however, send a chosen successor on the highroad under a favored aegis. This fact seems to have given a practical cast to his hospitable invitation to Houston.

Sam Houston spent several days at the big house by the Six Bull, and the conversation of his host brightened the horizon of possibilities open to an ambitious man in the Indian theater.

These pleasant discussions were interrupted, noted Mr. Haralson, by the arrival of "a parcel of the Osage Indians at Colonel Shouteau's." The Indians said that their agent was stealing their annuities, another instalment of which was due. "They had concluded," continued Haralson, "not to go to receive their annuity but hearing that some strangers were in the country (which was us) they came to see us. They insisted that Genl Houston . . . and myself go with them to the agency. We told them we would go and see what passed between them and their agent." 8

The Osage Agency, in charge of John F. Hamtramck, was at the Three Forks, as they called the place where the Verdigris, Six Bull and Arkansas Rivers came together about fifty miles below Chouteau's establishment. The agency was a part of the nameless settlement that had grown up around the trading-post of the Creole, Joseph Bogy, who came to the Three Forks in 1807. The importance of the place had grown steadily and Sam Houston saw perhaps thirty log houses strung along a clearing by the Verdigris opposite a waterfall.

The settlement was important as a station of the American Fur Company, whence the trappers worked westward, laying their snares along the creeks and bartering for skins among the Indians. An Indian thus drawn into business relations with Mr. Astor was advanced equipment and supplies on credit at a net profit to the fur company of about one hundred per cent. When he brought in his catch at the end of the season he discharged this obligation in pelt currency at something near half the figure the hides would bring in the market. If, as often happened, the catch was insufficient to liquidate the account for supplies, an Indian would begin his second season with a debt over his head as an incentive to industry.

Trappers came to the village to deliver their skins, square their accounts and cultivate the amenities. There were soldiers off duty from Cantonment Gibson and an occasional white derelict who drifted in and then drifted out; also a few permanent residents who lived quietly respectable lives, like Nathaniel

Pryor, an honest old soldier who had been to the Pacific Ocean with Lewis and Clark, and had taken a squaw and settled down to ignore a civilization that had used him shabbily. Captain Pryor had tried trading but could not make it pay, lacking the finesse of Hugh Glenn and Colonel Hugh Love, prominent among the Anglo-Saxon contingent of Arkansas River merchants who had their establishments at the Three Forks. The largest trading store in the place was still owned by Auguste Chouteau, and managed by his half-brother, Paul. The Creek and the Osage tribal agencies contributed their personnel to the society of the community, which with its negro slaves, Indian mistresses and the mixed-breeds of various crossings, led a free-and-easy life facilitated by a patois of French, English, Osage, Creek and an occasional idiom from the Spanish.

Into this milieu rode Sam Houston, moved by a disposition of inquiry. The austere Osages were present in large numbers. The friendly house of Chouteau had early won their loyalty, mainly by keeping their exploitation within bounds. The Creole influence upon them became such that when the United States purchased Louisiana the Osage chief, Big Track, refused to recognize the change of sovereignty until the Chou-teaus approved.

After that changes were rapid. The Cherokees and other tribes were thrust westward. Agents were appointed to administer the affairs of the Osages and to pay them for the lands they had relinquished. The Anglo-Saxons came and plundered, and the easy Creole regime developed a prevalence of murder, venereal disease, incest, drunkenness and starvation. Or such was the observation of a Presbyterian missionary who visited the tribe shortly before Sam Houston. 9

Nevertheless, two generations of debauchery had failed to efface the singular native dignity of the race. With their magnificent copper-colored bodies two-thirds bare, the Osages sauntered about the agency with an air of impoverished noblemen in a world of affluent parvenus. For all that, they looked

to the elegantly tricked-out white counselor of the Cherokees for protection, which was a strange pass of affairs for an Osage who had fought the Cherokees for twenty years and deferred to no white man on earth save a Chouteau.

The decline of the Creole leader's prestige was hastened by John Hamtramck, the agent, a strong-willed man who had been quick to take advantage of the retirement of Auguste. As Mr. Hamtramck controlled the tribal purse strings, his overtures proved more than some of the tribesmen could resist. Lately he had captured the friendship of the first Chief, White Hair. The body of the tribe, however, stood with the inactive Chouteau—and paid the penalty. Many were actually hungry when the appearance of Sam Houston gave them hope.

The coming of Houston created a problem for Mr. Hamtramck. He took counsel with his colleague, David Brearley, the agent of the Creeks, with Trader Hugh Love and others content with the status quo.

"At the last annuity Genl Houston was there," Paul Chouteau wrote to a cousin in Washington, Colonel Charles Gratoit of the Army. "Mr. Brannin [the blacksmith at the Three Forks] and Carble all called upon him and beged him if he could render them any aid to do so for they had despaired of receiving any from Mr. Hamtramck." From them Houston heard tales of outrages by hungry Indians against the stock and property of the white residents. It was charged that the agent had encouraged this sort of thing by joining the Osages on their hunts and stimulating their "Savage Propensities." "But ..." continued Mr. Chouteau, "the Agent had a powerful inducement to this, he had become enamoured of a young woman, a relation to the principal chiefs and warriors." To advance his suit with this well-connected damsel Mr. Hamtramck had "lavished favors" upon her male relatives "and made offers of la[r]ge bounties but . . . failed of success."

During a hunt Mr. Hamtramck "bribe [d] a Warrior called the Iron, a brother to Bel Oiseau (Fine Bird), one of the

principal chiefs of the Band, to accompany him to the lodge where the young woman slept. ..." The writer's description of what followed left little to his correspondent's imagination. The young lady declined to be possessed in any such violent fashion, however, and after a furious scuffle she "repulsed" the ardent agent who "skulked from the lodge."

But a faint heart "After that failure he commenced

negociation with White Hair for one of His Wives Whom he had not taken to bed, obtained her, and now keeps her publicly at the Agency. . . . His squaw is displayed on all public occasions loaded with wampum and decorated with trinkets and a Green Mantle Set off with Silver Lace. This is a great cause why the indians are dissatisfied. . . . They are suspicious enough to believe that their annuity is appropriated in part to purchase the finery that drapes Mr. Hamtramck's squaw." 10

Sam Houston was suspicious also, but for the present confined himself to the formality of signing a petition to Colonel Arbuckle suggesting that Hamtramck be superseded as agent by Paul Chouteau.

From the Three Forks settlement Houston moved on to Cantonment Gibson, five or six miles away, where he remained for two weeks. By this time the curiosity of the whole region was excited. Officers' ladies stood guard at their cheerless windows for a glimpse of the romantic figure, envying, not for the first time in their lonely lives, plump and pleasing Sallie Nicks, the sutler's wife, who served the visitor with refreshments. Houston's actions were observed and his letters intercepted. Beyond the fact that he drank heavily, appeared to be getting on good terms with Colonel Arbuckle and seemed never to go to bed, little was learned.

Matthew Arbuckle was a good-natured bachelor in his fifties who liked his dram. An old frontier campaigner, he appreciated the boon of a caller and welcomed Houston with the

courtesies due a former officer of the Regular service and a friend of the President.

The hospitality of Colonel Arbuckle was interrupted by another windfall for The Raven when the most "impressive" delegation of Indians ever seen on the Arkansas appeared unannounced at the cantonment gate. The "full council" of the Creek Nation, with clerk and interpreter, had come to request an audience with Colonel Arbuckle—and General Houston. The spokesman was Roly Mcintosh, a son of the late Chief William Mcintosh, of Georgia, who had kept his followers in hand during the War of 1812 and had joined Jackson in the campaign against the Alabama Creeks under the pro-British Weathersford. Roly Mcintosh handed Arbuckle and Houston a document of nine pages.

"To General Andrew Jackson President of the United States Council Ground of the Western Creeks 22d June 1829

"The Chiefs, Headmen & Warriors of the Creek Nation . . . cannot overlook the unhappy situation in which they are placed, and deeply impressed with their misfortunes . . . Complain to a Man whose ears have always been open. . . .

"General Jackson knows the Circumstances under which we emigrated to this country; He heard the groans of the Mackintosh Party in the old Nation . . . and he told us to come to this country.—In War and in Peace we have always taken his Counsel; In coming to this Country an agent was given us. . . . That agent has not tried to make us happy.—■ He has done bad things toward us. . . . We will state the causes of our Sorrows.—

"1st Col Brearly has failed to pay us the bounty promised us by the Treaty and we have reason to believe that the money was placed in his Hands. . . .

"3d He has Connived at the introduction of spiritous liquors into Creek Nation. . . .

"4th He has speculated on the Necessities of the Indians through his Clerk by permitting him to sell flour to the Indians at the enormous price of $10 the barrell.

"5th Intoxication and disrespectful language to the Chiefs. ..."

The complaints against Agent Brearley contained eleven specifications. Summing up, "the Chiefs feel Sensible that Col Brearly does not Regard them or their people in the light contemplated by the Government and that his Sole object is speculation." They asked the removal of Brearley, but did not want John Crowell, the eastern Creek agent, transferred west in Brearley's stead. They had heard that this was contemplated. But surely "Genl Jackson would not make us so unhappy. . . . He has not forgotten the_ Murder of Mackintosh.—He knows that his blood yet lies on the ground un-buried. Mackintosh was a Warrior of Genl Jackson's.—The Genl told him he would protect him, but Jackson was far off— Col Crowell near at hand. He whispered to the enemies of Mackintosh—he pointed at him and he perished. . . . We Hope Genl Jackson will not make us miserable and that he will keep this man from amongst us." 11

"He whispered to the enemies of Mackintosh—he pointed at him and he perished"—written by an unhappy tribal scribe fumbling through the great haystack of English for words to express his meaning, rather than to contrive an effect of style. The Indian was a natural stylist. A scholarly Jesuit once wrote to Paris that the first orators of France would not despise some of the addresses he had heard from the lips of savage chieftains.

The apprehension of the western Creeks that Crowell might be foisted upon them had a basis. The eastern Creeks were doing their best to get Jackson to send Crowell away: "Father listen, we beseech you to hear us. Col Crowell has been the Agent for this nation a good many years . . . and there has been large sums of money appropriated to pay the Creek Nation [for ceded lands]. His Brother Thomas Crowell has been a Merchant during the whole time and from the various large sums of money we have received but a small proportion. . . . They have become immensely rich and we have become poor, although the agents accts. and vouchers may appear to the Genl Government to be fair and equitable. But

THE INDIAN THEATER 113

Father listen, you know that we do not understand keeping accounts of such magnitude. . . . We cannot resist the belief that He has defrauded the Creek Nation of large sums of money and Father ... we have lost all confidence in the agent and his brother the Merchant and it can never be restored. . . . Father listen to Your red Children, we wish you to remove Coin. John Crowell from the office of I. A. of this Nation and order Him and his brother from the confines of the Creek Country." 12

Having read the Mcintosh memorial and witnessed its signing, Houston cultivated the acquaintance of the distinguished Creeks who were present. The following day Roly Mcintosh placed the memorial in Houston's hands to send to General Jackson, explaining that previous petitions entrusted to official channels had not reached their destination. Houston forwarded the document with a personal note saying that the complaints deserved investigation. The President could then determine what remedy would be necessary to restore the confidence of the Indians and quiet the angry feelings of the different tribes toward each other. 13

6

The closing lines of Houston's letter broached a matter that disturbed Colonel Arbuckle. The question of peace was in delicate balance. Arkansas was mobilizing militia. Events seemed to move toward a general war, which the United States must avert at all hazards. Houston was willing to assist, writing to Secretary Eaton that the War Department's latest gesture of sending troops to guard the Santa Fe Trail would be a local and temporary remedy at best. The real trouble was a war that had been going on for years among the various plains tribes that were little known to white men. Houston suggested a mission to compose the differences among these savages which, he said, could "be easily affected by . . . some man who understands the character of Indians. ... I beg leave

to present the name of Colonel Augustus Chouteau. ... I would with great pleasure accompany him . . . but will not accept any compensation for my services as the duty would recreate my mind." 1 *

But the restless exile found recreation for his mind sooner than he anticipated and nearer to hand than the Santa Fe Trail. The Cherokee war party was getting on with its scheme to make an alliance with neighboring tribes and fall upon the Pawnees and Comanches. A party of belligerent Creeks had been approached. The whole project was to be threshed out at a war-dance to take place on the Bayou Menard in the Cherokee country. So swiftly and secretly had the conspiring Cherokees worked that the news did not reach Cantonment Gibson until the braves were on their way to the rendezvous. Anything could happen. From Canada to the Gulf the frontier Indians were suspicious and discontented. On the plains war existed, and troops had been ordered thither. A spark ignited by a small combination of tribes on the Arkansas might envelop the whole frontier. Colonel Arbuckle ordered his horse, and calling Sam Houston, the two set out for the Bayou Menard.

Surviving records of the next few moves are not clear, but it appears that Arbuckle decided to stake everything on Houston's ability to stay the hand of the plotters. In any event, Houston alone rode into the circle of astonished warriors, while Arbuckle turned back. The following day Houston sent the Colonel a lengthy report.

"After you left me last evening I attended the Dance & Talk of the Cherokee [and the] Creeks and had the mortification to witness . . . the raising of the Tomahawk of War by several Cherokees. The Creeks did not join . . . tho' I am sensible that Smith [a Creek chief] will use every persuasive in his power with them to [join this] . . . impolitic war against the Pawnees & the Kimanchies. It is the project of a few restless- and turbulent young men who will not yield nor listen to the Talk of their Chiefs. The great body of Chiefs of the Cherokees are most positively opposed to the war: and I have pointed out to them the ruinous consequences which must result to them. . • .

"The Creeks assured me that they would not begin a war without Genl Jacksons consent, but ... I have some fears. ... I have been informed (but vaguely) that some Osage, Choctaw, Shawnee & Delewares are to join the Party, and in all make it some 250 or 300 warriors. I will not yet give up the project of stopping the Cherokees until all hope is lost, and there are yet fifteen days . . . before they will actually start for home. . . .

"It is not difficult to perceive that the most turbulent among the Cherokees are very solicitous that Cantonment Gibson should be broken up and all troops removed without the I. T. . . . I will predict that in the event of a removal of the U. S. Troops . . . that in less than twelve months . . . there will be waged a war the most sanguinary and savage that has raged within my recollection." 15

Sam Houston knew that his report would go to Wash" ington without delay, thus enabling him to address the authorities without assuming to do so. The letter to Arbuckle would tend to allay the apprehensions of Jackson who had been disturbed by the word he had received of Sam Houston's secret intentions in the West. The Arbuckle letter would show Houston's conduct to be quite correct—exercising his powers not to involve the Indians in war, but to avert such a thing. It would show him sympathetic with the Administration's desire to concentrate the remaining eastern Indians in the West.

This on one hand. On the other, Sam Houston's reasons for favoring the migration differed from the reasons of the Administration which wished the East to be a white man's country. Houston cared nothing for that, but the more Indians in the West the more power in the hands of Houston, in return for which he was willing to labor to better the lot of a reduced people with all the energy of a boiling mind that craved forgetfulness and nursed vague and bitter notions of revenge. Sam Houston's ultimate aim at this juncture is something no one can say. It is doubtful if Houston himself knew whither he was heading or wished to head. But the ideas of Oo-loo-te-ka, the ablest Indian in the region and the exile's closest counselor, were clear and definite.

The Raven had taken no step that did not comport with his foster-father's dream of empire. In six weeks he had established his influence with three of the four principal "agency" tribes in the Southwest. He enjoyed the confidence of the Commandant of all the United States troops in the country. He had stirred to temporary activity Auguste Chouteau through whom he proposed to extend his sway over the wild tribes of the plains, whose benevolent neutrality would be the least that Oo-loo-te-ka's project would require. Now he was engaged, with Oo-loo-te-ka, in trying to forestall a purposeless war that would imperil any possibility of such neutrality.

Houston addressed the war-dance on July 7, 1829. Mobilization of war parties was to be delayed for fifteen days. That much time remained in which to prevent the war. Houston, Arbuckle and every Indian leader who was for peace did their utmost. They succeeded, and the tomahawk was not raised.

With war forestalled, Sam Houston took the road without a day's delay for Fort Smith, Arkansas, fourteen miles from the Choctaw Agency. The Choctaws were the remaining immigrant tribe of importance to which Houston had not bound himself by ties of obligation. In this business The Raven had been adroit. In no case, excepting the crisis on the Bayou Menard, had he approached an Indian uninvited. In every instance the Indians had solicited his counsel—first the Chero-kees, then the Osages, then the Creeks. The Choctaws came to Houston, finding him, conveniently, at Fort Smith-.

The gullible Choctaws were in a plight worse than the other western emigres. Their agent, Captain William McClellan, was an honest man, but Washington had ignored his letters. Houston hurried to the agency and wrote the Secretary of War a stiff account of the robbery of the Choctaws by white interlopers. He told Major Eaton that he had assured the chiefs that their treaties with General Jackson would be kept. Houston might have done more had not illness cut his visit short, but he had won the lifelong friendship of the Choctaws.

An important work was now complete.

CHAPTER X

Pagan Sanctuaries

The winged symbol of a "great destiny" had flown furiously and far. Sam Houston stood at the threshold of things of which destinies are made. His flagging forces whipped up by whisky, The Raven had thrust himself into a position of leadership over seven thousand Indians who controlled the country from Missouri to Texas and westward to the great plains. He had accomplished this in the space of eight weeks. Activity, activity—anything to "recreate my mind" and turn it from the perils of introspection.

Yet there was a limit to which a physique so remarkable as that of Sam Houston could be driven. At the end of the long ride from the Choctaw country The Raven reeled from his horse at Oo-loo-te-ka's wigwam with the stamp of a desperate illness upon him.

It was August, a month of which white men stood in dread. Even transplanted Indians, particularly those accustomed to the salubrious air of the southern mountains, were stricken by the pestilential heat that fell like a dead damp weight upon the swampy lowlands of the Arkansas Valley. The garrison at Cantonment Gibson had buried men until there were more soldiers in the graveyard outside the stockade than on the muster-rolls within.

At Oo-loo-te-ka's they helped The Raven inside a log hut and laid him on a mat of corn-shucks. His limbs trembled, his skin was yellow and hot to touch. He was burning with a

malarial fever, which had reached a stage that was usually fatal.

Chief Oo-loo-te-ka's was not a Christian household. Although friendly to missionaries, he kept to the gods of his fathers and the punctilio of the ancient religion, with its medicine-men who regarded white physicians as their professional adversaries. To this habitation the stricken man had come in preference to Cantonment Gibson where there was a hospital (of a sort), or to a missionary station with its staff surgeon.

The scene at the wigwam must have been a weird one. The Cherokee word for disease mean? "the intruder." The intruder comes through the influence of ghosts and witches which only the intervention of certain gods can dispel. The treatment of the sick, therefore, was an office of the clergy—the shamans or medicine-men who were also poets wonderfully learned in the forms of a worship as colorful and as complete as any of the ceremonial religions of the East. In the belief of the old Cherokee practitioners, fevers were the work of insects and worms in revenge for being trodden on. To confound their destructive efforts the gods of the Great and the Little Whirlwind must be summoned from their pantheons in the air, the mountains, the trees and the water.

Every step was associated with the fantastic realm of mythology that encompassed the whole being of the Cherokee and touched and tinctured everything he knew, through the five senses, of the world about him. First the medicine-man beat up some bark of the wild cherry tree or tobacco leaves and heated the mixture in water over seven coals, representing the seven clans of the Cherokee people. Filling his mouth with this brew, he faced his patient toward the sunrise and intoned first to the gods in the air:

"Listen! On high you dwell. On high you dvell—you dwell, you dwell, for ever you dwell, for ever you dwell. Relief has come—has come. Hayi!"

With the interjection, "Hayi!" the medicine-man ceremoniously blew the medicine from his mouth on symbolic parts of

the patient's body, making four blowings in all—four, like seven, being a sacred number.

The shaman then addressed the gods on the mountain. Four more blowings and the gods in the trees were summoned. Drenching the patient again, the priest called upon the gods in the water and then recited in a whisper a long petition to th<" Little Whirlwind to scatter the disease "as in play," that is, as the wind scatters the leaves. After this he blew his breath on the subject, chanted more ritual and enacted a pantomime. Lastly, he addressed the Great Whirlwind:

"Listen! O now again you have drawn near to hearken, O Whirlwind, surpassingly great. In the leafy shelter of the great mountain there you repose. 0 Great Whirlwind arise quickly. A very small part [of the disease] remains. You have come to sweep the intruder into the great swamp on the upland. You have laid down your paths to the great swamp. You shall scatter it as in jA^y so that it shall utterly disappear.

"And now relief has come. All is done. Yu!" 1

This rite was repeated at dawn and at dusk for four days. There was much more to the treatment, however, and the thirty-eight days that The Raven lay in his foster-father's wigwam afforded to the devout of Oo-loo-te-ka's family opportunity to reveal their familiarity with the rich repertoire of formulas and charms. Through the burning nimbus of his delirium, sounds of the conjurer's rattle reached the ears of the sufferer. . . . Poetic imagery. . . . Pagan nummery. . . , A vision of a yellow-haired girl bending among the flowers of an old-fashioned garden.

John Thornton, the chief's youthful letter-writer, had learned something of the white man's medicine from Doctor Weed, the mission physician at Dwight. It may be that John got Doctor Weed to visit the sick man, although no mention of it appears in the mission records. It may be that John himself did some blood-letting or administered Peruvian bark and nitre to reinforce the simples of the shamans. The missionaries prayed for Sam Houstoi? ov other occasions; possibly on

this occasion they mingled their supplications with the entreaties of the heathen Cherokees. In any event when September brought a measure of relief from the heat, the glassy-eyed man on the pallet of corn-shucks began to improve, and he was able to read a letter that had been carried down from Cantonment Gibson, As soon as he could hold a pen he answered it.

"Cherokee Nation "19th Sept 1829 "My dear Sir,

"I am very feeble from a long spell of fever which . . . well nigh closed the scene of all my mortal cares, but I thank my God that I am again cheered by the hope of renewed health. I would not write this time but I cannot deny myself the pleasure of tendering you my heartfelt acknowledgement of your kind favor which reached me when I was barely able to peruse its contents. It was a cordial to my spirits and cheered me in my sickness. . . .

"The solicitude which you have so kindly manifested for my future welfare cannot fail to inspire me with a most proper sense of obligation. ..." However, "to become a missionary among the Indians is rendered impossible for want of that Evangelical change of heart so absolutely necessary to a man who assumes the all important character of proclaiming to a lost world the mediation of a blessed Savior. To meliorate the condition of the Indians—to prevent fraud and peculation on the part of the Governments agents among them and to direct the feelings of the Indians in kindness to the Government and inspire them with confidence in its justice and magnanimity towards the Red People have been the objects of my constant solicitude and attention since I have been among them. . . .

"I pray you to salute your family for me and be assured of my sincere devotion. . . .

"Truly your friend

"Sam Houston "Genl Jackson "President U. S."

A postscript added:

"I hope to take and send you between this and Xmas some

fine buffaloe meat for your Xmas dinner or at farthest the 8th of Jany!" 2

2

The President of the United States was not the first to whom Sam Houston had revealed a want of that evangelical state of the heart necessary to commend the God of Israel to the heathen. The missionaries had learned as much. The lines to Jackson were written while Houston was under the influence of a deep emotional experience, as it is impossible to believe that one so sensitive to such impressions could have remained untouched by the aura of religious devotion which during his illness had enveloped the household of his foster-father. These unenlightened barbarians had unhesitatingly commended an unbeliever to the mercies of their gods. Five months before two clergymen of Nashville had found "good grounds" for sending a penitent fellow-follower of Christ into exile unblessed.

On his arrival in the Indian country, Sam Houston had been sought by the principal missionaries who desired the friendship of a personage so important. During all the years he lived with the Indians the missionaries, though they never liked him, continued to approach Houston for favors of many kinds. He helped them more often than not, and never was hostile. He treated them with the respect that had been a part of his childhood training in religion, and saw that others did the same—which was something of an undertaking in that part of the world.

The story is told of Sam Houston's meeting in Fort Smith with a white man of evil reputation when drunk. He was roaring about town declaring his intention of "licking" a missionary named Williams.

"I understand you are looking for Mr. Williams," Houston remarked.

The man said he was.

"I am Mr. Williams," said Sam Houston.

"That can't be," said the man. "I know Williams when I see him."

"That is the same as calling me a liar," said Houston, drawing two bowie knives from his belt. "Take your choice."

The white man accepted an alternative of apologizing to Mr. Williams. 8

Even Dr. Marcus Palmer, of the Fairfield Mission, for whom Houston formed a warm regard, failed to "convert" The Raven or to change his habits, which the local clergy found a fertile subject for criticism.

Sam Houston's attitude toward the missionary idea more nearly resembled that of an intelligent Indian than a Christian concerned even nominally with the spread of his creed. Houston admired the missionaries for the dangers they braved, and the hardships they met unflinchingly in the name of their faith. He appreciated the uprightness of their personal characters and their honesty with the Indians. They were living proofs that white men were not necessarily blackguards. Oo-loo-te-ka, though he deplored the slight inroads they made on the tribal faith, felt that the good they did outweighed the harm, and permitted services in his wigwam. These friendly relations were the rule, but not the invariable rule. The Osages had trouble with Reverend Benton Pixley, and White Hair, the friend of Agent Hamtramck, wrote to Jackson:

"Father, we moved our people towards the setting sun and left the Missionaries two days march toward the rising sun,

"Father—one of them followed us and has been living on our land though we gave them land enough. . . .

"Father, He has quarrelled with our men and women and we hear he has also quarrelled with all the white men who our Great Father has sent here to do us good. . . .

"Father—we have enough of white people among us without him, even if he was good. ... He forgets his black coat . . . disturbs our peace and many other things. . . .

"Father, we hope you may live long and be happy." 4

The missionaries also encountered difficulties in acquainting the untutored with the merits of civilization's economic system. Washington Irving scribbled an example on a fly-leaf of

the journal he kept at the time he made Sam Houston's acquaintance in the West. "Old Father Vail addressed the Indians on the necessity of industry as a means to happiness. An Indian replied—Father I dont understand this kind of happiness you talk of. You tell me to cut down tree—to lop it—to make fences—to plough—this you call being happy—I no like such happiness. When I go to St. Louis I go to see Chouteau—or Clarke.—He says hello—and negro comes in with great plate with cake, wine &—he say eat, drink. If you want anything else he say hello—three—four, five, six negro come and do what we want, that I call happy, he no plough, he no work, he no cut wood."

But in his chosen field of religion the missionary found the hardest rows to hoe. This was particularly true of those laboring among the Cherokees with an old-established and well-organized "church" of their own. Cephas Washburn, head of the Dwight Mission, the most scholarly Protestant missionary in the region, learned that his interpreter had enlightened a congregation as follows: "Mr. Washburn tells me to say to you that in the sight of God there are but two people, the good people and the bad people. But I do not believe him. I believe there are three kinds; the good people, the bad people, and the middle kind, like myself." The interpreter who knew the Cherokee mind better than Mr. Washburn doubtless sought only to lead his countrymen from error by easy steps. He was dismissed for his pains.

Cherokees who were troubled by witches were told that if they should accept Christianity the witches would be powerless to molest them. Some made the experiment only to discover hell-fire and brimstone, after which they were glad to return to the comparatively minor discomforts the witches might inflict. The case of Tah-neh was more involved, however. Tah-neh was the wife of The Girth, son of Oo-loo-te-ka. She was a sister-in-law, therefore, of The Raven. Her struggles with the doctrinal subtleties of the Christian gospel were witnessed by him.

In the Dwight Mission records the account runs:

"Tah-neh is deeply distressed. Her mind is greatly perplexed with some of the doctrines. . . . It is obvious that her heart is hostile. . . . When we told her that a condemned heathen in the world of retribution would be punished with less severity than a rejector of gospel grace she . . . expressed a wish that she had never heard of the gospel. She continued for several weeks . . . opposing her only Deliverer till she felt herself wholly lost ... & that she must have a Savior or perish. Now she [has] returned to the L. J. C. . . . we trust with tears of real repentance." 5

But in the estimation of Mr. Washburn Tah-neh's return to the Lord Jesus Christ was belated. rt Hope" was all that could be held out to her. She must, Mr. Washburn said, undergo a period of instruction and apprenticeship. This term of uncertainty lasted for two years, after which Tah-neh was conducted to the mission and given "a very particular" quizzing as to her "humility, meekness, deep penitence & humble trust in God." This time her proofs were acceptable; she was baptized and her heathen name exchanged for that of Naomi. A few weeks later Naomi became hopelessly insane. 6

As far as can be learned no other member of Oo-loo-te-ka's household was ever converted. Sam Houston was not converted. The covert hostility of the missionaries persisted as long as The Raven remained in the Indian country. In this matter, as in others, he gave no one his confidence. He explained nothing. Twenty-five years later, a spiritually broken man, grappling with a deep interior question of conscience, knelt with a woman to pray. Not until then can one understand the desolation sown by two Tennessee ministers whose view of their responsibilities had bereft Sam Houston of his faith.

3

Houston's illness was followed by a long period of convalescence, with much to do and little strength. His whirlwind entry into the Indian melodrama had left a trail of loose ends. The Indian agents and traders were almost a unit

against him, and while Houston lay helpless grass had not grown under their feet. Susceptible Indians were being stirred up. Unless Houston could consolidate his position much of the ground gained would be lost. In this situation The Raven decided to specialize on the two most important Indian groups—the Cherokees and the Creeks—which were also the nearest to hand.

The first event of importance was the payment of the Cherokees' annuity. This took place at their agency in October, about a month after Houston was up and about. An annuity disbursement was always a great occasion and this particular disbursement to the Cherokees promised to be an occasion without precedent. A fortune in gold was due to be paid over—the fifty thousand dollars lump indemnity due under the treaty of 1828, the two thousand dollars annuity due under that treaty and various sums due under earlier treaties. The tribesmen and their officials and the white and mixed-breed complement usual to such occasions, began to pitch camp on the prairie about the agency. Whisky runners, traders, speculators, soldiers and attaches of the Indian Bureau—from Cantonment Gibson, the Three Forks, Fort Smith and even distant Little Rock they came—the rag-tag and bobtail of the frontier. Thus Major E. W. du Val, the Cherokee agent, made his second visit to his charges in their new home. Thus a bevy of light though thrifty ladies from the Arkansas capital made their first visit to await the shower of gold. Thither repaired also a tall man whose fashionable buckskins hung loosely upon his gigantic frame.

Major du Val made an announcement to the Cherokee chiefs. There would be, it seemed, no shower of gold. A murmur of dismay must have swept the tents of the camp-followers, until they learned that the agent's words should not be taken in too narrow a sense. Literally there would be no shower of gold, but actually there would be something much better. In default of currency, certificates of indebtedness would be distributed among the Indians. To get "hard" money from an

Indian was never a difficult task. To paper money he attached no importance whatever.

The result was a free-for-all. "Merchants," wrote Houston, "who had connections with the agents, purchased up these certificates in a fraudulent manner for a mere song. ... A Mackinaw blanket, a flask of powder and even a bottle of whisky was often all these defrauded exiles ever got for the plighted faith of our Government." 7 Agent du Val himself opened a store to facilitate trade in certificates. The agent's brother opened a whisky running station, and in six weeks \e had sold two hundred and fifty barrels of liquor. 8

"In this manner," continued Houston in subsequent review, "whole tribes were preyed upon. . . . We cannot measure the desolating effects of intoxicating liquors among the Indians by an analogy drawn from civilized life. With the Red man the consequences are a thousand times more frightful. . . . The President . . . only hears one side of the story, and that, too, told by his own creatures. . . . During the entire period he resided in that region [Houston speaks of himself, Indian fashion, in the third person], he was unceasing in his efforts to prevent the introduction of ardent spirits among the Indians; and . . . this, too, was a period when he was far from being a practically temperate man himself." 9

The swindlers' harvest was not what it might have been, however. Watt Webber, who was a Cherokee official, got his hands on a considerable amount of certificates. Ben Hawkins, a half-breed Creek of influence, got some. Houston seemed concerned with these transactions, which outraged the feelings of Agent du Val, but when Mr. du Val heard that Houston himself had carried away certificates to the value of sixty-six thousand dollars, official indignation knew no bounds.

The Cherokees who had entrusted Houston with their paper felt differently about it, however, and the Nation invested him with a privilege not previously granted to a white man, by this means checkmating a scheme of Du Val to circumscribe The Raven's activities:

"Whereas, an order has been published by the agent of the Cherokee Nation, requesting all white men who reside in the Nation ... to comply with certain rules. . . . Now, Be it known. . . . That Samuel Houston, late of the State of Tennessee, has been residing in the Nation for sometime past and ... In consideration of his former acquaintance with; and services rendered the Indians, and . . . our confidence in his integrity, and talents . . . We do . . . irrevocably grant him forever, all the rights, privileges' and immunities, of a citizen of the Cherokee Nation ... as though he was a native born Cherokee. . . .

"In witness whereof we have this day set out hands this 21st day of October, 1829.

his "Walter + Webber Prest Commt "Cherokee Nation mark

"Illinois his

"Aron + Price vice President mark

his "Approved John + Jolly Principal Chief" 10 mark

The one-time congressman, governor, protege of Jackson and aspirant to the presidency no longer considered himself a citizen of the United States.

4

In the wigwam of Oo-loo-te-ka a pen scratched at the dictation of the first Chief.

"Great Father,

"My son (Gen 1 Houston or) the Raven came to me last spring . . . and my heart embraced him. ... At my wigwam he rested with me as my son. He has walked straight. . . . His path is not crooked. . . . He is now leaving me to meet his white Father, Gen 1 Jackson, and look upon him and I hope he will take him by the hand and keep him as near to his heart as I have done. He is beloved by all my people. . . . When you look upon this letter I wish you to feel, as though we smoked the pipe of peace together, and held each other by the

hand, and felt, as one man. We are far a part but I send my heart to my friend Jackson, and the Father of my people I" 11

John Jolly affixed his X mark and the letter was directed to "Gen 1 Andrew Jackson President U. States." The letter-writer on this occasion was not young John Thornton, but The Raven himself. The new citizen of the Cherokee Nation was too useful a man to remain a private tribesman. He had been raised to the rank of ambassador and was in readiness to depart for the seat of the Great Father in Washington.

The appointment had not been made according to regular form in open council. Secrecy surrounded The Raven's departure. But Jackson was advised through a mutual friend. "I am on my way to Washington and perhaps New York. . . . Many will be the conjectures as to the object of my trip, and it will be . . . neither to solicit office or favors of . . . the President. . . . My only study shall be to deport myself ... as can no wise embarrass his feelings, nor his circumstances. . . . Write to Judge White's care [in Washington]. If this were not done the curious would open my letters as they have done this summer." 12

The Raven slipped away early in December, but weeks elapsed before it was learned whither he had gone or why. Some of the missionaries were much put out. They had counted on Houston to undertake to raise money for them in the East. Houston's boyhood friend, Captain John Rogers, Jr., was disturbed. Watt Webber had gone east with Houston, and Rogers did not like Webber. He wrote to Jackson, expressing his distrust of Webber, and by inference included Houston in his insinuations.

Near Fort Smith, Houston and Webber encamped by the side of the river near the residence of Major du Val, the Cherokee agent, who transacted his affairs from the civilized side of the Arkansas line. With them was John Brown, an eastern Cherokee recently come West, with whom Oo-loo-te-ka was dickering to bring about his cherished reunion of the tribe. Du Val rode down to invite General Houston and his

friends to supper. At the house Du Val took Houston aside. They had had a few drinks together, when a clerk of Du Val's appeared bearing a letter which the agent opened and read. Then he handed it to Houston. The communication was to warn Major du Val that Houston was on his way to Washington to prefer charges against the agent. Du Val asked if this were true.

"Substantially," said Houston.

Du Val demanded that Houston put his charges in writing. Houston asked for pen and paper and did so, in duplicate. One copy he kept, the other he gave to the agent and took his written receipt for it. Major du Val renewed his invitation to dine but Houston and his Indian friends excused themselves and withdrew to prepare their own meal over a fire. 13

5

On the day before Christmas, the palpitating little steamer Amazon trudged up the Mississippi. To the left lay the pine-dressed lowlands of Arkansas. On the right a more conspicuous shore now and then attained the dignity of a bluff that gave an air of aspiration to the unpeopled scene. This was Tennessee.

Tennessee! A tall man in a blanket and turban surveyed the prospect from the deck, and in the course of the day recorded certain Christmas Eve reflections:

"Composed on Dec 24th 1829

"There is a proud undying thought in man,

That bids his soul still upward look,

To fames proud cliff! And longing

Look in hope to grace his name

For after ages to admire, and wonder

How he reached the dizzy, dangerous

Hight, or where he stood, or how—

Or if admiring his proud station fell

And left a name alone! !

This is ambitions range, and while it seeks

To reach . . .

Beyond all earthy names, And stand where millions never Dared to look, it leaves content

• • Companion of a virtuous heart!

the

"There is a race of mortals wild . . .

Who range the desert free

And roam where floods

Their onward currents pour

In majesty, as free as Indian thoughts,

Who feel that happiness and

Content are theirs.

They owe no homage to written rules

... no allegiance to idle forms

. . . which Virtue dare not own! But proud of freedom, In their native words, they . . . pitch their hopes of endless joys In fields where game of never Dying sort . . . Delights the hunter's soul." 14

Sam Houston never claimed to be a poet and later in life conceived a curious prejudice against that form of expression. But he could not forget Tennessee. Four days later he wrote to Judge John H. Overton, of Nashville:

"Passing near to the borders of a land so dear to me as Tennessee, and reflecting upon . . . my life ... I should be wanting in justice to my feelings . . . were I to suppress the expression of my most grateful and friendly regard. In prosperity you regarded me well, and generously, but when the darkest, direst hour of human misery was passing by you called to sustain me by the lights of age, philosophy, and friendship. . . . The hour of anguish has passed by, and my soul feels all that tranquility conscious gratitude can bestow. And it is in this state of feeling that my heart . . . recurs, in gratitude, to the man, who dared . . . diminish the weight of misery, which I had been doomed to feel !" 15

CHAPTER XI Notions of Honor

On St. Patrick's Day of 1830 General Duff Green marched into the President's house exuding an air of importance. But Duff Green invariably looked important. It became his position as proprietor of the great United States Telegraph, charter member of Jackson's "kitchen cabinet" and, allowing for a personal point of view, President-maker.

In the President's private study, Duff Green saw three men about a littered desk, their heads together "in earnest conversation." They were the President, the Secretary of War and the ambassador of the Cherokee Nation of Indians. When Editor Green entered a palpable silence fell—a thing really difficult to avoid when time-tried associates who have privately begun to distrust each other unexpectedly meet under circumstances not calculated to diminish suspicion. The old aalutes have a hollow sound. What is one to say?

Duff Green said nothing.

The vindicators of Eliza Allen did not feel that they had bungled their work. Houston's reputation was gone—and he was gone. Although the achievement had the appearance of permanence, a word from Jackson would insure this v There would be naught to fear from the man who, in banishment, retained the capacity to strike otherwise confident hearts with vague alarms of a return from Elba.

Andrew Jackson was chivalry embodied. "I never war against women and it is only the base and cowardly that do." He sought the presidency to wipe the smirks from the shifty countenances of his wife's traducers. Alas, a broken-hearted widower had composed a brave epitaph for "Rachel Jackson . . . whom slander might wound but could not dishonor," and plunged himself into the quixotic championship of Peggy Eaton. Surely one so generous would not withhold the mantle of his gallantry from Eliza Allen.

General Jackson had given patient audience to Sam Houston's enemies. He had listened to their stories, but said nothing. From Houston's friends came a few pitifully vague letters, and the President was three months in making up his mind what to do. Then, Indian intrigues notwithstanding, he wrote Houston a letter, which the exile, in reply, called "a cordial to my spirits," continuing:

"From the course which I had pursued in the relation to the cause of my abandonment of society—my absolute refusal to gratify the enquiring world—my entire silence because it comported with my notion of honor ..."

"Because it comported with my notion of honor." This was putting it in rather general terms. The man who had conducted a prospective Cabinet officer to a shotgun wedding usually received more explicit answers to his inquiries. But Sam Houston told him no more, even in the exhilaration of feeling at the assurance that he retained the friendship of the great and loyal Jackson.

"Had a sceptre," continued Houston, "been dashed at my feet it would not have afforded me the same pleasure which I derived from the proud consciousness not only that I deserved but that / possessed your confidence! The elevation of your station . . . contrasted with that of a man who had ceased to be all that he ever had been in the world's eye; was such as would have justified you in any inferences, the most damning to his character and prejudicial to his integrity. You disre-

garded the standard calculations of mankind and acted from an impulse peculiar to yourself." 1

An inquiring world was not immediately informed of this understanding between Andrew Jackson and the broken exile. Houston's enemies continued to importune the President. This was the state of affairs when Sam Houston reached Washington on January 13, 1830.

His arrival was the sensation of the week. It was one thing for Washington to receive a barbarian dignitary, and another to receive one who looked the part. Indians in claw-hammer coats were getting too common. With his fine eye for the proprieties, The Raven made no attempt to imitate the externals of a prosperous congressman. He presented himself in the costume of the wigwam. For every occasion there was a new blanket, and the metal ornaments on the ambassador's buckskin coat tinkled pleasantly as he walked. While flustered Washington was trying to determine what to do, the President made the decision. He invited The Raven to an entertainment at the Executive Mansion. The Tennessee avengers had their answer. Sam Houston's "notion of honor" satisfied Andrew Jackson.

The Aliens made no attempt to conceal their displeasure, but their political partners were more discreet. Nevertheless, reprisals were planned. From a congressman with a foot in the enemy camp, Houston learned that he was to be visited with "a fate most appalling to humanity" should he return to the West by way of Tennessee. Moreover, he knew Duff Green to be his secret enemy.

3

The urbane Secretary of War spoke first. The President and General Houston, Major Eaton said, were discussing an important contract for supplying rations to the Indians newly emigrated or about to emigrate across the Mississippi. The present ration, costing twenty-one cents, was unsatisfactory.

General Houston had volunteered to supply a superior ration for eighteen cents. A saving of twelve thousand dollars a day! Think of it.

Duff Green did not share the Secretary's enthusiasm. Surely, he replied, General Houston had miscalculated. There was no saving to the government at eighteen cents a ration, but a great loss. Beef bought on the hoof in Illinois and Missouri could be distributed for much less than eighteen cents.

Jackson and Houston changed the conversation, and presently Duff Green took his departure, reflecting that if Eaton were after a puff in the Telegraph for Sam Houston's ration scheme, he was barking up the wrong tree. What with protecting the precious Peggy, the Telegraph had done enough for the Eaton family.

The next day Green found the President alone. Jackson said Houston was practically certain to get the contract. Duff Green raised his eyebrows. Hadn't the President better look into the matter more closely? Duff Green said that he had been examining figures, and the ration could be provided for six cents. Jackson turned in his chair. "Will you take it at ten?" Green said he would not. "Will you take it at twelve cents?" Green said he was not a bidder, and the President began to fuss with papers on his disorderly desk.

Duff Green went home and wrote a letter to the Secretary of War. The eighteen-cent contract might "enrich a few who are concerned in it but will . . . impair the fair name of the President which it is your duty and mine to guard."

While these high-minded words of caution were on their way, another letter was written at the Green residence—by a house-guest of the publisher, John Shackford, of St. Louis, making a formal bid for the ration contract at seventeen cents.

Affairs moved briskly. Shackford reduced his proposal to fifteen cents to meet competition. Houston countered with a bid of thirteen cents, submitted in the name of John Van Fossen, of New York. Other bids ran as low as eight cents. Shackford needed money, but the editor of the Telegraph had

other motives for opposing the interests of The Raven. Houston had obtained the dismissal of five Indian agents, including du Val and Hamtramck. Green was a friend of Hamtramck and had opposed his removal. Moreover, the Peggy Eaton petticoat war was in full swing with Vice-President Calhoun, a relative of Green by marriage, getting the worst of it. Green saw the disguised hand of Sam Houston at work against Calhoun, and the Tennessee vendetta received a powerful ally.

Against this coalition Sam Houston stood alone. He declined to exploit Jackson's friendship, but otherwise he intrigued with the nimblest. Yet, the only words of concern for the Indian discoverable in a voluminous record of this sordid episode were uttered—with no thought of public effect—by Sam Houston when he wrote to Van Fossen: "Justice to the Indians ... a full ration, and of good quality . . . must be a 'sine qua non.' "

The tempest whirled to a tame pause. The request for bids was withdrawn, and no one got the contract. 2 There the matter rested for two years.

Sam Houston was not the only outcast sheltered by Andrew Jackson that winter in the white "Castle" on the Avenue. John Eaton had dutifully married Peggy. Washington has seen strange sights in its time and has acquiesced, but on this occasion the transformation from tavern belle to Cabinet lady stopped the wheels of the social machinery. Firstly and finally, Society would not accept the amiable Peg.

Jackson canvassed the field for supporters. He appealed particularly to Calhoun and Van Buren. Mr. Van Buren responded handsomely. He gave a party for Mrs. Eaton. He got two of his bachelor friends, the British and the Russian ministers, to be nice to her. Mr. Calhoun would have done as much—if he could. He understood what was going on, but unlike Van Buren, Mr. Calhoun had a wife whose cooperation

was essential. Mrs. Calhoun refused to cooperate, and nothing could move her.

Mr. Van Buren redoubled his attentions. Jackson began inviting the Secretary of State on horseback rides and calling him "Van." Mr. Calhoun bit his nails and made lame excuses; he was in a desperate fix. In the fulness of time the President heard that not for the first time had a certain fastidious South Carolina gentleman declined to stand with forthright Andrew Jackson. Shade by shade, color was applied to the dark picture that Sam Houston three years before had etched about the famous letter of 1818 on the Florida campaign.

In the midst of this came Houston's dramatic reappearance in Washington—a towering figure in a bright blanket, grand, gloomy and peculiar, that paced the worn carpet of the presidential smoking-room, brooding and drinking. The Raven did not scruple to impart fresh significance to his old accusation. The bright blanket he wore stirred no memories calculated to soften his resentment toward John C. Calhoun.

Lewis, Eaton, Sam Swartwout and others of the original anti-Calhoun combination were on hand. The encirclement of Mr. Calhoun was complete. Duff Green could do little more than postpone the crash which obliged Mr. Calhoun to resign the vice-presidency. This came after Houston, taking his own good time, had departed for the Indian country. By the light of a dying fire in the Wigwam Neosho Sam Houston spent mor« than one summer evening in contemplation of the sweets of a subaltern's revenge.

5

April in Tennessee. Azaleas flamed in a landscape where spring's work already was complete. The slender figure of a young woman in black moved along the paths of an old-fashioned garden beside a house that overlooked the Cumberland. Her oval face wore an expression of infinite loneliness.

Inside the house men were talking. The young woman in

the garden had watched them arrive: Former Governor Hall, Squire Alexander, General Eastin Morris, Lawyer Guild, of Gallatin, Captain Douglass and so on. They were shut in a room with her father. ... A year this month, April. And still the secretive meetings, the maddening talk, talk.

As the men conversed they passed from hand to hand a letter that had never been answered. The woman in the garden knew every word of this letter. The signature at the bottom was a bold one with a rubric under it: Sam Houston —her husband.

But one thing, one overwhelming thing, known to the men in the room was as yet unknown to the girl in the garden. Sam Houston was in Nashville! He had defied them.

This was the reason for the conference. Circumstances had changed within the year. The chivalrous championship of Eliza Allen now rested on strange premises. The champions trembled in the fear of exposure. They knew that Houston knew of their predicament. But they did not fear exposure by him. It was Eliza, the object of all their tender solicitation, who destroyed their peace of mind. She wanted her husband back. 3

This cast of affairs had come about in a peculiar way. The proud Aliens had a valid grievance against the man with a brilliant future into whose eager arms they had persuaded an unwilling daughter of their house. Sam Houston had accused his bride of a terrible thing. Then on his knees he had begged her forgiveness and the pardon of her family; but by her code and theirs amnesty was not possible. 4 Houston seemed to understand. His humiliation was complete. Without criticism or comment he had set his feet upon the path of retribution suggested by his personal ideas of honor. He never expressed resentment toward the Aliens, and in later years they softened toward him. 5 As to Carroll, Houston hated him with a grim and abiding passion which the Tennesseean reciprocated. Forty years after the event, when Sam Houston and Eliza Allen were in their graves, a member of the old Carroll clique who had

attained distinction in life, published a vituperative account of the marriage. 9

The emotions of Eliza Allen had been-the first to grow clear. Did she perceive the exploitation of herself and her family by a resourceful politician who had bound them all to the wheels of his chariot?

Everything went back to the circumstances attending the marriage. The enchantment of the crowded autumn hour when Eliza made her promise had been of brief duration. While donning her bridal gown, she had wept. Her hands trembled during the exchange of wedding vows. She felt that she loved another, but of Sam Houston's love for her there was no doubt. That night was passed at Eliza's home. When they were alone Houston spoke of his bride's nervousness "which convinced him some secret had not been revealed. Before retiring he frankly told her of his suspicion, asked a frank confession and pledged her that he should work her no injury. His frankness and firmness led to the confession that her affections had been pledged to another . . . and that filial duty had prompted her acceptance of his offer." 7 They rested apart.

The second night was spent at Locust Grove. In the morning Mrs. Robert Martin stood thoughtfully tapping a window of her mansion on the Pike. The chatelaine of Locust Grove had seen something of the world. Eight presidents and the Marquis de Lafayette skim through the pages of her unpublished memoirs. She was pondering the sight she beheld from her window. A beautiful snow had fallen during the night, and on the blanketed lawn Governor Houston and the two lively brunette Martin girls were engaged in a hilarious snow battle.

Mrs. Martin's reflections were interrupted by a step on the stairs. Eliza was coming down. "I said to her, 'It seems as if General Houston is getting the worst of the snow-balling; you had better go out and help him.' Looking seriously at me Mrs. Houston said, 'I wish they would kill him.' I looked up astonished to hear such a remark from a bride of not yet forty-eight

hours, when she repeated in the same voice, 'Yes, I wish from the bottom of my heart that they would kill him.' " 8

Martha Martin was Sam Houston's friend. She kept well the secret of that morning, and the couple journeyed to Nashville to pass the days in comparative seclusion. As far as any one could learn they were happy. Houston was busy with preparations for the campaign against Carroll. He made a journey from home—to Chickasaw Bluffs, one account says; to Columbia, in Maury County, according to another; but Cockrell's Spring seems to have been the place. The return was unannounced and unexpected. What the scene was no one can know. It has been said that Eliza was weeping over old love-letters. 9 It has been said that she was in a man's arms—a supposition not favored by the evidence. 10 In any event, provocation was such that Sam Houston accused his wife of infidelity.

The fearful indictment had scarcely fallen from his lips when doubts assailed him. It was the old story of jealous rage and terrible suspicions: a moment of wild accusation and a lifetime of regret. Naturally, Eliza desired to clear her name. By mutual consent the matter was laid before a third party and then, by means* unexplained, the news reached the Aliens. There was no repairing anything after that.

Eliza went home. Houston wrote her father a letter saying he believed his wife "virtuous." He followed the letter to Gallatin, and begged an interview with Eliza. It was granted on condition that an aunt remain in the room. Many, many years after, when passions had cooled, this aunt's story was told. "He knelt before her and with tears streaming down his face implored forgiveness . . . and insisted with all his dramatic force that she return to Nashville with him. Had she yielded to these entreaties what the future may have brought to them none can tell. As it was there were many years of sadness to be endured." 11

Ah, had she but yielded! It was Eliza's turn now to regret. But she was brave. She took counsel of the intuitions of

her heart and did a womanly thing. Setting aside the sacred code, she said she wanted her husband.

At the same time Eliza was loyal to her men-foik. She had no wish to involve them in a painful repudiation of declarations they had made to preserve her fair name. And there was Carroll; the security of his throne lay in keeping Sam Houston out of Tennessee. Lastly and least explicable was the position of Sam Houston himself. The ardor with which he declined the sympathy of the world suggests a compensating consolation that he had been able to afford himself. A whisky-whirled, romantic brain, brooding in forest solitudes, had turned inward. Houston had shouldered the blame and taken his punishment. He thought this enough. Yet the lash of a hundred untruths, of high names and low motives, pursued him in exile. Eliza's feelings had veered a full cycle; her husband's did the same. Again they were at opposite poles, Eliza entreating, Houston holding aloof. What caused this? Had Tiana Rogers taken the vacant place in his heart? And again, in the very fierceness with which Sam Houston, to the last day of his life, repelled the breath of scandal from Eliza Allen lurks a disturbing thought. . . .

6

At whatever expense to their own pride, or peril to the political fortunes of Carroll, the Aliens had the courage and the tenderness to attempt a reconciliation. From a letter of Houston's it appears that they approached Houston on the subject and only when rebuffed by him—"when they had lost all hopes of a reunion" 12 —had they sought to justify before the world the uncomfortable plight in which Houston's changed attitude had thrust them.

With Sam Houston in Nashville, a short thirty miles away, the family was alarmed lest she fly to him "and I would not receive her." 13 The decision of the conference, dominated, it appears, by the lieutenants of the equally anxious Carroll, was to take measures not only to avert this, but also to guard

the dangerous secret that Eliza had forgiven her husband. To make matters properly secure "they sent Mrs. H. to Carthage," 1 * where her Uncle Robert, the ex-Congressman, lived.

These maneuvers were screened by an energetic thrust a$\ Houston. On April twenty-sixth, five days after Houston's arrival in Nashville, a meeting of "citizens of Sumner County" assembled at the court-house in Gallatin. The gathering was very respectable. George S. Crockett presided, and Thomas Anderson, Esquire, was appointed secretary. Lawyer Guild explained the business before the body, which formally "Resolved, that the following gentlemen be appointed a committee to consider and draw up a report expressive of the opinion entertained of the private virtues of Mrs. Eliza H. Houston and whether her amiable character had received an injury among those acquainted with her, in consequence of the late unfortunate occurrence between her and her husband, General Samuel Houston, late Governor of Tennessee, towit: Gen. Wm Hall, Wm. L. Alexander, Esq., Gen. Eastin Morris, Col. J. C. Guild, Elijah Boddie, Esq., Col. Daniel Montgomery, Thomas Anderson, Esq., Capt. Alf. H. Douglass, Isaac Baker, Esq., Mr. Robt. M. Boyers, Maj. Charles Watkins and Joseph W. Baldridge, Esq., and that said committee meet at the Court House on Wednesday next and report." 15

This gave the committee forty-eight hours in which to perform its delicate mission. But the work was finished on time, and at a' second meeting the committee's report was read and approved. Following this a motion was adopted requesting "the editors of the State of Tennessee who feel any interest in the character of the injured female ... to give the foregoing report and proceedings in their respective papers." 16 But not until Sam Houston had left Tennessee were editors provided with copies of the proper material.

A slight recurrence of his Indian fever detained Houston in Nashville until a fortnight after the meeting in Gallatin had adjourned sine die. He had some shadowy knowledge of what had taken place and was not impatient to know more, calling

the affair an example of the political generalship of William Carroll.

On his tour of Tennessee Sam Houston had held his head high. He showed himself where it was not supposed to be safe to go. This boldness had its little victories. The threats purveyed in the nervous effort to keep Sam Houston out of Tennessee died to a murmur in the path of his progress. Despite the formal frowns of the best people, throngs surrounded him wherever he appeared.

The mother of a small boy in Knoxville said, "Now, John, do you not go near him. The people have little to do to honor such a man." The flesh is weak. Not only did John go near the notorious traveler, but he shook his hand and then ran home to confess his crime. But mother became so engrossed in the recital of her son's adventure that she forgot to punish him. 17 A little girl in Nashville "was half afraid of Cousin Sam in his strange Indian garb, and yet so strongly did he attract me that I kept very close by my mother's side that I might lose nothing he should say." 18

Houston's friends made their usual fine display of fidelity, but the result emphasized rather than disguised the fact that the ex-Governor was an outcast where a year before he had been an idol. Still, they urged him to remain in Tennessee. He would have only to explain, to tell his side of the story in order to overthrow Carroll and win back what he had lost. The proposal met the insurmountable obstacle that had defeated Houston's friends the year before. Their man would explain nothing. Only God, he said could understand and "justify"

On the Mississippi below St. Louis Houston read in a newspaper the findings of the Sumner County citizens:

"The Committee appointed to express the sentiments of this meeting in relation to the character of Mrs, Eliza H Houston,

and the causes which led her to separate from her husband, beg leave to present that . . . very shortly after the marriage Governor Houston became jealous of his wife, and mentioned the subject to one or two persons, apparently in confidence; yet the Committee are not informed that he made any specific charges, only that he believed she was incontinent and devoid of affection . . . [for] her husband. . . . He rendered his wife unhappy by his unfounded jealousies and his repeated suspicion of her coldness and want of attachment, and she was constrained by a sense of duty to herself and her family to separate from her infatuated husband . . . since which time she has remained in a state of dejection and despondency.

"The Committee . . . are informed that Governor Houston had lately . . . returned to Nashville on his way to Arkansas where they understood he has located in the Cherokee Nation, and it has been suggested that public sympathy has been much excited in his favor, and that a belief has obtained in many places abroad that he was married to an unworthy woman, and that she has been the cause of . . . his downfall as a man and as a politician, whereas nothing is farther from the fact; and without charging him of . . . baseness of purpose, the committee have no hesitation in saying he is a deluded man; that his suspicions were groundless; that his unfortunate wife is now and ever has been in the possession of a character unimpeachable, and that she is an innocent and injured woman. . . .

"The Committee have had placed in their hands a letter from Governor Houston to his father-in-law written shortly after the separation. . . .

" 'Dear Sir— . . . Whatever had been my feelings or opinions in relation to Eliza at one period, I have been satisfied . . . and believe her virtuous, [as] I had assured her last night and this morning; this . . . should have prevented the facts from coming to your knowledge and that of your wife.

" 'I would not for millions that it had been known to you. But one human being knew anything of it from me, and that was by Eliza's consent and wish. I would have perished first; and if mortal man had dared to charge my wife or say aught against her virtue, I would have slain him.

" 'That I have and do love Eliza none can doubt and that I have ever treated her with affection she will admit; that she is the only earthly object dear to me God will bear witness. . . ,

" 'Eliza stands acquitted by me. I have received her as a virtuous, chaste wife and as such I pray God I may ever regard her, and I trust I ever shall. She was cold to me, and I thought did not love me; she owns that such was one cause of my un-happiness. You can think how unhappy I was to think I was united to a woman who did not love me. That time is now past, and my future happiness can only exist in the assurance that Eliza and myself can be more happy, and that your wife and yourself will forget the past, forget all and find lost peace— and you may be assured that nothing on my part shall be wanting to restore it. Let me know what is to be done.

" 'Your most obedient " 'Sam Houston.' " 20

Seven months later, when "my motives should have the character of reflection," Houston spread that newspaper before him and wrote a long letter. In all the years of bitterness and farce that this blighted romance engendered, this letter represents Sam Houston's solitary attempt to parry a blow:

"Cherokee Nation, Wigwam Neosho, 7th Dec. 1830 "To Genl Wm. Hall:-

"Sir—When I resigned into your hands, the office of chief magistrate of the State of Tennessee, I could not have supposed that any act of yours, or association of your name, would . . . render it necessary for me, in the vindication of my feelings and character to address you."

Ex-Governor Hall was not, however, to take this as an "unkind" reflection, and the same applied to other members of the committee, though Houston could not forbear remarking the "imposing array of Titles—as I presume to render the proceedings of the committee at a distance more weighty and Dignified." Without naming him the writer indicated William Carroll as the "mover" of the proceedings in which innocent men had been misled.

"The resolutions originating the committee declared in substance that the object in view, was adverse to the character of no one, but for the purpose of offering respect, and confidence

where it was due. But how far . . . the proceedings . . . accord, with this declaration, I shall take leave to examine. . . .

"The committee say that 'they deem it unnecessary at this time to animadvert on my conduct and character, except so far as it may be inseparably connected with the investigation,' etc. Now sir, it is evident to me that this observation was not only intended as a reflection upon my general character, but was designed to acquire for the committee a reputation for . . . magnanimity; and thus decently dressed the Report and charges were to insinuate their way to the world. . . . It is then alleged by the committee 'that they are informed, that J had returned to Nashville on my way to Arkansas, where they understood I had located myself in the Cherokee Nation.' Now I readily admit the correctness of this understanding . . . why was this really made a part of the report? . . . The reason obviously was that I ought to be proscribed in society, that others (than the party concerned) might be enabled to exult . . . over the memory of an exiled man. . . .

"The report then proceeds to state 'And it has been suggested that public sympathy has been excited in his favor; and that a belief has obtained in many places abroad that he was married to an unworthy woman' etc. By whom were those suggestions made? . . . How were , . . these facts . . . ascertained? Or were they facts at all or rather were they only suggestions made for the purpose of furnishing a ground of accusation against me. . ■. . I courted the sympathy of no one. ... I have acquiesced to my destiny, and have been silent."

Houston took up the letter to his father-in-law. "It seems to me to have been a favorite object with the mover who incited the call of the committee to give publicity" to that letter. "And however much I may regret its publication, and certainly can derive no pleasure from adverting to it," Houston begged to correct an "error."

"The committee states 'that the letter was written shortly after the separation.' This is not the truth! It was written previous to the separation; but as it failed in restoring harmony, the separation occurred immediately. ... So far as

the feelings of the heart are expressed in the letter I have nothing to regret. . . .

"Now, Sir, a few general reflections. . . . Was it thro' me, or by my agency, or seeking that this private and domestic circumstance was ever extended beyond the family circle ? . . . No, clearly not, as my letter published by the committee shows!—Yet all the consequences resulting from the affair are perseveringly visited upon me, even in exile in the wilderness. Had a moment of public excitement produced a committee . . . there might be some excuse . . . but when a twelvemonth had passed, it seemed to be uncalled for. . . . Had the committee not attacked my reputation as I deem, improperly; but had pursued their object, the reparation of an injured Lady, and the feelings of her family, I do most solemnly assure you, sir, I would never have addressed you . . . for it is impossible for me to cherish other than . . . the sincerest wishes for their happiness."

The communication closed by giving General Hall permission "to publish this letter, that my protest may be judged as well as the report of the committee." 21

8

In the Sumner County resolutions the enemies of Sam Houston for the first time offered something more palpable than whispers to define their accusations. The emphasis is not on the fact that Sam Houston had uttered an accusation, however serious, against his wife, but that he spread "abroad" his suspicions. A curious charge: uttered against a man whose attitude toward the whole question could be expressed by the one word "silence," it seemed to call for clarification.

Before the world Sam Houston at last had challenged his accusers to prove what they said. He did not stop there. He charged them with the gravest duplicity. They had talked.

Sam Houston's friends might have done much with the letter from the Wigwam Neosho. It supplied the lon^-sought fuel they required for a back-fire against the conflagration of

calumny which they had never believed to arise from facts discreditable to their man. The letter was moderate. Had sensation been the writer's primary aim Houston could have achieved it in fuller measure by disclosing Eliza's actual attitude toward the chivalrous championship of her cause.

But Houston's friends could do nothing. They never saw the Wigwam Neosho letter. It had been entrusted to the wrong man. William Hall had tasted power from a ruined man's cup and had found it sweet. He was Carroll's man now, and he suppressed the letter, which if given to the world might have changed the course of a nation's history.

Houston accepted the behavior of Hall as he accepted everything concerned with the tragic romance—in silence. In the beginning he had said that if his character could not stand the shock let him lose it. He never publicly amplified that statement, except as there crept into his memoirs, published years later, an atmosphere of distrust of the white race. He had found the Caucasian's capacity for "coldness" and "treachery" superior to that of an Indian. Near the close of his stormy life, Sam Houston said he had yet to be wronged or deceived by an Indian, but that every wound he had known was the work of those of his own blood. Of the source of this disillusionment he never spoke, and the mystery of his perfect reticence cast a long shadow.

CHAPTER XII

The Wigwam Neosho

May is the radiant month on the Arkansas. Sam Houston returned more tranquil in mind, despite the incidents of his journey, than he had been since the debacle. In Washington he had gained more than he had lost. In Tennessee the very lengths to which his enemies had gone, seemed, in a sense, reassuring. At any rate The Raven appears to have recalled that in a previous existence he was a member of Andrew Jackson's literary bureau. He took up the quill again.

"The Indian of other days stood on the shore of the Atlantic. . . . He was monarch of the wilds. . . . That age has gone by—the aboriginal character is almost lost in the views of the white man. A succession of injuries has broken the proud spirit and taught him to kiss the hand which inflicts upon him stripes—to cringe and ask favors of the wretch, who violates his oath by defrauding him out of his annuities, or refusing him money promised by treaties." 1

These lines introduced a series of articles on the Creek Indians published by the Arkansas Gazette of Little Rock. They were signed "Tah-lhon-tusky" and appeared currently in the same newspaper with a series on the Cherokees over the signature of "Standing Bear."

The writings of Tah-lhon-tusky and of Standing Bear are still useful to students of Indian annals. The style is more vigorous than is usual for a historian, but the substance is

reliable. Not improbably was the author's form influenced by the tenor of some examples of the art of literary criticism as it was cultivated on that frontier. The editor of the Gazette adjudged one such item "of too personal a cast for admission into the columns of our newspaper." He printed it, therefore, in a supplement which was also reserved for dueling challenges. "The only objection . . . one can urge against this mode of publication is the expense of printing as the circulation of the Supplement is co-extensive with the- circulation of our newspaper."

"To Standing Beab alias Gen. Samuel Houston, Sir: I have seen ... a communication in the Arkansas Gazette . . . [calculated] to injure the private and public character of the late Agent of the Cherokees. . . . But, sir, you may rest assured that the mere ridiculous, feeble and contemptible as-servations of every vagabond and fugitive from the just indignation of an offended community . . . will neither be regarded by his friends nor credited by his enemies." And so on for a bristling column, after which, "without wishing, sir, to triumph over fallen greatness ... I will now bid your tur-band honor adieu, leaving you in the enjoyment you may find in your new matrimonial alliance, hoping your fair bride may induce you to make a prudent husbandry of whatever resources you may have left, awaken you to a sense of your own degradation and in the belief 'stat magni nominis umbra. 9 [signed] Tekotka." 2

If such care-free use of language tried the patience of Standing Bear he gave little sign of it in his reply, which was rather temperate and convincing. 3 After answering a long train of counter-accusations, he observed that there had been no refutation of the original charges. The rejoinder is so thorough as to draw attention to the single point upon which Standing Bear had nothing to say, thus affording ground for the inference that he intended to treat his "new matrimonial alliance" as the private concern of himself and the fair bride in question.

Tiana Rogers was a living link with Oo-loo-te-ka's island in Tennessee, where a runaway boy with a copy of the Iliad and a rifle had learned the meaning of love and much of the meaning of life. When life seemed without aim and without hope he had turned again to the people among whom he had experienced the greatest happiness he was ever to know. In a year he had managed to reconstruct some fragments of that earlier Elysium, which Tiana was to make the more complete.

He remembered her as a half-naked sprite not more than ten years old, a part of the vague background of the halcyon interlude on the enchanted island. She was a half-sister of The Raven's chums, John and James Rogers, her mother being Jennie Due, whereas John's and James's mother was Elizabeth Due, Jennie's stepmother. Old Headman Rogers had confined his selections of wives to one wigwam. So had John and James, barring James's earlier misadventure with Susy. Their wives were the Coody sisters, Lizzie and Nannie. Indeed, nearly every one The Raven had known in the old days—the girls to whom he had made love, the boys with whom he had roamed—■ had married by now, some of them rather often. But Tiana was free.

She had been married, it is true—to David Gentry, a blacksmith, and consequently a man of affairs. She was David's second wife, his first having been Mary Buffington, Tiana's aunt. David was no longer a factor, however. What had become of him I do not know: whether he had fallen in battle with the Osages, or whether he and Tiana had simply "divided the blanket." Tiana, however, was more than a mere marriageable widow of thirty about whom crept the wraith of old desires. She was tall and slender and, on testimony from impartial white sources, she was beautiful. The whites sometimes called her Diana.

Moreover, she was socially eligible to become the wife of an adopted son of the Supreme Chief. The Rogers were of distin-

guished tribal lineage, their name and their strain of Caucasian blood coming, by tradition, from a British officer of the Revolution. They were related to the Black Coats, the Bushy-heads, the Rattlingourds, the Little Terrapins and most of the principal families on the Arkansas, including that of Oo-loo-te-ka himself. Tiana's half-brother, Captain John, succeeded Oo-loo-te-ka as first chief, and his grandson, William Charles Rogers, was the last chief to rule the Cherokee Nation. The family is still important in eastern Oklahoma. Will Rogers, of Claremore, Oklahoma, and Beverly Hills, California, is Tiana's nephew, three generations removed.

In the summer of 1830 The Raven left his foster-father's lodge for one of his own with Tiana to cheer the hearth. Where the marriage ceremony took place, or whether there was any ceremony, is not known. Tiana was a widow and custom did not require a great to-do over a lady's second mating, which is one of the things that raises the study of Cherokee genealogy above the commonplace. But the Cherokees considered Sam Houston and Tiana Rogers to be man and wife, and this under no inability to discriminate between a marriage and a liaison.

This view, however, was not shared by the missionaries who were endeavoring to popularize "mission weddings." But the fact that Eliza Allen had declined to sanction a divorce would seem to have left the white clergy without alternative—or Houston either, for that matter. The missionaries saw many alliances' on the Arkansas in an unfavorable light, and from this view the Rogers family was not exempt. Tiana's younger sister, Susannah, attended Mr. Washburn's school at Dwight. Her classroom record terminates with this notation:

"In the summer of 1824 it seems that she had imbibed a strong attachment to a young native. . . . She tried by indirect means ... to excite a reciprocal regard. . . . Failing in this she resorted to open and explicit means. She . . . proposed to abscond with him. . . . This proposition was rejected but in a way not to expose her folly and indelicacy. She however was so much disappointed . . . that she left the

school" and "married a white man of considerable enterprise and intelligence." 4 Eighteen twenty-four was leap year.

A great many young Rogers attended the Dwight School. Cynthia, a niece of Tiana, was "active" and "amiable," but "for want of parental . . . example she was vain, giddy, fond of dress and impatient of wholesome restraints. . . . She absconded with a most worthless and abandoned white man who had another Cherokee wife." Eliza Rogers was "active in body and mind" and made "rapid improvement," which was neutralized, however, by being "exposed to the wicked example of her father's house." The Rogers had not relinquished the native religion. Betsy Rogers, another niece, was an inattentive "scholar" and "excited more mischief than all the other pupils." At the age of fifteen "she was married to a profligate and abandoned white man who came to the nation as a merchant. . . . Peace and tranquility have long ago been banished from their dwelling." 5

But there was peace and tranquillity at the Wigwam Neosho where The Raven established his bride. This dwelling-place was near the Neosho River, a little above Cantonment Gibson, and thirty miles from the lodge of Oo-loo-te-ka. Houston bought or built a large log house and set out an apple orchard. There he lived in style, transacting his affairs and entertaining his friends. There was no concealment. Tiana was his wife, her barbaric beauty a part of the solace he had found, as he said, amid "the lights and shadows of forest life."

3

To the boom of the morning gun, the Stars and Stripes slid to the top of a tall sapling pole at Cantonment Gibson, and the stout gate at the terminus of the military road from Fort Smith swung open for the day. A weather-beaten sergeant took his stand by the gate, serenely conscious of his role as symbol of the authority of the United States. Any one failing to meet the approval of this non-commissioned officer's scrutiny entered the

post under guard to explain himself at headquarters. The pathway to the squat log building that served as headquarters passed a pillory and a wooden horse, where minor culprits expiated their crimes under a blistering sun. At the doorway of headquarters a smart-looking orderly in a cavalry uniform inquired the business of callers. On the twenty-second day of July, 1830, the commandant was within. He was reading a letter.

"Colonel Arbuclde. Sir: I have the honor to inform you of the arrival of my Boat . . . with an assortment of goods which I will proceed to open and make sale of so soon as convenient. ..." This was not news. Sam Houston had made no secret of his purpose to enter the trading business. All Three Forks had heard of that stock en route from Nashville, and of the owner's intention to sell it to the Indians at "honest" prices.

"You are the only public officer in this country to whom I will or could report, . . . Capt. Vashon [the new Cherokee agent] not having arrived. . . . My situation is peculiar and for that reason I will take pains to obviate any difficulty arising from supposed violation of the intercourse laws." Supposed violation! "I am a citizen of the Cherokee Nation and as such I do contend that the intercourse laws have no . . . bearing upon me or my circumstances." Ah!

"I ordered to this point for my own use and the convenience of my establishment, five barrels of whisky (four of Mononga-hela and one of corn), one barrel of cognac brandy, one of gin, one of rum and one of wine. . . . The whiskey excepting one barrel will be stored with the sutler Gen'l Jno. Nicks, subject to your orders . . . and not to be used . . . without your knowledge or consent—nor shall one drop of whiskey be sold to either soldier or Indian. . . . [because] I entertain too much respect for the wishes of the Government—second— too much friendship for the Indians and third too much respect for myself.

"So soon as my establishment is opened I will request of you that you will (if you please) direct an officer or officers to

examine and see that there is a perfect agreement between my report and the stores on hand. ... I have the honor to be . . . Sam Houston." 6

The bland presumption of his correspondent might have ruffled a man of less poise than Matthew Arbuckle. There were, as Colonel Arbuckle doubtless knew, old treaties that gave the Cherokee Indians a peculiar national status. But the Colonel's instructions had nothing to do with these treaties. After sleeping on the matter, Arbuckle forwarded Sam Houston's interesting communication to the War Department, with comment.

General Houston, he said, was jealous of his privileges as a Cherokee citizen, "and being rather impatient of restraint has on some occasions made remarks . . . which might be regarded exceptionable." Colonel Arbuckle was not an alarmist, however. He was disposed to regard Houston's indiscreet talk as "the result of momentary excitement," arising from the controversies over his Indian writings. Nevertheless the Colonel had the honor to suggest "a decision . . . with respect to the Right of Genl Houston to absolve himself from his allegiance to the United States." 7

The War Department viewed the case in a serious light. "The right contended for by General Houston, as a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, to carry on trade with the Indians without being licensed ... as required by the laws of the United States, would, if admitted, tend to overthrow the whole system of Indian trade as established by Congress, under the power conferr'd by the General Government by the Constitution 'to regulate trade and intercourse with the Indian Tribes.' . . . General Houston will therefore be required to give bond and obtain (as other traders have to do) a license from the Indian Agent." The government would make an important concession, however. "Indian traders are not allowed to take Spirits into the Indian Country, but . . . Genl Houston . . . may be permitted ... to take [the