Cherokee Friends

By Jeannie Thompson

Ephram Humphry is a man with a dream of owning his own business. When his Cherokee neighbors are forced to move to Indian Territory, he sees this as a chance to make that dream a reality. With the help of his wife, Mindy, Eph takes his family and follows the Cherokee to the small town that will become the capital of their new nation. When things don't go as planned, Andy, Addie, and Desdimona step in to help their parents make the best of a bad situation while still finding time, as children do, to have some fun. Through their victories and defeats, the Humphrys find their place as the white man in Indian lands.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Oct 16, 2009
• ISBN: 9781440175657

Jeannie Thompson

A graduate of Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, OK, Jeannie Thompson is now a retired English teacher. The Cherokee Nation has always been home to her. Writing provides her a way of sharing family legends with her children and grandchildren. She includes photography and reading among her hobbies.

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Copyright © 2009 by Jeannie Thompson

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This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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ISBN: 978-1-4401-7564-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4401-7565-7 (ebook)

Contents

One Bandits

Two The Trail Where They Cried

Three Civil War

Four Tornado

Five Disappointments

Six Journey’s End

Seven Barn Raisin’

Eight Nuts And Bears

Nine Levi

Ten Snow Games

Eleven New Plans

Twelve Christmas

Thirteen Quilting Bee

Fourteen More Plans

Fifteen Return To Lafayette

Sixteen Progress

Seventeen Spring

Eighteen Cherokee Wedding

Nineteen Open For Business

Twenty Green Corn Ceremony

Twenty-One Rabies And Madstones

Twenty-Two Mushrooms

Twenty-Three Hog Killing

Twenty-Four Cherokee Justice

Twenty-Five Winter

Twenty-Six Summer Pleasures

Twenty-Seven Measles

Twenty-Eight Conversation With The Reverend

Twenty-Nine Attacked

Thirty A Friend Returns

Thirty-One A Family Wedding

One

BANDITS

Addie woke suddenly, startled from deep slumber by an unfamiliar sound. She lay still, feeling Desi’s small, warm body next to hers, her chest still rising and falling with the slow, rhythmic breaths of sleep. Through the shadows, Addie could hear the sharp chirrup of crickets, and from a long distance the softer questioning Who, who? of the night owl. Then she felt the slight sway of the wagon and realized Andy had shifted position in the front of the wagon from his bed under the seat. She wondered if he, too, had been awakened by that unidentified sound. Lying still and quiet, she soon recognized the soft clop, clop of horses approaching their campsite.

Well, what do we have heah?

The voice was soft but somehow sinister, coming from the shapeless shadow at the edge of the clearing where they had made camp for the night. Addie heard her father stir on his blanket on the ground outside the wagon, and, as he rolled over and sat up, she could see the shape of his large back against the glowing coals that remained from their campfire. As Ephram moved to stand, Mindy quietly rose behind him. Addie felt soft shifting in the front of the wagon as Andy stirred again, and she followed suit, remembering the instructions their father had given them.

Three scraggly brown horses, each carrying a rider slouched on the saddle hitched tightly to its bony back, moved into the clearing. A tall, thin man slowly dismounted from the lead horse, casually slinging his leg across the back of the saddle. He kept a watchful eye on Eph while his hand rested on the pistol tucked into the holster that slapped against his hip. The second stranger followed, pulling a rifle from behind his saddle, holding it tightly with the barrel pointed toward the ground. Even from the wagon, Addie could smell their unwashed bodies.

What’cha got in this heah wagon, mister? the first man growled. He spat a brown stream of tobacco from the side of his mouth.

Eph reached down casually and tossed a log onto the fire causing sparks to fly upward into the night. The logs ignited, casting a soft light around the camp. My belongings, Eph said. Then as he stood he repeated, MY things.

You look like a man who don’t mind sharin’. The man’s eyes moved from the wagon to Mindy, and Eph quickly pushed her behind him.

Sorry, but I got plans for my things, he replied.

The man scratched his scruffy beard, then he hooked his thumb under his hat brim, pushing it back over his long, oily hair. He lifted one scraggly eyebrow, and he smiled lopsidedly beneath a drooping moustache.

Well, mister, guess you’re gonna have a change of plans. He took a step toward Eph as his hand tightened on his pistol.

Suddenly, an explosion broke the quiet of the night. Dirt and rock blasted up from the ground in front of the stranger, dust blowing into his eyes, mouth, and nose. At almost the same time, as the second bandit started to raise the barrel of his rifle, there was another explosion. The man let out a loud scream and looked down at his foot. Where the tip of his boot had been, there was a large hole. Blood poured onto the ground from what had been his big toe.

Wayne, they shot me! Someone shot me, Wayne! he screamed frantically. This ain’t supposed to happen. Who’s out there? Someone else is out there, Wayne. Someone else is shootin’ at us!

In the confusion, Eph bent down and picked up his rifle, which had been hidden in the blankets on the ground. He quickly aimed at the third rider who had remained on horseback.

Don’t, stranger, he commanded as the rider started to lift his gun. Be best if y’all mount up and ride out. We ain’t looking for no trouble, but that was your warning. We don’t warn but once. Git out. Now!

Looking uncertainly toward the wagon and into the shadowed woods, the two men mounted their horses, one moaning as he swung his bloodied foot carefully over his saddle. As the horses loped down the road and back into the darkness, Eph and Mindy stood listening attentively until they could no longer hear the sounds of the horses’ hooves striking the gravel. Then they quickly gathered their blankets and supplies and carried them to the wagon. Andy and Addie hopped off to help their parents. The darkness hid the blush on their faces as their father praised them for doing what he had taught them to do if strangers approached in the dark.

I’m sorry I hit him, Addie said sorrowfully. I’m just not as good a shot as Andy. Really, I did just mean to make a hole in front of him.

When he thinks about it, he’ll just be glad you didn’t aim any higher, Andy laughed as they stacked their camping supplies into the back of the wagon. Ephram hitched the horses to the vehicle as Mindy smothered the campfire. They left, moving into the starlit night, fearful of staying where the bandits might return. Desi stirred in her covers having slept through the ordeal. Addie and Andy would spend several days telling and retelling their six-year-old sister the tale of their bravery and marksmanship.

Two

THE TRAIL WHERE THEY CRIED

The wagon jolted each time a narrow wheel fell into a rut, and the ruts were plentiful. However, it was the branches slapping the wooden sides of the rickety cart that caused Addie’s heart to jump each time she heard an sudden unexpected crack in the dark. She didn’t like riding in the back of the large, lumbering vehicle, but she knew there was danger walking in the dark on the lonely black roads, if these trails could be called roads. So she huddled with her younger sister under their skimpy blanket until the rhythm of the wagon finally lulled them into a fitful sleep. Soon, however, Father stopped so they could all rest until the dawn rose in the eastern sky. They were worn out before the day began, but they knew daylight would bring only more long hours of walking westward. They had planned this journey with other families who had left two weeks earlier, and Ephram hoped to catch up to them by the time they reached the big river at a town called Memphis.

The ruts in the road they traveled had been worn the year before, in 1838, as one of the thirteen exiled parties of Cherokee people wound their way from their homes in Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, and the Carolinas to the territory that had been assigned to them in the new lands. The Humphreys were following Bell’s Route, one of the four major trails the Cherokee had followed. It would take them through Tennessee and the delta of Arkansas rather than forcing them to face the full range of the Ozark Mountains to the north. Along the way, all too often they saw small burial mounds marking the spot where yet another member of the displaced tribes had died from disease, starvation, exhaustion, or despair. At first Addie had commented on them, asking her mother or father what had happened, but she soon stopped after seeing her parents’ sad faces and receiving no reasonable answer. Sometimes they even found household items or furniture or cooking utensils that had been tossed aside. Ephram picked up as much as he could and stacked it all on the wagon, adding to the wares he would sell in the store he intended to open when he reached the Indian territories.

Since they had no Cherokee ancestors, unlike many of their neighbors, Addie’s family had not been forced to move from their home in Georgia. Addie, her sister Desdimona, and her brother Andrew had watched as many of their friends packed their most valued possessions before they were herded first into small groups, then into larger bands, as the soldiers forced them from their homes. She heard her mother and father speak in whispers of the occasional family who had slipped into the forests to hide. Many had been hunted down by the soldiers and some renegade Cherokee who had helped the soldiers find the runaways. Others of those who escaped had not been found and were still hiding, or they had died from starvation or from the cold of the mountain winters.

Eph and Mindy Humphrey, Addie’s parents, had seen their friends forced to leave, too, and missed the companionship of their neighbors. Many of them had been half Cherokee, or a quarter, or even less, but to President Jackson that made them Indian and not welcome in the white man’s world. Addie didn’t understand why it was fair to take the Indians’ land so that the white settlers could claim it, but she thought maybe she was just too young to understand. Perhaps it would make more sense as she got older.

At least they were traveling in warmer weather. The heat in the day sometimes got almost unbearable, but there were often streams nearby where they could get fresh water. They waded in the rushing water, too, cooling their aching feet. Addie knew when her friends had left in September or October the year before, they had made much of the trip in bitter winter weather. The government had given them some supplies, but reports had come back that the supplies had run out, or the commissioners had cheated the Cherokee by selling off the good supplies and giving them only poor quality merchandise such as thin cotton blankets and half or quarter rations of their food provisions. However, the only person that Addie knew who hadn’t survived the trip was her friend Levi Ballew’s grandmother. The elderly lady had developed pneumonia and died within two days. Her gravesite was somewhere along the northern road, but now no one knew for sure where because it was one among so many. Even Cherokee Chief John Ross had become a widower when his wife Quatie had died the winter before. She was in the last party to leave when an early November blizzard rolled over the struggling group of emigrants. Giving her blanket to a child who was ill with pellagra, Mrs. Ross left herself exposed to the elements. Already weak and near starvation, she developed a cold that quickly turned to the pneumonia that had already claimed the lives of so many in their tribe, and she died within days. Her body was also buried in an unmarked grave somewhere near Little Rock in Arkansas.

The bugs were bad, too. Addie, Desi, and Andy’s arms and faces were speckled with red spots from mosquito bites. It was a nightly chore checking for ticks, pulling off those that had bitten down hard in the soft, warm flesh under their clothing, especially where the garment fit the tightest. They often found ticks in their hair when a spot began itching and a large knot could be felt where the little insect had buried itself for two or three days. Chiggers were bad, too, and the children quickly learned to avoid any bush that might contain those tiny red creatures that created such a horrible itch with their tiny bites. At night, when Father stopped and they built a campfire, it was fun to chase the fireflies that appeared in the darkness at the edge of their circle of light. The children would catch them, then squeeze their glowing tails off and stick them to their fingers to make rings that shone for a short time in the dark. Andy liked to capture the June bugs. He would tie a long string from Mother’s sewing basket onto one scratchy leg, then they’d watch the little creature fly in circles, buzzing above their heads in its futile attempt to escape. Upon tiring of the game, Andy would untie the string and let the little bug go since June bugs, at least, don’t bite and cause an itch.

On rainy days when the roads were muddy, making it difficult to walk, Addie would climb into the tiny space in the back of the wagon and read. Reading was a skill her mother had taught her, one not many girls had. Her mother had learned from her brother, Addie’s Uncle Presley. He had been taught by the preacher. Reverend McIntosh had told Press that he had the gift and should turn to the pulpit to become a minister himself. He believed Press should first know the Bible, so McIntosh took it upon himself to teach Press to read. The boy studied at home with his younger sister, Mindy, who learned more quickly and more easily than her brother. After two years, the preacher gave up on Presley, not only because the boy was slow and unwilling to learn, but also because he was prone to pranks and mischief. Mindy, however, continued to read anything she could find in print, from newspapers and labels at the local mercantile to the occasional book she could borrow. Another of Mindy’s gifts was an understanding of basic math, a gift that Eph appreciated more than any dowry she could have brought to their marriage. He had fallen in love with the tiny, dark-haired girl with the sparkling blue eyes when she was thirteen. He had waited until she was sixteen before asking her father for her hand in marriage. He was eight years older than his new bride, but that had given him time to acquire a few acres in a hollow with rich soil and tall, straight trees. By then he also owned three cows, a horse, some chickens, four hogs, and a small cabin—belongings that made him quite a catch in their community. Her father hadn’t hesitated a moment before giving his approval, never bothering to ask his youngest daughter her opinion. Since she had allowed Ephram to court her for a full year, both men knew there would be no objection.

Eph and Mindy had been married for sixteen years, and for sixteen years he