Over the Misty Mountains (10 page)

“Gone hunting. Bad winter. Not much to eat.” Sequatchie puffed on the pipe and watched the blue smoke rise slowly. “Your name is Jehoshaphat.” He pronounced it slowly, breaking it up into syllables. “What does it mean?”

Josh blinked with surprise. “I don’t know that it means anything.”

“White people not very smart about names.”

“I guess not. What does your name mean?”

Sequatchie puffed contentedly on the pipe. “A man’s name is power. He doesn’t give it away to others easily because it would give that man power over him.”

“Oh!”

Sequatchie, however, nodded and said, “It is only one of my names. It means Possum River.”

Josh suddenly grinned. “That’s a funny name.”

“Among my people we have naming ceremonies. Every name someone gives has to be used. Someday I may tell you some of my other names.”

Josh picked up a knife and began whittling on a stick. It was a poorly made knife, and he looked at it, saying, “This isn’t much of a knife.”

“No. Trader’s goods. I give two beavers for that knife.”

“Two beavers?” Josh stared at the thinness of the rusty blade and shook his head. “You were cheated, Sequatchie.”

“Yes, Indians get cheated regularly by your people.”

Sequatchie’s words embarrassed Josh, and he dropped his eyes. He continued to whittle on the stick, and finally a thought occurred to him. “Did you see anything else when you found me? Anything that might help me find the man who shot me?”

“No. He rode a horse without shoes and led a pack animal.” Sequatchie studied the young man and said, “The hawk showed me where you were.”

Confusion swept across Josh’s face. “An Indian named Hawk?”

“Hawk—” Sequatchie pointed up at the sky. “Bird with red shoulders and a red tail.”

“Oh, that kind of hawk. What do you mean he showed you?”

Sequatchie considered the white man carefully. He had learned that white people made fun of Indian beliefs, and he himself made light of some of them. However, his heritage ran deep and he said, “I was out hunting, and I heard a hawk far off as the sun dipped low in the sky. When I climbed the hill, I saw a big red hawk. He kept circling and circling high overhead. I kept waiting for him to fall to make his kill, but he did not.”

Josh sat waiting for the story to go on. He had learned that Indians did not like to be rushed, and so he was as patient as he could be.

Finally Sequatchie said, “I knew this was not just a hawk. So I went through the woods, closer to where he circled, and when I got under him I found you there.” He waited for one moment and said, “That was when I gave you your Indian name.”

“What’s that?”

“Hawk. It is a good name. Better than Jehoshaphat—which means nothing.”

Josh smiled. “You may be right about that. I never liked it much myself.”

The two men sat there talking, and finally Sequatchie’s mother called out, “Come and eat.” They moved inside the cabin, which had very little light. The village had been a surprise to Josh. It was not large, having no more than twenty houses. He had learned that it was part of a network of Cherokee villages. The Cherokees all built one-story log cabins. The logs were stripped of the bark and notched at the ends, and grass mixed with smooth clay was plastered over the walls. They were roofed with bark and long broad shingles or sometimes thatched. Only a few had a window. Sequatchie’s was partitioned to form two rooms, with animal skins covering the doorways from within and without. Just outside the dwelling was a smaller, partly buried winter house where the family slept during the coldest weather. Sequatchie had told him that these were called “hot houses” by the white traders because of their stifling heat and smokiness. The floor of the hot house was dug two or three feet below ground level and was twenty to thirty feet square. Large upright logs formed the framework, which was covered with clay plaster. Cane couches for sleeping were built along the walls. One wall had a small scooped-out fireplace, which often burned day and night. Josh learned also that the hot houses were used by medicine men to treat certain diseases.

Josh ate the stew hungrily and asked, “What is this, Awenasa? Possum?”

“Puppy.”

Josh had a mouthful of the stew, and for one moment considered spitting it out, but the dark eyes of both of his hosts were watching him intently. He managed a smile and said, “It’s very good.”

“Puppy dog stew not bad,” Sequatchie said. Again humor gleamed in his eyes. “Some white people don’t eat dogs.”

“I heard that some men from over the sea eat snails,” Josh said. “The French people.”

Disgust crossed the face of the Indian woman, and she said, “White people have no sense! Eating snails!”

****

From time to time, Josh sensed a difference in the spirit of the two who had taken him in. They did not speak of themselves a great deal, but one thing he discovered was that they were very religious. It was two weeks after he had awakened from his coma that he finally asked Sequatchie, “You talk a lot about God. How do you know about Him?”

Sequatchie was making a pair of snowshoes. He had stretched thin strips of wood around a frame and now was boring through one of them with a sharp awl made out of metal. He worked slowly, for time did not mean much to the Indians. If it took two weeks to make a pair of snowshoes, that mattered little. There was nothing else to do during the winter except hunt. The question that Josh had put forth hung in the air for some time, and he waited as usual.

Finally Sequatchie said, “Many moons ago, when I was a very young man, no more than a puppy in the tribe, a man came to trade with us. His name was Elmo McGuire. He was a small man, and he knew nothing about our ways.” Carefully he finished making a hole through the thin piece of wood, then he blew the chips away and grunted with satisfaction. “We made fun of him at first. He could not shoot a bow. He could not even run as fast as some of the squaws. But one thing we saw—he never grew angry. Once we put a snake in his bed, not a bad one, just a green snake. He was terribly frightened of them, and I expected him to strike out. He was so frightened that he became ill, but he didn’t say one word to us.” He held the partly finished snowshoe up to the sky and peered at it critically. “There was something different about him. Any Indian I knew would have fought over the things we did to him—but he never did.”

“Where did he come from?”

“From across the water. He spoke funny. Not like you speak. He said his words differently. He said he was Scottish. Do you know Scottish?”

“Yes, way across the big waters, Sequatchie. Very fine people. What was he doing living among the Cherokees?”

“He came to tell us about his God.”

“A missionary!” Josh exclaimed.

“What is that?”

“One who goes to another land to tell people about his God.”

Sequatchie continued working on the snowshoe. Far off a wolf howled, and Sequatchie’s eyes swiftly turned in that direction. He had the habit that most Indians had of always being aware of his surroundings. The tall Indian said nothing, but the animal was on his mind, Josh knew. “Had you never heard of his God before?”

“No. He talked about Jesus all the time. Do you know Jesus?”

Josh hesitated, then said, “Yes, I know about Jesus.”

“He is a good God, is He not? He died for all men, red and white.”

“That’s right,” Josh muttered. “You got converted then?”

“What is converted?”

“You put away your old gods and followed the Jesus God.”

“Yes.” Sequatchie’s face grew troubled for a moment, and his eyes narrowed. “It was not easy. My people like the old ways, most of them. But I listened to McGuire for many moons. He stayed three years. Not one single person would come to believe in his God, but he never gave up.”

“He sounds like a strong man.”

“No. He was very weak. Always sick, but he was a good man. He did what he could to help. He did not understand our ways, but he didn’t make fun of them either as many white people do.”

A long silence passed, and Josh saw that Sequatchie was thinking hard. Finally he said, “What happened to Elmo McGuire?”

“After a long time, some of us began to believe him. Every day he would come and read to us from a book. Then he got sick and died. Everyone was sad. I still have the book.”

“Could I see it?”

Without a word, Sequatchie got up and entered the cabin. He came back, almost at once, carrying a small object wrapped in flexible doeskin, soft as velvet. With careful hands, he unwrapped it and handed over a dog-eared, worn book that had the words
Holy Bible
on the front. “This is the book of Jesus. I cannot read it.” He handed it to Josh, who opened it and saw that the first page had an inscription in a coarse handwriting: “To my son, Elmo McGuire. May he serve God all the days of his life.” It was signed, Amos McGuire. “From his father,” Josh said. He thumbed through the Bible, noting that the pages were worn very thin. Then looking up, he saw Sequatchie’s eyes fixed upon him.

“You can read in book?”

“Why, of course.” Josh hesitated for a moment, then said, “Would you like for me to read some?”

“Wait! I get other Christians.”

Sequatchie got up instantly and went quickly from cabin to cabin, and soon everyone in the village, mostly women and children, with only a few old men, had come together. Most of them did not speak English, but Sequatchie said, “You read book. I say in Cherokee.”

Josh opened the Bible to the first page. “In the beginning,” he read, “God created the heaven and the earth.” He stopped then, and Sequatchie, in the strange, guttural language of the Cherokee, translated it carefully. He sounded as if his mouth were full of mush, but his eyes were alive as he looked quickly to Josh.

“What say now, Hawk?”

It was the first time his new name had been used, and from that moment on, Jehoshaphat Spencer was known among the Cherokees as simply Hawk. All around him, eager eyes watched, waiting for him to continue. Somehow he knew that this would be a new way of life for him. Looking down at the page, he read the second line from the Scriptures. “And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. . . .”

Josh read line after line, waiting each time for Sequatchie to translate. Each time he looked around at the dark faces and saw that they were turned to him expectantly, and a sudden thought occurred to him.
It must be awful not to be able to read. These people can read the face of nature. They know so much about the skies and the woods and the ways of the wild creatures, but they can’t read the Word of God
. Something in the hunger of the people stirred him, and he thought with guilt,
I’m a hypocrite! I’ve given up on God and the Bible, and here I am reading it, just like a preacher!
But he could not stop now, for the hunger in the eyes of these simple people was evident on every face.

He read for over two hours, and finally when he closed the book, Sequatchie dismissed the people. After everyone had returned to their cabin, the tall Indian turned to Josh. “You want to be a long hunter?”

Josh nodded. He had shared this much of his dream with the Indian, and he waited now to hear Sequatchie’s comment.

“You are not a very good hunter.”

“No, I’m not. I was raised mostly in a big town—a big village.”

Sequatchie sat thinking for a moment, then he turned and said, “Every promise the white man has ever made to the Cherokee they have broken. I have given up on making treaties.”

“I can’t say as I blame you, Sequatchie.”

Sequatchie hesitated, then said, “I will make a treaty with you. It was what McGuire called a covenant, an agreement between two men.”

“Yes. That’s what a covenant is.” He was puzzled and said, “What kind of covenant do you want to make with me?”

“You read the book of Jesus to me and teach my people, and I will teach you how to be the best hunter in the mountains.”

Josh sensed the solemnness of the moment and hesitated. He knew he was getting a late start. Daniel Boone had learned how to hunt as a young boy, but Josh had missed out on most of that. Suddenly a burning desire touched him to become a great hunter like Boone—a man who could move through the woods as silently as an owl! Josh realized he was being offered a great gift. “You don’t understand, Sequatchie. I . . . I can read the book, but I have turned away from the God that the book speaks of.”

“I know that. It is not in your heart—this Jesus that died for all men. You have a bitterness in you. Something is eating away. You’re like a tree with a bad disease on the inside. Outwardly you look strong, but inside something is bad.”

Hawk could not answer for a moment, for Sequatchie’s words had surprised him. This simple Indian had described the inner struggles of his life better than any white man could have done. Hawk dropped his head and stood there silently. Finally he lifted his eyes. “You’re right, Sequatchie. So you would not want me to read the Bible.”

“The book is true no matter who reads it,” Sequatchie said. “Will you covenant with me? You will read and teach my people, and I will make you a hawk indeed. The hawk is the best of hunters, and you will become like him, like your name.”

It was one of those moments when life seemed to hang in the balance—as when a man reaches a crossroads and must choose which path to follow. Jehoshaphat Spencer hesitated only for one moment, then he smiled. “My name is Hawk,” he said. “I will read the book, and you will teach me how to be like you.”

Chapter Six

Trouble at Fort Loudoun

Esther Spencer was well aware that the Scriptures strictly warned against pride. She would have been taken aback, however, if anyone had accused her of being guilty of this particular sin. Actually, this “evil” was centered almost altogether in one area—her kitchen and the meals that she prepared in it. All of her life she had been a cook, and although she read practically nothing in the form of books, journals, or periodicals, she had a large collection of recipes bound together under leather covers, all carefully arranged. Some of them went back to her ancestors in England, back to Devon. Nothing gave Esther Spencer more pleasure than reading the spiderlike scroll of brown ink that set forth the making of a mint pie or another delicacy of that age. It delighted her to be able to reproduce those dishes that her great-great-grandmother Ophelia had set on tables for her men back so long ago in another time and another place.