An Undisturbed Peace (27 page)

He was not convinced. Contractual provisions were the flimsiest of solutions. He laughed like a madman when they brought it up. Instead, Abrahan Bento Sassaporta Naggar swore an oath on the head of his second child who was soon to be born: Next year he would do everything in his power to condemn the abomination that was Indian removal. He no longer trusted anyone involved in the process to have a lick of sense or an ounce of compassion. In a fit of principle, he vowed he would not put his name to any removal activities. He would go once more to Washington to expedite the termination of his license and to lobby the commissioner of Indian Affairs for a change in stewardship of the process, as George Gaines was obviously a blockhead, a man of hard and narrow heart. To put some gumption behind his words, he was prepared to relinquish his sublicenses, those he'd won to do business with the Indians that remained in the country, as well. “If it doesn't pinch,” he explained to his family, “if it doesn't hurt, then penance is void of meaning. And for our part in the murder of innocents, penance is due.” They looked at him helplessly. Hannah bit her lip and anxiously agreed while fearful of the consequences of agreeing. Susanah clasped her hands to her bosom and looked to the heavens but for what purpose it was unclear. Isadore raised his palms in the same direction, saying to his wife, “When did your son become the head of the family?” only he said it not with acrimony but with pride.

For the second year in a row, Abe rode to Washington in his sleek suit and beaver hat. He reversed the order of his visitations, first sitting outside the office of the Commission on Indian Affairs under the row of Edward Redhand busts. As in the previous year, the corridors bustled with men eager to make their fortunes on the back of Choctaw hardship. Unlike the previous year, Abe befriended none. At last his turn came for an audience with the same commissioner's secretary Mr. Parker had bribed in the lobby of the Old Patriot Hotel the year before. He declined an offer to sit in the man's well-stuffed visitor chair covered in red-white-and-blue damask. Instead, he stood tall, shoulders squared before an over-large mahogany desk with heavy scrolled legs and highly polished top, an appurtenance of power meant to intimidate and impress. In unwavering voice, he lodged a protest against the management of the Choctaw removal, providing the gray-haired, mustachioed bureaucrat with a letter protesting the horrors O'Hanlon had reported. Below his summation, every Quaker in Greensborough had signed his name. Abe told the man there were more copies of this letter. One would find its way into the hands of the War Department, others into the hands of the press and of Congressmen Crockett, Sprague, Everett, and Frelinghuysen, the most vocal opponents of the Indian Removal Act, with the hope that it might inspire an effort to repeal the heinous law. He then took his various agency licenses from his breast pocket, ripped them in quarters, and tossed them onto the desktop.

The eyes of the secretary shifted to the side, where his marshal stood at the ready. The man's lips pinched. He opened his mouth, preparing to excoriate his visitor before giving him the boot. Abe didn't wait to be thrown out. He executed a sharp nod with eloquent finality, turned on his heel, and left. Exhilarated, lighter, happy, halfway to redemption, he headed to the War Department.

The War Department corridors were even more crowded than those of the Commission of Indian Affairs. Men were pressed shoulder to shoulder without courtesy or order. From their chatter, Abe surmised many of them were members of the press. He wondered what newsworthy event had occurred. Was there a new war? A revolt in the hinterlands? The massive gold-knobbed door to the war secretary's chambers swung open. Cries of excitement pierced the air. Men pushed one another backward and forward, climbed up one another's backs, all jostling for a spot where they might see what was going on. Officers of the guard pushed the crowd against the walls. Abe stood on a bench to avoid being crushed. Once a narrow passage had been cleared, several men left the secretary's chamber. The remarkable thing was that there was among them a man Abe knew. They were all Indian, but the one he knew was Principal Chief John Ross of the Cherokee Nation.

He called out to the chief. So did thirty other men. The Indians made their way slowly through the crowd, stopping to answer questions from the most prominent journalists. Whenever they spoke, the people immediately hushed. When they stopped, cacophony broke out again, redoubled. Abe left his bench to scuttle along the wall 'til his back found a door leading to a service staircase. He pushed it open, ran down the stairs, and positioned himself behind a wrought-iron railing at the building's entrance close to the brick wall. So secured by stone and metal, it would be impossible to dislodge him. He waited. Within moments, a sea of shouting men flooded the entry lobby. Guardsmen pushed them aside with the tips of their bayonets. The Cherokee walked with their heads high down the interior steps and out the door. Abe extended his hand and pulled on Chief John Ross's coat. The chief turned. His black eyes flickered with a hint of recognition.

All the world around them faded away as Abe said, “Chief Ross, remember me? A friend of Dark Water and Jacob's what came to you at New Echota a number of years back.”

He remembered. He nodded. “And what do you want?”

Before he knew what his words would be, Abe blurted out, “I need to know of them.”

Chief John Ross turned to a man Abe hadn't noticed before. He was a small man in an ill-fitting suit. The copper color of his skin declared him Indian of some kind, but somehow he had neither the bones nor the carriage for it. “Give him my hotel.” John Ross put his head close to Abe's and spoke in his ear for privacy's sake. “You may come there tonight. Nine o'clock.”

Abe clasped his hand and gave it a good solid shake. “Thank you, sir. Thank you,” he said, before scribbling down on the back of one of his copies of the letter of protest the name and address of Chief John Ross's hotel.

Allies

A
be entered the lobby of the discreet, three-storied brick hotel, the Federalist, located in the heart of the capital at a quarter to nine. He looked around. The chief's accommodations were far superior to his own, which were situated in a boardinghouse more than halfway to Virginia, a place frequented by transient salesmen looking for a home-cooked supper and decent bedding for their mounts. While the common areas of Ethel Mae's Rooms were plain and worn, furnished in scraped wooden chairs and threadbare carpet, at the Federalist there was gold flocked wallpaper, multiple crystal chandeliers, oak floors, and an abundance of velvet and brocade upholstery on welcoming couches and chairs that dazzled the eye. His merchant's gaze wandered to the walls, estimating the worth of oil paintings and brass sconces, when he was interrupted in his reverie by a shuffle of feet and gently murmured “ahem.” Standing close to his right was the small man in the ill-fitting suit, a man Abe assumed was the chief's secretary. He tipped his hat to him. The small man reciprocated. He gestured Abe to follow him to a corner suite on the second floor.

John Ross sat in his shirtsleeves at a writing desk overburdened with papers. His head was down, his hand held a quill poised tentatively over documents he read with furrowed brow. He did not seem to notice his visitor. Again the small man murmured “ahem,” so gently the utterance was more plea than announcement. Chief John Ross looked up.

“Ah, Mr. Sassaporta, here you are.” He rose and slipped on his frock coat. “I apologize for my disarray.”

Abe executed a little bow from the waist, not too deep a bow, which he worried would appear obsequious, but a short, respectful one.

“Not at all, sir. I am delighted you could find time for me.”

They moved to a settee. The small man brought them glasses of sherry. Abe inquired about the chief's negotiations with the War Department, to which John Ross raised his eyes to the heavens and moved his hands to indicate hopefulness. “I believe we are near the end,” he said, without clarifying his meaning.

Abe blushed. Were his feet put to a fire, he would confess he had no desire to discuss the current round of negotiations. It wasn't that he was heartless on the subject of the Cherokee Nation's fate. Obviously, he believed that the government management of Choctaw removal was an abomination. They'd been promised moneys, livestock, and western lands in return for volunteering to leave their ancestral home, and what had they got but penury, sickness, and death? He felt he had done his duty when he lodged his protests and washed his hands of all aspects of the removal, denying himself any profit in it. The point was that there was nothing else a man like him could do. Who was he but a humble merchant in a provincial town? Abe's America was one of wholesome geniality, of the good people of all backgrounds who had embraced him. His experience inspired him to trust that, having made tragic mistakes with the Choctaw and after suffering impassioned objections like the ones he'd delivered that very morning, the various men in power would see to it that such horrors were not repeated. He had faith in that. This was the New World, not the Old. America was not Spain or Germany or France, where Jews could be kicked from country to country, their assets gobbled up, their futures left to their own devices, to good fortune or ill. In any event, he had not visited Ross to inquire about the fate of the entire Cherokee Nation. He'd visited to inquire about the fate of one Cherokee in particular, and that of her mother's slave.

“Chief Ross,” he began, “if you say you are near completion, then I wish you only the best of luck in securing whatever terms you desire. But I am come to you to ask what has happened to Jacob and Dark Water, who are my friends. I was told that, while I was in this very city a year ago, they visited my place of business and, not finding me there, went on their way. It was reported to me that they were not in the best of circumstances. I'm hoping you can explain to me what happened to them.”

John Ross leaned backward in his seat and presented Abe a look of astonishment.

“What do you think has happened to them, Mr. Sassaporta? Our glorious boundaries have shrunk from the spread of an eagle's wing to that of a butterfly's in but a handful of years. In Georgia, where first we met, white settlers are granted what's left of our lands by lottery, dispossessing whoever might be in the way without so much as a warning. We crowd together on territories with little enough game to go around while our most fertile fields are harvested by white hands. Echota is a ghost town. Our white advocates—our postman, Reverend Worcester!—are arrested for their loyalty. It's a crime in Georgia for white men to help us. Men like Reverend Worcester languish in prison despite your Supreme Court's decisions in their favor. President Jackson, who is bound to be rid of us, sides against the supreme judges and with the State of Georgia, despite the Constitution, which I thought your people held sacred. More the fool me.

“Our ruination is certain. The only thing left of Echota is the printing press, which is in disrepair after the last militia raid burned the building in which it was housed. We prepare to move the capital of the nation to Red Clay, Tennessee, as soon as the buildings we require are completed. How long we will last there, I cannot say. I pray at least until President Jackson is out of office and one more sympathetic sleeps in the White House. It's our only chance. Otherwise we will be on our way to that small parcel of this great continent your government has designed for us—a little corner of land just outside the Missouri Territory and the state of Arkansas. We will sit on a crowded territory with no place to grow, on top of those awarded the Choctaw and Chickasaw, the Seminole and Creek. No nation will be happy. There are other tribes, western nations, who will resent our arrival. It will be only a matter of time before we are all at war with each other as in the old days. I fear then your government will drive us farther, even to the great mountains, then over them, and into the western sea.

“We have not been able to support the old places for some time. These lawsuits gobble up all our funds. If Jacob and Dark Water left, it was only as they were hungry. Except …” John Ross put his glass down on the little table in front of them. He paused. When next he spoke, it was in a hushed tone, his voice as soft as the small man's ahem. “They married. Did you know that?”

Abe spoke slowly, embarrassed as he was to have been ignorant of the extent of Cherokee decline. He thought the Choctaw disaster an anomaly. The newspapers he read painted a rosy picture of other Indians who voluntarily left their lands, of a benign federal government that helped them relocate for their own protection against the lawless. This country, he thought. So rich it opens one's eyes to boundless ambition and blinds them to the misfortunes of others. All of his earlier assumptions were thrown into doubt. “Yes,” he managed to say. “I believe Dark Water mentioned as much to my wife and uncle. I wasn't sure whether to believe it.”

“Indeed, they married. Not in the traditional sense exactly, as they had no clan to witness them nor medicine man to bless them, but they observed the rituals. They fasted, they purified themselves in the living stream, they exchanged the proper gifts and wrapped themselves in a single blanket.”

John Ross rose and went to the window, stood looking out with his hands clasped behind his back.

“You are aware the marriage of a black slave and a Cherokee is against our law?”

“Yes.”

“And are you aware of the punishment the law prescribes?”

Abe's breath was stolen by an image of Dark Water, his Marian, with a back striped by scars. He could not speak.

“Then I'll tell you,” Chief John Ross said. “It is twenty-five lashes against the naked back if the Cherokee is a woman. Seventy-­five if a male. It's a cruel law, yes, but one the people have voted is necessary to preserve the true blood and make themselves as good as white in the white man's eyes. Questions of survival often have dubious solutions. At any rate, I suspect our friends left Chota not merely out of hunger but also to avoid prosecution. Many of our people love them. Most of the people would look the other way—and I include myself in that number, Mr. Sassaporta, willingly, wholeheartedly! There are few so brave, so faithful to the Cherokee way as those two. But Jacob and Dark Water have their enemies. Bitter enemies who would be delighted to see her flogged. Especially while he wept.”

“Please. Tell me.”

“I admire the ways of the full blood and those who have resisted my own efforts to accommodate the Europeans. Never have I supported the idea that the white man's ways are superior to Cherokee. But war against the white man does not work. There are too many. To preserve the people, I have dressed them in broadcloth suits and calico dresses, weakened their rituals and encouraged the Christ in their hearts, put plows in the hands of men and spinning wheels in those of women. I knew from my father that the white man would devour them otherwise. But the white man's maw remains open and greedy despite my best efforts.

“When I was a boy, I worked in my father's trading post high in the mountains close to my mother's village. He was a Scot, you see, and my mother also had Scottish blood that flowed with the Cherokee in her veins. I would watch the play of the Cherokee boys from the windows of my father's store and long for their company. To my eyes, they were free and strong and wise in all important things while I was but an apprentice shopkeeper, skilled only in the making of change and the stocking of shelves. My mother and aunties encouraged me to participate in the Green Corn Dance and other celebrations of the people. These were the best days of my youth. When I was allowed to frolic with the others, how good those full-blood boys were to me! They joked with me. They called me Little White Bird, as my mother was of that clan, but they also embraced me. When my father sent me to the Christian school with other mixed bloods, I was the chap most likely to paint my face and rip off my shirt at the first opportunity.

“I first saw Dark Water just after I graduated and was appointed Indian agent. There was a General Council as was held every year, and of course all the people who were not infirm attended. There were the usual practical matters and disputes discussed and a most important vote on whether or not to support the United States in their most recent war, but there were also dances, games of stickball, races, and other competitions. Dark Water competed against the boys and won fame throughout the nation for her skill at running and shooting, and her beauty, of course, was by that time legendary. Like all the others, I longed for her attention. We noticed that after she collected her awards and honors at the competitions, she would rush to place them in the lap of her father. Yet her eyes did not take him in but settled instead on the beaming features of the slave, Jacob, who attended him. We were all jealous. Some swore they saw them touch hands or lean into each other when they thought no one was looking.

“This was the infamous year of the slave Jacob's confession to the murder of Teddy Rupert's son. You know of that, do you not? Yes, I thought you did. And of her foolish pleas for him, her confession, which he denied? Yes, yes. I tell you many of the young men who longed for her, myself included, loved her all the more for the madness of her passion. Who would not desire the devotion of a woman who could love so deeply? Others hated her for it. They felt she demeaned herself and shamed her family. When Jacob fled to Chota, our city of refuge was all but deserted after your Revolution scoured it. He tended it as best one man could. He labored to rebuild its cemetery. In this way, he earned the respect and gratitude of the nation even before the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in which he was so terribly damaged. But some hated him for being the one who caused the desertion of Dark Water, her withdrawal from her people, that terrible isolation and refusal to take one of them as his replacement in her arms.”

Chief John Ross turned from the window to face his visitor. He put his hands together in front of his chest and then opened them again, holding them close to his face.

“After you reunited them, their joy was boundless.” He wiggled his fingers in the air. “They say the very leaves of the trees trembled with pleasure at the sight of their lovemaking under the moon and stars. And these, they say, whispered their midnight secrets to the birds, who flew from one town to the next to tell their trees of it, and soon the goats knew and the dogs and then all the people. Lovers among them smiled and felt their own love strengthened in the happy ending of two so challenged and faithful. But those who hated her and those who hated him joined forces and spoke of them as a disgrace. Married properly or not, they grumbled, they were in violation of the law and she, especially, must be punished.

“How do y'think their supporters defended them? They said, they are not young, they are not whole, they will not bear children. Why should anyone care? Even if they should have children—was Shoeboots punished? Or were his babies with his slave made citizens? Ah! How much argument would then occur. Shoeboots bore his children when the restriction against marriage with slaves was custom, not law. He was a man. The issue of men has never been as important to us as the issue of women, who carry the privilege of citizenry and inheritance in their very wombs. On and on and on. Whenever there was nothing else to argue about, the gossips of the towns and villages would argue about Jacob and Dark Water. Even when there was much to argue about, they argued about Jacob and Dark Water to hide from the pain of matters more pressing. Questions such as when we will all be driven from our lands, and who would be the most convincing man to send to Washington to achieve a peace and, if not that, a settlement we could live with. This is the way of man. To seek distraction in the petty and evade the significant.”

John Ross clucked his tongue and sat next to Abe once more, falling into his own dark thoughts while Abe, absorbing so much intelligence, kept him company in his silence. The little man interrupted them, offering more sherry. They both refused with weary waves of the hand. The chief took up his tale.