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How I Live.
Living friendly, feeling kindly.
Acting fairly towards men ;
Seeking to do that to others,
They may do to me again.
Hating no man, scorning no man,
Wronging none by word or deed;
But forbearing, soothing, serving,
Thus I live—this is my creed 1
— :
» Written for Burke’s Weekly.
MAROONER’S ISLAND ;
OR,
Dr. Gordon in Search of His Children.
BY REV. F. R. OOULDINO,
Author of " The Young Murooners.”
CHAPTER YII.
simpson’s story.
I was a « big
chunk of a boy,” my
father moved from Ivi
okee, where I was born,
to a place called the
AY Cherokee Corner, where he farm-
J|3|\L ed and preached. My time was
divided between working on the
* 4wl f arm during the busy season, and
helping in a store in which my
father had an interest, and which kept up
a pretty brisk trade with the neighbors
and the Indians. I do not mean to say
that the Indians w|re living there at the
time, for that part of the country had
long been settled by the whites, and the
red men had been pushed off towards the
sunsetting; but the store used to be a
famous place of trade with them when
the Cherokee line cornered at that place,f
and for a great while afterwards they
would come a long way to trade at their
old-time stand.
Some of the Indians came as much on
my mother’s account, as on account of
trading, for she was a great favorite with
a large part of the tribe. You remember
I told you she had been captured when a
wee-baby, and had lived among them all
her life, until she married my father.
The truth is, the “Injin” in her was so
strong that to the day of her death she
was never able to give in entirely to the
way 7 s of the Unaykas, as she called the
white people ; but she loved her red-skin
ed brothers and kinsfolks, and they loved
her to the last. The name they had for
her showed their feelings ; they knew her
as O-see-u, which is the Cherokee for
Good morning, because her face always
brightened on seeing them, as if she was
saying in her heart “Welcome! I am
glad to see you.” And the name she
gave me showed her love for Indian ways,
f The passages in this story marked thus, are histori
cal, or rather traditional, being parts of the unwritten
history of the places and parties concerned.
BURKE’S WEEKLY-
for she did not give me a Christian name,
as might have been expected of a Chris
tian man’s wife, but one in Cherokee, the
same as if I were to belong to the tribe.
People know me as Joe Simpson, and
suppose that I was named Joseph for my
father; but this is not so; the name my
mother gave me was Yonali-steeka, Avhich
is the Cherokee for Little Bear; and my
father, who thought the world and all of
his bright-faced wife, but who did not
“give in” to all her ways, humored her
so far as to tell the people that my name
was Jonah-Stephen, the nearest sound in
English he could find to my Cherokee
name; while, for short, he called me Joe,
after himself.
I do not think that my mother’s love
for her adopted people is to be wondered
at, when her histor} 7 is known. She was
brought up in the family of an old war
rior, who, after her parents had been
killed, had taken her from her home and
adopted her as his own child, in place of
a daughter that had been killed by the
whites. He was a very great “ brave;”
no one in his nation stood higher, or
could stand higher than he. I will tell
you why.
As long ago as two life-times, —may-bc
more, —there was a big warj* between the
Cherokees and the Coosas —these are the
same that are called Creeks, on account
of the many streams that pervade their
country.f The Creeks, who wanted more
land, tried to force the Cherokees beyond
the Blue Ridge Mountains, and the Chero
kees, who loved their hunting grounds,
and the graves of their fathers, tried to
keep the Coosa’s back to their old limits.
After a long and bloody Avar, in Avhich
many lives had been lost, and the Chero
kees had been forced back almost to the
Blue Ridge, and the Creeks had settled
as far as the Coosa-Avattee river, (Coosa-
Avattee means the settling place of the
Coosas,) it was agreed by solemn oath
betAveen the parties to leave the question
in dispute to be settled by a fight betAveen
twelve men selected from each side. If
the Creeks Avere successful, the Cherokees
were to give up all their hunting grounds
south and east of the Blue Ridge Moun
tains; if the Cherokees were successful,
the Creeks Avere to be content Avith their
former boundaries. The place selected
for the battle Avas a mountain, which has
a level top, containing about forty acres
—a beautiful place for a fight—away up
above the world. There they met and
fought, those twenty-four men, Avhile all
the rest of the two nations, assembled on
that high table land, looked on without
striking a blow. Os these twenty-four
men Avho went into the fight, only one
came out alive. That man Avas a Chero
kec, my mother’s adopted father. The
Coosas kept their Avord, called back their
warriors, broke up their settlement at
Coosa-wattee, and established the bound
aries as they were before the war. The
place of the fight keeps the name of
“ Blood Mountain ” to this day.j-
This old warrior had three sons, one of
Avliom, named Yonah-steeka, was my
mother’s playmate Avhen she was a child.
He died young. The others greAV to be
men, and Avere quite famous in their day.
One of them Avas named Nung-noh-hut.
tar-liee, (he avlio kills the enemy in his
own way,) and the other Kah-nung-da
ha-geh, (the one Avho Avalks on the moun
tain ridge.) These men my mother taught
me to call uncle; but as their names
were too long to be pronounced by any
one except a Cherokee, the first Avas call
ed by the Avhite people, Way, and the
other-was called Ridge.
My' uncle Way Avas a great sportsman,
both by' land and Avater, and Avas skilled
in all the arts practiced by his people for
taking deer, bears, raccoons and wolves,
and also for spearing and shooting fish.
My uncle Ridge was a “medicine-man,”
or doctor, the most famous in his tribe,
and not only 7 did people come to him to
be cured from all parts of the nation , but
many also from the Avhite settlements.
WheneA r er these tAvo men made a visit
to the Corner , they Avould ask my 7 mother
to let me return AA 7 ith them, and she Avas
almost as ready to consent as they Avere
to ask; and I Avould go and spend one,
tAvo, or even three weeks at a time at
their lodges, living just as they' lived, and
enjoying myself more than y'ou Avould
suppose in that Avild kind of life; and
Avhen I returned home, nothing pleased
my mother more than to hear me recount
all that I had seen and done.
It seems to me, now that I look back,
that I learnod more, and more that Avas
useful, among them, than I did at home.
So I thought at the time, because I did
not expect it, and because what I learned
at home came to me natural like; and I
have not changed my 7 mind since.
Among the useful things I learned at
uncle Way’s Avere two in one day'. The
first is that clear water is much deeper than
it appears to be. I was in a canoe with
him and a son of his, about my own age,
spearing fish. There Avas a fine trout
near my end of the boat, in Avater that
seemed only knee deep. I bogged him
for the spear, and tried at it, leaning over
the side of the boat and pushing as quick
ly and vigorously as I could, expecting of
course to find myself supported by 7 the
resting of.the spear upon the sandy hot-