STORY AROUND THE YEAR 1820

1 was told by my father of the story he told of the fighting with the white man, this is just one of them. A cold wind blew off Hanging Dog Mountain and I dared strike so much as a spark that might betray my hiding place. Somewhere near, an enemy lurked, waiting.

Yesterday morning, watching my back trail, I saw a deer, startled he crossed the meadow in great bounds and disappeared into the forest. Later, shortly after high sun, two birds flew up suddenly; something was following me.

Warm in his blanket, he huddled below a low earthen bank, concealed by brush and a fallen tree. The wind swept above him, worrying because in his mind its sound might cover the approaching of an enemy creeping closer. There he could lie, waiting to kill him, when he arose from his hiding place.

I, George Green, was but a day's journey from our home on Shooting Creek, in the foothills of the Nantahales, near Chunkygal Mountain. All the enemies of whom he knew were far from here, yet any stranger was a potential enemy. He was a wise traveler who was forever alert.

Our white enemies were beyond the sea and our only red enemies were the Seneca, living far away to the north, beyond the Hudson River. No Seneca was to be found so far away from his kind. The Seneca were a fine, fierce, but a fighting breed. Men of the Iroquois League, who had become our enemies because we were friends with the Catawba, who were their enemies.

Whoever followed him was a good reader of signs, for he left little evidence of his passing. Such an enemy is one to guard against, for skilled tracking is a mark of a great hunter and a great warrior. Nor did he wish to leave his scalp in the lodge of some unknown enemy, when my life has scarce begun.

What was this strange urge that drove him westward, ever westward into an empty land?

Behind him were family, home and all that he might become. Before him were nameless rivers, swamps, mountains and forests and beyond the great river were the plains and vast grasslands of which he had only heard of and of which he knew nothing.

About him and before him lay a haunted land whose boundaries he did not know. What little he had heard was from the tales of others. Indians, shield from his land, hunted here but always were moving and returning to their homes, far away. When the night winds prowled, they huddled close to their fire and peered uneasily into the night. There was game here a plenty and when the need was great, they came to hunt. We did not know what mysteries lay here or why the place was shunned but they spoke of it as a dark and bloody ground.

Why in such a land of meadows, forests and streams were there no habitations? So far there are earth mounds of the Cherokee and friendly Indians had told us of a stone fort, built, but they know not when or by whom. next