The amulet: A novel

by Charles Egbert Craddock

Mr. Morton was old, and lank, and pallid, and dreary. No affinity had he with the portly and well-liking type of his profession of his day. Such manna as gave them a repletion of self-satisfaction had been denied him. He had an infinite capacity for hardship, an absolute disdain of danger. Luxury affected his ascetic predilections like sin. He desired but a meditative crust to crunch while he argued the tenets of his religion and refuted the contradictions of his catechumen. He was as instant in and out of season as if he were in pursuit of some worldly preferment—one can say no more. He did not need encouragement, and he was so constituted that he could recognize no failure. He had no vain-glory in his courage—to him it was the most natural thing in the world to risk his life to save Rolloweh’s soul. He knew it was rank heresy to think it, but he was willing to trust the salvation of Captain Howard and the garrison of Fort Prince George to their own unassisted efforts, and such mercy as the Lord might see fit to grant their indifference, their ignorance, their folly, and their perversity. But Rolloweh’s soul had had no chances, and he was bound personally to look after it. He even hoped for the conversion of those great chiefs of the upper towns—Yachtino of Chilhowee, Cunigacatgoah of Choté, Moy Toy of Tellico Great, and Quorinnah of Tennessee Town. He was worldly wise in his day and generation, too. He had fastened with the unerring instinct of the born missionary on the propitious moment. Not while prosperity shone upon them, not while their savage religion met every apparent need, not while facile chance answered their ignorant prayer, was the conversion of a people practicable. But the Cherokees were conquered, abased, decimated, the tribe scattered, their towns in ruins, the bones held sacred of their dead unburied, their ancient cherished religion fallen in esteem to a meaningless system of inoperative rites and flimsy delusions. Now was the time to reveal the truth, to voice “the good tidings of great joy.” Hence he had said, “Woe is unto me if I preach not the gospel!”

And the common people had been listening to him gladly. Thus the chiefs feared they would never seek to made head against their national enemies under their national rulers. Simple as he stood there in his thread-bare black clothes and his darned hose,—he was wondrously expert with a meditative needle,—he had the political future of a people and the annihilation of a false and barbarous worship in his grasp. Therefore said the Cherokee rulers to Captain Howard—“Your beloved man must remove himself.”

It was an old story to the soldier. He had written to the missionary and remonstrated, for peace was precious. In reply he had in effect been admonished to render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s and unto God the things that are God’s. A meek address was not among the merits of the Reverend Mr. Morton. The obvious interpretation of this saying seemed to the commandant a recommendation to go about his business. He desisted from advice for a time. He had known a certain luke-warmness in religious matters to ensue upon a surcharge of zeal, and he had waited with patience for the refined and delicately nurtured old man to tire of the hardships of life in that devastated country among the burned towns and the angry, sullen people, and the uncouth savage association. But he had continued to preach, and the tribesmen had continued in hordes to listen, expecting always to discover the secret of the superiority of the British in the arts of war and manufacture,—the reason of their own deplorable desolation and destruction. They could not separate the ideas of spiritual acceptability and worldly prosperity. The Briton revered his religion, they argued, and therefore he knew how to make gun-powder, and to conquer the bravest of the brave, and to amass much moneys of silver and gold,—for in their enlightenment the roanoke and the wampum were a wofully depreciated currency,—perhaps it was the religion of the British people which made them so strong. Thus the Cherokees lent a willing ear. As they began to discriminate and memorize, certain familiarities in the matters offered for their contemplation were dimly recognized. The archaic figment or fact—whichever it may be—that the ancient Scriptures had once been theirs, and through negligence lost, and through degeneration forgotten, reasserted its hold. The points of similarity in their traditions to the narrations of the old Bible were suggested to Mr. Morton, who accepted them with joy, becoming one of the early converts to the theory of the Hebraic origin of the tribes of American Indians. It was a happy time for the scholarly old man—to find analogies in their barbarous rites with ancient Semitic customs; to reform from the distortions of oral teachings a divine oracle of precious significance; to show in the old stories how the prophecy fore-shadowed the event, how the semblance merged into the substance in the coming of the Christ. In this way he approached their conversion to Christianity from the vantage ground of previous knowledge, however distorted and inadequate, and commingled with profane and barbaric follies. He was convinced—he convinced many—that they were of an inherited religion, into which he had been adopted, that they were descendants of the lost tribes of Israel, that the Scriptures they had had were a part of the Book he revered, and that he would indoctrinate them into the remainder. Perhaps Mr. Morton doubted the account of the teachings of the Roman Catholic captive, Cabeza de Vaca, among the Floridian Indians early in the sixteenth century, or perhaps he disbelieved that any remnants of such precepts had drifted so far to this secluded and inimical tribe, always at war as it was with its southern neighbors and totally without communication with them.

Though this persuasion took hold on the masses it encountered great disfavor among the chiefs, more especially when the valorous and fearless old man thundered rebukes upon their pagan follies and observances, their superstitions, their methods of appeasing the “Great White Fire.” He knew no moderation in rebuke; intolerance is the good man’s sin. He was especially severe in his denunciation of the pretended powers of necromancy, above all of the supernatural endowment of a certain amulet which they possessed and which by the earlier travellers among them is termed their “Conjuring-Stone.”

This was said to be a great red crystal. According to Adair, the historian, it was a gigantic carbuncle; others have called it a garnet—these gems are still found in the Great Smoky Mountains; more probably it was a red tourmaline of special depth and richness of color.

Mr. Morton had never seen the stone, but Cunigacatgoah of Choté had told him triumphantly that he could never captivate his soul, for he held the precious amulet in his hand whenever the missionary preached, and it dulled the speech, so that he heard nothing. As the aged Cunigacatgoah had been deaf these several years, this miracle had involved little strain on the powers of the stone. These days were close upon the times of witchcraft, of the belief in special obsessions, of all manner of magic. This stubborn and persistent paganism roused the utmost rancor and ingenuity of the Reverend Mr. Morton, and at last he made a solemn statement in the council-house of Choté, in the presence of many witnesses, that if they would show him one miracle wrought by the stone, if they could bring positive testimony of one evil averted by the amulet, he would renounce his religion and his nation, he would become an adopted Cherokee and a pagan; he would poll his hair, and dance in three circles, and sacrifice to the “Ancient White Fire” and the little Thunder men.

In the sullen silence that had ensued upon this declaration he had demanded why had the amulet not stayed the march of the British commander, Colonel Grant, through the Cherokee country? Why had it not checked the slaughters and the burnings? Why had it not saved to the Cherokees the vast extent of country ceded for a punitive measure in the pacification and forced treaties of peace? Where was the luck it had brought? Defend all good people from such a possession!

The old missionary owed his life less to any fear that should he disappear the British government might bethink itself of such a subject as a superannuated and pious old scare-crow in the barren field of the Cherokee country than to the hold he had taken on the predilections of the people. There was scant use in burning him—many among themselves would resent his fate. He, himself, would rejoice in martyrdom, and their utmost deviltries would add to his crown.

The savage leaders had a certain natural sagacity. Wiser than they of eld they cried not upon Baal. They would not accept the challenge of the man of God. They would not produce the amulet at his bidding, lest it be discredited—they said the touch, the evil eye of a stranger were a profanation. Yet they feared that the conversion of the people to Christianity was national annihilation. And they clung to their superstitions, their polytheistic venerations, their ancient necromancies, their pagan observances; to them all other gods were strange gods. They realized the hold which the new faith was taking on the tribesmen. Therefore they had told Mr. Morton that he had long plagued them with many words and they desired him to leave the country. When he refused in terms they despatched a delegation to refer the matter to Captain Howard at Fort Prince George, with a most insistent demand that he should return with it and meet them at Little Tamotlee, a village at no difficult distance from the fort itself, and easily accessible by boat, by reason of the confluence of the Keowee and Tugaloo rivers.

This was one of the smaller towns of the Ayrate district, sending only sixty gun-men to the wars and with a population of women and children in proportion. The inhabitants could by no means muster such an assemblage as had now gathered. Visitors whom Raymond, familiar with the people, recognized as hailing from the towns of the Ottare region had crowded in, making the day in some sort a representative occasion. They had arranged themselves around the “beloved square,” some standing, some seated, others kneeling on one knee, and the proceedings had well begun before Captain Howard realized what manner of part he was expected to sustain. In noting the number of chiefs ranged in state in the “holy cabin” on the “great white seat,” Raymond thought that the lack of space might explain the fact that Captain Howard was not offered a place commensurate with his rank and importance on the frontier. After a few moments, however, he understood that this subsidiary position better accorded with the rôle assigned to the commandant.