“The Nicotani were a mystical, religious body, of whom the people stood in great awe, and seem to have been somewhat like the Brahmins of India. By what means they attained their ascendancy, or how long it was maintained, can never be ascertained. Their extinction by massacre is nearly all that can be discovered concerning them. They became haughty, insolent, overbearing, and licentious to an intolerable degree. Relying on their hereditary privileges and the strange awe which they inspired, they did not hesitate by fraud or violence to rend asunder the tender relations of husband and wife when a beautiful woman excited their passions. The people long brooded in silence over the oppressions and outrages of this high caste, whom they deeply hated but greatly feared. At length a daring young man, a member of an influential family, organized a conspiracy among the people for the massacre of the priesthood. The immediate provocation was the abduction of the wife of the young leader of the conspiracy. His wife was remarkable for her beauty, and was forcibly abducted and violated by one of the Nicotani while he was absent on the chase. On his return he found no difficulty in exciting in others the resentment which he himself experienced. So many had suffered in the same way, so many feared that they might be made to suffer, that nothing was wanted but a leader. A leader appearing in the person of the young brave whom we have named, the people rose under his direction and killed every Nicotani, young and old. Thus perished a hereditary secret society, since which time no hereditary privileges have been tolerated among the Cherokees.”[32]
109. THE WAR MEDICINE
Some warriors had medicine to change their shape as they pleased, so that they could escape from their enemies. Once one of these medicine warriors who had been away from home came back and found a strong party of the enemy attacking the settlement while nearly all the men were off on a hunt. The town was on the other side of the river, but his grandmother was there, so he made up his mind to save her. Going down the stream a little way, he hunted until he found a mussel shell. With his medicine he changed this to a canoe, in which he crossed over to his grandmother’s house, and found her sitting there, waiting for the enemy to come and kill her. Again he made medicine and put her into a small gourd which he fastened to his belt. Then climbing a tree he changed himself to a swamp woodcock, and with one cry he spread his wings and flew across to the other side of the river, where both took their natural shape again and made their way through the woods to another settlement.
There was another great Cherokee warrior, named Dasiʻgiya′gĭ, or Shoe-boots, as the whites called him, who lived on Hightower creek, in Georgia. He was so strong that it was said he could throw a corn mortar over a house, and with his magic power could clear a river at one jump. His war medicine was an uktena scale and a very large turtle shell which he got from the Shawano. In the Creek war he put this scale into water and bathed his body with the water, and also burned a piece of the turtle shell and drew a black line around his men with the coal, and he was never wounded and never had a man killed.
Some great warriors had a medicine by the aid of which they could dive under the ground as under water, come up among the enemy to kill and scalp one, then dive under the ground again and come up among their friends.
Some war captains knew how to put their lives up in the tree tops during a fight, so that even if they were struck by the enemy they could not be killed. Once, in a battle with the Shawano, the Cherokee leader stood directly in front of the enemy and let the whole party shoot at him, but was not hurt until the Shawano captain, who knew this war medicine himself, ordered his men to shoot into the branches above the head of the other. They did this and the Cherokee leader fell dead.
110. INCIDENTS OF PERSONAL HEROISM
In the Cherokee war of 1760 when small bodies of the enemy, according to Haywood, were pushing their inroads eastward almost to Salisbury, a party of six or eight warriors was discovered, watched, and followed until they were seen to enter a deserted cabin to pass the night. The alarm was given, and shortly before daylight the whites surrounded the house, posting themselves behind the fodder stack and some outbuildings so as to command both the door and the wide chimney top. They then began to throw fire upon the roof to drive out the Indians, when, as the blaze caught the dry shingles, and death either by fire or bullet seemed certain, one of the besieged warriors called to his companions that it was better that one should be a sacrifice than that all should die, and that if they would follow his directions he would save them, but die himself. He proposed to sally out alone to draw the fire of the besiegers, while his friends stood ready to make for the woods as soon as the guns of the whites were empty. They agreed, and the door was opened, when he suddenly rushed forth, dodging and running in a zigzag course, so that every gun was emptied at him before he fell dead, covered with wounds. While the whites were reloading, the other warriors ran out and succeeded in reaching the woods before the besiegers could recover from their surprise. The historian adds, “How greatly it is to be regretted that the name of this hero is not known to the writer, that it might be recorded with this specimen of Cherokee bravery and patriotism, firmness and presence of mind in the hour of danger.”[33]
More than once women seem to have shown the courage of warriors when the occasion demanded. At the beginning of the last century there was still living among the Cherokee a woman who had killed her husband’s slayer in one of the Revolutionary engagements. For this deed she was treated with so much consideration that she was permitted to join the warriors in the war dance, carrying her gun and tomahawk. The Wahnenauhi manuscript has a tradition of an attack upon a Cherokee town and the killing of the chief by a hostile war party. His wife, whose name was Cuhtahlatah (Gatûñ′lătĭ, “Wild-hemp”?), on seeing her husband fall, snatched up his tomahawk, shouting, “Kill! Kill!” and rushed upon the enemy with such fury that the retreating Cherokee rallied and renewed the battle with so great courage as to gain a complete victory. This may be a different statement of the same incident.
In Rutherford’s expedition against the Cherokee, in 1776, the Indians made a stand near Waya gap, in the Nantahala mountains, and a hard-fought engagement took place, with a loss to the Americans of nineteen men, although the enemy was finally driven from the ground. After the main body had retreated, an Indian was seen looking out from behind a tree, and was at once shot and killed by the soldiers, who, on going to the spot, found that it was a woman, painted and striped like a warrior and armed with bow and arrows. She had already been shot through the thigh, and had therefore been unable to flee with the rest.