By the time Lady ended her monthly interval in the moon house, Samuel was greatly weakened. His attention to the farm’s business was blurred. His strength had waned, and he slept later and went to bed earlier, neglecting his visits to the left cabin. At night Lady would slip into his room and nudge him, but he would not wake. She would reach under his nightshirt to rouse his manhood, as Aggie had instructed her. Then Lady would quickly climb on top of her husband, swallowing her pain and disgust.
By the time he discovered Lady was expecting, Samuel was confused as to how his wife had gotten with child. He had no memory of her climbing astride him and was dumbfounded when he discovered her condition. He accused her of infidelity with one of the farmers in the territory, but she assured him that was not the case. How would she meet anyone? she asked. He did not allow her to leave the plantation. And Lady feigned shyness when she asked Samuel, did he not remember their nights together? She had enjoyed those times very much, and Samuel decided, however these children were conceived, he was a white man. He needed legal heirs, even if they weren’t of his own seed.
Assisted by Aggie, Lady gave birth in the moon house. She bore a set of twins named Gloria and Victor. Both were golden-haired like their father, and Lady wept. Thinking her friend was upset by the white appearance of her newborns, Aggie told her, do not blame these babies for their blood. After all, Nick was Samuel’s seed, too, but she loved the boy as her own.
Yet Lady told her she was weeping for joy, for her children had no appearance of Indian blood. She had lived in fear during her pregnancy. And Aggie was silent, considering that her friend still seemed unaware of her African line. In her heart, she was sympathetic, however, that a burden had been lifted from Lady.
Of Warriors and Prophets
The love of our land was a fever that would not be chilled. It called white man after white man to our place, which they labeled a “frontier.” To these men, our people weren’t even as good as animals, because our people could not feed the hungry or keep others warm with their hides. They were inconveniences, sitting upon spots that these men coveted, and as more treaties were signed by more self-appointed leaders of our people giving away our land, more white men came. They came with the rights they had given themselves and the rights they had taken away from others. They sent word from mouth to mouth that our earth was free. Come and split down the pine, the cedar, the pecan. Come and shoot the deer. Come and bring your pigs and cattle that trample the earth. Here is a place where a white man can make himself a king.
There had been skirmishes and battles between the Creek people and white men. And there were traitors to the Creek people and there were loyalists and a civil war fought between those factions: the Red Stick War. Our people fought against each other, one side supported by the British and the Spanish, who wanted to get back at the Americans, who held up the other side. Yet whichever side the white men were on, they urged our people, turn on each other.
Then there came warriors, such as Tecumseh of the Shawnee, a tribe in the north of the continent. And there were prophets, such as Tecumseh’s brother Tenskwatawa. Together these men were the Shooting Star and the Open Door, and they rode down to our land to unite our people of the south with our people of the north. Tecumseh held a weapon and Tenskwatawa held a dream, and the dreaming brother’s sights led him to tell the Creek, unite against the white man. Abandon eating his cattle and pig and chicken and wheat and return to the bison and the deer and the corn, as should be the way. And give up the white man’s god—his ugly god, his lying god, his torturous god, his thieving god, his tricking god, and rebuke his missionaries who had one set of rules for white Christians and another for Christians among the people, and who, when asked, talked crossways, so that one word followed the next down a line leading to a place where buzzards roosted and called out beaked noise.
Yet some Creek did not heed the warrior. They paid no attention to the prophet. And our people kept fighting each other, and an American murderer was able to win the Red Stick War. His name was Andrew Jackson and he and his soldiers murdered many hundreds of Creeks, so that his name would become a curse among our people. Indian Killer, he would be called, but somehow he would become a hero among white men. In a new century, statues of him would be built, and his face would be printed upon money.
And his name was praised after he brokered a new, treacherous treaty with the Creeks, the Treaty of Fort Jackson, in 1814.
And more land was taken from our people.
And there was a traitor, a mestizo named William McIntosh, who presented himself as a leader of the Creeks in 1825. McIntosh signed away the rest of our land in Georgia. In that year, this was the Second Treaty of Indian Springs. And McIntosh would be found guilty by our people and executed, but his damage was done.