And in time, Andrew Jackson the Indian Killer became the president of his white man’s nation. And in 1830, this murderer signed the Indian Removal Act, after which the Creek people’s hope turned to the mud after a heavy rain, for this law decreed that all Creek people were ordered to leave their homes permanently. Many tried to resist and hide in the forest and in the hills. And many of our people were hunted and killed.
The Departure of Micco and Mahala
When Samuel Pinchard read in the newspaper about the new law that forced all Creeks to leave Georgia, he laughed as if this was welcome news. He told Lady it was time for all savages to leave. And he laughed again when he invited her to walk with him to her parents’ home to say goodbye.
Lady was ashamed, imagining her place beside her husband as he told her parents they had to depart the land they’d once owned. Even Carson Franklin, a mere tenant, had been allowed to stay. It was not right, but Lady was deprived of gumption. She was a woman and an Indian, and the law placed Samuel above her, in both categories. She was quiet as she walked to the small cabin where her parents had been exiled. Her parents had set aside their disappointment in Samuel when Lady gave them grandchildren. It had been a moment that Micco had never expected. Though Micco didn’t speak of his son-in-law’s perversions, he’d seen enough to know they existed. Yet his power was gone, and he was only happy that his family would continue, blond-haired and strange-eyed as his grandchildren might be. As always, whiteness in others pleased Mahala, and she had spent many days stroking the light-colored hair of her grandchildren, and telling them how beautiful, how special they were.
In his in-laws’ cabin, Samuel spoke directly: the two of them had to leave. They were Indians, and according to the laws of Georgia that had been in place since the previous century, neither the Creek nor the Cherokee were in amity with the government of Georgia. Mahala began to weep. Micco was completely beaten, his shoulders slumped, his frown apologetic, as Samuel advised him that it was time to go west. He would provide a covered wagon and money to get his in-laws settled. Then Samuel slipped the knife in further: he reminded Micco that he was a Negro, because of his grandfather’s African blood. His body was a crime, his presence against the law, and Micco placed all of them in danger. If anyone found out about his blood, not only would Samuel’s marriage to Lady be voided under the law, but her children would be documented as Negroes.
At these words, Mahala shrieked: in their years of marriage, she had never guessed her husband’s secret. She began to flail, her eyes widened, and then, she fainted on the dirt floor.
“Papa?” Lady whispered. “Is this true?”
Micco held out his hand. When his daughter moved toward him, Samuel grabbed her arm, digging in his fingers. He asked, was she a nigger or was she a white woman? She better make her choice, and Lady turned and left the cabin.
And so, in 1832, Micco left his youngest child in the care of her husband. He took Mahala and left the home that had cradled him. They headed west, crossing the Mississippi River. Micco’s heart was sibilant when he settled in the ultimate destination of the Journey-Where-the-People-Cried, a place called Oklahoma, a land that originally was the home of the Kickapoo, Wichita, and Osage tribes.
The earth was red in Oklahoma, but there were no trees worth praising. Though Mahala and Micco found their three sons （for they had been required to leave Georgia as well）， Mahala still could not find the happiness that had eluded her all of her life. She was surrounded by Indians of all nations out in Oklahoma, including the Creeks, who spoke a language Mahala had avoided since memory. She did not respect them or their ways, but she would never be the white woman she’d aspired to be, either. And she had been betrayed by her husband, whom she now regarded as an African animal.
Soon, she tired of the stunted pine trees that Micco had planted from saplings he’d taken from their original homeland. Those trees never would grow half as tall as those of her youth. One day, Mahala lay down on the cot that was provided by the American government for the removed Indians, underneath the rough blanket that had been given by the same. She closed her eyes and would not speak to anyone, not even her three sons. She ignored the quiet words of her husband, who had asked her forgiveness for his lies. In six years after leaving Georgia, Mahala would pass away.
The End of a Bond
When her parents had prepared for their journey west, Lady had not helped them pack. Nor would she take the days before their departure in early summer to spend last moments with them. When her children whined to see their doting grandparents, Lady spoke sharply to them that she did not have time. It was only after Micco and Mahala left that Lady informed her children that their grandparents had gone on an adventure out west. They had wanted to be near her brothers, she explained. When her children cried, Lady hugged them to her breast, but she did not weep. Her anger at her father was a coal within her, relentlessly bright. Micco had placed her—and her children—in jeopardy, by his inability to keep quiet. How could he not have seen that Samuel was a dangerous man?