Bushy Hair had inherited the tendencies of Coromantee-Panther and, though he had stiffened in age, when young men from the village began to fight the white men—the children and grandchildren of Englishmen and Scotsmen—Bushy Hair was filled with red courage and rode into battle. He died in one of these fights and his name was sung with grief and gratitude.
Yet battle was different when it occurred on paper and in assaults on the mind. The white men—the Americans—wanted everything and did not respect the ways of the people. Even those who represented themselves as friends encouraged domestication among Creek men, that they should farm the land, instead of letting women do it. The most annoying were the Christian missionaries who intruded at odd times to advocate baptism and the romantic practice of the man on top instead of on the bottom or from behind. They insisted that anyone civilized knew the latter two were unholy and, moreover, encouraged the rheumatism.
After his uncle died, Micco felt more confusion, especially when the elders of The-Place-in-the-Middle-of-the-Tall-Trees decided to combine their village with another. Nila begged her son to move with her, but his desire for property, a hankering he had inherited from his father, became stronger. He wanted to make his own way and it pleased him that after the villagers left, he could walk the land and know that he owned it all. As he had in his childhood, he whispered to himself, “Mine! Mine!” This was land Micco could give to his children after his death. A legacy, for he had married as a young man.
Micco and his wife, Mahala, had twin sons and a third son. Each had American names, as Mahala had insisted. Then, when Micco thought that Mahala had gone through the change, for she had stopped her intervals in the moon house—the only Creek way she followed—Mahala had become pregnant and gave birth to a little girl. Her mother named her Eliza, but her father would call her “Lady.”
Mahala was a mestizo, the daughter and granddaughter of mixed-blood children of white men who had mated with Creeks. Mahala’s skin was very pale, her hair light brown, and her eyes blue instead of brown. She had met Micco at the trading post near her family’s home by the Oconee River. Mahala’s father had impressed upon her his own ways—that women should obey their husbands—and after Micco and Mahala married in a tiny Christian church near the trading post, she had moved her belongings to his village and his house, instead of Micco following his wife, as a proper Creek man did. In fact, Mahala did not even speak the language of the people. Her parents had forbidden it in their home, and when Micco spoke to their children in his dialect—for he had taught them—and they responded in kind, Mahala grew petulant. She accused her husband and children of making fun of her, an insecurity made more potent when they laughed at her in reply.
Mahala was ambitious for her husband, and at their biannual journeys to the trading post, she urged him to buy another cow, as well as a couple of pigs. These trips allowed her not only to visit with her parents, but to covet the lifestyles of the whites. In addition to livestock, Mahala began to bother Micco to purchase slaves, whom traders brought to the post. Initially, Micco was resistant: though his wife was unaware of his Negro blood, he was sensitive about the idea. He had seen slaves before, naturally, though they had been Creek. The village had kept people in bondage, because of a revenge trade in the aftermath of a murder, or when captives were taken in war. Yet buying a person who had not committed any wrong, or whose clan or village had not transgressed, did not sit well with Micco. Still, his wife pushed him, and one summer, when a slave trader found his way up the path to Micco’s farm, he paused to speak to the man.
The trader rode a horse and carried a long gun. He was accompanied by a stoic-looking mulatto boy. The boy held on to a chain that was connected to four shackled Negroes: three men, and a woman who was young with large eyes and a mane of thick, kinky hair. Micco knew he did not want to purchase this woman. She stirred a man’s desire in him, and she would be a temptation. Yet a slave could not say yes to him in the dark, and rape was not in Micco’s nature. He almost sent the trader away until Mahala came to the opening of their hut and berated him, saying that she needed a slave. Hadn’t he promised her one long ago, along with a cabin like her father’s? Micco ended up buying the oldest slave in the bunch for a pittance, only fifty dollars. Though the man walked upright and, when his mouth was forced open, every one of his shining, white teeth was in place, the trader told him he had to be honest. This slave had been taken from Africa thirty years before, and thus, was well past his prime, but the trader assured Micco that he was getting a good bargain. The trader had put the slave through his paces on the coffle journey, and he was a hard worker who could labor for many hours at a time. The slave’s name was Pop George, and he was patient with Mahala as she sent him on many errands and spoke to him in a sharp, superior voice.