Nila was no fool. She had shared a womb with Bushy Hair and had carried Micco inside her body and fed him from her breasts. She saw the glances her brother and son gave one another, and she knew that one or the other had killed Dylan. Yet her own grief wasn’t over her husband. She only mourned the guilt of her son. Nila made a long face and cried and beat her chest over Dylan, but inside she was leaping. Though no longer young, Nila still visited the moon house for her bleeding times and reckoned she had two or three summers before her woman’s change. She was of high status, and there were younger men in the village already giving her nice looks, even at her age. The elders of the village told her her husband had been a white man and not of the people. Therefore, Nila didn’t have to mourn Dylan for four years, as Creek women were required to do when they became widows. She could shorten her grief time to four moons, as Creek men did. After her mourning period, Nila intended to choose a Creek man as her second husband, for a Creek man understood the responsibilities of the people and knew about the requirements of loyalty to the family of his wife.
Nila warned Micco that no matter who his father had been or how friendly white men might seem, they would never truly love or respect the Creek people. That was her first gift to her son. The second was the cow that her brother had given to her from the five head of cattle that had been split up among him and the others, after the killing of the cracker. Nila wanted no part of that bounty. She wanted to be free of the possessions of white men.
The Scourge of Mr. Whitney
And so the sin was intrusion, as when a neighbor calls at the entryway and when there is no answer walks inside anyway. Or when there is an answer, he kills his neighbor and pretends the dwelling was empty. When the Englishmen and Scotsmen came to the land of the people, cattle took over. It was no paradise before, but there were rules followed by the Creek, the descendants of beings who built Rock Eagle and hunted the deer and gave thanks before they dressed the meat. Who ate the corn and kept its season sacred.
And then the treaties, the agreements between these intruders and the people, all of which would be broken, and the land that would be taken—and taken again.
There was the Treaty of Savannah in 1733.
The Treaty of Coweta in 1739.
The Treaty of Augusta in 1763. Ten years later, a second treaty in that same place.
The Treaty of New York in 1790, and the realization that our land would be fertile for short-staple cotton, and after this, there came an invention by a man named Eli Whitney. Think of him, a man stewing in the juice of mediocrity, the blankness of his legacy breathing down his neck, tinkering with his rude invention. Or did a slave invent the gin, as some have said? Workers tend to have more genius than the boss, to reduce the strain of labor. Whoever its inventor, before the gin, one daily pound of cotton. After, fifty pounds, more slaves, very few deer, many cattle and pigs, and running talk of planting, for the gin was a way to separate good from evil. More specifically, cotton bolls from seeds.
The intruders on the land weren’t Englishmen or Scotsmen anymore, because a revolution had been fought. Now they were “Americans,” “white” men, and though to the Creek the color white meant peace, that word meant something else to the intruders.
And now those called Coromantee or Igbo or Wolof or Fula were “Negroes” or “slaves.”
And now the Creek were “Indians.”
And there was the Treaty of Colerain in 1796.
The Treaty of Fort Wilkinson in 1802.
The Treaty of Washington in 1805, and our land was no longer what the people called it.
Now the white men called us “Georgia.”
The Tracing of the Line
When we follow the centuries to come, a family will remain in our same place. Here on our land. The-Place-in-the-Middle-of-the-Tall-Trees will be called another name: Chicasetta.
The family won’t know the original name of our land, nor the name of that first, taken African of their line, the one whose mother had traveled over water. Nor will this family know about the Creek woman who was already here. They won’t know the names of Coromantee-Panther, of Woman-of-the-Wind. Those will be lost to everyone but us.
There will be generations that lie between the people of The-Place-in-the-Middle-of-the-Tall-Trees and their descendants: a woman who will be named Eliza Two Pinchard Freeman, also called Meema. She will marry a man named Red Benjamin, and he will take her last name.
And Meema will bear a daughter named Sheba, who will grow up to be free with her love.
And Sheba will bear Clyde, a son. His father’s name will not be known by her family.