Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 7, 2025
Only one of the white pack-men employed to drive a score of well-laden horses semi-annually from Charlestown to a trading-station farther along on the Great Tennessee then called the Cherokee River and back again used to glower fearfully at the "waste town" as he passed.
The traders and pack-men generally confined themselves to this path till it crossed the Little Tennessee River, then spreading themselves out among the several Cherokee villages west of the mountain, continued their traffic as low down the Great Tennessee as the Indian settlements upon Occochappo or Bear Creek, below the Muscle Shoals, and there encountered the competition of other traders, who were supplied from New Orleans and Mobile.
Cuthbert Barnett, however, always looked to see what he might, perhaps because he was a trifle bolder than the other stalwart pack-men, all riding armed to the teeth to guard the goods of the train from robbery as well as their own lives from treachery, for although the Cherokees professed friendship it was but half-hearted, as they loved the French always better than the English; perhaps because he had a touch of imagination that coerced his furtive glance; perhaps because he doubted more, or believed less, of the traditions of the day.
The roaring bacchanalian glees with which the pack-men set the melancholy sheeted woods aquiver might well send the ghosts out of earshot, presuming them endowed with volition. Suddenly Cuddy Barnett discovered that one of the pack-horses of his own especial charge was missing, a good bay with a load of fine dressed deerskins to take to Charlestown, then the great mart of all this far region.
The rest of the Carolina pack-men, trooping noisily past, averted their eyes from the darkened doors of the empty houses; the weed-grown spaces of the "beloved square," where once the ceremonies of state, the religious rites, the public games and dances were held; the council-house on its high mound, whence had been wont to issue the bland vapors of the pipe of peace or the far more significant smoke emitted from the cheera, the "sacred fire," which only the cheera-taghe, the fire-prophets, were permitted to kindle, and which was done with pomp and ceremony in the new year, when every spark of the last year's fire had been suffered to die out.
The pack-men, however copper-colored, black, and dusky- white were not only masters of their art, but possessed tempers that could not be ruffled; when they showed severity it was because severity was needed, and not because they were angry. They finally got all their longhorned beasts loaded and started on the trail with them. On January 21 we ourselves started, with the mule-train.
The supper of the young pack-men was broiling on the coals; their faces were florid with the keen wind, their coonskin caps all crested with snow; and the fringes of their buckskin raiment had tinkling pendants of icicles; but although they had found good cheer in a chortling jug, uncorked as the first preliminary of encamping, they had not yet imbibed sufficient fictitious courage to set at naught their fears of the old "waste town."
All this, however, the pack-men might see and hear, to believe the tradition of the day, in camping but a single night near the old "waste town."
Word Of The Day
Others Looking