An Embarrassment of Riches (38 page)

A guide was furnished us, youngest brother of the Scholar, who conducted us on a two-days' march out of the Cherokee hills down to the piedmont, where the virgin forests were falling to the settler's axe and the great plantations of the cotton empire were being carved out of a wilderness.

The whitewashed plantation house glowed in the autumn sunshine like a lantern against the darker fields. It stood about a mile in the distance from the hillside where we emerged from the forest. White smoke issued from a log outbuilding, and the air carried the sweet-acrid scent of hickory. My heart filled with yearning for the familiar and beloved things of home. Uncle too gazed upon the dwelling of this Georgia planter like one who has returned to earth after a lengthy exile upon a strange planet.

“What a lovely sight!” he declared with a catch in his voice, and we started down to the fields. The year's crop had been picked, and only rows of corn stubble remained.

“What is the first thing you shall want to do when you reach Owl's Crossing?” I asked.

“I should like to inspect my garden.”

“But it will be so late in the year.”

“Seed time, my boy, seed time.”

“O, yes, of course.”

“And thee, Sammy?”

“I want to go to a ball and see the beautiful girls of New York City all in a row.”

“Pish—”

“And I want to read a newspaper—an hundred newspapers! No, not read,
devour
them! And I want to sit before a warm fire with a bowl of chocolate filberts
this
high! And O, Uncle, I want Christmas, the family round the parlor, sister Caroline at the spinet, and the hearth blazing, and roasted apples, and snow! Beautiful, clean, white, fluffy snow—!” I remembered poor little Tansy and my heart shrank. “Yes, I shall like Christmas,” I concluded somberly. “Do you think we might get home in time?”

“With a fair wind and the right ship and a good captain and a little luck,” Uncle said and patted my shoulder, sensing my emotion.

In the distance arose the squeals of pigs. A strong and decidedly foul odor mingled with the scent of hickory smoke.

“'Tis hog-slaughtering time,” Uncle declared. “They're blanching off the bristles. O, I shall like a chop or two!” he glanced merrily my way and smacked his lips. “And look! What ho! They come to greet us!”

Coming toward us at several hundred yards were two white men accompanied by a quartet of Negroes. We had just raised our hands to signal
halloo
when shots rang out. Uncle groaned and clutched me before slumping to the ground. I gazed down at him in horror. Blood spilled over the folds of his Cherokee tunic.

“Don't shoot! Don't shoot!” I screamed and began racing toward them. They didn't seem to understand. Another shot resounded. The ball whistled past my ear. “What are you? Madmen? Idiots? Hold your fire, damn you!”

The two white men traded a worried glance.

“Villains!” I cried. “Murderers!”

The pair and their Negroes began a brisk trot toward us. I returned to Uncle. He lay supine amid the stubble, his face ashen, blood everywhere. I fell to my knees and cradled his head in my lap.

“I am slain, Sammy.”

“Please be still,” I said, rocking him back and forth, the tears streaming down my face.

“Owl's Crossing. The garden. My darlings. Thee must look after—”

“I will. Depend upon it.”

“I shall miss them so—”

“Dear Uncle, I beg you, don't die.”

The men and their slaves now arrived upon the scene and formed a circle around us.

“We thought that you was Indians,” one of the whites said, a porridge-faced youth some years my junior.

“Better you had never thought at all, nor drawn a breath,” I reviled him. “Look upon your work, you caitiff!”

“Sammy….” Uncle remonstrated me with a gasp and weakly wagged his finger in my face.

“Oh look what they have done to you!” I blubbered and drew him to my breast.

“I am not afraid. But the light, nephew, it is dazzling! O, O, O, Jehovah, I come….”

Uncle swooned in my arms.

The slaves took off their hats.

It was never established if the shot that brought down Uncle was fired by Orrin or Reuben Grinder, sons of Aaron Grinder, patriarch of Longwood Plantation. It is probably true, however, that they innocently mistook us for a pair of rogue Indians who had been stealing livestock and terrorizing the neighborhood for some months previous, for we were undeniably dressed in the Cherokee style when the assault took place.

Happily, Uncle was not slain after all. The ball passed cleanly through the superior lobe of his right lung and out of his back below the scapula, causing much less damage to the staunch gentleman than the flood of gore initially suggested. We were, however, constrained to make our Christmas among the planters of Glascock County, Georgia, and did not arrive in Philadelphia aboard the bark
Adamantine
until the following Easter. But Uncle lived another twenty-three years after taking his wound, and the famous portrait of him by Rembrandt Peale was painted in his eighty-fifth year, at Owl's Crossing, beneath the white oak tree
(Quercus alba)
that grew beside the brook in the garden that he loved so well.

The fate of other personages who played a part in this account is no doubt of interest to the reader.

Louis Bourbon, as he came to call himself, parlayed a $50 loan from his father-in-law into the largest cotton brokerage in New Orleans. A lover of knowledge, he eventually mastered seventeen languages—including Choctaw, Urdu, and Aramaic—and helped found Tulane University in his adopted city. All his years, it was whispered up and down the Vieux Carré that he was Louis XVII, the rightful king of France, an insinuation he always denied with a laugh, as though the idea amused him.

Bessie Bilbo Bourbon gave birth to fifteen children and became doyenne of the city's commercial aristocracy. Her charity work among the poor prostitutes of Toulouse Street is legendary and worthy of a book in itself.

Melancton Bilbo, after being briefly jailed on suspicion of fraud, made a small fortune from the sale of his Universal Physic and a larger fortune in politics. In 1816 he was elected Lieutenant Governor of the state of Louisiana; impeached, 1817; returned to office by the voters, 1820. In his later years he was proprietor of a theater on Dauphine Street, where he often appeared in the role of King Lear.

Neddy, surname unknown, left his comfortable surroundings in New Orleans in the spring of 1807 and vanished into the West.

Judge Felix Ravenel was slain by robbers in Carroll County, Kentucky, on his return to Babylon in 1803.

William Clark, along with his co-commander, Meriwether Lewis, successfully explored the western territories and reached the Pacific Ocean in 1805. In later years he was appointed Governor of the Missouri Territory, winning further renown as a diplomat among the Indians.

Meriwether Lewis died on the Natchez Trace in 1809 at the age of thirty-five of gunshot and knife wounds. It is not known whether he was a victim of suicide or murder. But he was considered deranged at the time of his death by many who knew him, including Thomas Jefferson.

The Wejun tribesmen as a group were never seen again, but reports of blond-haired savages speaking a quaint and queer variant of the English language persisted well into the nineteenth century around the region of Mobile Bay.

Alexander Hamilton was killed in a duel by his arch-rival, Vice President Aaron Burr, in July 1804, the same year as our return from the wilderness.

¹
William Bartram, Travels Through North and South Carolina, Georgia, and East and West Florida. Philadelphia: James and Johnson, 1790.