Bon Marche (71 page)

What came through those stories to Thomas Dewey was not the same horror his father felt, but the realization that some men—
many men
— were making fortunes at the expense of the Indians. In land and property and, in Georgia, gold.

It was a latent need—perhaps not fully understood—to make his own fortune that motivated the young man. In northwest Georgia might be that opportunity. In the troubled lands of the once mighty nation of the Cherokees. And so he rode, in the spring of 1835, having convinced himself that he might
be somebody
there, that he might be able to shake off the mantle of failure he had worn at Bon Marché.

Why, he might even find some gold!

For a week he rode. And two. Crossing the Tennessee River into Cherokee country. His baggage was a modest provision of food, a loaded two-shot pistol, and the same indecisiveness that had plagued him at Bon Marché.

Darkness was just overtaking him when he trotted his gelding into a tiny settlement cut in the heavy forest. There was really only one substantial building—a small log hut and three or four tents. A fire was burning in the center of the clearing, and five men were huddled around it.

When he rode into the circle of light, he realized that three rifles were trained on him.

“Good evening,” he called cheerily, wanting to make it clear that he was friendly. “What place is this?”

“Ain't got a name,” one of the men growled.

Thomas started to dismount, but the spokesman shouted: “Hold it right there!”

Two of them got to their feet and, their guns still pointed at him menacingly, they came up to his horse. “Who are ya?”

“My name is Thomas Dewey.”

“From where?”

“Tennessee. Nashville, Tennessee.”

“Whatta ya doin' here?”

It was a simple question, if hostile. Young Dewey realized that he didn't have an immediate, convenient answer.

“Ah said, whatta ya doin' here?”

“Well, I'm … uh … looking for Cherokee territory.”

“Why?”

“I understand a man might find gold—”

“Git down!”

Thomas dismounted, to be herded to the fire at rifle point.

“This gentleman,” the spokesman said to the others, making an epithet of the word
gentleman,
“is Mr. Dewey. He comes from Tennessee to find gold.”

Everyone laughed raucously.

“Coffee,
Mister
Dewey?”

“That would be welcome.” Thomas squatted down by the fire, accepting a tin cup of steaming brew. He sipped at it, finding it extremely bitter. He wanted to spit it out, but thought better of it.

“Now,
Mister
Dewey,” the spokesman said, “tell us 'bout this lookin' fer gold.”

“All reports are that gold has been found in this area, on the Cherokee lands, and it seemed logical to follow up on those reports.”

The obvious leader of the rough group of men studied him suspiciously. “Ya one of them Indian lovers?”

“What?”

“Well, ya don't look like no gold prospector to me…” The others nodded agreement. “… an' if ya ain't a gold prospector, mebbe yer one of them eastern bastards what's bleedin' their hearts out over the poor Cherokees.”

“No. I'm who I said I was: Thomas Dewey of Nashville.”

“Seen any Indians ridin' in here?”

“No.”

“Ya wanna see an Indian?”

“Yes, I imagine so.” The answer was tentative.

“See thet bastard right there?” the spokesman asked, pointing his rifle barrel toward one of his companions. “He's Indian, or half so. Show him, Morgan!”

The man took off his hat, turning a grinning face to the traveler. Thomas saw the high cheekbones that suggested Indian blood.

“That's an Indian,
Mister
Dewey. Ya like 'im?”

“He seems pleasant enough.”

“He ain't!” the leader snarled. “He's a lyin', thievin', whorin' sonofabitch what'd cut his mother's heart out without battin' an eye. Now, how do ya like 'im?”

“Well, I—”

There was general derisive laughter again.

The leader's attitude seemed to change suddenly. “We're jest funnin' ya, Dewey. Don't git much chance to fun a gentleman.”

Thomas smiled, relieved.

“Now … let's git serious. There is some gold hereabouts, but it takes a lot of work to git it out.” He glanced at Dewey's horse. “… An' Ah don't see no tools to do thet with.”

“Oh, I planned to buy equipment when I got here.”

The spokesman shook his head sadly. “The nearest place where ya can git shovels an' such is 'most eighty miles away.” He scratched his grizzled chin for a moment. “'Course, we might be willin' to let ya have—”

He gestured to the half-breed, who tossed a shovel into the circle of light.

“Like this here shovel. We kin let ya have thet fer fifty dollars.”

Thomas's eyes opened wide in surprise. “Fifty dollars!”

“What? Ain't ya got fifty dollars,
Mister
Dewey?”

“Of course. But fifty dollars is a ridiculous price for a shovel.”

“Mebbe. But thet's what it is out here.” He swept his arm to indicate the wilderness surrounding them.

Thomas coughed nervously. “I appreciate your help, of course, but I think I'll wait to get my equipment.”

The leader sighed. “Now, thet's too bad,
Mister
Dewey. Too bad. Ah guess ya might say that I'm a bit offended—”

“Oh, please, I didn't mean to offend.”

“Yessir, offended by yer refusal of our kind offer…”

Once more there was a universal nod of agreement.

“… an Ah'm real sorry,
Mister
Dewey, to tell ya thet we jest can't let ya leave here with all thet money yer carryin'.”

He squeezed the trigger of the rifle. Only a few feet away from young Dewey, he couldn't miss. The lead ball tore a terrible hole in his forehead.

Thomas Jefferson Dewey, age thirty-four, was dead instantly eighteen days after he had left Bon Marché.

It was nearly the end of May before the news reached the plantation in a letter from one Captain Morrison of the Georgia State Guard. The body had been found, he reported, on a routine patrol through the dangerous Cherokee region:

Your son obviously stumbled on to a band of cutthroats, and was gunned down and robbed. His money was taken, and his boots, and we found no horse in the vicinity, so we must assume that it was stolen, as well.

Fortunately, his papers were left on him, enabling me to perform this sad duty. You have my profound sympathy. It seems I am called on more and more to write letters of this type in these troubled times.

Charles grieved, but did not weep.

Nor did he tell his distraught wife that he blamed the death of their son on the brutal Indian policies of the administration of President Andrew Jackson.

49

“C
HARLES
, you can't keep filling that child's head with this nonsense!”

Mattie waved a copy of the
Liberator,
William Lloyd Garrison's uncompromising abolitionist newspaper, in front of his face.

“My Lord, I can't even understand how this is allowed to be sent through the mails.” She dropped the paper on Dewey's desk. “But it's a lot worse, I think, to use it as a study tool for Honey. There's something … uh … uh …
sinful
about that.”

Charles grinned, trying to dampen his wife's vehemence. “Mattie, dear, I try only to expose Honey to the views that are shaping her world—the world in which she'll have to live.”

“And you honestly think the views of the rabble-rouser Garrison will
shape,
as you put it, Honey's world?”

“Yes, I do. Immeasurably, I would think.”

Mattie grunted in exasperation. “I think I liked you better, Charles, when I was second in your priorities to the horses.”

“That was never true!”

“… And I resent it, I really resent it, when your preoccupations with the slavery issue allows you no time at all for me, or the rest of the family.”

“That's another of your famous generalizations, dear.”

She glared at him.

“Permit me to try to explain something,” Charles went on. “Mr. Garrison, while he may be unorthodox in his methods, believes, as do I, that slavery is a moral issue—that it is, in the final analysis, immoral. And if it is immoral, then it ought to be done away with; the central government ought to take the lead in acting against that immorality. Garrison says only that. I agree with him.”

“And you expect all others to agree with you!”

Another grin. “I can only
hope
that others will agree. I know that I can't
expect
them to.”

“Damn you and your semantics! I started out this conversation by saying that you shouldn't expose an innocent six-year-old to the garbage of William Lloyd Garrison, and you've twisted it around once more to a lecture on the morality of slavery.”

“The
im
morality,” he chided her.

“You try, it's clear to me, to make others who don't agree with you … well, to make them out as evil. I resent that. I'm not evil. There are generations and generations of people who have been slaveholders who weren't evil. Do you consider yourself evil?”

“Perhaps.”

“That's not an answer, Charles! Do you or do you not consider yourself personally evil because you own slaves?”

“I'd prefer if it were not so.”

“But it
is
so. And does that make you evil?”

“No.”

“Well, then—”

“Mattie, I admit to you that I don't have an answer. If I did, I'd have used it years ago. But that doesn't stop me from being certain that slavery is immoral. Nor does it stop my belief that if some political solution is not found for the slavery issue it's going to tear this country apart.”

“But—”

He held up a hand to stop her. “… And because I know that we are headed for disaster, I think it valid for little Honey to understand that.”

“And that brings us full circle.” She sighed.

“Still without an answer.”

“Yes—still without an answer.”

They sat silently for a moment or two.

“May I bring up another point of agitation?” Mattie asked.

Charles laughed. “Why not?”

Her voice was low, calm. “Don't allow yourself to be hurt by Honey as you were by Carrie.”

He pondered that. “I risk that, don't I?”

“Yes.”

“I suppose it's a risk I have to take.”

She saw the sadness in that basically good man. “Very well, Charles, I promise that I've said my last word on the subject.”

II

I
T
wasn't just Honey's education that took Charles and the young girl to Nashville on the day after Christmas 1835 to stand on Market Street and watch the desperate, ragged line of Cherokee Indians, cowed by their guard of Regular Army guns, shuffling along toward their new home across the Mississippi. What motivated the elder Dewey was a belief—maybe a hope—that he was somehow honoring Thomas Jefferson Dewey, who had died on Cherokee lands. He knew that his son's death had been ignoble, that he had been killed by common cutthroats. But he wanted to associate that death with a defense of the Indians in their hour of trial. That way Thomas's loss would have some meaning. And Charles allowed himself that private lie.

“Where are they going, Pop-Pop?”

“To somewhere in the Oklahoma Territory.”

“Why?”

“Because greedy men want their lands, because promises made to them have been broken, because a lot of people everywhere don't think of Indians as being worth much.”

“Oh.” A pause. “They look very cold, Pop-Pop.”

“Yes.” He watched the unhappy parade, the marchers inadequately clothed, some of them barefoot. And he looked into the faces of the men, women, and children and saw no hope there. A few tears started down his cheek.

Honey looked up at him, sober-faced, squeezing his hand.

When the column had passed them, headed for an overnight encampment on the edge of Nashville, Charles and Honey made their way to the Methodist church where a Pastor Robison, one of a band of ministers who were accompanying the Cherokees, was to speak. The church was packed. The impact of what they had seen that day had affected many Nashvillians.

“Brothers and sisters,” the pastor said, “I don't have to tell you, because you've seen it with your own eyes, of the horrors that have been afflicted on these people that some call savages. Yet, those of us of faith, or belief, in Jesus Christ our Lord, He who died on the cross for
all
men—not just white American citizens, but
all
men!—are as much responsible for this as is our government.

“I don't tell you this just to make you feel guilty. But you
are
guilty. I am guilty. We are
all guilty!
This didn't happen overnight. There is not one single political administration in Washington on which to fix blame. The removal of the Cherokees from their ancestral lands is the result of long, detailed planning, well known to everyone for years. And yet, we Americans who profess Christianity, who loudly proclaim that we are our brother's keeper, remained silent.

“We remained silent when the Choctaws were moved west. We remained silent when the Chickasaws were driven out of their homes. We remained silent when the Creeks were herded across the Mississippi. Our lips spoke no words of protest when the Seminoles were made to leave Florida. Our guilt has been our silence!”

Pastor Robison sighed deeply. There was not another sound in the crowded church. He dropped his voice.