Verwandte Artikel zu Nickajack

Nickajack - Softcover

Conley, Robert J.

 
9780312984885: Nickajack
Softcover
ISBN 10: 031298488X ISBN 13: 9780312984885
Verlag: St Martin's Press, 2002

Inhaltsangabe

Nickajack finds himself caught between warring factions within the Cherokee Nation after his people are removed from their ancestral lands and relocated to the Indian territory. Reissue.

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Nickajack
CHAPTER 1
His name was Nikutsegi. It was an old name, even when it had been given to him at birth.
He could remember a time years ago when a white man had asked, "What does it mean?" He had not answered, in fact, had not even understood the question, for he had not known any English at that time. He had later learned to understand and even to speak a little English, but he had never become comfortable with the strange language. They had told him later that the white man had asked for the meaning of his name. And they had answered that it had no meaning. "It's just a name," they had told the white man.
Of course it had a meaning. Or at least it had at one time had a meaning. But even inthose days, which now seemed so long ago, there were names of people and of towns and there were other words in the Cherokee language which the people no longer understood. They had lost their meanings. Perhaps they had been part of the old sacred language, most of which had been lost long ages ago when the people had killed the Ani-Kutani, the ruling priests, who had become so tyrannical. Whatever the truth of the matter, he had a name that was just a name, and the white men and the breeds who did not speak Cherokee had begun to call him Nickajack, and sometimes even the Cherokees who spoke their language called him that.
Nickajack had never been one to brood. But after he had killed that man, he had not been able to put it out of his mind. He did not know the man's clan, the man known as Common Disturber. But in the old days, the men of Common Disturber's clan would have come for Nickajack. They would have come to kill him, to balance things out between the two clans.
Those ways had changed since the white people had come among them and married into the Cherokee Nation and begun raising mixed-blood families. There were even people among the Cherokees who did not know to which clan they belonged. And since the government ofthe Cherokee Nation had remodeled itself in the fashion of the United States with a written constitution, there was in effect a new concept of citizenship.
In the old days, if a child had been born of a Cherokee mother, that is, a woman who belonged to one of the seven clans, then that child was a Cherokee, a member of his mother's clan. However, a child as much as half Cherokee whose Cherokee blood was derived only from his father would not have been considered to be a Cherokee for that child would not belong to a clan. But in the new Cherokee Nation, any child born with a mother or father who had Cherokee blood was called a Cherokee citizen.
Chief John Ross was more white man than Indian, yet his Cherokee blood had come from his mother, and he had been born into a clan. He, at least, was Cherokee according to the old ways. But these younger Ridges and Boudinots and others like them, their fathers had married white women. Their mothers were white. They had no clan, and therefore, according to the old ways, they were not Cherokee. They were, of course, citizens, under the new system. And under the new system, Nickajack had committed a crime against the Cherokee Nation, had broken one of the laws of the land, when he had killed Common Disturber. In the old daysthat act would have been a crime against Common Disturber's clan.
All of these thoughts troubled the mind of Nickajack as he tried to go about the business of his daily life.
Nickajack was not an intellectual. He had never been a scholar, and thoughts of this nature were almost painful to his brain. He rose early in the morning, as usual. He wrapped himself in a blanket and walked outside to relieve himself. Back inside the one-room cabin which he had built himself with logs, with the help of his friend and neighbor Coffee Soldier, he added more wood to the fire in the hearth. Then he began to make some coffee. He did that by simply tossing a handful of coffee grounds into a pot of boiling water.
He glanced over at his wife. She was still asleep. His own sleep had been troubled and fitful, and he was up a little earlier than usual. She would wake soon enough, he thought. He went outside again. There were animals to be fed: his white mule, some hogs and chickens. All, he thought, as he went automatically through his chores, all animals brought across the ocean by the white man. His brain felt tired.
And overriding or underneath or behind all of these troubling thoughts was the one big thought, nagging and persistent, the thoughtthat had stimulated all of this unusual brain activity in the head of Nickajack.
He had killed a man.
But that was not really a thought. It was more a feeling or a sort of stunned realization. It was a feeling that he did not like, and it was constant. He would have this uncomfortable feeling, he supposed, for as long as he lived.
There were Cherokees who carried with them through their lives the old honorable "killer" names: Nunnahi-dihi, Pathkiller; Tsata-dihi, Choctawkiller; Gusoi-dihi, Creekkiller; Yonega-dihi, Whitekiller; Nungi-dihi, Fourkiller; Sudali-dihi, Sixkiller; Sgohidihi, Tenkiller, and others, but that was different. The names were old and had become family names, surnames like the white man used. Originally they had been war titles, and the people who now carried the names had ancestors who had earned them honorably. And the names had been earned by warriors who had killed their enemies.
But Nickajack had killed another Cherokee. If he had earned a name it would be Tsalagidihi , Cherokeekiller, or perhaps just Didahihi, murderer. He did not like the feeling, and he did not like the thoughts which it provoked in his head.
He made himself as busy as he could, tending to the animals, working on a section offence that really did not need mending, anything to try to keep his mind off the other business. But nothing worked. The tasks were routine manual tasks, leaving his mind free to wander on its own. He was aware of a constant dull pain in his head. He knew that if he could only quit thinking, the ache would go away with the thoughts. But he could not stop. He could not control his own mind.
At lunch he sat with his right elbow on the table, his head resting heavily against the palm of his hand. His wife looked at him, and her brow wrinkled. She knew him well, and she could tell when he was troubled.
"What is it?" she asked.
"My head hurts," he said, but she read his mind. She knew why his head was hurting.
"You had no choice," she said. "There wasn't time to think. You did what any man would have done, and many women, too."
"I killed a man," he said.
"You had no choice."
"He was a Cherokee," said Nickajack, "and I killed him."
When they had finished eating, the children went outside to play. It was cold out. It was the month the Cherokees call Unoluhtana, Cold Wind. The white men called it January. And it was a cold January there in the western foothills of the Ozark mountains. Still, the childrenwent outside. When children want to play, they ignore the cold. It doesn't matter to them. Nickajack envied them a little.
He was still sitting at the table there, still holding his head, when the riders came. The children heard them first, but, being children, they did not immediately sound the alarm. They waited and watched until they could see the riders coming, but once they saw them, they ran into the house shouting.
"Someone's coming. Someone's coming."
"A bunch of men on horses."
Nickajack had an old pistol, a .46-caliber Kentucky flintlock converted to percussion. He kept it loaded and hanging on a peg over the fireplace.
He looked up briefly into the...

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Verlag
St Martin's Press
Erscheinungsdatum
2002
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
031298488X
ISBN 13 
9780312984885
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
256
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Nicht verfügbar

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