PAGE 13
The Captive Of The Ada-Wehi
by
Kenneth MacVintie was seen again in the Cherokee country only in his place as a marker in the march of his regiment, and as he was evidently exceedingly desirous to permit no one to incur penalties for his liberation, his officers spared him questions concerning his escape, save in a general way.
When the ada-wehi next reappeared in a remote town of the district and was sedulously interrogated as to how his freedom had been achieved, he threw out his right hand at arm’s length in his old, boastful, airy gesture.
“Cheesto kaiere!” (An old rabbit!) he exclaimed. “A little old rabbit ran down the slope. I turned the soldier into a rabbit, and he ran away. And I turned myself into a fish, and I swam away. Ha! Tsida-wei-yu!” (I am a great ada-wehi!)
FOOTNOTES:
[1].
The primary and somewhat complex significance of the word ada-wehi is suggested by the idea of sorcery,–a man, or animal, or even element endowed with uncontrolled superlative and supernatural powers. It has been stated that since the introduction of Christianity and the printing of the New Testament in the Cherokee typographical character the word has been utilized with its subtleties of signification to express spirit or angel. In this story, however, the scene of which is laid in a period long previous to the conversion of the tribe, or even the accepted date of the invention of the Cherokee alphabet, the word is used in its early and original sense to denote a magician of special and expansive gifts of sorcery.
[2]
Although this officer’s name was regularly incorporated into the Cherokee vocabulary as a synonym of disaster, he seemed to revolt at the unhappy plight of the people whom in the discharge of his duty he had succeeded in reducing to so abject a condition of despair and woe, and has left on record expressions of compassion incongruous with his deeds and his position as a professed soldier of long experience. He had served in Flanders and Ireland in his youth as captain in the Royal Scots before he first came to America as major in Montgomerie’s regiment of Highlanders.
Some adequate idea of the desolation and destitution of the Indians may be gleaned from the reports to the British government: “The Cherokees must certainly starve or come into terms, and even in that case Colonel Grant thinks it is hardly in the power of the provincials to save them. He proposed in a few days to send for The Great Warrior (Oconostota) and The Little Carpenter (Atta-Kulla-Kulla) to come and treat for peace, if they choose to save their nation from destruction. Till he receives their answer he will endeavor to save the small remains of the Lower Towns. In the mean time Colonel Grant intends to put Fort Prince George into repair, and to wait there or at Ninety-Six till he receives orders from Sir Jeffrey Amherst.”
The idea of the pangs of hunger and the sight of starvation and deprivation may have been the more repugnant to Colonel Grant since he was himself famous as a bon vivant and gourmet. Indeed, even yet, in turning old pages we come upon records of his dinners. Bartram, the Philadelphia botanist, whom the Muscogee Indians quaintly called Puc-Puggy (the Flower Hunter) details the great size of a rattlesnake, “six feet long and as thick as the leg of an ordinary man” which he chanced to kill in his bosky researches near Fort Picolata in Florida, and not the least surprising feature of the incident was a message from the commandant inviting both combatants to dinner, “Governor Grant being very fond of rattlesnake flesh.” This officer, at that time Royal Governor of East Florida, was holding a congress with the Creek Indians hard by the fort, having come from St. Augustine with a detachment of its garrison for the purpose. Bartram, dining in company with Grant that day, saw his enemy served up in several different styles,–and he, too, must turn softhearted!–he could not partake of the dish,–and “was sorry after killing the serpent, when coolly recollecting every circumstance of it.” However, neither the rattlesnake nor the Cherokees were in condition to profit by these belated graces of magnanimity.