University of Virginia Library

1. CHAPTER I.

“Keowee Old Fort,” as the people in that quarter style it, is a
fine antique ruin and relic of the revolution, in the district of
Pendleton, South Carolina. The region of country in which we
find it is, of itself, highly picturesque and interesting. The
broad river of Keowee, which runs through it, though comparatively
small as a stream in America, would put to shame, by its
size not less than its beauty, one half of the far-famed and
boasted rivers of Europe;—and then the mountains, through and
among which it winds its way, embody more of beautiful situation
and romantic prospect, than art can well figure to the eye,
or language convey to the imagination. To understand, you
must see it. Words are of little avail when the ideas overcrowd
utterance; and even vanity itself is content to be dumb in the
awe inspired by a thousand prospects, like Niagara, the ideals of
a god, and altogether beyond the standards common to humanity.

It is not long since I wandered through this interesting region,
under the guidance of my friend, Col. G—, who does the honours
of society, in that quarter, with a degree of ease and unostentatious
simplicity, which readily makes the visiter at home.
My friend was one of those citizens to whom one's own country
is always of paramount interest, and whose mind and memory,
accordingly, have been always most happily employed when
storing away and digesting into pleasing narrative those thousand
little traditions of the local genius, which give life to rocks and
valleys, and people earth with the beautiful colours and creatures

of the imagination. These, for the gratification of the spiritual
seeker, he had forever in readiness; and, with him to illustrate
them, it is not surprising if the grove had a moral existence in
my thoughts, and all the waters around breathed and were instinct
with poetry. To all his narratives I listened with a satisfaction
which book-stories do not often afford me. The more he
told, the more he had to tell; for nothing staled

There may have been something in the style of telling his stories;
there was much, certainly, that was highly attractive in
his manner of doing every thing, and this may have contributed
not a little to the success of his narratives. Perhaps, too, my
presence, upon the very scene of each legend, may have given
them a life and a vraisemblance they had wanted otherwise.

In this manner, rambling about from spot to spot, I passed five
weeks, without being, at any moment, conscious of time's progress.
Day after day, we wandered forth in some new direction,
contriving always to secure, and without effort, that pleasurable
excitement of novelty, for which the great city labours in vain,
spite of her varying fashions, and crowding, and not always innocent
indulgences. From forest to river, from hill to valley, still
on horseback,—for the mountainous character of the country forbade
any more luxurious form of travel,—we kept on our way,
always changing our ground with the night, and our prospect
with the morning. In this manner we travelled over or round
the Six Mile, and the Glassy, and a dozen other mountains; and
sometimes, with a yet greater scope of adventure, pushed off on
a much longer ramble,—such as took us to the falls of the White
Water, and gave us a glimpse of the beautiful river of Jocassée,
named sweetly after the Cherokee maiden, who threw herself
into its bosom on beholding the scalp of her lover dangling from
the neck of his conqueror. The story is almost a parallel to that
of the sister of Horatius, with this difference, that the Cherokee
girl did not wait for the vengeance of her brother, and altogether
spared her reproaches. I tell the story, which is pleasant and
curious, in the language of my friend, from whom I first heard it.

“The Occonies and the Little Estatoees, or, rather, the Brown

Vipers and the Green Birds, were both minor tribes of the Cherokee
nation, between whom, as was not unfrequently the case,
there sprung up a deadly enmity. The Estatoees had their town
on each side of the two creeks, which, to this day, keep their
name, and on the eastern side of the Keowee river. The Occonies
occupied a much larger extent of territory, but it lay on the
opposite, or west side of the same stream. Their differences were
supposed to have arisen from the defeat of Chatuga, a favourite
leader of the Occonies, who aimed to be made a chief of the nation
at large. The Estatoee warrior, Toxaway, was successful;
and as the influence of Chatuga was considerable with his tribe,
he laboured successfully to engender in their bosoms a bitter dislike
of the Estatoees. This feeling was made to exhibit itself on
every possible occasion. The Occonies had no word too foul by
which to describe the Estatoees. They likened them, in familiar
speech, to every thing which, in the Indian imagination, is accounted
low and contemptible. In reference to war, they were
reputed women,—in all other respects, they were compared to
dogs and vermin; and, with something of a Christian taste and
temper, they did not scruple, now and then, to invoke the devil
of their more barbarous creed, for the eternal disquiet of their
successful neighbours, the Little Estatoees, and their great chief,
Toxaway.

“In this condition of things there could not be much harmony;
and, accordingly, as if by mutual consent, there was but little
intercourse between the two people. When they met, it was
either to regard one another with a cold, repulsive distance, or
else, as enemies, actively to foment quarrel and engage in strife.
But seldom, save on national concerns, did the Estatoees cross the
Keowee to the side held by the Occonies; and the latter, more
numerous, and therefore less reluctant for strife than their rivals,
were yet not often found on the opposite bank of the same river.
Sometimes, however, small parties of hunters from both tribes,
rambling in one direction or another, would pass into the enemy's
territory; but this was not frequent, and when they met, quarrel
and bloodshed were sure to mark the adventure.

“But there was one young warrior of the Estatoees, who did
not give much heed to this condition of parties, and who, moved

by an errant spirit, and wholly insensible to fear, would not hesitate,
when the humour seized him, to cross the river, making
quite as free, when he did so, with the hunting-grounds of the
Occonies as they did themselves. This sort of conduct did not
please the latter very greatly, but Nagoochie was always so gentle,
and at the same time so brave, that the young warriors of Occony
either liked or feared him too much to throw themselves often in
his path, or labour, at any time, to arrest his progress.

“In one of these excursions, Nagoochie made the acquaintance
of Jocassée, one of the sweetest of the dusky daughters of
Occony. He was rambling, with bow and quiver, in pursuit of
game, as was his custom, along that beautiful enclosure which
the whites have named after her, the Jocassée valley. The circumstances
under which they met were all strange and exciting,
and well calculated to give her a power over the young hunter,
to which the pride of the Indian does not often suffer him to
submit. It was towards evening when Nagoochie sprung a fine
buck from a hollow of the wood beside him, and just before
you reach the ridge of rocks which hem in and form this beautiful
valley. With the first glimpse of his prey flew the keen
shaft of Nagoochie; but, strange to say, though renowned as a
hunter, not less than as a warrior, the arrow failed entirely and flew
wide of the victim. Off he bounded headlong after the fortunate
buck; but though, every now and then getting him within range,
—for the buck took the pursuit coolly,—the hunter still most unaccountably
failed to strike him. Shaft after shaft had fallen
seemingly hurtless from his sides; and though, at frequent intervals,
suffered to approach so nigh to the animal that he could not but
hope still for better fortune, to his great surprise, the wary buck
would dash off when he least expected it, bounding away in some
new direction, with as much life and vigour as ever. What to
think of this, the hunter knew not; but such repeated disappointments
at length impressed it strongly upon his mind, that the
object he pursued was neither more nor less than an Occony
wizard, seeking to entrap him; so, with a due feeling of superstition,
and a small touch of sectional venom aroused into action
within his heart, Nagoochie, after the manner of his people,
promised a green bird—the emblem of his tribe—in sacrifice to

the tutelar divinity of Estato, if he could only be permitted to
overcome the potent enchanter, who had thus dazzled his aim and
blunted his arrows. He had hardly uttered this vow, when he
beheld the insolent deer mincingly grazing upon a beautiful tuft
of long grass in the valley, just below the ledge of rock upon
which he stood. Without more ado, he pressed onward to bring
him within fair range of his arrows, little doubting at the moment
that the Good Spirit had heard his prayer, and had granted
his desire. But, in his hurry, leaping too hastily forward, and
with eyes fixed only upon his proposed victim, his foot was caught
by the smallest stump in the world, and the very next moment
found him precipitated directly over the rock and into the valley,
within a few paces of the deer, who made off with the utmost
composure, gazing back, as he did so, in the eyes of the wounded
hunter, for all the world, as if he enjoyed the sport mightily.
Nagoochie, as he saw this, gravely concluded that he had fallen
a victim to the wiles of the Occony wizard, and looked confidently
to see half a score of Occonies upon him, taking him at a vantage.
Like a brave warrior, however, he did not despond, but
determining to gather up his loins for battle and the torture, he
sought to rise and put himself in a state of preparation. What,
however, was his horror, to find himself utterly unable to move;
—his leg had been broken in the fall, and he was covered with
bruises from head to foot.

“Nagoochie gave himself up for lost; but he had scarcely
done so, when he heard a voice,—the sweetest, he thought, he had
ever heard in his life,—singing a wild, pleasant song, such as the
Occonies love, which, ingeniously enough, summed up the sundry
reasons why the mouth, and not the eyes, had been endowed with
the faculty of eating. These reasons were many, but the last
is quite enough for us. According to the song, had the eyes,
and not the mouth, been employed for this purpose, there would
soon be a famine in the land, for of all gluttons, the eyes are the
greatest. Nagoochie groaned aloud as he heard the song, the
latter portion of which completely indicated the cause of his
present misfortune. It was, indeed, the gluttony of the eyes which
had broken his leg. This sort of allegory the Indians are fond
of, and Jocassée knew all their legends. Certainly, thought

Nagoochie, though his leg pained him wofully at the time, `certainly
I never heard such sweet music, and such a voice.' The
singer advanced as she sung, and almost stumbled over him.

“`Who are you?' she asked timidly, neither retreating nor
advancing; and, as the wounded man looked into her face, he
blessed the Occony wizard, by whose management he deemed
his leg to have been broken.

“`Look!' was the reply of the young warrior, throwing
aside the bearskin which covered his bosom,—`look, girl of Occony!
'tis the totem of a chief;' and the green bird stamped
upon his left breast, as the badge of his tribe, showed him a
warrior of Estato, and something of an enemy. But his eyes
had no enmity, and then the broken leg! Jocassée was a gentle
maiden, and her heart melted with the condition of the warrior.
She made him a sweet promise, in very pretty language, and with
the very same voice the music of which was so delicious; and
then, with the fleetness of a young doe, she went off to bring him
succour.