University of Virginia Library

5. CHAPTER V.

“The next day came the movement of the hunters, still under
the conduct of Moitoy, from the one to the other side of the upper
branch of the Keowee river, now called the Jocassée, but which,
at that time, went by the name of Sarratay. The various bands
prepared to move with the daylight; and, still near, and still in
sight of one another, the Occonies and Estatoees took up their
line of march with the rest. The long poles of the two, bearing
the green bird of the one, and the brown viper of the other, in
the hands of their respective bearers—stout warriors chosen for
this purpose with reference to strength and valour—waved in
parallel courses, though the space between them was made as
great as possible by the common policy of both parties. Following
the route of the caravan, which had been formed of the ancient
men, the women and children, to whom had been entrusted
the skins taken in the hunt, the provisions, utensils for cooking,
&c., the great body of hunters were soon in motion for other and
better hunting-grounds, several miles distant, beyond the river.

“The Indian warriors have their own mode of doing business,
and do not often travel with the stiff precision which marks European
civilization. Though having all one point of destination,
each hunter took his own route to gain it, and in this manner asserted
his independence. This had been the education of the Indian
boy, and this self-reliance is one source of that spirit and
character which will not suffer him to feel surprise in any situation.
Their way, generally, wound along a pleasant valley, unbroken
for several miles, until you came to Big-knob, a huge
crag which completely divides it, rising formidably up in the
midst, and narrowing the valley on either hand to a fissure, necessarily
compelling a closer march for all parties than had heretofore
been pursued. Straggling about as they had been, of
course but little order was perceptible when they came together,
in little groups, where the mountain forced their junction. One

of the Bear tribe found himself alongside a handful of the Foxes,
and a chief of the Alligators plunged promiscuously into
the centre of a cluster of the Turkey tribe, whose own chief was
probably doing the proper courtesies among the Alligators. These
little crossings, however, were amusing rather than annoying, and
were, generally, productive of little inconvenience and no strife.
But it so happened that there was one exception to the accustomed
harmony. The Occonies and Estatoees, like the rest, had
broken up in small parties, and, as might have been foreseen,
when they came individually to where the crag divided the valley
into two, some took the one and some the other hand, and it was
not until one of the paths they had taken opened into a little plain
in which the woods were bald—a sort of prairie—that a party of
seven Occonies discovered that they had among them two of their
detested rivals, the Little Estatoees. What made the matter
worse, one of these stragglers was the ill-fated warrior who had
been chosen to carry the badge of his tribe; and there, high
above their heads—the heads of the Brown Vipers—floated that
detestable symbol, the green bird itself.

“There was no standing that. The Brown Vipers, as if with
a common instinct, were immediately up in arms. They grappled
the offending stragglers without gloves. They tore the green
bird from the pole, stamped it under foot, smothered it in the mud,
and pulling out the cone-tuft of its head, utterly degraded it in
their own as well as in the estimation of the Estatoees. Not content
with this, they hung the desecrated emblem about the neck
of the bearer of it, and, spite of all their struggles, binding the
arms of the two stragglers behind their backs, the relentless Vipers
thrust the long pole which had borne the bird, in such a
manner between their alternate arms as effectually to fasten them
together. In this manner, amidst taunts, blows and revilings,
they were left in the valley to get on as they might, while their
enemies, insolent enough with exultation, proceeded to join the
rest of their party.