Back then our nation’s boundaries were double what they are today and the peace town of Echota was the capital of our nation. Thousands of deer hides were brought in every year to my father’s store in Taskigee by our Tsalagi hunters. Then the white men moved in and killed all of the deer. And then our leaders were forced to sign yet another treaty and Taskigee and Echota were lost to us.

We are like the man in a story that my father told me when I was little. I was too young to understand it then as I do now. Perhaps my father understood that, but also understood me well enough to know that I would not forget it and that its meaning would one day be as clear to me as it is today. Or maybe he just told me that story because he was feeling sad and had been drinking. The smell of alcohol was strong on his breath and his voice was slurred as he told the story.

“A Tsalagi man was sitting by the river on a log,” my father said. “Along came a white man.

“‘Can I join you, my friend?’ the white man asked.

“‘Yes, my friend,’ the Tsalagi man answered, moving over to make room for his new companion.

“But then another white man came along and another . . . and another.

“Each time the Tsalagi man moved over to make room. So it went until finally the Tsalagi man was pushed off the end of the log, fell into the river, and was swept away.”

I remember how I waited to hear what happened next. Did the Tsalagi man drown? Were the white men ever punished for what they did?

But my father just shook his head, got up, and walked away, his steps unsteady from drink.

I need to stop thinking about such things. Those thoughts are darker than the feathers of a raven. I turn my gaze again to the buildings across the road from me.

Next to the house is a low-roofed open-sided building. It looks a little like an arbor, such as the one behind my mother’s small cabin. Almost every Tsalagi home has such an arbor for the warm months of long days. That is when everyone moves outside to cook our food and sleep at night cooled by the breeze that comes up from the river.

But this building, a building that his second wife had made for my father’s use, is not an arbor. The things that I can see within it are not meant for cooking. There’s a forge, an anvil, and hammers. Though little used, it contains everything needed for the profession I would like to learn. It’s a blacksmith shop.