Red Sticks: Members of the Upper Creek Nation who tried to drive out the whites and were eventually defeated by a coalition of Lower Creeks, Cherokees, and white soldiers commanded by General Andrew Jackson

Willstown, Alabama,
1821

CHAPTER 1

My Father Is Crazy

Crazy. That is the best thing they whisper about my father.

Black magic. Witchcraft. What he is doing or trying to do is evil medicine. That’s the worst.

Since he returned from the West three weeks ago I have heard nothing but bad things said about him. Is it just those bad words that have kept me from going to see him? Am I afraid that when I do see him—if I see him—I will think he is crazy, too?

I am also uncertain how he will treat me if I show up at his door. Maybe he will not be glad to see me. Maybe he will tell me to go away. He has another child now, my half sister, Ahyokah. My father spends much of his time with her. She’s his favorite, not me. I think he loved me once. I remember the stories he used to tell me in his gentle voice. But if he really cared about me, why did he leave me and go to Arkansas? Why have I never heard anything from him during the years he was gone from our town?

Others of our people who emigrated to those western places have sent messages by way of the traders and missionaries who are always moving back and forth between our people. Some, who have learned English, have even sent written letters. But not my father, Sequoyah. No word, either written or spoken, has ever come to me from him.

Maybe he has even forgotten that he ever had a son.

Still, despite all my uncertainty, I have almost gone to where he is living at the home of his second wife. Last week I walked halfway across town toward their cabin before I turned back and returned to my mother’s cabin.

How long will my father be able to stay here? Some say that if it was not for the fact that Agili, who is now the chief of our town, was my father’s cousin and oldest friend, he would have been forced to leave—or worse. I worry I will not get the chance to see him before he is driven away.

I tap the chunkey stick I am holding against the ground. The ground sounds hollow as I do so, almost like a drum. It still holds the cold of winter inside it, even though it will not be long until the leaves return.

I don’t mind the cold. I know the song to keep frostbite away before going out to hunt for food when it is cold. It’s the song that calls on the deer, whose feet cannot be hurt by frost or snow, to share that power with the hunter.