She already knows the answer. I do not have to say it. I want to go to the big cabin of my father’s second wife on the other side of Willstown. I want to see my father. I want to ask him to teach me things.

“Why don’t you want to keep learning from your uncles?” she asks. “There is still much they can teach you.”

Her words are true. Red Bird was closest to me, but he was not my only uncle. His older brothers, Blackbird and White Raven, have a lot they could teach me. They know much about the new world in which our people must live. Both of them have learned to speak English. They are as well known by their English names of John and Samuel as they are by their Indian names. Both are deeply involved in the politics of our nation. The first elections for our new Tsalagi legislature take place this fall. Everyone says that one of them will surely be chosen to go to New Echota as one of the four representatives from our district.

But, unlike Red Bird, they both have children of their own and they are as devoted to them as my father, Sequoyah, was neglectful of me. They do not have all that much time for me. They travel so much and are so busy that I seldom see them.

Also, the path my mother’s two remaining brothers have chosen is not really the one I want to follow. Politics does not interest me. I do not enjoy trying to convince people to like me better than they like someone else. I want to know how to make things, useful things.

Nor do I want to continue taking classes in English from the missionary, even though he has said I am a quick learner. No one, he told me, has learned to write the alphabet faster than me. And when I speak the Aniyonega words I have learned, I do so perfectly—or so he said.

That missionary, Reverend Worcester, is a kind man. Like many of the Aniyonega he likes our Tsalagi people and wishes to assist us. He believes that teaching us to read and write English will not just make it easier for him to “save our souls,” as he puts it. He believes it will help us to resist being forced to leave our homeland.

I like Reverend Worcester. I like many of the other white people I have met. It is only some of the Aniyonega—those who are greedy for our land—who wish to drive us away. Unfortunately, those few who wish to get rid of us are powerful men. And one of the most powerful of those who wish to remove us is one who said he was our friend.

Perhaps that is why learning more English, which is the language of those who have betrayed and cheated us, does not interest me.