Tsali's Hatchet

My fingers traced the tiny stitches of the old Cherokee quilt that covered Grandmother's lap. It had been part of my life for as long as I could remember. I asked, who made it--where it came from?

She stroked the surface with long, gentle fingers. "Would you truly like to know?" she asked, her old olive face suddenly solemn. Oh, she was still beautiful, but there was a burning behind her dark eyes. At that moment, I felt an intensity from her that would never touch me so again.

I nodded dumbly. The quilt, she told me, had been made in Indian Territory by her great grandmother, Noonda-yea-li, sometime in the 1850’s.

"This was her wedding quilt," she said, lifting one frayed edge. Then she laughed. "Her mother carried her into Oklahoma in a bag." With that disclosure, the story changed. She began to tell me of Tsali and Anawaggia, Nundayeli's parents.

Thanks to Andrew Jackson, I suppose it was my story too, for like them, I am Cherokee. I learned much that day, some of it comforting, most of it horrifying. Their twenty year struggle to halt their removal from the Southeast was lost without a major battle being waged.

Years later, when I began research for this book, I found that Grandmother's story was fact. Some of the things she told me I did not find in my search, but I would never discount them.

After my trip into the Great Smoky Mountains of North Carolina, I thought this would be an easy subject about which to write. I talked with many people who knew Tsali's story. I gathered and sorted and stored the information. It seemed a simple matter of removal. That assumption quickly faded, however, as I learned how it's simplicity was lost in brutal betrayals. To suit the whims of a powerful few who demanded an unreasonable vengeance, justice and reason went mad.

This then is the account of Tsali and Anawaggia. It is written as they might have spoken it, as if translated from their own language. The story, though laced together with fiction, is true. Had you been there, would you have told them what you knew about the murder weapon? To save a people, would you have told them, "it's TSALI'S HATCHET!"