Her Loving Husband's Curse by Meredith Allard Read Free Book Online

not believe in land ownership. And the discoverer has rights too. What is the point of discovering land if you cannot have it when you find it?
    But the Cherokee assimilated. They converted. Their children go to proper schools. They have a written language, a syllabary, invented by Sequoyah over twenty years ago, and they have laws and a Constitution. They abolished clan revenge and other acts considered too savage for gentle American sensibilities. The women spin and weave while the men raise livestock and plant crops. They own their own plots of land, no longer shared as one whole. Most have become God-fearing, Bible-reading, prayer-speaking Christians. Many have become wealthy. Some further south are slave owners, a sad concession to their wish to conform. The people here are farmers, but others are doctors, lawyers, writers, teachers, professors, and journalists. But no matter how well they follow the leader they will always be Other.
    It’s the land, Lizzie. The Americans are greedy for the land. And now they will force the people to go away when they will not leave it all behind. When they will not pretend they were never here. It’s beginning already.
    As I look through the window all is dust. Even into the night the chalky air rises and swirls, settling on cornstalks, clothing, faces, leaving a pallid mask on everyone. There is the grit-covered white man I see here often who comes to trade with the natives. Now he is speaking to my neighbor.
    “ Ridge and Boudinot signed the treaty in Georgia,” the white man says.
    “ No,” says my neighbor. “Chief John Ross won’t allow it. He thinks we can keep our land.”
    “ It’s done, Friend. They’re taking your land and sending you away.”
    “ No,” my neighbor says again. “Chief John Ross has gone to Washington to talk to the government. They will listen. They will see why it’s wrong to take our land.”
    “ Ridge and Boudinot thought there was no way the government would let you keep the land—that’s why they signed. Removal will start soon. I thought you should know.”
    The trot-trot-trot of horse’s hooves comes faster and closer. I heard it long before the men talking outside. Suddenly, the horse stops a few feet away. I see the stern-faced, blue-suited officer dismounting, his bayonet at his side. My neighbor’s family have come outside, his mother-in-law, wife, and daughters, huddled close to one another, watching.
    The wind picks up, and everyone disappears in the dust. Through the haze I see the officer nod at the white man. He doesn’t look at the native man or his family as he walks through their open doorway. He scans their possessions, their basic furniture, the spinning wheel, the beads and stones and pestles. He eyes my neighbor’s pretty black-haired wife with a suggestive gleam that boils rage from the soles of my feet to the tips of my hair. For a moment I am back in Salem in 1692, and I feel the constable at our door, cruel as he drags you away. I can hardly restrain myself from ripping the officer man to shreds. How dare he impose himself on this family. What have they done?
    The native man must also sense danger and he stands protectively in front of his women.
    “ What do you want here?” the white man asks.
    “ I have orders to take inventory of the belongings inside,” says the officer.
    “ So you can confiscate it for yourself or sell it?”
    “ I have orders.”
    “ Seems awful late into the night for that. Can’t you come back tomorrow?”
    “ I’m here now.”
    The officer brushes further into my neighbor’s house, his back stretched tall, shoulders back, a sad apology for his height—the Napoleon complex, I believe it’s called. He needs to make a show, the man in the uniform, the man with the orders. This is all a show of Power. You will do what we make you do. When we want what you have you must give it to us. When we want you to leave you must leave. There is no other way.
    The white trader notices me