CHAPTER 1

The Land

Manus McDibble, his wife Sara, and sixty other passengers boarded the vessel HMS Each-Mara in Port of Grangemouth, Scotland, and sailed to America in the year 1745. They all were escaping the clouds of war that loomed low over the Highlands as Scottish revolutionaries machinated to invade England from the north in conspiracy with the French who schemed to invade from the south, all in an attempt to usurp the British throne.

The third day out of port, the crew navigated the ship through a flotilla of icebergs in the North Atlantic while nervous passengers watched from the decks. A week later the ship was attacked by a fierce storm that sent huge hailstones clacking onto the planks and ripping through the sails, spat crushing waves over the bulwarks, and hurled bright and terrible lightning bolts at the masts. The storm abated after a frightening eleven hours, but the rest of the trip was calm and uneventful. Manus recorded the maze of icebergs and the storm in his journal. The Each-Mara crossed the Atlantic Ocean with no loss of life or cargo.

The McDibbles came ashore to Virginia during the time that a cool, wet spring was turning into a warm, bountiful summer. They were met on the low dunes by an English military patrol dressed in red coats and carrying long muskets affixed with long bayonets that glinted in the bright sunlight. The McDibbles were asked to avow their loyalty to England and their fealty to King George. The sky in Virginia was bright, the land was green, the sea was blue, and the sun was warm on his shoulders. Manus breathed in the sweet air of a new world, swore his allegiance to king and country, and vowed his sword and service to the Crown.

More than a decade later, as the days began to shorten in the late autumn of 1756, McDibble left his wife and two Virginia-born sons to tend their farm in Prince William County while he traveled by horseback to the western frontier with twenty other mounted colonials and one Cherokee scout, all of whom were regimented and dispatched by the governor of Virginia. They were going to meet with British troops and join England in its fight against the forces of the French and French-allied Indian tribes for control of the Ohio River Valley.

Sixteen days after the regiment set out from Williamsburg, the Cherokee scout reported that a small village of Shawnee lay a half day’s ride ahead on the western bank of a river the English called the Little Shawnee, and the Shawnee called Shawano Nepi, or South Water. The Virginians traveled through the night and arrived across the water from the encampment shortly after the break of day. They crossed through a shallow place in the stream and rode their tall horses through a harvested field of maize, then trampled patches of pumpkins and squash before they charged into the sleeping cluster of round-topped wigwams an hour after sunrise and two hours after the Shawnee men left to hunt large game in the lowlands beyond the Tug Fork of the Big Sandy River in the western regions that ultimately became known as Kentucky.

Before the colonials arrived, in the still dark hours of a crisp autumn morning, the Shawnee hunters quietly left the village on ponies, riding their mounts into the damp fog that seeped inland from the river and oozed into the tall grass before it disappeared into the pre-dawn haze. A small girl, Moon Water, and her grandmother watched the men ride away. Her father, the village shaman, rode in the rear of the hunting party and waved goodbye to the girl as the ponies and riders were absorbed by the mist. When the soft sounds of the gently trotting horses faded, the two went back inside their wigwam to sleep for a few more hours beside the dying fire.

The wigwam was a dome topped structure constructed of long, thin poles bent into shape while the wood was still green, then covered with birchbark, woven grass mats, and animal hides. The dwelling was approximately fifteen feet wide at the base and nearly ten feet tall at the highest point of the dome. In the center of the wigwam, the flickering flames in the fire pit burned through two pieces of white oak that were stacked in the embers. Smoke curled up dreamily through an opening in the top. Moon Water and her grandmother moved quietly and were careful not to awaken the girl’s grandfather when they cozied under bear skin robes and fell back to sleep listening to the snaps from the glowing coals and the crackles of the burning wood.

The Shawnee men rode two days to get to the hunting ground. It was an annual trip that occurred in the autumn before early winter precipitation set in. The hunt was the source of much of their winter food supply. The weather was still warm enough to hang, dry, beat, and scrape furs, pelts, and hides for use in the wigwams when the snow fell and the winds blew the winter weather through the village.

The warriors camped on the eastern side of the Tug near a large patch of blackberry bushes that covered over an acre of land. The men hunted for four days, then took three days to ride back, each horse pulling a travois laden with pelts, raw hides, and choice meats from wild boar, deer, elk, and bear. One travois carried a dozen woven baskets filled with blackberries.

A two-day ride to the Tug Fork hunting grounds, four days of hunting and gathering, and a three-day return trip meant the men did not return to the village until nine days after the elders, women, and children, including Moon Water and her grandmother, were all massacred by the regimental Virginian raiding party. The braves found their grandfathers and sons all murdered and mutilated. Their bodies lay scattered among the wigwams where they fell to the muskets and swords of their attackers. The mothers, grandmothers, wives, sisters, and daughters of the Shawnee hunters were dead on the ground, lying in an area near the center of the village where the Shawnee performed religious ceremonies. All the females had been violated. The corpses were in early stages of decomposition and were ravaged by buzzards, crows, and wild animals.

Laying on the ground by Moon Water’s wigwam was the lone casualty of the raiding party, the Cherokee scout. His neck was pierced by an arrow shot by the girl’s grandfather just before a musket ball exploded through the old man’s chest. The arrow he launched from his bow struck the scout in the nape of his neck and protruded from the front of the dead scout’s throat.

After traditional Shawnee funeral rituals and the customary mourning period of four days, they put their slain friends and family in the dirt by the river bank, choosing not to place the murdered bodies in the burial mound where their ancestors were interred. They did not want to disturb the peacefully departed by putting the newly dead in the mound to tell them of the violent deaths inflicted upon them by the vile Virginians.

The graves they dug by the river were each approximately four feet deep and lined with bark from birch and beech trees and with flat stones from the downstream shoals of the river. Over each of the graves the men built grave houses, hip-high wooden structures with low peaked roofs, according to the burial customs of the Shawnee.

On the last night of the funeral rites, they sat by a campfire that sporadically spat yellow and orange sparks into the night sky. The shaman told the warriors the land had been visited by an evil spirit and was no longer fit for the living. He said the rich, dark dirt by the South Water was a place for the dead. The chief of the tribe agreed with the shaman.

The Shawnee men left the following day, taking only their ponies, weapons, and the clothes they could wear on their backs. Before they departed their village, the tribe’s shaman knelt on both knees and said a silent prayer for his slain mother and his murdered daughter, Moon Water. He rose, lifted his head and howled in emotional pain. The Shawnee men echoed his howl. When the wailing ceased, the shaman wiped tears from his eyes then slowly walked and danced clockwise around the cemetery while he sang a song of tribute to the dead. When he completed the circle, he reversed his path and sprinkled small seeds onto the graves from a white leather pouch as he danced backward around the cemetery.

When the reverse dance was completed he blessed the fallen people who were buried in robes of fur and capped with headbands colorfully decorated with blue jay, goldfinch, cardinal, and bluebird feathers. He again turned his head upwards and raged toward the sky with a piercing scream. When the reverberations of his wailing stopped echoing from the mountains, he cursed the land above ground and anyone who may inhabit it. He asked the Great Spirit, Mishe Moneto, to keep the evil spirit away from the village and the surrounding land, but if it was permitted to venture there again, the shaman prayed it would eat the plants that would grow from the seeds he scattered, and the plants would take the life from the body the evil spirit inhabited.

“Oh, Great Spirit Mishe Moneto,” he besought, “if any man crosses the river to this land of our ancestors, either by the shoals or by floating upon the water in vessels, let such men join the children of Mishe Moneto in the earth, for this is now a land for the dead, and is no longer a land for the living.”

One of their last acts before leaving the village was to take the body of the Cherokee scout to the river and weigh it down with stones placed in woven baskets that they tied to the invader’s wrists and ankles. They tossed the corpse into the deep dark water with the arrow still impaled through its throat. They wanted the body to be consumed by the bottom dwelling red carp, mud eels, and flat head catfish, all...