exactions. It was a mere question of confiscation, or robbery,
without redress, by the Indians. He risked it. With traders, at
that time, it was customary to take an Indian wife. She was
expected to furnish the eatables, as well as cook them. By the law
of many Indian tribes property and the control of the family go
with the mother. The husband never belongs to the same family
connection, rarely to the same community or town even, and often
not even to the tribe. He is a sort of barnacle, taken in on his
wife's account. To the adventurer, like a trader, this adoption
gave a sort of legal status or protection. Gist either understood
this before he started on his enterprise, or learned it very
speedily after. Of the Cherokee tongue he knew positively nothing.
He had a smattering of very broken English. Somehow or other he
managed to induce a Cherokee girl to become his wife.

This woman belonged to a family long respectable in the Cherokee
Nation. It is customary for those ignorant of the Indian social
polity to speak of all prominent Indians as "chiefs." Her family
had no pretension to chieftaincy, but was prominent and
influential; some of her brothers were afterward members of the
Council. She could not speak English; but, in common with many
Cherokees of even that early date, had a small proportion of
English blood in her veins. The Cherokee woman, married or single,
owns her property, consisting chiefly of cattle, in her own right.
A wealthy Cherokee or Creek, when a son or daughter is born to
him, marks so many young cattle in a new brand, and these become,
with their increase, the child's property. Whether her cattle
constituted any portion of the temptation, I can not say. At any
rate, the girl, who had much of the beauty of her race, became the
wife of the German peddler.