Eupharsee River, as the Hiwassee was then called, gathered their
household gods and journeyed back to Blue Lick, to cry out in the
wilderness that they were "home" once more, and clasp each other's hands
in joyful gratulation to witness the roofs and stockade rise again,
rebuilt as of yore. Strangely enough, there were old Cherokee friends to
greet them anew and to be welcomed into the stockade; for even the rigid
rule of war and hate must needs be proved by its exceptions. And there
were one or two pensive philosophers among the English settlers vaguely
sad to see all the Cherokee traditions and prestige, and remnants of
prehistoric pseudo-civilization, shattered in the dust, and the
tremulous, foreign, unaccustomed effort--half-hearted, half-believing,
half-understanding--to put on the habitude of a new civilization.

"The white man's religion permits poverty, but the Indian divides his
store with the needy, and there are none suffered to be poor," said
Atta-Kulla-Kulla, the famous chief. "The white men wrangle and quarrel
together, even brother with brother; with us the inner tribal peace is
ever unbroken. The white men slay and rob and oppress the poor, and with
many cunning treaties take now our lands and now our lives; then they
offer us their religion;--why does it seem so like an empty bowl?"

"Atta-Kulla-Kulla, you know that I am deaf," said Richard Mivane, "and
you ask me such hard questions that I am not able to hear them."

It is more than probable that these stationers in the vanguard of the
irrepressible march of western emigration had been trespassers, and thus
earned their misfortunes, in some sort, by their encroachment on Indian
territory; although since the war the Cherokee boundaries had become
more vague than heretofore, it being considered that Grant's operations
had extended the frontier by some seventy miles. It may be, too, that