Sam Houston was a Cherokee; he had been adopted by the old head chief John Jolly――whose Indian name was Oo-loo-te-kah; and took part in the councils that made the laws, and was given the name Col-lon-neh, which meant The Raven. He was one of the few white men who could speak the Cherokee language.
But lately Sam Houston had left the Cherokee town of Tah-lon-tees-kee; he had married a half-Cherokee woman named Tyania Rodgers, and with her had settled across the Grand River opposite Fort Gibson, where he had taken up land, built a log house, and was farming and trading.
Ernest saw him frequently, at the post and also across the river. There was something mysterious about Sam Houston. Nobody appeared to understand what had got into him, except that he had been disappointed in his marriage back in Tennessee, and had separated from his wife there, resigned his governorship of Tennessee, and had fled as far as he could from all his white acquaintances. He never breathed a syllable about the cause of his trouble; people respected him for that. He never permitted a word to be uttered blaming his first wife; and people respected him for that. He “took his medicine,” as the saying was. But no one could respect his habits, especially his drunkenness.
He wore Cherokee Indian costume constantly――usually a slovenly costume, as when Ernest had first seen him, but again a “full dress” of beautiful white doeskin hunting-shirt, yellow buckskin leggins, beaded moccasins, a brilliant red blanket as a cloak, and a kind of crown of wild-turkey feathers. Thus he stalked about.
He hunted much, alone, with bow-and-arrow and with gun. He had spells when he would answer nobody except in Cherokee. And he had other spells when he lay on the ground drunk, even at the fort itself. Then his wife Tyania, who was as large and as stately as himself, would seek him and take him home to the log house across the Grand River. He was known as “Drunken Sam”; and even his Indian brothers called him “Big Drunk” instead of Col-lon-neh, The Raven.
It was a sad step downward for any man to take; and for a man who had been as great as Sam Houston――――! Yet, sober or drunk, he still had about him a dignity that bespoke his better days in the past, and perhaps promised better days to come. He almost always greeted Ernest very kindly, and Ernest could not help but like him.