Story of a Cherokee Family

              From: Dugger, Romance of the Siamese Twins and Other Sketches ( 1936)
STORY OF A CHEROKEE INDIAN FAMILY
CHARACTERS
Hogbite hogbite.
His wife Zetella crane.
Their daughter, Unatsi snow.
Their baby boy name unknown.
In 1910, an old gentleman by the name of Rollin and an old lady whose name was
Moore gave this story to me as it was told to them by their fathers who lived near
neighbors to Hogbite till after all these things occurred, except the robbery of Unatsi’s
grave which you will come to on the next page.
In 1835 Hogbite and his wife, Zetella, with their daughter Unatsi, fourteen, and their
baby boy six months old, crossed the Nantahala mountains to Franklin.
On their return in the evening, when they got back to the top of the mountains, Hogbite
told his wife and Unatsi to go down on Pendergrass Creek, build a fire by a certain rock,
and camp there for the night. He would hunt through the woods and try to kill a deer or
wild turkey and come to them, or go home, according to where the persuit of game had
taken him at night.
After they had laid down they heard a loud hollow and thought it was Hogbite who had
hollowed to fill their hearts with joy at his approach; but it was a panthcr which slipped
up on the rock and leaped down on the mother. Unatsi snatched the baby and ran with all
possible speed, but the panther, after killing the woman, followed and overtook her, took
the baby off her back and killed it. Unatsi ran home about four miles and fell on the floor
with exhaustion.
Hogbite, with an Indian companion, went back to find that the panther had not preyed
on the baby, but returned to the woman, eaten her breast out and left.
Hogbite, aided by some of his white neighbors, wrapped the wife and baby in some
deer skins and buried them, coffinless, by that rock. I was shown the grave.
Unatsi became a great huntress, using a small fire- lock, muzzel- loading rifle which was
individually hers.
On a cold day some dogs ran a deer into the Nantahala near her father’s house. She
waded the stream to a position where she killed it on the other side. From this she took
pneumonia, died and was buried on a sunny hill, a short distance north of her home, and
the things in her father’s cabin that were personally hers, were put in the grave that she
might take them with her to the Happy Hunting ground where there would be no more
cold rivers to wade and no more fevers to burn her fair brow.