My own tribe had become fewer, for the young men did not stay in our valley, but drifted back to the West, to that nation we had come from, or went north to the wars with the white man, or became lonely hunters in the hills.

Then from the south along the mountain crests came another people, a squat and murderous people, who watched us from the ridges and bided their chance." "The Cherokees ?" I asked.
"Even so.

I speak of a hundred moons back, when I was yet a stripling, with little experience in war.

I saw the peril, but I could not think that such a race could vie with the Children of the Sun.

But one black night, in the Moon of Wildfowl, the raiders descended in a torrent and took us unprepared.