East of the dueling ground’s grassy clearing, the Mississippi rolled past, unaware of the insignificant human drama playing out its banks.

Two pairs of men stood apart. One well dressed, the other still trying to figure out what they were doing here in the first place.

“Don’t like this, Luke.” Said Sam, staring at the flintlock pistol in his hands. It was worth more than anything he’d ever touched.

“Well, that might’ve been a thought before you went and pissed on that Manhattie’s shoes last night.” He’d taken to calling the rich man that, despite his repeated protestations that he was from Boston, not New York.

“Gentlemen? Are we ready?” The Manhattie’s second called to them.

Sam thought about running, but didn’t want his momma knowing her boy had died from a shot to the back. He nodded.

“Excellent.” The second motioned Sam and the Manhattie into position, back to back, then told them to count out ten paces.

And that’s just what Sam did before turning and pulling the trigger of the gun the Manhattie had loaned him for the duel.

“Aimed wide,” said the well dressed man from the east, before he shot Sam square in the heart.

Memphis Note
Today, the dueling grounds are an overgrown bit of the space on the west banks of the Mississippi River. But, during the period before the Civil War, they were a place where murder by combat was protected by custom, if not legality. People would travel from great distances, presumably from places that the common sense to outlaw dueling, to settle their disputes in very permanent ways.

Wagon wheels groaned as the caravan made its way down the muddy road. Misty rainy fell, the world wept as the Chickasaw left their home.

To the side of the road, two men hunkered under the branches of a pecan tree. Both dark skinned, one African, the other an Indian with an empty bottle of whiskey at his feet.

The African was the son of a minor village leader, his family sold into slavery to feed the ambitions of a rival tribe. His earliest memories were nightmares of the crossing.

To his master, the Indian, he was known as Mark. His real name was Kwesi, but he didn’t know this. He knew the word, but only as something his mother would whisper to him at night. The memory of her was now merely whisper to him as well.

The Indian began to snore. The African contemplated taking his master’s knife and…

No, he thought, the world was already rife with suffering. The Chickasaw were losing their home as he had lost his. He would choose a different path.

So, Kwesi called Mark took his master’s knife, along with his money and the good blanket, and strode out into the rain.

Memphis Note
It may be strange to think about, but Indians owned slaves. And when the Indian tribes were forced to leave their ancestral homes by the guns of the US Army, their slaves went with them, died with them, on the Trail of Tears.

The farther they got from their home, the more color drained out of the world. First the sky went gray, then the woods, and now, as he glanced around the riverboat, he saw that his people were starting to lose their color as well.

He looked over them, past the churning of the paddle wheel and the icy expanse of the river to the shrinking pillars of smoke that marked the Memphis harbor. Closing his eyes, he looked even farther, to the hills of Mississippi where he was raised. Then to the great mound Nanih Waiya, the birthplace of his people, and the smaller mounds around it, that entomb their history. The sacred place fixed in his mind, he said his good-byes to the land, and to his ancestors.

Opening his eyes he thought of the thin white man with the bizarre accent that had stopped him while boarding the riverboat. The man asked why the Choctaw people were leaving. He had looked at the man for a moment, thinking of the million hateful and angry things he wanted to scream in his face.

“To be free,” was all he could ultimately say.

He hoped he had not lied.

Memphis Note
Memphis was the final point east of the Mississippi for the Choctaw Indians on the Trail of Tears. From here, they were loaded into riverboats and taken across to Arkansas. Alexis de Tocqueville was here to witness their departure, and those were the words on Choctaw told him. They were leaving “To be free”.