10-31-02, Voice in the Crowd
Lost in the Valley of
the Mules
By Pete Chaney
IPS Features
A major part of writing anything is the research. Depending on the subject, the amount of research will vary. But, if a writer isn’t careful, the research can become an end to itself. It’s like opening a door for information and finding that door leads to two others and each door leads to more in an endless trail of bits and pieces of sometimes tantalizing data.
When I became interested in the idea of a pre-Civil War
novel on the area around Chattanooga and northwest Georgia, my only geographic
acquaintance with the region was form TVA topographic maps.
Since I grew up on a Virginia farm, I knew a bit about mules and the
unappreciated virtues of the offspring of a donkey and a horse.
And I was much absorbed in the tragedy of the way Cherokees were treated.
Initially, I had the story begin in 1820 with a mule
breeder from Ireland making his way to a mythical area south of Chattanooga
which I called the Valley of the Mules. I
found that I didn’t really know much about mules.
Sources were available and I began to amass tracts and bulletins.
When you are behind a mule with the reins you don’t ask yourself which
of the seven groups of mules he belongs to.
I bought several books on the Cherokees, Grace Steele Woodward’s “The
Cherokee.” It was fascinating,
not only the history but the presentation of history and mythology.
A bought a book and some tapes and even tried to learn
to speak Cherokee. My tongue
couldn’t twist around the strange syllables.
Then a friend gave me a book that opened my eyes to a
new era. Halbert and Ball’s
“The Creek War of 1813 and 1814” included interviews with people who had
lived through that period. It
amazed me how little was known about the massacre of Ft. Mims in Alabama where
over 500 white were massacred by the Creeks.
It was in retaliation of the settlers killing six Creeks at Burnt Corn.
An account in the book of a survivor who swam the river with a small dog
on his shoulders made an amusement incident for my novel, which I decided to
revise. Instead of beginning in
1820, I decided to start with two immigrant families coming to Savannah and
Brunswick in 1884 during the birth of the new nation.
The research was getting to me. If I wasn’t careful, I would be going back to Columbus and
the research would last forever with nothing written.
As a prelude to the Trail of Tears in 1838, I wanted to
show the mistreatment of the Cherokees and the unrest of the slaves.
I had decided Gone with the Wind was a fairy tale.
What man or woman could be happy under the burden of slavery?
William Styron’s “Confessions of Nat Turner” gave a picture of
slaves rising in rebellion, but it “hadn’t happened yet.”
That would be in the 1830’s. Gabriel,
sometimes called Gabriel Prosser, was in the right time frame.
His insurrection around Richmond in 1800 as the first major slave
rebellion in American history almost succeeded.
But it rained. I read the
book “Gabriel’s Rebellion” by Douglas R. Egerton just to have information
for a few pages in my novel.
In the research some legends fell.
Others rose from the mire of disrespect.
Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson weren’t quite the saints I grew up
with. A consummate politician, Jefferson manipulated those around
him for his own ends—however justified they may seem to have been for the
country’s future. He played
Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr against each other.
Burr, a man I think history was is unkind to, supposedly said he had the
duel with the wrong man; it should have been Jefferson and not Hamilton.
Jackson likely was the kind of man America needed at the
time. But he was heartless when it
came to American Indians. In
fighting the Creeks, it took his volunteers with the aid of Cherokees and
Choctaws to defeat them. With
victory in sight, he sent word to Washington that he wanted to turn on the
Cherokees and Choctaws and drive them westward.
The government refused his request.
When he was president, the Supreme Court ruled in favor
of the Indians and the land being stolen from them. Jackson refused to obey the order, saying let the courts
enforce it with their own bayonets.
The imaginary characters of my novel mingled with the
real people as I understood them and clamored for life on the printed page.
When the last word was written, I felt empty.
I don’t know if it was because the writing was completed or the press
of research was over.
Come to think of it research is never over.
Even now some new facet of that period crops up and is just as fresh and
fascinating to me as when I began the novel.
Maybe my mind is still lost in the Valley of the Mules.
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