The Amulet by Mary Noailles Murfree — Read

It was dawn when Raymond sighted Little Tamotlee, and the early sunshine, of an exquisite crystalline purity, was over all the world -- misty mountain, shimmering river, the infinite stretches of the leafless wilderness -- as the young officer's pettiaugre was pulling into the bank, where Captain Howard's boats were already beached. The Indian town on the shore, an oasis of habitation in the midst of the unpeopled forest, was all astir. Columns of smoke were rising alike from the conical-roofed dwellings of the characteristic Indian architecture and those more modern structures which the Cherokees also affected, and which resembled the log cabins of the European settlers in the provinces to the eastward. The population seemed all afoot, as if some event of moment impended. Knots of braves pressed hither and thither, with feather-crested heads and painted faces, arrayed in buck-skin or fur shirts and leggings with floating fringes, and many tawdry gauds of decorated quivers and bows, carried for ornament only, long ago discarded as a weapon in favor of the British "Brown Bess," and powder and lead. The chiefs, the cheerataghe or priests, the political head-men, and the warriors of special note were all easily distinguishable to Raymond, as he stood in the bow of the boat, by reason of their splendor of attire, their feather-braided iridescent mantles, or their war bonnets of vertically placed swan's quills, standing fifteen inches high, above the forehead. On the summit of the tall mound, where the great dome-like rotunda or town-house was perched, -- its contour conserved by a thick plaster of the tenacious red clay of the region laid on smoothly, inside and out, -- a white flag was flying.

Presently a wide sonorous voice sounded thence. The Cherokee town-crier was uttering the "News Hollow. " It was strictly an official demonstration, for the arrival of Captain Howard and his escort in the night, now quartered in the "Stranger house," was an event that had fallen under the personal observation of all the denizens of Tamotlee. Nevertheless, every man paused where he stood, as if the sound of that great voice possessed gifts of enchantment, and he were bound to the spot.