The Pale Man Rises

CHAPTER FIFTY

364

It broke through the mist of his memory like the shimmering glint of gold that James Marshall had spotted in the water off of Sutter's Mill in 1848 California. There it was like a grail sought by some knight-errant from the tale of King Arthur, the legend that came down from the annals of the now nonexistent Indian Tribe the Oklo-Siouans.

The Lumbee Indians were a sect that descended from several tribes the Oklo-Siouan being one of these tribes that were their forebears. Others were the Croatoans, expatriates from the coastal regions and long dwindled to the point that they no longer constituted a tribe. And there were Cherokees in this area though their bands had generally favored the western mountainous regions of the state.

The Cherokees were members of the five largest "Civilized Tribes", as the advanced Southeastern Indian nations were known by the White Americans. These were the aforementioned Cherokees, the Creek, Seminoles, Choctaw, and the Chickasaw. All were eventually forced out of their native lands, save for the Seminole who resisted the federals with such zeal and ferocity within their swampy terrain in Georgia and Florida that the US government had simply declared the war against them won. They then left them to their own devices in the swamps as long as they did not interfere with the white man's progress.

Some of the Cherokee bands in North Carolina did manage to take refuge in the Great Smokey Mountains. All, the unfortunate others would eventually have to journey down "The Trail of Tears" to the Oklahoma Territory like many other defeated tribes.

In these contemporary times it was this Eastern Branch of the Cherokee that was the major obstacle to the federal recognition that the Lumbees desired. The animus between the two peoples had grown so over the years that none of the hierarchy of either band would now communicate with each other over even to most trifling of affairs that was of their mutual concern. It had gotten to the point that the former tribe refused to even admit that the Lumbees were even authentic Native Americans. They even went so far as to accuse them of being any race other than the aboriginal peoples that they said they were due to the other racial strains being prominent in the tribe, which the Lumbees had gladly incorporated with their own.

365

Locklear now could remember the connection with the legend of the Barrows Gang. It seemed that when Barrows first began his guerilla campaigns against the local Confederates one of his favorite staging areas had been in The Great Black Swamp. But soon after the tale of the Mantaque started his spooked men forced him to abandon his camp in the dense swamp. His men had grown desperate as the rumor of the Mantaque once again being in the swamp spread throughout the territory. He was certain the authorities were behind the legend getting unearthed and used once more.

The legend of the Mantaque, once lost, had gained renewed momentum when someone, a very old Indian, an Indian Barrows suspected was in the pay of the local Confederate government, said he had seen the beast one night. And then another person said they had seen it, and then another, and so on it went until almost half the Indian population in the county had seen it. And even some whites had spotted it. And so the monster had been reborn.

And then the older men in Barrows Gang took up the tale and told it with animated zest. It had quite an effect on the more impressionable minds of the younger members of the gang and soon he was at his wits end. He was so incensed by it all that he threatened to kill the next man he heard repeating the tale, but after seeing how it troubled his men he relented to their well.

Operating from less dense terrain proved to be a terrible obstacle from then on and so much so that Barrows soon found himself more and more in retreat fleeing from the local posses that were sent out to pursue him. These militias sought him relentlessly in those days and even beyond the white rebellion.