Nathaniel and Daniel Greathouse were well known by people on the Virginia frontier. Unlike many white hunters, they were literate, and possessed a dark charisma that won an unusual amount of loyalty from other men. But the Greathouse brothers were killers, the type of men powerful people used to achieve goals without regard to the pain they inflicted on others. Whether sanctioned by law or contract, Daniel and Nathaniel Greathouse existed outside the boundaries that governed most civilized men.
When Daniel walked into the tavern at Baker’s Landing, he wore a hunting shirt and buckskins stained with the blood of an elk he had killed several days before. His red, shaggy beard had crumbs of bread and meat encrusted within, and after going weeks without a bath, he was rank and offensive.
Joshua walked over to a small corner table, placed pint of warm ale in front of Greathouse and took a seat.
“There are rumors the Shawnee might be preparing to raid nearby settlements,” Joshua said, as he watched Greathouse gulp down the drink.
Wiping his mouth with the sleeve of his shirt, Daniel looked at Joshua with only casual interest, “Rumors from where?”
“From across the river.”
“The Shawnee village?”
“Yes.”
Greathouse glanced at Joshua out of the corner of his eye but was fixated on two Shawnee women who had just entered the trading post.
“Shawnee warriors are worked-up about the three hunters you boys killed last week,” Joshua said as he slid the empty pewter mug to the side and leaned closer to Greathouse.
“Who is telling you this, Joshua?”
“A Shawnee woman named Koonay. She and her family come to trade pelts every week. They were just here today and might come back tomorrow to trade for fresh meat.”
“She comes with her family?”
“Usually with her brother, Taylayne. Sometimes a few squaws and hunters.”
“What do you want me to do about this, Joshua?”
“I am not saying you should do anything about it, especially here. I’m just trying to spread the word so people might be ready,” Joshua said.
Greathouse turned in his chair and smiled when he spoke, his breath and foul clothes assaulting the tavern keeper’s senses, “Maybe I should meet this Koonay and her brother and ask them some questions?”
“Listen Daniel, I do not want any trouble here. We are on good terms with the Shawnee. They are good customers.”
“Trouble?” Greathouse asked as he let out a foul belch, “There will not be any trouble. I just want to make sure these savages stay on their side of the river. There are innocent families living nearby.”
Joshua considered what Daniel Greathouse might do if he refused to help and decided it would be better to direct the man’s attention to the Shawnee, “Like I said, Koonay and her family may be over tomorrow.”
Daniel rubbed his grungy beard and considered the layout of the room, “Fine, if this squaw comes, I will just sit here and ask her a few questions. The boys will stay out of the way. Nothing dangerous about that, right?”
Joshua knew he could only agree, “All right Daniel. We can do it that way.”
The next day, Koonay, Taylayne, their sister-in-law, Mallana, Taylayne’s son, and eight other Shawnee women arrived from across the river. For the Shawnee, the harvesting of an elk was a time for celebration and Koonay wore a bright smock of red and blue with a buckskin and wool skirt that extended below her knees. The younger women had a-sipella-wan in their hair, ornaments that curved around the top of their ears, and tall moccasins decorated with silver bobbles and medallions. Climbing the hill from the riverbank, they smelled roasting meat and apple butter. Lucy nervously greeted Koonay and pulled her off to the side.
“There are men here who want to talk to you about the rumors.”
Koonay immediately grew concerned, “Men? What men?”
Before Lucy could answer, Daniel and Nathaniel Greathouse walked out the tavern door, “Are you Koonay?”
Koonay just stared at the two men, and immediately knew that she and her people were in danger. Taylayne sensed it too and stepped in front of the group, “I am Taylayne, Koonay’s brother. I will speak for her. What do you want?”
“Want?” Nathaniel Greathouse asked, half smiling. “Well, we just want to talk. Joshua here tells my brother there are rumors of savages looking for a fight.”
Joshua walked out and stood behind the Greathouses. Taylayne made eye contact with him seeking an explanation, but Joshua just shook his head and hoped the Greathouses would not notice. Taylayne turned to look back toward the river and saw eight more white men with flintlocks and tomahawks, “My son and I will speak with you,” he said to Nathaniel. “The women will go around back and trade for meat.”
“That sounds like a good idea,” Lucy Baker said, grabbing Koonay’s arm and hurrying her and the women away. “We will go out back.”
Koonay looked at Taylayne as Lucy half dragged her around the left side of the building. Daniel Greathouse stepped forward and pointed to the door with his thumb, “Now, let us have that talk.”
Taylayne motioned for his son to stay behind him and nodded. Once inside, they sat where Daniel and Joshua had the day before, and Joshua brought a jug of whiskey and four pewter mugs to the table. When Joshua held the jug up for everyone to see, Taylayne placed his hand over his son’s mug and shook his head. Pouring Taylane’s first, and then the Greathouse’s, Joshua re-corked the jug and went back to the bar. As this was happening, the eight men who had blocked the path to the river walked in and sat at different tables on the far side of the room.
“Tell me about these warriors who want to cross the river and kill our people,” Daniel ordered after he emptied his mug.
“No one is saying those things,” Taylayne lied.
“We hear that your sister told Lucy warriors are angry and want white scalps.”
“She was mistaken. Women say these things,” Taylayne said, ignoring the drink on the table in front of him.
“Who are they? Are they from your village?” Nathaniel asked before Daniel could respond.
“No one has said these things.”
“Someone is saying something and people around here take talk about raids and massacres seriously,” Daniel said.
Taylayne looked at the men around the room, “I have heard nothing.”
“Why are you not drinking?” Nathaniel asked with an unblinking stare.
“Our elders have forbidden it. Whiskey is bad for my people. ”
With a loud belly laugh, Daniel shouted, “Hell son, whiskey is bad for everyone!” The men at the other tables laughed. A moment later, Daniel’s smile vanished behind his scruffy beard, “Drink before you insult us,” he said, pointing at the mug.
Taylayne looked at Joshua who stood expressionless behind the bar. Seeing no guidance or help, he took the mug and gulped the whiskey down.
“There you go,” Nathaniel said. “Now we can be friends.”
“So, who is going to cross the river and murder our people?” Daniel asked.
“The only people who have been murdered around here have been innocent Shawnee,” Taylayne said.
“There is no such thing as innocent Shawnee,” Daniel responded in a low voice. “Just last month, a party of Shawnee massacred a white family in the Tygart Valley. They butchered and scalped everyone, even two little babies.”
Taylayne looked around the room and spoke so everyone could hear, “I know nothing of that. That place is far. My people and the whites near us, like the Bakers, have much in common. We all grow corn, hunt beavers, deer, and buffalo. We paddle canoes on the great rivers, and even sometimes live in lodgings that look the same. We trade with each other. Life and death around here has a natural way about it.”
“So, it is just natural for Shawnee to kill homesteaders? Just the way things are supposed to be?” Nathaniel asked.
“I am not saying that. But when you speak of murder and savagery, these are things you should ask those who killed our hunters last week.”
Daniel tilted his head back as if to pray. After a moment of silence, he looked at Taylayne, smiled, and then spoke to Taylayne’s son, “What is your name, boy?”
The boy looked to his father for guidance, and Taylayne nodded his consent, “My name is Molnah.”
Daniel looked at Nathaniel who was fidgeting with his mug, “Molnah? The boy’s name is Molnah, Nathaniel. We have Molnah and Taylayne.”
The room fell silent, and no one moved for a few seconds before it happened. Then, Taylayne’s eyes widened as Daniel pulled a tomahawk from underneath the table and buried it into Taylayne’s neck, nearly severing his head. Before Molnah could react, Nathaniel drew his knife, reached across the table, and slit the boy’s throat. Molnah briefly clasped both hands around the deep gash, and gasped for breath several times before life drained from his body.
Joshua stood behind the bar in shock. Taylayne remained seated in his chair, head tilted up at an grotesque angle, his lifeless eyes open. Molnah lay face down on the table. The Greathouse brothers considered their work for a moment as Daniel finished what was left of Taylayne’s drink. Nathaniel and the other men slowly stood. With the bloody tomahawk still in his hand, Daniel looked at his brother, and in a calm voice said, “Now, we shall go to work.”
Before Joshua knew what was happening, the Greathouses and their men burst out the tavern’s back door where Lucy, Koonay, and the Shawnee women were standing by the fire pit, talking as the elk roasted on the spit. Seeing the tomahawk in Daniel’s hand, Koonay screamed for the others to run, “Bimibatoowin!”
Koonay was set upon by Nathaniel with his knife and died immediately. When Lucy Baker tried to save Koonay, Nathaniel knocked her to the ground with a vicious backhand. A man named Ethan finished Lucy off with his tomahawk. Daniel and the other men killed Mallana and the other Shawnee women. Joshua Baker witnessed the deathblow that ended Lucy’s life and ran towards Ethan in a mad rage. Daniel tripped Joshua and beat the tavern keeper lifeless with a half-burnt piece of sycamore he pulled from the fire pit.
When it was over, the Greathouse gang took gory trophies from the bodies of the dead Shawnee women and hung Taylayne and Molnah from the exposed rafters in the tavern. They left Lucy and Joshua where they fell. Cutting pieces of meat from the elk as it roasted on the spit for dinner, they stole what was left of the whiskey, powder, ammunition, and jerky from the trading post, mounted their horses, and rode south.
* * * * *
When Koonay and the others failed to return that evening, a Shawnee Kispoko named Blue Jacket led ten warriors across the river and discovered the victims of the massacre. As the other men cut Taylayne and Molnah from the rafters inside the ransacked tavern, Blue Jacket stepped outside and stood silently by himself, letting the horrific scene burn into his memory. Then, he saw the body of the girl he was hoping to not find. Taking slow, hesitant steps, he went to her side and knelt. Brushing strands of long black hair from her face, he covered her small body as best he could with her torn clothes and gently closed her eyes with two fingers. Collapsing into a seated position beside the body, he rested his elbows on his knees and held one hand over his quivering lips. Only then did Blue Jacket muster the strength to touch the lifeless hand of his thirteen-year-old sister. My sweet kweema…what have they done to you?
* * * * *
Motivated by unthinking rage, the youngest warriors looked at the dead women and wanted to immediately pursue the whites who murdered their people, but Blue Jacket forbade it. Revenge would come, but first they had to prepare their loved ones for life in the afterworld.
After the desecrated bodies were carried back to the Shawnee village, Blue Jacket found Logan alone in his cabin, sitting in the dark, waiting for the rumors of a massacre circulating in the village to be confirmed. Standing just inside the doorway, Blue Jacket told Logan that white hunters had murdered Logan’s entire family.
“They are all dead?” Logan asked, as if trying to reach a conclusion through logic.
“Yes, my friend. Massacred at the trading post along with my sister,” Blue Jacket responded.
“How did they die?”
“It was not well. Their bodies were laid about. Some were scalped, and torn.”
The open door allowed just enough light into the cabin to make one wall visible. Everything else inside was covered in darkness. Logan sat in the opposite corner, away from the light, and Blue Jacket could only see his friend’s foot.
“I promised my wife that no one would ever come seeking revenge for the wrongs I have done,” Logan said. “I believed if I proclaimed peace, I could protect everything I loved. But now, there runs not a drop of my blood through any living person.”
Blue Jacket stepped further into the room and tried to see his friend’s face, “We must avenge our dead, my friend. There is no other way. I will gather our most fierce Kispoko. Together, we can make the Long Knives pay so our families can rest in the beyond.”
Logan slowly emerged from the shadows and looked at Blue Jacket. His eyes burned with intensity and hatred, but his voice was calm, “Choose your warriors carefully. They must be willing to do what is required. We will avenge our families so they may rest, but what we will do is for this world. This shall be a vengeance the whites have never known. Every white that breathes is a plague on our people. I will kill them all.”
The next night, the bodies were buried, heads pointed west so in death their spirits would face east and see the rising sun as it lit the gateway to the life beyond. Logan watched as Koonay’s body, dressed in a bright pii-tenika, was sprinkled with sage, sweet grass, kw-sha-tai, and cedar, and then covered with stones to prevent animals from taking her remains. A meteinuwak sang the death song before Logan returned to his cabin and allowed himself to grieve until morning.
When the sun peeked above the eastern Alleghenies, Logan stood before the thirty warriors Blue Jacket had selected. Most were young, but several older men had fought for the French and Pontiac. Each man had lost someone they loved to unspeakable atrocities. They were elite, trained Kispokos, born and raised as great Shawnee warriors. Each raised a tomahawk and struck the war post and dedicated their lives to seeking revenge. After the last warrior made his mark, Logan walked to the post and looked at the others. He shouted his war cry, struck the post with his long-handled tomahawk and led the warriors out of the village. Fading silently into the woods, ghosts of the land.