with the mother.  The husband never belongs to the same family
connection, rarely to the same community or town even, and often
not even to the tribe.  He is a sort of barnacle, taken in on his
wife's account.  To the adventurer, like a trader, this adoption
gave a sort of legal status or protection.  Gist either understood
this before he started on his enterprise, or learned it very
speedily after.  Of the Cherokee tongue he knew positively nothing.
He had a smattering of very broken English.  Somehow or other he
managed to induce a Cherokee girl to become his wife. 

This woman belonged to a family long respectable in the Cherokee
Nation.  It is customary for those ignorant of the Indian social
polity to speak of all prominent Indians as "chiefs." Her family
had no pretension to chieftaincy, but was prominent and
influential; some of her brothers were afterward members of the
Council.  She could not speak English; but, in common with many
Cherokees of even that early date, had a small proportion of
English blood in her veins.  The Cherokee woman, married or single,
owns her property, consisting chiefly of cattle, in her own right.
A wealthy Cherokee or Creek, when a son or daughter is born to