Even in view of the red man's hideous methods
of battle and inhuman treatment of captives, we cannot ponder
unmoved Adair's description of his preparations for war--the
fasting, the abstention from all family intercourse, and the
purification rites and prayers for three days in the house set
apart, while the women, who might not come close to their men in
this fateful hour, stood throughout the night till dawn chanting
before the door. Another poetic touch the author gives us, from
the Cherokee--or Cheerake as he spells it--explaining that the
root, chee-ra, means fire. A Cherokee never extinguished fire
save on the occasion of a death, when he thrust a burning torch
into the water and said, Neetah intahah--"the days appointed him
were finished." The warrior slain in battle was held to have been
balanced by death and it was said of him that "he was weighed on
the path and made light." Adair writes that the Cherokees, until
corrupted by French agents and by the later class of traders who
poured rum among them like water, were honest, industrious, and
friendly. They were ready to meet the white man with their
customary phrase of good will "I shall firmly shake hands with
your speech." He was intimately associated with this tribe from
1735 to 1744, when he diverted his activities to the Chickasaws.
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