It would have seemed a strange face to others as well as to the poor
baby. For this was indeed an Indian woman. A late day, certainly, for a
captive among the Cherokees, but the moonshiners felt that they had
scored a final victory when they left the little creature within the
Qualla Boundary, the reservation where still lingers a remnant of that
tribe, the "Eastern Band," on the North Carolina side of the Great Smoky
Mountains, a quaint survival of ancient days amidst the twentieth
century. The moonshiners had represented the little boy as the son of one
of their party, recently a widower. They stated that they were seeking
work among the laborers employed in a certain silver mine beyond the
Qualla Boundary, and that they had lost his kit with the rest of his
clothes in the Oconalufty River hard by. Leaving some goods, purchased at
a cross-roads store on the way, to supply this need, with a small sum of
money for his board in advance, and fixing an early day for their return,
they departed.
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