What If Sam Houston Had a Son? A Reading from Raven's Son
While reading Walk in My Soul by Lucia St. Clair Robson, I came across the story of Sam Houston's relationship with Tiana Rogers, a Cherokee woman he lived with during his years in Indian Territory.
Their relationship lasted only a few years, and they had no children together.
But I began to wonder: What if they had?
What if a son had been born of that relationship, raised among the Cherokee, with no idea that his father was one of the most consequential figures in Texas history?
That question eventually became Raven's Son.
In the following excerpt, young Sam Rogers learns something about his parentage that will change the way he understands himself—and, eventually, the world around him.
A Reading from Raven's Son
My Father’s Name
1838
I discovered who my true father was when I was five. It wasn’t who I thought it was. A man named Sam McGrady lived with us. He was not my father, although I guessed he was, since he was the only man in the house. Because he shared my name, I believed him to be my father, although I called him Sam—not Father.
Etsi—mother in Cherokee—and Sam argued often. Their voices would rise behind closed doors, or out in the yard when my attention was elsewhere. The fights frightened me, though I failed to understand them. It seemed to be about what he drank. The words didn’t matter as much as the yelling.
One evening, I found a glass he’d left on the table. Curious, I took a sip. The taste proved bitter and burned my throat. I gagged and dropped the glass, which shattered at my feet. They came rushing in. Sam cursed me and raised his hand. Never having been hit before, I didn't know how to cower. I just stood there, saying “sorry”.
“If you touch him, it will be the last thing you do.” Etsi said.
They fought all night before he finally went to sleep in the barn. When he appeared at the door the next morning, expecting breakfast, Etsi blocked the door with Abraham, our Negro hand, just behind her, and said, “It’s over,” she said. “Take your things and go.”
Etsi piled his things in the dirt outside the gate—his clothes, tools, his spare saddle. Only later did I learn that this was the Cherokee way of divorce: the wife would put the husband's possessions outside for him to take.
As he loaded his wagon, I cried, calling him Father—for the first time. I stepped forward, ready to run to him, but Etsi caught my arm and held me back.
“Why is Father leaving?” I asked.
She looked down at me, her voice calm but distant. “Sam McGrady is not your father,” she said. “Sam Houston is the name of your father. He died in a battle in Texas.”
So, I never knew my father. His name was Sam Houston, and I’m named after him.
Etsi’s name was Tiana Rogers.
I was five. I understood little, but knew something important had ended. One Sam left, and another, one I would never meet, took his place.
That discovery is only the beginning of Sam Rogers' story.
In Raven's Son, a question about one child becomes an alternate history of Texas, the Cherokee Nation, and the people whose lives might have taken a very different course.
Want to find out where Sam's story leads?
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