In his newsletter, he educates us by teaching words and sentences which were the Cherokee’s method of communication during the period of the Civil War. During the Civil War, many Cherokees and their families were hiding out, running, dodging, and working to survive. Many of their Cherokee fathers were involved with the Confederacy of the Southern States. They were inducted on site into active duty and therefore, left their women and families unguarded and forced them to get by with any way that survival would allow.

This description of events was a big part of their daily living. With a little practice, the word, "Tsunalugi" (Ju-na-loo-gee) can be repeated and pronounced easily. You will then be in the practice of saying "Rising Smoke."

The rising smoke was a signal that intruders were burning their homes and barns after ransacking the Cherokee’s homes and stealing what silver, gold and other valuables that had been in the families’ collections for many generations.

The "rising smoke" was an unnoticed development this past week, as most of us didn’t find out about the fire at the Aubrey Methodist Church until we received our weekly e-mail from Colleen Darraugh. Her e-mail was headlined – FIRE AT THE CHURCH. She went on to say that we were saved by the Bible and supported by the choir.

Last Thursday evening as the Aubrey Methodist choir gathered at the church for their weekly choir practice, they came into a church filled with smoke. As they entered the church sanctuary, they found that the communion table, the paraments, the altarware and the Bible were smouldering.

The fire had burned through the bible, through the communion table and down to the carpet, the pad and was smouldering to the floor. A candle was left burning from Sunday morning’s service and had burned its way through all of these elements until the choir came for their practice on Thursday evening.

They immediately called the fire department who extinguished the fire and cleared a great deal of the smoke from the building. The densely thick pages of the Bible contained the smouldering fire for the period of days and kept the church from igniting into flames, therefore, the statement, "we were saved by the Bible and supported by the choir."

Most all of my readers are aware that the church was organized during the late 1850's, which was the period of the "Rising Smoke" era and was a worshiping church during the Civil War. The meeting place was at the Key Settlement Cemetery in a log house that was used for the school and the Methodist Church.

The small Key Cemetery is in a pasture and is the resting ground for many of our Cherokee ancestors and many other Aubrey natives. It is located just a half-mile to the southwest of downtown Aubrey.