The first part of the story of pioneering white Americans and Cherokee Indians who went West on The Trail of Tears. There they established a family of White Indians (the title of Part Two). To get there they had to cross Yun'wi gunahi'ta, The Long Man, a name for rivers, which, in this instance, was the Mississippi River. Abe MacKay, of Ulster Irish ancestry, falls in love with Tsuta, a woman of the Real People (Cherokees), whom Abe and his father are helping the American government drive from their native lands in Tennessee and Georgia.