Part 17 (1/2)

THE STORY OF OSCEOLA

BY FRANCES M. PERRY

THE STORY OF OSCEOLA

I. THE EXODUS OF THE RED STICKS

The sun was low in the west and sent long shafts of light across the tops of the trees that bordered a quiet, s.h.i.+ning lake in northern Florida. It shone upon a company of Indians who were straggling along the sh.o.r.e, and made their bright turbans and many colored calicoes look gay in spite of dirt and tatters.

The company was a large one. In it were not only braves, but also squaws and pappooses, and a few negroes. They trooped along with the unhurried swiftness and easy disarray of men and women who have journeyed for many days and have many days of travel still before them.

Here and there a strapping brave bestrode a horse, while his squaw trudged beside him, sharing with a black slave the burden of household goods. But for the most part ceremony had given way to necessity and the warriors went afoot, leaving the horses and mules to carry the old men, aged squaws, and young children, who were too feeble to walk.

This was a band of Red Stick Indians who had left forever the camping grounds of their fathers on the Chattahoochee River, to escape the oppression of their powerful kinsmen, the Creek Indians. They had rebelled against the rule of the Creeks, because the Creeks refused them their share of plunder in battle, and laid claim to their lands and their slaves. The Red Sticks hated the Creeks so bitterly that they could no longer live near them. They were resolved to leave altogether the territory that the United States government recognized as belonging to the Creeks, and seek homes with the Seminoles or runaways in Florida.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CREEK INDIANS]

The Red Sticks had left the Creek country far behind them, and had arrived, as we have seen, in northern Florida. The land into which they had come was uncultivated, wild, and sweet. The lakes and rivers were full of fish; the forests were full of game; fruits and berries grew in abundance. Everything seemed to invite the wanderers to tarry there and build themselves homes. Still they marched on over rich brown fields, past dancing lakes and streams, over fertile hillsides shaded with live oak and magnolia. No spot, however beautiful, could induce them to pause for more than a few days' rest. Their object was not to find a pleasant camping ground but to escape the hated Creeks. They were bound for a distant swamp. On the borders of the Okefinokee marsh they planned to make their homes. There they would be reasonably safe from the enemy, and even if the Creeks should follow them there, the swamp would afford them a secure retreat.

But this goal was still many miles away, and the fugitives were now pressing toward a little hill, where they expected to make a short halt.

The young men were silent but alert. Now and again one raised his bow and brought down a goose or a wild turkey, and some youngster plunged into the thicket to find it and fetch it to his mother. Here and there were groups of women burdened with kettles and pans and bundles of old clothes, or carrying small children and raising a great clamor of chatter and laughter.

A little apart from the main company a tall and handsome Indian woman plodded silently along by herself. The splendor of her kerchief had been faded by sun and rain; her skirts were torn by briers, but the necklace of silver beads wound many times about her throat retained its glory. On one hip rested a huge basket, packed and corded. Astride the other rode a st.u.r.dy-limbed boy of about four years of age. Nearly all day the child had run by her side without complaint. But toward evening he had begun to lag behind, until at last, when, after a good run, he caught up with his mother, he clutched her skirts to help himself along. Then she had stooped and picked him up with a sort of fierce tenderness and in a moment he had fallen asleep.

Soon the Indians reached the hilltop where they were to camp for a few days. Their preparations for the night's rest consisted chiefly in building camp fires; for, though the days were warm, the nights were chilly. Besides, fires were needed to cook food and to keep the wild beasts away during the darkness. A small fire of light brush was made first. Then several large logs were placed about it, each with one end in the flame, so that they looked like the spokes of a great wheel radiating from a center of fire. As the ends of the logs burned away, the fiery ring at the center grew wider and dimmer. When a hotter fire was wanted, the logs were pushed toward the center till the glowing ends came together once more and burned briskly.

On the morning after the Red Sticks went into camp on the hill, while others lounged and talked together, the woman wearing the necklace of silver beads still kept apart. She sat on the unburned end of a fire log and for a time paid no heed to the question her small son had repeated many times. At last she looked up and said: ”Do not ask again about the baby with the blue eyes. Do not think of her. She does not cry for you.

She plays with little Creek pappooses. She is not your sister any more.

Go, play at shooting turkeys with black Jim. He loves you like a brother.”

The woman was the daughter of a chief. She had married a man of her own tribe, but after he fell in battle she married a Scotch trader, named Powell, who lived among the Creeks. When the time came for the flight of the Red Sticks her heart turned to her people. She enjoyed too much the glory of being a trader's wife to give up her position and her home without much bitterness. But she was too true an Indian to desert her tribe. As her husband had no notion of leaving his trading station among the Creeks, she had left him and her blue-eyed baby and had come with her kindred, bringing with her her little son, a true Indian, the child of her first husband.

The boy played at shooting wild turkeys with black Jim that day, and many times afterward. As time pa.s.sed he thought less and less of the blue-eyed sister and more and more of his comrade with a black skin.

II. THE FLORIDA HOME

These Red Sticks were not the first wanderers who had sought homes and safety in Florida. For some fifty years bands of Indians enticed by the rich hunting grounds, or driven by the persecutions of the Creeks, had left their kindred in Georgia and Alabama to try their fortunes in Florida.

They had found other tribes in possession of the peninsula, but the newcomers were more warlike and soon made themselves and their claim to the land respected by the natives. Indeed, the immigrants soon came to be looked upon as the ruling people. They were called Seminoles, which means runaways.

The Seminoles would not attend Creek councils. They refused to be bound by treaties made by the Creeks. In all ways they wished to be considered a separate and distinct people.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SEMINOLE INDIANS]