Authors: Lalita Tademy
“No trouble here at camp?” Cow Tom asked.
“Trouble? No. But now is a bad time for us to Remove,” said Micanopy. “Better in the fall. Tell General Jesup.”
The same suggestion he always expressed. No matter when they talked, Micanopy said the right time to leave would be next month, or next year, or five years hence. But somehow Micanopy managed to get young braves eager for revenge to lay down their weapons and surrender. Or more likely, one of his counselors had.
“Where is Abraham?” Cow Tom asked. “Where are the Negroes?”
“Taken. To Fort Volusia, down the river,” Micanopy said. “To ship on separate boats.”
Impossible, this chase. What if his mother wasn’t in Florida after all? Twenty years gone since he’d seen her. Yet already Cow Tom’s mind spun to figure how to get sent to Fort Volusia, to look for her there.
“Are your people ready to Remove?” Cow Tom asked Micanopy.
Micanopy concentrated on his bread, stuffing the last piece in his mouth, as if he hadn’t heard Cow Tom speak. He’d lost interest in the exchange.
His lawyer answered instead. “We need more corn,” Jumper said. He was perhaps forty, small and scrappy compared to Micanopy’s girth. In negotiations, a whisper by Jumper in Micanopy’s ear at the right moment often caused the chief to change course. “We left crops in the field to come here. And weapons. We need weapons to hunt.”
“Terms of Capitulation are for the government to provide all food until Removal,” Cow Tom said. “And one year beyond.”
“Terms of Capitulation also say our bona fide property, our Negroes, emigrate with us,” said Jumper. He spoke in English, emphasizing the word
property
, as used in the treaty, his distaste and defiance both clear. “And where are they now?”
Cow Tom took his time. He considered telling Jumper they would reunite in Indian Territory, but he himself wasn’t convinced, not since the general failed to inform him the Negroes were already sent away from Fort Brooke. Empty words would do nothing to reassure Jumper. He abandoned the official platitudes so often repeated in translations at the general’s request.
“The Seminoles are friends to the black man,” he said. “I admire Abraham and his place in the nation. It is best for all if Seminole and Negro stay together.”
Jumper considered this, without comment.
“What about Osceola?” Harry asked. “Will he Remove now you’ve turned yourselves in?”
Micanopy cocked his head, suddenly uncomfortable, and Jumper and one of the other petty chiefs exchanged a quick look.
“Osceola is his own man,” Jumper said. “Bound by none but himself.”
“Will he revenge against those who surrender?” Cow Tom didn’t expect honesty, but sought a statement from which he might try to wring truth, something to report back to the general.
“Osceola is fearless, with many followers in the Seminole Nation,” Jumper said.
The men in the circle turned inward then and passed the pipe in silence, without offer to Cow Tom or Harry, and the translators took the gesture as dismissal.
Once out of earshot of Micanopy and his advisers, they speculated as to what the exchange meant.
“I don’t know,” said Harry, “but just the mention of Osceola set them squirming. I wager you this. Some sort of shecoonery is afoot.”
Chapter 8
COW TOM AND
Harry kept themselves apart from the others, Seminole and military both, and set up bunk outside near the storehouse, sharing the jug of moonshine Harry liberated. The fiery liquid burned, but they drank to the bottom of the jug, and the menace of the fort seemed more distant. They wanted no part of the free-floating hostility permeating the camp, and less of measles. The evening proved thick and warm, but they slept in their clothes, scant protection against the biting sand fleas.
Cow Tom woke to war whoops. The moon was at its height, full and bright. Harry bolted upright, alert, and Cow Tom held his arm to prevent him from making a sound. They unsheathed their knives, and crept slowly in the direction of the outer wall of the fort, toward the front gate. The lone sentry slumped seated, his back propped against the upright like one of Malinda’s rag dolls, blood at a line on his throat, dead.
Seminole braves appeared from every direction, some bare-faced, some with faces striped with mud, half-black, half-red, fanning throughout the grounds and weaving in and out of the buildings, pulling the few soldiers they found from their beds. Cow Tom and Harry scattered, but not before Cow Tom saw one young brave goad forward the dragoon they rode in with from Fort King by repeated jabs with a beech club to the small of his back.
Cow Tom managed to slip behind an upright beam, neither
hidden nor exposed. He’d lost sight of Harry and stayed frozen, trying to think his way out of this mess. But the warriors were everywhere, hundreds, and finally he began to run. He tried to circle around to the stables, but two braves were on him before he’d barely built up momentum and they pinned his arms, pulling him backward toward the open area where rations were distributed. Harry was already there, along with the dragoon and several others. The supply convoy from earlier in the day and all the accompanying soldiers had left the fort before nightfall, and what remained were only the few soldiers permanently stationed at Fort Brooke. The measles outbreak had reduced the number of healthy soldiers significantly, that number less than ten. The diseased were relegated to the infirmary. The camp was more Seminole than military, more sick than fit.
Detainee Seminoles poured in from the surrounding areas of the fort, great masses of them, abandoning tent and sand and makeshift blanket. Women in flour-sack dresses stood alongside Seminole warriors dressed for battle, corn husks in their hair, faces streaked with red ocher. Cow Tom guessed at least two hundred warriors had descended on the fort, as from nowhere, more surging through the front gate even now as though they owned the entire garrison. Cow Tom waited with the rest of the captives, and the detainee Seminoles whispered among themselves in a loudening buzz. He heard the name from several directions at once.
“Osceola.”
His bladder went weak. Until now, his jobs had mostly been physical labor, or thickets of words to translate, or swamps to scout, or foxing the general, or spinning bold strategies to impress. This was life-and-death. He hoped he wasn’t a coward. There were more stories of Osceola than all other chiefs put together, the symbol of the resistance to remove all Seminoles from Florida. One quick glance at Harry confirmed. Harry was as panicked as he.
The night was bright, and Osceola stepped into the middle of the detention camp gathering, not far from the clutch of prisoners.
He was nothing like Micanopy, in temperament or carriage: commanding, even magnetic, average height, and older than Cow Tom, somewhere between thirty and thirty-five. His face, neck, throat, and the back of his hands were streaked with red ocher, and he pulled his scalping knife from his war belt.
Osceola held up the knife, and the crowd quieted.
“I am Osceola,” he announced. A guttural cheer went up.
Cow Tom singled out faces in the crowd. One of the women who pounded coontie root. The brave who refused to talk to Cow Tom and Harry. The brave who fetched a piece of warm bread for the ranking chief. Micanopy and Jumper stood close by.
Osceola pointed to the prisoners. Cow Tom tried to swallow, but found he could not. Even if they had weapons, they were less than a dozen against a field of two hundred warriors and seven hundred detained Seminoles who greeted Osceola as inspiration.
“They cannot hold you here. They have no power over you. They confine you and spread their sickness among you. You are free to return to Seminole lands in Florida instead of making the trip to the holding pens in the west.”
The crowd cheered again.
“I will make the white man red with blood; and then blacken him in the sun and rain, where the wolf shall smell of his bones, and the buzzard live upon his flesh.”
Osceola pointed his finger at Micanopy’s chest.
“You led your people here, but they know moving from the ancestral land is not the way. You are principle chief of the Seminole, and must be respected, but a true chief will lead his people away from this place. A true chief will continue to fight. A true chief will not Remove.”
Micanopy stood rooted, flanked by Jumper. For all his girth and title, he looked small and vulnerable alongside Osceola’s slimness and surety of purpose.
“The military have guns, and food, and might,” Micanopy said. His voice sounded whiny in the night air. “The search teams track
us like deer and drive us deeper into the Everglades to starve. What chance have we in Florida now? At least in Indian Territory we will not be hunted.”
Osceola played to the crowd. “Any who surrender are our enemy. We brought wagons and horses, and we will be on our way to Palaklikhaha before the break of day.”
Old man Micanopy seemed at a loss. Jumper inched closer to his chief, but before he could whisper into his ear, Osceola lowered his voice to speak directly to Micanopy.
“Micanopy, if you don’t lead your people out, I will, and I will leave you here for the enemy in your own blood.”
Micanopy assessed the sea of Seminole faces surrounding him. For this, he needed no adviser. He held up his hand.
“The Seminoles are a great people,” he announced in a thunderous voice to Osceola and the crowd, “and we will take up arms and fight the white man until our last breath.”
Once again there arose a group cry of support, and Cow Tom understood their time was short. All that remained was to loot the fort and flee into the Everglades. No need leaving prisoners alive to pursue them, or to alert the U.S. Army. Cow Tom wondered how Osceola would kill them, whether fast or slow, personally or through agents. His guess was fast, since they had to move so many in one night. He wondered whether it would be him or Harry who’d watch the other die first.
As if Cow Tom summoned attention with his thoughts, Osceola looked in the direction of the prisoners, assessing his options. They stood in wait, ringed by war-painted warriors.
Osceola motioned toward Cow Tom and Harry.
“Blacks,” he said.
Four braves grabbed Cow Tom and Harry by the arms. Cow Tom’s knees had gone feeble, and he thought they might have to help him move, but he refused to be dragged like a cow to slaughter. He straightened his legs and walked, until they were so close to Osceola he could see for the first time the burls of pitted scars down
both cheeks. The braves closed behind them like a curtain, separating them from the others. They prodded Cow Tom forward. There was no point resisting. Whatever was going to happen was already on its way into being.
“Who do you belong to?” Osceola asked.
Cow Tom found voice first, although he couldn’t quite marshal his thoughts, and answered the first thing that came into his head. “General Jesup sent us yesterday to the fort to report on conditions, but we came to seek out Abraham. My mother is with the Seminoles, and I’m trying to find her.”
Osceola considered this, deliberating. Cow Tom’s thoughts scattered, random images flitting through his head, of Amy’s strong hands flattening Indian bread for the fire, of his daughter’s waddling walk alongside the creek bed. But then he imagined the first lance of the knife’s sharp blade, the picking of vultures through his bones after his broken body was left to dry in the sun. He could only hope the end came swiftly.
Osceola was quick with his knife. As if in one motion, he pulled at the tip of Cow Tom’s ear and sliced clean through from top to bottom, and held up the bloody flap. Red spurted, and dripped down to Cow Tom’s collar, and he cried out, as much in surprise as over the stinging burn where his right earlobe used to be. It came so fast Cow Tom barely associated the bloodied mass as his until the pound and throb brought him to focus, and he clutched at the right side of his head. Osceola watched him through narrowed eyes, and Cow Tom sensed an unexpected hesitancy. He forced himself to straighten up, as if momentarily caught off guard by nothing more than a wasp’s prick, of little consequence. He stifled both the scream of pain and the scream of terror competing to surface.
Jumper stepped forward. The counselor made no pretense of going through Micanopy, and the fat chief didn’t protest. He seemed as irrelevant as Cow Tom in the exchange.
“He did ask after Abraham this morning,” Jumper confirmed.
Cow Tom’s head wasn’t clear, some angle to figure he couldn’t
quite grasp. If Jumper involved himself, there was indeed an angle. It took Cow Tom’s full concentration to remain upright.
“Where is Abraham?” Osceola asked Jumper.
“They took him to Fort Volusia with the rest of the Negroes,” Jumper said.
“We need our black warriors to fight by our side.” He turned again to Cow Tom. Osceola’s stare was fierce, but Cow Tom saw how deeply fatigue played at the corners of his mouth and his eyes, how hunger and want weighed down his features. “Are you government?”
Cow Tom allowed himself a faint flicker of hope. Sound came to him as if confused by its own echo, both muffled and clear simultaneously, but he willed himself to focus. “We go where our masters say we must, work for who we must. The general pays our masters, and we translate. That is the way of it. We are not government.”
Osceola thought about this. “Tell Abraham we wait for him to lead his people out to join us.”
Cow Tom nodded, mutely. He didn’t volunteer that he didn’t really know Abraham, and had no authority to go to Fort Volusia. He didn’t ask Osceola how unarmed blacks were supposed to break free from a fort surrounded by white men willing to siphon off any slave who couldn’t prove ownership by a Seminole. Osceola had already shifted his attention elsewhere, finished with the burdensome talk of blacks and Indians.
The braves who held them released their hold, and Cow Tom and Harry stood where they were. Harry touched Cow Tom, lightly, on the arm, and made the first slow move away from the congested center of the swarm of Seminole detainees organizing themselves to flee. Cow Tom followed, the flow of blood slowing, but still dripping down the side of his face and soaking his shirt, and they eased their way toward the stables.