Citizens Creek (5 page)

“Two is better than one,” Cow Tom said. “Harry Island is a top linguister. Almost good as me.”

The general waved his hand in easy dismissal. “Yes. Yes. Fine,” he said. “Just report back to me immediately if there’s trouble. The situation isn’t . . .” He trailed off.

“Stable?” Cow Tom offered.

He’d handed the general an easy out. What he wanted to say to the general was that the situation was foul. He bore no great love for the Seminoles, two had carried off his mother after all, but this business of repeatedly moving them and all other tribes off ancestral land and taking away their way of life was worse than wrong. As bad as Indians had it, the slaves of Indians were in for even worse if stripped of their current masters and forced to the Deep South to cotton fields or plantations there. But he held his tongue, as he’d learned to do well.

“Yes,” the general said. “Not stable.” He looked as pleased with the word as Cow Tom knew he would. The general used it often to convey broke-spirit compliance with the government’s will, and Cow Tom recognized the value of feeding the word back to him now. Translation wasn’t the only tool of a good interpreter. “The Seminoles have known they are to Remove for three years, and still they threaten hostility.”

Cow Tom considered keeping quiet, but what purpose to have maneuvered into his position if he didn’t risk to protect those who couldn’t protect themselves?

“They didn’t expect slave catchers let loose in the camp,” he said. “They believed the treaty.”

The general flared, and turned to face Cow Tom head-on. “The job is to Remove all Seminoles from Florida. Suddenly your sympathies are with the Seminoles?”

“Peaceable removal of the Seminoles has to include their Ne
groes,” Cow Tom said simply, keeping the edge from his tongue. “Otherwise they’ll keep resisting, and fighting never stops.”

For generations, the Seminoles had held their in-name-only slaves, intermixing, intermarrying, fighting off the government, or hiding side by side deep in the swamps of Florida. Leaving their slaves behind would mean, too often, leaving family behind. Outnumbered and outgunned, the Seminoles surrendered to army-run emigration camps only after the general’s personal assurance they could take their slaves with them when they left.

The general squinted his eyes as if he had a headache, his high forehead prominent. He ran his hand through his thick mane of hair. “The government decreed them Removed, and they will Remove, whether I bring them in one at a time or burn their camps down where they sleep. Your soft heart is of no consequence. Creeks set no store by the Seminole, nor Seminole to Creek.”

“My wife was owned by Seminole before Creek,” said Cow Tom. “That’s how I come by the language.”

The general stared at him, taken aback, whether from the fact that he had a woman in Alabama, or that Amy had been slave of Seminole before Creek, or that Cow Tom had never offered personal information before, he wasn’t sure. The general didn’t ask anything else, letting the matter drop, and Cow Tom made no further offering either, as the general took the disclosure and quickly threw it aside, disinterested.

“As soon as a few more bring their horses and cattle for the quartermaster to purchase, we sail,” said the general. “Seminoles who come in peaceably to the camps will Remove first. With slaves.” He stared baldly at Cow Tom, daring his response, authority plainly painted on his face.

He was lying about something. Cow Tom was sure of it. He’d made a study of matching men’s gestures with their words, practicing for years on Chief Yargee before this bigger test of Florida. The general’s breathing slowed and he gave the appearance of calm
whenever he lied in negotiations, and his demeanor mirrored that now. There were already reports that some Seminole slaves expecting to emigrate west at Fort Brooke were first segregated in separate areas, and then “reclaimed” by anonymous white men allowed into camp. Several disappeared, either escaped or spirited away to the South. The general surely understood this was a direct violation of his personal promise. He might be a rigid man, but for all his faults, he wasn’t merciless. He didn’t enjoy the spectacle of suffering, even as he caused it to occur. Cow Tom calculated this wasn’t the time to try to push the general further into a corner he had to defend.

“The sooner the ships come to take the Seminoles and their Negroes together, the better,” Cow Tom offered. He waited for the general to share a timetable with him, to let slip some information that would give him hope for the future of the detainees.

“All I need from you is to go to the camp and tell me if there’s trouble,” the general said. “Let me know if Chief Micanopy means to keep his word to Remove.”

The general turned his back to Cow Tom and rejoined the other military men, and Cow Tom took his chance for a quick smoke.

He was trapped in Florida, that was given. But so long as he was here, until he could get back to Amy and his daughters, he would continue his own mission, one not swaddled in stalking and bloodshed and double-crossing. He had free rein to search this detention camp, as he had so many others, and seek his mother.

Chapter 7

FOR THE BETTER
part of a day and night Cow Tom, Harry Island, and one of the general’s dragoons navigated the military road from Fort King into the detention camp at Fort Brooke by Tampa Bay. They arrived without incident, midmorning on ration day, the damp heat oppressive, riding in for the last few miles in the wake of a convoy of forty supply wagons and fifty pack mules. The racket overwhelmed, and they paced the horses slow, afraid the marshy ground would trip their steeds. The moment their three-man party rode through the gate, a soldier called them.

“You there,” he said. “We need attending.”

Cow Tom, Harry, and the dragoon dismounted and helped unload supplies, while convoy soldiers began to break barrels and sacks down into quantities for individual distribution. Others jockeyed their animals into position to water and feed.

“Put muscle behind it!” the soldier shouted to the sweating men. “We got a turnabout to make.”

Too hot to move this fast, Cow Tom thought. The supply wagons had only just arrived, yet they intended to drop the load and clear out again. A long line snaked around one of the outbuildings, Seminole women waiting in the scorching sun, more than one wrapped in the cotton feed bags used to hold corn for the army’s horses. Cow Tom studied them all: long, straight black hair, complexions fawn and russet and olive and mushroom and copper,
but even the darkest among them weren’t the deep coffee color of his mother. He refused to let his disappointment get the better of him. There was more of the camp to search.

“Leastways they boast rations,” he said.

Two young Seminole braves began to pass out the weekly corn and flour to the line, under the watchful eye of a dragoon, along with mismatched lengths of coarse cotton cloth.

“Where are the guards?” Cow Tom asked. At the turret, there was only one dispirited soldier with a musket.

“Measles outbreak,” Harry said. He had to almost yell to be heard. “Soldiers here sick or dead. First they thought smallpox, but the doctor declares measles. The convoy’s dumping supplies and hightailing. They won’t stay overnight.”

Cow Tom was never exactly sure where Harry secured his information, but had come to both trust and depend on it. He enjoyed the company of another African Creek forced to serve as guide and translator. Harry Island’s owner lived not too far north of Chief Yargee in Alabama, but Cow Tom hadn’t known Harry before they met in Florida one sticky afternoon, each at the heels and ears of their assigned military men.

“Sickly season in Florida is a crazy time to wage war,” Cow Tom said in Mvskoke to Harry, so the dragoon couldn’t understand the criticism. “For both sides.”

Once finished with unloading, the three led their horses to the stables. A young soldier, alone, groomed one of the horses, without enthusiasm, a healthy brown roan with a darkish mane. The soldier’s uniform seemed several sizes too big, and the tuft of sandy brown hair under his cap was dry and brittle. From farther away, the soldier had a farm-boy look, fresh faced, but when they came closer, they saw the ravages of dried pustules and spots not yet faded dotting both cheeks. The dragoon was first to say what Cow Tom was thinking.

“You got the pox?” he asked, taking a step back.

“Not the pox,” the young soldier said. “Doctor when he come
said measles. I spent my time in the sickbed, and measles come and gone.” He fingered his face, touching the still-swollen skin as if exploring a foreign territory. “More than three-quarters of the soldiers here in the infirmary, burning up with fever. I’m better off than the others.”

“They let you out?”

“Once you can walk out, that’s what you do,” the boy said. “If fever breaks, you’re through with it. Doctor says you’re done carrying.”

“They let you handle the horses?”

“Nobody else here to do it,” he said. “But don’t matter to me whether you leave your horses or not.”

After a bit of negotiation and pulling of rank by mentioning the general’s name, they left the tired animals with the young soldier to dress and put up.

“Best stay away from the infirmary,” the soldier warned as they left the stables.

The dragoon disappeared by himself into the bowels of the fort, off, Cow Tom assumed, to find drink and English-speaking companions more to his liking. Cow Tom and Harry kept together and explored by foot. Deportee camp or no, there were bad feelings between the Creeks and Seminoles, and hostilities didn’t evaporate overnight because of a shift in the balance of power. Conditions were as they had come to expect, the women in the most desperate state, clothes scant and tattered, mood subdued and depressed. Groups of Seminole men were scattered around the grounds, adjacent to the dots of makeshift housing on the sandy soil.

“Must be seven or eight hundred Seminoles here,” Harry guessed, in Mvskoke.

“But for rations, the chiefs would never come in willingly,” Cow Tom said.

“Especially with Osceola at their heels,” said Harry. “He can’t be happy they’ve given up the fight.”

Cow Tom switched to English, though none seemed particularly
interested in two black men talking. “Murderers, the lot of them. Micanopy and Jumper killed almost as many whites as Osceola. I never believed to see all turn themselves in at once.”

They wound their way around the encampment, mingling with the Seminoles, pausing to listen wherever men clustered, straining for news, but for the most part, they met stony silence or outright suspicion. Cow Tom compared Fort King to this encampment in Tampa Bay. Setting aside the likeness of steamy heat and sand and vicious fleas, the difference came down to people. Only the occasional woman appeared at the margins of Fort King, usually of the roughest, military-follower sort, but here at Fort Brooke, large numbers of women settled into domestic life alongside their men, their children playing games among themselves as children did anywhere.

A sallow-skinned brave lay prone on a coarse horse blanket, alone under a sycamore tree, chewing slowly on a tobacco leaf. He coughed several times, hoarse and unsettling.

“You all right?” asked Cow Tom.

“The white man brings us to this place to give us smallpox,” the brave said.

“No,” Harry said in Miccosukee, “measles. The white man brings measles.”

The brave glared, unimpressed with the distinction. They left him and walked the camp, and came upon a small group of women pounding coontie root with a flat rock. The women never slowed their rhythm. They hadn’t touched their ration of corn or flour, set off to the side under an oak tree, wrapped in gunny. Instead, for bread making, they used the plentiful root found everywhere in this part of Florida, foraged outside the encampment.

“You see what I see? Or more like it, don’t see?” said Harry. “Not a single Negro, free nor slave.”

“Balls!” Cow Tom swore. The government already separated the Negroes from the Seminoles. His mother wasn’t at this camp. Understanding the general’s strategy didn’t calm his anger. A free black man
or woman facing re-enslavement was the most potent ally the Seminoles could have in their bloody fight to keep their Florida home.

“So much for easy information,” said Harry.

“We best find Micanopy,” Cow Tom said.

Cow Tom and Harry widened their loop around the camp once more. At the periphery, under the shade of an old oak, a cluster of men sat in a circle, passing a smoking pipe. Cow Tom recognized almost all of them, the same group he and the general met for the Capitulation six months prior. They looked the worse for wear, thinner, scruffier, defeat written in the language of their bodies. Micanopy sat at the head, flanked by his henchman Jumper. The old chief held himself slightly apart, sitting cross-legged on the ground. Micanopy gave instruction to a young brave in the circle, who leaped up, coming back moments later with a piece of bread still warm from the women’s fire. Micanopy was twice Cow Tom’s age, maybe more, and in contrast to the others, so overweight he barely moved at all, except to give a slight turn of head to see who approached, but he didn’t acknowledge their presence. Micanopy accepted the bread without thanks, devouring half of the large piece of flat dough with the first bite, crumbs a-tumble down his massive front. The brave silently resumed his seat.

Cow Tom and Harry drew nearer, too close to ignore, directly in the chief’s line of sight.

“Governor,” Cow Tom said.

Micanopy fixed him in a steely stare. But then his expression changed, as if suddenly aware of something to be lost or gained.

“Jesup’s man,” Micanopy acknowledged.

“Yes. Cow Tom. Come at General Jesup’s request.”

“Report back,” said Micanopy in Miccosukee, his voice a mix of fatigue, pride, and loss, “I brought my people in.” Cow Tom easily adjusted to the Seminole dialect of Hitchiti. “My advisers worry Washington won’t do right by us, but I have the promise of the big white chief.” He looked to Jumper and the other lesser chiefs. “They follow my word.”

Cow Tom knew differently. Micanopy was, indeed, Pond Governor of the Seminole Nation in Florida, head chief, but by heredity, and his opinions and advice often went unheeded in Council. Cow Tom observed the dynamics firsthand when he met with the general and Micanopy at Capitulation, hammering out the terms under which his people would be willing to emigrate. Micanopy leaned heavily on everyone else—his counselors, his lawyer and sense bearer, his Negro translator Abraham—always choosing the path of least resistance. Although surrounded by younger and more reckless Seminoles still possessing the passions of youth, Micanopy’s eagerness for conflict of any kind played out long ago. He preferred talk of peace or whatever the white man wanted to hear so long as he didn’t actually have to do or risk anything.