style="font-size:15px;"> “General” Wiley Thompson, 53,
Former Congressman & Current Indian Agent
Nostalgic this morning for my wife’s milk gravy thick with loose sausage slathered in a heap on her fluffy white biscuits and me in my robe with little else to cover my modesty—coffee percolating in the fire and bacon popping in the skillet and she is happy and breaks two eggs to sizzle in the fat and the sunlight comes through her lace curtains and she is glowing and humming a tune I do not know, something from the hymnal I suppose, and this is the life we always promised one another—soon as the children were grown and gone, I came home from DC and the madness of the House—we were both surrounded by babies—but my pipes stood cold in the pewter tray and the bourbon canter was empty as she demanded it be so at first chance I cut out for this detail. What would you have me do, dear? The heathen ambuscade the white farmers, snipe them as they try to put order into that wild earth and master it through will and toil and sweat. It is my Christian duty, I lied—so I repaired to this land, where even after Christmas it is boggy as hell, the bugs ambitious about my eyes and ears, but at least here I can smoke in peace—Erastus keeps his store chock-full of my cigars, and when Jackson makes me general for crushing this Osceola and his band of savages, I will keep a team of islanders to roll them for me at my leisure—and too my wife got me going to church where, despite my best raiments, I never felt comfort—here I am sated and sweating in my wool uniform, the stink of four days’ worth of rye rising into my nostrils—my belly full from the cracklin’ cornbread and venison and beans—yet I hum her tune and think how good tobacco always tasted right after a good morning romp in the—
A crazed screech splits the air and the scrub brush comes alive with a rush of the ungodly red devils—they are everywhere, like ants, over the ramparts of the fort and into the general store—poor Erastus and all my cigars—I spy Osceola across the field—he stands tall with that rifle Jackson gave me, and I reach for my pistols but only too late: ah, the wasted time, the indecision, the bargains and compromises, and the pains in this life too brief.
Asi-yahola (a.k.a. Osceola; born Billy Powell), 31,
Seminole Warrior
We came to you naked singing the hawk-tail song and offered you the white feather and the black drink and you shackled me, friend, caught me in chains like one of your dark slaves and held me in a cage where I bared my teeth and growled like the wolf until my cunning spirit said to you, In five days’ time I shall bring to you the men of my band, and you stroked my spine, made a great present of this Spanish rifle whose stock is well oiled and holds the weight of the deer shank, and now I aim it at your head as you waddle from the same fort where you told me what the Great Father demands—you do not know, friend, that on a cool night when the stars crackled in the black sky of my boyhood, the Great Father you serve, General Jackson, led an army of whites and traitorous reds, thick as the summertime locust, to kill and drive us from our homes and we fled into this flat wet country—now that same man threatens that if we do not go to the far side of Mother River to live among the false and faithless Creeks he will send another storm to roll over us—but I will tell every living man this: I am no longer a young blade of grass bending in the big wind, I am now the hard cypress standing strong in swamp water—so bring your thunder and rain, friend, but I will not be swayed and you will not have our land and you will not have our rivers or swamps or sward and you will not have our dignity, which the Breathmaker gives us from his very mouth, and neither will you have our Negroes—not our slaves or Maroons and not my wife and my son, the one you call half-breed, the same as you called me the day you bade me sign the Great Father’s treaty, the one I stabbed with my scalping knife as my signature as well as my promise: my white half hates you, friend, and my Muskogee half will make your skull red and leave it to blacken in the sun while your body is devoured by the vulture and the rat—
I cry my war whoop and we step into the open and you can see I am true to my word: I have delivered all of my men—sixty hadjo, each in battle dress singing the death-scalp song and running straight at you—but do not fear, dear friend, for they will drive past you and on into the fort—no, I alone will stop and wait for you to arm yourself before I kill you and share your scalp with all.
Bloody Hands, 16 & 54,
Muskogee Artist & Alleged Witness to the Duel
This controversial piece of ledger art was uncovered by Professor Scott Gage in an antique store outside St. Augustine, Florida. It is a fine specimen; however, its authenticity is disputed and has come under some level of scrutiny. The artist purportedly witnessed this event when he was a teenager and a participant in the Second Seminole War. Some forty years after the event, according to Dr. Gage, Bloody Hands created this art piece while serving in a US government internment camp for Aborigines. Interestingly, he is one of the few ledger artists who are not of Plains Indian origin. In support of the artwork’s integrity, Dr. Gage argues that, after the Second Seminole War, many Florida peoples were forcibly relocated to the Oklahoma Territory where, perhaps, Bloody Hands fell in with Sitting Bull and participated in the hit-and-run attacks on US forts in the upper Missouri area during the 1860s. In support of this claim, Dr. Gage points to the fact that Bloody Hands was incarcerated in Fort Yates, where his name appears on various government documents. Later, he was shipped back to Florida and imprisoned in Fort Marion, where he purportedly composed this picture and, later, in 1898, died of pneumonia, accompanied by what doctors at the time described as dementia praecox or, by today’s nomenclature, acute schizophrenia.
Steel Hole by Hole: Henry v. MacKenna
Laying Train Tracks through the West Virginia Mountains,
September 27, 1871
John Henry, 28,
Steel-Driving Man
Done drove twenty durn miles of line and that machine on my heels steady behind, comin down on me like rain on the tin roof above where I slept as a youngun—chicken and dumplins stewin in the pot lure me out a dream of Daddy comin home from the workhouse with a sackful of orange rock candy, back into the world of Ma Ma Ma and she be hammerin home her orders with that two-inch-thick belt she call “Mercy”—Get yo ass out that bed and slop them hogs, boy, and gather them greens fore I tan yo hide—I shore do as she say and when I come back it’s her ladlin in our best bowl the chicken and ramps and carrots and pellets of dough—I come over the top again for the ten one thousandth time today and my bones brittle beneath my muscles all stove up and tight—a pang of fire runs right through my arm and catches a stitch in my heart—I hear a poundin there and know that machine gonna pound on past, poundin, like Ms. Freeman poundin on the front door, her askin Ma if she’s seen the egg layers that skidaddled out her yard, and if we find em, wouldn’t we please just please let her know and I get the guilt-face lookin at the food afore me but Ma just suck her teeth and say, Nah, Miss Lady, I ain’t see no bird ’round here today—I like to of died from shame but Ma say Miss Lady a uppity-actin old biddy anyway, say she just wish I’d drop dead of a stroke fore she’d even give one yard bird back to that uppity-actin old biddy—I remember a dozen times when I squeamed at loppin the head off a hen but Ma would grab that heavy axe out my hand quick as you please and say, What kindly man you
