The Creeks refused.
Their lands were their lives, too important to lose, sell, or give away.
The white men looked down in anger.
And they called the Creeks savage.
Chapter 3: Keepers of the Swamplands
TO THE SOUTH, down toward the great waters, down amidst the saw grass swamps and mangrove thickets, there roamed a scattered band of isolated Indians that the Creeks called Seminole, meaning “wild” or “people who camp at a distance.”
Theirs was a foreboding world that few dared to enter, and even fewer ever found their way back out again. The Seminoles had no identity. They merely misplaced themselves in a river of grass where the land was mostly sea.
They had their war villages and their villages of peace, but mostly they were exiles, fighting to hold on to their last outpost east of the big water that was known as the Mississippi. For a time, the Seminoles united themselves with the Lower Towns of the Creeks, even partaking of the glorious Green Corn Dance as though it were a communion of the soul.
Upon the sacred square they spread soil from the earth where no one had ever walked before. And every fire in town was doused, every floor swept and scrubbed, a way to rid the tribes of the old year and make ready for the new one.
For amongst the Creeks and Seminoles, the new year’s came down in the steaming heat of summer. The religious white drink – the liquid of purification – was brewed black in the kettles. Each family walked forward to secure fresh fire from the sacred flames in the square, and for eight days, the people danced and fasted and drank medicine and played ball as they gave thanks to the gods for the gift of corn, the gift of life in bad times, as well as in good ones.
Everyone was expected to attend the celebration. Those who could not reach the sacred square in time gathered a bundle of green corn, slashed it, then rubbed the juice over their faces and hands. If an escaped or wanted criminal could make it to the festival, he was immediately forgiven for his sins and his crime overlooked, if not forgotten.
War and a treacherous land had taken their toll on the Seminoles. The Spanish came, then the British, and finally the Spanish returned. Once the tribe had numbered 25,000. But by 1763, when they again heard the guns of Spain, only 83 fled from St. Augustine, 80 escaped from Southern Florida, and 108 slipped out of the port at Pensacola.
There were no more. They buried themselves deep in an untrammeled forest, sheltered, but not safe from the rattlesnakes and cottonmouths and malaria and dengue fever that lurked behind the cypress and tangled vines. In Congress, Virginia’s John Randolph turned to a colleague and remarked, “If I were given the choice of emigrating to Florida or to hell, sir, why then, sir, I should choose hell.”
William DuVal, an agent for the tribe, would even journey into the strange river of grass, then write: “I suffered much from drinking water alive with insects, from mosquitoes, intolerable hot weather . . . I have never seen a more wretched tract . . . No settlement can ever be made in this region, and there is no land in it worth cultivation . . . the most miserable and gloomy prospect I ever beheld.”
But it was home and it was good enough for the Seminoles. They only hungered for a place to rest, a chance for survival.
But the white men sought them out. And the white men called them savage.
“Uprooted,” carved from a red cedar stump, symbolizes the Five Civilized Tribes that were torn away from their homes and transplanted in Eastern Oklahoma. Willard Stone, the artist, fashioned the carving from a stump, he said, because the tribes had been pulled away from the ground of their birth.
Five Civilized Tribes Museum
Muskogee, Oklahoma
Willard Stone, Artist
Chapter 4: Hunters of the Southern Woodlands
THE CHOCTAWS, their story tellers told them, came from the west, marching behind priests who carried the sacred book wrapped in animal skins. They sang in unknown tongues and trekked a desolate land, meeting no one and nothing until a terrible sickness gripped them.
The priests died, all but one, all but the bearer of the sacred book.
The Choctaws burned their dead but kept the ashes, then trudged on, coming at last to Nane-wy-yah, the stooping hill. They all lay down to die, all but one, the bearer to the sacred book.
The Nane-wy-yah opened up, and the last priest entered, then vanished.
The years swept past, and finally the Great Spirit took the ashes of the dead and, from them, created two boys and two girls. They were suckled by a panther until they grew strong and tall and were ready to leave.
The bearer of the sacred book appeared to them, giving them bows and arrows and an earthen pot. He stretched his arms and said, “I give you these hunting grounds for your home. When you leave them, you die.”
The Choctaws had no thoughts of ever leaving them. They were quite pleased with the Mississippi and Alabama dirt beneath their feet. The soil was rich and fertile, so they spent their days clearing fields, plowing with a bent stick or a piece of flint or maybe the shoulder bone of the bison, and growing beans, corn, pumpkins, and melons. They raised enough to satisfy their own needs, then peddled the rest to neighboring tribes who had more land but less success with the art and patience of farming.
Buffalo grazed the grasslands, Wild turkey and deer hid away in the forests. Squirrels chattered from treetops, and the beaver bridged the rivers. The Choctaw became a hunter without equal, moving quietly through the woodlands and canebrakes with a blowgun, a bow and arrow, and later a rifle, which gave him dominion over all the beasts of the field, including man.
A missionary, H. B. Cushman, wrote:
The Choctaw hunter generally hunted alone and on foot; and when he killed his game, unless small, he left it where it had fallen, and turning his footsteps homeward, traveled in a straight line, here and there breaking a twig leaving its top in the direction he had come, as a guide to his wife . . . As soon as he arrived, he informed her of his success and merely pointed in the direction in which the game lay. At once she mounted a pony and started in the direction indicated; and guided by the broken twigs, she soon arrived at the spot, picked up and fastened the dead animal to the saddle, mounted and soon went home again; then soon dressed and prepared a portion for her hunter lord’s meal, while he sat and smoked his pipe in meditative silence. No animal adapted for food was ever killed in wanton sport by an Indian hunter.
The Choctaws seldom sought war.
They never ran from it.
In fact, Bernard Romans, who traveled among them in 1770, wrote:
They are the swiftest of foot of any savages in America, and very expert in tracking a flying enemy, who very seldom escapes. . . They almost always brought [their captives] home to shew them, and then dispatched them with a bullet or hatchet; after which the body being cut into many parts, and all the hairy pieces of skin converted into scalps, the remainder is buried, and the above trophies
