Table of Contents
I - South—Into the forest—Lawson
II - A land forfeit—Redsticks—Florida
IV - A teeth cutting—A return to the Mississippi Territory—The remains of a ...
V - Hungry Crow—The Conecuh River—An unknown killer—The highwaymen
VI - Across Florida—Honeybees—Lorenzo Dow—Another cave
VII - The Apalachicola River—Elvy Callaway
VIII - Down the Apalachicola River—A negro farm—A general presents
IX - A fort—Beah—The biography of Garçon
X - A conversation with Garçon—A manatí killed
XI - Xavier—Pigeons—A Choctaw—A supper with Garçon
XII - The dome swamp—A dead Choctaw—Parakeets—A bow stave
XIII - To the mouth of the river—The pigeonkeeper—St. Vincent Island
XIV - Ships—An Ota parable—A skirmish—A funeral
XV - A watering party—Up the river—An ambush
XVI - North—The torture of Edward Daniels—Juaneta—Samuel
XVII - Samuel tells his story—Garçon at play—Beah is swayed
XVIII - A desertion—In the American encampment
XIX - William McIntosh and the Lower Creeks—A failed negotiation—A gift from Garçon
XX - Cranes—An escape—The future glimpsed—An obliteration
For Sylvia
Why, ever since Adam, who has got to the meaning of his great allegory—the world? Then we pigmies must be content to have our paper allegories but ill comprehended.
—HERMAN MELVILLE
PROLOGUE
CENTRAL AFRICA. 1786. A full moon rises over the forest and the Pygmy is born. The Ota dance beneath the stars, and the clearing is beaten smooth by the poundings of their feet. A leopard coughs in the night and the child is given his name, Kau.
Fifteen years later his sister is traded for a girl from a neighboring Ota band. A leaf hut is prepared, and she waits for him to push past the laughing crowd of older women who punch him and kick him and pinch him as he fights his way to the entrance. The girl sees that it is him—the brave one called Leopard—and she is happy because this is the young man she had hoped for. She smiles and rolls onto her stomach, giving herself to him in the way that her mother taught her. Blood drips from his torn lips onto her flawless back.
The next day he presents her family with the hindquarters of an okapi. This gift of meat is accepted and the girl becomes his wife. A near decade of happiness and children passes. His wife gives him a daughter, and then she gives him a son.
1810. HE IS HUNTING along the bank of the river when he discovers Kesa canoes hidden in the mangroves. He returns to his camp and finds it destroyed. Kesa warriors have attacked the sleeping band, and his father is among the dozen survivors who are now bound in Spanish trade irons. Twice that number are dead. Mother and wife and son and daughter lie melting in a bed of smoldering coals.
The Kesa march their chain of neck-shackled prisoners to the river and break. He follows with his bow. That evening the Kesa drink palm wine around a bonfire, and from a distance he kills them one by one by one until only a single crazed warrior remains. This last man abandons his slaves, and the Pygmy chases
