Part 31

In the meantime Osceola must make a visit to Fort King. There was a white man there whose scalp he had sworn should be the first one taken in the war. With a small band of warriors he started on his errand of vengeance.

Osceola knew General Thompson's habits. He was accustomed to take a walk after dinner while he smoked a cigar. Frequently he walked some distance from the fort, going out towards the sutler's house, where he sometimes had business. Osceola determined to wait for him in that vicinity.

He and his comrades lay closely concealed, and watched without ceasing. But for several days the weather was unpleasant and the agent did not go beyond the fort. Still the Indians waited. At last a fine day dawned, and shortly after noon Osceola saw from his hiding place two men approaching the sutler's house. From afar he knew that one was General Thompson. He crept closer to the path; his friends followed; all were silent as serpents. The unsuspecting men came nearer, laughing and talking in easy security. Rising on one knee, Osceola took steady aim and fired. Instantly other shots rang through the still air and the two men lay dead on the earth.

The Indians quickly scalped their victims. Then they hurried to the sutler's house, where they found several men at dinner; they surrounded the house and shot and scalped its inmates. When this was done they set fire to the house and took their leave with an exultant war whoop. No one pursued them; those who heard the shots and the war whoop, and saw the flaming house supposed a large war party had come to attack the place, and were afraid to investigate.

The Indians meanwhile left the neighborhood with all speed. They had stayed longer than they had intended and they were anxious to reach the swamp in time to share in the attack on Major Dade and his men. They set off through the forest, a grim and terrible company, smeared with war paint and stained with human blood. Their knives and tomahawks were red; fresh scalps dangled from their belts or swung from poles carried over their shoulders. At the head of the company strode Osceola. On his head he wore a red and blue kerchief twisted to form a turban, from whose center waved three splendid ostrich plumes.

Darkness fell before the company reached the swamp, but as they drew near to its outskirts they saw the luminous smoke of camp fires over the trees and heard faint yells. This told them they had come too late for the struggle, but in time to celebrate the victory. They were greeted by the revelers with wild shouts of delight. All joined in a hideous dance about a pole on which were fastened the scalps that had been taken that day.

From the old chief, Micanopy, and his sub-chiefs, Jumper and Alligator, Osceola learned the details of that day's action. About two hundred warriors had taken their station in the outskirts of the swamp to await the coming of Major Dade and his one hundred and ten soldiers. They sent out scouts who brought them exact information concerning Dade's route and all his movements. They knew the information to be reliable, for they obtained it from Dade's guide, Louis, a slave, who was in sympathy with the Indians and Maroons. On the third day of their march the troops reached the point the Indians had decided upon as best adapted to their purpose. But neither Micanopy nor Osceola was present and many were unwilling to act without them. Some young warriors set out for Micanopy's camp and forced him to come with them to the scene of action. Even then he advised delay and it took all Jumper's eloquence to induce the old man to give the command for attack on the following morning.

Meanwhile Dade's men spent a good night in their camp, little dreaming how near to them was the enemy. On the morning of the twenty-eighth of December they resumed their march in good spirits.

The Indians had left the swamp and hidden themselves in a pine barren, near which the roadway wound. On one side was a deep swamp; on the other, a thin pine forest with a swamp beyond it. They found hiding places behind trees or on the ground sheltered by the saw palmetto and brush.

From their hiding places the Indians saw the advance guard come into sight, reach, and pass them. Still Micanopy did not fire the signal shot. Now the main division was coming with Major Dade on horseback at the head. On marched the soldiers with unwavering tramp, tramp. The warriors crouched with muskets ready. Micanopy fired and Jumper raised the yell. Instantly the green waste was awake with the flash and bang of muskets, with death cries and savage yells. A white smoke hid the scene for a moment. When it cleared away, the road was strewn with the dead and dying. The Indians having reloaded their guns, rushed from their hiding places to finish their work.

Some of Dade's men sprang to the thicket to seek refuge behind trees. They were followed and shot down. Others caught their feet in the heavy stems of the palmetto and, stumbling, fell an easy prey to their pursuers. The officers who had escaped the first fire did their best to rally the men. The cannon was brought into action and added its roar to the din of battle. But its balls went over the heads of the Indians and they succeeded in shooting the gunners before they could do any harm.

The contest seemed over. The warriors were scattered in pursuit of fugitives or busy scalping the dead, when a negro brought word to Jumper that a number of the soldiers had collected and were building a fort of logs with the cannon to protect them. Jumper raised the yell and called together his Indians for a charge on the little company of brave men who were making their last stand behind tree trunks placed on the ground in the form of a triangle. The soldiers had exhausted their powder and were able to offer only a feeble resistance to the savages, who shot them down without mercy.

The Indians carried off their own dead and wounded--three dead and five wounded. But they left the bodies of Dade's men to tell their own story to those who should find them. So well were the commands of Osceola heeded that months later when white troops found the dead, their money, watches and clothes were untouched.

The battle over, the Indians returned to the swamp to await Osceola, count scalps, and celebrate their victory. Of one hundred and ten soldiers only four escaped.

VIII. OSCEOLA A WAR CHIEF

As a fire that has smoldered long flames up in many places at once, so the war broke out with several actions in quick succession. The tidings of the slaughter at Fort King had not become generally known and the Indians had not slept after Dade's massacre, before preparations were afoot for another assault.

Scarcely had the victors wearied of shouting and dancing when an Indian, exhausted, not with revelry, but with swift running through forest and swamp, came into the camp, bringing important news. A council of chiefs was called. The bowl of honey water was passed around and when all had drunk from the deep ladle, the messenger rose to give his message. He told the chiefs that General Clinch had left Fort Drane with two hundred regulars and four hundred Florida volunteers, and was already far advanced into the Indian country. Indeed he was even now approaching the Withlacoochee River.

Micanopy, with his usual caution, advised the Indians to keep out of the way of such a large force. But his hearers were in no mood to listen to his faint-hearted advice; they had been emboldened by their recent victories and responded to the fearless daring of Osceola. One hundred and fifty Indians and fifty negroes volunteered to go with Osceola and Alligator to intercept General Clinch and his six hundred soldiers.

With one accord the warriors bounded off towards the ford of the Withlacoochee. There the water was only two feet deep, and as it was the only place where the river could be crossed without boats, there could be little doubt that the white general would lead his forces to this point before attempting to cross the river.

For a day and a night the Indians waited to give their enemy a deadly welcome. In the neighborhood of the ford there was no sound to interrupt the music of the river, no sight to disturb the peace of the dense forest. But on the morning of the following day, scouts came skulking through the trees, and in a few minutes the apparently unpeopled place was alive with red men.

The scouts brought word that General Clinch and two hundred of his men had already crossed the river. They had made the passage slowly and laboriously in an old canoe that carried only eight at a time. But they were now advancing on this side of the river. Many a warrior's heart failed him when he heard this. But Osceola's dauntless spirit rose to the emergency. He cheered his men with words of such good courage that they were soon following him with new enthusiasm to a hill, where he posted them in a hammock to await the enemy.

On the morning of the last day of the year, General Clinch advanced towards the hammock. He was aware of the presence of hostile Indians, but not knowing of the outrages they had already committed, he felt reluctant to attack them. He sent messages to Osceola telling him that it was useless for the Indians to struggle against the white man and advising him not to enter upon a war that could end only with the destruction of his race.

To this humane counsel Osceola replied with haughty independence: "You have guns, and so have we; you have powder and lead, and so have we; you have men, and so have we; your men will fight, and so will ours until the last drop of the Seminoles' blood has moistened the dust of his hunting grounds." He added, what then seemed to the whites an idle boast, that after a few weeks' further preparation the Seminoles would be ready to enter upon a five years' struggle for the hunting grounds of Florida.

At about noon General Clinch charged up the hill. He was greeted with a lively fire, but his men were tried fighters and were not checked. On they came calmly returning the fire of the enemy. The Indians and negroes offered a determined resistance. If they wavered, the shrill and terrible "Yo-ho-e-hee" of their leader gave them new courage. Everywhere his white plumes waved in the thick of the fight. The fire of his warriors broke upon the enemy always at the most unexpected point, and had it not been for the bravery of General Clinch, the Indians would have driven the soldiers back to the river, on the other side of which four hundred volunteers were watching the battle. But they held their ground, and at last Osceola was so seriously wounded that he ordered a retreat.

For an hour and twenty minutes the battle had raged. The loss of the Indians was slight. When at Osceola's signal the wild yells ceased and the Indians disappeared in the forest, they bore with them only three dead and five wounded. General Clinch had suffered much heavier loss. Eight of his men had been killed and forty wounded.

The Seminoles were highly elated by the success of the first engagements of the war. They regarded the battle on the Withlacoochee as a great victory, and Osceola's praises were on every lip. The old and timid Micanopy, head chief of the Seminoles by birth, kept that title of honor. But Osceola who, before the war opened, was not so much as a sub-chief and had but two constant followers, had been the real power in planning the hostile acts that opened the second Seminole war. All knew this and they now made him head war chief of the nation. He was only thirty-two years old, but he had the respect of all. With his own hand he had taken vengeance on the great white man who had wronged him; with his own hand he had punished the traitor chief, Charley A. Mathla. He had planned the massacre of Dade's troops. With a small band of Indians and negroes he had engaged the forces of General Clinch for more than an hour, inflicting heavy loss. His words had kindled the spirit of war throughout Florida.

On the border, lawless young men were spreading terror and desolation; in the month of January sixteen well stocked plantations were laid waste by the Indians. In the distant swamp, Indian women were moulding bullets for the warriors. Through all the forest paths war parties were hurrying towards the camp of Osceola. The leader of each carried a bundle of sticks, each stick representing a warrior under his command. These were given to Osceola--but how many sticks there were only the Seminoles knew.

IX. THE SEMINOLES HOLD THEIR OWN