Runaway

by Donna Cooner

  And when James was born, Jarrett was delighted to have a little brother. It seemed strange to many white visitors that Jarrett should have his mother’s near coal-black eyes—hers from a maternal Creole ancestry—while James inherited their father’s cobalt blue. But in everything else the boys were very similar, both growing very tall, James trailing after Jarrett, Jarrett teaching his little brother what he knew about both white and Indian ways.

  In 1812 the United States went to war against Britain once again. A strange war, if one thought about it in retrospect. America’s early presidents had tried very hard to maintain a policy of neutrality where other countries were concerned. America had maintained its isolationist stance while Napoleon Bonaparte became emperor of France, and kept its distance while the French and British went to war. But both France and Britain put out embargoes against American ships, and then the British began seizing American ships and impressing American sailors. Finally, war was declared. It was ironic, because at nearly the same time the British had lifted their embargo—since communications across the Atlantic were slow, the Americans could not know the British had relented before they had declared war.

  The British, furious that the Americans could go to war against them when they were so strenuously embattled in the war with Napoleon, promised help to a number of Indians if the Indians would side with them. By 1813 the Creek War had exploded, with the Lower Creeks—the civilized Creeks, as the whites liked to call them—mainly at war with the Upper Creeks. Many of these “Creeks” were actually Shawnees and other northern Indians grouped into the “Creek Confederation” simply because of where they had been forced to migrate. The great Shawnee leader Tecumseh, a respected, intelligent man who had learned from the whites and then taught nativism and the power of banding together to other tribes as well as his own, sided with the British, hoping to keep the whites from pressing farther westward into Indian lands. He perished in the war.

  Luckily for Jarrett he and his family lived among the “civilized” Creeks—and sided with the Americans. Sean, determined that both his boys would have the best education for mind and soul offered by two very different worlds, had sent his sons to Charleston for schooling, but at the outbreak of hostilities, he called them home. Jarrett and James were glad to be back with their parents, but it was a sad time as well, for Mary was in torment. Her paternal kinsmen were Upper Creeks and Florida Seminoles, and it was a bitter time for her. Through her father’s family she was related to James McQueen, one of the most militant of the Upper Creek “Red Stick” warriors. Thankfully they were not destined to find themselves in battle against their own kin.

  James was too young to really understand the war, and young enough to be dragged back by the ears when he mentioned the very idea of fighting in it. Sean McKenzie, of course, decided to keep his older son, Jarrett, out of the warfare as well. But that was difficult, for in the beginning of the war the Red Sticks, as the Americans then referred to the enemy, attacked Fort Mims, slaughtering women and children right along with the men, the majority of victims being civilized or interbred Creeks. When Andy Jackson came through the embattled territory, Jarrett found himself intrigued by the general and slipped quietly away from his father’s eagle eye to follow Jackson about and perform small tasks of navigation and translation when necessary. Jackson was an impressive man. Already past his prime, he was still the most astonishing soldier Jarrett had ever seen, courageous but never foolhardy. He was weathered and worn in the face, and in the heart as well, it seemed, but he was ready for almost anything that came his way, any deprivation, any surprise attack, any disappointment—such as reinforcements failing to arrive. He and his Tennesseans were solid, do-or-die men, and Jarrett could not help but find himself impressed by the man. So impressed that by the time Jackson had quelled the Red Sticks and was heading on to do battle in New Orleans, Jarrett decided to run away from home—leaving his father and Mary a very apologetic note. Jarrett was already a very tall youth, muscular in his development, and when he lied about his age to the general, Jackson accepted his age without question. At the time Jarrett had not yet turned fifteen, but with Ole Hickory he was given amazing lessons in warfare in a pitifully scant time. He would never forget his baptism by fire, never forget the terrible fear of his first battle. Yet it was then that he learned something about tactical warfare from Jackson himself. He had learned temperance, patience, and wisdom from his white father—and courage from his adopted Indian family. Indians did not run, and they never showed their fear.

  Jarrett survived the battle, but barely survived his father’s wrath when he returned from it. And when it was all over—the fighting and his father’s rage—he found that even the Lower Creeks had lost in the war that they had fought on the side of the Americans. They were paying for their aid with their land. Americans were moving westward and so the Indians must move much farther west themselves.

  Sean McKenzie had lived with his wife’s family, as was Seminole custom, just as Mary McKenzie’s father had moved in with her mother’s family. Sean had never staked any type of separate claim for the land. When the Indians’ land was threatened, Sean McKenzie’s home was threatened as well. Astounded by the turn of events Jarrett decided that there was only one thing to do—confront Jackson about what had happened and demand that his family lands be returned in good order.

  Jarrett found Jackson engaged in war with the Seminoles in Florida Territory. The fact that the territory was still Spanish didn’t stop Ole Hickory.

  Jarrett still liked Jackson, admired him tremendously. He’d come to know a lot about Jackson because sometimes at night, while smoking his pipe in whatever house or cabin they had called headquarters near their battlegrounds, Jackson would talk. He talked about Rachel, his beloved wife. He admitted to having fought a duel over her, for her honor, and he admitted to having killed the man. He admitted to having been a drinker, a swearer, a gambler, in his younger days, but he’d told Jarrett as well that there’d been nothing so fine in life as his love for Rachel and for his country. America was going to be great, it was destiny. It was going to take great Americans to make it so, Americans who would not back down, who would stand their ground. “Whatever that ground is going to be, Jarrett McKenzie, you stand it!” Jackson had told him.

  He intended to do so.

  In Florida he discovered that he hated Jackson’s attitude toward the Indians. Jackson wanted them all removed. There were lands out west. Americans were hungry for Florida—a land that was still supposedly divided into two Spanish territories. The Americans came south to fight the Indians, claiming that the Spanish couldn’t control the ones residing in Florida who were constantly raiding across the Georgia border. By 1818 Jackson was campaigning against Indians, outlaw runaway Negroes, and those who would succor and support them, from Pensacola to the Suwanee. He executed two British citizens, Alexander Arbuthnot and Robert Ambrister, for inciting the Indians to acts of war against the Americans. The British were enraged. Spain was furious. Andy Jackson was there and holding his ground.

  He wasn’t about to back down.

  But these upheavals were nothing new. Florida had been going through many changes since 1513 when Juan Ponce de León had first stepped upon her shores. She was a Spanish acquisition, but ruled by her natives, some of them friendly, some of them warlike. In those early days Spaniards sometimes landed to seek treasure, only to disappear themselves instead. But the natives—friendly and not—began to fall prey to a weapon the Spaniards had unwittingly brought—European disease. In the end Spain enforced her hold upon her possession.

  In 1719 the French briefly took possession of Pensacola, but the Spanish very quickly took it back.

  In 1740 British General Oglethorpe invaded, yet could not take the Castillo de San Marcos in St. Augustine. Still, the Treaty of Paris in 1763 gave Florida to the British. In 1781 Spain captured Pensacola from the British. In 1783 Florida was returned to Spain by the British in return for the Bahamas.

  Florida h
ad been a prize passed back and forth many times. Now the Americans wanted her. There were rich, fertile lands to be farmed, coasts to be fished. Sunny plains to homestead. There might be great treasures somewhere; some still believed in the Fountain of Youth that Juan Ponce de León had sought. More than that, it seemed that Americans could not accept boundary lines. Florida seemed like a natural extension of American land. More and more settlers wanted to come south. With Jackson at the fore America would have her.

  But Jarrett could no longer fight beside the commander he so admired. Jackson’s war became a war against all Indians living within the Florida borders and Jarrett could not be a party to it. Finding General Jackson at St. Augustine during a lull in the campaign some men called the Seminole War and some men called Andy Jackson’s War, Jarrett sought an audience with him late at night. Stand your ground, Jackson had taught him, and so he did. He floundered a little bit at first, but he passionately reminded Jackson of how loyally he had followed him to war, how he had fought, never tired, and how he had served the general and therefore his country. He hadn’t deserved to go home and discover that he had no home. He also informed him at the time that he’d support him in any endeavor—except for an all-out war with the Indians. Jackson had appeared angry at first, but Jarrett didn’t care. And in the end Jarrett was glad to realize he had behaved in exactly the manner the general had taught him—he had stood his ground. While he was still speaking, Jackson had been filling out the papers to assure that the land held by Sean McKenzie and family was properly deeded. “My young sir!” Jackson told him, standing tall to offer him the documents. “I am sorry that we can no longer be comrades-at-arms, but you are a man I would call friend nonetheless, for honesty and courage are virtues I cherish. We shall agree to disagree, but I’d never so dishonor a soldier as I have so unintentionally done you. I owe you better, young man.”

  “I’m seeking nothing but what is mine.”

  “If you discover something else should be yours, let me know.”

  Jarrett gripped his hand and met his steady eyes. He smiled after a moment. They had agreed to disagree. But he would respect Jackson all of his life; fight for him whenever he could.

  That night, at a dance in the old city, Jarrett met Lisa. To the tunes of five fiddles they danced in an old coquina-shell mansion built by a Spanish don years before. Lisa spoke about the territory, about the travels into the interior she had taken with her father. She talked about the bays and the crystal springs. About the colorful birds, the exotic plants. The feeling of being alive and alone in an Eden lit only by the stars.

  He found himself staying in the town. Walking the streets of the city, staring at the never-breached walls of the Castillo de San Marcos.

  He wouldn’t fight the Indians, but he would translate. He stayed on.

  The old alliances from the Creek War were now gone. Many of the Red Sticks from the earlier war had come to peaceful terms with the whites.

  But some Red Sticks had remained hostile. And some of the “civilized” Lower Creeks had come upon their more militant distant kin and become more militant as well, willing to fight the Americans who had cost them their lands once and were ready to do so again. As the Creeks—Lower and Upper—moved into the Floridas, displaced by their previous wars, they joined with those who had come before them and the remnants of tribes native to the peninsula. They were all to become known as cimarrones, renegades. Seminoles.

  Some Indians managed to hold on to lands in northern Florida, lands deep in hammocks, hidden away, and far enough from white settlements. But for the most part the bands had been pushed south of St. Augustine on the east coast and far south of Pensacola on the west.

  Jackson faced tremendous problems before it was all over. He had been sent to fight Indians. He had attacked Spanish positions. The English and the Spaniards were up in arms again. Members of Congress rained down abuse on the general as well. John C. Calhoun, secretary of war, was furious with Jackson. John Quincy Adams, secretary of state, defended Jackson, and was given the task of smoothing over all that had happened by President Monroe.

  In 1821 an agreement was ratified between Spain and the United States of America. The U.S. would take on a multitude of Spanish debts to citizens of both countries, and the eastern boundary line of Mexico was also decided, with the U.S. giving up any claim to Texas. Andrew Jackson returned to Florida and received title to the Floridas, East and West, at Pensacola on July 17, 1821, and became the first territorial governor.

  Americans began flocking over the border.

  Jarrett called on his old friend and commander once again. Like everyone else he wanted land. His own.

  Jackson, anxious to see the settlement of the new American territory, was ready to listen to Jarrett’s request, and ready to grant him what he could. He would be happy to give Jarrett title to vast acreage in his control, with one catch: It neighbored directly on Indian territory. It lay eastward from the port at Tampa Bay, a savage country bordering rough, wild land that the Indians had been free to take. In 1821 these regions were of little interest to other whites.

  Jarrett didn’t care how wild or savage other men might consider the place. Sean had spent years teaching him the value of land, and Jarrett had learned his lesson well. He also knew the Florida peninsula better than almost any other man alive, since he had traversed it with both Andrew Jackson and his scouts and surveyors and his own adopted family—which included men without university educations, but the innate common sense and natural ability to blaze trails through any wilderness and discover the means to survive—and prosper—within it.

  That seemed a long time ago now, a very long time. Jackson had formally taken hold of Florida, but soon after he had left the state. William P. Duval had become territorial governor, done well with the job, and kept confidence with the Indians, and matters had remained somewhat stable. John Eaton had then been appointed to the office. He had taken his sweet time coming to Florida and had arrived just in time to find the Indian situation exploding. Ole Hickory himself was sitting in the White House, and if Jarrett knew the old warrior at all, he knew that the days—maybe the years—stretching ahead of them were going to be brutal ones. Andy Jackson had always believed in Indian removal.

  The Florida Indians didn’t want to be removed.

  Jarrett stared at his brother. James stood near the water, watching him, hands idly folded at his back, striking, handsome, obviously Indian, obviously white. He could have been part of either world, and he had chosen his place among his mother’s people. But he had never broken his bonds with his brother or with other whites he had determined to call friends. Like their father he had the ability to judge a man not by his color, ancestry or creed, but by what he was within his own heart.

  “Dear God, but this is bad. There’s always been trouble. Always. But now, we’re at war,” Jarrett muttered hollowly.

  “We’ve been at war before,” James said. “And this war will be like other wars. Some men will seek peace. Some Indians will fight with the white men. Some will fight against them. Win or lose, we will lose. I didn’t attack Dade, and I didn’t fight with Osceola. But I understand why they fought.”

  “I learned in Tampa that General Clinch was out there somewhere. He was on his way to see that the Indians were removed at the same time Dade was being ambushed. There will be more federal troops coming down as well. Militia groups are rising up right and left. The whites are outraged.”

  “You refused to fight us?” James asked.

  “They knew that I’d refuse.”

  James shrugged and walked to the log, taking a position beside Jarrett.

  “You’ve never broken a treaty with any of your Creek, Seminole, or Mikasuki brothers,” James told him. “Hell, you’ve never even broken your word. And I didn’t have anything to do with the massacre of Dade and his troops, nor have I burned any white farmhouses or stolen any goods. We’re at war—yet you and I have a faith that we keep with each other.”

  �
��Yes,” Jarrett agreed, “but I have taken up arms against some Red Sticks, I did fight with Andy Jackson, once.”

  James grinned. “Ah, yes, but even Osceola has forgiven you for that now.”

  Jarrett shrugged at the comment. “James, though you are capable of seeing that many whites are good men, not so many whites are capable of telling the differences among Indians.”

  “I’m well aware of that. And though I committed no atrocities, Jarrett, you have to understand—I cannot condemn the warriors who believe that they must fight or else find themselves dead, betrayed, and completely at the white man’s mercy. The white military have swept in often enough to decimate entire villages, you know that. I have seen men thrive on the butchery of children.”

  Jarrett felt a burning sensation in the pit of his stomach and he straightened his shoulders and stared up at the sky. He did know too damned many whites who thought the only good Indian was a dead Indian—and the Indian’s age or gender didn’t mean a thing. Little Indians grew into big, tomahawk-carrying Indians—or so the philosophy went. Thank God there were enough rational people in the United States to protest senseless slaughter, or else the atrocities committed might be so fierce that no native population could survive.

  “What do we do?” James asked Jarrett softly.

  “Do?” Jarrett murmured. He stretched out his fingers, then folded them tightly together and looked at his brother. “Do? I’m not in this war.”

  “They’ll make you be in this war,” James said.

  His brother was right. He still wanted to deny it.

  “I have refused to take command of any troops,” Jarrett said flatly.

  “They will demand that you negotiate and parley with our leaders,” James said.

  “I will do that—but I will not take up arms.”