Citizens Creek

by Lalita Tademy

  After a last delivery, Cow Tom and Harry returned outdoors. They skirted the slaughter ground, avoiding the soldiers’ corpses, resigned to leave them where they lay until morning, and found a remote spot, not too far from the protective walls of the fort but not too close to the infirmary, and spread their blankets for a second time that night. One kept watch while the other slept. Although the straggler Seminoles left behind seemed passive in their decision to Remove peaceably, neither Cow Tom nor Harry had desire to be caught by surprise a second time.

  Come morning, they tackled the gruesome task of burial. There were eleven in all to be put to ground, including the dragoon the general sent with them from Fort King, and an unlucky soldier from the infirmary who spat up blood before his choked breath stopped in the middle of the night. Billy helped them dig, and Harry said some impressive words over the bodies, but Cow Tom was so tired he could barely remember from one moment to the next. Without the dragoon as escort, they knew they had to return directly to Fort King, along the military trail. They couldn’t risk being caught alone, two slaves with neither Indian nor white to claim them, vulnerable to slave catchers, vulnerable to hostiles, vulnerable to road thieves.

  And how could Cow Tom maneuver a trip to Fort Volusia now, to search for his mother? He feared that opportunity as vanished as Osceola.

  Chapter 10

  COW TOM AND Harry kept mostly to the main military road, ducking into the woods if they heard a traveler. Often, on the trail, Cow Tom touched the makeshift bandage on his missing ear to reassure himself he was still alive. They arrived back at Fort Brooke in less than a day.

  Cow Tom barely took the time to knock the dust of the trail from his moccasins before rushing to the general’s office. The general was a volatile man, lately more paranoid than ever, and Cow Tom didn’t want any parts of their story to drift back to the commander without explanation. When he entered the room Jesup used for business, the general sat behind his desk, cleaning the blade of his small boot knife. Though all the windows were open, the room carried a musty smell, and Cow Tom took a deep breath before announcing himself.

  “Are the chiefs still ready to Remove?” the general asked, his tone mild. He didn’t bother to look up from his papers.

  “No, sir,” said Cow Tom.

  The general gave full attention then, and when he noticed the crude bandage where Cow Tom’s ear used to be, his manner changed. “Egads, man, what happened to you?”

  “Osceola,” Cow Tom said. He hurried to share the worst news. “The Seminoles escaped. Almost all. And ten soldiers killed.”

  The general pounded his desk, his eyes gone flinty. “How?”

  Cow Tom launched into an accounting of the twenty-four hours spent at Fort Brooke, the lack of sentries, the measles outbreak, the hoarded rations, the midnight raid by Osceola and his braves, Micanopy’s change of heart, the slashing of his ear, the looting of the fort, the killing of the soldiers, the few straggler Seminoles, the confounding pardon of himself and Harry Island at Osceola’s hands, the infirmary, even young Billy. He waited for the general’s reaction.

  “You and Harry Island were the only healthy men to escape—not by hiding or throwing in your lot with the soldiers, but by . . . ?” He stopped to light his cigar, and let his thought trail off. The general’s icy calm was not a good sign.

  “It was whim,” Cow Tom said. “We’ve no notion why he spared us.”

  “Remove the bandage.”

  “Sir?”

  “The bandage.” The general moved fast for a big man, around the desk and at Cow Tom’s side in a flash. He ripped the bandage from his head and examined the wound, poking at the exposed flesh. “So,” he said, “it’s real.”

  Cow Tom knew better than to complain, though the general’s touch set off a deepening round of the stinging pain, and bleeding started afresh. He reattached the bandage as best he could.

  “Osceola—” Cow Tom began, but the general interrupted.

  “A year ago, I started out with over seven hundred Creek warriors to help round the Seminoles up for Removal.”

  Cow Tom had no idea where the general might be going with this line of thought. When the general ranted, it was always best to stay silent until he calmed. But when the general went cold, it sometimes served better to introduce some new consideration before too late. He decided to respond. “Yes, sir, I rode east alongside them.”

  “We thought to use the natural bad blood between the tribes, and match fierceness of Seminoles with fierceness of Creeks. But that is not the way it turned out.”

  Cow Tom projected his listening face, assumed his attentive, ready-to-be-taught demeanor.

  “I find the Creek warrior doesn’t have much stomach for the job we have here. Even toward a natural enemy. So the Creek warriors are suddenly tired. The Creek warriors are suddenly sick. The Creek warriors can’t find the Seminole camps or their trails. The Creek warriors drink so much they prove useless in the field. The numbers dwindle until there are only a hundred, not seven hundred. Like a fever, this attitude spreads. Like a contagion. And before you know it, everybody catches the fever. Instead of the discipline of a soldier, this weakness, this fever. From soldier on the horse to tracker and translator in the field. More and more, I’m forced to use non-Indians to round up Seminoles. Why is that?”

  Cow Tom wanted a drink, something to steady himself. He pushed away the thought of the families of conscripted Creek warriors held hostage in camps somewhere as guarantee of their good behavior. He sent out another silent prayer about Amy and brought himself back to face the general.

  Jesup jabbed a finger in Cow Tom’s chest, his face just inches from Cow Tom’s nose. “Are you in cahoots with Osceola?”

  “No, sir.”

  “I ask again. Did you help the Seminoles escape?”

  “No, sir. We didn’t expect Osceola, but there he was. We counted on the Seminoles to Remove peaceably. You saw them sign the agreement at Capitulation. They swore to Remove when they turned themselves in.”

  “I send three to Fort Brooke and only two return. Both Creeks. Black Creeks. At final count we had the main chiefs, the war near over.”

  “Osceola took my ear,” said Cow Tom. He fought the assault of the general’s withering gaze. “Sir. I’m serving the right side. I serve you.”

  The general calmed a bit and paced the room. Cow Tom didn’t think the matter finished, but Jesup appeared to have moved on.

  “We had them. We had most all in one place waiting for the damned boats!”

  “Osceola brought hundreds of braves.”

  The general fixed Cow Tom with a stony stare. “So he forced them. Osceola forced the Seminoles to break pledge?”

  “Micanopy maybe would stand Removal, but found his advisers primed to join Osceola. So all followed, except a handful.” Cow Tom judged the moment right. Now or never. “They were angry their Negroes were separated from them at Fort Volusia, and the agreement broken. It might be helpful to send me to Fort Volusia to sense the mood there.”

  The general didn’t respond. “And my soldiers at Fort Brooke?” he asked.

  “We buried eleven before we left,” said Cow Tom. “One from measles, the rest at Osceola’s hands.”

  The general continued his pacing of the width of the small room.

  Cow Tom made one last attempt. “Some of the Negroes at Fort Volusia lived alongside Osceola and Micanopy for years. They’d know hideouts, habits. I could learn much.”

  The general didn’t bother to disguise his distaste, suspicion written plainly on his face. “I’ll never trust the word of an Indian again,” the general said.

  Cow Tom could have pointed out that both the general and the Seminoles had broken trust in equal measure, but the general was in no mood to listen. Did he include Creeks as well as Seminoles in his new resolve against all things Indian? And what about Cow Tom himself? D
id the general consider him Creek or Negro, or did his classification vary depending on circumstance?

  “The sooner we get every Seminole loaded on boats west,” the general said, “the better.” His voice turned cold. “With or without the Negroes. That’s my job. Measles or no, we tighten security on all forts. We will find Osceola and Micanopy and the rest, and when we do, we’ll burn their camps to the ground until they have nowhere else to turn. Most sold their horses and cattle to us before they played their little trick, so their livelihood is gone. Mayhaps this time they drew some months’ rations, stole government supplies, and left me an empty fort, but I promise, that will not repeat.”

  There was nothing more to say. Of one thing Cow Tom was sure. The general had been humiliated, and someone would have to pay.

  Chapter 11

  LESS THAN SIX weeks after the Osceola affair, in a routine roundup of a dozen starving Seminoles in the woods, mostly women and children, one of the smaller captured boys threatened that warriors “from the big village by the lake” would rescue them. Cow Tom’s further interrogation was fruitful.

  “I might have found Micanopy’s camp,” Cow Tom reported to the general. “Inland. West of Fort Brook, deep in the heart of the Everglades.”

  “Did the boy call him Micanopy by name?” the general asked.

  “No, but he called him the fat chief. My bet is Micanopy.”

  The general played with the idea in silence. Cow Tom’s ear, or what remained of it, was on the mend, at least enough that he wasn’t scratching or rubbing or thinking about the itchy nub every minute, but it bothered him now. Still, he waited patiently. A capture this large would surely win back the general’s trust, and he could search for his mother in the camp.

  “Worth the gamble,” said the general. “We take a contingent and ride out in the morning.” He didn’t hide his scrutiny of Cow Tom. “Can you scout us there solo?”

  Harry was already assigned as translator elsewhere, upstate. Cow Tom would have welcomed his friend’s company and counsel, but in truth, a part of him was greatly relieved Harry wouldn’t witness his bald attempts to please the general.

  “No issue,” said Cow Tom.

  They traveled for days, soldiers and horses and scouts, to get to the area the boy described, through scattered pinewoods and intermittent swampy ground. On the night of the third day, the rain came in force, and they camped out under dripping palmettos, only to rise early the next morning for a predawn start. The sky was clear, and a cutting wind from the northeast brought cold and foreboding. They tromped through shallow puddles from yesterday’s downpours, and miles of fresh, gummy mud sucked at their boots, slowing their forward progress to almost a crawl in the worst of the swampy stretches. After three miles of marching, they approached a wide stretch of boggy marsh, and just beyond, elevated, a dense cypress hammock. They led their horses in.

  The mud and water were knee deep, with sharp, rank saw grass growing five or six feet high. Unless they found a different way, less marshy, the horses were a liability in this terrain, bogged to their bellies after a few steps and useless. They needed to leave their horses and supplies behind, all save guns and knives. There was no way to get the horses through the swamps, and the general ordered them pulled back to firmer ground. The soldiers dismounted, awaiting orders.

  The general chose two raw volunteers for horse detail, along with Cow Tom. “Stay back with the horses,” he ordered. He prepared to slog ahead on foot with the rest of the military men.

  “I can survey,” Cow Tom quickly offered. Cow Tom wanted the credit for finding the Seminole village, and an acknowledgment of his loyalty from the general, and how could he get that guarding horses and baggage? But the general seemed unmoved. “The boy put the village in the middle of the hammock,” Cow Tom added. “But could be a trick. No need to risk all without a further look.”

  The general nodded, but assigned two kersey-wool-outfitted dragoons to shadow Cow Tom, an advance party of three. All these months of faithful service, Cow Tom thought, and still the general doubted him.

  Cow Tom was first to plunge into the knee-high sludgy waters, and quickly, the mud shifted under his feet until he was almost up to his waist. He held his muzzle-loading flintlock musket and powder container aloft over his head, so heavy that a sharp burst of pain shot through his arms and shoulders, but he pushed forward with as much speed as he could marshal. He was well aware that his musket was only good for close-in combat, less accurate than what most armed Seminole braves carried, their smaller-bored rifles better for marksmanship at long distance. Unlike the Seminole braves, only one in twenty of the soldiers had rifles—men of rank like the general—but there would still be hell to pay for giving even a musket up to carelessness. Cow Tom slogged his way slowly through the slimy black ooze and muck of the swamp, at one point able to gain purchase only by putting one foot precariously upon a clump of saw grass roots and feeling ahead for another such clump. The going was slow and exhausting, but the three men made their way up the slanted slope to the hammock.

  Once on the surer footing of the raised ground, Cow Tom took the lead, with the two dragoons on his heels. He was a decent tracker, not the best, not the worst, but as they drew farther into the cypress hammock toward higher ground, the Indian signs would have been unmistakable even to a novice. Grass and mud pounded by moccasins, hides and bones of slaughtered cattle, footprints going hither and thither. The hammock was only three or four hundred yards long, and opened to a prairie, fairly dry, with both cattle and Indian ponies grazing. In the distance was the smoke of multiple campfires. For so many cattle and ponies to graze, there had to be another entranceway to the village.

  Cow Tom stuck to the dense trees, a dark line of shadowy cypresses, where gently swaying Spanish moss was the only moving thing. The settlement seemed large, several hundred at least, and bringing so many in for Removal would be a challenge for the relatively small number of military, but Cow Tom was satisfied he’d found the community. He swung wide of the village, and within the hour, found another swamp on the far end, but not so deep, passable for horses and men in either direction. They’d entered on the back side of the village, and the advance party set out to return to the general with the news, following the higher ground out and across the prairie, circling around until they rejoined the military party from behind.

  “I found the village, sir,” Cow Tom reported back to the general, “and there’s a better way in, over drier ground.”

  The general looked to the dragoons for corroboration.

  “We saw it too, sir,” said one of the soldiers.

  The general regarded Cow Tom, his eyebrows knit in assessment, although the hardness of his features remained intact. “Well done,” he said. He turned to the rest of the men. “Mount up,” he ordered. “Follow Cow Tom. We take the village.”

  Cow Tom made his face a mask as he rode to the front of the phalanx of soldiers, processing the while his surprise. He’d received a rare compliment from the general, in front of the other men. Maybe his favored status could be restored.

  On horseback, Cow Tom led the men away from the deepest swamp and through the woods abutting the prairie. They made good time, both cavalry and army together, picking their way through the wooded terrain, until they were at the lip of the tree line, still providing cover, but within sight of the village.

  “Torches,” called the general.

  A dragoon quickly produced five torches, branches wrapped in cloth and soaked in kerosene, and awaited his orders. This was the part that disturbed Cow Tom most, watching helpless as the general’s men burned down Seminole villages. He usually hung about on the fringes, back turned, waiting for the deed to be finished. His usefulness came afterward, in translation duties with the victims, newly homeless, stunned, and defeated. He explained the terms and mechanics of Removal to them in Miccosukee as they stood or squatted in the midst of scorched, choking air
, their homes now nothing but smoldering ash. After, he rounded up confiscated cattle and ponies to drive back to the fort.

  Cow Tom backed away, separating himself, closer to the tree line, and waited.

  “Formation,” ordered the general, and the men lined up, ready for the charge to storm the village. They needed little instruction, having played out the scenario many times in the last few weeks.

  The general called out the two dragoons who’d accompanied Cow Tom in the advance party, and two others selected at random, and he scanned the other men around him. His eyes, bright and filled with purpose, settled on Cow Tom.

  “You found them,” the general said. “You burn it down.”

  This wasn’t part of the bargain. Cow Tom wanted recognition for finding the settlement, not responsibility for destroying it. His own mother might be in there. But the general’s unyielding gaze was upon him.

  He accepted one of the torches from the dragoon, and several sulfur friction matches, but didn’t let go of his musket, a clumsy undertaking. Cow Tom had seen this process enough times to know the sequence, but he’d never before set flame. They made a quick plan, who would take which part of the village, and mounted, the five of them, and set the torches alight. Cow Tom dug his heels into his horse’s sides and they were in motion. He rode at something less than a gallop with his blazing torch, and peeled away from the others toward his assignment, the southwest corner, all the while plotting a way out, how not to be a part of burning the village down. Out of the general’s sight, he would go through the motions, he promised himself, nothing more. He dallied as much as he dared.

  The settlement was larger than he initially thought. In scouting, they’d skirted around only half of the periphery, but there were hundreds living here, a hut city of open-sided housing on stilts, with raised platforms and roofs thatched with palmetto leaves, supported by poles. On horseback, Cow Tom watched two plumes of dense, dark smoke, one crosswise to his position and another off to his right. The other dragoons had done their work, flames beginning to rise above the palmetto roofs. It sickened him, the transformation, the village alive with upheaval, like a disturbed anthill. Panic let loose, Seminole women in tunics running, confused children wailing, already alert to the destruction even before the general’s scream of “Charge” and the sharp bugle blasts behind him.