The Crayon Papers

feelings of a man that loves his country.”
    As Florida had but recently been erected into a territory, everything as yet was in rude and simple style. The governor, to make himself acquainted with the Indians, and to be near at hand to keep an eye upon them, fixed his residence at Tallahassee, near the Fowel towns, inhabited by the Mickasookies. His government palace for a time was a mere log house, and he lived on hunters’ fare. The village of Neamathla was but about three miles off, and thither the governor occasionally rode, to visit the old chieftain. In one of these visits he found Neamathla seated in his wigwam, in the center of the village, surrounded by his warriors. The governor had brought him some liquor as a present, but it mounted quickly into his brain and rendered him quite boastful and belligerent. The theme ever uppermost in his mind was the treaty with the whites. “It was true,” he said, “the red men had made such a treaty, but the white men had not acted up to it. The red men had received none of the money and the cattle that had been promised them: the treaty, therefore, was at an end, and they did not mean to be bound by it.”
    Governor Duval calmly represented to him that the time appointed in the treaty for the payment and delivery of the money and the cattle had not yet arrived. This the old chieftain knew full well, but he chose, for the moment, to pretend ignorance. He kept on drinking and talking, his voice growing louder and louder, until it resounded all over the village. He held in his hand a long knife, with which he had been rasping tobacco; this he kept flourishing backward and forward, as he talked, by way of giving effect to his words, brandishing it at times within an inch of the governor’s throat. He concluded his tirade by repeating that the country belonged to the red men, and that sooner than give it up his bones and the bones of his people should bleach upon its soil.
    Duval saw that the object of all this bluster was to see whether he could be intimidated. He kept his eye, therefore, fixed steadily on the chief, and the moment he concluded with his menace, seized him by the bosom of his hunting shirt, and clinching his other fist:
    “I’ve heard what you have said,” replied he. “You have made a treaty, yet you say your bones shall bleach before you comply with it. As sure as there is a sun in heaven, your bones shall bleach, if you do not fulfill every article of that treaty I I’ll let you know that I am first here, and will see that you do your duty!”
    Upon this, the old chieftain threw himself back, burst into a fit of laughing, and declared that all he had said was in joke. The governor suspected, however, that there was a grave meaning at the bottom of this jocularity.
    For two months, everything went on smoothly: the Indians repaired daily to the log-cabin palace of the governor, at Tallahassee, and appeared perfectly contented. All at once they ceased their visits, and for three or four days not one was to be seen. Governor Duval began to apprehend that some mischief was brewing. On the evening of the fourth day a chief named Yellow-Hair, a resolute, intelligent fellow, who had always evinced an attachment for the governor, entered his cabin about twelve o’clock at night, and informed him that between four and five hundred warriors, painted and decorated, were assembled to hold a secret war-talk at Neamathla’s town. He had slipped off to give intelligence, at the risk of his life, and hastened back lest his absence should be discovered.
    Governor Duval passed an anxious night after this intelligence. He knew the talent and the daring character of Neamathla; he recollected the threats he had thrown out; he reflected that about eighty white families were scattered widely apart, over a great extent of country, and might be swept away at once, should the Indians, as he feared, determine to clear the country. That he did not exaggerate the dangers of the case has been proved by the horrid scenes of Indian warfare that have since desolated that devoted region. After a night of sleepless cogitation, Duval determined on a measure suited to his prompt and resolute character. Knowing the admiration of the savages for personal courage, he determined, by a sudden surprise, to endeavor to overawe and check them. It was hazarding much; but where so many lives were in jeopardy, he felt bound to incur the hazard.
    Accordingly, on the next morning, he set off