This by-play was of short duration. Thompson could endure the suspense no longer.
"Tell Onopa," said he to the interpreter, "that the council awaits his answer."
The interpreter did as commanded.
"I have but one answer to make," replied the taciturn king, without deigning to rise from his seat; "I am content with my present home; I am not going to leave it."
A burst of applause from the patriots followed this declaration.
Perhaps these were the most popular words that old Onopa had ever uttered. From that moment he was possessed of real kingly power, and might command in his nation.
I looked round the circle of the chiefs. A smile lit up the gentlemanly features of Holata Mico; the grim face of Hoitle-mattee gleamed with joy: the "Alligator," "Cloud," and Arpiucki exhibited more frantic signs of their delight; and even the thick lips of Abram were drawn flat over his gums, displaying his double tier of ivories in a grin of triumphant satisfaction.
On the other hand, the Omatlas and their party wore black looks. Their gloomy glances betokened their discontent; and from their gestures and att.i.tudes, it was evident that one and all of them were suffering under serious apprehension.
They had cause. They were no longer suspected, no longer traitors only attainted; their treason was now patent--it had been declared.
It was fortunate for them that Fort King was so near--well that they stood in the presence of that embattled line. They might need its bayonets to protect them.
The commissioner had by this time lost command of his temper. Even official dignity gave way, and he now descended to angry exclamations, threats, and bitter invective.
In the last he was personal, calling the chiefs by name, and charging them with faithlessness and falsehood. He accused Onopa of having already signed the treaty of the Oclawaha; and when the latter denied having done so, the commissioner told him he _lied_. [Again historically true--the very word used!] Even the savage did not reciprocate the vulgar accusation, but treated it with silent disdain.
After spending a portion of his spleen upon various chiefs of the council, he turned towards the front and in a loud, angry tone cried out: "It is _you_ who have done this--_you_, Powell!"
I started at the word. I looked to see who was addressed--who it was that bore that well-known name.
The commissioner guided my glance both by look and gesture. He was standing with arm outstretched, and finger pointed in menace. His eye was bent upon the young war-chief--upon Osceola!
All at once a light broke upon me. Already strange memories had been playing with my fancy; I thought that through the vermilion paint I saw features I had seen before.
Now I recognised them. In the young Indian hero, I beheld the friend of my boyhood--the preserver of my life--the brother of Maumee.
Note 1. Osceola--written Oceola, a.s.seola, a.s.sula, Ha.s.seola, and in a dozen other forms of orthography--in the Seminole language, signifies the Rising Sun.
CHAPTER TWENTY NINE.
THE ULTIMATUM.
Yes--Powell and Osceola were one; the boy, as I had predicted, now developed into the splendid man--a hero.
Under the impulsive influences of former friendship and present admiration, I could have rushed forward and flung my arms around him; but it was neither time nor place for the display of such childish enthusiasm. Etiquette--duty forbade it; I kept my ground, and, as well as I could, the composure of my countenance, though I was unable to withdraw my eyes from what had now become doubly an object of admiration.
There was little time for reflection. The pause created by the rude speech of the commissioner had pa.s.sed; the silence was again broken-- this time by Osceola himself.
The young chief, perceiving that it was he who had been singled out, stepped forth a pace or two, and stood confronting the commissioner, his eye fixed upon him, in a glance, mild, yet firm and searching.
"Are you addressing me?" he inquired in a tone that evinced not the slightest anger or excitement.
"Who else than you?" replied the commissioner abruptly. "I called you by name--Powell."
"My name is _not_ Powell."
"Not Powell?"
"No!" answered the Indian, raising his voice to its loudest pitch, and looking with proud defiance at the commissioner. "You may call me Powell, if you please, _you, General Wiley Thompson_,"--slowly and with a sarcastic sneer, he p.r.o.nounced the full t.i.tles of the agent; "but know, sir, that I scorn the white man"s baptism. I am an Indian; I am the child of my mother [Note 1]; my name is Osceola."
The commissioner struggled to control his pa.s.sion. The sneer at his plebeian cognomen stung him to the quick, for Powell understood enough of English nomenclature to know that "Thompson" was not an aristocratic appellation; and the sarcasm cut keenly.
He was angry enough to have ordered the instant execution of Osceola, had it been in his power; but it was not. Three hundred warriors trod the ground, each grasping his ready rifle, quite a match for the troops at the post; besides the commissioner knew that such rash indulgence of spleen might not be relished by his government. Even the Ringgolds--his dear friends and ready advisers--with all the wicked interest they might have in the downfall of the Rising Sun, were wiser than to counsel a proceeding like that.
Instead of replying, therefore to the taunt of the young chief, the commissioner addressed himself once more to the council.
"I want no more talking," said he with the air of a man speaking to inferiors; "we have had enough already. Your talk has been that of children, of men without wisdom or faith: I will no longer listen to it.
"Hear, then, what your Great Father says, and what he has sent me to say to you. He has told me to place before you this paper." The speaker produced a fold of parchment, opening it as he proceeded: "It is the treaty of Oclawaha. Most of you have already signed it. I ask you now to step forward and confirm your signatures."
"I have not signed it," said Onopa, urged to the declaration by Osceola, who stood by behind him. "I shall not sign it now. Others may act as they please; I shall not go from my home. I shall not leave Florida."
"Nor I," added Hoitle-mattee, in a determined tone. "I have fifty kegs of powder: so long as a grain of it remains unburned, I shall not be parted from my native land."
"His sentiments are mine," added Holata.
"And mine!" exclaimed Arpiucki.
"And mine?" echoed Poshalla (the dwarf), Coa Hajo, Cloud, and the negro Abram.
The patriots alone spoke; the traitors said not a word. The signing was a test too severe for them. They had all signed it before at the Oclawaha; but now, in the presence of the nation, they dared not confirm it. They feared even to advocate what they had done. They remained silent.
"Enough!" said Osceola, who had not yet publicly expressed his opinion, but who was now expected to speak, and was attentively regarded by all.
"The chiefs have declared themselves; they refuse to sign. It is the voice of the nation that speaks through its chiefs, and the people will stand by their word. The agent has called us children and fools; it is easy to give names. We know that there are fools among us, and children too, and worse than both--_traitors_. But there are men, and some as true and brave as the agent himself. He wants no more talk with us--be it so; we have no more for _him_--he has our answer. He may stay or go.
"Brothers!" continued the speaker, facing to the chiefs and warriors, and as if disregarding the presence of the whites, "you have done right; you have spoken the will of the nation, and the people applaud. It is false that we wish to leave our homes and go west. They who say so are deceivers, and do not speak our mind. We have no desire for this _fine land_ to which they would send us. It is not as fair as our own. It is a wild desert, where in summer the springs dry up and water is hard to find. From thirst the hunter often dies by the way. In winter, the leaves fall from the trees, snow covers the ground, frost stiffens the clay, and chills the bodies of men, till they shiver in pain--the whole country looks as though the earth were dead. Brothers! we want no cold country like that; we like our own land better. If it be too hot, we have the shade of the live-oak, the big laurel [Note 2], and the n.o.ble palm-tree. Shall we forsake the land of the palm? No! Under its shadow have we lived: under its shadow let us die!"
Up to this point the interest had been increasing. Indeed, ever since the appearance of Osceola, the scene had been deeply impressive--never to be effaced from the memory, though difficult to be described in words. A painter, and he alone, might have done justice to such a picture.
It was full of points, thoroughly and thrillingly dramatic; the excited agent on one side, the calm chiefs on the other; the contrast of emotions; the very women who had left their unclad little ones to gambol on the gra.s.s and dally with the flowers, while they themselves, with the warriors pressed closely around the council, under the most intense, yet subdued, interest; catching every look as it gleamed from the countenance, and hanging on every word as it fell from the lips of Osceola. The latter--his eye calm, serious, fixed--his att.i.tude manly, graceful, erect--his thin, close-pressed lip, indicative of the "mind made up"--his firm, yet restrained, tread, free from all stride or swagger--his dignified and composed bearing--his perfect and solemn silence, except during his sententious talk--the head thrown backward, the arms firmly folded on the protruding chest--all, all instantaneously changing, as if by an electric shock, whenever the commissioner stated a proposition that he knew to be false or sophistic. At such times the fire-flash of his indignant eye--the withering scorn upon his upcurled lip--the violent and oft repeated stamping of his foot--his clenched hand, and the rapid gesticulation of his uplifted arm--the short, quick breathing and heaving of his agitated bosom, like the rushing wind and swelling wave of the tempest-tossed ocean, and these again subsiding into the stillness of melancholy, and presenting only that aspect and att.i.tude of repose wherewith the ancient statuary loved to invest the G.o.ds and heroes of Greece.
The speech of Osceola brought matters to a crisis. The commissioner"s patience was exhausted. The time was ripe to deliver the dire threat-- the ultimatum--with which the president had armed him; and, not bating one jot of his rude manner, he p.r.o.nounced the infamous menace:
"You will not sign?--you will not consent to go? I say, then you _must_. War will be declared against you--troops will enter your land-- you will be forced from it at the point of the bayonet."
"Indeed!" exclaimed Osceola, with a derisive laugh. "Then be it so!" he continued. "Let war be declared! Though we love peace, we fear not war. We know your strength: your people outnumber us by millions; but were there as many more of them, they will not compel us to submit to injustice. We have made up our minds to endure death before dishonour.
Let war be declared! Send your troops into our land; perhaps they will not force us from it so easily as you imagine. To your muskets we will oppose our rifles, to your bayonets, our tomahawks; and your starched soldiers will be met, face to face, by the warriors of the Seminole.
Let war be declared! We are ready for its tempest. The hail may rattle, and the flowers be crushed; but the strong oak of the forest will lift its head to the sky and the storm, towering and unscathed."