6: Part 1: Chapter VI
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While the mutiny was brewing, one La Roche Ferriere had been sent out as
an agent or emissary among the more distant tribes. Sagacious, bold, and
restless, he pushed his way from town to town, and pretended to have
reached the mysterious mountains of Appalache. He sent to the fort
mantles woven with feathers, quivers covered with choice furs, arrows
tipped with gold, wedges of a green stone like beryl or emerald, and
other trophies of his wanderings. A gentleman named Grotaut took up the
quest, and penetrated to the dominions of Hostaqua, who, it was
pretended, could muster three or four thousand warriors, and who
promised, with the aid of a hundred arquebusiers, to conquer all the
kings of the adjacent mountains, and subject them and their gold mines
to the rule of the French. A humbler adventurer was Pierre Gambie, a
robust and daring youth, who had been brought up in the household of
Coligny, and was now a soldier under Laudonniere. The latter gave him
leave to trade with the Indians,—a privilege which he used so well that
he grew rich with his traffic, became prime favorite with the chief of
the island of Edelano, married his daughter, and, in his absence,
reigned in his stead. But, as his sway verged towards despotism, his
subjects took offence, and split his head with a hatchet.
During the winter, Indians from the neighborhood of Cape Canaveral
brought to the fort two Spaniards, wrecked fifteen years before on the
southwestern extremity of the peninsula. They were clothed like the
Indians,—in other words, were not clothed at all,—and their uncut
hair streamed loose down their backs. They brought strange tales of
those among whom they had dwelt. They told of the King of Cabs, on whose
domains they had been wrecked, a chief mighty in stature and in power.
In one of his villages was a pit, six feet deep and as wide as a
hogshead, filled with treasure gathered from Spanish wrecks on adjacent
reefs and keys. The monarch was a priest too, and a magician, with power
over the elements. Each year he withdrew from the public gaze to hold
converse in secret with supernal or infernal powers; and each year he
sacrificed to his gods one of the Spaniards whom the fortune of the sea
had cast upon his shores. The name of the tribe is preserved in that of
the river Caboosa. In close league with him was the mighty Oathcaqua,
dwelling near Cape Canaveral, who gave his daughter, a maiden of
wondrous beauty, in marriage to his great ally. But as the bride with
her bridesmaids was journeying towards Calos, escorted by a chosen band,
they were assailed by a wild and warlike race, inhabitants of an island
called Sarrope, in the midst of a lake, who put the warriors to flight,
bore the maidens captive to their watery fastness, espoused them all,
and, we are assured, "loved them above all measure."(15)
Outina, taught by Arlac the efficacy of the French fire-arms, begged for
ten arquebusiers to aid him on a new raid among the villages of Potanou,—again alluring his greedy allies by the assurance, that, thus
reinforced, he would conquer for them a free access to the phantom gold
mines of Appalache. Ottigny set forth on this fool's errand with thrice
the force demanded. Three hundred Thirnagoas and thirty Frenchmen took
up their march through the pine barrens. Outina's conjurer was of the
number, and had wellnigh ruined the enterprise. Kneeling on Ottigny's
shield, that he might not touch the earth, with hideous grimaces,
howlings, and contortions, he wrought himself into a prophetic frenzy,
and proclaimed to the astounded warriors that to advance farther would
be destruction.(16) Outina was for instant retreat, but Ottigny's
sarcasms shamed him into a show of courage. Again they moved forward,
and soon encountered Potanou with all his host.(17) The arquebuse did
its work,—panic, slaughter, and a plentiful harvest of scalps. But no
persuasion could induce Outina to follow up his victory. He went home to
dance round his trophies, and the French returned disgusted to Fort
Caroline.
And now, in ample measure, the French began to reap the harvest of their
folly. Conquest, gold, and military occupation had alone been their
aims. Not a rod of ground had been stirred with the spade. Their stores
were consumed, and the expected supplies had not come. The Indians, too,
were hostile. Satouriona hated them as allies of his enemies; and his
tribesmen, robbed and maltreated by the lawless soldiers, exulted in
their miseries. Yet in these, their dark and subtle neighbors, was their
only hope.
May-day came, the third anniversary of the day when Ribaut and his
companions, full of delighted anticipation, had first explored the
flowery borders of the St. John's. The contrast was deplorable; for
within the precinct of Fort Caroline a homesick, squalid band, dejected
and worn, dragged their shrunken limbs about the sun-scorched area, or
lay stretched in listless wretchedness under the shade of the barracks.
Some were digging roots in the forest, or gathering a kind of sorrel
upon the meadows. If they had had any skill in hunting and fishing, the
river and the woods would have supplied their needs; but in this point,
as in others, they were lamentably unfit for the work they had taken in
hand. "Our miserie," says Laudonniere, "was so great that one was found
that gathered up all the fish-bones that he could finde, which he dried
and beate into powder to make bread thereof. The effects of this hideous
famine appeared incontinently among us, for our bones eftsoones beganne
to cleave so neere unto the skinne, that the most part of the souldiers
had their skinnes pierced thorow with them in many partes of their
bodies." Yet, giddy with weakness, they dragged themselves in turn to
the top of St. John's Bluff, straining their eyes across the sea to
descry the anxiously expected sail.
Had Coligny left them to perish? Or had some new tempest of calamity,
let loose upon France, drowned the memory of their exile? In vain the
watchman on the hill surveyed the solitude of waters. A deep dejection
fell upon them,—a dejection that would have sunk to despair could
their eyes have pierced the future.
The Indians had left the neighborhood, but from time to time brought in
meagre supplies of fish, which they sold to the famished soldiers at
exorbitant prices. Lest they should pay the penalty of their extortion,
they would not enter the fort, but lay in their canoes in the river,
beyond gunshot, waiting for their customers to come out to them.
"Oftentimes," says Laudonniere, "our poor soldiers were constrained to
give away the very shirts from their backs to get one fish. If at any
time they shewed unto the savages the excessive price which they tooke,
these villaines would answere them roughly and churlishly: If thou make
so great account of thy marchandise, eat it, and we will eat our fish:
then fell they out a laughing, and mocked us with open throat."
The spring wore away, and no relief appeared. One thought now engrossed
the colonists, that of return to France. Vasseur's ship, the "Breton,"
still remained in the river, and they had also the Spanish brigantine
brought by the mutineers. But these vessels were insufficient, and they
prepared to build a new one. The energy of reviving hope lent new life
to their exhausted frames. Some gathered pitch in the pine forests; some
made charcoal; some cut and sawed timber. The maize began to ripen, and
this brought some relief; but the Indians, exasperated and greedy, sold
it with reluctance, and murdered two half-famished Frenchmen who
gathered a handful in the fields.
The colonists applied to Outina, who owed them two victories. The result
was a churlish message and a niggardly supply of corn, coupled with an
invitation to aid him against an insurgent chief, one Astina, the
plunder of whose villages would yield an ample supply. The offer was
accepted. Ottigny and Vasseur set out, but were grossly deceived, led
against a different enemy, and sent back empty-handed and half-starved.
They returned to the fort, in the words of Laudonniere, "angry and
pricked deepely to the quicke for being so mocked," and, joined by all
their comrades, fiercely demanded to be led against Outina, to seize
him, punish his insolence, and extort from his fears the supplies which
could not be looked for from his gratitude. The commandant was forced to
comply. Those who could bear the weight of their armor put it on,
embarked, to the number of fifty, in two barges, and sailed up the river
under Laudonniere himself. Having reached Outina's landing, they marched
inland, entered his village, surrounded his mud-plastered palace, seized
him amid the yells and howlings of his subjects, and led him prisoner to
their boats. Here, anchored in mid-stream, they demanded a supply of
corn and beans as the price of his ransom.
The alarm spread. Excited warriors, bedaubed with red, came thronging
from all his villages. The forest along the shore was full of them; and
the wife of the chief, followed by all the women of the place, uttered
moans and outcries from the strand. Yet no ransom was offered, since,
reasoning from their own instincts, they never doubted that, after the
price was paid, the captive would be put to death.
Laudonniere waited two days, and then descended the river with his
prisoner. In a rude chamber of Fort Caroline the sentinel stood his
guard, pike in hand, while before him crouched the captive chief, mute,
impassive, and brooding on his woes. His old enemy, Satouriona, keen as
a hound on the scent of prey, tried, by great offers, to bribe
Laudonniere to give Outina into his hands; but the French captain
refused, treated his prisoner kindly, and assured him of immediate
freedom on payment of the ransom.
Meanwhile his captivity was bringing grievous affliction on his
tribesmen; for, despairing of his return, they mustered for the election
of a new chief. Party strife ran high. Some were for a boy, his son, and
some for an ambitious kinsman. Outina chafed in his prison on learning
these dissentions; and, eager to convince his over-hasty subjects that
their chief still lived, he was so profuse of promises that he was again
embarked and carried up the river.
At no great distance from Lake George, a small affluent of the St.
John's gave access by water to a point within six French leagues of
Outina's principal town. The two barges, crowded with soldiers, and
bearing also the captive Outina, rowed up this little stream. Indians
awaited them at the landing, with gifts of bread, beans, and fish, and
piteous prayers for their chief, upon whose liberation they promised an
ample supply of corn. As they were deaf to all other terms, Laudonniere
yielded, released his prisoner, and received in his place two hostages,
who were fast bound in the boats. Ottigny and Arlac, with a strong
detachment of arquebusiers, went to receive the promised supplies, for
which, from the first, full payment in merchandise had been offered. On
their arrival at the village, they filed into the great central lodge,
within whose dusky precincts were gathered the magnates of the tribe.
Council-chamber, forum, banquet-hall, and dancing-hall all in one, the
spacious structure could hold half the population. Here the French made
their abode. With armor buckled, and arquebuse matches lighted, they
watched with anxious eyes the strange, dim scene, half revealed by the
daylight that streamed down through the hole at the apex of the roof.
Tall, dark forms stalked to and fro, with quivers at their backs, and
bows and arrows in their hands, while groups, crouched in the shadow
beyond, eyed the hated guests with inscrutable visages, and malignant,
sidelong eyes. Corn came in slowly, but warriors mustered fast. The
village without was full of them. The French officers grew anxious, and
urged the chiefs to greater alacrity in collecting the promised ransom.
The answer boded no good: "Our women are afraid when they see the
matches of your guns burning. Put them out, and they will bring the corn
faster."
Outina was nowhere to be seen. At length they learned that he was in one
of the small huts adjacent. Several of the officers went to him,
complaining of the slow payment of his ransom. The kindness of his
captors at Fort Caroline seemed to have won his heart. He replied, that
such was the rage of his subjects that he could no longer control them;
that the French were in danger; and that he had seen arrows stuck in the
ground by the side of the path, in token that war was declared. The
peril was thickening hourly, and Ottigny resolved to regain the boats
while there was yet time.
On the twenty-seventh of July, at nine in the morning, he set his men in
order. Each shouldering a sack of corn, they marched through the rows of
huts that surrounded the great lodge, and out betwixt the overlapping
extremities of the palisade that encircled the town. Before them
stretched a wide avenue, three or four hundred paces long, flanked by a
natural growth of trees,—one of those curious monuments of native
industry to which allusion has already been made. Here Ottigny halted
and formed his line of march. Arlac, with eight matchlock men, was sent
in advance, and flanking parties were thrown into the woods on either
side. Ottigny told his soldiers that, if the Indians meant to attack
them, they were probably in ambush at the other end of the avenue. He
was right. As Arlac's party reached the spot, the whole pack gave tongue
at once. The war-whoop rose, and a tempest of stone-headed arrows
clattered against the breast-plates of the French, or, scorching like
fire, tore through their unprotected limbs. They stood firm, and sent
back their shot so steadily that several of the assailants were laid
dead, and the rest, two or three hundred in number, gave way as Ottigny
came up with his men.
They moved on for a quarter of a mile through a country, as it seems,
comparatively open, when again the war-cry pealed in front, and three
hundred savages bounded to the assault. Their whoops were echoed from
the rear. It was the party whom Arlac had just repulsed, and who,
leaping and showering their arrows, were rushing on again with a
ferocity restrained only by their lack of courage. There was no panic
among the French. The men threw down their bags of corn, and took to
their weapons. They blew their matches, and, under two excellent
officers, stood well to their work. The Indians, on their part, showed
good discipline after their fashion, and were perfectly under the
control of their chiefs. With cries that imitated the yell of owls, the
scream of cougars, and the howl of wolves, they ran up in successive
bands, let fly their arrows, and instantly fell back, giving place to
others. At the sight of the leveled arquebuse, they dropped flat on the
ground. Whenever the French charged upon them, sword in hand, they fled
through the woods like foxes; and whenever the march was resumed, the
arrows were showering again upon the flanks and rear of the retiring
band. As they fell, the soldiers picked them up and broke them. Thus,
beset with swarming savages, the handful of Frenchmen pushed slowly
onward, fighting as they went.
The Indians gradually drew off, and the forest was silent again. Two of
the French had been killed and twenty-two wounded, several so severely
that they were supported to the boats with the utmost difficulty. Of the
corn, two bags only had been brought off.
Famine and desperation now reigned at Fort Caroline. The Indians had
killed two of the carpenters; hence long delay in the finishing of the
new ship. They would not wait, but resolved to put to sea in the
"Breton" and the brigantine. The problem was to find food for the
voyage; for now, in their extremity, they roasted and ate snakes, a
delicacy in which the neighborhood abounded.
On the third of August, Laudonniere, perturbed and oppressed, was
walking on the hill, when, looking seaward, he saw a sight that sent a
thrill through his exhausted frame. A great ship was standing towards
the river's mouth. Then another came in sight, and another, and another.
He despatched a messenger with the tidings to the fort below. The
languid forms of his sick and despairing men rose and danced for joy,
and voices shrill with weakness joined in wild laughter and acclamation,
insomuch, he says, "that one would have thought them to bee out of their
wittes."
A doubt soon mingled with their joy. Who were the strangers? Were they
the friends so long hoped for in vain? or were they Spaniards, their
dreaded enemies? They were neither. The foremost ship was a stately one,
of seven hundred tons, a great burden at that day. She was named the
"Jesus;" and with her were three smaller vessels, the "Solomon," the
"Tiger," and the "Swallow." Their commander was "a right worshipful and
valiant knight,"—for so the record styles him,—a pious man and a
prudent, to judge him by the orders he gave his crew when, ten months
before, he sailed out of Plymouth: "Serve God daily, love one another,
preserve your victuals, beware of fire, and keepe good companie." Nor
were the crew unworthy the graces of their chief; for the devout
chronicler of the voyage ascribes their deliverance from the perils of
the sea to "the Almightie God, who never suffereth his Elect to perish."
Who then were they, this chosen band, serenely conscious of a special
Providential care? They were the pioneers of that detested traffic
destined to inoculate with its infection nations yet unborn, the parent
of discord and death, filling half a continent with the tramp of armies
and the clash of fratricidal swords. Their chief was Sir John Hawkins,
father of the English slave-trade.
He had been to the coast of Guinea, where he bought and kidnapped a
cargo of slaves. These he had sold to the jealous Spaniards of
Hispaniola, forcing them, with sword, matchlock, and culverin, to grant
him free trade, and then to sign testimonials that he had borne himself
as became a peaceful merchant. Prospering greatly by this summary
commerce, but distressed by the want of water, he had put into the River
of May to obtain a supply.
Among the rugged heroes of the British marine, Sir John stood in the
front rank, and along with Drake, his relative, is extolled as "a man
borne for the honour of the English name. . . . Neither did the West of
England yeeld such an Indian Neptunian paire as were these two Ocean
peeres, Hawkins and Drake." So writes the old chronicler, Purchas, and
all England was of his thinking. A hardy and skilful seaman, a bold
fighter, a loyal friend and a stern enemy, overbearing towards equals,
but kind, in his bluff way, to those beneath him, rude in speech,
somewhat crafty withal and avaricious, he buffeted his way to riches and
fame, and died at last full of years and honor. As for the abject
humanity stowed between the reeking decks of the ship "Jesus," they were
merely in his eyes so many black cattle tethered for the market.(18)
Hawkins came up the river in a pinnace, and landed at Fort Caroline,
accompanied, says Laudonniere, "with gentlemen honorably apparelled, yet
unarmed." Between the Huguenots and the English Puritans there was a
double tie of sympathy. Both hated priests, and both hated Spaniards.
Wakening from their apathetic misery, the starveling garrison hailed him
as a deliverer. Yet Hawkins secretly rejoiced when he learned their
purpose to abandon Florida; for although, not to tempt his cupidity,
they hid from him the secret of their Appalachian gold mine, he coveted
for his royal mistress the possession of this rich domain. He shook his
head, however, when he saw the vessels in which they proposed to embark,
and offered them all a free passage to France in his own ships. This,
from obvious motives of honor and prudence, Laudonniere declined, upon
which Hawkins offered to lend or sell to him one of his smaller vessels.
Laudonniere hesitated, and hereupon arose a great clamor. A mob of
soldiers and artisans beset his chamber, threatening loudly to desert
him, and take passage with Hawkins, unless the offer were accepted. The
commandant accordingly resolved to buy the vessel. The generous slaver,
whose reputed avarice nowhere appears in the transaction, desired him to
set his own price; and, in place of money, took the cannon of the fort,
with other articles now useless to their late owners. He sent them, too,
a gift of wine and biscuit, and supplied them with provisions for the
voyage, receiving in payment Laudonniere's note; "for which," adds the
latter, "untill this present I am indebted to him." With a friendly
leave taking, he returned to his ships and stood out to sea, leaving
golden opinions among the grateful inmates of Fort Caroline.
Before the English top-sails had sunk beneath the horizon, the colonists
bestirred themselves to depart. In a few days their preparations were
made. They waited only for a fair wind. It was long in coming, and
meanwhile their troubled fortunes assumed a new phase.
On the twenty eighth of August, the two captains Vasseur and Verdier
came in with tidings of an approaching squadron. Again the fort was wild
with excitement. Friends or foes, French or Spaniards, succor or death,
—betwixt these were their hopes and fears divided. On the following
morning, they saw seven barges rowing up the river, bristling with
weapons, and crowded with men in armor. The sentries on the bluff
challenged, and received no answer. One of them fired at the advancing
boats, and still there was no response. Laudonniere was almost
defenceless. He had given his heavier cannon to Hawkins, and only two
field-pieces were left. They were levelled at the foremost boats, and
the word to fire was about to be given, when a voice from among the
strangers called out that they were French, commanded by Jean Ribaut.
At the eleventh hour, the long looked for succors were come. Ribaut had
been commissioned to sail with seven ships for Florida. A disorderly
concourse of disbanded soldiers, mixed with artisans and their families,
and young nobles weary of a two years' peace, were mustered at the port
of Dieppe, and embarked, to the number of three hundred men, bearing
with them all things thought necessary to a prosperous colony.
No longer in dread of the Spaniards, the colonists saluted the
new-comers with the cannon by which a moment before they had hoped to
blow them out of the water. Laudonniere issued from his stronghold to
welcome them, and regaled them with what cheer he could. Ribaut was
present, conspicuous by his long beard, an astonishment to the Indians;
and here, too, were officers, old friends of Laudonniere. Why, then, had
they approached in the attitude of enemies? The mystery was soon
explained; for they expressed to the commandant their pleasure at
finding that the charges made against him had proved false. He begged to
know more; on which Ribaut, taking him aside, told him that the
returning ships had brought home letters filled with accusations of
arrogance, tyranny, cruelty, and a purpose of establishing an
independent command,—accusations which he now saw to be unfounded, but
which had been the occasion of his unusual and startling precaution. He
gave him, too, a letter from Admiral Coligny. In brief but courteous
terms, it required him to resign his command, and requested his return
to France to clear his name from the imputations cast upon it. Ribaut
warmly urged him to remain; but Laudonniere declined his friendly
proposals.
Worn in body and mind, mortified and wounded, he soon fell ill again. A
peasant woman attended him, who was brought over, he says, to nurse the
sick and take charge of the poultry, and of whom Le Moyne also speaks as
a servant, but who had been made the occasion of additional charges
against him, most offensive to the austere Admiral.
Stores were landed, tents were pitched, women and children were sent on
shore, feathered Indians mingled in the throng, and the borders of the
River of May swarmed with busy life. "But, lo, how oftentimes misfortune
doth search and pursue us, even then when we thinke to be at rest!"
exclaims the unhappy Laudonniere. Amidst the light and cheer of
renovated hope, a cloud of blackest omen was gathering in the east.
At half-past eleven on the night of Tuesday, the fourth of September,
the crew of Ribaut's flag-ship, anchored on the still sea outside the
bar, saw a huge hulk, grim with the throats of cannon, drifting towards
them through the gloom; and from its stern rolled on the sluggish air
the portentous banner of Spain.
__________
(15) Laudonniere in Hakinyt, III. 406. Brinton, Floridian Peninsula,
thinks there is truth in the story, and that Lake Weir, in Marion
County, is the Lake of Sarrope. I give these romantic tales as I find
them.
(16) This scene is the subject of Plate XII. of Le Moyne.
(17) Le Moyne drew a picture of the fight (Plate XIII.). In the
foreground Ottigny is engaged in single combat with a gigantic savage,
who, with club upheaved, aims a deadly stroke at the plumed helmet of
his foe; but the latter, with target raised to guard his head, darts
under the arms of the naked Goliath, and transfixes him with his sword.
(18) For Hawkins, see the three narratives in Hakinyt, III. 594;
Purchas, IV. 1177 ; Stow, Chron., 807; Biog. Briton., Art. Hawkins;
Anderson, History of Commerce, I. 400.
He was not knighted until after the voyage of 1564-65; hence there is an
anachronism in the text. As he was held "to have opened a new trade," he
was entitled to bear as his crest a "Moor" or negro, bound with a cord.
In Fairhairn's Crests of Great Britain and Ireland, where it is figured,
it is described, not as a negro, but as a "naked man." In Burke's Landed
Gentry, it is said that Sir John obtained it in honor of a great victory
over the Moors! His only African victories were in kidnapping raids on
negro villages. In Letters on Certain Passages in the Life of Sir John
Hawkins, the coat is engraved in detail. The "demi-Moor" has the thick
lips, the flat nose, and the wool of the unequivocal negro.
Sir John became Treasurer of the Royal Navy and Rear-Admiral, and
founded a marine hospital at Chatham.
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