Citizens Creek by Lalita Tademy Read Free Book Online

news, but for the most part, they met stony silence or outright suspicion. Cow Tom compared Fort King to this encampment in Tampa Bay. Setting aside the likeness of steamy heat and sand and vicious fleas, the difference came down to people. Only the occasional woman appeared at the margins of Fort King, usually of the roughest, military-follower sort, but here at Fort Brooke, large numbers of women settled into domestic life alongside their men, their children playing games among themselves as children did anywhere.
    A sallow-skinned brave lay prone on a coarse horse blanket, alone under a sycamore tree, chewing slowly on a tobacco leaf. He coughed several times, hoarse and unsettling.
    “You all right?” asked Cow Tom.
    “The white man brings us to this place to give us smallpox,” the brave said.
    “No,” Harry said in Miccosukee, “measles. The white man brings measles.”
    The brave glared, unimpressed with the distinction. They left him and walked the camp, and came upon a small group of women pounding coontie root with a flat rock. The women never slowed their rhythm. They hadn’t touched their ration of corn or flour, set off to the side under an oak tree, wrapped in gunny. Instead, for bread making, they used the plentiful root found everywhere in this part of Florida, foraged outside the encampment.
    “You see what I see? Or more like it, don’t see?” said Harry. “Not a single Negro, free nor slave.”
    “Balls!” Cow Tom swore. The government already separated the Negroes from the Seminoles. His mother wasn’t at this camp. Understanding the general’s strategy didn’t calm his anger. A free black manor woman facing re-enslavement was the most potent ally the Seminoles could have in their bloody fight to keep their Florida home.
    “So much for easy information,” said Harry.
    “We best find Micanopy,” Cow Tom said.
    Cow Tom and Harry widened their loop around the camp once more. At the periphery, under the shade of an old oak, a cluster of men sat in a circle, passing a smoking pipe. Cow Tom recognized almost all of them, the same group he and the general met for the Capitulation six months prior. They looked the worse for wear, thinner, scruffier, defeat written in the language of their bodies. Micanopy sat at the head, flanked by his henchman Jumper. The old chief held himself slightly apart, sitting cross-legged on the ground. Micanopy gave instruction to a young brave in the circle, who leaped up, coming back moments later with a piece of bread still warm from the women’s fire. Micanopy was twice Cow Tom’s age, maybe more, and in contrast to the others, so overweight he barely moved at all, except to give a slight turn of head to see who approached, but he didn’t acknowledge their presence. Micanopy accepted the bread without thanks, devouring half of the large piece of flat dough with the first bite, crumbs a-tumble down his massive front. The brave silently resumed his seat.
    Cow Tom and Harry drew nearer, too close to ignore, directly in the chief’s line of sight.
    “Governor,” Cow Tom said.
    Micanopy fixed him in a steely stare. But then his expression changed, as if suddenly aware of something to be lost or gained.
    “Jesup’s man,” Micanopy acknowledged.
    “Yes. Cow Tom. Come at General Jesup’s request.”
    “Report back,” said Micanopy in Miccosukee, his voice a mix of fatigue, pride, and loss, “I brought my people in.” Cow Tom easily adjusted to the Seminole dialect of Hitchiti. “My advisers worry Washington won’t do right by us, but I have the promise of the big white chief.” He looked to Jumper and the other lesser chiefs. “They follow my word.”
    Cow Tom knew differently. Micanopy was, indeed, Pond Governor of the Seminole Nation in Florida, head chief, but by heredity, and his opinions and advice often went unheeded in Council. Cow Tom observed the dynamics firsthand when he met with the general and Micanopy at Capitulation, hammering out the