The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 70, August, 1863

Hard by stood the column of stone, graven with the fleur-de-lis, planted here on the former voyage. The Indians had crowned the mystic emblem with evergreens, and placed offerings of maize on the ground before it; for with an affectionate and reverent wonder they had ever remembered the steel-clad strangers whom, two summers before, John Ribaut had led to their shores.

Five miles up the St. John's, or River of May, there stands, on the southern bank, a hill some forty feet high, boldly thrusting itself into the broad and lazy waters. It is now called St. John's Bluff. Thither the Frenchmen repaired, pushed through the dense semi-tropical forest, and climbed the steep acclivity. Thence they surveyed their Canaan. Beneath them moved the unruffled river, gliding around the reed-grown shores of marshy islands, the haunt of alligators, and betwixt the bordering expanse of wide, wet meadows, studded with island-like clumps of pine and palmetto, and bounded by the sunny verge of distant forests. Far on their right, seen by glimpses between the shaggy cedar-boughs, the glistening sea lay stretched along the horizon. Before, in hazy distance, the softened green of the woodlands was veined with the mazes of the countless interlacing streams that drain the watery region behind St. Mary's and Fernandina. To the left, the St. John's flowed gleaming betwixt verdant shores beyond whose portals lay the El Dorado of their dreams. "Briefly," writes Laudonnière, "the place is so pleasant that those which are melancholicke would be inforced to change their humour."

A fresh surprise awaited them. The allotted span of mortal life was quadrupled in that benign climate. Laudonnière's lieutenant, Ottigny, ranging the neighboring forest with a party of soldiers, met a troop of Indians who invited him to their dwellings. Mounted on the back of a stout savage, who plunged with him through the deep marshes, and guided him by devious pathways through the tangled thickets, he arrived at length, and beheld a wondrous spectacle. In the lodge sat a venerable chief, who assured him that he was the father of five successive generations, and that he had lived two hundred and fifty years. Opposite, sat a still more ancient veteran, the father of the first, shrunken to a mere anatomy, and "seeming to be rather a dead carkeis than a living body." "Also," pursues the history, "his age was so great that the good man had lost his sight, and could not speak one onely word but with exceeding great paine." Despite his dismal condition, the visitor was told that he might expect to live in the course of Nature thirty or forty years more. As the two patriarchs sat face to face, half hidden with their streaming white hair, Ottigny and his credulous soldiers looked from one to the other, lost in wonder and admiration.

Man and Nature alike seemed to mark the borders of the River of May as the site of the new colony; for here, around the Indian towns, the harvests of maize, beans, and pumpkins promised abundant food, while the river opened a ready way to the mines of gold and silver and the stores of barbaric wealth which glittered before the dreaming vision of the colonists. Yet, the better to content himself and his men, Laudonnière weighed anchor, and sailed for a time along the neighboring coasts. Returning, confirmed in his first impression, he set forth with a party of officers and soldiers to explore the borders of the chosen stream. The day was hot. The sun beat fiercely on the woollen caps and heavy doublets of the men, till at length they gained the shade of one of those deep forests of pine where the dead and sultry air is thick with resinous odors, and the earth, carpeted with fallen leaves, gives no sound beneath the foot. Yet, in the stillness, deer leaped up on all sides as they moved along. Then they emerged into sunlight. A broad meadow, a running brook, a lofty wall of encircling forests. The men called it the Vale of Laudonnière. The afternoon was spent, and the sun was near its setting, when they reached the bank of the river. They strewed the ground with boughs and leaves, and, stretched on that sylvan couch, slept the sleep of travel-worn and weary men.

At daybreak they were roused by sound of trumpet. Men and officers joined their voices in a psalm, then betook themselves to their task. Their task was the building of a fort, and this was the chosen spot. It was a tract of dry ground on the brink of the river, immediately above St. John's Bluff. On the right was the bluff; on the left, a marsh; in front, the river; behind, the forest.

Boats came up the stream with laborers, tents, provision, cannon, and tools. The engineers marked out the work in the form of a triangle; and, from the noble volunteer to the meanest artisan, all lent a hand to complete it. On the river side the defences were a palisade of timber. On the two other sides were a ditch, and a rampart of fascines, earth, and sods. At each angle was a bastion, in one of which was the magazine. Within was a spacious parade, and around it various buildings for lodging and storage. A large house with covered galleries was built on the side towards the river for Laudonnière and his officers. In honor of Charles IX the fort was named Fort Caroline.

Meanwhile, Satouriona, "lord of all that country," as the narratives style him, was seized with misgivings, learning these mighty preparations. The work was but begun, and all was din and confusion around the incipient fort, when the startled Frenchmen saw the neighboring height of St. John's swarming with naked warriors. The prudent Laudonnière set his men in array, and for a season pick and spade were dropped for arquebuse and pike. The savage potentate descended to the camp. The artist Le Moyne, who saw him, drew his likeness from memory,—a tall, athletic figure, tattooed in token of his rank, plumed with feathers, hung with strings of beads, and girdled with tinkling pieces of metal which hung from the belt, his only garment. He came in regal state, a crowd of warriors around him, and, in advance, a troop of young Indians armed with spears. Twenty musicians followed, blowing a hideous discord through pipes of reeds. Arrived, he seated himself on the ground "like a monkey," as Le Moyne has it in the grave Latin of his "Brevis Narratio." A council followed, in which broken words were aided by signs and pantomime. A treaty of alliance was made, and Laudonnière had the folly to promise the chief that he would lend him aid against his enemies. Satouriona, well pleased, ordered his Indians to aid the French at their work. They obeyed with alacrity, and in two days the buildings of the fort were all thatched after the native fashion with leaves of the palmetto.

A word touching these savages. In the peninsula of Florida were several distinct Indian confederacies, with three of which the French were brought into contact. The first was that of Satouriona. The next was the potent confederacy of the Thimagoa, under a chief called Outina, whose forty villages were scattered among the lakes and forests around the upper waters of this remarkable river. The third was that of "King Potanou," whose domain lay among the pine-barrens, cypress-swamps, and fertile hummocks, westward and northwestward of the St. John's. The three communities were at deadly enmity. Their social state was more advanced than that of the wandering hunter-tribes of the North. They were an agricultural people. Around all their villages were fields of maize, beans, and pumpkins. The harvest, due chiefly to the labor of the women, was gathered into a public granary, and on this they lived during three-fourths of the year, dispersing in winter to hunt among the forests.

Their villages were clusters of huts thatched with palmetto. In the midst was the dwelling of the chief, much larger than the rest, and sometimes raised on an artificial mound. They were inclosed with palisades, and, strange to say, some of them were approached by wide avenues, artificially graded, and several hundred yards in length. Remains of them may still be seen, as may also the mounds in which the Floridians, like the Hurons and various other tribes, collected at stated intervals the bones of their dead.

The most prominent feature of their religion was sun-worship, and, like other wild American tribes, they abounded in "medicine-men," who combined the functions of priest, physician, and necromancer.

Social distinctions were sharply defined among them. Their chiefs, whose office was hereditary, sometimes exercised a power almost absolute. Each village had its chief, subordinate to the grand chief of the nation. In the language of the French narratives, they were all kings or lords, vassals of the great monarch Satouriona, Outina, or Potanou. All these tribes are now extinct, and it is difficult to ascertain with precision their tribal affinities. There can be no doubt that they were the authors of the mounds and other remains at present found in various parts of Florida.

Their fort nearly finished, and their league made with Satouriona, the gold-hunting Huguenots were eager to spy out the secrets of the interior. To this end the lieutenant, Ottigny, went up the river in a sail-boat. With him were a few soldiers and two Indians, the latter going forth, says Laudonnière, as if bound to a wedding, keen for a fight with the hated Thimagoa, and exulting in the havoc to be wrought among them by the magic weapons of their white allies. They were doomed to grievous disappointment.

The Sieur d'Ottigny spread his sail, and calmly glided up the dark waters of the St. John's. A scene fraught with strange interest to the naturalist and the lover of Nature. Here, two centuries later, the Bartrams, father and son, guided their skiff and kindled their nightly bivouac-fire; and here, too, roamed Audubon, with his sketch-book and his gun. Each alike has left the record of his wanderings, fresh as the woods and waters that inspired it. Slight, then, was the change since Ottigny, first of white men, steered his bark along the still breast of the virgin river. Before him, like a lake, the redundant waters spread far and wide; and along the low shores, or jutting points, or the waveless margin of deep and sheltered coves, towered wild, majestic forms of vegetable beauty. Here rose the magnolia, high above surrounding woods; but the gorgeous bloom had fallen, that a few weeks earlier studded the verdant dome with silver. From the edge of the bordering swamp the cypress reared its vast buttressed column and leafy canopy. From the rugged arms of oak and pine streamed the gray drapery of the long Spanish moss, swayed mournfully in the faintest breeze. Here were the tropical plumage of the palm, the dark green masses of the live-oak, the glistening verdure of wild orange-groves; and from out the shadowy thickets hung the wreaths of the jessamine and the scarlet trumpets of the bignonia.

Nor less did the fruitful river teem with varied forms of animal life. From the caverns of leafy shade came the gleam and flicker of many-colored plumage. The cormorant, the pelican, the heron, floated on the water, or stalked along its pebbly brink. Among the sedges, the alligator, foul from his native mud, outstretched his hideous length, or, sluggish and sullen, drifted past the boat, his grim head level with the surface, and each scale, each folding of his horny hide, distinctly visible, as, with the slow movement of distended paws, he balanced himself in the water. When, at sunset, they drew up their boat on the strand, and built their camp-fire under the arches of the woods, the shores resounded with the roaring of these colossal lizards; all night the forest rang with the whooping of the owls; and in the morning the sultry mists that wrapped the river were vocal, far and near, with the clamor of wild turkeys.

Among such scenes, for twenty leagues, the adventurous sail moved on. Far to the right, beyond the silent waste of pines, lay the realm of the mighty Potanou. The Thimagoa towns were still above them on the river, when they saw three canoes of this people at no great distance in front. Forthwith the two Indians in the boat were fevered with excitement. With glittering eyes they snatched pike and sword, and prepared for fight; but the sage Ottigny, bearing slowly down on the strangers, gave them time to run their craft ashore and escape to the woods. Then, landing, he approached the canoes, placed in them a few trinkets, and withdrew to a distance. The fugitives took heart, and, step by step, returned. An amicable intercourse was opened, with assurances of friendship on the part of the French, a procedure viewed by Satouriona's Indians with unspeakable disgust and ire.

The ice thus broken, Ottigny returned to Fort Caroline; and a fortnight later, an officer named Vasseur sailed up the river to pursue the adventure: for the French, thinking that the nation of the Thimagoa lay betwixt them and the gold-mines, would by no means quarrel with them, and Laudonnière repented him already of his rash pledge to Satouriona.

As Vasseur moved on, two Indians hailed him from the shore, inviting him to their dwellings. He accepted their guidance, and presently saw before him the cornfields and palisades of an Indian town. Led through the wondering crowd to the lodge of the chief, Mollua, Vasseur and his followers were seated in the place of honor and plentifully regaled with fish and bread. The repast over, Mollua began his discourse. He told them that he was one of the forty vassal chiefs of the great Outina, lord of all the Thimagoa, whose warriors wore armor of gold and silver plate. He told them, too, of Potanou, his enemy, a mighty and redoubted prince; and of the two kings of the distant Appalachian Mountains, rich beyond utterance in gems and gold. While thus, with earnest pantomime and broken words, the chief discoursed with his guests, Vasseur, intent and eager, strove to follow his meaning; and no sooner did he hear of these Appalachian treasures than he promised to join Outina in war against the two potentates of the mountains. Hereupon the sagacious Mollua, well pleased, promised that each of Outina's vassal chiefs should requite their French allies with a heap of gold and silver two feet high. Thus, while Laudonnière stood pledged to Satouriona, Vasseur made alliance with his mortal enemy.

Returning, he was met, near the fort, by one of Satouriona's chiefs, who questioned him touching his dealings with the Thimagoa. Vasseur replied, that he had set upon and routed them with incredible slaughter. But as the chief, seeming as yet unsatisfied, continued his inquiries, the sergeant, Francis la Caille, drew his sword, and, like Falstaff before him, re-enacted his deeds of valor, pursuing and thrusting at the imaginary Thimagoa as they fled before his fury. Whereat the chief, at length convinced, led the party to his lodge, and entertained them with a certain savory decoction with which the Indians were wont to regale those whom they delighted to honor.

Elate at the promise of a French alliance, Satouriona had summoned his vassal chiefs to war. From the St. Mary's and the Satilla and the distant Altamaha, from every quarter of his woodland realm, they had mustered at his call. By the margin of the St. John's, the forest was alive with their bivouacs. Ten chiefs were here, and some five hundred men. And now, when all was ready, Satouriona reminded Laudonnière of his promise, and claimed its fulfilment; but the latter gave evasive answers and a virtual refusal. Stifling his rage, the chief prepared to go without him.

Near the bank of the river, a fire was kindled, and two large vessels of water placed beside it. Here Satouriona took his stand. His chiefs crouched on the grass around him, and the savage visages of his five hundred warriors filled the outer circle, their long hair garnished with feathers, or covered with the heads and skins of wolves, panthers, bears, or eagles. Satouriona, looking towards the country of his enemy, distorted his features to a wild expression of rage and hate; then muttered to himself; then howled an invocation to his god, the sun; then besprinkled the assembly with water from one of the vessels, and, turning the other upon the fire, suddenly quenched it. "So," he cried, "may the blood of our enemies be poured out, and their lives extinguished!" and the concourse gave forth an explosion of responsive yells, till the shores resounded with the wolfish din.

The rites over, they set forth, and in a few days returned exulting with thirteen prisoners and a number of scalps. The latter were hung on a pole before the royal lodge, and when night came, it brought with it a pandemonium of dancing and whooping, drumming and feasting.

A notable scheme entered the brain of Laudonnière. Resolved, cost what it might, to make a friend of Outina, he conceived it a stroke of policy to send back to him two of the prisoners. In the morning he sent a soldier to Satouriona to demand them. The astonished chief gave a flat refusal, adding that he owed the French no favors, for they had shamefully broken faith with him. On this, Laudonnière, at the head of twenty soldiers, proceeded to the Indian town, placed a guard at the opening of the great lodge, entered with his arquebusiers, and seated himself without ceremony in the highest place. Here, to show his displeasure, he remained in silence for a half-hour. At length he spoke, renewing his demand. For some moments Satouriona made no reply, then coldly observed that the sight of so many armed men had frightened the prisoners away. Laudonnière grew peremptory, when the chiefs son, Athore, went out, and presently returned with the two Indians, whom the French led back to Fort Caroline.

Satouriona dissembled, professed good-will, and sent presents to the fort; but the outrage rankled in his savage breast, and he never forgave it.

Captain Vasseur, with Arlac, the ensign, a sergeant, and ten soldiers, embarked to bear the ill-gotten gift to Outina. Arrived, they were showered with thanks by that grateful potentate, who, hastening to avail himself of his new alliance, invited them to join in a raid against his neighbor, Potanou. To this end, Arlac and five soldiers remained, while Vasseur with the rest descended to Fort Caroline.

The warriors were mustered, the dances were danced, and the songs were sung. Then the wild cohort took up its march. The wilderness through which they passed holds its distinctive features to this day,—the shady desert of the pine-barrens, where many a wanderer has miserably died, with haggard eye seeking in vain for clue or guidance in the pitiless, inexorable monotony. Yet the waste has its oases, the "hummocks," where the live-oaks are hung with long festoons of grape-vines,—where the air is sweet with woodland odors, and vocal with the song of birds. Then the deep cypress-swamp, where dark trunks rise like the columns of some vast sepulchre. Above, the impervious canopy of leaves; beneath, a black and root-encumbered slough. Perpetual moisture trickles down the clammy bark, while trunk and limb, distorted with strange shapes of vegetable disease, wear in the gloom a semblance grotesque and startling. Lifeless forms lean propped in wild disorder against the living, and from every rugged stem and lank limb outstretched hangs the dark drapery of the Spanish moss. The swamp is veiled in mourning. No breath, no voice. A deathly stillness, till the plunge of the alligator, lashing the waters of the black lagoon, resounds with hollow echo through the tomb-like solitude.

Next, the broad sunlight and the wide savanna. Wading breast-deep in grass, they view the wavy sea of verdure, with headland and cape and far-reaching promontory, with distant coasts, hazy and dim, havens and shadowed coves, islands of the magnolia and the palm, high, impending shores of the mulberry and the elm, the ash, hickory, and maple. Here the rich gordonia, never out of bloom, sends down its thirsty roots to drink at the stealing brook. Here the halesia hangs out its silvery bells, the purple clusters of the wistaria droop from the supporting bough, and the coral blossoms of the erythryna glow in the shade beneath. From tufted masses of sword-like leaves shoot up the tall spires of the yucca, heavy with pendent flowers, of pallid hue, like the moon, and from the grass gleams the blue eye of the starry ixia.

Through forest, swamp, savanna, the valiant Frenchmen held their way. At first, Outina's Indians kept always in advance; but when they reached the hostile district, the modest warriors fell to the rear, resigning the post of honor to their French allies.

An open country; a rude cultivation; the tall palisades of an Indian town. Their approach was seen, and the warriors of Potanou, nowise daunted, came swarming forth to meet them. But the sight of the bearded strangers, the flash and report of the fire-arms, the fall of their foremost chief, shot through the brain with the bullet of Arlac, filled them with consternation, and they fled headlong within their defences. The men of Thimagoa ran screeching in pursuit. Pell-mell, all entered the town together. Slaughter; pillage; flame. The work was done, and the band returned triumphant.

CHAPTER II

In the little world of Fort Caroline, a miniature France, cliques and parties, conspiracy and sedition, were fast stirring into life. Hopes had been dashed; wild expectations had come to nought. The adventurers had found, not conquest and gold, but a dull exile in a petty fort by a hot and sickly river, with hard labor, ill fare, prospective famine, and nothing to break the weary sameness but some passing canoe or floating alligator. Gathered in knots, they nursed each other's wrath, and inveighed against the commandant.

Why are we put on half-rations, when he told us that provision should be made for a full year? Where are the reinforcements and supplies that he said should follow us from France? Why is he always closeted with Ottigny, Arlac, and this and that favorite, when we, men of blood as good as theirs, cannot gain his ear for a moment? And why has he sent La Roche Ferrière to make his fortune among the Indians, while we are kept here, digging at the works?

Of La Roche Ferrière and his adventures, more hereafter. The young nobles, of whom there were many, were volunteers, who had paid their own expenses, in expectation of a golden harvest, and they chafed in impatience and disgust. The religious element in the colony—unlike the former Huguenot emigration to Brazil—was evidently subordinate. The adventurers thought more of their fortunes than of their faith; yet there were not a few earnest enough in the doctrine of Geneva to complain loudly and bitterly that no ministers had been sent with them. The burden of all grievances was thrown upon Laudonnière, whose greatest errors seem to have arisen from weakness and a lack of judgment,—fatal defects in his position.

The growing discontent was brought to a partial head by one Roquette, who gave out that by magic he had discovered a mine of gold and silver, high up the river, which would give each of them a share of ten thousand crowns, besides fifteen hundred thousand for the king. But for Laudonnière, he said, their fortunes would all be made. He found an ally in a gentleman named Genre, one of Laudonnière's confidants, who, still professing fast adherence to the interests of the latter, is charged by him with plotting against his life. Many of the soldiers were in the conspiracy. They made a flag of an old shirt, which they carried with them to the rampart when they went to their work, at the same time wearing their arms, and watching an opportunity to kill the commandant. About this time, overheating himself, he fell ill, and was confined to his quarters. On this, Genre made advances to the apothecary, urging him to put arsenic into his medicines; but the apothecary shrugged his shoulders. They next devised a scheme to blow him up, by hiding a keg of gunpowder under his bed; but here, too, they failed. Hints of Genre's machinations reaching the ears of Laudonnière, the culprit fled to the woods, whence he wrote repentant letters, with full confession, to his commander.

Two of the ships meanwhile returned to France,—the third, the Breton, remaining at anchor opposite the fort. The malecontents took the opportunity to send home charges against Laudonnière of peculation, favoritism, and tyranny.

Early in September, Captain Bourdet, apparently a private adventurer, had arrived from France with a small vessel. When he returned, about the tenth of November, Laudonnière persuaded him to carry home seven or eight of the malecontent soldiers. Bourdet left some of his sailors in their place. The exchange proved most disastrous. These pirates joined with others whom they had won over, stole Laudonnière's two pinnaces, and set forth on a plundering excursion to the West Indies. They took a small Spanish vessel off the coast of Cuba, but were soon compelled by famine to put into Havana and surrender themselves. Here, to make their peace with the authorities, they told all they knew of the position and purposes of their countrymen at Fort Caroline, and hence was forged the thunderbolt soon to be hurled against the wretched little colony.