THE HIDDEN WAR CAMP.
Wild Catand Cohadjo were allowed to remain in old Fort Marion the prison at St. Augustine, Florida. Wild Cat feigned sickness and was permitted, under guard, to go to the woods to obtain some roots; with these he reduced his size until he was able to crawl through an aperture that admitted light into the cell. Letting himself down by ropes made of the bedding, a distance of fifty feet, he made his escape, joined his tribe and once more rallied his forces against our army. Latter daycritics have questioned the correctness of this bit of written history. Last winter, during the height of the season, the Ponce de Leon guests enjoyed a unique entertainment. A wealthy tourist made a wager of one hundred dollars that “Wild Cat never could have made his escape through the little window in the old castle.” Sergeant Brown accepted the wager and himself performed the feat, to the great delight of the excited spectators.
Courtesy of the Bureau of American Ethnology.OSCEOLAA copy from Catlin’s painting.
Courtesy of the Bureau of American Ethnology.OSCEOLAA copy from Catlin’s painting.
OSCEOLA
A copy from Catlin’s painting.
Our soldiers fighting in an unexplored wilderness, along the dark borders of swamp and morass, crawling many timeson hands and kneesthrough the tangled matted underbrush, fighting these children of the forest who knew every inch of their ground could hope for little less than defeat. Even General Jessup in writing to the President said: “We are attempting to remove the Indians when they are not in the way of the white settlers, and when the greater portion of the country is an unexplored wilderness, of the interior of which we are as ignorant as of the interior of China.”
By way of illustrating the enormity of the task the government had in subduing the Seminoles, it is only necessary to describe one of the many Indian strongholds in the swamps of Florida. About ten miles from Kissimmee, west by south, is a cypress swamp made by the junction of the Davenport, Reedy and Bonnett creeks. It is an aquatic jungle, full of fallen trees, brush, vines and tangled undergrowth, all darkened by the dense shadows of the tall cypress trees. The surface is covered with water, which, from appearancemay be any depth, from six inches to six feet; this infested with alligators and moccasins would have been an unsurmountable barrier to the white troops.
A few years ago when the Seminoles yet frequented this section for trading purposes old settlers have seen them coming from the swamp carrying bags of oranges. Interrogations received no answers and white settlers year after year searched for the traditional orange grove, but without success.
So difficult to penetrate and so dangerous to explore is the swamp that it was not until fifty years after the Indians had left their island home that a venturesome hunter, during a very dry season, accidentally discovered the old Seminole camp. The Indian mound, the broken pottery and the long hunted for sweet orange grove were proofs of the old camp. The majestic orange trees laden with golden fruit were an incentive to further research. With a surveyor working his way, as guided by the point of the compass, this wonderland was explored, and proved to be a complete chain of small hommocks or islands running through from one side of the swamp to the other; the topography of the marsh being such that a skirmish could take place on one side of the jungle and an hour later, by means of the secret route through the swamp, the Indians could be ready for an attack on the other side, while for the troops to reach the same point, by following the only road known to them, it would have required nearly a day’s marching. The Indian trail is lost in the almost impenetrablejungle; but the tomahawk blazes are perfectly discernible. The Seminoles held the key to these mysterious islands and in the heart of the great swamps they lived free from any danger of surprise. This retreat must have been a grand rendezvous for them, as its geographical position was almost central between the principal forts. Lying between Fort Brooke (Tampa) and Fort King (Ocala), within a distance of thirty miles from the scene of the Dade massacre, about forty miles from Fort Mellon, the present site of Sanford, the camp could have been reached in a few hours by Indian runners after spying the movements of the troops at any of the forts. The old government road, over which the soldiers passed in going from Fort Brooke to Fort Mellon, passes so close to the old Indian camping ground that all travel could have been watched by the keen-eyed warriors.