Runaway (25 page)

Yes, he knew that well enough. Too often it was all-out war.

“If the whites would keep just one damned treaty—”

“James, there were so many men massacred! Ambushed. It was a brutal attack. You can’t think that the group who did it was right.”

“And the whites?” James asked.

Jarrett lifted his hands. “We both know,” Jarrett said harshly, “that whites have cruelly attacked Indian villages. We also know that many long to live in peace. You said that Osceola knew that all whites were not bad, and, James, of all men, you can perhaps turn some of the tide of absolute hatred against the whites—”

James interrupted him with a groan. “Of all men, Jarrett, you must know that I pray no harm comes to many a white man. Nowhere was there a greater man than our father, farseeing, giving, eternally granting all men their rights! But, Jarrett, you have to see it yourself. He was a rare man, and though there are surely good white men
settling here, we have met so far with mostly the cruel and treacherous!”

A downed log lay near the water. Jarrett dragged his fingers through his hair and sat, staring out at the creek. Yes, there was a great deal that he had to see. He had been seeing it since he had been a very small boy.

Jarrett had been born in Charleston, South Carolina, the son of Irish immigrant parents. His grandfather held the title of Lord McKenzie in Cork, but as Jarrett’s father had been the seventh of eight sons born to the lord, life in Ireland on the McKenzie estate had seemed limited. Sean McKenzie had, at the age of fifteen, left the genteel poverty of his family’s home and come to America just in time to join in with the Rebels near the close of the American Revolution. When the fighting had ended, he had been on the outskirts of Charleston, and that was where he had stayed. A lot of it had to do with a girl—Geneva Tweed, the daughter of a very prosperous Carolinian merchant. Geneva, an only child with a will of her own and a fascinating beauty, had stood him quite a merry chase, warning Sean that she would have nothing serious to do with a cast-off Irishman. But Sean had been determined, and in time Geneva had been won. But soon after the marriage Geneva caught yellow fever. Sean nursed her through it, somehow evading the fever himself. Geneva’s health was never the same. The vivacious beauty became frail and delicate. Sean had always wanted land of his own, and the fur trade fascinated him. But he adored his wife, and due to her health he determined he would remain in Charleston and forget all such vague dreams.

The couple was childless for over a decade. Jarrett was born in 1802 to the great surprise and pleasure of his parents. But Geneva continued in frail health. A few months before Jarrett’s fifth birthday his still beautiful
mother smiled at him, held him tight, and kissed his father good-bye. With her smile still curving her lips, her hands still upon her son, she breathed her last.

Sean McKenzie was disconsolate, and in such an abyss of pain that he nearly died himself of a broken heart. His father-in-law, bereft himself, made Sean get up and move on with his life. Sean wanted land. Great, endless acres of it. The fur trade with the Georgia Indians was making many men fabulously wealthy. The Americans were just beginning to deal with the “Creeks” there, Creek Indians being those who lived along the creek.

The move was intriguing to young Jarrett.

There were times when he felt very much alone, since few white men lived among the Indians in those days. But Jarrett was a strong boy, both eager to learn and ready to defend himself. And his father, for the first time since his mother’s death, seemed to be growing content.

Jarrett discovered what only those close to the Creek Indians knew, and that was just how different the Indians were among themselves. There were many tribes, many peoples, many languages. He learned the Muskogee of the Creek and the Hitichi of the Mikasukis. He learned about their corn dances, about the “black” drink.

He learned to understand that the Creek “Confederation” itself was composed of such a variety of peoples because they’d been pushed to where they were—pushed by the continual encroachment of the whites.

On the day he turned six, Jarrett learned something else. He was to have a brother. His father explained that he had fallen in love with a lady named Mary McQueen, or Moon Shadow, an Indian lady of curious parentage herself. On her mother’s side she had white blood, being related to Peter McQueen, a white-Creek leader of the Upper Creeks. Her father had been a Seminole chief
from the area around Pensacola in Florida. He had been an old-time Seminole, one of the “runaways” or “renegades” whose family had long claimed the area as home and had interbred with the all-but-obliterated original Indian clans of the peninsula.

Maybe because she was an Indian, part of this very different world, Jarrett had little difficulty in accepting Mary as his stepmother. Maybe it was just that Mary was young and very pretty, kind, and completely loving to Jarrett. Life was much better for Jarrett once he and his father and Mary made a home together in a pleasant log cabin among the People. It seemed that they took the best from both life-styles, enjoying white men’s luxuries and the Indian love of the earth and more basic spiritualism. White traders and those pressing ever farther west were constant visitors. The People were their family.

And when James was born, Jarrett was delighted to have a little brother. It seemed strange to many white visitors that Jarrett should have his mother’s near coal-black eyes—hers from a maternal Creole ancestry—while James inherited their father’s cobalt blue. But in everything else the boys were very similar, both growing very tall, James trailing after Jarrett, Jarrett teaching his little brother what he knew about both white and Indian ways.

In 1812 the United States went to war against Britain once again. A strange war, if one thought about it in retrospect. America’s early presidents had tried very hard to maintain a policy of neutrality where other countries were concerned. America had maintained its isolationist stance while Napoleon Bonaparte became emperor of France, and kept its distance while the French and British went to war. But both France and Britain put out embargoes against American ships, and then the British began seizing American ships and impressing American
sailors. Finally, war was declared. It was ironic, because at nearly the same time the British had lifted their embargo—since communications across the Atlantic were slow, the Americans could not know the British had relented before they had declared war.

The British, furious that the Americans could go to war against them when they were so strenuously embattled in the war with Napoleon, promised help to a number of Indians if the Indians would side with them. By 1813 the Creek War had exploded, with the Lower Creeks—the civilized Creeks, as the whites liked to call them—mainly at war with the Upper Creeks. Many of these “Creeks” were actually Shawnees and other northern Indians grouped into the “Creek Confederation” simply because of where they had been forced to migrate. The great Shawnee leader Tecumseh, a respected, intelligent man who had learned from the whites and then taught nativism and the power of banding together to other tribes as well as his own, sided with the British, hoping to keep the whites from pressing farther westward into Indian lands. He perished in the war.

Luckily for Jarrett he and his family lived among the “civilized” Creeks—and sided with the Americans. Sean, determined that both his boys would have the best education for mind and soul offered by two very different worlds, had sent his sons to Charleston for schooling, but at the outbreak of hostilities, he called them home. Jarrett and James were glad to be back with their parents, but it was a sad time as well, for Mary was in torment. Her paternal kinsmen were Upper Creeks and Florida Seminoles, and it was a bitter time for her. Through her father’s family she was related to James McQueen, one of the most militant of the Upper Creek “Red Stick” warriors. Thankfully they were not destined to find themselves in battle against their own kin.

James was too young to really understand the war, and young enough to be dragged back by the ears when he mentioned the very idea of fighting in it. Sean McKenzie, of course, decided to keep his older son, Jarrett, out of the warfare as well. But that was difficult, for in the beginning of the war the Red Sticks, as the Americans then referred to the enemy, attacked Fort Mims, slaughtering women and children right along with the men, the majority of victims being civilized or interbred Creeks. When Andy Jackson came through the embattled territory, Jarrett found himself intrigued by the general and slipped quietly away from his father’s eagle eye to follow Jackson about and perform small tasks of navigation and translation when necessary. Jackson was an impressive man. Already past his prime, he was still the most astonishing soldier Jarrett had ever seen, courageous but never foolhardy. He was weathered and worn in the face, and in the heart as well, it seemed, but he was ready for almost anything that came his way, any deprivation, any surprise attack, any disappointment—such as reinforcements failing to arrive. He and his Tennesseans were solid, do-or-die men, and Jarrett could not help but find himself impressed by the man. So impressed that by the time Jackson had quelled the Red Sticks and was heading on to do battle in New Orleans, Jarrett decided to run away from home—leaving his father and Mary a very apologetic note. Jarrett was already a very tall youth, muscular in his development, and when he lied about his age to the general, Jackson accepted his age without question. At the time Jarrett had not yet turned fifteen, but with Ole Hickory he was given amazing lessons in warfare in a pitifully scant time. He would never forget his baptism by fire, never forget the terrible fear of his first battle. Yet it was then that he learned something about tactical warfare from Jackson
himself. He had learned temperance, patience, and wisdom from his white father—and courage from his adopted Indian family. Indians did not run, and they never showed their fear.

Jarrett survived the battle, but barely survived his father’s wrath when he returned from it. And when it was all over—the fighting and his father’s rage—he found that even the Lower Creeks had lost in the war that they had fought on the side of the Americans. They were paying for their aid with their land. Americans were moving westward and so the Indians must move much farther west themselves.

Sean McKenzie had lived with his wife’s family, as was Seminole custom, just as Mary McKenzie’s father had moved in with her mother’s family. Sean had never staked any type of separate claim for the land. When the Indians’ land was threatened, Sean McKenzie’s home was threatened as well. Astounded by the turn of events Jarrett decided that there was only one thing to do—confront Jackson about what had happened and demand that his family lands be returned in good order.

Jarrett found Jackson engaged in war with the Seminoles in Florida Territory. The fact that the territory was still Spanish didn’t stop Ole Hickory.

Jarrett still liked Jackson, admired him tremendously. He’d come to know a lot about Jackson because sometimes at night, while smoking his pipe in whatever house or cabin they had called headquarters near their battlegrounds, Jackson would talk. He talked about Rachel, his beloved wife. He admitted to having fought a duel over her, for her honor, and he admitted to having killed the man. He admitted to having been a drinker, a swearer, a gambler, in his younger days, but he’d told Jarrett as well that there’d been nothing so fine in life as his love for Rachel and for his country. America was
going to be great, it was destiny. It was going to take great Americans to make it so, Americans who would not back down, who would stand their ground. “Whatever that ground is going to be, Jarrett McKenzie, you stand it!” Jackson had told him.

He intended to do so.

In Florida he discovered that he hated Jackson’s attitude toward the Indians. Jackson wanted them all removed. There were lands out west. Americans were hungry for Florida—a land that was still supposedly divided into two Spanish territories. The Americans came south to fight the Indians, claiming that the Spanish couldn’t control the ones residing in Florida who were constantly raiding across the Georgia border. By 1818 Jackson was campaigning against Indians, outlaw runaway Negroes, and those who would succor and support them, from Pensacola to the Suwanee. He executed two British citizens, Alexander Arbuthnot and Robert Ambrister, for inciting the Indians to acts of war against the Americans. The British were enraged. Spain was furious. Andy Jackson was there and holding his ground.

He wasn’t about to back down.

But these upheavals were nothing new. Florida had been going through many changes since 1513 when Juan Ponce de León had first stepped upon her shores. She was a Spanish acquisition, but ruled by her natives, some of them friendly, some of them warlike. In those early days Spaniards sometimes landed to seek treasure, only to disappear themselves instead. But the natives—friendly and not—began to fall prey to a weapon the Spaniards had unwittingly brought—European disease. In the end Spain enforced her hold upon her possession.

In 1719 the French briefly took possession of Pensacola, but the Spanish very quickly took it back.

In 1740 British General Oglethorpe invaded, yet
could not take the Castillo de San Marcos in St. Augustine. Still, the Treaty of Paris in 1763 gave Florida to the British. In 1781 Spain captured Pensacola from the British. In 1783 Florida was returned to Spain by the British in return for the Bahamas.

Florida had been a prize passed back and forth many times. Now the Americans wanted her. There were rich, fertile lands to be farmed, coasts to be fished. Sunny plains to homestead. There might be great treasures somewhere; some still believed in the Fountain of Youth that Juan Ponce de León had sought. More than that, it seemed that Americans could not accept boundary lines. Florida seemed like a natural extension of American land. More and more settlers wanted to come south. With Jackson at the fore America would have her.

But Jarrett could no longer fight beside the commander he so admired. Jackson’s war became a war against all Indians living within the Florida borders and Jarrett could not be a party to it. Finding General Jackson at St. Augustine during a lull in the campaign some men called the Seminole War and some men called Andy Jackson’s War, Jarrett sought an audience with him late at night.
Stand your ground
, Jackson had taught him, and so he did. He floundered a little bit at first, but he passionately reminded Jackson of how loyally he had followed him to war, how he had fought, never tired, and how he had served the general and therefore his country. He hadn’t deserved to go home and discover that he had no home. He also informed him at the time that he’d support him in any endeavor—except for an all-out war with the Indians. Jackson had appeared angry at first, but Jarrett didn’t care. And in the end Jarrett was glad to realize he had behaved in exactly the manner the general had taught him—he had stood his ground. While he was still speaking, Jackson had been filling
out the papers to assure that the land held by Sean McKenzie and family was properly deeded. “My young sir!” Jackson told him, standing tall to offer him the documents. “I am sorry that we can no longer be comrades-at-arms, but you are a man I would call friend nonetheless, for honesty and courage are virtues I cherish. We shall agree to disagree, but I’d never so dishonor a soldier as I have so unintentionally done you. I owe you better, young man.”