General Clinch had foreseen that hostilities were unavoidable, and, as early as the fifteenth of November, had sought to increase the number of troops at Fort King by such reinforcements as could be spared from other stations. For this purpose, he ordered Major Dade, then at Fort Brooke, near Tampa Bay, to prepare his command for a march to Fort King. The distance was one hundred and thirty miles, through an unsettled forest, much diversified with swamps, lakes and hommocks. No officer nor soldier could be found who was acquainted with the route, and a guide was indispensable: yet men competent to the discharge of so important a trust were rarely to be found, for the lives of the regiment might depend upon the intelligence and fidelity of their conductor.
At this point in our history, even before the commencement of general hostilities, we are led to the acquaintance of one of the most romantic characters who bore part in the stirring scenes of that day. On making inquiry for a suitable guide, the attention of Major Dade was directed to a colored man named Louis. He was the slave of one of the old and respectable Spanish families, named Pacheco, who resided in the vicinity of Fort Brooke. Major Dade applied to the master, Antonio Pacheco, for information concerning his slave, and was assured that Louis, then near thirty years of age, was one of the most faithful, intelligent, and trustworthy men he had ever known. He had also been well bred, was polite, accomplished, and learned. He read, wrote, and spoke, with facility, the Spanish, French, and English languages, and spoke the Indian, and was perfectly familiar with the route to Fort King, having frequently traveled it.
Pleased with the character and appearance of Louis, Major Dade entered into an agreement with the master for his services in conducting the troops through the forest to Fort King, at the rate of twenty-five dollars per month, and stated the time at which the service was to commence. The contract was made in the presence of Louis, who listened attentively to the whole arrangement, to which he of course gave his own consent.
Louis Pacheco was too enlightened to smother the better sympathies of the human heart. He was well informed, and understood the efforts that were making to reënslave his brethren, the Exiles. With many of them he had long been acquainted; he had witnessed the persecutions to which they had been subjected, the outrages heaped upon them, and now saw clearly the intention to subject them to slavery among the Creeks. He had spent his own life thus far in servitude, and, although his condition was regarded with envy by the plantation servants around him, he yet sighed for freedom.
Blessed with an intellect of no ordinary mould, he reflected deeply upon his condition, and determined upon his course. Hostilities had not yet commenced, and he was in the daily habit of conversing with Indians, and often with Exiles. He was well acquainted with the character of each, and knew the men to whom he could communicate important information with safety. To a few of the Exiles, men of integrity and boldness, he imparted the facts that Dade, with his troops, would leave Fort Brooke about the twenty-fifth of December, for Fort King, and that he, Louis, was to act as their guide; that he would conduct them by the trail leading near the Great Wahoo Swamp, and pointed out the proper place for an attack.[81]
This information was soon made known to the leading and active Exiles, and to a few of the Seminole chiefs and warriors. The Exiles, conscious that the war was to be waged on their account, were anxious to give their friends some suitable manifestation of their prowess. They desired as many of the Exiles capable of bearing arms as could assemble at a certain point in the Great Wahoo Swamp, to meet them there as early as the twenty-seventh of December, armed, and prepared to commence the war by a proper demonstration of their gallantry.
Information was sent to Osceola and his followers, inviting them to be present. They were lying secreted near Fort King, too intent upon the death of Thompson to turn their eyes for a moment from their victim. However, many other chiefs and warriors assembled at the time and place designated, in order to witness what they supposed would be the first scene in the great drama about to be acted. Their spies detached for that purpose, arrived at their rendezvous almost hourly, bringing information of the commencement of Dade’s march, the number of men forming his battalion, and their places of encampment each night.
In the evening of the twenty-seventh, their patrols brought word that Dade and his men had arrived within three miles of the point at which they intended to attack them. Of course every preparation was now made for placing themselves in ambush at an early hour, along the trail in which it was expected the troops would pass. The scouts reported that precisely one hundred and ten men constituted the force which they expected to encounter, and the official report fully confirms the accuracy of their intelligence. The Exiles looked to the coming day with great intensity of feeling. More than two hundred years since, their ancestors had been piratically seized in their own country, and forcibly torn from their friends—from the land of their nativity. For a time they submitted to degrading bondage; but more than a century had elapsed since they fled from South Carolina, and found an asylum under Spanish law in the wilds of Florida. There their fathers and mothers had been buried. They had often visited their graves, and mourned over the sad fate to which their race appeared to be doomed. For fifty years they had been subjected to almost constant persecution at the hands of our Government. The blood of their fathers, brothers and friends, massacred at “Blount’s Fort,” was yet unavenged. They had seen individuals from among them piratically seized and enslaved. Their friends, residing with E-con-chattimico and with Walker, had been openly and flagrantly kidnapped, and sold into interminable servitude, where they were then sighing and moaning in degrading bondage. In looking forward, they read their intended doom, clearly written in the slave codes of Florida and the adjoining States, which could only be avoided by their most determined resistance. If they behaved worthy of men in their condition, their influence with their savage allies would be confirmed, and they would be able to control their action on subsequent occasions. Every consideration, therefore, tended to nerve them to the work of death which lay before them.
In the meantime, their victims were reposing at only four or five miles distant in conscious security. Their encampment had been selected according to military science. The men and officers were encamped in scientific order. Their guards were placed, their patrols sent out, and every precaution taken to prevent surprise. They had seen service, and cheerfully encountered its hardships, privations, and dangers, but had no suspicion of the fate that awaited them on the coming day.
At early dawn, the men were paraded, the roll called, and the order for regulating the day’s march given. They were then dismissed for breakfast, and at eight o’clock, resumed their march, and proceeded on their way in the full expectation of reaching their destination by the evening of that day.