Osceola was now visiting the different bands of the tribe, preaching this crusade of resistance to tyranny. As he stood before Philip Emathla and his warriors, with his noble figure and fine face fully displayed in the bright firelight, they were thrilled by his eloquence. With bated breath they listened to his summing up of their grievances, and when he declared that he would rather die fighting for this land than live in any other, they greeted his words with a murmur of approving assent.
Never had Coacoochee been so powerfully affected. The sting of the white man's whip across his shoulders was still felt, and he was choked with the sense of outrage and injustice inflicted upon his people. His fingers clutched nervously at the hilt of his knife and he longed for the time to come when he might fight madly for all that a man holds most dear.
As his gaze wandered for a moment from the face of the speaker, it fell on a group just visible within the circle of firelight. There sat the beautiful girl to whom he had so recently plighted his troth, and beside her Chen-o-wah, the daughter of a Creek chief and his quadroon squaw. She was the wife of Osceola, and the one being in all the world whom the fierce forest warrior loved.
For a moment Coacoochee's determination wavered as he reflected what these and others equally helpless would suffer in a time of war. There came a memory of the manner in which Nita's mother and brother had been consigned to slavery by the white man. No word had come from them, but he could imagine their fate. Might not the same fate overtake her most dear to him and hundreds of others with her? Would it not be better for them to incur the dangers and sufferings of war rather than those of slavery? Yes, a thousand times yes.
And then, perhaps the whites were not so very powerful, after all. Their soldiers, so far as he had seen them, were but few in number, and moved slowly from place to place. He and his warriors could travel twenty miles to their five. Besides, there were the vast watery fastnesses of the Everglades and the Big Cypress in the far south, to which the Indians could always retreat and into which no white man would ever dare follow them. Yes, his voice should be raised for war, no matter how long it might last, nor how bloody it might be, and the sooner it could be begun, the better. But he must listen, for Philip Emathla was about to speak.
CHEN-O-WAH IS STOLEN BY THE SLAVE-CATCHERS
The aged chieftain rose slowly and for a moment gazed lovingly and in silence at those gathered about him; then he said: "My children, we have listened to the words of Ah-ha-se-ho-la, and we know them to be true. But he has spoken with the voice of a young man. He sees with young eyes. My eyes are old, but they can look back over many seasons that a young man cannot see. They can also look forward further than his, and see many things. I have seen the great council of the white man, and his warriors. I have seen his villages. His lodges are more numerous than the trees of the forest, and his numbers are those of the leaves of countless trees. To fight with him would be like fighting the waves of the great salt waters that reach to the sky. If we should kill one, ten would spring up to take his place. For a hundred who may fall, a thousand will stand. He is strong, and we are weak. Let us then live at peace with him while we may. Let us meet him in council and tell him how little it is that we ask. There is a land beyond Okeechobee, the great sweet water, that the white man can never want, but where the red man could dwell in peace and plenty. Let him leave this to us, and we will ask no more.
"If he will not do this, then let us fight. Never will Philip Emathla consent to go to the strange and distant land of the setting sun. If it is a better land than this, as the white man tells us, why does he not go there himself and leave us alone? It is a cold country. My people would die there. It is better to die here and die fighting.