“I have not signed it,” said Onopa, urged to the declaration by Osceola, who stood by behind him. “I shall not sign it now. Others may act as they please; I shall not go from my home. I shall not leave Florida.”
“Nor I,” added Hoitle-mattee, in a determined tone. “I have fifty kegs of powder: so long as a grain of it remains unburned, I shall not be parted from my native land.”
“His sentiments are mine,” added Holata.
“And mine!” exclaimed Arpiucki.
“And mine?” echoed Poshalla (the dwarf), Coa Hajo, Cloud, and the negro Abram.
The patriots alone spoke; the traitors said not a word. The signing was a test too severe for them. They had all signed it before at the Oclawaha; but now, in the presence of the nation, they dared not confirm it. They feared even to advocate what they had done. They remained silent.
“Enough!” said Osceola, who had not yet publicly expressed his opinion, but who was now expected to speak, and was attentively regarded by all. “The chiefs have declared themselves; they refuse to sign. It is the voice of the nation that speaks through its chiefs, and the people will stand by their word. The agent has called us children and fools; it is easy to give names. We know that there are fools among us, and children too, and worse than both—traitors. But there are men, and some as true and brave as the agent himself. He wants no more talk with us—be it so; we have no more for him—he has our answer. He may stay or go.
“Brothers!” continued the speaker, facing to the chiefs and warriors, and as if disregarding the presence of the whites, “you have done right; you have spoken the will of the nation, and the people applaud. It is false that we wish to leave our homes and go west. They who say so are deceivers, and do not speak our mind. We have no desire for this fine land to which they would send us. It is not as fair as our own. It is a wild desert, where in summer the springs dry up and water is hard to find. From thirst the hunter often dies by the way. In winter, the leaves fall from the trees, snow covers the ground, frost stiffens the clay, and chills the bodies of men, till they shiver in pain—the whole country looks as though the earth were dead. Brothers! we want no cold country like that; we like our own land better. If it be too hot, we have the shade of the live-oak, the big laurel (Note 2), and the noble palm-tree. Shall we forsake the land of the palm? No! Under its shadow have we lived: under its shadow let us die!”
Up to this point the interest had been increasing. Indeed, ever since the appearance of Osceola, the scene had been deeply impressive—never to be effaced from the memory, though difficult to be described in words. A painter, and he alone, might have done justice to such a picture.
It was full of points, thoroughly and thrillingly dramatic; the excited agent on one side, the calm chiefs on the other; the contrast of emotions; the very women who had left their unclad little ones to gambol on the grass and dally with the flowers, while they themselves, with the warriors pressed closely around the council, under the most intense, yet subdued, interest; catching every look as it gleamed from the countenance, and hanging on every word as it fell from the lips of Osceola. The latter—his eye calm, serious, fixed—his attitude manly, graceful, erect—his thin, close-pressed lip, indicative of the “mind made up”—his firm, yet restrained, tread, free from all stride or swagger—his dignified and composed bearing—his perfect and solemn silence, except during his sententious talk—the head thrown backward, the arms firmly folded on the protruding chest—all, all instantaneously changing, as if by an electric shock, whenever the commissioner stated a proposition that he knew to be false or sophistic. At such times the fire-flash of his indignant eye—the withering scorn upon his upcurled lip—the violent and oft repeated stamping of his foot—his clenched hand, and the rapid gesticulation of his uplifted arm—the short, quick breathing and heaving of his agitated bosom, like the rushing wind and swelling wave of the tempest-tossed ocean, and these again subsiding into the stillness of melancholy, and presenting only that aspect and attitude of repose wherewith the ancient statuary loved to invest the gods and heroes of Greece.