The history of this young Spaniard, who is reported to have been handsome, together with the saving of his life at a crucial moment by the daughter of the proud old Chieftain of Hirrihigua, parallels that of the Virginia annals, of Pocahontas and John Smith, and antedates this epoch-making history of Virginia almost one hundred years. In memory of Pocahontas, the Lady Rebecca of the English courts, toasts of all England have been given; entertainments have been planned in her honor, and medals have been struck off to commemorate her visit to the imperial court of James the First.
The proudest blood of Virginia runs through her descendants and every history of white America gives the tragic story of her heroism and her instrumentality in saving Virginia to the Caucasians.
Of U-le-lah, our Florida princess, whose heroic stand and womanly courage stand out as the peer of any character in history, we know but little and honor has been withheld, not only as an Indian princess whose father was the emperor of an unbounded area, but as a historical character of gracious personality. She was truly the heroine of the first American romance, where honor, dignity and a woman’s heart shone forth, and as Floridians, we should endeavor to memorialize her name and her deeds in the history of America. A brief sketch of this young Indian girl is appended.
Juan Ortez, a Spanish youth deserted by his comrades, was captured on the shores of Tampa Bay by the Indians, and taken to their chief U-ci-ta. This chief was the reigning monarch of this southern province of Hirrihigua, and thoroughly embittered against the butchery his people had suffered at the hands of De Soto, was ready to wreak vengeance on the pale face, the only survivor of the De Narvaez expedition.
Florida, from the day the first Spanish invaders, with blood-hounds, chains, battle-axes and sabres, set foot upon her flower-bordered soil, has been a battle ground. Her sands have run red with blood of the innocent native, who always held out a hand of welcome and gave sustenance from his well filled storehouses, while the newcomers ever practiced the same atrocities and butcheries that have been perpetrated upon the Indians of America, although with greater cruelties and no restraining power.
It is not surprising that the proud chief of Hirrihigua wished to be relieved entirely of every vestige of white blood, for, added to the rapacities from which he and his tribe had suffered, the Narvaez expedition had even subjected the chief’s mother to the most atrocious cruelties, and thus his desire for vengeance upon this representative of the white intruders was natural. With revenge uppermost in his mind, the chief ordered Juan Ortez to be bound hand and foot and placed upon a rack made of poles—and to be slowly burned to death.
As history records the account of this tragic scene, the beautiful daughter of U-ci-ta, who was about the same age as the handsome Spaniard, when she saw the dreadful fate about to be inflicted upon the young white stranger, rushed to the burning fagots, and braving the anger of her all-powerful father, threw herself at his feet and implored him to spare the life of the captive youth, urging and pleading with all the compassion of a woman’s heart, that this white stranger had done no injury and that it was nobler for a brave and lofty chief like U-ci-ta to keep the youth a captive than to sacrifice so mere a lad to his revenge.
Looking back four centuries, a vision rises. We stand in the midst of an aboriginal people. A tragic scene is before us. We see Indians wreaking vengeance for the wrong inflicted upon them, and a stern visaged chieftain, whose word is law, in command. A boyish form is bound upon a rack of fagots, with the flames already gently licking the poles and creeping to his helpless body. All at once a trembling, girlish form rushes to the rescue, and with the pleading of a compassionate woman, forgetting her own natural resentment for the past wrongs done for her kindred, touches her stern and stoical father and secures the release of the captive youth.
This was the youth Ortez, who, released from his fiery bed, was cared for by his gentle protector, his burned flesh bound and dressed, and under her gentle administrations restored to health, and as an act of honor he was given the position of guard over the sepulchres of the dead. It was the custom to place the dead upon scaffolds, and, as these sepulchres in those wilderness days were beset by wolves and wildcats, a guard watched over them day and night.
Ortez guarded these mausoleums through the lonely hours of the night and grew in great favor with the haughty chieftain; but one night, so the narrative goes, a wolf carried away the body of a child of a chief. Ortez threw an arrow and wounded it, but did not know that the child had been taken. The next morning the loss of the child’s body was made known, and Ortez ordered to be put to death. Some friendly Indians, following on the trail of the wolf, discovered the child, and the wolf lying dead just beyond it. The chief, with a justice ever belonging to the American Indian, being satisfied of the faithfulness of Ortez, took him again into favor.