The Lily and the Totem; or, The Huguenots in Florida

by William Gilmore Simms

“When the lots were determined, the king of Calos drew nigh to examine us more heedfully. He had not before regarded us with any consideration. Verily, he was a noble savage to the eye. His person was tall, like one of the sons of Anak, and his carriage was that of a great warrior, born a prince, to whom it was natural equally to conquer and to rule. Rich were the garments of flowing cotton which he wore loosely, like a robe, mostly white, but with broad stains of crimson about the skirts and shoulders.

“A great baldrick hung suspended at his back, which bore a quiver, made of the skin of the rattle-snake, filled with arrows, each shaft better than a cloth-yard’s length. The macana which he carried in his grasp, was a mighty club of hard wood, close in grain, and weighty as stone, which, save at the grasp or handle, was studded with sharp blades of flint, which resembled it to the mighty blade of the sword-fish. With this weapon mine eyes have seen him smite down two powerful enemies at a single stroke. Great was his forehead and high, and his cheek bones stood forth like knots upon his face, as if the cheeks were guarded by a shield. Black was his piercing eye, which grew red and fiery when he was angered; and, at such seasons, it was easier for him to smite than to speak. Unlike his people, he wore the natural growth of his hair, long and flowing straight adown his back, glossy with its original blackness, and with the oil of the bear, of which, like all his people, the lord of Calos made plentiful use. This king might be full forty years of age. Yet looked he neither young nor old—neither so young that you might not hold him the gravest and best counsellor of wisdom in the land, nor so old, but that he might better and more ingeniously lead in battle than any of his warriors. Certes, he was the most ready first to march when the invasion of the distant tribes had been resolved on; and, of a truth, never was statesman in the great courts of Europe—not the counsellors of the great Carlos himself—so cool in speculation, so just in judgment, so heedful to consider all the advantages and all the risks of an enterprise, before the first step was set down in the adoption of a policy. For seven years had I sufficient means, in the immediate service of his household, to watch the courses of his thoughts and character, and to know the virtues and the strength thereof. I saw him devise among his chiefs, and inform them with his own devices. I have seen him lead in battle, when all the plans were his own, and it was his equal teaching and valiancy by which the field was won. Verily, I say that this lord of Calos were a prince to mate with the best in Europe; and, but that we have in European warfare such engines of mischief as come not within the use or knowledge of his race, it were difficult to circumvent him in stratagem, or overcome his braves in battle. With an hundred shot—no less—and employing at the same time all the red-men as allies, who are hostile to this king of Calos—and they are many—and I doubt not Monsieur Laudonniere, but that you could penetrate his dominions and make the conquest thereof. But of him could you make no conquest. He is a warrior of the proudest stomach, who would rather perish than lose the victory; and who, most surely, would never survive the overthrow of his dominion.

“Me, did this great king examine with more curious eyes than he bestowed upon the other captives. I know not for what reason, unless because of the superior size and strength which I possess, and the extreme length and thickness of my beard and hair, of which, as a Christian man, I have always made too much account. All of us did he assign to labor; to the gathering of wood, and work in the maize fields, with the women. By-and-by, there came a preference for me beyond the others. I was brought into the king’s household, and barbed his arrows, and wrought upon his great macanas, and strove, among the Indians, in hewing out his canoes from the cypress, first burning out the greater core with fire. But when harvest time came, a great festivity was held among the savages. Bitter roots were gathered in the woods, and great vessels of the beverage which was made thereof, was placed within the council or round-house of the nation. Thither did the chiefs resort and drink; and ever as they drank they danced, though the liquor wrought upon them like aguardiente with the European, and moved them even as the most violent of emetic medicines. Still danced they, and still they danced for the space of three whole days.—But the lord of Calos seemed not to mingle at this strange festival. He purposed rites still more strange—rites, which even now, I think upon with horror only. He had a dwelling to himself in the deep woods, whither he retired the night before the day when the great feast of the nation was to begin. Here he waited all the night, watching with reverence and patience the burning of a strange fire which had been wrought of many curious and fragrant herbs and roots. Three of the ancient people, the priests or Iawas, as they style themselves, retired with him to build this fire, which, when it began to burn, placing in store a sufficient supply of aromatic fuel that he might feed it still, they left him, with strange exorcising, to himself. And there he kept watch throughout the night. But early with the next morning he came forth, and he sprinkled the ashes of the fire upon the maize field, and he cried thrice, with a loud voice, of Yo-he-wah, which, I believe to mean the sacred name as known among the red-men. With each cry, as our poor Spaniards, myself among them, were gathering the green ears from the maize stalks, the priests who followed the king of Calos, seized bodily upon three of our brethren, taking us by surprise, and putting us all in a quaking fear. These three were all brought before the lord of Calos, who, not looking upon them as they lay bound at his feet, threw yet another vessel of sacred ashes into the air, and as these three Spaniards lay separate, with their faces looking up, I beheld the ashes sink immediately upon the breast of him whom I have already named to you—the Jonas by whom our vessel was doomed to wreck—the cruel Don Juan de Mores y Silva. Now, though the king surely looked not as he threw the ashes into the air, yet did it descend upon the breast of this said Spaniard, as certainly as if the eye and arm of this lord had been upon this particular person at the moment when he threw. Verily, though I know not well how it should be—being counselled by Holy Church against such belief—yet, verily, had this lord of Calos certain powers which did seem to justify the saying among his people, that he was a master of magic and of arts superior to those of common men.

“Now, when the Iawas, or priests, beheld where the ashes fell, they seized incontinently upon the Spaniard aforesaid. They bore him away from us, wondering and fearing all the while. But those who remained loosed the other two who had been bound, and they were set free with the rest, to pursue their labors in the corn-field. But we were not let to know the awful fate which befel the Spaniard who was taken. Verily, he saw his danger in the moment when the ashes lighted on his breast. His face was whiter than the blossom of the dogwood when it first opens to the spring. His eye glared, and his lip quivered like a leaf in the gusts of March, though nothing he spake at anything they did to him. But when they bore him away from our eyes, then a terrible fear and agony caused him to cry aloud—‘Oh! my countrymen, will you not save me from the bloody savage!’ I cannot soon forget that cry, which was clearly that of a person who beholds his doom. But of what avail? We had not the people, nor the strength, nor the weapons! A thousand savages danced wildly around the council-house, and the fields were full of these who came to drink and dance. Besides, we thought not of any danger but our own. We knew not how soon the fate was to befal us; for had it not seized upon Don Juan without a warning or a sign.

“They bore him to the secret tabernacle in the woods, where the lord of Calos watched alone. We saw not then, but afterwards we knew, what had been his fate. There they laid him upon a great mound of earth, with the sacred fire burning at his head in a large vessel of baked clay, formed with a nice art by the savages, and painted with the mystic figure of a bloody hand. The garments which he wore were taken off, and his limbs were fastened separately to great stakes driven in places about the mound. Thus were his hands and legs, his body and his very neck made fast, so that whatever might be the deed done upon him, he could oppose it not even in the smallest measure. But it was permitted him to cry aloud—and those of us who stole into the woods seeking to hear,—with a terrible curiosity which our very apprehensions fed,—we heard,—we heard,—and even as the awful scream of our late companion came piercing through the woods upon our ears,—we fled afar from the sound, which was that of a mortal agony and anguish. And, verily, the torture to which he was doomed was that which might well compel the poor outraged heart of humanity to cry aloud. With a keen knife, and the hand of one who had practised long at the cruel rite, the lord of Calos laid bare the breast of the victim, he not able to struggle even,—only to shriek,—he laid it bare as one peels the ripe fruit, and exposes the precious heart thereof! Even this did the lord of Calos. He stripped the skin from the breast of his victim, then, with sharp strokes, he smote away the flesh, until the quaking ribs lay bare to his point. With a sharp stone chisel he smote the breast-bone asunder, lifted the ribs, and tore away the smoking heart, which he cast, reeking red, into the burning fire of odorous woods and herbs, which then flamed up and brightened in the dark chamber, as if fed with some ichorous fuel. In that terrible agony, when the soul and the human life were thus rudely torn apart from the mutual embrace, it was told me by the lord of Calos, himself, that the victim burst one of the wythes that bound him, and freed his right hand, which he waved violently thrice, even while his murderer was plucking his heart away from its quivering fastenings! Oh! the horror, though for a moment only, of that awful consciousness! Verily, my friends, if the lord of Calos did possess a power of magic such as his people affirm, verily, I say, he paid a terrible price to the eternal hater of human souls, when he gat from him his perditious privilege!

“But the sufferings of that wretched victim, who then and thus perished, were they greater than those which followed our footsteps,—we, the survivors,—haunting us by night and day, with the mortal terrors of a fear that such must be our doom also? Every rustle of an approaching footstep among the maize-stalks where we toiled, breaking the stems and gathering the ripened ears, seemed to our woe-stricken souls, as the step of one who came as an executioner; while we labored in the gloomy thicket, gathering fuel for the winter fires, the same fear was hanging over us with a threat of the impending doom. We lived and slept in a continual dread of death, which made the hair whiten on every brow, even of the youngest, before that terrible winter was gone over.

“To us it was assigned to put away the body of our murdered comrade. But this was only after the three days of the feast was elapsed, and when the duty was tenfold distressing. Still, though all our senses revolted at the task, a fearful curiosity compelled a close examination of the victim. Then it was that we saw how the execution had been done, though we knew not then, nor until some time after, that the cell which enshrined and kept the heart had been torn open, and the sacred possession wrenched away with violent hands, even while the wretched victim had eyes to see, as well as sensibilities to feel, the sacrilegious and bloody theft. We bore the body far into the woods, wrapping it with leaves so as to hide it from our eyes, while we carried it in the bottom of an old canoe which we found for this purpose. Our burial was conducted after the fashion of the red-men. We laid the corse of our comrade upon a bed of leaves on the naked earth, and laid heavy fragments of pine and other combustible wood about him. With this we made a great pile, which we set on fire, and let to burn until everything was consumed. We then, with sad, sorrowing, and trembling hearts, returned, each one of us, in a mournful silence that wist not what to say, to our separate tasks, and the places which had been assigned us.

“Now, many months had passed in this manner, and still I was employed about the king’s household. This lord of Calos distinguished me, as I have said, beyond my comrades. I had a great vigor of limb which is not common among this people, except in so much as it moves them to great agility. They are rather light, swift and expert, than powerful in war; and trust rather to great cunning than superior strength, in the meeting with their enemies. The king of Calos greatly admired to see me lift heavy logs of timber, such as would have borne down any among his people if laid upon his shoulders. But he himself had a strength superior to his people, and he wondered even more when, striving to lift the logs which I laid down, he found it beyond his mastery. Then, he put his bow into my hand, and giving me a cloth-yard shaft of reed, well tipped with a flinty barb, and dressed with an eagle’s feather, he bade me draw it to the head, and send it as I would. Upon which, doing so, he greatly wondered to see how rapid and distant was the flight, for well he knew that the ability to shoot the arrow far comes rather from sleight than from strength, and is an art that only grows from practice. But this, perhaps, had not fully given me to the confidence of the king, had it not been for a service which I rendered on one occasion to his favorite son, a boy of but twelve years of age, whom I plucked from beneath the feet of a great stag, which the hunters had wounded in the forest. The red-men greatly delight to see their sons take part in the chase, even while their gristle is yet soft and their limbs feeble; for by this early practice they desired to make them strong and skilful. The son of the lord of Calos was a youth, tall and strong beyond his years; and because of the fondness of his father, exceedingly audacious in all manner of sports and strifes. Thus it was that, having seen a great stag wounded by the shaft of his sire, he had run in upon him with his slender spear. The staff of the spear broke, even as the barb penetrated the breast of the beast, and the boy fell forward at the mercy of his mighty antlers. Then was it that, seeing the lad’s danger,—for I was at hand, bearing the victuals for the hunters—I threw down the basket, and rushing in, took the stag by his horns, in season for the lad to recover himself. The lord of Calos drew nigh and saw, but he offered no help, leaving it to his son to draw the keen knife which he carried, over the throat of the struggling beast. And, excepting what the boy said to me of thanks, nothing did I hear of the thing which I had done. But, three weeks after, the king made his preparations, for a war party against the mountain Indians. Then he spoke to me, saying, in his own language,—which, by this time, I could understand,—Barbu,—this was the name which had been given me because of my beard—Barbu, it is not fit that one with such limbs and skill as thou hast, should labor still in the occupation of the women. Get thee a spear, such as will suit thy grasp, and there are bows and arrows for thy choice,—make thee satisfied with sufficient provision, and get thee ready to go against mine enemies. Thou shalt have to tear the flesh of a strong man!

“Verily, my friends, though it shames me to confess, that I, a Christian man, could lift weapon in behalf of one against another savage of the wilderness; yet such had been my sorrow, and so wretched did I feel at the base tasks to which I had been given,—so very unlike the valiant duties which had distinguished mine ancient service in the armies of Castile,—that I even rejoiced at the chance of putting on the armor of war,—and the meaner weapon of the red-men satisfied me then, who of old had carried, with great favor, the matchlock and the sword. But the weapon of the savage, as perchance thou knowest, is not greatly inferior, according to their usage, and in their country, to the superior implements with which the Christian warrior takes the field. If the arquebuse is more fatal than the barbed arrow of the Indian, it is yet less frequently ready for the danger. While you shall have put your pieces in readiness for a second fire, the savage will deliver thirty javelins, each of which, if within bullet reach, shall inflict such an injury, short of death, as may disarm the wounded person. Their reeds are always ready at hand. To them every bay and river bank affords an armory, and the loss of their weapons, which were fatal to Frenchman or Spaniard, causes them but little mischief, since a single night will repair all their losses. Neither much time nor much cost is it to them to supply their munitions, of which they can always carry a more abundant provision than can we. The great superiority of the European, in his encounter with the red-man, is in his wisdom, the fruit of many ages of civilization, and not in the weapons which he wields in conflict. Let him exchange weapons with the savage, and he will still obtain the victory.

“It was because of this showing of superiority, together with the service which I had thus rendered to his son, that made the lord of Calos take me with him, armed as a warrior, on his expedition against the mountain Indians of Apalachy. I hastened to provide myself with weapons, as I was commanded, and I made for myself a great mace, such as that which the strongest warriors carried, which was a billet of hard wood, not more than four feet in length, with a handle easy to the grasp, while at each side ran down a great row of flinty teeth, each broad and sharpened like to a spear-head. It is a fatal weapon, with a well-delivered blow. In like manner did I imitate the practice of the red-men in dressing the head and breast for war. I put on the paints, red and black, which I beheld them use; but, instead of the unmeaning and rude figures which they scored upon the breast, I drew there the figure of a large cross, by which, though none but myself might know, I made anew my assurance to Holy Mother, of a faith unperishing, in Him who bore its burthen; and implored His protection against the perils which might lurk along the path. In the same manner, with a bloody cross, did I inscribe my forehead and each cheek, while I dipped my hands above the wrist in the black dyes which they also used as paints, and which they took from the walnut and other woods of the forest. Greatly did my Christian comrades wonder to behold me, painted after this fashion, with a bunch of turkey feathers tied about my head like the savage, and the strange weapons of the red-men in my grasp. These rejoiced exceedingly as they beheld me, and laughed and chatted among themselves, saying—‘Yah-hee-wee! Yah-hee-wee!’ with other words, by which they testified their satisfaction. But our Spaniards were in the same degree sorry, as it seemed to them that, in spite of the holy emblem upon my breast, I had delivered myself up to the enemy, and had put on, with the habit, all the superstitions of the Heathen. They had sorrow upon other grounds, since I was about to leave them, and, from the favor I had found with the lord of Calos, I had grown to be one to whom they began to look as to a mediator and protector.