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

by William Gilmore Simms

“It grieves me that these men should perish: they will perish of cold and hunger, and by violence among the savages. This man Le Caille will fight bravely, but he is a sorry dolt to have the conduct of brave men. Besides, we shall all perish if we do not keep together. Perhaps it is better that we should err in our progress—go wide from the proper track—than that we should break in twain. Let us retrace our steps—let us follow them, and unite with them for a season, at least, until their eyes open upon the truth.”

He spoke to willing listeners. His followers obeyed him through habit; they acknowledged the authority of a greater will and a stronger genius; but they had not been satisfied. They, too, hungered secretly for the great city and the place of rest, and were impatient of the wearisome progress, day by day, without any ultimate object in their eyes. Cheerfully, and with renewal of their strength, did they turn at the direction of their leader, and push forward to re-unite with their comrades. They had a wearisome distance of four hours to overcome, but they had hopes to regain their brethren by night, as they knew that they would rest two hours at noon for the noonday meal, which, it was resolved, should not, on this occasion, delay their progress, and by moving with greater speed than usual, it was calculated that the lost ground might be recovered.

Meanwhile, the party of Le Caille had crossed a little river which they had to wade. The depth was not great, reaching only to their waists, but it was very cold and it chilled them through. They halted accordingly on the opposite side, and built themselves a fire. Here the rest taken and the delay were unusually long, and contributed somewhat to the efforts made by D’Erlach’s party to overtake them. When, after a pause of two hours, the troop of Le Caille was prepared again to move, it was considerably past the time of noon. As they gathered up their traps, one of their party who had gone aside from the rest, was suddenly confounded to behold a red-man start up from the bushes where he had been crouching, in long and curious watch over their proceedings. The Frenchman, who was named Rotrou, was quite delighted at the apparition, since they eagerly sought to gather from the Indians the directions for their future progress, and none had been seen for many days. Rotrou called to the Indian in words of good-nature and encouragement, but the latter, slapping his naked sides with an air of defiance, started off towards the mountains. Rotrou again shouted; the savage turned for a moment and paused, then waving his hand with a significant gesture, he responded with the war-whoop, and once more bounded away in flight. The rash and wanton Frenchman immediately lifted his arquebuse, and fired upon the fugitive. He was seen to stagger and fall upon his knee, but immediately recovering himself, he set off almost at as full speed as ever, making for a little thicket that spread itself out upon the right. The party of Le Caille by this time came up. They penetrated the covert where the red-man had been seen to shelter himself, and for a while they tracked him by his blood. But at length they came to a spot where he had evidently crouched and bound up his hurts. They found a little puddle of blood upon the spot, and some fragments of tow, moss, and cotton cloth, some of which had been used for the purpose. Here all traces of the wounded man failed them; and they resumed their route, greatly regretting that he should have escaped, but greatly encouraged, as they fancied that they were approaching some of the settlements of the natives.

It was probably an hour after this event when D’Erlach and his party reached the same neighborhood, and found the proof of the rest and repast which that of Le Caille had taken on the banks of the little river. This sight urged them to new efforts, and though chilled also very greatly by the passage of the stream, they did not pause in their pursuit, but pressed forward without delay, having the fresh tracks of their brethren before their eyes, for the guidance of their footsteps. It was well they did so. In little more than an hour after this, while still urging the forced march which they had begun, they were suddenly arrested by a wild and fearful cry in the forests beyond, the character of which they but too well knew, from frequent and fierce experience. It was the yell of the savage, the terrible war-whoop of the Apalachian, that sounded suddenly from the ambush, as the rattle of the snake is heard from the copse in which he makes his retreat. Then followed the discharge of several arquebuses, four or five in number, all at once, and soon after one or two dropping shots.

“Onward!” cried Alphonse D’Erlach; “we have not a moment to lose. Our comrades are in danger! On! Fools! they have delivered nearly or quite all their pieces; and if the savage be not fled in terror, they are at the mercy of his arrows. Onward, my brave Gascons! Let us save our brethren.”

The young captain led the advance, but though pushing forward with all industry, he did not forego the proper precautions. His men were already taught to scatter themselves, Indian fashion, through the forests, and at little intervals to pursue a parallel course to each other, so as to lessen the chances of surprise, and to offer as small a mark as possible to the shafts of the enemy. The shouts and clamor increased. They could distinguish the cries of the savages from those of the Frenchmen. Of the latter, they fancied they could tell particular voices of individuals. They could hear the flight of arrows, and sometimes the dull, heavy sounds of blows as from a macana or a clubbed arquebuse; and a few moments sufficed to show them the savages darting from tree to tree, and here and there a Frenchman apparently bewildered with the number and agile movements of his foes, but still resolute to seek his victim. At this moment Alphonse D’Erlach stumbled upon a wounded man. He looked down. It was the Sergeant, Le Caille himself. He was stuck full of arrows; more than a dozen having penetrated his body, and one was yet quivering in his cheek just below his eye. Still he lived, but his eyes were glazing. They took in the form of D’Erlach. The lips parted.

“Le Grand Copal, Monsieur—eh!” was all he said, when the death-rattle followed. He gasped, turned over with a single convulsion, and his concern ceased wholly for that golden city, in the search for which he had forgotten every other. D’Erlach gave but a moment’s heed to the dying man, then pushed forward for the rescue of those who might be living. They were surrounded by more than fifty savages, and among these were scattered groups of women and even children. In fact, Le Caille, in his pursuit of the Indian wounded by Rotrou, had happened upon a village of the Apalachians.

It was fortunate for D’Erlach that the savages were quite too busy with the first, to be conscious of the second party. They had been brought on quietly, and, scattered as they had been in the approach, they were enabled to deliver their fire from an extensive range of front. It appalled the Indians, even as a thunder burst from heaven. They had gathered around the few Frenchmen surviving of Le Caille’s party, and were prepared to finish their work with hand-javelins and stone hatchets. The Frenchmen were not suffered to reload their pieces, and were reduced to the necessity of using them as clubs. They were about to be overwhelmed when the timely fire of the nine pieces of D’Erlach’s party, the shout and the rush which followed it, struck death and consternation into the souls of their assailants, and drove them from their prey. With howls of fright and fury the red-men fled to deeper thickets, till they should ascertain the nature and number of their new enemies, and provide themselves with fresh weapons. But D’Erlach was not disposed to afford them respite. His pieces were reloaded; those of the Frenchmen of Le Caille—all indeed who were able—joined themselves to his party, and the Indians were pressed through the thicket and upon their village. To this they fled as to a place of refuge. Our Frenchmen stormed it, fired it over the heads of the inmates, and terrible was the slaughter which followed. The object of D’Erlach was obtained. He had struck such a panic into the souls of the savages, that he was permitted to draw off his people without molestation; but the inspection of the fatal field into which the rashness of Le Caille had led his party, left D’Erlach with few objects of consolation. Seven of them were slain outright, or mortally wounded; three others were slightly wounded, and but three remained unhurt. The survivors were brought off in safety, greatly rejoicing in a rescue so totally undeserved. The party that night encamped in a close wood, in a spot so chosen as to be easily guarded. Two of the persons mortally wounded in the conflict died that night; the third, next day at noon. They were not abandoned till their cares and sufferings were at an end, and their comrades buried them, piling huge stones about their corses. Repose was greatly wanting to the party; but they were conscious that the Indians were about them. D’Erlach knew too well the customs of the Apalachian race to doubt that the runners had already sped, east and west, bearing le baton rouge—the painted club of red, which summons the tribe to which it is carried to send its young vultures to the gathering about the prey.

He sped away accordingly, re-crossing the little river where the party of Le Caille had encountered the Indian spy, and pressing forward upon the route which he had been before pursuing. Day and night he travelled with little intermission, in the endeavor to put as great a space as possible between his band and their enemies. But the toil had become too severe for his people. They began to falter, and were finally compelled to halt for a rest of two or more days, in a snug and pleasant valley, such as they could easily defend. Here they suffered several disasters. One of his men, drying some gunpowder before the fire, it exploded, and he was so dreadfully burnt that he survived but a day, and expired in great agony. Another, who went out after game, never returned. He probably fell a victim to his own imprudence, or sunk under the arrows of some prowling savage. The camp was broken up in haste and apprehension, and the march resumed. Their force was now reduced to thirteen men, and these were destined to still further reduction. The cold had become excessive. The feet of the Frenchmen grew sore from constant exercise; and at length, despairing of the long progress still before them before they could reach the sea, Alphonse D’Erlach yielded to the growing desire of his people to ascend the mountains and seek a nearer spot of refuge, or at least of temporary repose. He began to give ear more earnestly to the story of the great city of the mountains; or, he seemed to do so. At all events,—such was the suggestion—‘we can shelter ourselves for the winter in some close valley of the hills; here we can build log dwellings, and supply ourselves with game as hunters.’ The Frenchmen had acquired sufficient experience of Indian habits to resort to their modes of meeting the exigencies of the season. They knew what were the roots which might be bruised, macerated, and made into bread; and they had been fed on acorns more than once by the Floridian savages. They began the painful ascent, accordingly, which carried them up the heights of Apalachia, that mighty chain of towers which divide the continent from north to south. They had probably reached the region which now forms the upper country of Georgia and South Carolina.

It was in the toilsome ascent of these precipitous heights that they encountered one of those dangers which D’Erlach had striven so earnestly to elude. This was a meeting with the Indians, in any force. A body of more than forty of them were met descending one of the gorges up which the Frenchmen were painfully making their way. The meeting was the signal for the strife. The war-whoop was given almost in the moment when the parties discovered each other. The Indians had the superiority as well in position as in numbers; being on an elevation considerably above that of the Frenchmen. They were a large, fine-limbed race of savages, clad in skins, and armed with bows and stone-hatchets. They had probably never beheld the white man before, and knew nothing of his fearful weapons. They were astounded by the explosion of the arquebuse, and when their chief tumbled from the cliff on which he stood, stricken by an invisible bolt, they fled in terror, leaving the field to the Frenchmen. But, three of the latter were slain in the conflict, and three others wounded. The path was free for their progress, but they went forward with diminished numbers, and sinking hearts. The survivors were now but ten, and these were hurt and suffering from sore, if not fatal, injuries. The cold increased. The savages seemed to have housed themselves from the fury of the winds, that rushed and howled along the bleak terraces to which the Frenchmen had arisen. They buried themselves in a valley that offered them partial protection, built their fires, raised a miserable hovel of poles and bushes for their covering, and sent out their hunters. Two parties, one of two, the other of three men, went forth in pursuit of a bear whose tracks they had detected; leaving five to keep the camp, three of whom were wounded men. Of these two parties, one returned at night, bringing home a turkey. They had failed to discover the hiding-place of the bear. The other did not reappear all night. Trumpets were sounded and guns fired from the camp to guide their footsteps, but without success; and with the dawn Alphonse D’Erlach set forth with his brother and another, one Philip le Borne, to seek the fugitives. Their tracks were found and followed for a weary distance; lost and again found. Pursued over ridge and valley, in a zigzag and ill-directed progress, showing that the lost party had been distracted by their apprehensions. This pursuit led the hunters greatly from the camp; but D’Erlach had made his observations carefully at every step, and knew well that he could regain the spot. He had provided himself well with such food as they possessed, and his little party was well armed. He refused to discontinue the search, particularly as they still recovered the tracks of the missing men. For two days they searched without ceasing, camping by night, and crouching in the shelter of some friendly rock that kept off the wind, and building themselves fires which guarded their slumbers from the assaults of wolf and panther; the howls of the one, and the screams of the other, sounding ever and anon within their ears, from the bald rocks which overhung the camp. On the morning of the third day the fugitives were found, close together, and stiffened in death. They had evidently perished from the cold.