La Florida: When Spain 'Discovered' Florida and Two Proud Cultures Clashed

By James D. Snyder

Swashbuckling Pedro Menéndez and his explorers reached South Florida hoping to find gold and silver. They'd also make Christians of docile natives, who would happily mine ore and raise crops for the tables of Europe. Instead, they confronted a fearsome confederation of tribes that had been a nation for longer than Spain itself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pharos Books
• Release date: Oct 20, 2021
• ISBN: 9781737097617

James D. Snyder

Jim Snyder lives along the Loxahatchee River in Tequesta, Florida and is active in organizations to conserve Florida's first Wild and Scenic River. He is also a former board chairman of the Loxahatchee River Historical Society. A graduate of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, Snyder spent over forty years as a Washington correspondent and magazine publisher before resettling in South Florida and continuing his love of writing as an author.

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Preface

In the year 1547 Ivan IV crowned himself the first tsar of Moscow and soon became known as Ivan the Terrible.

In France, another new monarch, Henry II, set out to conquer every Italian city-state in his warpath.

In England, nine-year-old Edward VI succeeded Henry VIII and was soon betrothed to Mary, Queen of Scots. She was five.

The rest of Europe, from The Netherlands south through the Iberian Peninsula, paid allegiance to Charles V, emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. But keeping the confederation intact meant maintaining a military colossus to combat the spread of the newly-emergent Protestant heresy in northern Europe and of Islam on his southern shores.

In fact, Charles’ patchwork empire would tatter and shatter were it not for the regular convoys of ships arriving with gold and silver from the mines of Mexico and South America. Hernando Cortés, the soldier of fortune who made it all possible thirty years beforehand by subduing the mighty Aztecs of Mexico, had just paid a king’s ransom for his success. Having been deemed so rich and powerful that he posed a threat to the monarchy, Cortés was nudged into retirement on his estate near Seville, where he finally sulked to death in 1547.

Meanwhile, the treasure fleet continued to bring Spain and Charles the precious metals that would be forged into the currencies that bought everything from shields and swords to goblets and tapestries. But crossing the Atlantic in a ship a hundred or so feet in length was neither routine nor predictable. August through October brought hurricanes, and when the ungainly cargo ships emerged north of Cuba and into the narrow Bahamas Channel, they faced high winds, angry waves and the menace of smaller, swifter French corsairs and English privateers that preyed like lions on a herd of zebra. All too many men and treasures were washed up on the reefs and sandy shores of Florida or the Bahamas, never to be seen again.

At that time, the term Florida applied to everything from Key West to Newfoundland.

Might some outposts be established along this coast to rescue Spanish sailors and salvage their ships? Might this mysterious Florida also contain precious metals? Along this narrow peninsula, might there be an inside waterway to the Gulf of Mexico that would shorten the long trip around the Florida Straits on the way to South America? Might the naked savages who shook their spears at passing ships actually have souls that might be saved for Jesus Christ and the Roman Catholic Church? And/or....might these natives also be potential reinforcements for the dwindling supply of labor for the silver mines of Mexico and haciendas of Cuba?

The first attempts to answer these questions were in vain. In 1513, Juan Ponce de León, then governor of Puerto Rico, probed the east coast of Florida. He dispatched a landing party in what is Jupiter Inlet today. The foragers had begun collecting fresh water and firewood when two of the men were hit by arrows tipped with sharpened bones and fish spines. They barely escaped to sea.

But Ponce was undaunted. In 1521 he sailed into southwestern Florida waters, only this time with 200 men, horses, cows, sheep, goats and the tools needed to begin a farming colony. While still dropping anchor in what is now Charlotte Harbor, the Spaniards were quickly met by hundreds of warriors in catamaran canoes firing arrows that could pierce chainmail armor. Ponce de León himself took an arrow in the arm that would produce enough gangrene to end his life back in Cuba several weeks later.

During the next thirty or so years, other bold Spanish adventurers would meet the same fate. Sometimes they would land and be lured inland with promises of trade, only to vanish from the crews waiting on ship for their return. Father Luis Cancer de Barbastro, a Dominican priest, was even braver. Convinced that the sight of Spanish weapons had ignited the natives’ furor, he asked to be put ashore unarmed. There on the beach he knelt with his crucifix raised in prayer so that any Indians who watched from behind the dunes could understand his godly intent.

As he prayed, Indians rushed out and bludgeoned Father Cancer to death with conch hammers.

Wild and naked as they appeared to Spanish eyes, the Indians who first greeted Spaniards in South Florida were part of a strong tribal network named the Calusa. In 1547, when Moscow was just coalescing into Russia, when France could call itself a nation for a thousand years, when Spain was still a confederation of small kingdoms, indigenous Indians had occupied South Florida for more than 10,000 years. They had been a cohesive kingdom called the Calusa for at least 2,000 years before the first Spanish ship appeared on the horizon.

The Calusa stronghold lay on the southwest coast, extending southward from today’s Big Pine Island to Charlotte Harbor to the countless islands in the Florida Straits. Its hub, and home to the royal family, was Mound Key, today a seldom-visited Florida State Park just off the south end of Fort Myers Beach.

In the outer Calusa orbit were vassal chiefdoms whose loyalty waxed and waned over the centuries. They included the Mayaimi around Lake Okeechobee and the Ais of the Indian River and Hutchinson Island on the east coast. Just below them lived the Jeaga, clustered mainly around Jupiter Inlet. A hundred miles further south were the Tequesta of Key Biscayne, today’s Miami.

Archeologists more or less agree that the population of the Calusa realm in South Florida at this time may have been 25,000 to 50,000. Immediately to the north were two age-old enemies: the Tocobaga, based around Tampa Bay, and the Timucuans who stretched across the peninsula’s middle.

Although 130 or so miles separate South Florida’s two coasts, people could move between them by canoe through a labyrinth of natural waterways and ancient canals.

Because they did not tend any large-scale crops, the Calusa fished and foraged according to the seasons and available food supply. For example, the villagers around Lake Okeechobee (then called Mayaimi) would probably have come to the eastern seaside in summer when their homeland could be inundated by summer floods and clouds of mosquitoes. But in winter the people might come to the warmer inland to hunt game and dig for roots that could be ground into flour. As part of all this intermingling, villages traded and chiefs – called caciques – arranged marriages to strengthen political ties just like the aristocratic families of sixteenth century Europe.

Although you will find this book in the fiction shelves of libraries, it is important to note that it adheres to actual people, events and dates that are well documented in the archives of Spain. However, anyone attempting to present the Indian perspective must resort to the fiction genre simply because the Indians of Florida left no written records. With great help from the spadework of dedicated archeologists, I have attempted to cast some light into that void.

I also offer four suggestions before you plunge into the sixteenth century.

First, because we know only a few Calusa names for lakes, rivers and other sites, I have used modern ones wherever possible to make them easier to recognize.

Second, be aware that South Florida geography was markedly different than today’s engineered version. With no dike to hold back southbound water from spilling over Lake Okeechobee, this river of grass ─ along with the network of crude canals ─ made canoe travel possible between the east and west coasts. Likewise, the estuary between the mainland and barrier islands of Florida’s east coast (the Long River in this book) was shallow, dotted with mangrove islands, and scarcely resembled the Intracoastal Waterway scoured out by government engineers in the 1890s.

Finally, don’t confuse Calusa and Seminole Indians. The latter, an amalgam of southern states Indians and runaway slaves, first appeared in Florida at the dawn of the nineteenth century. This was at least fifty years after the remnants of the once-mighty Calusa had all but vanished from Florida.

But in 1547 the Calusa were still fiercely proud and vibrant, with a new king. His name was Calus, and at age twenty he was taller and more powerfully built than any European noble.

I

The Great Gathering

November 1547

Red Hawk crouched at the opening to the smoke kiln, mopped his forehead and pushed in another tray of half-grilled manatee. It was early afternoon on this clear November day on the River of Turtles. Ordinarily Red Hawk would be smoking the catch from the spectacular fall mullet run. Today he was midway through slicing, grilling and smoking the 700-pound manatee he had speared in the river that flowed past Jeaga Town.

All around, villagers were grinding, pounding, peeling or primping as preparations for the Great Gathering of Calusa tribes neared their final hours. Across from the riverfront huts of Jeaga Town Red Hawk could make out young men on ladders laying in saw palmetto leaves to finish the new thatched roof of the Great House. Beneath it women were stacking clay bowls, carrying in jugs of water and wiping down the centuries-old sacred masks that had been in storage since the last Gathering at Jeaga Town five years before.

All around, Red Hawk heard the voices of women – some in the midst of boiling palmetto berry tea, shucking oysters or comparing the jewelry they would wear at tonight’s opening ceremonies. Sounds of excitement also came from within his own hut, where his wife chirped and fussed over a young girl who sat in silence, biting her lip. He understood. His youngest daughter, Mourning Dove, would soon be married. To a man she’d never seen.

Red Hawk smirked to himself as he realized that carving and smoking meat wasn’t what the forty-year-old head of the Mako Shark Clan ought to be seen doing, but it was wise that he had stayed quiet, as his wife had counseled. Anhinga, who now came outside to grind more saw palmetto berries, also saw the need to feed Red Hawk’s male ego. Your spotting that manatee in the river was a lucky omen, she soothed, just when we were all wondering if we’d have enough to feed 300 visitors. No three women could skin, carve and cook that giant.

Red Hawk grunted. And if the Great Cacique should ask who wrestled such a big prize to shore, wouldn’t his jaw drop if I stood up?

They laughed, but it was strained and sinister, for many reasons. First, even though a Gathering brought games, songs, dances and marriages, preparing for one always made the host tribe anxious. Despite the pompous pronouncements by Calusa kings about celebrating tribal peace and unity, the bonds were in fact woven by Calusa conquest and sustained over centuries by a web of obligations. The Jeaga people, for example, were expected to plunder wrecked Spanish gold ships and bring the booty to the Great Cacique on Mound Key.

But even before there were Spanish ships, the Jeaga performed a valuable service for their Calusa masters. Each winter pods of right whales would head south from their feeding grounds in icy northern waters and some would glide into Jeaga Inlet to bear calves or make new ones. Jeaga warriors could earn tattoos by heaving their spears into a forty-foot-long whale’s back and then leaping on to stab vital organs. Once the meat was sliced up and the blubber boiled into oil, one-half of the processed catch would be taken across the Florida peninsula to the Calusa stronghold on Mound Key. Still, the remainder from a catch of just one or two whales would be enough to sustain the vassal tribes of Jeaga, Mayaimi, Ais and Tequesta with enough to stave off a lean winter.

And what did the Jeaga get in return? The right not to be wiped out. But they also had a powerful protector to punish the Ais, Tequesta, or Mayaimi should one of the other tribes become too large or combative.

Even the Great Gathering itself embodied the balance of power: the Calusa had long made it a tradition that no vassal tribe could send a delegation of more than fifty. The Calusa, however, might arrive with a hundred or more, always dominated by warriors.

Red Hawk stiffened up as the wind shifted and surrounded him with smoke from the racks of steaming cutlets. I wonder if this king will be trying the old game of trading us things we don’t want, he said absentmindedly. Anhinga sat silently, grinding more palmetto berries. It was an old lament and she didn’t want to encourage any more of it.

It came anyway. We produce sharkskin that they need, he muttered. We get sore backs digging coontie root that they hardly have over there. We produce oysters that make theirs look like sand fleas. So in turn they ‘trade’ us fish nets and forbid us from making our own when we could make them just as well. And they send us chert arrowheads that they get from up north while it would be easy enough to get them on our own.

Red Hawk was beginning to generate more steam than his smokehouse and Anhinga already had too much of it. All this is putting you in no proper mood for this evening, she scolded. Take a rest, get your pipe and smoke something better than that manatee.

Both knew they’d gotten to the core of his distemper.

How strange, he said, stretching his back from bending over the low smokehouse. "For all the reasons I just mentioned – and for his own selfish reasons – Eagle Feather starts talking rebellion. I walk and paddle a canoe for three days to tell King Calus about it, and he rewards me with insult to me and my clan. Now we have less independence."

Anhinga stirred her pot in silence lest her husband’s own cauldron boil over.

Red Hawk’s distemper had been ignited some two years before at Mound Key on the peninsula’s west coast. At that time, the aging Great Cacique had been unable to produce a son despite the efforts of three wives and all the shaman’s special herbs, talismans and incantations. After the god Taku appeared to him in a dream to say that his time on earth was expiring, the old king adopted Escampaba, the son of his chief warrior, and betrothed him to his own daughter.

When the old king died, Escampaba was not yet old enough to assume the throne, so the head shaman agreed to serve as regent until he came of age. But when the Escampaba reached the agreed-upon age, the regent stunned the Calusa by installing his own son, Calus, as king.

Could the young Calus muffle the muttering among his nobles and control his unpredictable vassals? Soon enough, word reached the new Great Cacique on Mound Key that three village chiefs to the north were about to strike an alliance with the hated Tocobaga of Tampa Bay. Calus immediately dispatched fifty warriors in a dozen war canoes. They swarmed upon and beheaded all three rebels within a single day.

The message was not lost on the outlying Mayaimi, Ais, Jeaga and Tequesta. Soon, all four sent delegations to Mound Key with supplications to the man whose very name meant cruel or fierce.

Later that same year, 130 miles to the east of the Calusa center, a Spanish galleon with a crew of forty toppled in a hurricane and broke apart on the beach a mile south of Jeaga Inlet. As bloated bodies began to wash in with the tide, the Jeaga rounded up eleven survivors, killed three to display their ferocity, and set off with the other captives for Mound Key to prove their fealty.

The Jeaga would soon learn that eight other Spanish survivors had staggered up the beach that night, only to be captured by the Ais as dawn broke over St. Lucie Inlet.

When the tide receded, Jeaga youths had scoured the broken hull and forecastle. They overturned a cedar chest of clothing and filled it with gold and silver bars from the hull until even four men couldn’t lift it.

When the Jeaga council met to discuss their next move, they had already gotten hints of it from the jaunty air of old Eagle Feather, patriarch of the Gray Panther clan and domineering cacique of all Jeaga. He surveyed the chests of gold and silver stored in the council house and said with a crooked smile: I think it’s too heavy to carry all the way to Mound Key. The rotund cacique was already wearing a dead Spaniard’s blue cotton shirt, gathered at the waist with a thick black belt, and seemed even more full of himself than usual. Besides, he said, "let’s just keep it here for now until we see how long this boy Calus will really be our king."

Red Hawk, the senior Mako Shark present, held his tongue because he knew that neither he nor anyone in his clan ever had an opinion that counted with Eagle Feather. But the old Jeaga cacique was playing with fire and Red Hawk decided that this time he would get burned. From everything he had heard, the new Great Cacique was no timid boy. In fact, it might present a delicious opportunity to rid the Mako Shark clan and the rest of Jeaga Town from the insufferable old codger and his overbearing son, Coral Snake. He, Red Hawk, would travel to Mound Key and disclose just how a certain greedy, disloyal, vassal cacique had withheld the tribute that was rightfully due his mighty king.

A week later Red Hawk packed his atlatl, bow and arrows and shoved off in his canoe before dawn, after instructing his wife to tell anyone who asked about him to say he’d gone off deer hunting.

In two days he had reached the town of Guacata where the Calusahatchee River met the western shore of Lake Mayaimi. In another day he had canoed down the swift Calusahatchee into Estero Bay. On the late afternoon of the fourth he raised a hand in a peace greeting to three men in a war canoe who patrolled the small beach at Mound Key.

Even the head of a loyal clan could not escape the scowls and suspicious stares of the Great Cacique’s protectors. As they climbed uphill to the Great House that he’d known from previous trips, Red Hawk again felt cowed by the fact that the Calusa were a head taller and more muscular than his own people – and that this alone seemed to entitle them to a menacing mien of superiority. Heaped on that was the malevolent miasma that hung about the place – one conveying a cruelty that might be unleashed on anyone at any time.

As he climbed the steep hill, Red Hawk felt the sea breeze grow cooler. Across from this mound he could see the adjoining hilltop where the Great Cacique’s family lived, and through its shield of sea grapes and gumbo limo trees he could glimpse forms of women and servants moving about in their daily chores. When he looked back, he could share briefly the cacique’s commanding view of the mangrove islands in Estero Bay and, beyond that, the sun spreading rays over the Gulf of Mexico.

Red Hawk already knew that no Calus would be at the top to greet him. It was part of a Great Cacique’s mystique never to be seen with any subject on what might be taken as equal level. No, Calus would be seated on a dais at the far end of the tall-roofed Great House that dominated this particular mound. Red Hawk could see the backs of men standing as they waited their turn to petition the king.

At the end of their climb, Red Hawk was motioned to wait while one of the Mound Key guardsmen disappeared into the long thatched building that contained a huge, soot-stained feasting hall with small rooms for guests along its perimeter. He soon emerged with two servants – no doubt slaves – who ushered the new visitor into one of the small spare rooms. It was now evident that Red Hawk would not see Calus that afternoon and that his guest room was more a detention cell. But the Jeaga’s fatigue outweighed the insult. After being brought a meal of grilled fish, root cakes and cocoplums, he spread out his deerskin blanket on the floor and fell dead asleep.

Late the next morning Red Hawk found himself before the Great Cacique and immediately sensed that his bold gamble against Eagle Feather had been a smart one. Calus stood two hands taller, with a pile of topknot that added two more hands . With a massive chest and thick biceps covered with heavy black and red body paint, he resembled more an ageless, powerful god of war than a youth of twenty summers. This was clearly a king who would not yield his throne without slicing the hearts from a gaggle of village caciques like the blustery, bluffing Eagle Feather.

A somber, older councilor stood on each side of Calus as Red Hawk knelt. When he had finished relating his story of the shipwreck and Eagle Feather’s greed, the king stood to his full height and glared down at the Jeaga for the longest five seconds of his life. Then he smiled as if a plate of succulent oysters had been placed before him. Ah, then, he said, we will soon dance with his head.

Just as quickly, one of the advisers stepped from the wings, whispered something to the Great Cacique, and said to Red Hawk evenly, You will return to our guest quarters. We will discuss this and inform you of our decision.

For a long day and night the visitor from Jeaga Town agonized in silence under the watchful gaze of his two slave-servants – one a gaunt leathery Spaniard and one a short Indian no doubt captured from some hostile northern tribe. As a guest, Red Hawk could roam within the ceremonial house, but his status was too unclear to risk venturing beyond it. So, alone with his thoughts, he re-lived the audience with Calus. He’d received no thanks, no hint of making him cacique of the Jeaga after they danced with Eagle Feather’s head. Had he insulted Calus? Might the Calusa simply decide to obliterate the Jeaga and re-settle its strategic inlet with their own people?

On the morning of the next day the same adviser who whispered in the king’s ear appeared at the opening of Red Hawk’s sleeping room as the guest sat on a low stool drinking palmetto tea.

Do you have daughters? he asked.

Startled, Red Hawk stammered, Yes, one.

And married?

Uh...no.

How old?

Sixteen.

And she is, ah.... The man approached an awkward subject.

Yes, comely. Beautiful. Very healthy. Good teeth, too.

The councilor nodded and walked away without another word.

Good teeth? Why did I say that? Red Hawk scolded himself in angry silence. Then the man re-appeared suddenly in his doorway.

Her name? he asked.

Er, Mourning Dove.

Then he was gone again. Red Hawk’s eyes followed him as he strode slowly from the ceremonial hall, across the broad courtyard and into the Great House where Calus no doubt waited.

The morning of the next day Red Hawk, by now unsure of his own future, again found himself before the stiff and haughty Calus. With no flicker of emotion, the Great Cacique said, Yesterday we sent warriors to Jeaga Town. They will remove the three you told us about and return to Mound Key with the tribute from the ship. You will stay until they appear here with the treasures you described. If your story is true, you should have no trouble.

Have no trouble? Replacing Eagle Feather or just being allowed to live?

Red Hawk was on one knee with his eyes lowered as were all supplicants to the Great Cacique. He had to learn more before he left.

"You said removed?" he asked.

Removed, echoed Calus, As in removing their heads. And with that he let out a half-roar, half-laugh.

Who will replace them? Will the Jeaga Council...

No, interrupted the same adviser from the wings. The king will replace the chief. The new cacique can choose his councilors.

And as if to anticipate the next question, the elder said, It cannot be you. While your, ah, efforts are proper and appreciated, it is not wise to name as cacique one who has conspired or sworn against the former one. It makes for bad blood among clans. Under the circumstances, we will appoint a new chief from another Calusa tribe. But in recognition of your loyalty and service, we will arrange a marriage between that chief and your daughter.

Mourning Dove?

Mourning Dove.

Red Hawk could feel his time before the king elapsing. But he also knew that if his life could be prolonged here, it could also be cut short by a revengeful Gray Panther clan back in Jeaga Town.

Great Cacique, will the Jeaga know who it is who came to you?

Calus was silent until he could feel that fear had seeped into every pore of Red Hawk’s body. No, he said at last. "As long as you and your daughter are loyal to your new chief, no one need know who informed me. I told my warriors that Taku spoke to me about this in a dream. And that is what they will tell your people."

Now, more than a year of unease had gone by in Jeaga Town with no new chief and no recrimination against himself and the Mako clan. Even though Red Hawk had brought back a dressed deer, displayed it along the riverside and feigned outrage when told of the surprise raid by the Calusa, he could feel the eyes of Gray Panthers burning holes in his back. They were stopped from doing anything more, he reasoned, by the fact that Red Hawk himself had been doomed to spend the rest of his life under a young cacique from outside.

On this day all of Red Hawk’s anxieties would soon converge. At the Great Gathering of tribes, Calus himself was coming to Jeaga Town to demonstrate his complete control of the kingdom, bringing with him an outsider cacique to marry a girl who had never seen him.

Cruel, scheming scoundrel, this Calus! Or am I just a small scoundrel who got swallowed by a bigger one?

The sun was about to set on this late afternoon as Red Hawk looked up from the last of his meat cutting and saw two young boys shouting as they ran breathlessly up the row of huts overlooking the river. In a few seconds women were poking their heads out and passing on the news faster than the boys could run. His party is coming. They just crossed the Southwest Fork. They’ll be here soon!

But Red Hawk knew they wouldn’t – not just yet. Although Calus’ entourage was only two miles west, the Mako Shark elder knew the king’s scouts would bring his catamaran to a halt in the water until the vassal tribes appeared first. Across the river in the Great House, the last of the ladders had been removed and celebrants could look forward to the smell of clean palm thatch and no bugs to fall into one’s bowl in the middle of a meal. Inside his own hut, Mourning Dove’s mother licked her finger to wipe away a smudge on her daughter’s cheek and placed on her bare neck the same polished shell necklace she had worn as a bride.

Just then an excited shout went up as the delegation from the Ais appeared to the north where Long River met the River of Turtles. Within minutes lookouts from Jeaga Inlet reported excitedly that ten canoes had appeared in the ocean carrying the Tequesta from the south.

Next, Red Hawk heard the sound of trumpets and pipes to the west. Emerging from the setting sun above the riverside trail came a great canoe convoy of warriors, bearers and important personages.

So many Calusa? No, wait. They were Mayaimi as well, mixed together. At the center he could easily pick out the red-black painted figure of King Calus. In another sedan chair in the catamaran behind him was a smaller, stockier young warrior of maybe twenty five years, seated next to a woman. Red Hawk knew him, but where from? Where? Where? Ah, from the Mayaimi town of Guacata where the Calusahatchee met the big lake.

His mind raced on.

Ah ha! He would have to be the Guacata cacique’s youngest son. A strategic town to Calus. Guardian of the canals that led from Lake Mayaimi to the Calusahatchee. The first defense against any Spaniards who might try to sneak up on Mound Key from inland. Inspectors and customs collectors of northern trading missions to the Calusa. Youngest son can’t become cacique, so send him to Jeaga Town as Calus’ surrogate! Then marry him into Mako Shark clan, which must support him or have its hearts cut out by the Gray Panther clan. Brilliant! That scheming slimy son of a salamander!

One thing doesn’t add up. Who was the handsome woman in that other catamaran behind Calus? Not a wife. Not a mother. Older than the usual bride. Adorned with bracelets and pendants. But who....and why?

The retinue of King Calus had begun at Mound Key and was joined at the mouth of the Calusahatchee by delegations from Sanibel Island, Pine Island, Cayo Costa and other major towns. Together they had canoed the Calusahatchee eastward for seventy miles to Guacata at the entrance to Lake Mayaimi. There they camped and reconnoitered with the chiefs of the lakeside towns known collectively as The Mayaimi, the remnants of a people who had existed perhaps even longer than the Calusa.

Throughout the trip King Calus had sat upon a wide woven seat that sprawled across two war canoes lashed together and paddled by four warriors.

Directly behind the Great Cacique’s double canoe came the leading family of Guacata. They included the cacique, Alligator Teeth, his wife Night Heron, Deerstalker, the youngest of two sons, and eldest daughter Bright Moon. All in the entourage knew by now that Deerstalker would be installed as chief of the Jeaga. Few knew that the king had selected Bright Moon to accompany her older brother to Jeaga Town and that the king himself would marry her at Jeaga Town. As her anxious father had explained, Trying to install an outsider as cacique there would be too precarious unless the king also placed a member of the royal family to strengthen the alliance. After all, Great Caciques traditionally married the sisters of leading vassal chiefs – sometimes two or three at once – at the Calusa gathering.

Bright Moon, who learned of all this only a week before, said little and thought much. When she had first married Black Crow at age fifteen, she had assumed that her destiny was to mother a large family on Mayaimi Lake. But then her young husband left for the north with a trading party and just simply vanished. No word, no hint. Only shrugs from other traders who came to Guacata.

Now, just having passed her twentieth summer, Bright Moon was restless. Her father had hotly discouraged any suitors because it was still assumed that Black Crow would re-appear one day. Now Calus had put an end to that fiction. Should she be grateful?

As the Calusa canoe caravan wound its way over the ancient trail that cut through the saw palmetto and pine forest, Calus swayed back and forth in front of her on his platform, the sunlight playing off the golden clasp that bound his topknot. A bracelet taken from a Spanish ship? How it glittered as the sun moved in and out of the clouds! And wrapped around his neck were three strands of a gold chain that must be very long when stretched out. Bright Moon fingered her lacquered shell necklace and earrings. All the jewelry she owned was of stone or shell and kept in one doeskin pouch. Yes, she wanted to wear jewelry like his, wanted to wear the red ocher that signified royal blood, wanted servants to fetch her water.

Above all, her body yearned to bear children before she was consigned to delivering other babies and helping the old women of Guacata sew and weave. She did not yet know if Calus had other wives and her father simply shrugged when she asked. If she were the first, might she give birth to the next king?

More torment. Would the royal family accept her? The women of Mound Key were taller and more graceful than the shorter, stockier Mayaimi. Calus himself stood more than a head taller. He was bound to be large between the legs and she hadn’t been with a man for four years. Oh Mother of Taku, what am I getting into? she agonized to herself. I am afraid of this person, even though he is the same age. He has a fearsome demeanor and gives off an air of contempt. They say he personally kills servants who displease him. He has not so much smiled at me or uttered a kind word.

Deerstalker sat beside her lost in his own thoughts. Has he talked to you much, brother? she whispered as the painted hulk swayed in front of her in his catamaran canoe.

Not much, he said without a glance. He said I have to show strength as cacique. I asked how. He said ‘I don’t know. Kill someone and eat his heart.’ I don’t know if he was joking, but I didn’t ask any more.

Actually, Deerstalker was not in the same distress as his sister. To be installed as a cacique at age twenty-two by the king was an intriguing prospect for a young warrior who would have always languished in the shadows of his older brother back home. Now he would have his own kingdom, one as large as his father’s town of Guacata.

Besides, he had pleasant memories of Jeaga Town. In many summer months heavy rains would turn everything alongside Lake Mayaimi into steamy marshes. When all Guacata became too soggy to find bread root and one couldn’t take a breath without inhaling a mosquito, her father would lead his people to the seashore near Jeaga Town. There they’d swim, fish in the ocean and luxuriate in the cool night breezes.

You should like Jeaga Town, Deerstalker said absentmindedly. Remember the summers? The breezes that kept the bugs from us?

I do, but I don’t know how I’ll like it in winter when those breezes become biting winds, she said. If you try to warm yourself by a fire, the wind changes and suddenly your skirt goes up in flames.

Both laughed, then returned to their own thoughts. Going to a place for a month or so is different than trying to live there all the time, mused Bright Moon. The Mayaimi were used to their bread root, fruits, deer, turtle, alligator, and large luscious eels from the creeks that fed the great lake. The Jeaga lived mostly on oysters, fish, and dried whale meat. They liked sea grapes and prickly pear. They chewed sassafras root and swore that it cured all sorts of ailments. But it was the saw palmetto berries that made her nose wrinkle to think about. Some of the Jeaga were so addicted to chewing them that they had permanent purple stains around their mouths.

And what awaited her in Jeaga Town? How long must she support her brother as chief before she was called by the king to Mound Key? How strong and friendly was the Mako Shark clan? Would she be accepted as wife of the king?

Amidst her inner disquiet, the only thing Bright Moon clung to for self-confidence was her unmatched skill as a weaver of cloth and basketry. In the large deerskin sack in the supply canoe behind her was a basket made from split palmetto stems, a second basket tightly wound with sabal palm roots, and a lovely small one artistically woven from grapevine. Also in the sack was her dismantled loom along with several wooden spools, each wound with fibers such as mulberry bark, cypress bark, and sabal palm trunk.

Yes, they have baskets and fiber in Jeaga Town, Bright Moon said out loud, but when the women see mine they will know at once that their new cacique doesn’t have an idle ignoramus for a sister.

Deerstalker didn’t comprehend but didn’t bother. He smiled and patted his younger sister on the knee.

The strange woman that Red Hawk spotted from his riverfront mound was seated in the middle of a strung-out convoy now crossing the river to the Great Gathering Place. In the lead canoes were the hunter-scouts, followed by warriors, the large catamaran with the raised figure of Calus, the honored guests from Guacata, the royal householders, bearers with ceremonial gifts and servants with camping supplies

The Mayaimi chiefs and families came last. Half-way across the river they veered off towards a shore a half-mile upriver from where the Calusa delegation landed. There they would set up their camp, the last night Bright Moon would spend with her mother and family. The large Calusa force made its camp surrounding the Great House and the base of the nearby mound topped by The Place of Sun and Moon. In a circle atop this fifty-foot high natural dune, the Great Cacique and his shamans would greet the sun each day and summon its power to flow into the spirit that dwelt within the king’s heart. When the Great Cacique had received the strength to sustain his superiority for the day, the other caciques would be invited into the sun’s presence – but only if they faced away from it lest they receive more power than the king.

On the final night of the Great Gathering the Place of Sun and Moon would be the site of an altogether different ceremony.

See, the moon is full tonight, said Night Heron to her daughter as their canoe nosed into the landing before the Great House. A good omen for someone named Bright Moon. Although the Great Gathering wouldn’t commence until the tribal caciques paid tribute to their king, the grassy plaza in front of the Great House was already crowded with men, some in earnest discussion, some hawking trade offers.

Arrowheads! Finest from the land of stone, shouted a young Ais warrior, showing a basket full of sharpened chert pieces.

Best hammers you can have! said a Tequesta holding up a conch mallet fastened to a wood handle.

One Mayaimi joined in as soon as feet had touched the shore. Deerskins. Deerskins. Big ones for your hut, medium ones for cloaks. Little ones for the baby. Winter’s coming. Don’t be cold.

For the men there, the Gathering offered a chance to trade for things that could soften their harsh lives. But for caciques and their families, it was a rare time in which to negotiate marriages and forge agreements. Some of the latter centered on rights to fishing spots or oyster beds or groves of rare trees.

Not discussed on this informal evening were clan blood feuds, unpunished murders, charges of adultery and the like. They would arise the next day. Resolving disputes was a big reason why Gatherings were held and why a Great Cacique was needed to settle them.

But tonight was for tired travelers to feast and regenerate. When everyone was finally summoned inside, they entered a building already thick with smoke and full of tantalizing aromas from grilled fish and meat. Calus sat at the far end on a raised seat covered with deerskin and rimmed with polished shells, the tall shadow behind him dancing in the torchlight each time he moved. His face was now painted in streaks of red, white and black. And Bright Moon could see the long chain more fully as it hung across his bare chest. It had a cross at the end that shone in the sunlight like the gold clasp around his topknot.

Along the walls sat caciques. Their families sprawled into the middle, leaving only a small dancing space in front of the king. Outside along the partially open walls stood warriors and servants looking on and eating quietly. Bright Moon and her mother nudged each other when someone pointed out that among the Jeagas seating themselves along the opposite wall was the family of Red Hawk,

Deerstalker at her side strained to get the first look of his intended bride. Bright Moon saw a seated girl beside Red Hawk and a woman who had to be their mother. Ah, that must be your Mourning Dove, she said with another poke in his side. Deerstalker gawked and said nothing. Neither wedding couple nor their families were permitted to converse until the next night at the wedding feast, but Bright Moon thought she saw the mother give her a demure nod of welcome. She nodded back, thankful for any sign that the Jeaga weren’t waiting to murder her in her sleep.

Food! Platters of it! A giant grilled grouper splayed and sliced on a single pallet. Stacks of smoked manatee steaks. Mullet filets. Oysters of all sizes and ways of preparation. Delicious root bread and sea grape jelly. Pumpkins, squash, sliced prickly pears, hog plums, muscadine grapes and, wherever one looked, large baskets of reddish-brown palmetto berries.

By the time King Calus stood to speak the air was so thick with smoke from grills and soot from flickering torches that some in the rear could hardly see him. They could only hear snippets of speech, which seemed to be all about Calusa family unity and Taku’s blessing. But what they cheered most was his call to music and dance.

With that, two flute players began piping. Another man kept time by beating conch hammers on a loggerhead tortoise shell. Another pounded a deerskin drum. Calus also had brought some of the women singers and dancers who attended him on Mound Key. For another hour the cream of the Calusa sang the songs that made them a united people. But only the young danced, and since the delegations were made up mostly of elders, many heads were already nodding around midnight when Calus stood up and left the building with his guards.

The next afternoon, as the caciques and their captains convened in the same smoky Great House, Bright Moon’s mother tried her best at making