196 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH. 



to examine the land, and to give up to the white claimants the 

 negro slaves said to have escaped. Seven chiefs accordingly went, 

 and in March of the following year, at Fort Gibson in Arkansas, 

 the seven chiefs ratified the Payne's Landing Treaty, and without 

 first making a report to their tribes, and thus made the original 

 treaty irrevocable. 



No sooner, however, had the delegation returned, and it was 

 told to the different tribes of Florida that they had entered into 

 an agreement to remove, than they, without dissent, repudiated the 

 treaty, refused to relinquish their native land, or surrender their 

 negro allies. They haughtily answered the different runners and 

 Indian agents, commissioned by the whites, and withdrawing to 

 their villages in the Cypress Swamps and hummocks, prepared to 

 defend their homes as best they might, according to the ancient 

 hereditary rules of Indian warfare. At a council summoned by 

 General Thompson, when Micanopy, Cooacoochee, Alligator, and 

 other chiefs of high renown were present, Osceola, who was then a 

 young chief, being called upon to answer if he would sign the 

 treaties, strode up to the table in front of the officers, saying, " The 

 only way I will sign such a treaty is this," and drove his scalping- 

 knife through the parchment deep into the table, while the con- 

 ference broke up in confusion. The call to arms sounded through 

 the land, the Indians pillaged the settler to obtain military weapons, 

 and burned his cabins, drove off the cattle, and waylaid the soldiers, 

 and the United States Government threw her best armies into 

 the country, to have them destroyed by the miasma and the 

 Indian arrow, patiently renewing the losses in the regiments, and 

 supplying millions of money for a period of over fifteen years. The 

 amplest supplies were afforded for the prosecution of the war, and 

 the first soldiers in the country, such as Generals Jackson, Clinch, 

 Scott, Worth, and Taylor, led the armies. 



This was the condition of Florida when, in the latter part of 

 the winter of 1840 and 1841, we found ourselves involuntary 

 prisoners at Fort Brooke, a low octagon fortress, with a pali- 

 sade enclosure of sharpened timbers, situated at the end of 

 Tampa Bay, and that formed the headquarters of the American 

 army through the many discouraging years of the Seminole 



