Bitter Legacy

by H. Terrell Griffin

  I heard a siren from behind me. I looked quickly. The boat that had been off my stern had lit up his light bar, activated his siren and gone after the boat I’d almost collided with. The police boat from the pass. He must have seen what was going on, followed us, and realized that the oncoming go-fast was a bad guy.

  “You okay?” I called to J.D.

  She was getting up off the cockpit floor. “Yeah, but I doubt I’ll want to go boating with you again anytime soon. What the hell was that all about?”

  I pointed to the boats. They were headed straight out to sea, the police boat dogging the tail of the bad guy. The lead boat seemed to be gaining, but it was hard to tell from my angle. I heard the beating of rotary wings coming from shore. A Coast Guard helicopter was coming fast and low, following the boats. He passed over us and within a minute I heard his loud-hailer over the sounds of my idling engines. I couldn’t make out the words. The boats kept moving. Then a burst of machine gun fire and everything came to a stop. The Coasties had made their point.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE

  “I think we’re out of it,” said J.D.

  “Looks like it. I don’t know how much damage the boat took. I’m going into the beach.”

  I turned onto an easterly course, traveling at just above idle speed. We were off Casey Key, a couple miles north of the Venice Inlet. I called the Coast Guard on the VHF and explained why I was going to the beach instead of New Pass. I gave him my coordinates. He told me to get to the road on the key and he’d have a sheriff’s patrol car pick us up.

  I eased the bow onto the beach and cut the engines. I toggled the electric windlass and allowed the anchor to fall onto the beach and play out some chain and line. I raised the engines as high as they’d go. I hadn’t checked the tide and didn’t know whether it was coming in or going out. I didn’t want the props bouncing against the bottom if we were on an ebb tide.

  I took the stern anchor out of its locker, tied the line to a cleat, and jumped into the shallow water behind the boat. I walked out about fifteen feet and secured the big Danforth into the bottom. J.D. had grabbed her purse and was standing at the stern waiting for me.

  We waded to the beach, and I dug the bow anchor into the sand. We were as secure as we could get. I’d call TowboatUS and have him come pull Recess back to Cannon’s Marina on Longboat.

  Large houses, estates used mostly in the winter months, separated the road from the beach, their lawns stretching down to the sand. I didn’t want to walk through yards to get to the road, because I had no idea what kind of security the mansions had. I didn’t want to get arrested for trespassing. I saw what appeared to be a beach access point several hundred yards to the south, and we started walking that way.

  A small rigid hull inflatable boat with an outboard beached about a hundred yards south of us. A kid out joyriding I thought. I didn’t pay him anymore attention. J.D. and I were walking and talking about the close call. We were both a little nervous and needed to bleed off some of the energy.

  When we were very near the inflatable, I noticed the man sitting on the sand in front of it. He wasn’t dressed for the beach. He wore jeans, biker boots, a T-shirt with a picture of a motorcycle on the front, a red kerchief, a do-rag they called it, on his head. He had a pistol in his hand, pointing at us. He unfolded from the sand and stood ten feet in front of us.

  I saw it in a flash. I’d wondered how the gunman had gotten on and off the jetty with a rifle. It had been easy. He’d parked his boat at the base of the rocks, probably tied a painter to one of the stones. His rigid hull would have kept the boat afloat even if it banged into the rocks. He climbed up, took his shots, and dropped back into the boat and roared off. He’d come around the end of the jetty and had a ringside seat to watch his buddies chasing us. The police boat had probably run right by him and didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary.

  “Mr. Royal,” the man said, “I bring you greetings from James Baggett.” He raised the pistol, preparing to shoot. J.D. moved behind me, as if for protection. I felt her purse drop to the beach, hitting the back of my left leg as it fell.

  “Hold it,” I said. “The police will be here in a minute.”

  “And I’ll be gone.”

  J.D. whispered in my ear. “When I say ‘drop,’ you hit the ground.”

  “Why are you doing this?” I asked the man.

  “Because my boss told me to do it.”

  “Your boss?”

  “Baggett.”

  I sighed. “How did you find us?”

  “Easy. My buddy in that go-fast out there running from the law followed you from Longboat. When he saw you go into the Crow’s Nest, he called me to come get you. I just live about a mile from the jetties. It was easy. I came out in my little inflatable.”

  “Don’t do it. This can’t end well for you.”

  He scoffed, a guttural sound, deep in his throat. “Your girl looks a little scared. Honey, when I shoot Royal here, the bullet is going to go through him and take you out too. Two birds with one shot.” He chuckled at his own lame humor.

  “Drop!” J.D. shouted.

  I hit the sand, moving to my left. J.D. had her Sig out of her purse. It had been pointing at my back. The instant I dropped, she fired, shooting the biker through his black heart.

  CHAPTER EIGHTY

  On Monday, Jock Algren walked into the little room deep in the bowels of a maximum-security federal prison in Montana. He wore an overcoat against the late spring chill. He was dressed in a suit, looking like some executive or lawyer. He carried a green canvas bag over his shoulder. It was thin and narrow, about two-and-a half-feet long. The guard showed him into the room, backed out, and shut the door.

  There was a small metal table bolted to the floor, maybe four-feet long and two-feet wide. A chair sat on either side. One was empty and the other contained a shackled James Baggett. He was staring at the table, showing no concern about his visitor

  “Remember me?” Jock asked.

  Baggett looked up. Shock moved across his face, briefly. Then he grinned. “Fuck you.”

  Jock sat down in the empty chair, settled himself in, reached over, and slapped Baggett’s face with as much force as he could muster from a sitting position.

  “Guard,” yelled Baggett.

  Jock slapped him again.

  “Guard.” Baggett was calling at the top of his lungs.

  Jock slapped him again.

  Baggett started to open his mouth, thought better of it, and shut up. “You can’t come in here and beat me up.”

  Jock smiled, a cold stare adding sting to it. “I can come in here anytime I want, Baggett. I can get to you in any prison in this country and probably in the entire world anytime I want to. And I can do anything to you I want to.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “You know about the security here? Impossible to get in with any kind of weapon.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  Jock bent down, picked up the canvas bag, and put it on the table. He untied the drawstring that kept it closed. He reached in and pulled something out. Laid it on the table. Grinned. Baggett blanched, the blood draining from his face, a gag reflex kicking in and making him suck in air to keep from retching.

  They both looked at the object on the table. A twenty-four-inch pair of bolt clippers.

  Jock sat and stared at Baggett, giving him a minute to get hold of himself.

  “You came very close to losing some fingers recently,” Jock said. “You’ll be in prison for a long time, and I can come and go as I please. Neither your fingers nor your dick is going to be safe unless you do exactly what I tell you to do.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Your boys tried to kill my friend Matt Royal a couple of days ago.”

  “You can’t prove I had anything to do with that.”

  “I don’t have to.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your contact with the outside world is, as of now, completely shut off. You’ll li
ve in solitary confinement. Your meals will be brought to you. You’ll get two showers a week, alone with a guard watching. You’ll be allowed to exercise one hour twice a week in a room not much bigger than this. A guard will be with you. From time to time a government agent will come to ask you questions. You will answer them truthfully.”

  “You can’t do that. The courts won’t let you.”

  “Yes they will. You’ll get used to it. But, I’m going to give you one phone call, right now. You’re going to call your next in command at the Marauders and you’re going to tell them that Matt Royal and his friends are to never be messed with again. You got that?”

  “And what if my people don’t listen.”

  “Then I’ll come back and take some of your fingers. If anybody looks cross-eyed at them, I’ll come get a finger. Do you believe me?”

  “Yes,” Baggett said quietly.

  Jock gave him a cell phone, pulled another out of his pocket. “These phones are wired together. I’ll hear everything you have to say and anything said by your buddies. Remember, any threat will be met with the death of those who make it. And my bolt clippers and I will pay you a visit.”

  Baggett took the phone in a hand shackled at the wrist and made the call.

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-ONE

  Jock called me on Monday afternoon. “Sorry to hear about your problems on Saturday. I’d be surprised if J.D. ever went on another date with you.”

  “It wasn’t exactly a date.”

  “Well, whatever it was.”

  “How did you hear about that?” I hadn’t called him.

  “The date?”

  “The other stuff.”

  “I hear lots of things.”

  “Well, it’s over, at least for now.”

  “It’s over forever.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I had a conversation with Mr. Baggett. We came to an understanding.”

  I laughed. “Did bolt clippers come into the conversation?”

  “May have. Take care, podner.” He was gone, disappearing into the ether like a guardian angel. And maybe that’s what he was, after all.

  AFTERWORD

  History is not immutable and most of it is told from the perspective of the historian, carrying with it the personal biases and other baggage of the teller of the story. However, over many years and through the diligence of those studying the historiography of an era, the truth tends to emerge, or at least a learned consensus of that truth, of what really happened in any given time period.

  In this book, I have taken some liberties with the history of a courageous people, the Black Seminoles, who lived and loved and procreated and fought and died in the Florida wilderness, seeking only the right to be left alone to live their lives in freedom. There was, of course, never a protocol to the treaty of 1832, but there was a treaty and I have tried to be faithful to the intent of that document. The Camp Moultrie Treaty of 1823 is real and I have attempted to accurately convey some of its provisions, including the ones dealing with the large parcel of land, more than four million acres, reserved for the Seminoles.

  The Seminole Tribes filed a lawsuit in 1950 seeking just compensation for the acreage given them in the Camp Moultrie Treaty and taken away by the 1832 pact. It took twenty-six years to settle the case, and the Indians were paid the sum of sixteen million dollars. What a deal. That land is today worth billions of dollars, but the Seminoles and their black allies only realized a pittance.

  The saga of the Black Seminoles is little known to the world at large and that is a shame. These men and women blazed a glorious trail of courage, political astuteness, and diplomacy that is a shining chapter in the history of African Americans. For the better part of two centuries, until the end of the Second Seminole War in 1842, the free black people of Florida changed the course of history and did so with the pride and dignity denied them by the United States Government.

  The Black Seminoles were fierce warriors and astute diplomats who served as the Seminoles’ ambassadors to the white man. They were shrewd strategists and tacticians, often leading the war parties against the government troops. And they were men and women seeking that universal human desire: freedom.

  For generations preceding the outbreak of the Civil War, black slaves had been escaping the plantations of the South and finding refuge in Florida. Often they would exchange their slavery to the whites for a benign bondage to the Indians. Other escapees lived in freedom as citizens of Spanish Florida and later as allies and friends of the Seminoles. These Seminole Negroes, as they were called, served as farmers, interpreters, spies, scouts, diplomats, and warriors. They were a proud and integral part of the Seminole Nation.

  There were three Seminole wars, or one long Florida war, depending on one’s perspective, that were fought primarily over the issue of fugitive slaves. In a large sense the question of ownership of the Black Seminoles was the catalyst for the wars, rather than the issue of removal of the Seminoles to the Indian lands west of the Mississippi. Indeed, the Seminoles might have acquiesced in removal if not for the perfidy of the United States government on the question of the black people who lived among them.

  These blacks were the slaves, friends, allies, and, not infrequently, the spouses and children of the Seminoles. They were warriors, advisers, and tribal councilors. Little wonder then that the Indians were less than willing to give up the blacks to the slave catchers of Georgia, Alabama, and the Carolinas.

  The blacks cherished their freedom; for some the first ever experienced, and for others the result of generations of their families’ residence in Florida. They were willing to, and did, fight and die for the right to remain free. Many of the Seminole warriors were black, and in some cases, notably in the famed Osceola’s band, made up the majority.

  At least as early as 1688, the Spanish government had encouraged black slaves from the British colonies to the north to seek refuge in Florida. Although the Spanish themselves held slaves, they were smart enough to realize that it would not be possible to entice blacks to flee British territory if they were only to exchange British slavery for Spanish slavery. As it was to the benefit of the Spanish to weaken their enemies to the north by inducing the slaves to flee, the government allowed them their freedom. The runaway slaves established communities where the authorities treated them as citizens. These communities continued to thrive during the British occupation of 1763–1783, even though the British did not welcome the runaways with the same open arms policies as those of the Spanish. During this period, the Seminoles became the protectors of the blacks who lived among them. Florida was returned to Spain at the end of the American Revolution by the Treaty of Paris in 1783.

  Some of the Seminole chiefs purchased black slaves using wild cattle as payment. Forty cattle was said to be the price of a slave. However, the Seminole had no concept of what a slave should do, or how he should relate to the slave. The system developed into a semifeudal relationship rather than a system similar to the one found on the slaveholding plantations. The Seminoles’ slaves lived in separate villages, and as they were more sophisticated in agriculture than their masters, they were for the most part farmers. The blacks were allowed to carry arms, and the majority was under no more subordination to the chief than was the average tribesman.

  In 1821, when Florida came under the control of the United States, there were thirty-four Seminole settlements with Indians occupying thirty-one and the blacks three. The villages were surrounded by cultivated fields, and the people lived in houses constructed in the Indian fashion with palmetto planks lashed to upright posts and covered with palmetto thatch. A part of the slave’s crop was paid to his Seminole master as a form of tribute, but it never exceeded ten bushels annually. At the beginning of the Second Seminole War in 1835, there were probably 1,200 free blacks and an estimated 200 slaves residing among the Seminoles.

  Many of the slaves became prosperous from holdings in crops and livestock. These slaves could live among the free black population and in
termarry with them. The Seminoles would on occasion also marry slaves, and the children of the marriage were free persons.

  An apparently distinct class of blacks was the Maroons who had at one time been fugitive slaves from the plantations, but who had lived among the Seminoles for so many generations that their antecedents had been completely forgotten. The word Maroon was derived from a Spanish word of East Indian origin meaning free Negroes. The Maroons had intermarried with the Seminoles and were thought of as brothers and allies.

  All of the Black Seminoles spoke a European language. Those who had escaped from Georgia, Alabama, and the Carolinas spoke English, and those from Louisiana and the Florida plantations spoke French and Spanish. They quickly learned the Muskogee language of the Seminoles and became valuable as interpreters. Because the former slaves had knowledge of the customs of the white man, they could advise the Indians on what to expect from them. It has been said that one of the problems with interpretation of the treaties between the Americans and the Seminoles was that the precise English of the American statesmen was translated into Muskogee by blacks who spoke the dialect of the field hand. It is not difficult to see how this could lead to misunderstandings on both sides.

  After Andrew Jackson won the presidency he was able to convince Congress to pass the Indian Removal Act, which was designed to move all Indians living east of the Mississippi River to the Oklahoma Territory. It was time for the government to abrogate the treaty of 1823.

  The Indians gathered at Payne’s Landing on the Ocklawaha River in the spring of 1832, and on May 9 entered into a treaty signed by Commissioner James Gadsden for the United States and by several chiefs for the Seminoles. The treaty required that the Seminoles move to Arkansas and be reunited with the Creeks from whom they had separated many years before. There was however a proviso made a part of the preamble that was later to cause much consternation. The weight of authority seems to be that the proviso was a condition of the treaty. It provided that several chiefs and their black interpreter, Abraham, would travel at government expense to Arkansas to examine the country, and if they were favorably disposed to move, the articles of the treaty would be implemented. The provision seems to be quite clear that this was a choice to be made by the Indians. The Indian delegation inspected the new lands and was not happy with them. They refused to move and the seeds of the Second Seminole War were sown.