1837 – Seminole Resistance and Survival
The sawgrass whispered warnings.
Beneath a sky stained orange by smoke and sun, the Big Water stretched quiet and still, as if holding its breath. Mosquitoes swarmed in clouds above the cypress fringe, but no birds called. No frogs croaked. Even the fish held to the deep.
The lake had seen this before, soldiers pushing from the north, boats patrolling the rivers, scouts moving through the glades with guns and promises. And still, the lake stood unchanged, its waters deeper than the maps could guess.
Tafi ran with breath like fire in his chest.
He had not slept in two nights, not since the raid at the old chickee village near Fisheating Creek. The soldiers had come at dusk, Creek auxiliaries, white coats, shouting in a tongue he hated. There was no warning. Just the crack of gunpowder, a fire in the palmettos, and a scream that might have been his sister’s.
He had no weapon now. Only a stone-bladed knife, a burned pouch of dried meat, and his grandfather’s medallion, made from hammered silver, etched with spirals he didn’t understand.
But he knew the water.
And the water remembered him.
He pushed the dugout deeper into the flooded sawgrass, body low, paddle silent. The wind shifted, bringing a smell of blood and gun smoke from the north. Behind him, the reeds closed like a curtain. In front of him, open water shimmered in the heat.
He reached the edge of a hidden island, just a knuckle of raised peat and cypress roots. Old shelters stood there, half-rotted but upright, palm-thatched roofs leaning into each other like elders in council. No footprints, but the fire circle was clean. Someone had been here. Or someone had left it for him.
Tafi stepped ashore, trembling.
He had reached Ahesa, the old name. The place his grandfather spoke of, where the Belle Glade ancestors had once kept the spirit fire dry during the storms. Where those who fled came to rest. It was not a camp. It was a memory made flesh.
And tonight, it was his only hope.
He lit a fire.
Not a signal, but a ward. Cypress bark, crushed tobacco, and ash from the pouch. He sang, low and hoarse, a war song with no rhythm. Half Muscogee, half memory. He didn’t know who would answer.
They came in the night.
Not soldiers. Others.
Old men with painted faces. A woman with a broken spear. A boy no older than ten holding a machete like a flute. They came from the water silently, stepping into the firelight as if rising from the lake itself.
One of them, a wiry man with hair wrapped in deer hide—spoke first.
“You brought the spiral?”
Tafi nodded. He held up the medallion.
The man smiled, not kindly but with recognition.
“This place is held by the ones who never left,” he said. “You’re not the first to run. But if you stay, you fight.”
“I will,” Tafi said.
And for the first time, the fire did not crackle. It pulsed.
By morning, the camp moved. Silent. Efficient. The shelters vanished, the fire buried beneath packed mud, the canoes strung with water vines to blend with the marsh. The soldiers would come, yes, but the lake had already hidden its children.
And in the shallows where the dugouts disappeared, a spiral of ripples lingered, marking the place where resistance became refuge, and memory became strategy.