Sawgrass Kingdom

I The fortress was without walls, the savanna and cypress domes and the wide river of sawgrass was remote and impenetrable. The Big Water Lake was free then, none of its power was contained, and when the storm season came the sawgrass swords flashed. The abundance of the waters was limitless in fish and turtles. The land teemed with wildlife, there was serenity in the people. Keen diamond edged sawgrass rose from the muck and ash of lost generations of ancestry resisting the futility of conquest. The Calusa knew the ancient land, knew the whispering water swords. They knew their own ancestry, the kingdom called Escampaba. The only gold to be had then was the golden skin of the people and sun dance on fertile waters. There was stillness in the land. II Then came Juan Ponce de León. He sought no fountain of youth as the mistaken myth proclaims. He hunted slaves, gold and power. Greed ran deep in Spain's blood and Ponce would spill the blood of the coastal Indios of Florida and the blood of his own men. Wind stirred in the Everglades and word of a genocide came from the Carib refugees fleeing vicious invaders of the islands. The wind in the sawgrass blew and was a sibilant warning the Spaniards did not heed for greed consumed their heart. That first conquistador they say was felled by a single arrow, but more evil would soon come. War hissed in the sawgrass! Ponce's mission was conquest, the search for imagined gold. Ponce brought terror and death. The Indios answered in kind. III Voracious intruders still came and died on the pure white sand now red with the comingled blood of Spanish and Indios warriors. Juan Ortiz was a noble youth, high of birth but lacking wealth. Like the others he sought gold and he hungered for adventure. Adventure found him shipwrecked, beached and seized by Chief Ucita near the great west central bay called the Baya de Spirito Santo. He would be burned at the stake but for the Chief's daughter, who pled for his life and her love crying for her father's mercy. And even then Ortiz also cried, praying to his Heavenly Father as already the fire was alight and Juan Ortiz writhed in pain. The prayer, or the girl's plea, was heard as Ucita gestured and Ortiz's life was spared, for only love salvages death. IV Three years passed in peace and Juan Ortiz learned the Indian ways and speech, content with his life and bride. But war among the tribes caused Ucita to retreat and contemplate the evil he had brought to the people. The Spaniard must be killed! Again the princess wept but showed her husband the path to the enemy camp. Mococo was the warring chief who took Ortiz in to know Ucita's strength and plans and to learn of the Spaniards. We do not know the fate of that sad Indian bride but it was a time of pain for all the Indios of Florida. Perhaps the princess was forgiven. Ortiz was finally granted freedom and released to Hernando De Soto and died by water in the north. V De Soto also died seeking glory on that same rambling exploration but the Spanish ships still sailed up and down Florida coasts. Rarely did they dare to land and there was no real need, the loot of Mexico and Peru streamed north on the current. The Gulf Stream ran north till the ships turned east to Spain, but if the soil of Florida did fall beneath their boots, they died. Hernando Escalante de Fontaneda was a child of only thirteen years on the voyage home to Spain but for fate and the shipwreck. The sailing tide paid no heed to the season of the storms and the hurricanes delivered gold and hostages to the Indios. Escalante was spared death by fire to sing and dance in the court of the great chief they called Calus, the mighty Lord of the Everglades. VI Like Juan Ortiz before him, who was held by central tribes in his three years of captivity, Escalante would learn the way. Seventeen years he spent with the fierce Calusa people before he was delivered to freedom by the French. It chanced that he was the first of the invaders to then behold the wise King Calus of Escampaba, to know, and live to tell the tale. It was the tale of an empire, perhaps 200,000 savage souls, great fearless armies of thousands, and keen hatred for the invaders. The empire was allied in trade with the Mayaimi Lake tribe and the east coast Tequesta, and the empire was allied in war. Escalante chronicled his story and warned those to come; these tribes would never submit to slavery, the sword, or the cross. VII The Spanish did not give up. One of the last adelantados was Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, a general as great as Calus. He came in peace not war and wed in shame and sham the sister of Calus who was forever more Doña Antonia. With more lies than promises, Menéndez left her in Havana where she learned Christianity, but her love was for Menéndez. The Everglades were given him but for this abandonment. All Florida was in his hands but for his deceitfulness. In years to come aged King Calus was killed by the Spanish traitors and Florida was ceded to England. Nothing had really been gained. As with all futile wars forever, only death itself was victorious. The Calusa died on the beaches and at last in fetid exile in Cuba. VIII So the winds continue to blow and till this day the breeze crosses the wild wet prairie and the Everglades endures. Other hardy men would come to seek alligator and fur pelts and the snowy egret plumes, but the Calusa were no more. Seminole came from the north and inhabited the sawgrass and the few remaining Calusa were absorbed into that tribe. Despite man's destructiveness, the Everglades today is much as it was five hundred years ago, or twenty thousand years ago. Still today a few brave souls fight as the Calusa fought to protect and keep the glades and restore them to their glory. And some may say King Calus still presides over the horizon, the half land emptiness and sky of his eternal sawgrass kingdom.