Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. I.djvu/314

Rh Town, a day's journey from this place. I have to thank Mr. Downing for this. I shall spend there a few days, and return hither, whence I shall go to Georgia. I must make good use of the time, because early in May the heat becomes great in the South, and then all the planters remove from their plantations to avoid the dangerous fevers which then prevail. During the summer months it is said that a night spent on one of the rice-plantations would be certain death to a white man. The negroes on the contrary suffer little or nothing from the climate.

I am now making a sketch, from an oil painting, of the portrait of a great Indian chief, by name Osconehola, who, at the head of the Seminole tribe, fought bravely against the Americans in Florida, who wished to drive the Indians thence and send them westward to Arkansas. The country in the southern parts, which was possessed by the tribes of the Seminole and Creek Indians, and where they were continually an annoyance to white settlers, produces as its more general wood a tree which is called light-wood, from the gumminess of its timber, which quickly kindles and burns with a bright flame. It is not of a large size, and is easy to fell. The Arkansas, on the Western side of the Mississippi, produces for the most part oak forests, bounded by the wild steppland (Nebraska, the principal resort of the Indians at this time in North America), and has a severe climate.

Osconehola therefore replied to the message and the threat which was sent by the government of the United States, in these words:— “My people are accustomed to the warm air of Florida, to the rivers and the lakes which abound in fish; to the light-wood, which is easy to fell, and which burns easily. They cannot live in that cold country where only the oak tree grows. The people cannot fell the large trees; they will perish there for want of the light-wood!”

And when at last the choice was given him, either open