Peter Matthiessen - Killing Mister Watson

I was borned in Key West back in '79 and lived on Chokoloskee in my later life, but I guess you could say them rivers was my home.

Lately I have come across another pioneer memoir that makes special reference to Mr. Watson. The author, Marie Martin St. John, was a child of Jim Martin, former sheriff of Manatee County, who in the fall of 1899 moved his family from Palmetto, Florida (on Tampa Bay), to the old shack used by Jean Chevelier on Gopher Key, "to give them a taste" of the Florida wilderness in which he had grown up. Martin subsequently erected a new dwelling on Possum Key. The author was only five when she went to the Islands, and though her memoir is alive with savored reminiscence, it may be shaded by events and rumor of a later period.

We made port at Marco, a landing pier and little else… then sailed south for Everglades City [sic] and Chucoluskee [sic], one a landing pier, the other a mud bank. Finally we came to Edgar Watson's place, a sugar plantation on the Chatham River.

Watson was an infamous outlaw. Every lawman in south Florida was acquainted with his treachery and cunning… From time to time he was halfheartedly sought for trial, though few crimes seemed to lead directly to his door. The legend persisted, however. The native whites feared him as you would a rattlesnake, but the Indians and black people were susceptible to his manipulations. Frequently hungry, they would go to work for him, cutting cane. He rarely paid the money agreed upon, and if a worker rebelled, Watson was said to execute him on the spot. I heard that countless human skeletons were left bare in his bayou when a hurricane blew the water out. The bayou filled the next day, and it was business as usual.

This merciless man had an invalid wife whom he adored. He kept fifty cats for her to pet. Of course I was intrigued with him the day we docked at the sugar plantation. I remember Mr. Watson taking me on his knee and telling me to pick one out for my own. He seemed the kindest of men.

Not without trepidation, Papa made arrangements with Watson to bring lumber, roofing, and other materials needed from Fort Myers to build our house, which we would do with our own hands and the help of friends. Like other people in this lost place, we were dependent on Watson's big boat, which made regular runs to and fro. We felt this dependency even more after we settled and commenced to farm. There was no other way to get our produce to market on a steady basis. The stranglehold Watson had over this section of Florida was not dissimilar to the unscrupulous activities of certain lawmen, other legal crooks, and even governors that our state was to suffer through its history.

It was sundown when we arrived at Gopher Key, where we would stay until the big house was built on a neighboring island. There was the little shack, not the most gracious of living quarters, and there was a murderer for our nearest and only neighbor, about thirty miles [sic] away. [Perhaps this was the year the Hamiltons spent near John Weeks at Flamingo.]

Our new two-story house [on Possum Key] was finished that spring. Papa had built it on an old homesite known as the Chevalier Place. The Frenchman… had planted guava and avocado pears, and they were now huge trees… What with Papa's fields of tomatoes, we soon had produce to send to market. We shipped, as contracted, with Edgar Watson. Immediately trouble arose. A messenger came from the sugar plantation bringing Papa a ridiculously small sum of money. For his part Papa told this man to go back and tell Watson how much was still owed, and that he, Papa, would be coming for it. The poor messenger was terrified and begged Papa to let the matter drop. "He'll just shoot you, Mr. Martin. That's the way he settles an account. No one argues with Edgar Watson and lives to talk about it."

The next day Papa went to see Watson. Hal and Bubba accompanied him. When they drew up to the dock in their boat, Papa told the boys to sit tight while he went in the house. Watson's whole living room could be seen through a wide screen. It was an armory: the walls were lined with guns. Papa did not carry a gun.

In the argument that followed the boys could see everything. Perhaps they thought of the skeletons under their boat as Watson became more and more strident. Then came a moment when Watson started backing toward his wall of guns. Papa was unrelenting; he demanded his money, and Watson's arm rose toward a pistol. At the height of this tense moment, a smile broke on Watson's face. From where he stood he could see the two boys in the boat fifty feet away, each with a rifle held in small, capable hands and a bead drawn on the man who threatened their father.

"Look," Watson told Papa, but Papa thought it was a trick to make him turn around. Watson understood and moved away from the guns and pointed to the boat. Papa grinned at his sons and even smiled at Edgar Watson.

"Do you suppose they thought I'd shoot you, Jim?" Watson asked.

"Do you suppose you'd have had the chance?" Papa sent back.

This man who never paid his debts paid my father and walked with him to the landing to get a closer look. All he saw were two nonchalant little boys sitting with their guns beside them, slapping mosquitoes.

Despite its clear affinity with later myth-making, including the heightened drama inherent in an oft-told narrative of family courage, the many well-remembered details elsewhere in the account suggest that there is something to her story, including the growing atmosphere of terror that by the turn of the century was beginning to gather around E.J. Watson. While "the man who never paid his debts" seems at odds with Watson's reputation for impeccable dealings with Ted Smallwood and others, it may also be true that he dodged small debts with creditors who could be bullied.

The St. John account ends on Possum Key at the turn of the century, not long before the notorious Tucker episode took place. Perhaps it was the fear that swept the region in the wake of the Tucker deaths which persuaded Jim Martin to abandon his new house and uproot his wife and four small children. Apparently he remained in the Everglades region, since he appears in the local census of 1910.

After our marriage, times was hard, and in early years, the man that helped to pull us through was Mister Watson. Coming north and south on his way to Key West, he liked to stop over and eat with us, and he always spared us extra grub, extra supplies just when we needed it. He done the same for the whole Hamilton clan, Gene and Becca, too, and they took his help, even though Gene would bad-mouth Mister Watson before his boat was over the horizon.

Leon never asked for help, not even once. Mister Watson could guess what us poor squatters needed and would bring old clothes from his own children, some spare food, maybe give us the lend of his good tools and equipment. We tried as best we could to pay him back, brought him fish sometimes, turtle and manatee for stew, palm bud, guava syrup. We did this and that, and I guess he knew we was ready to help out any way we could.

Course Gene told Leon that Mister Watson was just paying in advance for having the Hamiltons and their guns to back him if it come to trouble. I hated Gene for saying that but couldn't be so sure it wasn't true. Leon told me I was too suspicious, same way Gene was, but Gene's idea begun to eat at my poor man, and finally Leon give the order we was not to take no more from Mister Watson. We was getting more beholden to another man than he could live with.

Mister Watson was a generous man, and a real gentleman, I never knew him not to tip that broad black hat. Many's the time he ate at our table, and we was always glad to see him, he was lots of fun. Leon says that Mister Watson loved his children. But after his family moved up to Fort Myers, and them Daniels females came and went at Chatham Bend, Mister Watson went back to his hard drinking, he got mean and he got heavy, and didn't waste no time at all getting in trouble.