Peter Matthiessen - Killing Mister Watson

Nobody at Chatham Bend spoke Injun enough to even tell that girl where she should sleep at, they figured Injuns probably slept out in the woods. Leslie Cox didn't hold with talk, just took her over to the shed and raped her, done that regular. Got her pregnant, too, is what we heard. And knowing her people would never take her back, knowing she had no place in this world she could ever go, the poor young critter got so lonesome and pathetic that she hung herself, unborn baby and all, down in the boat shed.

That was a story that never got out about the Watson Place until long after. The nigger told it but nobody believed it, cause by the time the men went down to Chatham Bend, her body was gone. But I was friendly with the Injuns when I lived on Possum Key in later years, and they all knowed about it. How they took care of it they would not say.

My granddaddy James Hamilton and my dad and uncles, they was pioneering at South Lost Man's when Mister Watson got the Atwell claim, which was Lost Man's Key and the farm patch at Little Creek, across the river. My other granddad, Captain Jim Daniels, was down there at that time. Him and his boy Frank, they seen the smoke of Tucker's sloop, burning away as she drifted out to westward in the Gulf, with the sunset like a halo all around her. Looked like she'd been set afire by that ball of light and just melted down into the sea.

Mister Watson got so scarce for a few years that we figured he was probably gone for good, so our bunch started in to farming Little Creek, which had growed over since the Tuckers' day but was handy to our place on Lost Man's Beach. Next thing we knew, Ed Watson had come back, friendly as ever, like he never even heard of Wally Tucker, and he made no trouble over Little Creek. For a start, he had enough to do bringing the Bend back to production and taking care of his north Florida farm. His young wife had him calmed down some, and anyway, he didn't need no fight with neighbors.

However, he had no money left and more work than he could handle, so he took any labor he could get. Chatham Bend got a bad name for escaped convicts and stray niggers, and pretty soon a rumor went around that people down there was just disappearing. Course there was no way to keep track of them runaways that worked that man's plantation, cause nobody knew who was down there in the first place, but more and more, people was saying that Mister Watson was scaring people off the islands, and killing his help when the time come to pay 'em, and who was to say that he would let it go at that? He was a man who had killed before, he had the habit of it, and they couldn't hang him twice if he tried again. Had a carpenter named Jim Dyches there with his wife and children that last summer, and them folks got so nervous at the Watson Place that one day they just left without Jim's pay, took off on the mail boat with Gene Gandees.

Even Uncle Henry Thompson didn't like the feeling in that place, not by the end of it. Uncle Henry will tell you that himself, and he was a feller never failed to speak up for Mister Watson.

In May 1910, Mr. McKinney reported that the weather remained dry and the fish few. The pear crop was poor and the horseflies bad, but there were no mosquitoes yet to speak of. At the end of the month, it was "dry, dry, dry: limes, grapefruit, guavas will all fail; fish still scarce."

"Jim Demere reports no luck on gator hunt."

"Bill House has shipped on the Rosina a cargo of wood, hogs, eggs, chickens, and pickled rabbits."

"Walter Alderman has moved into the Andrew Wiggins house vacated by Gene Roberts and will go fishing."

"The most of us have seen the comet but now we are expecting to get another look in the west soon."

In June, the Rivers and Harbors Act authorized the dredging of the Calusa Hatchee, whose white sandy bottom had been increasingly covered with silt due to the widening of the Okeechobee Canal. Under Governor Napoleon Broward (who would die that same year on October 1) widespread canal dredging had been resumed, and big sales campaigns had started up for the sale of Everglades land.

The Monroe County census taken in May listed Green Waller, 53, and Mrs. Smith (cook), 40, at Chatham Bend, as well as Mr. and Mrs. Watson and their two young children-the third child was born later in this month. There was also Lucius Watson, age 20, a fisherman, and another white man, "John Smith, age 33."

Early June brings warm and cloudy weather, with mosquitoes. "I have been here twenty-four years and have never seen the fruit trees so near dead as now, near the first of June… don't know what the effect will be when the rain comes, if it ever does… We see the comet in the west now, but not so brilliantly as in the east…"

His brother Horace from Marco visits Walter Alderman. He will move onto the island in July. (Horace Alderman became notorious in later years for his exploits in the rum-running and Chinese-smuggling trades. He was hung at Fort Lauderdale in the mid-twenties for the murder of two Coast Guardsmen who had detained him.)

Mr. George Storter, his two sons, and Henry Short have "fair luck" on a gator hunt and go again.

Game laws protecting alligators are passed in Lee County, since in the dry season the gators dig out water holes used by the cattle.

"Mr. C.T. Boggess and family have moved on the island to dwell among the righteous for a while."

At the end of June, the rainy season arrives at last, nearly two months late, with lots of Indians, mosquitoes, and "blind tiger" (moonshine).

Walter Alderman, Henry Smith, C.G. McKinney, Jim Howell, Willie Brown, D.D. House, Charlie Boggess all growing vegetables for the Key West market.

In early July (as Admiral Peary claims discovery of the North Pole) McKinney teases the preacher Brother Jones, who chronically defers his visits due to the torments visited upon him by the "swamp angels" (mosquitoes).

Henry Smith and Tant Jenkins go to dig clams at Pavilion Key until the fishing improves.

Charlie McKinney and Kathleen Demere are married at the schoolhouse on July 28 by Justice George Storter.

In early August, the Rosina, which now sails twice a month, leaves for Key West with Mr. and Mrs. John Henry Daniels.

"Green peas and beans are being harvested; fish are fat."

"Mr. Walter Alderman has a (chronic) infected foot."

McKinney reports lots of rain, thunder, and lightning for late August, also "low bush lightning." The "truckers" (truck farmers) are setting out their crops. McKinney is getting in his pepper crop while fighting rabbits.

A baby girl is born on the island to Andrew Wiggins and his wife on August 20. She is the former Addie Howell. His father, William Wiggins, has moved to Fort Myers, but his younger brother, Raleigh, is on Chokoloskee.

Bill House and Miss Nettie Howell are wed at the school-house on the last Sunday of August, "just as we have been expecting for two years." They have their honeymoon at Key West on the Rosina, and will live on the boat. Dan House now plans to acquire his own boat.

In early September, Miss Lillie Daniels, daughter of Jim Daniels, marries Capt. Jack Collier at Caxambas. "Lucius Watson was here [Caxambas] Sunday for the first time since April." (One may guess that he was visiting the Daniels-Jenkins clan, including his young half-sisters Pearl and Minnie.)

Henry Short has gone back fishing. The fishing is good but the hens are not laying.

School reopens. Gregorio Lopez and sons have gone to Honduras hunting alligators, while Lovie Lopez and the younger children move to Chokoloskee "for the school season."