Peter Matthiessen - Killing Mister Watson

It was right there on Chatham Bend that Jean Chevelier shot the first short-tailed hawk was ever seen in North America, something like that. Weren't much of a claim cause it weren't much of a bird-tail too damn short, I guess. Why he thought this o' scraggy thing we couldn't eat would make him famous I don't know. He seen Carolina parrots, too, far away up inland, freshwater creeks. Bright green little things, size of a dove, all red and yeller on the head, but they was shy and he never did come up with one.

Them parrots used to be thick as fleas back in the hammocks. I told him I would eat a few when I went in there after deer and turkey. "Eat it? Mange? Le perroquet?" He squawked and slapped his brow. Well, that was a long time ago, I told him, and I ain't seen one since. I believe they told me not so long ago that them pretty birds has flewed away for good.

Christmas 1888, Captain Carey brought presents from Key West for all the kids, give each one an apple, candy cane, and Roman candle. That evening Old Man Chevelier says, How would you like to help me collect birds? And he spells out all the kinds he wants, not a plume bird in the bunch. Wants wild eggs, too. I'm nodding away to show I get the drift, and when he says "swallowtail hawk" I nod again and smile and say "Tonsabe."

At that he flies right at my face-"Where you get it that word?" I tell him that is Indin speech for swaller-tail hawk, and he asks, real sly, "Which Indin?" "Choctaw," I says. I call myself by my mother's tribe just to get on in life. Choctaws was good Indins, I tell him, helped Ol' Andy Jackson fight them Creeks, helped him steal most all of Georgia for the crackers. But when they made him president, Ol' Hickory packed the Choctaws up right along with the dang Creeks, sent the whole sad and sorry bunch off to Oklahoma. I told the Frenchman that Ol' Hickory kept a soft spot in his heart for Choctaws all the same.

That Frenchman weren't much interested in my historical lore. He asks what is this river in my language, and I tell him that the old words for this country have been lost. He nods quick, like he's sprung a trap. "Tonsabe is old word, is it not?" He grins. "Tonsabe is Calusa, is it not?"

He had took me by surprise and my face showed it. That word ain't used by Mikasuki, nor Muskogee neither, that word come straight down from my granddaddy, Chief Chekaika.

Back in them days, Chekaika's name was a dirty word to white people, so I says, real coony, "Choctaw and Calusa must be pretty close." But he keeps staring right into my eyes, nodding his head like he can read my brain. Then he sets down on a crate, so we're knee to knee.

"Vair few Calusa words survive," he says, nodding and staring.

I decide to trust him just a little, cause it ain't often I find somebody who knows what I am talking about. Well, I say, my people was not Calusa, not exactly, they was what white men called the Spanish Indins.

Damn if that don't overjoy him so, he has to jump up and sit down again. He tells me Spanish Indins was descended from Calusas that the Spaniards took over to Cuba. Being Spaniards, they snuck some Indins back in to this coast to stir up trouble when the Americans was grabbing off the State of Florida. "So! You are Calusa!" Gives me that skull smile of his when I do not answer. "You know all about where is Calusa burial!" I shrug again.

Chevelier told me he had studied up the maps and such, read the Spanish archives in Madrid, visited all of the big mounds in the Ten Thousand Islands before he decided that Chatham Bend was a main Calusa mound way back in Spanish times. Somewhere pretty close to here, the Calusa took eighteen canoes and attacked Juan Ponce de León, and maybe they withdrew into these hidden rivers to escape the Spanish poxes, cause poxes done a lot more damage than all them swords and blunderbusses put together. If his theory was right, then somewhere in these godforsook green islands was a burial mound, built up higher than the village mounds, using white sand, and one sign of it would be traces of canals out to open water, like some he had seen already, up the coast. Any temple would be gone by now, and the white sand overgrowed, but all the same there was a burial mound on one of these here islands, had to be! He was very excited, but gave up in disgust when I just shrug. "I ain't nothing but a dumb old Indin," I tell him.

"Indians say 'dumb Indin,' white pipples say 'dumb Injun'-why is that?"

"Maybe dumb Indins are too damn dumb to know how to say 'dumb Injuns,' what do you think?"

"Ay-coot," he says, "I am vair interest in Indiang pipples. These foking crack-aire are know-nothing, are grave rob-baire! Are des -ecrating!" He talks this way to get on the good side of this dusty feller who might not care too much for his cracker neighbors.

He wanted to study a Calusa burial place, he says, blurting it out.

"Calusa treasure?" I smile him my best smile. He does not answer.

All the while the Frenchman talked about his mound, he was watching my eyes like a cardplayer to see if I might put him in the way of it. I knew him a little bit by now, and I believe he did want to study that mound, just like he wanted to study birds, cause he was a real scientist, he was born curious, he was the nosiest damn man I ever come across. But he would loot them graves first thing, because some way he was starved by life, and greedy, and here was maybe his last chance at fame and fortune. I was watching him as close as he watched me, and I seen his crippled hand twitch while he spoke.

"Well," say I, "one day I was out des -ecrating with my oldest boy, had ten-twelve pretty skulls lined up on a log, airing out, y'know. Chip the crown off for your ashtray, rig the head for your cigars. For a human humidor you just can't beat it." I hum a little, taking my time. "Them redskin skulls done up artistic for the tourist trade will bring you some nice spot cash down to Key West."

He is really staring. "Com maung?" he says. These Frenchmen say "Come on!" like it's a question-Com- maung?

"Yessir. One them skulls had a hole conched into it, and I give that one to my boy, and he stuck a buzzard feather in there, looked real pretty." I let him sit with that one for a minute.

He says in a funny voice, "Where this place was?" He couldn't take the chance I might be fooling.

"Nosir," I says, "I wouldn't let on to my worst enemy about that place!" and I drop my voice right down to a whisper and touch knees. "Cause when we lined them skulls up, put the feather in, why, all of a sudden, them trees went silent on us! That silence was so silent it was ringing!" I set there and nod at him awhile. "Yessir, we was plenty scared, and we got out of there, and we ain't never been back. Left them twelve skulls lined up on that log grinning good-bye. Cause that ringing silence, know what that was? That was the venging spirits of Calusa Indins!"

Then I show him my Indin face, refusing to answer any questions for his own damn good, and he had to accept that out of his great respect for the noble redskin. He went away, shaking his head over the idea that a Indin could desecrate Indin graves, and bound and determined to do some desecrating on his own. I knowed just the mound the Frenchman wanted, and after that day, until he died, one of my kids was generally his guide, to keep him headed off the scent, keep him away from there as best we could.

Every one of these small creeks and canals had some kind of small shell mound at the head of it, he could hack his way into a hundred and not hit the right one. But south and west of Possum Key, well hid from the world in all them miles of mangrove, was a big old clamshell mound called Gopher Key, had a Calusa-built canal we called Sim's Creek that led straight out to the Gulf of Mexico. Don't know too much about ol' Sim, might been one them misfits from the Civil War hid out back up there on that key, took plenty of gopher tortoise for his dinner. Gopher Key weren't the place Chevelier was after, but it give him enough shell to dig the whole rest of his life.