Sementera

“ In the transplanting and harvesting of palay the woman is given credit for greater dexterity than the man; men harvest palay only when sufficient women can not be found. Women plant, care for, harvest, and transport to the pueblo all camotes, millet, maize, and beans.
The men and women together construct and repair irrigated sementeras, men usually digging the earth while the women transport it. Together they prepare the soil of irrigated sementeras, and carry manure to them from the pigpens. ”

“ As in the case of Som-kad′, all old, rich men are buried in a plat of ground close to the last fringe of dwellings on the west of the pueblo, but all other persons except those who lose their heads are buried close to their dwellings in the camote sementeras. ”

“ Beware, adventurer, for this wilderness region gives out no secrets and only the Seminole knows the hidden channels and haunts.
The shadows grow dimmer and dimmer and we look up to see the stars lift the lids of their twinkling eyes to smile down upon the sleeping pappooses; the braves and the squaws, with the faith of little children, keep afresh the mystic religion of their ancestors, while they worship before the Great Spirit, who [206] has given this Pay-hay-o-kee country to his red children. ”

“ He sat down on the couch opposite and his honest blue eyes met the other's keen, black ones unwaveringly. "The Seminoles, once a mighty people, have grown as few in number as the deer in the forest," he began, falling naturally into the speech of the Indians. "Yet, few though they became, there walked among them, at least, one of their race whose heart and mind was like the night when the moon shines not and clouds have hid the stars. One day this evil one rose up and slew a harmless white settler. ”

“ The ancestral music of the Seminole is full of a wild, weird melody, where men and women and little children join voices. As the Indians sing, you may hear the melancholy waters whisper a pensive good-night and the drowsy birds flutter in their boughs. You hear the camp songs and the lullabies like voices trained in the woodland with a strain of heartbreak, where life and love steal forth in fanciful ecstasy and the vanished souls seem to call back in tenuous fragments of mystery, only to die away into a symphony of sorrow, as the melodies echo across the dark wilderness. ”

“ Many of the rills were artificial, leading from one rice field to another. The industrious inhabitants were guiding their ploughs or otherwise in their fields, while here and there a grove of fruit-trees, with cocoa-nuts, areca palms, and clusters of bamboos rising among them, showed the situation of the villages. Nearly surrounding this beautiful country swept a semicircle of magnificent mountains of the most picturesque description, one out-topping the other, while in the far distance the stately Semiru raised his lofty cone into the blue sky. ”

“ We see the happy wigwam homes, gleaming in the red flames of the camp fire and hear the soft lullabies of the crooning mothers; the dusky hero of the chase returns game-laden from the hunt, and, in the picture, framed, as it were, by the boundaries of nature, we see long lines of moving life, the graceful forms of thousands of flying creatures, while the song of the forest minstrel hallows the wooded silence. It is the land of the Seminole.
Thou, Florida, with thy laughing waters and sunny skies, art the Seminole’s elysium. Thy spreading palms form the only canopy he desires. ”

“ On our return to camp in the evening, we were saluted by a party of young Indian warriors, who had pitched their tents on a green eminence near the lake, at a small distance from our camp, under a little grove of oaks and palms. This company consisted of seven young Seminoles, under the conduct of a young prince or chief of Talahasochte, a town southward in the isthmus. They were all dressed and painted with singular elegance, and richly ornamented with silver plates, chains, etc., after the Seminole mode, with waving plumes of feathers on their crests. ”

“ Are not the Seminoles of Florida, the descendants of the old monarchs, this race around which shadowy romance hovers, as worthy of preservation as the inanimate treasures of ancient Egypt? Are there no Rameses in American history? In the old turbaned tribe of Florida, we have a remnant of the most picturesque, deserving and moral of all the Aborigines of America, and they belong to a type that is everywhere else extinct. Are they not worth preserving and protecting to a point worthy the proud and historic name of Seminole? ”

“ After death the body of a Seminole is immediately prepared for burial, the corpse being clad in new clothes. When a chief dies one cheek is painted red, the other one is painted black. The rest of the tribe do not have the face painted for burial. ”

“ The statement I had from some cattlemen in mid-Florida I have thus found true, namely, that the Seminole are producing more men than women. What bearing this peculiarity will have upon the future of these Indians can only be guessed at. It is beyond question, however, that the tribe is increasing in numbers, and increasing in the manner above described.
There is no reason why the tribe should not increase, and increase rapidly, if the growth in numbers be not checked by the non-birth of females. The Seminole have not been at war for more than twenty years. ”

“ The women and savage warriors clustered around, laughing at his sallies, or contributing their quota of grotesque wit, at which they uttered yells of demoniac laughter. We might easily have fancied ourselves in the infernal regions, in the middle of a crowd of jibbering fiends, who stood grinning down upon us, as if they drew delight from our anguish.
We noticed that few of the men were Seminoles. Indians there were; but these were of dark complexion, nearly black. They were of the tribe of Yamassees—a race conquered by the Seminoles, and partially engrafted into their nation. ”

“ Among these vines, singing from morning till night, hung the Senora's canaries and finches, half a dozen of each, all of different generations, raised by the Senora. She was never without a young bird-family on hand; and all the way from Bonaventura to Monterey, it was thought a piece of good luck to come into possession of a canary or finch of Senora Moreno's 'raising.
Between the veranda and the river meadows, out on which it looked, all was garden, orange grove, and almond orchard; the orange grove always green, never without snowy bloom or golden fruit ”

“ To remove them from their tropical homes to the chilling blasts of the Indian Territory would be an act of cruelty and wholly unnecessary. Those of us who have enjoyed life in this land of the palm, this land of the balmy air and life-giving sunshine, reveling in the eternal bloom of the flowers and the ceaseless song of the birds, can well picture the struggle it would cost the patient Seminole to be forced to a cold western land. No, fair Florida, the ancestors of these proud people were forced to the country of the setting sun silent and dejected. ”

“ Seldom, if ever, has a Seminole squaw stepped beyond the boundaries of her trackless Everglade home to visit the home of the white man; to study a Seminole woman at close range and yet far from her forest refuge, is a privilege seldom experienced. ”

“ In dealing with the Seminole language we meet with long words and mammoth expressions. The Seminole greeting, “Ha-tee-eten-chee-hick-cha-hit-is-chay,” sounds formidable, yet it only means “Glad to see you.” These, with well-understood Indian phrases, such as “burying the tomahawk,” “going on the warpath,” we employ familiarly without a thought of the tribe we have dispossessed. The time for studying the aborigines of America will soon be over. Only remnants of the tribes remain among us. ”

“ A pretty tradition among the Seminoles is that a beautiful race of Indians, whose women they call the daughters of the sun, reside among the swamps and lakes of the O-kee-fee-ne-kee wilderness and live in uninterrupted felicity upon islands of eternal verdure, feasting upon the luxuries of the islands, but inaccessible to the approach of human footsteps. ”

“ Perhaps a senorita, more venturesome, with her black hair hanging in two long plaits behind each shoulder, has run to her iron-barred window to smile at me, and then penitently fallen before her patron saint imploring forgiveness, or hurried to confess her sin to the wily padre. ”

“ In the recess the Senora was pacing to and fro with a flushed countenance and bright eyes; I thought, too, she was speaking to herself, like one in anger. But when I addressed her with my customary salutation, she only replied by a sharp gesture and continued her walk. The weather had distempered even this impassive creature; and as I went on upstairs I was the less ashamed of my own discomposure.
All day the wind continued; and I sat in my room and made a feint of reading, or walked up and down, and listened to the riot overhead. Night fell, and I had not so much as a candle. ”

“ The gens represented in the Seminole tribe to-day are the Otter, the Tiger, the Deer, the Wind, the Bird, the Snake, the Bear, and the Wolf. Other gens are now extinct in Florida. Thus, in asking about the Alligator tribe, the chief replied, “All gone—long time ago—to Indian Territory.” A young brave dare not marry a girl from his own gens, he must select her from another clan. When asking a chief what he would do were he to want a girl from his own gens for a wife, and the girl should want to marry him, he replied, “Me no marry her.” ”

“ Tustenuggee would remove the cool ember and quietly reach down and put a fresh one in its place. This old chief, so famous in history, never yielded to removal, and lived till a few years ago with his tribe in the Everglades. The goal of the Seminole is to learn to endure and to achieve. To this end is every Seminole boy educated, and different modes of developing the powers of endurance are employed. Carrying a deer for a long distance without fatigue, walking or running for many miles, jumping, wrestling, poling a canoe, etc., are some of the practical modes. ”

“ What promise in a babe left fatherless? See what a sturdy little warrior, who, as Asshur liveth, hath the eye of Ninus and his very nose!"
Thus the wrath of the King grew less, as the wrath of man must ever grow beneath the soothing subtleties of a woman's tongue. Then Semiramis shut herself within her chamber, communing with none save Sozana and the child; and thus through the life of seven moons she mourned for Menon, sitting by day in the garden's shade, or at night on the palace roof, seeking for peace in the rays of Ishtar and her sister stars. ”

“ The ruin is sacred to your uncle's spirit. Your aunt monopolizes the park, and, I must be allowed to state, not unfrequently trespasses upon the grounds of others. The horse-pond is frequented by the spirit of your maid, and your murdered sister walks these corridors. To be plain, there is no room at Sloperton Grange for another ghost. I cannot have them in my room,—for you know I don't like children. Think of this, rash girl, and forbear! Would you, Selina," said the phantom mournfully,—"would you force your great-grandfather's spirit to take lodgings elsewhere?" ”

“ Semiramis laughed aloud. Through the open tent she pointed to a cleft which split two mountain peaks in twain:
"Climb yonder and pass between, then journey down the further slope till the second mountain stream is reached; hunt northward toward its source, and the foam-tongued waters will shout thy way, even as hounds lift up their song on the quarry's trail." She paused to laugh again: "In truth, King Ninus is of little wisdom, else to him I might have pointed out this open path, even as I point it out to thee." ”

“ As I have already stated, the soil is quite barren over a large part of the district; but, on the other hand, there is also in many places a fertility of soil that cannot be surpassed. Plantings are followed by superabundant harvests, and the hunter is richly rewarded. But I need not repeat what has already been said; it suffices to note that the natural environment of the Seminole is such that ordinary effort serves to supply them, physically, with more than they need. ”

“ When Hannah returned to her work about the table, snap! went the button, and Hannah’s ebony face and twisted, string-tied locks was photographed on the plate, and proud was the owner to possess so good a likeness of Uncle Sam’s one and only unfreed slave.
UNWRITTEN LAWS.
The government among the Seminoles is peculiar, it is remarkable, it is magnificent. There is no lying, no stealing, no murder and yet apparently there is no restraining law. The Seminole has many noble traits; he is proverbially truthful. ”

“ Temple, who had been tutor to Sir Henry Seymour's ward, Augustus Mordaunt. With them Selina often joined in studies of a graver cast than those usually appropriated to her age and sex. And perhaps the peculiar style of her education was the one best adapted to her disposition. She had naturally uncommon vivacity. "Her cheek was yet unprofaned by a tear," and her buoyant spirits had never been depressed by those unfeeling prohibitions and restraints, which, "like a worm i' th' bud," feed on the opening blossom, and turn the happiest season of our lives into days of protracted penance. ”

“ And so, as Sestrina laid her paddle in her canoe and piped her flute, and heard the soft, Lydian music of the wind amongst the leaves, and mutterings of cockatoos, she fancied the dead lepers spoke to her. Then, as the shadows deepened to the westward, she saw shadowy tresses toss as the winds stirred the dark-fingered palm leaves, revealing to her watching eyes, visionary faces of beautiful women who gazed in silent sorrow upon her. ”