The King`s Commission

'When has it ever been good for Indians to live cheek-to-jowl with Europeans, Lieutenant Lewrie?' McGilliveray asked sadly. 'Do you but think back on the history of relations between us since the first colonists. Slaughter, misunderstandings, Indians displaced from their ancestral lands by usurpers. We shall never understand each other. You think in terms of property to buy and sell; my people own everything, and nothing. Our ways are so different. Your people slave to make a living, put up houses to last hundreds of years, while my people do with so little, and all we have is impermanent, taking only what we need. We are clean in our personal habits of bathing each morning, but wear the same single trade-good clothing until they wear out, and have no need for more, just to have something to prove we are wealthy, as you do. I saw your sea chest aboard ship, sir. You carry a lifetime's worth of goods for your comfort. I and any of my people could gather his life's possessions in a single sack, and feel rich.'

'Well…' Alan began but Cashman shushed him with a nudge.

'Perhaps sometime in the distant future, there will be good relations between us, but until then, it would be best if someone could say, here is Indian land this side of this river. No whites but traders and missionaries go there. Here is where Indians do not go. We Creeks and the Seminolee know our borders, to the north where Upper Creek territory starts, and the Upper Creek know where Cherokee land begins. To the west of here are Chickasaw, Choctaw, Natchez. If white men come among us here, there is nowhere for us to go. If rum comes among us as trade goods, we lose respect for our mikkos and mischief comes down with the Thunder Boys. We cannot be with you and stay a people. If you need us, and truly want to live in peace with us, you must realize this. If you want us to take the arms and fight your enemies for you, then you must let us live our own ways on our own lands. To keep our lands and our ways, we need your support and your arms, your soldiers close by.'

'But what about the smaller tribes already here?' Cashman asked.

'The Spanish and the French have already destroyed them,' McGilliveray said. 'They could move to the Indian territories, if they do not like living among the Rebels or the British. People in small groups can always find a home in another tribe easily. And if there is land that you want, then the Upper Creeks, the Lower Creeks, and the Seminolee, tied by trade treaties, supported by British arms, can make war on the smaller tribes with you. The Alabama, Biloxi, Kosati, and some of the tribes along the coast. West of here, toward Pensacola, and the mouth of the Mobile, there are fewer swamps along the coast. If we march together, you take certain lands, and we take certain lands, making sure we have good borders, you get what you want, and we get what we want. When the Rebels come across the mountains, as they will, they will put pressure on the Cherokee, and the small tribes in Georgia, who will be forced to move onto our lands. But if my people have strong allies who will march to our aid and give us weapons, we can say 'no' to them.'

'An Indian kingdom,' Cowell said, having heard the argument before. 'We join hands with sultans and rajahs in the East Indies so.'

'This would give heart to the Cherokee to hold onto their land, to come parley with England for the same sort of help. And you already help the Iroquois League north of them. A solid barrier, all along the great river Mississippi, west of the mountains where the Rebels live.'

'Been my experience with sultans that they'd rather fight among themselves than eat,' Cashman stated, a trifle dubious.

'Then bring officers among us, white officers and sergeants to lead us, to teach us, like the East India Company raises native units,' McGilliveray urged, getting excited. 'Bring teachers to help us develop, our own books, printed in Muskogean. Do you know just how big this continent really is, Captain? How far it stretches to the other ocean? It would take a thousand years to fill it up with people. Think of Indian regiments who could help you take it and hold it. Think of future wars with the Rebels, and how the people east of the mountains could be defeated with our help, not just as irregular scouts and raiders, but as a field army, like Germanic and Gallic auxiliaries who supplied the cavalry to Imperial Rome! And how barbaric were the Germans to the Romans at the time. As barbaric as we appear to your burgeoning Empire now?'

'Gad!' Alan exclaimed, getting dizzy at the thought of it. 'Is that what we could start? We'd go down in history, famous as anybody!'

'It is, indeed, Lieutenant Lewrie,' Cowell said so soberly that even in his ludicrous togs, he looked as impressive as any to-gaed Senator of old Rome himself. 'So you see why Desmond and I were so worried that neither of you seemed very involved in it, and have altered our carefully laid arrangements.'

'Had we been told, sir, it would have made a difference,' Cashman replied. 'Did you discuss this hope with Lieutenant Colonel Peacock? With Alan's admiral?'

'We were not able to make either of them privy to all our goals.'

'Damme, Mister Cowell, we should've landed a regiment and come ashore with a band, 'stead o' this rag-tag- and-bobtail. I didn't even bring my regimentals with me. Alan left his uniform behind. From now on, would you please consider us in your plans, 'stead o' keepin' it to y'rself?'

'I give you my solemn vow that from this instant, you shall be thoroughly informed, and involved, in our deliberations, Captain,' Cowell said, giving them a satisfied smile. 'But do you see the implications of our embassy to the most powerful southern tribes? Not simply correcting a fiscal mistake which reduced subsidies when the war began. If we had continued financial aid, the Creeks and Seminolee would have stayed on with us instead of staying neutral, and we would have had the force to retain Florida and Georgia, come the Devil himself against us. God willing, it is still not too late to recover this region. And in the process, establish a fairer, more productive and peaceful relationship between all Indians and all Europeans throughout the Americas, one that shall put to shame near on two hundred and fifty years of the way we have dealt together. The Rebels are married to the old ways, while our new colonists to a renascent British Florida, untainted by misconceptions of the past, can adjust to the new order of things.'

'And I would not worry much about making a grand show,' McGilliveray chuckled. 'Along the Great Lakes, the 8th Regiment wears Iroquois garb as part of its full-dress regimentals, Captain. My people have seen grand embassies before, and they all led to nothing. What we bring is more important than how well you dress for them. As I remember, I saw a painting in London just before we left. A very famous soldier portrayed in part Hindu garb, part rag-tag-and-bobtail, as you put it. He was Clive of India. Would you gentlemen like to be known to history as famous as Clive? He won England a doorway to India. You could win England the rest of North America.'

Chapter 5

Alan had not known what to expect when they got to the Indian town. At best a cluster of chickees straggling along the lake shore. But what greeted him was a frontier fortress. Across nearly a mile of bottom land thickly sprigged with new corn stalks twined with vines laden with quickening bean pods, row upon raised row of plantings mixed with gourds and squash, plots of other vegetables and fiber plants he had never seen cultivated before, there was a huge town surrounded by a tall log palisade, with watch- towers every fifty yards or so, and gates cut into the walls with guard-towers alongside them.

McGilliveray informed them that this chiefdom, the White Town, held land about a mile and a half in depth into the forests from the shore of the lake, and ran for over six miles east and west.

In pride of place, McGilliveray mounted a magnificent Seminolee horse and rode at the forefront of their column, with Cowell at his side, now turned out in a bright blue silk suit as neatly as if he were taking a stroll along The Strand. Alan, Cashman, and their troops followed in two columns, somewhat uniform in their forest green shirts and breeches or slop trousers. Seminolee brought up the rear, leading the pack animals, yipping and curvetting their mounts to show off.

'Just like the Romans,' Cashman said as they passed through the gate into the town proper. 'A fightin' mound just behind the gate with another palisade, you see. Bends us to the left, you'll note, between another long mound. Opens up our weapons side to arrows, and puts our shield side on the left where it wouldn't do any good. It'd take a light artillery piece to force an entry here, if you could get close enough to un-limber under the fire o' those towers. Nacky bastards.'