Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [299]
One afternoon, while he was on one of his periodic inspections of the birds that were maturing out on the rangewalk, he decided to amuse himself by trying out his nearly perfect imitation of a challenging cock’s crow. Almost always in the past, it would bring instantly forth a furious defender crowing angrily in reply and jerking its head this way and that in search of the intruding rival he was sure he had just heard. Today was no exception. But the magnificent gamecock that burst from the underbrush in response to his call stood beating its wings explosively against its body for almost half a minute before its crow seemed to shatter the autumn afternoon. The bright sunlight glinted off its iridescent plumage. Its carriage was powerful and ferocious, from the glittering eyes to the stout yellow legs with their lethal spurs. Every ounce, every inch of him symbolized its boldness, spirit, and freedom so dramatically that Chicken George left vowing this bird must never be caught and trained and trimmed. It must remain there with its hens among the pines—untouched and free!
CHAPTER 100
The new cockfighting season was fast approaching, but Massa Lea hadn’t mentioned New Orleans. Chicken George hadn’t really expected him to; somehow he had known that trip was never going to happen. But he and the massa made a very big impression at the local “mains” when they showed up in their gleaming, custom-built, twelve-coop wagon. And their luck was running good. Massa Lea averaged almost four wins out of five, and George, using the best of the culls, did just about as well in the Caswell County hackfights. It was a busy season as well as a profitable one, but George happened to be home again when his fifth son was born late that year. Matilda said she wanted to name this one James. She said “James somehow ’nother always been my fav’rite ’mongst all de Disciples.” Chicken George agreed, with a private grimace.
Wherever he and Massa Lea traveled for any distance now, it seemed that he would hear of increasing bitterness against white people. On their most recent trip, a free black had told George about Osceola, chief of the Seminole Indians in the state called Florida. When white men recaptured Osceola’s black wife, an escaped slave, he had organized a war party of two thousand Seminoles and escaped black slaves to track and ambush a detachment of the U. S. Army. Over a hundred soldiers were killed, according to the story, and a much larger Army force was hard after Osceola’s men, who were running, hiding, and sniping from their trails and recesses in the Florida swamps.
And the cockfight season of 1836 hadn’t long ended when Chicken George heard that at someplace called “The Alamo,” a band of Mexicans had massacred a garrison of white Texans, including a woodsman named Davey Crockett, who was famous as a friend and defender of the Indians. Later that year, he heard of greater white losses to the Mexicans, under a General Santa Anna, who was said to boast of himself as the greatest cockfighter in the world; if that was true, George wondered why he’d never heard of him till now.
It was during the spring of the next year when George returned from a trip to tell slave row still another extraordinary piece of news. “Done heared it from de co’thouse janitor nigger at de county seat, dat new Pres’dent Van Buren done ordered de Army to drive all de Indians wes’ de Mis’sippi River!”
“Soun’ for sho’ now like gwine be dem Indians’ River Jordan!” said Matilda.
“Dat’s what Indians gittin’ for lettin’ in white folks in dis country, in de firs’ place,” said Uncle Pompey. “Whole heap o’ folks,’cludin’ me till I got grown, ain’t knowed at firs’ weren’t nobody in dis country but Indians, fishin’ an’ huntin’ an’ fightin’ one ’nother, jes’ mindin’ dey own business. Den here come l’il ol’ boat o’ white folks a-wavin’ an’ grinnin’. ‘Hey, y’all red mens! How ’bout let us come catch a bite an’ a nap ’mongst y’all an’ le’s be friends!’ Huh! I betcha nowdays dem Indians wish dey’s made dat boat look like a porcupine wid dey arrows!