Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth [229]
In this manner, singing and dancing, they advanced until they were within twenty yards of the pavilion, when they halted and stood silent, their only movement the deep rise and fall of their chests. For perhaps a minute they stood thus, then the two chiefs came forward with a fast dancing step and Erasmus saw now that the objects in their hands were long-stemmed pipes tied with feathers.
Without hesitation, still dancing, they entered the pavilion and advanced to the white men. Erasmus watched while they stroked the faces and hands of the Governor and Superintendent, neither of whom moved a muscle, with the feathers of the pipes. Then one came to him. He felt the soft brush of the feathers and smelled the ignited tobacco in the bowl of the pipe. He met for a moment the gleaming, strangely impersonal eyes of the Indian below the beaded headband. Two braves came forward from the ranks, loaded with dressed buckskins, some of which they laid on the floor and some on the table. The remaining headmen advanced and sat in their places. A pipe was held out by the bowl and the white men smoked solemnly in turn, followed by the seated chiefs. There was a further interval of deep silence, then the Superintendent rose to his feet and began to speak in slow, deliberate tones, pausing frequently to allow his interpreter time to translate.
He declared himself happy that the chiefs and warriors had accepted the invitation for this meeting and kept their word for the hour. He believed they would be well pleased with what they were going to hear from the Governor and from himself. He introduced Erasmus as an emissary from the King of England. He requested his Indian brothers earnestly to listen and pay attention to the words that would be said to them.
At the conclusion of these remarks he took one of the strings of beads from the table and dropped it with deliberate movements on the earth floor, where it fell with a muffled crash. This ceremony, and the words which had preceded it, were greeted by the Indians with complete silence and impassivity.
The Governor now came forward to the table. Glancing keenly at the expressionless faces of the chiefs on either side of him, he began speaking in his usual brisk, direct and somehow confiding fashion: ‘Friends and brothers, the Great King, my master and your father, after driving the French and Spanish from this land, was graciously pleased to appoint me to govern the white people in this part of his newly conquered dominions.
‘I know and love the red people. I have lived long with them and I am acquainted with their customs and manners. The Great King knows that I will do everything in my power to keep up peace and harmony between his white subjects and his red children.
‘You are apprehensive and have been told that the white people are desirous of getting possession of your hunting grounds. Your fears are ill-founded for my sentiments with regards to the hunting ground of an Indian nation are well known. Such of you as have been in the Cherokee nation must know and all of you must have heard that in the Treaty signed at Charleston after their defeat I spoke against taking their ancestral lands and I prevented it. If I did that for a people with whom I had been at war, who had been prevailed upon by the French to strike their English brothers, you may be sure I will do nothing to the harm of your people who have always been our friends …’
Erasmus listened to this with feelings of distinct approval. He had heard a lot of speeches in his time, and this was a good one, though it was difficult to read anything in the set faces of the Indians. Campbell spoke with a kind of gritty dignity that was native to him and made his appeal to matters that lay within the knowledge of his audience. And the accent of sincerity in his words was unmistakable; his voice had grated with feeling when he spoke of his defence of the beaten and demoralized Cherokee. Once again it came to Erasmus that Campbell would be an excellent man to head his Florida Land Company.
The Indians who sat beyond the pavilion were