Sawgrass Kingdom Poem by Barry Middleton

I

The fortress was without walls,
the savanna and cypress domes
and the wide river of sawgrass
was remote and impenetrable.

The Big Water Lake was free then,
none of its power was contained,
and when the storm season came
the sawgrass swords flashed.

The abundance of the waters
was limitless in fish and turtles.
The land teemed with wildlife,
there was serenity in the people.

Keen diamond edged sawgrass
rose from the muck and ash
of lost generations of ancestry
resisting the futility of conquest.

The Calusa knew the ancient land,
knew the whispering water swords.
They knew their own ancestry,
the kingdom called Escampaba.

The only gold to be had then
was the golden skin of the people
and sun dance on fertile waters.
There was stillness in the land.

II

Then came Juan Ponce de León.
He sought no fountain of youth
as the mistaken myth proclaims.
He hunted slaves, gold and power.

Greed ran deep in Spain's blood
and Ponce would spill the blood
of the coastal Indios of Florida
and the blood of his own men.

Wind stirred in the Everglades
and word of a genocide came
from the Carib refugees fleeing
vicious invaders of the islands.

The wind in the sawgrass blew
and was a sibilant warning
the Spaniards did not heed
for greed consumed their heart.

That first conquistador they say
was felled by a single arrow,
but more evil would soon come.
War hissed in the sawgrass!

Ponce's mission was conquest,
the search for imagined gold.
Ponce brought terror and death.
The Indios answered in kind.

III

Voracious intruders still came
and died on the pure white sand
now red with the comingled blood
of Spanish and Indios warriors.

Juan Ortiz was a noble youth,
high of birth but lacking wealth.
Like the others he sought gold
and he hungered for adventure.

Adventure found him shipwrecked,
beached and seized by Chief Ucita
near the great west central bay
called the Baya de Spirito Santo.

He would be burned at the stake
but for the Chief's daughter,
who pled for his life and her love
crying for her father's mercy.

And even then Ortiz also cried,
praying to his Heavenly Father
as already the fire was alight
and Juan Ortiz writhed in pain.

The prayer, or the girl's plea,
was heard as Ucita gestured
and Ortiz's life was spared,
for only love salvages death.

IV

Three years passed in peace
and Juan Ortiz learned
the Indian ways and speech,
content with his life and bride.

But war among the tribes
caused Ucita to retreat
and contemplate the evil
he had brought to the people.

The Spaniard must be killed!
Again the princess wept
but showed her husband
the path to the enemy camp.

Mococo was the warring chief
who took Ortiz in to know
Ucita's strength and plans
and to learn of the Spaniards.

We do not know the fate
of that sad Indian bride
but it was a time of pain
for all the Indios of Florida.

Perhaps the princess was forgiven.
Ortiz was finally granted freedom
and released to Hernando De Soto
and died by water in the north.

V

De Soto also died seeking glory
on that same rambling exploration
but the Spanish ships still sailed
up and down Florida coasts.

Rarely did they dare to land
and there was no real need,
the loot of Mexico and Peru
streamed north on the current.

The Gulf Stream ran north
till the ships turned east to Spain,
but if the soil of Florida did fall
beneath their boots, they died.

Hernando Escalante de Fontaneda
was a child of only thirteen years
on the voyage home to Spain
but for fate and the shipwreck.

The sailing tide paid no heed
to the season of the storms
and the hurricanes delivered
gold and hostages to the Indios.

Escalante was spared death by fire
to sing and dance in the court
of the great chief they called Calus,
the mighty Lord of the Everglades.

VI

Like Juan Ortiz before him,
who was held by central tribes
in his three years of captivity,
Escalante would learn the way.

Seventeen years he spent
with the fierce Calusa people
before he was delivered
to freedom by the French.

It chanced that he was the first
of the invaders to then behold
the wise King Calus of Escampaba,
to know, and live to tell the tale.

It was the tale of an empire,
perhaps 200,000 savage souls,
great fearless armies of thousands,
and keen hatred for the invaders.

The empire was allied in trade
with the Mayaimi Lake tribe
and the east coast Tequesta,
and the empire was allied in war.

Escalante chronicled his story
and warned those to come;
these tribes would never submit
to slavery, the sword, or the cross.

VII

The Spanish did not give up.
One of the last adelantados
was Pedro Menéndez de Avilés,
a general as great as Calus.

He came in peace not war
and wed in shame and sham
the sister of Calus who was
forever more Doña Antonia.

With more lies than promises,
Menéndez left her in Havana
where she learned Christianity,
but her love was for Menéndez.

The Everglades were given him
but for this abandonment.
All Florida was in his hands
but for his deceitfulness.

In years to come aged King Calus
was killed by the Spanish traitors
and Florida was ceded to England.
Nothing had really been gained.

As with all futile wars forever,
only death itself was victorious.
The Calusa died on the beaches
and at last in fetid exile in Cuba.

VIII

So the winds continue to blow
and till this day the breeze
crosses the wild wet prairie
and the Everglades endures.

Other hardy men would come
to seek alligator and fur pelts
and the snowy egret plumes,
but the Calusa were no more.

Seminole came from the north
and inhabited the sawgrass
and the few remaining Calusa
were absorbed into that tribe.

Despite man's destructiveness,
the Everglades today is much
as it was five hundred years ago,
or twenty thousand years ago.

Still today a few brave souls
fight as the Calusa fought
to protect and keep the glades
and restore them to their glory.

And some may say King Calus
still presides over the horizon,
the half land emptiness and sky
of his eternal sawgrass kingdom.