The Daily state journal. [volume] (Alexandria, Va.) 1868-1874, 1872-12-28
A Captive Baby Among the Florida In
dians Two Hundred Years Ago.

| The tribe among which they now were
had borne the famine for two years their
| emaciated and hunger-btten faces gave
| fiercer light to their gloomy, treacherous
| eyes. Their sole food was fish and palmetto
berries, both of which were scant. Moth
| ing could have been more unwelcome than
the advent of this crowd of whites bringing
more hungry mouths to fill /; and, indeed,
there is little reason to doubt that the first
intention was to put them all to death.
But, after the second day, Dickinson relates
that the chief ''looked pleasantly upon my
Wife and Child )" instead of the fish en-
trails and filthy water in which the fish had
been cooked which had been given to the
prisoners, he brought clans to Mary, and
kneeiing in the sand showed her how to roast
them. The Indian women, too, carried off
the baby, knowing that the mother had no
milk for it, and handed it about from one
to the other, putting away their own
children that they might give it their
food. AT which the child, that, when
it had been wrapped in fine flannel and
embroidery had been always nigh to
death, began to grow fat and rosy, to
crow and laugh as it had never done be-
fore, and kick its little legs sturdily about
under their bit of raw skin covering.
Mother Nature had taken the child home,
that was all, and was breathing new lusty
life into it, out of the bare ground and open
sky, the sun and wind, and the breasts of
these her children /; but its father saw in
the change only another inexplicablc mira
Gle of God. Nor does he seem to have
seen that it was the child and its mother
who had been protection and shield to
the whole crew and saved them this their
most perilous strait.
Our baby accepted all fellow travellers
cheerfully; made them welcome, indeed,
savage, or slave, or beast were his friends
alike, his laugh and outstretched hands
were ready for them all.
They escaped the sea to fall into worse
dangers. Disease was added to starvation.
One by one strong men dropped exhausted
by the way, and were left unburied, while
the others crept feebly on; stout Jonathan
Dickinson taking as his charge the cid
man, now almost a helpless burden. Mary,
who, underneath her gentle, timid ways,
seems to have had gallant heart in her
little body, carried her baby to the last,
until the milk in her breast was quite dried
and her eyes grew blind, and she too fell
one day beside poor negress who, with
her unborn child, lay frozen and dead, say
ing that she was tired, and that the time
had come for her too to 60. Dickinson lift
ed her and struggled on.
The child was taken by the negroes and
sailors. 1t makes q nother's heart ache
even now to read how these COARSE, fam.
ished men, often fghdng ike wild animals
with each other staggering alap 0-@aKness
and bodily pain, cargiea tho neaYy baby, |
never compiain'1,, Of its weight thinking,
it may he, ofsome child Of their ayyn whom |
they would never see or touch again.
| can understand better the mystery of |
that Divine Childhood that was once in the |
world, when hear how these poor slaves,
unasked, gave of their dying strength to |
this child; how, in tribes through which |
no white man had ever travelled alive, it |
was passed from one savage mother to the |
other, tenderly handled, nursed at their |
breasts how gentler, kindlier spirit |
seemed to come from the presence of the |
baby and its mother to the crew; so that |
while at first they had cursed and fought |
their way along, they grew at the last help
full and tender with each other, often going |
back, when to 60 back was death, for the
comrade who dropped by the way, and
bringing him on until they too lay down,
and were at rest together. "-From "a |
Faded Leqf of History" By Rebecca
Harding Daris, in Tie Atlantic Monthly
for January.