“How far has the expansion progressed?”
“The Seminole tribes who have allied with us are celebrating their victory in the war. It won’t be long now before they control the entire Florida peninsula.”
“Good. That is an excellent result. First, let’s bring in more slaves to cultivate that land.”
For a long time, a plague that had killed countless people began to spread from Florida. This time, it was not a story of smallpox or other diseases spread by Europeans. Of course, the colonial policies of the Spaniards had ignited the spark, but the disease itself was not something the indigenous peoples were experiencing for the first time.
“We must go north. If we do not, we will all starve.”
“But wouldn’t that mean submitting to those tribes? Will they even accept us? We are both short on food…”
“If they have no food either… then they too will be looking for a way.”
The name of the first plague was Hunger. Those in Florida who refused to ally with Spain were defeated in wars against the Spanish and other tribes, and were pushed north. It was an unprecedented upheaval. A population of a scale never seen before began to move all at once. Naturally, tribes driven from their ancestral lands had no time to leisurely pack their corn and beans before fleeing. Some saw all their adults slaughtered before the survivors were absorbed into other tribes; others barely managed to escape with enough people to preserve their lineage, fleeing ever northward.
“We beg you… please accept our people…!”
“…”
“…”
“…”
“If we accept them, our own strength will be bolstered. We were running low on provisions ourselves. This could open a path for us as well.”
“If a path opens…”
“Yes. With numbers like these, we can stand against the powers of the north. The Muscogee are sharpening their blades as we speak, are they not? Now is the chance!”
“…You are right. We will choose a new war chief.”
And so, the fleeing tribes became carriers of another disease, igniting a new fire in the north. The second plague was something intimately familiar to the first.
Its name was War.
People replaced the heads on their arrows, gathered stones that fit perfectly in their slings, and ground their spear tips to a sharper point. With their gardens drying up and their hunting grounds growing barren while the number of mouths to feed increased, it was an inevitable outcome.
And…
“Kill them all! No, focus on the beans and corn rather than killing!”
“If we retreat from here today, we all die!”
Blood soaked the parched furrows of the fields.
Crack! Crunch! Thwack!
Skulls fractured, brains scattered on the ground. Guts spilled out, bones and muscles were exposed, and skin was torn away. Savage and horrific battles, like those between starving beasts, spread like a pestilence or a wildfire.
Northward. And ever northward. Through the lands that would one day be called Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina… and all the way to Virginia.
***
Future scholars would define it thus: the Catawba and Tutelo peoples spoke languages of the Siouan family. The tribes of the great Virginia Confederacy, meanwhile, mostly spoke languages of the Algonquian family. Language, as always, is a critical matter. Those whose languages are the same or similar, those who share a common ancestry, can communicate and unite more quickly than those who do not. The same thing happened among the peoples who had suddenly lost their lands and been broken.
“Over there… the lands stretching around the Chesapeake Bay are the only ones that remain prosperous in all this turmoil.”
“…”
“They say that while those tribes offer a great tribute to the Great Chief, they receive a great amount of food in return. That is how so many have been able to survive through this long famine.”
“So?”
“We… must also go there… In order to survive…”
Dozens of tribes who had been chased north gathered, and the chiefs of those tribes gathered, and the great chiefs whom those chiefs served gathered in turn.
“Then how? The other tribes near that place will not welcome us. They will surely try to kill us.”
“…No. We must kill them. By any means necessary. We must forge a path to that wealthy Great Chief. If we do not…”
The great chiefs looked for a moment at the other chiefs. They saw the flesh beneath their bellies withering away. Outside the tent, the cry of a child who had been wailing from hunger went silent. Another one had died.
“…If we do not, we all starve to death.”
Hunger brings war, and war, in turn, brings more hunger. The Catawba and the Tutelo, with thousands of warriors, invaded the lands of the Tuscarora people, the largest group that paid tribute to the Chesapeake. They fought for several days. And they were all killed. Just like that, a tribe was erased.
“…Huh?”
“What is it, Mr. Hewitt?”
“Well… we’re short on fox pelts. The Tuscarora tribe always brought the most…”
“That would be because the Tuscarora tribe sent no envoy.”
“…”
“…”
“…Vicente, do you know why?”
“I have no idea.”
A vicious cycle, crafted by a devil, turned smoothly, staining the American continent with blood and scattering white bones across the land. And so, history moved. A desperate, brutal struggle for survival. And that chain reaction had, at last, reached Virginia.
***
The Spanish Empire had unequivocally marked us as their enemy. We, in turn, had been placed in a situation where we could no longer ignore the growth of their colony in our vicinity. Whether for survival, or for moral reasons. Everyone in the settlement had learned of the situation in the Florida colony.
“They… impaled a person on a skewer and burned them alive?”
“Good heavens, s-such… urgh!”
The English, long exposed to anti-Spanish propaganda, decried the immorality and cruelty of the Spaniards. The Algonquians and other natives, having lived alongside the English and heard their furious tirades against Spain, also felt a sense of revulsion. The Spaniards among us expressed sorrow, shame, and anger at the depraved state of their ‘old’ homeland.
And finally, the freed slaves…
“Th-that could have been us, couldn’t it?”
“No. It’s not ‘could have been.’ If this place falls, that’s what can be us, at any time.”
“…”
“…”
“…”
They were afraid.
And so, the many peoples of our settlement, speaking a multitude of languages, united through their varied angers and diverse hatreds. To put it coldly, it was the first time that the Virginia community, which had little in common besides a shared faith in me, had united as one.
Fear, revulsion, and anger. A swirling vortex of similarly-hued negative emotions spurred the settlers into frantic action.
“How many cannons do we have left in the coastal batteries?”
“Out of a total of two hundred and ten, we have about seventy in reserve!”
“We must strengthen the defenses of Croatoan Island first!”
“The transparent shields! We’re short on transparent shields!”
“We’re also low on gunpowder! We have to find a way to secure more fertilizer…”
“That won’t work. Fertilizer, when we’re in the middle of expanding our farmland? It would be better to find a nearby source of saltpeter…”
“I know a place.”
“Sir Nemo? Is that true?”
“Yes. For now, come with me south of Croatoan Island. Manteo? Prepare the boats.”
Our first priority was to prepare our military strength. The freed slaves, terrified that their former masters might invade this land and create a living hell, demanded stronger armaments. Most of the other peoples agreed. If Spain were to land a large-scale fleet here… we too would suffer enormous damage, and in the worst-case scenario, we could be defeated. At least, that is what the settlers believed. I thought the probability of a Spanish invasion was low, but I didn’t think strengthening Virginia’s military was a bad idea either. Our community clearly needed more power. This small settlement of tens of thousands had to stand against a great empire that commanded millions.
They worked to make more guns, more ships, and more gunpowder. Military drills became more frequent, and soon, there were few among the settlers who could not handle a gun properly. We ran at a frantic pace. The problem with Spain was a matter of survival, and matters of survival were paramount. I had thought this would remain the prevailing mood in our settlement for some time.
“Weren’t there tribes that we… lost contact with?”
“Yes, Manteo. There were tribes that suddenly stopped sending gifts.”
“They have… returned.”
“What? What happened?”
But I was wrong.
“And they are requesting to settle here. It looks like… thousands of them will be coming.”
“…What did you say?”
Another problem had begun to charge at us. Native peoples from all over began to flood in once more.
“W-we beg you to accept us. We no longer have any land to stay.”
The Chowanoke. The Moratuc. The Pamlico. The Secotan. …And countless other peoples whose names I did not even know. They arrived every few days, in groups of dozens, then hundreds. These were the peoples who revered me as their Great Chief, who had maintained a gift-trading relationship with the Virginia community for a long time. To see them, one and all, exhausted by hunger and covered in wounds, pleading for my protection as their ‘Great Chief’ was… devastating.
It was one thing to organize the list of people into charts, but the urgent priority was to treat and feed the wounded and starving. Eleanor and the other medical volunteers moved breathlessly, and the ‘civil servant’ administrators clutching their tablets ran about, struggling to get a grasp on the number of people. And the result that came back was…
“Big or small, at least ten percent of the refugees are wounded.”
“…”
“It seems… there was a war. In many places, at that.”
“Manteo, if there was a war, why did they not report it to the ‘Great Chief’? Even if the Great Chief’s role is minor, I understood that he presides over matters of war…”
Manteo answered my question. “It seems they were likely crushed before they had a chance to report.”
“Which means.”
“Yes. It appears that other tribes suddenly flooded their lands in unbelievable numbers. The chaos from the simultaneous collapse of multiple tribes was too great.”
Other tribes flooded their lands? …From the south? The movement of peoples is usually caused by a lack of food, and the climate to the south is milder than in the north, making food more abundant. An invasion from the north would make sense, but an invading force from the south is a bit strange.
–“The Spaniards are growing their Florida colony down there. They probably feel threatened by the Virginia colony. It might cause some trouble in the south, so be careful.”
…Ah. Drake had said something like that when we first met. Considering that was a year or two ago, it seemed the effects of the Spaniards’ actions were only now beginning to reach us.
‘Good heavens.’
A chill ran down my spine. I couldn’t believe how many times our colony had been shaken by the single decision of the Spanish to expand in Florida. And these were the people we had to survive against.
Noticing my grim expression, Manteo answered cautiously. “And, more than anything, the situation to the south is not good.”
“…The south? You mean where the people who have newly invaded this area are from?”
“Yes. It seems we will have to make preparations.”
…’Preparations.’ For some reason, Manteo’s words felt hollow to me. A few days later, when the ‘Council’ convened, the true nature of that hollowness was made clear.
“The ones who have newly taken the lands of the Chowanoke… the Catawba and Tutelo people have sent word of their desire to submit to our rule.”
“What? That’s absurd! We cannot allow those cruel people into this land!”
“That’s right. They are… devils. Devils, I say! Great Chief, I beg you, destroy them! Please, kill them!”
This was not a disaster one could simply prepare for. Just as an ant cannot prepare for a landslide. This was something we first had to endure with our entire beings.