Light a Distant Fire

by Lucia St. Clair Robson

Book Overview

Threatened with forced removal from their Florida homeland, the Seminole and Miccosukee Indians took up arms. Using alligator-infested swamps to their advantage, they fought the U.S. Army to a... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0345325486
• ISBN13: 9780345325488
• Release Date: September 1988
• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Length: 432 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

A beautiful historical

A very well researched account of the infamous Seminole wars. You will travel to Florida when the swamp land was over ran with snakes, alligators, and clusters of thick vines to meet the brave Seminole people that saw life through pure eyes, true hearts not filled with greed. Here you will meet a young Seminole boy named Cricket. In one minute he is a normal child mischievously performing his daily chore and in the next a brutal attack from the feared Andrew Jackson transforms Cricket into Osceola; the valiant warrior that urged the Seminole Nation to never give up their homeland. I suggest this read for anyone interested in the history of Florida and the legend of the Seminoles. You will learn of the whites betrayal and their attempt to annihilate Florida's native inhabits. The author does an unforgettable job at recreating real life characters like Osceola, Wild Cat, and Micanopy. I will never walk across the beaches of Florida without remembering that once these great heroes roamed that wild savage land and of their sorrowful sacrifices.

Serious Historical Fiction at its Best

This iUniverse POD reprint of the Ballantine edition of LIGHT A DISTANT FIRE is a welcome find since the original version has gone out of print. Lucia St. Claire Robson has here given us a stirring retelling of the legend of Seminole war leader ("tastanagi thloko" or "great warrior") Osceola. Born to a Creek mother in the Muskogee nation (called Maskokee by the author) and a possible white father named William Powell somewhere in Alabama among the Upper Creeks, young Powell was part of the rebellious Red Stick exodus to Florida after the devastating defeat of the Red Sticks by Andrew Jackson at Horseshoe Bend. Robson gives us Powell or "Cricket" (the childhood Indian name she has assigned him, absent full knowledge of those times) being rescued by Indian kinsmen at Horseshoe Bend and, later, by a sympathetic white trader of English or Scottish extraction at the Negro Fort, an abandoned British stronghold from the War of 1812 which was taken over by a fugitive slave community and their Indian allies for a few years and destroyed, on Jackson's orders, in order to remove a refuge for Africans fleeing the chattel slavery of plantation life in the states bordering the Florida territory. Young Cricket grows up in the wild areas of the Florida peninsula where his clan and fellow tribesmen have fled for safe haven after Jackson destroyed their prosperous settlements on the Alachua Plain and along the Suwannee River to the north in what is known to history as the First Seminole War around 1817. Residing in the western coastal region along the Withlacoochie River and the Great Wahoo Swamp, Cricket grows to manhood and gains his manly name, Asi Yahola ("Black Drink Singer"), denoting his role in certain of the Maskokee rituals with the purgative elixir they called the asi or black drink. His name would later be corrupted by the whites to "Osceola" of course. Also known as Talassee Tastanagi ("Great Warrior of the Talassee"), Osceola ultimately became instrumental in the decision by the various Seminole bands (including the Hitchiti-speaking Mikasuki, the refugee Maskokee Red Sticks and the Hitchiti-speaking Oconee) to refuse to accept the decision of the federal government to relocate in accord with the Indian Removal Act passed in 1830. By 1835, the white authorities in Florida had already forced one treaty on the Seminole bands which confined most of them to a reservation on land in the south central part of Florida (the Treaty of Moultrie Creek) and then, reversing that agreement, a second which required them to accept relocation to Indian Territory in what is today's Oklahoma, west of the Mississippi (the Treaty of Payne's Landing). Osceola led the early resistance to the whites and, for the first two years of what turned out to be a seven year struggle, had a string of remarkable successes against an unprepared U.S. Army. Fighting a guerrilla war in the harsh jungle environment of central and south Florida, the Seminole defeated the whites at t

Serious Historical Fiction at its Best

This iUniverse POD reprint of the Ballantine edition of LIGHT A DISTANT FIRE is a welcome find since the original version has gone out of print. Lucia St. Claire Robson has here given us a stirring retelling of the legend of Seminole war leader ("tastanagi thloko" or "great warrior") Osceola. Born to a Creek mother in the Muskogee nation (called Maskokee by the author) and a possible white father named William Powell somewhere in Alabama among the Upper Creeks, young Powell was part of the rebellious Red Stick exodus to Florida after the devastating defeat of the Red Sticks by Andrew Jackson at Horseshoe Bend. Robson gives us Powell or "Cricket" (the childhood Indian name she has assigned him, absent full knowledge of those times) being rescued by Indian kinsmen at Horseshoe Bend and, later, by a sympathetic white trader of English or Scottish extraction at the Negro Fort, an abandoned British stronghold from the War of 1812 which was taken over by a fugitive slave community and their Indian allies for a few years and destroyed, on Jackson's orders, in order to remove a refuge for Africans fleeing the chattel slavery of plantation life in the states bordering the Florida territory. Young Cricket grows up in the wild areas of the Florida peninsula where his clan and fellow tribesmen have fled for safe haven after Jackson destroyed their prosperous settlements on the Alachua Plain and along the Suwannee River to the north in what is known to history as the First Seminole War around 1817. Residing in the western coastal region along the Withlacoochie River and the Great Wahoo Swamp, Cricket grows to manhood and gains his manly name, Asi Yahola ("Black Drink Singer"), denoting his role in certain of the Maskokee rituals with the purgative elixir they called the asi or black drink. His name would later be corrupted by the whites to "Osceola" of course. Also known as Talassee Tastanagi ("Great Warrior of the Talassee"), Osceola ultimately became instrumental in the decision by the various Seminole bands (including the Hitchiti-speaking Mikasuki, the refugee Maskokee Red Sticks and the Hitchiti-speaking Oconee) to refuse to accept the decision of the federal government to relocate in accord with the Indian Removal Act passed in 1830. By 1835, the white authorities in Florida had already forced one treaty on the Seminole bands which confined most of them to a reservation on land in the south central part of Florida (the Treaty of Moultrie Creek) and then, reversing that agreement, a second which required them to accept relocation to Indian Territory in what is today's Oklahoma, west of the Mississippi (the Treaty of Payne's Landing). Osceola led the early resistance to the whites and, for the first two years of what turned out to be a seven year struggle, had a string of remarkable successes against an unprepared U.S. Army. Fighting a guerrilla war in the harsh jungle environment of central and south Florida, the Seminole defeated the whites at t