Page 86 - John Anderson

&KDSWHU:KRLV&DSWDLQ-DPHV2UPRQG,

Indian corn, sweet potatoes, "cabbage trees", pumpkins and coontie
flour.
James Ormond III later wrote in his “Reminiscences” that “when the
slaves returned from their "free time" trips they would bring back
salted fish, turtle eggs, wild ducks and game. He also wrote that
hand-mills made of stone were used by the slaves to grind their corn,
and, "you could hear the mills a' going for half the night, as each man
or head of a family ground his grist for the next day's grub."
Damietta was a cotton plantation, and the cotton was transported
down the Halifax River in rowboats to Mosquito Inlet (Ponce de Leon
Inlet) where it was transferred to waiting schooners. There were often
races back to the plantation between the slave-manned boats from
the inlet to Mount Oswald Point (northern tip of present-day Tomoka
State Park). The slaves would sing and chant as "they kept time to the
stroke of the oars."
The Seminole Indians were also a strange and fascinating people.
James saw many of them when they came to Damietta to trade
venison, turkeys, wild honey, and coontie, for blankets, homespun,
powder, lead, cloth, and beads. He met Indian leader (King Philip) and
knew his son, Coacoochee (Wild Cat). The boys grew up together
during the plantation days. Later, when they were both young men,
James and Coacoochee fought on opposite sides in the Seminole
Indian War. James described Coacoochee at that time as being a
“splendid specimen of an Indian chief, tall, straight and quite a
handsome man, but an impudent dog and with the manners of a
hog.”

In the fall, the Indians would bring in large droves of hogs and cattle
to be traded at the plantations for supplies. Young James wrote that,
"The trade almost always ended in a big drunk — and sometimes a big
fuss. I remember once old "Billy Bowlegs" after trading and as usual
getting drunk, kicking up the Very Devil because a fat heifer he had
sold and which in being killed proved to be with calf, alleging that he
had been very badly cheated inasmuch as he had not been paid for
the calf. He raved like a madman, but finally subsided into a good
long spell of crying, and begged to be paid for it, and so went on till
the old chief went to sleep."

74