Ten thousand isles

Six

What Tomlinson had her find at the Sanibel Library were a couple of books plus translations of letters from Spanish Jesuits who'd been sent to what is now the west coast of Florida. This was back in the late 1500s, when missionaries were an important political arm of colonialism.

When Europeans arrived in Florida, they found a complex society living on the Gulf Coast. The dominant tribe of the region, controlling both coasts and what is now the Florida Keys, had built great pyramids out of shell, ornate plazas and a highway system of canals. Because Carlos was ruler of Spain, or because the conquistadors misheard, they called the chief Carlos, although Caalus was probably closer. The kingdom and people over which he reigned was soon mispronounced, Calusa.

Physically, the Calusa were much bigger than the Spaniards and impossible to intimidate. A member of Ponce de Leon's crew described the men as being more than seven feet tall, though that was an exaggeration. The Jesuit missions all failed and Ponce de Leon was mortally wounded in batde and later died in Cuba. The Calusa never accepted Christianity, nor the Spaniards who came later. They had controlled the peninsula for several thousand years and would not submit. However, they had no way to fight European diseases, and they gradually vanished, leaving their cities abandoned.

At one point, from the work of an anthropologist, JoAnn read, "The Calusa operated as a conquest kingdom with a pattern of tribute collection that resembled that of the Aztecs and Incas. There are indications that the Calusa language originated in the interior of South America, around the Orinoco River, nearly 2,000 years ago." Then she added, "Tomlinson said that would interest you, because you've spent so much time in Central and South America."

I said, "Uh-huh. What I'm trying to understand is what any of this has to do with someone opening the grave of your friend's daughter."

JoAnn also read a series of letters by a Jesuit missionary, Father Juan Rogel, and also one written by Juan Lopez de Ve-lasco, both of whom lived for a short time among the Calusa.

"You picture these guys with shaved heads, swatting mosquitoes, writing on parchment in the Florida jungle. I find it interesting as can be."

Some of it was.

According to the priest, Carlos was the most powerful man in Florida. His people didn't view him as a leader. He was divine, like a god. They believed that he controlled the heavens, and he had secret religious knowledge that he wouldn't share with commoners. He'd go to the burial areas at night and talk to ghosts. From those conversations, the priest wrote, Carlos could correcdy predict the future. As a symbol of his divinity, the missionary described Carlos as wearing a golden medallion and carrying a wooden totem.

"Now we're getting to it," I said. "Pure Tomlinson."

According to the priest, Carlos enjoyed the absolute loyalty of his people. He hated the Spaniards, therefore none of his people would cooperate. So the Jesuits found a traitor, a Calusa they called Felipe. Felipe lured Carlos into a trap where the Spaniards murdered him. That was the beginning of the end of the Calusa.

At the same time, a similar drama was being played out in the Ten Thousand Islands, a region of mangroves, black water and swamp south of Marco Island. The ruling chief there was Salvador. Like Carlos, he was a human god, controlled the skies and storms, wore a royal golden medallion and carried a sacred totem. He, too, despised the Spaniards.

To illustrate, JoAnn read part of a letter from one of the priests who tried to convert Salvador: "When my fellow priest, Fray Castillo, ordered Salvador to tell his people to pray to the True God, Salvador became angry. Salvador gave the Father a number of blows to the face. He then rubbed human excrement on the Father's face while he was praying. Then Salvador urinated on him, saying, 'Man boy, why are you so small?' He then told we religious many times that they did not want to become Christians and that we should go away."

JoAnn added, "Because the Spaniards couldn't make Salvador cooperate, they started recruiting a traitor. It solved the Carlos problem, so why not assassinate their second great chief?"

I said, "Religion had an edge to it in those days."

"Uh-huh. What's the biblical line? Something about a terrible swift sword." She paused for a moment. "Funny thing is, Tomlinson said you'd understand that part easiest of all. Deposing one leader to put your own guy in power. Political assassination, that sort of thing. What'd he mean by that, Ford?"

Very softly, I said, "One of Tomlinson's little jokes. He thinks he's funny."

The traitor selected to dispose of Salvador was an outcast shaman from a "distant land" they called Tocayo, a dangerous man, according to one of the priests, but potentially useful to the Spaniards' cause.

The priest wrote, "I believe that the devil is in Tocayo, yet he promises that he will accept the True God if we help him depose Salvador. Tocayo also promises that he will forsake witchcraft and burn his sacred idol and no longer kill and eat the children of his enemies, nor have unclean knowledge of his daughters. He has promised that he will remove the sodomites."

I said, "This was five hundred years ago?"

JoAnn looked at the paper. "The thing I just read, about killing children and the sodomites, it was written in 1568, a little over four hundred years ago."

After Tocayo hacked Salvador to death, the priest returned from Havana to discover that Tocayo had murdered fifteen principal men of neighboring villages and eaten their eyes. It was a belief of the Calusa that a man's permanent soul resides in the pupil of his eyes. The Calusa weren't cannibals, but Tocayo was. As Lopez de Velasco wrote, "They say that their idol eats human men's eyes."

Tocayo had made himself a human idol.

The priest found Tocayo and his captains holding a celebration and dancing with the heads of four chiefs, kicking their heads through the shell courtyards as if playing at sport.

Tocayo had also taken for himself the golden medallion- a chaguala- and the wooden totem, both considered sources of great power.

I leaned a little closer to JoAnn, listening carefully as she read, '"Fray Castillo believes that these two idols possess unholy authority. Now Tocayo guards them jealously and laughs when we ask to examine them. He tells us that Light is in one of the idols, Darkness is in the other. They are the source of all his strength and he will not part with them.

"'But he has kept his word on other matters. He now kneels before the cross. He is serving Your Holiness as he promised. I know that Tocayo is not a tool of the Devil. He is a tool of the One True God.'"

JoAnn turned to me. "Dorothy found them both. The gold medallion and the wooden totem. When she was digging on the bank of that canal."

"How do you know they're the same artifacts? Maybe the Calusa had several."

"Tomlinson says they're the same ones."

"Ah."

"He seems pretty certain of it."

"I'm not surprised. Omniscience is one of his specialties."

One thing was clear, though: someone wanted those artifacts. Wanted them badly enough to risk several break-ins. Wanted them badly enough to dig up the grave of a long-dead child. Maybe wanted them badly enough to come after me. Because that was the night, a Friday night, the foggiest night of the year, when a sensitive and civilized dope surprised two intruders on his boardwalk.

Me, the sensitive and civilized dope.

The next morning, we were gone-on our way to Marco.