A year or so later, a young artist imitator of
Catlin's made his way to the Seminole village with a guide. He had
been traveling about among the Indians of the reservations painting
Indian types, and had heard of this old turbaned tribe buried in the
Everglades. Nanca's beauty must have driven him quite mad, I think.
At any rate he wooed and won. Nanca begged the young foreigner to
divorce her, which he did. The Seminole divorce custom is lenient when
the marriage is childless. The artist, I fancy, was merely a wild,
reckless, inconstant sort of chap who did not regard the simple
Seminole marriage tie as binding. After the birth of his daughter, a
tiny little elf whom Nanca has named "Red-winged Blackbird," he tried
to run away, and the Indians killed him.
Red-winged Blackbird! Keela then was the child of the artist!
The old Spaniard in his gruff and haughty way has been kind to Grant
and me. He's not well--some obscure cardiac trouble from which he
suffers at times most horribly. He has confided to me a singular
secret. The young foreigner who divorced Nanca is the crown prince of
some obscure little mountain kingdom called Houdania. His name is
Theodomir. He had wild revolutionary notions, hated royalty and fled
at the death of his father.
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