Around it stood six smaller cabins arranged in a rough semicircle, all facing inward toward the main structure. Behind the cabins, Greer could see a cleared field of perhaps 2 acres planted with what he recognized as corn and sweet potatoes. There were hogs penned along the tree line. There were chickens scratching in the dirt, and there were people.
Greer estimated he saw between 15 and 20 individuals, including several children. He said they were dressed in rough hand-sewn clothing and that the women wore their hair loose and uncombed. He said the children were barefoot. He said no one spoke above a whisper.
And he said that every person he could see without exception stopped what they were doing and turned to face him the moment his pro came into view. What happened next is where Greer's testimony becomes difficult to read. He said a man came out of the main building. The man was tall, heavily built, with a full gray beard and hands that Greer described as the largest I have ever seen on a living person.
The man walked to the edge of the water and stood there looking at Greer. He did not speak. He did not wave. He did not raise a weapon.
He simply stood and looked. Greer called out a greeting. He identified himself as a trapper. He said he meant no harm and was simply passing through.
The man said nothing. Greer said that while the man stood at the water's edge, every other person in the compound moved very slowly and silently behind the main building and out of sight. Within 30 seconds, the only person visible was the tall man. The clearing, which moments earlier had held nearly 20 people, appeared empty.
Greer said he felt at that moment a kind of fear he had never experienced before, not the fear of violence or ambush, something else. He said it was the fear of having seen something he was not supposed to see, of having accidentally opened a door into a room that was meant to stay locked. He said the tall man's face showed no anger, no surprise, no curiosity. It showed nothing at all, and that blankness, that absolute absence of reaction was what frightened him most.
Greer turned his pirogue around and pulled back downstream without another word. He did not return to Bayou Malure for 3 months, but he did return. And what he found on that second visit is what eventually made its way into the official record. Because what Greer saw on his second visit was something he could not keep to himself, no matter how much the tall man's empty face haunted his sleep.
Greer returned to Bayou Malure in March of 1856. He later told the justice of the peace that he could not explain why he went back, only that he felt compelled. He said the compound had stayed in his mind like a splinter, and he needed to see it again to convince himself it was real. This time he approached from a different direction, coming in from the east through a shallow slough that ran parallel to the main channel.
He left his pirogue tied to a cypress knee about a quarter mile from the clearing and approached on foot, staying low in the underbrush. He said he could smell the compound before he could see it. Woodm smoke, animal waste, and something else, something sharper, something he compared to the smell of a tannery, but worse. When he reached the tree line and looked into the clearing, the compound had changed.
The seven structures he had seen 3 months earlier had grown to nine. Two new buildings had been constructed, both smaller than the original cabins, but built with the same rough-hewn logs and mud chinking. One of these new structures had no door. Its only opening was a narrow slot cut into the wall at about head height, roughly 6 inches wide, and 2 feet tall.
Greer watched the compound for what he estimated to be 3 hours. During that time, he observed the following. The tall man, whom Greer now understood to be the patriarch of the family, emerged from the main building several times. Each time he emerged, every person in the clearing stopped moving.
Not slowed down, stopped. Whatever they were carrying, they held still. Whatever they were doing, they froze. They did not resume until the tall man either returned inside or gave a signal that Greer described as a single sharp nod of his head.
Greer counted 23 people in the compound on that second visit. He noted that several of the women appeared to be pregnant. He noted that the children ranged in age from what he guessed was about 2 years old to perhaps 14 or 15. He noted that none of the children played.
None of them ran. None of them made any sound that he could hear from his position in the tree line. He also noted something that disturbed him more than anything else. Along the western edge of the clearing behind the row of cabins, there was a row of wooden posts driven into the ground.
There were eight posts. Each post was about 4 feet tall, and each one had a length of iron chain attached to it. The chains were short, perhaps 3 feet long, and each one ended in what Greer recognized as a leg shackle, the kind used to restrain enslaved people on plantations. The shackles were not empty.
Two of the eight posts held a person. Greer could not determine from his position whether the chained individuals were men or women, but he could see that they were alive because they moved periodically, shifting their weight or adjusting their position on the ground. He said they appeared to be sitting in the dirt at the base of the posts. He said neither of them called out or made any attempt to attract attention.
He said they sat in the dirt the way that animals sit in cages with a kind of resignation so complete that it no longer looked like suffering. It looked like something beyond suffering. It looked like the total surrender of the idea that any other state of existence was possible. Greer left the tree line before dark and pulled back to the main channel.
He said he did not sleep that night. He said he sat in his pirogue in the middle of the bayou wrapped in a blanket and stared at the water until dawn. 3 days later he walked into the office of the justice of the peace in Gainesville and gave his deposition. What happened next is where the story of the Pardio family begins to intersect with the story of Hancock County itself.
And where the question of who knew what and when and why nothing was done becomes a question that implicates not just a single family living deep in the swamp, but an entire community of people who chose deliberately and repeatedly to look the other direction. The justice of the peace who took Greer's deposition was a man named Bartholomew Keane. Keane had held the position for 11 years and was by the standards of the antibbellum Gulf Coast a respected figure. He had presided over land disputes, minor criminal matters, and the occasional probate case.
He was not a wealthy man, but he owned a small farm on the Jordan River and was known as fair-minded, if somewhat cautious. Keen read Greer's deposition twice. He then asked Greer a series of questions that Greer dutifully answered. The questions focused almost entirely on the location of the compound: how difficult it would be to reach, whether the Pardios appeared to have firearms, and how many adult men Greer had observed.