Anyone who
has ever consulted a map of Florida should have noticed something other than
the State’s elongated shape. Quite a few place names throughout Florida have an
interesting, unusual, and even romantic ring. Especially if you hail from the
East or from the dreadfully boring Midwest, as
I do. Where you’re used to names like Jonesville, Michigan, Farmerstown, Ohio,
Oblong, Illinois, Norman, Indiana, or Knob Noster, Missouri.
Here’s a limited
sample of interesting Florida place names and their probable meanings.
Apalachee The People
Apalachicola Those
people living on the other side (of the estuary)
Chattahoochee Creek
either for Marked Rock or Red Rock
Choctawhatchee Choctaw, name of a Muskhogean-speaking
Alabama tribe, plus hatchee, Timucuan for river
Chipola Dance place
Fakahatchee
Vine river
Pensacola Long
Hair People
Ochlockonee Yellow water
Okefenokee Trembling water
Sopchoppy Creek for Twisted or Crooked
River
Tallahassee Apalachee word for Old Town
Tsala
Apopka Lake
where trout are eaten or Many Waters
Wakulla Either
from the Creek language, for loon, or a corrupted form of Guacara, name of a
minor northern Florida tribe
Withlacoochee Creek
word for Little Big Water (river)
Wewahitchka Water eyes
Naturally,
the romance of those strange and foreign syllables, at least to my ears, stems
from their origin as Native American place names, most of them several hundred
years old. Question is, who were those Native American peoples and what roles
did they play in Florida
history?
The Florida
we’re talking about is a complex inter-mixture of land/water/people distilled
through many centuries. We know relatively little about the earliest
inhabitants, the Archaic peoples [who I like to think of as the Ancient Ones.
Yeah, I’m a romantic at heart but don’t tell my wife], other than they were
non-agricultural hunters, gatherers and fishermen. Later, invading groups from
the powerful Mississippian culture of the Southeast overran southern Alabama, Georgia,
and northern Florida,
absorbing the earlier, indigenous cultures. Those later tribes, identified as
the Fort Walton Culture after the first site of excavation in the Panhandle,
constructed towns that consisted of large mounds of dirt, shells, and garbage
around central plazas and used both canals and overland trails to move about.
The major tribes known to inhabit Florida
shortly before the Spanish arrival included:
Apalachee:
the principal heirs of the Fort Walton culture and the dominant force in
northwest Florida until the arrival of the Spanish; they were fierce warriors
who kicked the Spaniards’ asses on several occasions.
Timucua:
most populous indigenous confederation; located through the center of the State
from east to west coasts; lived in dome-shaped, palm thatched huts; their
villages were typically surrounded by vertical fences of sharpened stakes.
Calusa:
the most dominant, warlike, and sophisticated pre-Colombian society in Florida;
they were located south of Tampa Bay; one of the world’s few highly organized
societies that established permanent towns unsupported by an agricultural base.
The largest Calusa towns were on the barrier islands of Marco, Sanibel, and Captiva
and on the edge of Lake Okeechobee. They
organized a way of life modern archaeologists term the Everglades Tradition,
placed their homes and tombs on shell-fish mounds often exceeding 30 feet and
more in height, traveled the waterways in 40-50 foot dug-outs carved from
single cypress logs, dug canals for access into their villages, graded
causeways, and constructed turtle kraals and fishponds.
Smaller
indigenous groups like the Mayami were located on the southeast coast and the
Tekesta on the eastern edge of the Everglades.
For Native
Americans, the history of the European conquest of Florida,
named Pascua Florida,
or Flowery Easter, by Juan Ponce de León in honor of the feast of Easter, is
written in the bold characters of warfare, brutal subjugation, disease, and
death. Although Ponce de León, a ruthless soldier by any standard, may have
lacked the social graces we find attractive today, he and his fellow
conquistadors were singularly focused on the only goal that drove them through
life. Grabbing the gold. Alas, it turned out de León’s search for the fabled
Fountain of Youth we read about as children was merely a literary smokescreen
created by Spanish publicists after his death to conceal his real mission and
rehabilitate his reprehensible character.
The
conquistadors who rampaged through Florida
were simple men with simple dreams. They wanted to retire in high style in Spain with a fortune stolen by force of arms
from the New World and loll around the boudoir
with as many sloe-eyed beauties as they could afford. With as much alcohol as
they could swill and still function. Pussy and booze. Simple men, simple
dreams.
They weren’t
particularly concerned about how that fortune fell into their hands. Just that
it did. Killing Native Americans, Frenchmen, or Englishmen to get their hands
on treasure was not something they lost sleep over. When the chips were down
and gold was at stake, the original inhabitants of Florida were beneath the Spaniards’
contempt. Pagans. Savages. Not fully human. If the nominally Christian
conquistadors had to torture and kill Native Americans to get their hands on
gold, so be it. It was the will of God and the King.
Juan Ponce de
León landed near present day Estero
Bay in 1521 and was
severely wounded in the eye for his troubles by the war-like Calusa. After that
battle he sailed back to Cuba
where he died. Served the nasty bastard right. Seven years later a violent
tempered, brutal, one-eyed giant named Panfilo de Narvaez, a man utterly devoid
of loyalty to anyone save himself, beached his long boats on the Timucuan shores
of Tampa Bay. And announced to the assembled
natives that he was there to claim Florida in the names of King Carlos, Queen Juana,
and the Pope (in that order of importance). All resistance would result in the
Spaniards attacking the Timucuans, forcing them into slavery, and even
slaughtering their women and children. If need be. And all that death and
destruction would be the fault of the Timucuans for resisting the Defenders of
the Holy Faith. Twisted logic from twisted men, to be sure, but it had to have
been a most persuasive presentation.
After months
of withstanding Narvaez’s cruel intimidation in his relentless demand for gold,
which included setting greyhounds trained to kill on defenseless women and
children and cutting off the noses of tribesmen who refused to cooperate, the
Timucuans solved their immediate problem by simply pointing north and
repeating, “Apalachens. Apalachens.” That those words constituted directions to
where the gold was Narvaez readily understood. He immediately led his eager
men, some three hundred strong, on a difficult overland route toward Apalachee Bay and destiny. Although the Timucuans
were rid of their violent visitors, if only for a time, the Spaniards had been
thoughtful enough to leave behind such kind gifts as smallpox, measles, scarlet
fever, and typhoid. Not to mention the common cold, which was deadly to the
genetically defenseless Timucuans.
The warlike
Apalachee proved to be of much stronger mettle than the Timucuans. They
attacked the Spaniards with ferocity, killing dozens and forcing them to
retreat to the coast. The conquistadores were avaricious but not stupid so they
quickly abandoned their quest for gold to save their sorry asses. On the beach
the relatively few survivors threw together five rough rafts out of native
yellow pine and headed out to sea. Of the entire company of over 300 men, only
Alvar Cabeza de Vaca (I always thought Cowhead was a very strange name) and
three others survived to return to Mexico. But not until enduring
eight years of captivity by Native American tribes in coastal Texas. Poetic
justice. Too bad Narvaez, having previously been washed out to sea and a watery
death, missed that particular turn of events. Hey, as my sainted Irish grandmother
loved to say: What goes around, comes around.
Soon after
that, King Carlos commissioned Hernando de Soto
as Governor of Cuba and Adelantado (Leader) of Florida. A former captain who learned his
brutal trade as a conquistador in Peru
under the infamously cruel Francisco Pizarro, de Soto was determined to succeed where
Narvaez had failed. In 1539, with an expedition of 600 soldiers, he landed at
the same Tampa Bay village that had been brought such
ill fortune by Narvaez. Naturally, remembering their treatment under good old
Panfilo, the natives fled, leaving only a handful of warriors to confront de Soto.
As de Soto’s troops marched
up the beach, ready to slaughter all who resisted, El Adelantado was astonished
to hear one of the tattooed natives shout in fluent Spanish, “Do not kill me,
Caballero. I am a Christian. My name is Juan Ortiz and I come from Seville.” Hey, no doubt the
guy really knew the conquistadores because the first thing he shouted was a
plea that they not kill him. Which is a fairly chilling commentary on the
character and proclivities of the Spaniards.
Ortiz, a
member of Narvaez’s original expedition, had been one of a handful of men who
returned to Havana after his leader departed for
Apalachee Bay. He then was pressed into service in
a rescue party sent by the conquistador’s worried wife. My guess is that her
biggest fear was that the son of a bitch would survive and return to her bed
and she wanted to make sure he was indeed dead. When Ortiz rowed in from the
bay he was captured by the Timucuan chief, Hirrihigua. The chief’s nose had
previously been slashed off by Narvaez because Hirrihigua had not responded
quickly enough to the conquistador’s questions about where gold was to be
found. After Hirrihigua’s nose had been carved up, as an additional incentive
to cooperate, the chief and his villagers were forced to watch in horror as
Hirrihigua’s mother was ripped apart by the conquistador’s murderous dogs.
Yeah, doesn't that make you wonder what the famous padres were doing during that
particular event? What the hell, they were only window dressing anyway.
So, you can
probably imagine why, when Ortiz fell into his grasp, the chief might not have
been in the mood to forget and forgive. After all, he wasn't a Christian,
laboring under at least a superficial moral obligation to turn his cheek,
unfortunately minus his nose, to those who had trespassed against him. Get
real. We’re talking bloodthirsty savages here. Or, perhaps that description is more
appropriately applied to Narvaez and his band of murdering thugs. Whatever.
Hirrihigua
ordered Ortiz to be tied to a stake and slowly roasted over a fire in a torture
the Timucuas called barbacoa. Which may be the only Timucuan word in common
American usage today, though some linguists believe the name derives from the Caribbean indigenous Taino, barabicu. Just as the flames were licking at Otriz’s tender flesh,
he was saved by Hirrihigua’s daughter, Ulele, who had taken a liking to the
handsome Spaniard. It must have been lust at first sight.
For three
years Ortiz was a virtual slave of the Timucuas, kept alive only by Ulele’s
continued affections and demands for attention. Hey, maybe Ortiz had hidden
talents. Arriba! When threatened by Hirrihigua with death on a second occasion,
Ulele intervened once again, freeing the Spaniard from his bonds and urging him
to haul ass for a neighboring village on Tampa Bay
headed by one of her father’s rivals, Mocoso. And that’s exactly where de Soto found him.
Please note
that the above events were recorded in 1557 and published as a popular book
shortly afterward in Madrid, some 59 years
prior to John’s Smith’s supposed adventures in Virginia. Incidentally, Smith’s first
printed account of his experiences in the New World
made no mention either of Pocahontas or of his being rescued from the stake by
a Native American princess of any name. But it’s a matter of historical record
that Smith was an avid reader of stirring Spanish adventures in the New World. Many historians believe that the insertion of
Smith’s rescue by the daughter of an Indian chief into the second edition of
his book, which occurred after he read about the deliverance of Juan Ortiz, was
not an oversight but rather plagiarism of the boldest sort. Freshmen English
comp students take heart, you’re in famous if not good company.
Without
belaboring the point, of the well over 100,000 indigenous peoples who lived in Florida at the onset of
European colonization, practically none survived their initial European
contact. By the Treaty of Paris in 1768 that entire population and their descendants had either been slaughtered outright, died from disease not long
after first contact, or, like the few Calusa then remaining in south Florida, migrated to Cuba. The Native Americans later
known to history as “Seminoles” were actually Creeks indigenous to Georgia and Alabama
who had gradually been forced south into Florida
by relentless white depredations in the 17th Century. Prior to that time they hadn't lived in Florida
so we can’t count them as original inhabitants. But that doesn’t mean we’re not
interested in them. As an aside, the U.S. government’s “Indian” policy could
not then and can not now be defended on any grounds sanctioned by civilized
society. Or by anyone claiming even moderately high moral standards. It was an
indefensible land grab generated by the most blatant racism, greed, and
deviousness imaginable. That policy was singularly focused on eliminating
Native Americans from their ancestral homes and stealing every acre of land
they occupied and every natural resource that was available for their use.
In the late
1600s, the peoples we have come to call Seminoles consisted of several groups
of loosely related Upper Creeks, who spoke Miccosukee, and Lower Creeks, who
spoke Hitchiti, a different language entirely. By the early 1700s, land hungry
whites pushed both groups south from Georgia and Alabama into Florida, where
they intermingled with a number of existing Choctaw bands and established
large-scale, permanent settlements from the Pensacola River east to the St.
John’s River and as far south as the Caloosahatchee River. The Upper Creeks
were concentrated around what is now Lake
Miccosukee near Tallahassee
while the Lower Creeks moved farther south to the area around present day Gainesville.
From the time
of their first contact with the Spanish a century previous the Creeks had been
implacable foes of the whites. It was the Spaniards who named them cimarrone,
meaning wild, runaway or, abandoned. The ro
sound, which was not found in their languages, was replaced by the more fluid l sound and gradually evolved to
Seminole, the form we use today.
Not to bore
those readers who are rendered comatose by historical detail, but a total of
three Seminole Wars were fought by the United States government. None of which
were particularly successful for the Americans but all were uniformly
disastrous for the affected tribes. Various treaties, meaningless paper
agreements that were violated with impunity by the conscienceless Americans,
supposedly resolved each War but the last. For example, the Treaty of Payne’s
Landing, signed near the Ocklawaha River in 1832 by a small number of Seminole
chiefs, was intended to end the conflicts of the First Seminole War.
That Treaty
committed the tribes to three separate actions. First, they had to relinquish
their reservation of four million acres for a single cash payment of $80,000
(an offer amounting to two cents per acre). Second, they were to give up all
rights to and relationships with their runaway slave allies, many of whom were
current family members. And third, this one really was the kicker, they had to
move west to the newly established Indian Territory (modern day Oklahoma) if their
representatives found those hot and dry prairie lands acceptable. Fat chance
any of those deals would come to pass since the Federal Government’s
representatives had started the process by lying shamelessly about the nature
of the documents the Seminole chiefs had signed. Another big problem concerned
the Americans’ hidden agenda, which was to seize runaway slaves (and their
offspring) and remove the Seminoles no matter what their objections or how
little affection they developed for the Indian Territory.
In 1833, not
satisfied with the apparent lack of success on the part of its bald-faced lying
representatives, the U.S. appointed a new Indian Agent to Florida, Wiley
Thompson (perhaps the model for Wiley Coyote). He had served as a Major General
in the Georgia Militia from 1817 to 1824, was elected a State Senator in 1817,
and served in the U.S. Congress from 1921 to 1832. Thompson was obviously a man
with heavy political connections in Georgia and Washington. When he arrived in Florida in 1834, his mission was unambiguous: to expedite
removal of all Seminoles to the Indian Territory.
To be fair, the nation’s leaders in Washington
thought it was clear that removal of the Seminoles was their only viable
alternative. The rapacious southern white settlers were so out of control that Washington realized that
the Seminoles’ bloody destruction was inevitable. The settlers’ only goal was
to obtain free land in Florida, no matter who occupied it at the time or who
they had to kill to steal the land. Washington
correctly realized the land-hungry settlers could not be restrained by the Army
or by the law without widespread violence to their own citizens. Doing violence
to non-Christian natives was their perfectly acceptable option.
But let’s
look at the situation from the eyes of Washington
politicians. The Seminoles weren't white, Christians, or citizens. And they didn't vote. Now, tell me how difficult a decision that was to make. Despite
the federal government’s having previously dealt with the Seminoles as an
independent nation (as witnessed by several Treaties between supposedly sovereign
nations), despite the glaring illegality, injustice, and immorality of removing
them from their homes, they would have to go. What other realistic choice was there?
The American government simply could not place itself in the position of
restraining its own citizens from committing illegal acts of aggression and
violence that approached genocide against a people who had lived in the Southeastern
states for well over 250 years. When it came to nut-cutting time, the white
government in Washington
would support its white settlers. It didn't matter if their hands were covered
with the blood of innocent Native American victims. And Wiley Coyote was just
the man to force the Seminoles out.
The U.S. Army
arrived en mass in 1835 to enforce the Treaty of Payne’s Landing’s provisions.
The level of violence escalated soon afterwards. Led by Chiefs Micanopy, Alligator,
and Jumper, the Seminoles fought to keep their lands. After the old chief
Micanopy became ill, probably cirrhosis of the liver from his great fondness
for alcohol, a new leader stepped forward. Although he never was recognized as
a chief, his name was Asi-Yaholo, a hot-headed “half-breed” the whites would
first call Powell and then Osceola. Lighter in skin color than most of his
fellow Seminoles, he was well-built, with expressive features and an aquiline
nose. He was a handsome and straightforward man by all accounts but Thompson’s.
And he very aggressively insisted that his people would remain in their Florida homeland. No
matter what the American government wanted.
Osceola and
Thompson sat down many times to discuss the Treaty of Payne’s Landing and
Seminole removal. But the meetings usually ended with harsh words and bitter
accusations. After one particularly argumentative session at Fort King
(modern-day Ocala),
Osceola stormed out, telling Thompson he was clearly a liar and a cheat.
Characterizations with which most objective observers would have agreed wholeheartedly
since the Indian Agent was a charlatan of the first rank.
Thompson,
revealing his true nature for all to see, ordered Osceola to be seized and held
in chains until he agreed to sign the hated Paynes Landing Treaty. After being
incarcerated for several months, Osceola finally realized he wasn’t dealing
with honorable people and decided to act on that experience. He signed the
document despite full knowledge that he would never allow such an unfair and
one-sided agreement to rule his life or the lives of his people. Thompson, with
the hubris born of a race-based sense of superiority, then presented the
Seminole leader with a new rifle, an inlaid silver model he had had expressly
made for Osceola. Almost certainly intending to humiliate the chief by
demonstrating his power over him. Thompson was absolutely convinced he held
Osceola so firmly by the short and curlies that the warrior could do nothing
but obey the Agent’s commands. Hello! Is there anyone out there who can’t guess
what happened next?
A day after
Major Francis Dade's reinforcement column of 108 men was wiped out as it
marched from Fort Brooke on Tampa Bay toward Fort King (only one survivor lived
to tell the tale of the slaughter), Osceola and 50 warriors caught Thompson as
he was taking a leisurely stroll through the woods outside Fort King. Osceola
shot the smug Agent with the very rifle Thompson had foolishly presented him,
stabbed him in the heart, scalped him, and then cut his head off, carrying the
grisly trophy back to his camp in the heart of the Green Swamp. Naturally, my
first, second, and third impulses led me to cheer but the end of the story is
far less heartening.
On October
21, 1837, a day of infamy in U.S.
history, while meeting under a white flag of truce eight miles south of St. Augustine, Osceola
was seized by order of General Thomas Jesup. He was taken as a prisoner to the
Castillo de San Marcos and then moved in chains
to Fort Moultrie
in Charleston, South Carolina, where he died a year later
as a result of a fever, malaria, or quinsy (acute tonsillitis accompanied by
abscesses in the throat). After his death his head was removed by the attending
physician, Dr. Fredrick Weedon, who secretly preserved the head and kept the
mummified “artifact” for decades to intimidate his children whenever they
misbehaved and to entertain a close circle of friends. In an extraordinarily
macabre twist that you wouldn't believe except in a work of fiction, Fredrick
Weedon was Wiley Thompson’s brother-in-law.
The hostilities
marking the Second Seminole War petered out in desultory fashion in 1842, only
to erupt again in 1849 as the Third Seminole War. Which ended in 1858 when the
Seminole population, diminished to somewhere around 100 to 300 individuals and
was reduced to hiding from whites in the most inaccessible parts of the
Everglades. Not a pretty picture but that’s the way it was. As a footnote, to
their credit the newspapers of the day mercilessly excoriated General Jesup for
his cowardly actions. But there’s little satisfaction in reporting that Jesup
spent the rest of his miserable life trying to justify a series of inexcusable
and egregiously reprehensible acts that demonstrated his treachery and dishonor
for all to see.
Here’s an
interesting historical fashion note. In the late 1830s, smack in the middle of
the Second Seminole War, a traveling company of Shakespearian actors visited
the Florida Territory. Their entire baggage was
stolen by a roving band of Seminoles led by Coacoochee, who later became Osceola’s
successor as tribal war leader. The Seminoles liked the costumes so much they
became the basis of the clothing members of the tribe wore thereafter, with a
number of color and style variations. Today, the traditional clothing worn by
south Florida Seminoles for ceremonies or to attract tourists dates back to
those Elizabethan-age costumes.
It is
critical to note that the single most important aspect of the Seminole Wars,
from the viewpoint of the Florida
Territory’s future
development, was construction of a massive military infrastructure that was
immediately converted to civilian use by incoming white settlers. This system
consisted of 850 miles of roads and 53 forts that became the focus of urban
centers and almost a mile of causeways and bridges. Without that essential civil
engineering infrastructure, the Territory’s achievement of Statehood would
certainly have been delayed for several decades at a minimum. The second most
important result of those Wars was America’s wakening to the sub-tropical paradise
perched on the Gulf of Mexico. Which leads us directly to the next post.
