FLORIDA — Setting the Historical Stage

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.