A History of the Everglades of Florida by J.E. Dovell, 1947
http://sofia.usgs.gov/memorials/dovell


CHAPTER V

LATTER-DAY EXPLORERS AND THE NATIVES

1. The Explorers

After crossing the lower Everglades in 1897 Hugh Willoughby commented:

"It may seem strange, in our day of Arctic and African exploration, for the 
general public to learn that in our very midst, as it were, in one of our 
Atlantic Coast States, we have a tract of land one hundred and thirty miles 
long and seventy miles wide that is as much unknown to the white man as the 
heart of Africa." 1

These words ably describe the veil of obscurity which covered the interior 
of Florida below the twenty-seventh parallel from the state's discovery by 
Ponce de Leon in the early part of the sixteenth century through most of the 
nineteenth century.  It seems almost incredulous that Lake Okeechobee (the 
second largest fresh water lake wholly within the United States) and the 
Everglades should be the objects of exploring expeditions in the years from 
1885 to 1900.  The military records of the two Seminole Wars, the Buckingham 
Smith reports published in 1848, and the exploits of the Disston enterprises 
all failed in large measure to dispel the mythical fancies popularly 
ascribed to the region.  Little accurate information could be disseminated 
about this terra incognita until articulate travelers produced some 
accounts.

Angelo Heilprin was the first of three South Florida explorers to preserve a 
record of explorations in the 1880-1890's.  Heilprin's approach was that of 
the scientist and nature lover.  James E. Ingraham, a businessman and the 
president of a railroad, was the second explorer Hugh Willoughby, a winter 
visitor in Florida, pursuing a quest to satisfy his own curiosity, was the 
third explorer.

In 1886 Heilprin led a party of five persons down the west coast of Florida 
to the Caloosahatchee River, where the course was turned eastward into what 
he termed "the Okeechobee wilderness." 2  The ostensible purpose of this
excursion was to make researches of a zoological nature in the Okeechobee 
region, Heilprin's schooner easily passed from the headwaters of the 
Caloosahatchee at Ft. Thompson into the canals connecting the river with 
Lakes Flirt, Hiopochee, and Okeechobee.

The voyage up the Caloosahatchee was made in leisurely fashion, with 
numerous landings to examine the flora and fauna along the river banks.  For 
four days the party followed, the tortuous stream from the Gulf of Mexico to 
the headwaters, an airline distance of fifty miles,

"but measured along the sinuosities of the channel, which are especially 
well-marked in the upper course, and, more particularly in the reach of the 
last few miles below the rapids, the distance is very nearly twice as 
great." 3

The clearings at Thorpe's landing attracted the attention of the scientist.  
He commented on the large tracts developed for the cultivation and 
production of pineapples, bananas, and sugar cane and the considerable 
industry derived from the growth of the cane, which yielded a sugar of fine 
quality.

Within ten miles of Ft. Thompson, Heilprin located

" . . without question the most remarkable fossiliferous deposit that has as 
yet been discovered in the state, and from a purely paleontological 
standpoint, perhaps the most significant in the entire United States east of 
the Mississippi River." 4

The river banks, for some miles, resembled a fossil shell beach composed of 
countless numbers of at least ninety-six varieties of shells of large size 
and in a beautiful state of preservation.

From Ft. Thompson the group entered the first of the drainage company' s 
canals, where Heilprin observed the canal banks and spoil dumps.  His 
examination led him to form the opinion that fresh water limestone formed 
the bedrock underlying the Okeechobee-Everglades waters and soil.  He 
believed that the whole area of ponds and swamps marked the site of a vast 
shallow lake whose origin could be traced to the period, when the land 
emerged from the sea, and that the union of waters had been scattered by the 
growth of vegetable life in combination with dessication. 5  In the passage 
through the canals the party found a virtual paradise for birds including 
red-winged starlings, crow- blackbirds, herons, egrets, ibises, limpkins, 
and roseate spoonbills. The animal life along the canals consisted of 
countless alligators, turtles, black bass, and gar fish.  The flow of the 
water in the various cuts was estimated at three miles per hour.

The party cruised along the shores of Lake Okeechobee for six days, 
investigating the bayous, streams, and creeks which entered the lake.  
Previous reports of the lake had stated it to be a swampy lagoon or mudflat 
whose miasmatic emanations rendered access a matter of risk.  Such reports 
were found to be grossly untrue.  The members of the party were pleased with 
the clear waters, which were much more agreeable than the barrel of water 
carried on the schooner.  From the many soundings taken, Heilprin judged the 
great body of water to be resting in a shallow pan, whose surface became a 
mass of majestic billows with steady winds.  Firsthand evidence of  this 
nature was furnished when the schooner was forced to lie to, at anchor, a 
full day while the waves beat the boat unmercifully.  The shore line of the 
lake on the south and southeast was not absolutely defined, owing to the 
continuous passage of open waters into the glades.  The delimitation at this 
shore was irregularly marked, however, by the growth of saw grass  
interspersed with flag weeds.  The northeastern and eastern shores were 
marked by a beach line of sand, rising five feet above the surface of the 
lake, and covered with a dense growth of oak, maple, and palmetto.  This 
sand ridge supporting a hardwood border was observed to be but a fringe to 
the  saw grass and cypress swamp at a moderate distance to the rear.

Heilprin could find only one dry island in the lake.  This island, in the 
southwest corner of the lake, measured approximately two miles long and 
Three-quarters of a mile wide.  It was covered with a growth of small 
cypress and custard, apple, and supported a continuous rookery from one end 
to the other. 6

The party spent two days investigating the Shore line and the numerous 
accessions, especially Taylor's Creek, which entered the lake at the 
northern shore.   The banks of Taylor's Creek were well-defined with massive 
cypress towering one hundred and twenty-five to one hundred and fifty feet 
into the air and six feet in diameter at their base.  Great masses of water 
lettuce, a floating surface growth, made the forest almost impenetrable.  
Several flocks of parakeets, frequenting the highest branches of the 
cypress, were noticed here for the first time, and the members of the party 
were able to catch one of the little birds.  The waters of the creek teemed 
with alligators, the largest specimen seen measure fifteen feet in length. 
Black bass and catfish were plentiful.  Few mosquitoes were noticed 
throughout the trip, a fact Heilprin attributed to the season of the year. 
The scientist found the Taylor's Creek locality intriguing.

"It would be vain to attempt to depict by word the solemn grandeur of these 
untrodden wilds, the dark recesses, almost untouched by the light of day, 
that peer forbiddingly into a wealth of boundless green -- or to convey to 
the mind, a true conception of the exuberance of vegetable life that is 
presented.   At no time before our visit had I been so thoroughly impressed 
with the wild grandeur of an untrodden wilderness -- nowhere have I so 
keenly appreciated the insignificance of my own humble being in the sea of 
life by which I was surrounded." 7

The project of draining the Everglades attracted the attention of Henry B. 
Plant in the last decade of the nineteenth century.  At a director's meeting 
of the Plant controlled South Florida Railroad in Tampa, Florida, in 
February, 1892, the subject of vegetable developments was being discussed.  
Among the directors present were Plant, Henry M. Flagler of the Florida East 
Coast Railroad, and James E. Ingraham, of the South Florida line, Plant was 
leading the discussion

". . . over a map which was spread on the table, and he said to me, "Mr. 
Ingraham, could we build a line from here to here?" being from Fort Myers to 
Miami.  I said in reply, "Mr. Plant, that is right across the Everglades of 
Florida." "Well," he said,  "What of it?"  I said, "So far as I know only 
two white men ever made that trip and they were accompanied by Indians, and 
I doubt if there is any record of their experience but I would be very glad 
to run a line [of levels] across there and go in person." 8

"The Everglades Exploring Expedition" was organized as a result of this 
Tampa meeting. On March 12, 1892, a party of twenty white and two colored 
men boarded a South Florida Railroad train at Sanford for Port Tampa, where 
they embarked on the Plant System steamer Tarpon for Ft. Myers.  James E. 
Ingraham, leader and organizer, appointed Wallace R. Moses secretary of the 
expedition. 9  Arriving at Ft. Myers on March 14, the group camped a mile 
southeast of the town.  John W. Newman, engineer in charge of the line of 
levels which was to run from the western edge of the glades to its eastern 
edge, was appointed officer in charge of the expedition.  Word was passed to 
all hands that

"Information is desired regarding the soil, the growth thereon, particularly 
anything unusual, and the adaptability of the soil to the growth of sugar 
cane, rice, tobacco, and sisal hemp; also the tropical fruits." 10

On March 15, two cypress skiffs and two canvas boats were sent ahead by ox 
team to the site of old Ft. Shackleford at the western edge of the glades.  
The following day the men broke camp in Ft. Myers and began their march to 
Ft. Shackleford, some fifty-five miles away.  On the eighteenth they crossed 
Ocaloacoochee Slough and the northern end of the Big Cypress using the old 
government causeway built during the Seminole War. 11

On March 21, the expedition left Ft. Shackleford, the surveyors starting 
their chaining and leveling from the position of the old fort.  The average 
depth of the water was six inches, the current of the water sluggish and in 
a southerly direction.  Rock outcroppings, many of them in the form of small 
pinnacles, made walking precarious.  The camp that night was pitched on a 
slight elevation, covered with a few small cypress and various bushes.  
After making five miles the following day, camp was set up on an island a 
quarter of acre in extent. On this island the growth consisted of grape 
vines, wild fig, elder bushes, briers, and pumpkin vines.  The average depth 
of the water was a foot with a change to a foot and a half in the latter 
part of the day.

On March twenty-third the surveyors set out at two in the morning, while the 
rest of the party moved off at seven.  Camp that night was made on an island 
that had been the site of a former Indian habitation.  The island, was off 
the route of the survey and the food and bedding had be packed two miles to 
camp.  Wood for the camp fires was taken from a stock pile laid up by the 
Indians, who cut their fuel in advance in order to have a dry supply on 
revisiting the spot.  Soundings for the day had averaged two to five feet of 
mud over the bed rock.  "The Glades at this point present an endless sea of 
saw and other grasses, lily pads, a great many of them in bloom, with small 
patches of water amid clear spots and small islands here and there." 12

The group traveled, only two and a half mile a on the twenty-fourth, having 
had to make several portages dragging the boats through the grass.  "All 
hands extremely tired and whisky was served out from the medicine stores." 
13  A number of turtles, marsh hens, and limpkins were taken during the day; 
they made a welcome addition to the bill of fare.  The next day proved the 
hardest traveling up to that date, and the expedition abandoned the smaller 
wooden boat, as well as some of the other equipment on a portage of 2,000 
feet.  The twenty-sixth proved to be a good day, with not quite so much saw 
grass encountered, and the group made five miles.  The supply of flour ran 
out, but a good break fast of hominy, rice, and beans was provided for the 
men. 14

Sunday, March 27, proved a discouraging day for the men of the expedition. 
Traveling a little over two miles through large bodies of saw grass, they 
found the water insufficient to float the boats.  In order to move through 
the grass it was necessary for two men to pull and two to push each of the 
boats through the mass of vegetation of the tendency of the growth of the 
grass was south and west, while the course to Miami was due southeast.  Camp 
that was night was made in the open glades, the party having had to retrace 
their steps for a mile and a half to avoid a particularly heavy patch of 
grass.

The following day the party made almost three miles, but two of the men 
became exhausted and had to be carried in one of the boats.  Camp that night 
was again made in the open grass. Supper had to be cooked over a fire made 
from grass, supplemented by splinters from the false bottom of  one of the 
canvas boats.  Soundings found the basal rock four to six feet below the top 
of the muck covering, and Moses logged the fact that the saw grass was quite 
heavy, indicating very rich land. 15  The group broke camp at seven on the 
morning of the twenty-ninth, each man carrying a pack.

"Locomotion is extremely difficult and slow.  The bog is fearful and it 
sometimes seems as though it would be easier to stay in it than to go on. 
Both legs up to the waist freqient1y become embedded in the same hole in the 
mud, and to extricate oneself with from 30 to 50 lbs. weight on the back 
requires strength and time.  Packing for any distance is impracticable.  A 
man by himself, carrying nothing would probably fail to reach the timber 
from this point.  The boats are very necessary to enable one to pull himself 
out of the mud and even then the labor is most exhaustive." 16

The stopping place for the twelfth night out from Ft. Myers was taken from a 
flock of white herons who had a rookery on the island.  Fifteen of the young 
birds were killed and cooked up into a dish the marchers thought much better 
than the average Florida chicken.  The food had been rationed, on the basis 
of moving five miles per day, whereas the party had averaged only three 
miles each day from Shackleford. 17   March 30 the expedition made four 
miles, but the labor occasioned by working through the high grass became too 
difficult for the chainmen and that phase of the work had to be given up. 
That night was spent on a quarter acre patch covered by a growth of stunted 
willows inhabited by turkey buzzards, which were "very odorous, but better 
than mud alone." 18

On the last day of March the party found the glades bearing east of south 
with sufficient water to float the boats, necessitating only two short 
portages. With the depth of water averaging two to three feet, the 
expedition moved four miles a day on the first two days of April.  The food 
stores had been reduced until all that remained was hominy, which the men 
supplemented with such animal life as they were able to procure on the march 
from day to day.  The bag of game for the second of April consisted of seven 
terrapins, three blue herons, several water turkeys, and a forty pound 
alligator.  The party saw a great many Indian signs, notably large burned 
over areas where the red men had sought game with fire hunting.  On the 
second of April the survey was given up because of physical incapacity of 
the men. 19

The depth of the muck increased as the expedition. moved eastward. Soundings 
to the bed rook now reached six to seven feet below the surface of the soil. 
  During the day of April third over a dozen fish, including one weighing 
four pounds, jumped into the boats as the party passed through the narrow 
and tortuous channels of the saw grass.  The group rested that night on an 
island covered with hackberry trees; from the top of one of the trees the 
timber line to the east could be seen, some five miles away  Constant wading 
in water and bog had weakened all the party and considerable lassitude 
prevailed. 20  A chance meeting with a Seminole Billy Harney, resulted in 
his engagement to guide four of the group into Miami to secure provisions.  
Ingraham and Loses left with Harney on the afternoon of the fourth riding in 
the native's dugout.  Newman and another man followed in one of the canvas 
boats.  The two boats reached the falls of the Miami River about nine the 
next morning, and were in the village of the same name at noon on April 
fifth.

Ingraham was able to hire another Indian to return with Harney and himself 
to guide the remaining members into the village.  After a few days of 
sightseeing around the village the party left on a steamer for Titusville . 
There the group boarded a special train for Sanford, and completed its 
journey on April 16. 21  This voyage of discovery by Ingraham and his party 
gave information that was valuable when drainage was begun in later years. 
The question which prompted the expedition, namely the feasibility of 
building a railroad from Tampa to Miami, was answered in the negative. 22

A third explorer, Hugh L. Willoughby, a former lieutenant commander in the 
Rhode Island Nava1 Reserve and gentleman traveler, visited Florida during 
the winter of 1896 and made the usual trip up the Miami River to the rapids 
and into the glades. 23  He met J. E. Ingraham and, after hearing the story 
of the latter's expedition, Willoughby made the boast that he would see if 
the passage across the Everglades could be made without having to sleep in 
wet clothes.  Intrigued with his first view of the Everglades, Willoughby 
resolved to return the next year and undertake a journey from the headwaters 
of the Shark River to the headwaters of the Miami River.  He stated that he 
wanted to examine the plant and animal life of the region and to

" . . show that the world swamp, as we understand it, has no application 
whatever to the Everglades; that it is a country of pure water; that this 
water is moving in one direction or another, depending on the natural 
topography of the country; that the air is wholesome, pure, and free from 
disease germs; that near the coast and mangroves the mosquitoes thrive; but 
deep in the Everglades, in the winter time at least, you can sleep 
comfortably without a net." 24

Willoughby returned to the North for the summer of 1896 and assembled 
equipment for his trip the following winter.  He secured two canoes of 
thirty inch beam, one fourteen and the other sixteen feet in length, 
equipped with single rig sails measuring forty square feet.  For 
navigational aids he procured a case in which were carried an octant, 
aneroid barometer, thermometer, artificial horizon, zenith compass, and two 
chronometers with waterproof cases. 25  For propelling the canoes Willoughby 
selected long poles similar to those used by the Seminoles.  As a traveling 
companion Willoughby hired Ed Brewer, a guide and huntsman living near Miami 
with whom he had hunted the previous season.

Willoughby decided to make the passage from the lower southwest coast of 
Florida through the Everglades because there was no record of a previous 
passage along that line, and because he would be able to locate positions 
along the east coast railroad whenever he should emerge from the glades. 26  
The canoes and other gear were loaded on the sloop Cupid on December 29, 
1896, and on the following day Willoughby shoved off and got underway for 
Cape Sable by way of Key Largo.  The little vessel reached Cape Sable on the 
morning of January 6 and moved into the Ten Thousand Islands area. Leaving 
the sloop about six miles from the mouth of Harney River, Willoughby and 
Brewer paddled their canoes to that stream.  Entering Harney River they made 
their way upstream, stopping within a mile of its source for the night. 27

The next morning the men set out up stream.  The mangrove lined banks 
crowded the fifty foot width of the channel until after three quarters of a 
mile the foliage met overhead and the canoes were barely able to find a 
passage.  Here the men believed they were on an Indian route, as the 
branches of the mangrove jungle had been cut, some rather recently.

"A little way farther on . . . an opening appeared letting in a flood of 
daylight and we suddenly burst into the pathless Everglades.  Here was the 
source of the Harney River very closely defined.  We were standing on the 
rim that dams up that great basin of shoal water, with so few outlets that 
except in very dry seasons it cannot drain itself." 28

On the first day in the glades Willoughby noted that they had traveled 
nineteen miles by canoe but only eight miles as the crow flew.  The water 
leads through the saw grass had been good, on the whole, though the grass 
tended to be heavy in spots.  The current of the water was about a mile and 
a half per hour, setting to the southwest over a rocky bottom, but now and 
again covered, up to a foot with mud.  The water was pure and fresh, and 
Willoughby did not hesitate to drink it.

The next two days were discouraging. The two men met quite heavy grass at 
latitude 25 36" north.  Ingraham had told Willoughby that he had crossed 
the heavy grass at 26 10".  "That there is a break about latitude 25 50" 
known only to the Indians  I have little doubt, else how could they travel 
from the edge of the Big Cypress to Miami with such rapidity." 29  Finding 
their course blocked to the northeast by the heavy sawgrass, and believing 
it almost fatal to attempt the crossing, the explorers returned to their 
station of the third night.  In the morning they took a more northerly 
course.  At noon they arrived at a heavily wooded island and, discovering it 
to be an old Indian camp cleared in the middle to an extent of some sixty 
feet, they decided to set up their camp for the night.

On the fifth say the men made less than three miles, and were stymied by a 
ten foot wall of sawgrass.  The camp that night was made on a very small 
hummock after they had cleared off the snakes and piled up the brush for 
bedding down.  The following day they observed Indian fires to the north and 
west and smoke on the east which they presumed to be Miami.  Travel was so 
slow through the high grass and low water that they decided to retrace their 
steps to the first opening to the east.  Close inspection showed the water 
to be running east of south, proving they had passed the dividing line of 
the watershed.

For the next four days the men made their way south and east, looking for a 
passage through the grass.  Toward the end of the tenth day in the 
Everglades they reached the end of the heavy grass.  Making their way four 
miles to the east on the eleventh and twelfth days they were still hindered 
by the low water and rock outcroppings.

"The difficult wading, lifting of the feet out of the holes in the rock, the 
pulling, dragging and the extra care necessary to avoid tearing the loaded 
canoes to pieces exhausted us terribly." 30

Deeper water was reached the thirteenth day as they continued eastward.  
Making good time that day they reached an old camp which Brewer recognized.  
Turning their course northward, the men covered eleven miles the following 
day to end their second week in the Everglades.  By Willoughby's estimate 
they were as far north as they had been on the sixth day and but seven miles 
further east. His figures led him to believe that they had made a fifty-five 
mile detour to avoid seven miles of heavy saw grass.  In the afternoon of 
the fifteenth day they reached the head of the Miami River, and completed 
their trip into Miami the following day. 31

Willoughby's expedition was made through the lower glades and the data he 
collected bear out the reports of the relative worthlessness of the southern 
part of the area insofar as soil depth and water levels are concerned.  
Ingraham, the railroad, builder, crossed the Everglades seeking to determine 
their value for agriculture and as a bed for his railroad, he realized that 
in time they might become a land of promise, Heilprin, the scientist and 
nature lover, found more than he sought in the Caloosahatchee shell beds and 
the wild, flora and fauna of Okeechobee.  Each of these latter-day explorers 
left a permanent record to be used, in one way or another, in the 
development of the Everglades.

2. The Seminoles

When the Seminole War ended in 1842, an Indian reservation was provided 
which roughly embraced the lands of the interior of Florida south of Lake 
Istokpoga.  At. that time the 0ffice of Indian Affairs estimated there were 
300 Seminoles remaining in Florida, but after the Hartsuff ambush of 1854, 
150 Seminoles were forced to migrate to the western Indian lands.  The few 
remaining red men, who had been hunted like animals, settled in the 
innermost recesses of the isolated Everglades and the adjoining Big Cypress. 
In order make sure they stayed there the Florida legislature in December, 
1862, enacted a law to regulate trade and intercourse with the Indians. 32

Section one of the act authorized the governor to appoint a State Indian 
agent, to hold office at the governor's pleasure, and to receive a stipend 
of $1,500 a year.  The agent was to seek by compact or agreement with the 
Indians for a settlement on a reservation south of a line running from the 
mouth of the Caloosahatchee to Lake Okeechobee and around the northern shore 
of that lake due east to the Atlantic Ocean.  The agent was instructed to 
confer with the Indians, giving them assurance of the state's desire to 
protect them, and to manage and superintend all trade and intercourse with 
the Indians within their boundaries.  The governor was allowed $5,000 a year 
to carry out the act and was directed to appoint a merchant to handle the 
red men's trade, to prohibit all trespassing on the reservation, to forbid 
the sale of intoxicating liquors, and to enforce all of the laws of the 
state, except that criminal law was not to extend to crimes committed by one 
Indian against another Indian within their reservation.

The 1862 act was significant in that it sought to reduce the size of the 
reservation that had been a part of the settlement of the Seminole Indian 
War in 1842.  Further, this act was the first overt move on the part of the 
State of Florida to aid and protect the aborigines albeit the act was 
repealed within the year.  Shortly after the close of the Civil War the 
1egislture took action in regard to the Seminole.  An act passed in 1866 
abolished all boundary lines, legalized free trade, allowed the Indians to 
make their own civil laws and to be governed by them.  The 1866 act outlawed 
maltreatment of the Indians and made punishable any incidents that would 
incite the red men to hostility. The act provided for an Indian agent, but 
at the more economical rate of $500 per year. 33  This law, abolishing 
outright any degree of right of the red men to lands in the state, left the 
Indians mere squatters on the hunting and fishing grounds of their 
forefathers.

The Florida Constitution of 1868 sought to recognize the Indians' rights by 
making provision in article sixteen for the seating of one Indian member in 
each house of the General Assembly.  The Indian representative and senator 
were to have all the rights and pay of other members.

F. Trench Townshend, an English tourist who stopped in the Miami area in 
1874, found a small store on the banks of the Miami River supplied with 
staples for the few settlers and the Everglades Seminoles.  Townshend noted 
that the store did a considerable trade with the Indians who resorted there 
for whiskey and beads.

"It is supposed there are not more than a hundred and fifty Indians now 
remaining in Florida.  . . .  The Red Skins down at Miami were tall well 
grown men, with the usual straight black hair and strongly marked features; 
their squaws were a hideous bundle of rags decorated with glass beads and a 
few old coins.  . . .  The Indians complain that their lodges on the islands 
in the Everglades are so unhealthy that they cannot raise their children, 
and there is no doubt that they are decreasing and will probably be extinct 
even before the game on which they exist." 34

James Henshall, in 1878, concluded, that the Seminoles were very peaceable, 
seldom being seen in the white man's village.  He described them as splendid 
specimens of the Indian. race: tall, symmetrical, and very straight with 
clean, sinewy limbs and good features.

"They shave their heads as high as the tops of the ears, and braid the lop 
lock into a long plait which they coil around the crown.  The head-dress is 
composed of a number of bright colored shawls wound around the head in the  
matter of a turban, looking for all the world like a gaily painted cheese 
with a hole in the center to fit the head." 35

It was not until 1861 that a scientific study was made of the Seminoles of 
Florida.  Reverend Clay MacCauley was commissioned by the director of the 
United States Bureau of American Ethnology to inquire into the conditions 
and numbers of the Seminoles in Florida . MacCauley spent the months of 
January, February, and March of 1881 among the Seminoles.  "Owing to the 
ignorance prevailing even in Florida of the locations of the homes of the 
Seminoles and also to the absence of routes of travel in Southern Florida 
much of my time at first was consumed in reaching the Indian country." 36  
The inquiry was further hampered by the 1ack of an interpreter; MacCauley 
finally attempted to master the native language with the aid of one man who 
could speak some English.

MacCauley found a total of two hundred and eight Indians, constituting 
thirty-seven families, living in twenty-two camps gathered into five widely 
separated settlements.  These settlements were located in the Big Cypress, 
rough1y twenty miles southwest of Lake Okeechobee; on the Miami River, about 
ten miles north of old Ft. Dallas; on Cow Creek, fifteen miles northeast of 
the mouth of the Kissimmee River; on Fish Eating Creek, five miles from the 
western shore of Lake Okeechobee; and on Catfish Lake, a small lake midway 
between Lakes Pierce and Rosalie, towards the headwaters of the Kissimmee 
River.

"The settlements are from forty to seventy miles apart, in an otherwise 
almost uninhabited region, which is in area about sixty by one hundred and 
eighty miles. The camps of which each settlement is composed lie at 
distances from one another varying from a half mile to two or more miles." 
37

A breakdown by age and sex discloses several curious facts about the 
Indians.  An overall excess of sixteen males was difficult to explain in the 
face of polygamous marriage.  There were thirty-eight males between ages 
twenty and sixty, and fifty-six women between ages fifteen and sixty.  
Almost all these latter were the wives of the former.  Of the fifty-four 
boys between ages five and twenty, and thirty-one girls under fifteen, there 
existed an excess of twenty-three boys.  The excess in the number of young 
males presented a puzzling problem to MacCauley, who found the Seminoles 
were increasing in numbers but producing more men than women.  He could see 
no reason why the tribe should not continue to increase unless it were 
checked by the non-birth of fema1es.  Further reasons for increase were the 
lack of wars from 1860 to 1880, the absence of epidemic disease for the same 
period, an abundance of animal and vegetable food easily obtained and 
prepared, equable climate, and the temperate and moral lives led by the 
Indians.

After observing the social life of the Seminoles, especially their 
associations with the white race, MacCauley wrote:

"The white half-breed does not exist among the Seminole, and nowhere could I 
learn that the Seminole woman is other than virtuous.  The birth of a whit 
half-breed would be followed by the death of the Indian mother at the hands 
of her own people." 38

The only explanation MacCauley could offer for the small number of Indians 
in southern Florida was that a great many more had migrated to the West than 
had been popularly supposed.

The physical characteristics of the people of the tribe were described as 
excellent, the men attracting attention by their six foot height, well 
filled out and symmetrically developed frames, with agreeable, small, and 
well sculptured features.  The women were observed to share largely the good 
qualities of the men, though they were under rather than over the average 
height of females in general.  The women possessed regular and agreeable 
features, and shapely and well developed bodies.

"Indeed, the only Indian women I have seen with attractive features and 
forms are among the Seminole. . . . Among American Indians I am confident 
that the Seminole women are of the first rank." 39

MacCauley believed the Seminoles to be among the brightest of the American 
Indians.  The Indians were antagonistic to the white man as a race, but 
MacCauley had no trouble making friends with them when his motives were made 
clear.  Most of them were eager to talk and answered directly without 
equivocation.  Though descended from Indian peoples of many nations, the 
Seminoles were found to have been so strongly moulded by their associations 
with the Creek nation that they had adopted the Creek language, customs, and 
regulations.  In their family life, they combined affection and cheerfulness 
with cooperative industry, and all hands took part in household industry and 
duties.

Distinctive dwellings marked the Seminole settlements; permanent houses were 
erected at the main camps and temporary houses at the sugar cane hammock, 
the hunting areas, and the "coontie" ground.  The houses, more like sheds, 
were usually nine by sixteen feet, built of palmetto logs, thatched with 
palmetto leaves, and fitted with a floor or platform about three feet from 
the ground.  The ridge pole was set about twelve feet above the ground, with 
the eaves sloping away to seven feet.  The space above the joists was 
partially planked and used for the storage of food and other commodities.  
The sides were open to the four winds, though some of the Indians had 
provided their houses with woven palmetto mats that could be hung from the 
eaves during periods of foul weather.

The society of the Seminoles, MacCauley discovered, was divided into nine 
gens or groups of relatives, tracing a common lineage.  The gens divisions 
were also used to serve as a basis of very simple governments organization.  
A  man could not marry into his own gens; children belonged to the mother at 
birth, and were members of her gens. 40  The Florida Indians rejected the 
name of Seminole as a term of reproach or cowardice; they spoke of 
themselves as "point-of land" or peninsular Indians.

MacCauley found the Indians cultivating one hundred acres sown principally 
to corn, cane, melons, and beans.  The cane averaged two inches in diameter 
and seventeen feet in length.

"It was at "Old Tommy's" sugar field.  I met forty-eight of the people of 
the Big Cypress Swamp settlement.  . . .  They had left their homes for a 
few weeks together, "camping out" and making and eating syrup." 41

The Indians had over fifty head of cattle, one thousand hogs, five hundred 
chickens, and thirty-five horses. One of the principal items of their diet 
came from t1 "coontie" or Florida arrowroot. The Indians dug the roots from 
the wild growth in the woods and were adept in their primitive methods of 
producing flour through a series of poundings and washings. The Indians did 
no weaving; their cloth came from trading posts, similar to the one at Miami 
where MacCauley was told the value of Indian purchases ran to $2,000 a year.

MacCauley pointed out the ease with which the natives lived off the bounty 
of nature as contrasted with the great moral strength which the tribe had 
gained from centuries of conflict with the white man.  These conflicts, 
MacCauley believed, had made this little group of Seminoles a brave and a 
proud people.  He pointed out the moving lines of population closing in on 
the lands of the Florida Indian, and the inherent dangers to the very life 
of the natives in the efforts then being directed toward the drainage of the 
Everglades.

"But now that new factors are beginning to direct his career, now that he 
can no longer retreat, now that he can no longer successfully contend, now 
that he is to be forced into close, unavoidable contact with men he has 
known only as enemies, what will he become?  If we anger him, he can still 
do much harm before we can conquer him; but if we seek, by a proper policy 
to do him justice, he may yet be our friend and ally." 42

Even before MacCauley's paper on the Seminoles appeared under the auspices 
of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, a petition was laid before the 
Board of Trustees of the Internal Improvement Fund of Florida asking that 
reservations of land be made for the Indians to protect them in their hones 
and on their hunting grounds. 43  The Board, on March 12, 1883, ordered the 
secretary to correspond with Frank A. Hendry and E. R. Trafford, pioneer 
residents of the Ft. Myers area, relative to the possible location and 
quantity of lands needed for the benefit of the Seminoles.

In 1893 the Women's National Indian Association began a movement to assist 
the Florida Indians by procuring eighty acres of land in the Immokalee 
settlement, south-west of the Big Cypress.  Several buildings were erected 
on this acreage, including a saw mill, school, and a residence for an agent. 
The distance of this reservation from the Indian camps combined with the 
reticence of the Seminoles to deal with the white man were among the factors 
which contributed to the closing of the agency shortly after the turn of the 
century. 44

Cornelius N. Bliss, United States Secretary of the Interior, devoted several 
paragraphs in the section on Indian Affairs of his Annual Report for 1896 to 
a resume of the status of the Seminoles of Florida. 45  Noting that the 
Seminoles had no legal rights in the state, he pointed out that attempts to 
locate them in 1888 under the provisions of the homestead act had failed. 
The failure was due, surprisingly enough, to the fact that no lands could be 
found for the purpose.

Under the swamp and overflowed land grant act of 1850, Florida had received 
by 1898, 16,734,852 of the 35,000,000 acres of land in the state. 46  The 
area known as the Everglades, some 2,225,000 acres, was approved by the 
Secretary of the Interior without exception on February 13, 1897, for 
transfer to the state as "swamp land list number eighty-seven."  The Office 
of Indian Affairs requested the Secretary of the Interior to protect the 
interests of the surviving Indians of the state, and Secretary Bliss 
directed that an inspection be made of the territory involved.  Colonel A. 
J. Duncan, brother-in-law of President William McKinley, was instructed to 
proceed to Florida in February, 1898, for the dual purpose of checking on 
land list eighty-seven and to recommend a reservation for the Indians.  
Legal opinion of the Interior Department was that the Seminoles' only claim 
to lands in the state was by right of occupancy, but that any lands which 
were not of the wet variety might be excluded from the list on a revision of 
the grant in question. 47

Duncan's examination, covering a period of seven weeks, encompassed all the 
Indian settlements in and around the Everglades. At the conclusion of his 
tour of the Seminole camps, he wrote:

"From time to time they have been driven within the Everglades and hammocks, 
and within a short time they have been dispossessed of a part of these, and 
unless protected the remaining hammocks on which they live will be seized by 
the irrepressible land grabber." 48

Duncan found three instances where the island settlements of the Indians on 
the eastern side of the Everglades had been expropriated by white squatters. 
He recommended that a list of lands and hammocks which he had located, be 
surveyed and held for the Seminoles' occupancy.  The locations, not to 
exceed 350,000 acres, were within or contiguous to the Everglades.  He 
further recommended that the Indian agency situated at Immokalee be removed 
to a point near the camps of the natives, and that proper measures should be 
instituted immediately to carry out these proposals. 49

The Indian appropriation act of 1894, continued each succeeding year, set 
aside $6,000, one-half of which was to be used in the purchase of lands for 
the Seminoles.  By June, 1898, 10,000 acres had been secured for a 
reservation in what is now Hendry County and by June, 1911, a total of 
26,781 acres comprised federal reservations for the tribe.  Dr. James E. 
Brecht, Florida agent of the Indian Service, expressed the hope in 1899 that 
"renewed effort may be made by the Government for work among them in their 
camps by a sufficient force of helpers."  50


Chapter Notes

I Hugh L. Willoughby, "Across the Everglades," 13.

2 Angelo Heilprin, "Okeechobee Wilderness," i.

3 Angelo Heilprin, OkeechobeeWilderness, iv.

4 Ibid., 28.

5 Angelo Heilprin, "Okeechobee Wilderness," 33.

6 Angelo Heilprin, "Okeechobee Wilderness," 43.

7 Angelo Heilprin, "Okeechobee Wilderness," 45.

8 James E. Ingraham letter, Ft. Lauderdale (Florida) Tropical Sun, January 
1, 1922; David G Fairchild, "The World Was My Garden," 111; John C. Gifford, 
"The Everglades and Other Essays Relating to Southern Florida," 19-20.

9 Wallace R. Moses, "The Everglades Exploring Expedition," 1.

10 Wallace R. Moses, "The Everglades Exploring Expedition," 2.

11 Ibid., 5-8.

12 W. R. Moses, "The Everglades Exploring Expedition," 16.

13 Ibid., 17.

14 W. R. Moses, "The Everglades Exploring Expedition," 21-22.

15 W. R. Moses, "The Everglades Exploring Expedition," 22.

16 Ibid.

17 Ibid., 23.

18 W. R. Moses, "The Everglades Exploring Expedition," 24.

19 Ibid., 28.

20 W. R. Moses, "The Everglades Exploring Expedition," 32.

21 Ibid., 52.

22 J. E. Ingraham letter, Ft. Lauderdale (Florida) Tropical Sun, January 1, 
1922.

23 Hugh L. Willoughby, "Across the Everglades," 1-8.

24 Hugh L. Willoughby, "Across the Everglades," 14.

25 Ibid., 49-57.

26 Ibid., 59.

27 Hugh L. Willoughby, Across the Everglades, 102.

28 Ibid., 104.

29 Hugh L. Willoughby, "Across the Everglades," 122.

30 Hugh L. Willoughby, "Across the Everglades," 157.

31 Hugh L. Willoughby, "Across the Everglades," 165-166.

32 Chapter 1363, Laws of Florida, 1862.

33 Chapter 1482, Laws of Florida, 1866.

34 F. Trench Townshend, "Wild Life in F1orida and a Visit to Cuba, 240-241.

35 James A. Henshall, "Camping and Cruising in Florida, 107-108

36 Clay MacCauley, "The Seminole Indians of Florida," United States Bureau 
of American Ethnology, Fifth Annual Report, 1883-1884, 475. Cited 
hereinafter as Clay MacCauley, "Repot on the Seminole Indians."

37 Clay MacCauley, "Report on the Seminole Indians," 478.

38 Clay MacCauley, "Report on the Seminole Indians," 480.

39 Clay MacCauley, "Report on the Seminole Indians," 482.

40 Clay MacCauley, "Report on the Seminole Indians," 508.

41 Ibid., 510.

42 Clay MacCauley, "Report on the Seminole Indians," 531.

43 I.I.B. Minutes, III, 211.

44 Roy Nash, "Survey of the Seminole Indians of Florida," Senate Documents 
Number 314, 71 Congress, 3 Session, 54.

45 Report of the Secretary of the Interior, 1898, House Documents, Number 5, 
55 Congress, 3 Session, LV-LVI.

46 Ibid., CCV.

47 Appendix G, Report of the Secretary of the Interior, 1898, House 
Documents, Number 5, 55 Congress, 3 Session, CCI.

48 Ibid., CCXI.

49 Ibid., CCXX-CCXI.

50 Roy Nash, "Survey of the Seminole Indians of Florida," Senate Documents, 
Number 314, 71 Congress, 3 Session, 62.