ANTIQUITIES.
Mounds.--Roads.--Shell Heaps.--Old Fields.
The descriptions left by the elder and younger Bartram of the magnitude
and character of the Floridian antiquities, had impressed me with a high
opinion of their perfection, and induced large expectations of the light
they might throw on the civilization of the aborigines of the peninsula;
but a personal examination has convinced me that they differ little from
those common in other parts of our country, and are capable of a similar
explanation. Chief among them are the mounds. These are not infrequent
upon the rich lowlands that border the rivers and lakes; and so
invariably did their builders choose this position, that during the long
journeys I made in the prairies and flat pine woods east of the St.
Johns as well as over the rolling and fertile country between this river
and the Gulf, as far south as Manatee, I never saw one otherwise
located. An enumeration and description of some of the most noteworthy
will suffice to indicate their character and origin.
On Amelia island, some half a mile east of Fernandina new town, there is
an open field, containing some thirty acres, in shape an isosceles
triangle, clothed with long grass and briary vines, bounded on all sides
by dense thickets of myrtle, live-oak, palmetto, yellow pine and cedar.
About midway of the base of this triangle, stands a mound thrown up on
the extremity of a natural ridge, which causes its height to vary from
twenty to five-and-thirty feet on the different sides. It is composed of
the common surface sand, obtained from the east side, close to the base,
where an excavation is visible. A few live-oaks and pines grow upon it,
the largest of which, at the time of my visit (1856), measured seventeen
inches in diameter. There is a fine view from the summit, embracing on
the west the vast marshes between Amelia island and the mainland, with a
part of St. Mary’s sound, across which, northward, lie the woody shores
of Cumberland island, projected in dark relief against the glittering
surf of the Atlantic, which stretches away in a brilliant white line to
the north-east, loosing itself in the broad expanse of ocean that bounds
the eastern horizon. Hence, one of its uses was, doubtless, as a
look-out or watch-tower; but from excavations, made by myself and
others, it proved, like every similar mound I examined, or heard of as
examined, in Florida, to be, in construction, a vast tomb. Human bones,
stone axes, darts, and household utensils, were disinterred in
abundance. Quantities of rudely marked fragments of pottery, and broken
oyster, clam, and conch shells, were strewed over the field. I was
informed of a second mound, smaller in size, somewhat south of
Fernandina light-house; but owing to the brevity of my stay, and the
incredible swarms of musquitoes that at that season infested the woods,
I did not visit it. I could learn nothing of the two large tumuli on
this island, known as the “Ogeechee Mounts,” mentioned by the younger
Bartram.[309]
On Fleming’s Island, at the mouth of Black Creek, identified by Sparks
with the “extremely beautiful, fertile, and thickly inhabited” Edelano
of the French colonists, and on Murphy’s Island, eight miles above
Pilatka, are found mounds of moderate size, and various other vestiges
of their ancient owners. But far more remarkable than these are the
large constructions on the shores and islands at the southern extremity
of Lake George, first visited and described as follows, by John
Bartram,[310] in 1766: “About noon we landed at Mount Royal, and went to
see an Indian tumulus, which was about one hundred yards in diameter,
nearly round, and twenty foot high. Found some bones scattered on it. It
must be very ancient, as live-oak are growing upon it three foot in
diameter; directly south from the tumulus is an avenue, all the surface
of which has been taken off and thrown on one side, which makes a bank
of about a rood wide and a foot high, more or less, as the unevenness of
the ground required, for the avenue is as level as a floor from bank to
bank, and continues so for three quarters of a mile, to a pond of water
about one hundred yards wide and one hundred and fifty long, north and
south,--seemed to be an oblong square, and its banks four foot
perpendicular, gradually sloping every way to the water, the depth of
which we do not say, but do not imagine it deep, as the grass grows all
over it; by its regularity it seems to be artificial; if so, perhaps the
sand was carried from thence to raise the tumulus.”
A description of this mound is also given by Wm. Bartram, who visited it
both with his father, and fifteen years later.[311] In summing up the
antiquities, he saw in Florida, this author says,[312] “from the river
St. Juans southerly to the point of the peninsula of Florida are to be
seen high pyramidal mounts with spacious and extensive avenues leading
from them out of the town to an artificial lake or pond of water. The
great mounts, highways, and artificial lakes up St. Juans on the east
shore, just at the entrance of the great Lake George; one on the
opposite shore, on the bank of the Little lake, another on Dunn’s
island, a little below Charlotteville, and one on the large beautiful
island just without the Capes of Lake George, in sight of Mount Royal,
and a spacious one on the West banks of Musquitoe river near New Smyrna,
are the most remarkable of this sort that occurred to me.”
The artificial lakes in this account are the excavations made in
obtaining material, since filled with water. The highways, which, in
another passage, the above quoted writer describes as “about fifty yards
wide, sunk a little below the common level, and the earth thrown up on
each side, making a bank of about two feet high,”[313] seem, from both
French and Spanish accounts to have been not unusual among the natives.
Laudonniére mentions one of great beauty that extended from the village
of Edelano to the river some three hundred paces in length,[314] and
another still more considerable at the head quarters of the powerful
chief Utina,[315] which must have been very near if not identical with
that at Mount Royal. La Vega, in his remarkable chapter on the
construction of the native villages,[316] speaks of such broad passages
leading from the public square at the base to the house of the chief on
the summit of the mound that the natives were accustomed to throw up for
its site. What we are to understand by the royal highways, _Caminos
Reales_, near Tampa Bay, that lead from one town to another, (que van de
un Pueblo al otro,)[317] an expression that would not be applicable to
mere trails, is not very evident.
Six miles by water above Lake Monroe, near the shore of a small lagoon
on the left bank of the river, stands an oval mound of surface soil
filled with human bones of so great an age, and so entirely decomposed,
that the instrument with which I was digging passed through them with as
much ease as through the circumjacent earth. Yet, among these ancient
skeletons, I discovered numerous small blue and large white glass beads,
undoubtedly inhumed at the formation of the tumulus. The bodies were all
of adults and no special order in their deposition seemed to have been
observed. Previous to my visit, I was informed that small earthenware
articles had been disinterred, some of which were simply pyramids of
triangular bases, whose use had much puzzled the finder. We know that
this form, sacred in the mythologies of the old world to the worship of
the productive power, had also a strong religious significance among the
Natchez, and many other aboriginal tribes,[318] and probably in
connection with the burial of the dead, it possessed among the
Floridians, as it did among the ancients and orientals,[319] a
symbolical connection with the immortality of the soul and the life
after death.
In the rich hammock half a mile below Lake Harney on the left bank of
the St. Johns, is a large oval mound, its transverse diameter at base
forty yards, and thirty feet in height. It is surrounded by a ditch
whence the soil of which it is constructed was taken. An extremely
luxuriant vegetation covers the whole hammock and the mound itself,
though few of the trees indicate a great age. On the same side of the
river twenty miles above the lake, is another similar mound. They are
abundant on the rich lands of Marion and Alachua counties, and in the
hammocks of the Suwannee, and are found at least as far south as
Charlotte’s Harbor and the Miami river. There is one on the government
reserve in Tampa, another at the head of Old Tampa Bay, and a third on
Long Key, Sarasota Bay. A portion of the latter has been washed away by
the waters of the gulf and vast numbers of skeletons exposed, some of
which I was assured by an intelligent gentleman of Manatee, who had
repeatedly visited the spot and examined the remains, were of
astonishing size and must have belonged to men seven or eight feet in
height. This statement is not so incredible as it may appear at first
sight. Various authors report instances of equally gigantic stature
among the aborigines of our country. The chiefs of the province of
Chicora, a portion of what is now South Carolina, were famous for their
height, which was supposed to prove their royal blood;[320] some
inhabitants of the province of Amichel on the Gulf of Mexico were not
less remarkable in this respect;[321] and Beverly found among certain
human bones religiously preserved in a temple of the Virginian Indians
an _os femoris_, measuring two feet nine inches in length;[322] while in
our own days, Schoolcraft saw a humerus at Fort Hill, New York,[323] and
Lanman, sundry bones in a cave in Virginia[324] that must have belonged
to men compared to whom ours is but a race of dwarfs.
On the opposite banks of Silver Spring run, respectively a quarter of a
mile and a mile and a half below the head, there are two tumuli.
Pottery, axes, and arrow-heads abound in the vicinity, and every sign
goes to show that this remarkable spot was once the site of a populous
aboriginal settlement.
What now are the characteristics of this class of Floridian mounds? In
summing up the whole available knowledge respecting them, we arrive at
the conclusion that to whatever purpose they may have subsequently been
applied, they were originally constructed as vast cemeteries. Mount
Royal tumulus is but a heap of bones covered with earth, and none have
as yet been opened but disclosed the same contents. They are very simple
in construction. I saw no well-defined terraces, no groups of mounds,
none with rectangular or octagonal bases, no ditches but those made in
excavating material, no covered ways, no stratification; in short, none
of those signs of a comparatively advanced art that distinguish the
earthworks of Ohio. Their age is not great. Some indeed are covered with
trees of large size, and in one case the annual rings were said to count
back to the year 1145,[325] (a statement, however, that needs
confirmation,) but the rapid growth of vegetation in that latitude
requires but a few years to produce a forest. The plantation of Lord
Rolles, deserted some fourscore years since, is now overgrown with pines
a foot in diameter, and I have seen old fields still bearing the marks
of cultivation covered with lofty forests, and a spot of cleared land,
forsaken for ten years, clothed with a thriving growth of palmetto and
oak. Moreover, savage and civilized, all men agree in leaving nature to
adorn the resting places of the dead, and hence it is an egregious error
to date the passing away of a nation from the oldest tree we find on its
graves. Rather, when we recollect that from the St. Lawrence to the
Pampas, many tribes did religious homage to certain trees, and when we
remember how universal a symbol they are of birth and resurrection,
should we be surprised were they not cultivated and fostered on the
sepulchres of the departed.[326]
We need no fanciful hypotheses to explain the reason and designate the
time of these constructions. The bare recountal of the burial rites that
prevailed among the aborigines is all sufficient to solve the riddle of
bone-mounds both as they occur in Florida and all other States. The
great feature of these rites was to preserve the bones of the dead, a
custom full of significance in nature-worship everywhere. For this
purpose the corpses were either exposed or buried till sufficient
decomposition had ensued to permit the flesh to be easily removed. The
bones were then scraped clean, and either carried to private dwellings,
or deposited in public charnel-houses; such were the “Templos que
servian de Entierros y no de Casas de Oracion,” seen by De Soto at Tampa
Bay,[327] and the “Osarios,” bone-houses, in Cofachiqui, among the
Cherokees.[328] Finally, at stated periods, they were collected from all
quarters, deposited in some predetermined spot, and there covered with
soil heaped into the shape of a cone. Annual additions to the same
cemetery gave rise to the extraordinary dimensions that some attained;
or several interments were made near the same spot, and hence the groups
often seen.[329]
As the Natchez, Taencas, and other southern tribes were accustomed to
place the council-house and chief’s dwelling on artificial elevations,
both to give them an air of superior dignity, to render them easy of
defence, and in some localities to protect from inundations,[330] so
the natives of Florida, in pursuance of the same custom, either erected
such tumuli for this purpose, or more probably, only took advantage of
those burial mounds that the vicissitudes of war had thrown in their
hands, or a long period of time deprived of sacred associations. In the
town of Ucita, where De Soto landed, “The Lordes house stoode neere the
shore upon a very hie mounte made by hande for strength,”[331] and La
Vega gives in detail their construction.
While this examination of their sepulchral rites, taken in connection
with the discovery of glass beads _in situ_, leaves no doubt but that
such remains were the work of the people who inhabited the peninsula at
its discovery by Europeans, it is not probable that the custom was
retained much after this period. The Lower Creeks and Seminoles, so far
from treating their dead thus, took pains to conceal the graves, and
never erected mounds save in one emergency. This was in the event of a
victorious battle, when they collected the dead into one vast pile, and
covered them with earth,[332] simply because it was the most convenient
way to pay those last and mournful duties that humanity demands at our
hands.
Another class of burial mounds, tallying very nearly with those said by
the French to have been raised over their dead by the early Indians of
the St. Johns, are not unusual in the hammocks along this river. They
are only a few feet in height, resembling in appearance the hillocks of
humus left by the roots of uprooted trees, from which they can be
distinguished by their general range, (N., S.,) by the hollows on each
side whence the earth was obtained, and by their construction. They are
sometimes distinctly stratified, presenting layers of sand, ashes and
charcoal, and clay. Bones, arrow-heads, axes, and pottery are found in
them, but as far as my own observations extended, and those of a
Norwegian settler bearing the classic name of Ivon Ericson, who assured
me he had examined them frequently on the Upper St. Johns, in no case
were beads or other articles indicating a familiarity with European
productions discovered.
The utensils, the implements of war and the chase exhumed from the
mounds, and found in their vicinity, do not differ from those in general
use among the Indians of all parts at their first discovery,[333] and go
to corroborate the opinion that all these earthworks--and I am inclined
to assert the same of the whole of those in the other Atlantic States,
and the majority in the Mississippi valley--were the production, not of
some mythical tribe of high civilization in remote antiquity, but of the
identical nations found by the whites residing in these regions.
An equally interesting and more generally distributed class of
antiquities are the beds and heaps of shells. These are found with more
or less frequency on the shores of every State from Connecticut
southward along the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico. Some of them are of
enormous extent, covering acres of ground, and of a singular height. For
a long time it was a debateable point whether they belonged to the
domain of the geologist or antiquarian; later researches have awarded
them to both, by distinguishing between those of natural and artificial
origin.[334] The latter are recognized by the presence of darts,
pottery, charcoal, &c., in _original connection_ with the shells and
debris throughout the mass, by the presence of surface soil, roots, and
stumps, _in situ_ beneath the heap, by nearness to an open fishing
shore, and finally by the valves of the shell fish being asunder and
their edges factured or burnt; on the other hand, whole closed shells as
at Easton in Maryland, fragments of older fossils in original
connection, distinct stratification,[335] and remoteness from any known
oyster bed, as those of northern Texas, northern Georgia, and perhaps of
Cumberland county, New Jersey, are convincing proofs of their natural
deposition.
Examples in Florida are numerous and striking. At Fernandina new town on
Amelia island, a layer extends along the face of the bluff for one
hundred and fifty yards and inland a quarter of a mile, sometimes three
feet in depth, composed almost wholly of shells of the esculent oyster
though with clams and conches sparsely intermixed. The valves are all
separate, the shells in some places rotten, fractured and mixed with
sand, charcoal, and pottery, while in others as clean and sound as if
just from the hands of the oysterman.
Similar deposits are found in various parts of the island; on the main
land opposite; on both sides of the entrance to the St. Johns; on
Anastasia island; and every where along the coast both of the Atlantic
and the Gulf. One of the most remarkable is Turtle Mound on Musquito
Lagoon, near New Smyrna. “It is thirty feet high, composed almost
altogether of separate oyster shells, it being rare to find an entire
one; there are also some conch and clam shells, both of which are,
however, exceedingly scarce. That it is artificial there is no doubt on
my mind. Some eight or ten years since we experienced a gale in this
section of the country, from the northwest, which caused that portion of
the mound facing the river, the steepest part, to wash and fall
considerably; being there a few days afterwards, I took considerable
pains to examine the face of it, and found as low as the bottom and as
high up as I could observe, numberless pieces of Indian pottery, and
quantities of bones principally of fish, but no human ones; also
charcoal and beds of ashes. The one on which I reside, opposite New
Smyrna, is precisely of the same formation. Having had occasion some
time back to dig a hole six or eight feet deep, I found precisely the
same contents that I have described at Turtle Mound, with the addition
of some few flint arrowheads.”
For this interesting description from the pen of a gentleman of the
vicinity I am indebted to the kindness of Mr. F. L. Dancy, State
Geologist of Florida; he adds from his own observation an account of one
on Chrystal river, on the Gulf coast, four miles from its mouth. “The
marsh of the river at that point is some twenty yards wide to the firm
land, at which point this mound commences to rise; it is on all sides
nearly perpendicular, the faces covered with brush and trees to which
the curious have to cling to effect an ascent. It is about forty feet in
height, the top surface nearly level, about thirty feet across, and
covered with magnolia, live-oak, and other forest trees, some of them
four feet in diameter. Its form is that of a truncated cone, and as far
as can be judged from external appearance, it is composed exclusively of
oyster shells and vegetable mould. These shells are all separated. The
mound was evidently thrown up by the Indians for a lookout, as the Gulf
can be distinctly seen from its summit. There are no oysters growing at
this time within four or five miles of it.”
Other shell heaps are met with along the coast but none equalling in
magnitude that seen by Sir Charles Lyell[336] on Cannon’s Island at the
mouth of the Altamaha, covering ten acres of ground, “elevated in some
places ten feet and on an average five feet above the general level,”
and which this eminent geologist attributes exclusively to the Indians,
or the vast beds of _Gnathodon Cuneatus_, on Mobile Bay, described by
Mr. Hale,[337] which, however, are probably of natural formation, though
containing quantities of human bones, pottery, images, &c.
It is strange that we find no notices of the formation of these heaps by
the early travellers; I do not remember to have met with any except a
line in Cabeza de Vaca, where, speaking of a tribe on the Gulf, he says
their houses were “built of mats on heaps of oyster shells.”[338]
Along Manatee river I noticed numerous small heaps of conches,
attributable to the later Indians, and in the post-pliocene shellbluffs
at the mouth of this river, nearly twenty feet in height composed
largely of a species of _Pyrula_,[339] I found numerous fragments of a
coarse, ill-marked, pottery, not, however, where the shells were
unbroken and clean, but where they were fragmentary, mixed with
charcoal, ashes and dirt, and never more than three feet below the
surface. The singular hillocks, whose formation is a geological enigma
not readily solved, so frequent along the St. Johns, vast aggregations
of Helices with some Unios and other fresh water shells in connection,
without admixture of earth, in some cases thirty feet high, and
irregularly stratified, are not to be mistaken for those of artificial
construction, though from the frequency of Indian relics found in them,
they seem to have been a chosen place of burial for the aboriginal
tribes.
Among the relics dating from a later period are the “Indian Old Fields.”
These are portions of land once cleared and cultivated by the Seminoles,
and are found wherever the fertility of the soil promised favorably for
agriculture. They are very abundant in Alachua, where, says
Bartram,[340] “almost every step discovers traces of ancient human
habitation,” reminding us of the time “when the Indians could assemble
by thousands at ball play and other juvenile diversions and athletic
exercises on these then happy fields and green plains.” Such is the
tenacity of the soil for retaining impressions, that the marks of
tillage by which these are distinguished from the Spanish old fields are
easily seen and readily discriminated, even after they are covered by a
dense growth of trees.
APPENDIX I.
THE SILVER SPRING.
The geological formation of Florida gives rise to springs and fountains
of such magnitude and beauty, that they deserve to be ranked with the
great freshwater lakes, the falls of Niagara, and the Mississippi river,
as grand hydrographical features of the North American continent. The
most remarkable are the Wakulla, twelve miles from Tallahassie, of great
depth and an icy coldness, which is the best known, and has been
described by the competent pen of Castlenau and others, the Silver
Spring and the Manatee Spring. The latter is on the left bank of the
Suwannee, forty-five miles from its mouth, and is so named from having
been a favorite haunt of the sea-cow, (_Trichechus Manatus_,) whose
bones, discolored by the sulphuret of iron held in solution by the
water, are still found there.
The Silver Spring, in some respects the most remarkable of the three, is
in the centre of Marion county, ten miles from the Ocklewaha, into which
its stream flows, and six miles from Ocala, the county seat. In
December, 1856, I had an opportunity to examine it with the aid of
proper instruments, which I did with much care. It has often been
visited as a natural curiosity, and is considered by tourists one of the
lions of the State. To be appreciated in its full beauty, it should be
approached from the Ocklewaha. For more than a week I had been tediously
ascending this river in a pole-barge, wearied with the monotony of the
dank and gloomy forests that everywhere shade its inky stream,[341] when
one bright morning a sharp turn brought us into the pellucid waters of
the Silver Spring Run. A few vigorous strokes and we had left behind us
the cypress swamps and emerged into broad, level savannas, that
stretched miles away on either hand to the far-off pine woods that, like
a frame, shut in the scene. In the summer season these prairies, clothed
in the luxuriance of a tropical vegetation, gorgeously decked with
innumerable flowers, and alive with countless birds and insects of
brilliant hues, offer a spectacle that once seen can never be forgotten.
But far more strangely beautiful than the scenery around is that
beneath--the subaqueous landscape. At times the bottom is clothed in
dark-green sedge waving its long tresses to and fro in the current, now
we pass over a sunken log draperied in delicate aquatic moss thick as
ivy, again the scene changes and a bottom of greyish sand throws in
bright relief concentric arcs of brilliantly white fragments of shells
deposited on the lower side of ripple marks in a circular basin. Far
below us, though apparently close at hand, enormous trout dash upon
their prey or patiently lie in wait undisturbed by the splash of the
poles and the shouts of the negroes, huge cat-fish rest sluggishly on
the mud, and here and there, every protuberance and bony ridge
distinctly visible, the dark form of an alligator is distended on the
bottom or slowly paddles up the stream. Thus for ten miles of an almost
straight course, east and west, is the voyager continually surprised
with fresh beauties and unimagined novelties.
The width of the stream varies from sixty to one hundred and twenty-five
feet, its average greatest depth about twenty, the current always quite
rapid. For about one mile below its head, forests of cypress, maple,
ash, gum, and palmetto adorn the banks with a pleasing variety of
foliage. The basin itself is somewhat elliptical in form, the exit being
at the middle of one side; its transverse diameter measures about one
hundred and fifty yards, (N. E., S. W.,) its conjugate one hundred
yards. Easterly it is bordered by a cypress swamp, while the opposite
bank is hidden by a dense, wet hammock. A few yards from the brink
opposite the exit runs a limestone ridge of moderate elevation covered
with pine and jack-oak.
The principal entrance of the water is at the northeastern extremity.
Here a subaqueous limestone bluff presents three craggy ledges, between
the undermost of which and the base is an orifice, about fifteen feet in
length by five in height, whence the water gushes with great violence.
Another and smaller entrance is at the opposite extremity. The maximum
depth was at the time of my visit forty-one feet. The water is
tasteless, presents no signs of mineral matter in solution, and so
perfectly diaphanous that the smallest shell is entirely visible on the
bottom of the deepest portion. Slowly drifting in a canoe over the
precipice I could not restrain an involuntary start of terror, so
difficult was it, from the transparency of the supporting medium for the
mind to appreciate its existence. When the sunbeams fall full upon the
water, by a familiar optical delusion, it seems to a spectator on the
bank that the bottom and sides of the basin are elevated, and over the
whole, over the frowning crags, the snow-white shells, the long sedge,
and the moving aquatic tribes, the decomposed light flings its rainbow
hues, and all things float in a sea of colors, magnificent and
impressive beyond description. What wonder that the untaught children of
nature spread the fame of this marvellous fountain to far distant
climes, and under the stereoscopic power of time and distance came to
regard it as the life-giving stream, whose magic waters washed away the
calamities of age and the pains of disease, round whose fortunate shores
youths and maidens ever sported, eternally young and eternally joyous!
During my stay I took great pains to ascertain the exact temperature of
the water and from a number of observations made at various hours of the
day obtained a constant result of 73.2°, Fahrenheit. This is higher than
the mean annual temperature of the locality, which, as determined by a
thermometrical record kept at Fort King near Ocala for six years, is
70.00°; while it is lower than that of the small mineral springs so
abundant throughout the peninsula, which I rarely found less than 75°.
It is probable, however, that this is not a fixed temperature but varies
with the amount of water thrown out. Competent observers, resident on
the spot, informed me that a variation of three feet in the vertical
depth of the basin had been known to occur in one year, though this was
far greater than usual. The time of highest water is shortly after the
rainy season, about the month of September, a fact that indicates the
cause of the change.
Visiting the spring when at a medium height I enjoyed peculiar
advantages for calculating the amount of water given forth. The method I
used was the convenient and sufficiently accurate one of the log and
line, the former of three inches radius, the latter one hundred and two
feet in length. In estimating the size of the bed I chose a point about
a quarter of a mile from the basin. The results were calculated
according to the formulæ of Buat. After making all possible allowance
for friction, for imperfection of instruments, and inaccuracy of
observation, the average daily quantity of water thrown out by this
single spring reaches the enormous amount of more than three hundred
million gallons!
Numbers such as this are beyond the grasp of the human intellect,
bewildering rather than enlightening the mind. Let us take another unit
and compare it with the most stupendous hydrographical works of man that
have been the wonders of the world. Most renowned of these are the
aqueducts of Rome. In the latter half of the first century, when
Frontinus was inspector, the public register indicated a daily supply of
fourteen thousand and eighteen quinaria, about one hundred and
ninety-six million gallons. Or we can choose modern instances. The city
of London is said to require forty million gallons every twenty-four
hours, New York about one-third, and Philadelphia one-quarter as much.
Thus we see that this one fount furnishes more than enough water to have
satisfied the wants of Rome in her most imperial days, to supply
plenteously eight cities as large as London, a score of New Yorks, or
thirty Philadelphias. By the side of its stream the far-famed aqueduct
of Lyons, yielding one million two hundred and nine thousand six hundred
gallons daily, or the Croton aqueduct, whose maximum diurnal capacity is
sixty million gallons, seems of feeble importance, while the stateliest
canals of Solomon, Theodoric, or the Ptolemies dwindle to insignificant
rivulets.
Neither is this the emergence of a sunken river as is the case with the
Wakulla fountain, but is a spring in the strictest sense of the word,
deriving its sustenance from the rains that percolate the porous
tertiary limestone that forms the central ridge of the peninsula.
There are many other springs both saline, mineral, and of pure water,
which would be looked upon as wonders in any country where such wonders
were less abundant. Such are the Six Mile Spring (White Spring, Silver
Spring), and the Salt Spring on the western shore of Lake George, a
sulphur spring on Lake Monroe, one mile from Enterprise, another eight
miles from Tampa on the Hillsboro’ river, Gadsden’s spring in Columbia
county, the Blue spring on the Ocklawaha, Orange Springs in Alachua
county, the Oakhumke the source of the Withlacooche, and numberless
others of less note.[342] Besides these, the other hydrographical
features of the peninsula are unique and instructive, well deserving a
thorough and special examination; such are the intermittent lakes,
which, like the famous Lake Kauten in Prussia, the Lugea Palus or
Zirchnitzer See in the duchy of Carniola, and the classical Lake
Fucinus, have their regular periods of annual ebb and flow; while the
sinking rivers Santa Fe, Chipola, Econfinna, Ocilla and others offer no
less interesting objects of study than their analogues in the secondary
limestone of Styria, in Istria, Carniola, Cuba, and other regions.
When we ponder on the cause of these phenomena we are led to the most
extraordinary conclusions. To explain them we are obliged to accept the
opinion--which very many associated facts tend to substantiate--that the
lower strata of the limestone formation of the peninsula have been
hollowed out by the action of water into vast subterranean reservoirs,
into enormous caverns that intersect and ramify, extending in some cases
far under the bed of the adjacent ocean, through whose sunless corridors
roll nameless rivers, and in whose sombre halls sleep black lakes.
During the rainy season, gathering power in silence deep in the bowels
of the earth, they either expend it quietly in fountains of surprising
magnitude, or else, bursting forth in violent eruptions, rend asunder
the overlying strata, forming the “lime sinks,” and “bottomless lakes,”
common in many counties of Florida; or should this occur beneath the
ocean, causing the phenomenon of “freshening,” sometimes to such an
extent as to afford drinkable water miles from land, as occurred some
years ago off Anastasia Island, and in January, 1857, near Key West.
APPENDIX II.
THE MUMMIES OF THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY.
A number of years ago considerable curiosity was excited by the
discovery of mummies in Tennessee and Kentucky, and many theories were
promulged regarding their origin, but I believe neither that nor their
age has, as yet, been satisfactorily determined.
Some were found as early as 1775, near Lexington, Kentucky, but we have
no definite account of any before those exhumed September 2, 1810, in a
copperas cave in Warren county, Tennessee, on the Cany fork of the
Cumberland river, ten miles below the Falls. These were described in the
Medical Repository by Mr. Miller, whose article was followed by another
in the same periodical, illustrated by a sketch, in support of the view
that this discovery indicated the derivation of the Indians from the
Malays and Tartars. The same pair was also described by Breckenridge and
Flint a few years later.
Shortly previous to 1813, two mummies were found in the Gothic avenue of
the Mammoth Cave, and not long afterwards, (1814,) another in the
Audabon avenue.
The same year, several more were discovered in a nitre cave near
Glasgow, Kentucky, by Thomas Monroe, who forwarded one to the American
Antiquarian Society, described by Dr. Mitchell in the first volume of
the publications of that body.
Again, in 1828, two more were found in a complete state of preservation
in a cave of West Tennessee, mentioned in the American Journal of
Science, (Vol. xxii. p. 124.)
With that zest for the wonderful, for which antiquarians are somewhat
famous, the idea that these remains could belong to tribes with whom the
first settlers were acquainted, was rejected, and recourse was had to
Malays, South Sea Islanders, and the antipodes generally, for a more
_reasonable_ explanation. It was said that the envelopes of the bodies
(all of which bore close resemblance among themselves) pointed to a
higher state of the arts than existed among the Indians of the
Mississippi Valley, and that the physical differences, the color of the
hair, &c., were irreconcileable. I think, however, it may be shown that
these objections are of no weight, and that the bodies in question were
interred at a comparatively late period.
The wrappings consisted usually of deer skins, dressed and undressed,
mats of split canes, some as much as sixty yards long, and a woven stuff
called “blankets,” “sheets,” and “cloth;” this was often either bordered
with feathers of the wild turkey and other birds, or covered with them
in squares and patterns. Their ages, as guessed from appearances, varied
from ten years to advanced life. In several cases the mark of a severe
blow on the head was seen, which must have caused the individual’s
death. Their stature was usually in conformity to their supposed
age;[343] the weight of one, as given by Flint, six or eight pounds; in
all cases but one the hair of a “sorrel,” “foxy,” “yellow” or “sandy”
color; and they were usually found five or six feet below the surface.
First, then, in our examination, the question arises, did the Indians of
the Mississippi Valley, when first met by the whites, possess the art of
manufacturing woven stuff of the kind mentioned? In answer we have the
express words of the Inca,[344] “These mantles the Indians of Florida
make of a certain herb-like mallows, (malvas,) which has fibres like
flax, (que tiene hebra, como lino,) and from the same they make thread,
to which they give colors which remain most firmly.” The next explorer
was La Salle; in Tonty’s account of his expedition,[345] he remarks that
he saw in a council lodge of the Taencas, “sixty old men clothed in
large white cloaks, which are made by the women from the bark of the
mulberry tree.” Still more to our purpose are the words of later
writers, who mention the interweaving of feathers. Not only, says
Dumont,[346] do the Indian women make garters and ribbons of the wool of
the buffalo, (du laine du beuf,) but also a sort of mat of threads
obtained from the bark of the linden, (tilleul,) “qu’elles couvrent de
plumes de cigne des plus fines, attachèes une à une sur cet toil.”
Dupratz[347] mentions similar cloaks of mulberry bark covered “with the
feathers of swans, turkeys, and India ducks,” the fibres of the bark
being twisted “about the thickness of packthread,” and woven “with a
wrought border around the edges.” Of the Indians of North Carolina,
Lawson says,[348] “Their feather match-coats are very pretty, especially
some of them which are made extraordinary charming, containing several
pretty figures, wrought in feathers, making them seem like a fine flower
Silk-Shag.” Other examples might be given, but these are sufficient.
The cane mat was an article of daily use among the tribes wherever the
cane grew, and was bartered to those where it did not. The Arkanzas,
Taencas, Cenis, Natchez, and Gulf tribes, used it to cover their
huts;[349] hence a piece even sixty yards long was no uncommon matter;
while in one instance at least,[350] we know that the eastern tribes
rolled their dead in them, tying them fast at both ends. All the minor
articles of ornament and dress, the bone and horn needles, the vegetable
beads, &c., can be shown with equal facility to have been in general use
among the natives.[351]
It has usually been supposed that these bodies were preserved by the
chemical action of the nitriferous soil around them; but this does not
account for their perfection and extreme desiccation, inclosed as they
were in such voluminous envelopes. Yet it is quite certain that the
viscera were never absent, nor has any balm or gum been found upon
them.[352] Hence, if artificially prepared, it must have been by
protracted drying by fire, in a manner common among the ancient
inhabitants of the Caroline islands, the Tahitians, the Guanches of
Teneriffe, and still retained in some convents in the Levant. It is well
known that in America the Popayans, the Nicaraguans, and the Caribs of
the West Indies had this custom;[353] but I believe that attention has
not been called to the fact, that this very mode of preserving the dead
was used more or less by the Indians of the Mississippi Valley. The
southern tribes of Mississippi and Alabama dried the corpse of their
chief over a slow fire, placed it in the temple as an object of
adoration till the death of his successor, and then transferred it to
the bottom or cellar (fond) of the building.[354] Analogous usages,
modifications of this and probably derived from it, prevailed among the
tribes of North Carolina, Virginia, and the Pacific coast,[355] while we
have seen that Bristock asserts the same of the Apalachites. That a cave
should be substituted for a temple, or that the bodies should be
ultimately inhumed, cannot excite our surprise when we recall how
subject the Indians were to sudden attacks, how solicitous that their
dead should not be disturbed,[356] and how caves were ever regarded by
them as natural temples for their gods and most fit resting places for
their dead.[357]
The rarity of the mummies may be easily accounted for as only the bodies
of the chiefs were thus preserved. Yet it is a significant fact that a
body is rarely, if ever, found alone. Moreover, in every case of which
we have special description, these are of different sexes, and one, the
female, and the youngest, sometimes apparently not more than twelve or
fourteen years of age, evidently died by violence. How readily these
seemingly unconnected facts take place and order, and how intelligible
they become, when we learn that at the death of a ruler the Indians
sacrificed and buried with him one or two of his wives, and in some
tribes the youngest was always the chosen victim of this cruel
superstition.[358]
The light color of the hair is doubtless caused by the nitriferous soil
with which it had been so long surrounded; a supposition certified by
one instance, where, in consequence of the unusually voluminous
wrappings, and perhaps a later interment, it retained the black color of
that of the true Indian.[359]
Though most of these references relate to nations not dwelling
immediately in the area of country where the mummies are found, it is
quite unnecessary for me to refer in this connection to those numerous
and valid arguments, derived both from tradition and archæology, that
prove beyond doubt that this tract, and indeed the whole Ohio valley,
had changed masters shortly before the whites explored it, and that its
former possessors when not destroyed by the invaders, had been driven
south.
Hence we may reasonably infer, that as no article found upon the mummies
indicates a higher degree of art than was possessed by the southern
Indians, as the physical changes are owing to casual _post mortem_
circumstances, as we have positive authority that certain tribes were
accustomed to preserve the corpses of their chiefs; and lastly, as we
have many evidences to show that such tribes, or those closely
associated with them, once dwelt further north than they were first
found, consequently the deposition of the mummies must be ascribed to a
race who dwelt near the region where they occur, at the time of its
exploration by Europeans.
APPENDIX III.
THE PRECIOUS METALS POSSESSED BY THE EARLY FLORIDIAN INDIANS.
The main idea that inspired the Spanish expeditions to Florida was the
hope of discovering riches there, equal to the gorgeous opulence of Peru
and Mexico. Although the country was supposed to be north of the
auriferous zone--in accordance with which geological notion in his map
of the world (1529) Diego de Ribero inscribes on the land marked “Tierra
de Garay,” north of the Gulf of Mexico, now West Florida, “This land is
poor in gold, as it lies too far from the tropic of Cancer”[360]--yet an
abiding faith in its riches was kept alive by Spanish traders obtaining
from time to time morsels of gold from the natives. As early as the
first voyage of De Leon (1512), they possessed and used it as an article
of barter in small quantities.[361] The later explorers, Narvaez, De
Soto, Ribaut, and Laudonniére, report both gold and silver, but never,
as far as their own observations went, in any abundance. The savages
were always eagerly questioned as to its origin and always returned one
of two answers; either that they had pilfered it from the wrecks of
vessels driven on their coasts, or else they referred the inquirer to a
distant and mountainous country to the north, known both to the nations
on the Gulf of Mexico, those at the extreme south of the peninsula, and
those on the Atlantic coast as far north as the Savannah river, as
Apalache. Here, said the rumors, the men wore cuirasses of gold and
shields of burnished silver, while the women were impeded in their
dancing by the weight of their golden ornaments and strings of pearls.
We have seen that this name was at one period applied to a large area of
country, and hence have no difficulty in appreciating the error that
Narvaez committed when he supposed the small town of that name east of
the Apalachicola to contain the major part of the nation. Fontanedo,
whose long residence among the Indians renders him one of our best
authorities on certain points, says expressly that the snowy mountains
of Onagatano whence the gold was obtained were the _furthermost
possessions of Apalache_.[362]
There is a general similarity in the accounts of the direction and
remoteness of the mines. The coast tribes north of the St. Johns river
had pieces of _sieroa pira_, red metal, which was tested by a goldsmith
who accompanied Laudonniére and found to be pure gold. When asked where
this was obtained they pointed to the north. Another chief who gave them
slips of silver said it came from a country at the foot of lofty
mountains ten long days’ journey inland, towards the north. A third had
small grains of gold, silver, and copper, procured, according to his own
account, by washing the sands of a creek that flowed at the base of
lofty mountains five or six days journey in a northwesterly direction.
The artist Le Moyne de Morgues, drawing somewhat on his imagination,
represents in his forty-first sketch this method of cleaning it. Hence
on some maps of a very early period the southern Alleghanies bear the
name _Apalatcy Montes Auriferi_. Years afterwards, rumors derived from
the Indians were rife among the Spanish colonists of a “very rich and
exceeding great city, called La Grand Copal, among the mountains of Gold
and Chrystal,” fifteen or twenty days journey northwest of St.
Augustine.[363]
Now as the gold mines of Georgia and Carolina lie about three hundred
miles north or northwest of Florida, such accounts as these can leave no
reasonable doubt but that they were known to the Indians, and to a
certain extent worked before the arrival of the white man. Indeed, may
we not impute to them the ancient and unrecorded mining operations,
signs of which are occasionally met with in the gold country of Georgia?
Such are the remains of what are called “furnaces,” the marks of
excavations, various rude metallurgical instruments, the buried log
houses, and other tokens of a large population in some remote past,
found from time to time in the vicinity of Dahlonega and various parts
of the Nacooche valley.[364] These were referred by the finders to De
Soto, who offers a favorite and ready explanation for any construction
of unknown age, in that part of our country; thus I have been told that
the bone mounds in Florida were the burial places of his soldiers, and
on one occasion a post pliocene bank of shells on Tampa Bay was pointed
out to me as the ruins of one of his forts. It is unnecessary to add
that the soldiers under this ill-fated leader spent no time in digging
gold either in north Georgia or anywhere else.
That in the course of barter small quantities of the metals here
obtained--for we must ascribe to shipwrecks the “lumps of gold several
pounds in weight” said to have been found in modern times on the shores
of Florida and Carolina[365]--should have gradually proceeded to the
nations on the shores of the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico, and even
to the Caloosas in South Florida, four hundred miles from their starting
point, will not astonish any one acquainted with the extent to which the
transportation of metals was carried by the aborigines in other portions
of the continent.
END.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Sommation à faire aux Habitants des Contrees et Provinces qui
s’étendent depuis la Riviére des Palmes et le cap de la Floride.
Extrait du livre des copies des Provinces de la Floride, Seville
Chambre du Commerce, 1527. It is the first piece in Ternaux-Compans’
_Recueil des Pièces sur la Floride_.
[2] Naufragios de Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca en la Florida,
Valladolid, 1555; republished by Barcia, in the Historiadores
Primitivos de las Indias Occidentales, Tomo II., Madrid, 1749;
translated by Ramusio, Viaggi, Tom. III., Venetia, 1556, from which
Purchas made his abbreviated translation, Vol. IV., London, 1624;
translated entire, with valuable notes and maps by Buckingham Smith,
Washington, 1851. French translation by Ternaux-Compans, Paris, 1837.
[3] Asiento y capitulacion hecho por el capitan Hernando de Soto, con
el Emperador Carlos V., para la Conquista y Poblacion de la Provincia
de la Florida, y encomienda de la Gobernacion de la Isla de Cuba,
1537. Printed in 1844, in the preface to the Portuguese Gentleman’s
Narrative, by the Lisbon Academy of Sciences, from the manuscript in
the Hydrographical Bureau of Madrid.
[4] Lettre écrite par l’Adelantade Soto, au Corps Municipal de la
Ville de Santiago, de l’Isle de Cuba. In Ternaux-Compans’ Recueil des
Pieces sur la Floride.
[5] Relation de ce que arriva pendant le Voyage du Capitaine Soto, et
Details sur la Nature des pays qu’il parcourut, par Luis Hernandez
de Biedma; first printed in Ternaux-Compan’s _Recueil_; Eng. trans.
by Rye, appended to the Hackluyt Society’s edition of the Portuguese
Gentleman’s Narrative, London, 1852.
[6] Relacão Verdadeira dos Trabalhos [=q] ho Gouernador dō Fernādo
d’ Souto y certos Fidalgos Portugueses passarom no d’ scobrimēto da
provincia da Frolida. Agora nouamēte feita per hū Fidalgo Deluas,
8vo., Evora, 1557; reprinted, 8vo., Lisboa, 1844, by the Academia
Real das Sciencias, with a valuable preface. It was “contracted” by
Purchas, vol. IV., London, 1624; translated entire by Hackluyt, under
the title, “Virginia richly valued by the Description of Florida, her
next Neighbor,” published both separately and in his Collections, vol.
V., and subsequently by Peter Force, Washington, 1846, and by the
Hackluyt Society, with a valuable introduction by J. T. Rye, London,
1852; another “very inferior” translation from the French, London,
1686. French trans. by M. D. C. (M. de Citri de la Guette), 12mo.,
Paris, 1685, and again in two parts, 1707-9. Dutch trans. in Van der
Aa’s Collection, 8vo., 1706, with “schoone kopere Platen,” and a map.
[7] Buckingham Smith, Translation of Cabeza de Vaca, p. 126.
[8] Herrera, Dec. VII., cap. x., p. 16.
[9] Ticknor, in his History of Spanish Literature, says 1540; the
Biographie Universelle, 1530; errors that may be corrected from the
Inca’a own words: “Yo nasci el año mil y quinientes y treinta y
nueve.” Commentarios Reales, Parte Segunda, Lib. II., cap. xxv.
[10] La Florida del Inca; Historia del Adelantado Hernando de Soto,
Governador y Capitan General del Reino de la Florida, y de otros
Heroicos Caballeros, Españoles y Indios; 4to, Lisbona, 1605; folio,
Madrid, 1723; 12mo., Madrid, 1803. French trans. by St. Pierre
Richelet, Paris, 1670, and 1709; Leyde, 1731; La Haye, 1735; by J.
Badouin, Amsterdam, 1737. German trans. from the French, by H. S.
Meier, Zelle, 1753; Nordhausen, 1785. Fray Pedro Abiles in the Censura
to the second Spanish edition, speaks of a garbled Dutch translation
or imitation, under the title (I retain his curious orthography), _Der
West Indis che Spiegel Durch Athanasium Inga, Peruan von Cusco, T.
Amsterdam, by Broer Jansen, 1624_.
[11] The Conquest of Florida by Hernando de Soto, 2 vols. 8vo.,
Philadelphia, 1835; revised edition, 1 vol., 8vo., New York, 1851,
with a map of De Soto’s route.
[12] Charlevoix’ scheme may be found in his Histoire de la Nouvelle
France; De l’Isle’s in the fifth volume of the Voyages au Nord, and
in his Atlas Nouveau; Homans’ is quoted by Warden in the Chronologie
Historique de l’Amerique; all in the first half of the eighteenth
century.
[13] Travels into the Arkansa Territory, in 1819, Phila., 1821.
[14] Natural and Civil History of Florida.
[15] Transactions of the American Antiquarian Society, vol. II.
[16] Antiquarian Researches.
[17] History of the Discovery and Settlement of the Valley of the
Mississippi, New York, 1846, vol. I.
[18] History of Alabama, and incidentally of Georgia and Mississippi,
vol. I.
[19] Southern Monthly Magazine and Review for Jan., 1839.
[20] History of the Conquest of Florida.
[21] History of Louisiana.
[22] Life, Travels, and Adventures of Ferdinand de Soto, 8vo.,
Philadelphia, 1858; an excellent popular compend.--Mr. Schoolcraft, in
the third volume of the History of the Indian Tribes, has described
from personal examination the country in the vicinity of the Ozark
mountains, with reference to the westernmost portion of De Soto’s
route.
[23] Relation de la Floride pour l’ Illustrissime Seigneur, Vice Roi
de la Nouvelle Espagne, apporté par Frére Gregorio de Beteta; in
Ternaux-Compans’ _Recueil_.
[24] Compte Rendu par Guido de las Bazares, du voyage qu’il fait pour
découvrir les ports et les baies qui sont sur la côte de la Floride;
in Ternaux-Compans’ _Recueil_.
[25] Lettre du vice-roi de la Nouvelle Espagne, Don Luis de Velasco,
à sa Sacrée Majesté, Catholique et Royale, sur les affaires de la
Floride. De Mexico, le 24 Septembre, 1559; in Ternanx-Compans’
_Recueil_.
[26] Bancroft, History of the United States, vol. I, p. 60.
[27] Memoire sur la Floride, ses Côtes et ses Habitants, qu’ aucun de
ceux qui l’ont visité ont su d’écrire; in Ternaux-Compans’ _Recueil_.
[28] Herrera, Dec. VIII., lib. IX., cap. xviii.
[29] The whole and true Discoverye of Terra Florida, (Englished, The
Flourishing Land) conteyning as well the wonderful straunge Natures
and Manners of the People, with the merveylous Commodities and
Treasures of the Country; as also the pleasant Portes and Havens and
Wayes thereunto, never found out before the last year, 1562. Written
in French, by Captain Ribauld, the fyrst that whollye discovered the
same, and now newly set forthe in Englishe, the xxx. of May, 1563.
Reprinted by Hackluyt, in his small black letter volume of 1583, but
not in the folio collection.
[30] Jared Sparks, Life of Jean Ribault, American Biography, vol.
VII., p. 147.
[31] Coppie d’vne Lettre venant de la Floride, envoyée à Rouen, et
depuis au Seigneur d’Eueron, ensemble le Plan et Portraict du Fort que
les François y out faict. Paris, 1565; reprint, without the “Plan et
Portraict,” in Ternaux-Compans’ _Recueil_.
[32] Histoire Memorable du dernier Voyage aux Indes, Lieu appellée
la Floride, fait par le capitaine Jean Ribaut et entrepris par
comandement du Roi en l’an 1565, Lyons, 1566; another edition at
Dieppe the same year, with the title “Discours de l’Histoire de la
Floride,” &c. Sparks says, “At least three editions were published
the same year.” Ternaux-Compans republished the Lyons edition in his
_Recueil_, which differs somewhat from that of Dieppe.
[33] “Pour vieillard que je suis et tout gris;” Sparks, mistaking the
last word for _gros_, rather ludicrously translates this, “Old man as
he was and very corpulent.”--Life of Jean Ribault, p. 148.
[34] Sparks, ibid., p. 149.
[35] Brevis Narratio eorum quæ in Floridâ Americæ Provinciâ, Gallis
acciderunt, secundâ in illam Navigatione, Duce Renato de Laudonniere
Classis præfecto: Anno MDLXIIII., Francofurti ad Mœnum, 1591.
[36] Epistle Dedicatorie, Vol. III., p. 364.
[37] This seems to have escaped the notice of Mr. Sparks. It is in
Ternaux-Compans’ _Recueil des Pièces sur la Floride_, appended to the
Compte-Rendu of Guido de las Bazares, without a distinct title.
[38] Memoire de l’heureux résultat et du bon Voyage que Dieu notre
Seigneur a bien voulu accorder à la flotte qui partit de la Ville de
Cadiz pour se rendre à la Côte et dans la Province de la Floride, et
dont était général l’illustre Seigneur Pedro Menendez de Aviles; in
Ternaux-Compans’ _Recueil_.
[39] “Les François furent merveilleusement oultrez d’une silasche
trahison, et d’une si detestable cruaulté. La Reprinse de la Floride;
Ternaux-Compans” _Recueil_, p. 306.
[40] Une Requête au Roi, faite en forme de Complainte par les Femmes
Veufues, petits Enfans Orphelins, et autres leurs Amies, Parents et
Alliez, de ceux qui out été cruellement envahis par les Espagnoles en
la France Antharctiques dite la Floride, Mai 22, 1566: it is printed
“in one of the editions of Challeux _Discours_, and also at the end of
Chauveton’s French translation of Benzoni, Geneva, 1579. There are two
Latin translations, one by Chauveton appended to his Brevis Historia,
and also to the sixth part of De Bry; the other by an unknown hand
contained in the second part. These are free translations, but they
accord in the essential points.” Jared Sparks, Appendix to Life of
Ribaut, American Biography, vol. VII., pp. 153-4.
[41] La Reprinse de la Floride par le capitaine Gourgues; Revue
Retrospective, seconde série, Tome II.; Ternaux-Compans’ _Recueil_.
The latter was not aware of the prior publication in the Revue.
[42] De Navigatione Gallorum in Terram Floridam, deque clade an. 1565
ab Hispanis acceptâ. Antwerpiæ, 1568, 8vo. Barcia erroneously adds a
second edition of 1583.
[43] Rich (Bibliotheca Americana) incorrectly states 1565.
[44] De Gallorum Expeditione in Floridam et clade ab-Hispanis non
minus iniusté quam immaniter ipsis illata, Anno MDLXV. Brevis
Historia; Calveton, Novæ Novi Orbis Historiæ, Genevæ, 1578; De Bry,
Peregrinationes, Pars VI.; French trans. in Chauveton’s French trans.
of Benzoni, 1579. For the notice of this work I am principally
indebted to Sparks.
[45] Life of John Ribault, comprising an account of the first Attempts
of the French to found a Colony in North America, Boston, 1845; in
Vol. VII. of Sparks’ American Biography.
[46] L’Histoire Notable de la Floride située es Indes Occidentales;
Contenant les troys Voyages faits en icelle par certains Capitaines
et Pilotes François, descrits par le Capitaine Laudonniére, qui y a
commandé l’espace d’un an troys moys; à laquelle a esté adjousté un
quatriesme voyage par le Capitaine Gourgues. Mise en lumière par M.
Basanier, Gentil-homme François Mathematicien. Paris, 1586, 8vo.,
124 pp; reprinted Paris, 1853, with an _Avertissement_. Eng. trans.
London, 4to, 1586, by R. H. (Richard Hackluyt,) who included it in his
folio of 1600, reprinted in 1812.
[47] Voyages, Relations, et Memoires Originaux pour servir à
l’Histoire de l’Amerique; seconde série; Recueil des Pieces sur la
Floride, Paris, 1841.
[48] The Relation of Pedro Morales, a Spanyard which Sir Francis Drake
brought from St. Augustines in Florida, where he remayned sixe yeeres,
touching the state of those partes, taken from his mouth by Richard
Hackluyt, 1586.
The relation of Nicholas Bourgoignon, aliâs Holy, whom Sir Francis
Drake brought from St. Augustine, also in Florida, where he had
remayned sixe yeeres, in mine and Master Heriot’s hearing. Voyages,
Vol. III., pp. 432-33.
[49] Varia Historia de la Nueva España y la Florida; Madrid, 1596;
Valladolid, 1634.
[50] Cedulas y Provisiones Reales de las Indias; Varios Informes y
Consultos de differentes Ministros sobre las Cosas de la Florida; 4to
Madrid, 1596.
[51] Relacion de los Martires que ha avido en la Florida; 4to,
(Madrid?) 1604.
[52] Nicolas Antonio, Bibliotheca Hispana Nova, Tom. II., p. 43, and
Compare “Garcilasso, Commentarios Reales, Parte II., lib. VII.”
[53] Barcia, Ensayo Cronologico, p. 181.
[54] “En breve tiempo hizó (Padre Antonio Sedeño) Arte para
aprenderla, y Catecismo para enseñar la Doctrina Cristiana à los
Indios.” Barcia, Ensayo Cronologico, p. 138. His labors have escaped
the notice of Ludewig in his Literature of American Aboriginal
Languages. Though they are the first labors, before him the French
on the St. Lawrence had obtained lists of words in the native tongue
which still remain, and Laudonniére, on the first voyage of Ribaut,
(1562,) says of the Indians near the Savannah river, “cognoissans
l’affection que j’avois de sçavoir leur langage, ils m’ invitoient
après à leur demander quelque chose. Tellement que mettant par escrit
les termes et locutions indiennes, je pouvois entendre la plus
grande part de leur discours.” Hist. Notable de la Floride, p. 29.
Unfortunately, however, he did not think these worthy of publication.
[55] Confessionario en Lengua Castellana y Timuquana. Impreso con
licencia en Mexico, en la Emprenta de la viuda de Diego Lopez Daualos;
Año de 1613, 12mo., 238 leaves. Nicolas Antonio says 1612, 8vo., but
this is probably a mistake.
Grammatica de la Lengua Timuquana, 8vo., Mexico, 1614; not mentioned
by Ludewig.
Catecismo y Examen para los que comulgan, 8vo., Mexico, 1614;
reprinted “en la imprenta de Juan Ruyz,” 8vo., 1627.
[56] Ludewig says Toledo; Torquemada calls him “Natural de
Castro-Urdiales,” but Nicolas Antonio says expressly, “Franciscus
de Pareja, Auñonensis (Toletanæ dioecesis Auñon oppidum est).”
Bibliotheca Hispana Nova, Tom. I., p. 456. Besides this writer, see
for particulars of the life of Pareja, Torquemada, Monarquia Indiana,
Lib. XIX., cap. xx, p. 350, and Barcia, Ensayo Cronologico, pp. 167,
195, 203.
[57] Ludewig, Literature of American Aboriginal Languages, p. 242.
[58] Voiages aux Indes Occidentales; traduits de l’Espagnol;
Amsterdam, 1722. Dutch trans. the same year. Another edition under the
title, Recueil de Voyages dans l’Amerique Meridionale, Paris, 1738,
which Brunet does not notice.
[59] Relacion de los Viages que los Españoles han hecho a las Costas
del Seno Mexicano y la Florida desde el año de 1685 hasta el de 1693,
con una nueva Descripcion de sus Costas.
[60] Memorial en Derecho al Rei sobre la Visita à la Florida y otras
Cosas, folio, Madrid, 1690.
[61] “Solo sirven de dar Escandalo al Vulgar en los Excesos impatados
à unos y otros Individuos,” Barcia, Ensayo Chronologico, p. 300.
[62] God’s Protecting Providence Man’s Surest Help and Defence, In the
times of the greatest difficulty and most Imminent danger, Evidenced
in the Remarkable Deliverance of divers Persons from the devouring
Waves of the Sea, amongst which they suffered Shipwrack, And also
from the more cruelly devouring jawes of the inhumane Cannibals of
Florida. Faithfully related by one of the Persons concerned therein.
Philadelphia, 1699, 1701, and a _fourth_ edition, 1751. London, 1700.
German trans. Erstaunliche Geschichte des Schiffbruches den einige
Personen im Meerbusen von Florida erlitten, Frankfort, 1784, and
perhaps another edition at Leipzic.
[63] Thomas, History of Printing in America, vol. II. p. 25.
[64] The Successes of the English in America, by the March of Colonel
Moore, Governor of South Carolina, and his taking the Spanish Town of
St. Augustine near the Gulph of Florida. And by our English Fleete
sayling up the River Darian, and marching to the Gold Mines of Santa
Cruz de Cana, near Santa Maria. London, 1702; reprinted in an account
of the South Sea Trade, London, 1711. _Bib. Primor. Amer._
[65] See the note on his New Map of the North Parts of America,
London, 1720, headed “Explanation of an Expedition in Florida Neck by
Thirty Three Iamasee Indians, Accompany’d by Capt. T. Nairn.”
[66] A voyage to Georgia, begun in the year 1735, by Francis Moore;
London, 1741; reprinted in the Collection of the Georgia Historical
Society, Vol. I.
An Impartial Account of the Expedition against St. Augustine under the
command of General Oglethorpe; 8vo., London, 1742. (_Rich._)
Journal of an Expedition to the Gates of St. Augustine in Florida,
conducted by General Oglethorpe. By G. L. Campbell; 8vo., London,
1744. (_Watts._)
[67] They are in the Rev. George White’s Historical Collections of
Georgia, pp. 462, sqq., and in Harris’s Memorials of Oglethorpe.
[68] An extract may be found in Fairbank’s History and Antiquities of
St. Augustine.
[69] History of the Florida War. Ch. viii.
[70] History of St. Augustine. Ch. xiv.
[71] Statements made in the Introduction to a Report on General
Oglethorpe’s Expedition to St. Augustine. In B. R. Carroll’s Hist.
Colls. of South Carolina, Vol. II., New York, 1836. Various papers
in the State Paper Office, London, mentioned in the valuable list in
the first volume of the Colls. of the S. Car. Hist. Soc. (Charleston,
1857) which further illustrate this portion of Floridian history, I
have, for obvious reasons, omitted to recapitulate here.
[72] Ensayo Cronologico para la Historia General de la Florida, fol.
Madrid, 1723.
[73] Jared Sparks, Life of Ribaut, p. 155.
[74] Nat. and Civil Hist. of Fla., p. 175.
[75] An Account of the First Discovery and Natural History of
Florida, with a Particular Detail of the several Expeditions made on
that Coast. Collected from the best Authorities by William Roberts.
Together with a Geographical Description of that Country, by Thomas
Jefferys. 4to, London, 1763, pp. 102.
[76] A description of East Florida. A Journal upon a Journey from St.
Augustine up the River St. Johns as far as the Lakes. 4to., London,
1766; 1769; and a third edition whose date I do not know. Numerous
letters interchanged between John Bartram and Peter Collinson relative
to this botanical examination of Florida, embracing some facts not
found in his Journal, are preserved in the very interesting and
valuable Memorials of John Bartram and Humphrey Marshall, by Dr. Wm.
Darlington, p. 268, sqq. (8vo. Phila., 1849.)
[77] Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West
Florida, and the Cherokee Country, Phila., 1791; 1794. London, 1792.
Dublin, 1793. French trans. by P. V. Benoist, Voyage dans les Parties
Sud de l’Amerique, Septentrionale, Paris, 1801; 1807.
[78] A Concise Natural History of East and West Florida. New
York printed: sold by R. Aitken, Bookseller, opposite the London
Coffee-House, Front Street, 1776.
[79] The case of Mr. John Gordon with respect to the Title to certain
Lands in East Florida, &c. With an Appendix and Plan. 4to, pp. 76,
London, 1772. (_Rich._)
[80] Fairbanks, Hist. and Antiqs. of St. Augustine, p. 164, seq.
[81] He did not meet with that success which attended a similar
experiment in Canada, so amusingly described by Baron de La Hontan.
For some particulars of interest consult Bartram, Travels, p. 94,
seq., Vignoles, Obs. on the Floridas, p. 73.
[82] Sketches, Historical and Descriptive, of Louisiana, vol. I, 8vo.,
Ch. II. Philadelphia, 1812.
[83] Notice sur le Colonie Greque établie à New Smyrna (Floride) dans
l’année, 1768. Societe de Geographie, T. VII., p. 31. (_Koner._)
[84] G. R. Fairbanks, Hist. and Antiqs. of St. Augustine, Ch. XVIII.
See also for other particulars, Bartram, Travels, p. 144, and note,
Vignoles, Obs. on the Floridas, p. 72, J. D. Schöpf, Reise---nach,
Ost-Florida, B. II., s. 363, 367, seq., who knew Turnbull personally
and defends him.
[85] Reise durch einige der mitlern und südlichen Vereinigten
Nordamerikanischen Staaten nach Ost-Florida und der Bahama-Inseln. 2
Th., 8vo., Erlangen, 1788.
[86] The Journal of an Expedition during the years 1796-1800,
for determining the Boundaries between the United States and the
Possessions of his Catholic Majesty in America, 4to., Philadelphia,
1814.
[87] A Description of East and West Florida and the Bahama Islands, 1
Vol. 8vo. Philadelphia, 1813. (_Bib. Univ. des Voyages._)
[88] Geographical and Historical Dictionary of America and the West
Indies; translated, with valuable additions, by G. R. Thompson, 5
vols., 4to, London, 1812.
[89] An account of this tribe by Major C. Swan, who visited them in
1791, has been published by Schoolcraft in the fifth volume of the
Hist. and Statistics of the Indian Tribes.
[90] Giddings, Exiles of Florida, p. 39, note.
[91] Narrative of a Voyage to the Spanish Main by the ship Two
Friends, the Occupation of Amelia Island by McGregor, Sketches of the
Province of East Florida, and Anecdotes of the Manners of the Seminole
Indians, 8vo., London, 1819.
Memoir of Gregor McGregor, comprising ---- a Narrative of the
Expedition to Amelia Island. By M. Rafter. 8vo., Stockdale, 1820.
(_Rich._)
[92] Reliquiæ Baldwinianæ; Selections from the Correspondence of the
late Wm. Baldwin, M. D., compiled by Wm. Darlington, M. D. 12mo.
Phila., 1843.
[93] Notices of East Florida, and the Sea Coast of the State of
Georgia; in a series of Letters to a Friend in Pennsylvania. With an
Appendix, containing a Register of the Weather, and a Calendarium
Floræ. The friend here referred to was Dr. Wm. Darlington. The
materials for the Calendarium are preserved in the letters to Dr.
Muhlenberg.
[94] J. L. Rattenbury. Remarks on the Cession of Florida to the United
States of America, and on the necessity of acquiring the Island of
Cuba by Great Britain. Second edition, with considerable additions,
printed exclusively in the Pamphleteer. London, 1819.
Memoir upon the Negotiations between Spain and the United States,
which led to the Treaty of 1819; with a Statistical Notice of Florida,
8vo., Washington, 1821.
[95] A Memoir of the Geography, and Natural and Civil History of East
Florida, 8vo., Philadelphia, 1821.
[96] Sketches of the History and Topography of Florida, 8vo., New
York, 1821.
[97] Compare the North Am. Review, Vol. XIII., p. 98, with the same
journal, Vol. XXVI., p. 482. (_Rich._)
[98] Notices of East Florida, with an Account of the Seminole Nation
of Indians. By a recent Traveller in the Province. Printed for the
Author. 8vo. Charleston, 1822. pp. 105.
[99] Observations on the Floridas. 8vo. New York, 1823. pp. 197.
[100] Answers of David B. McComb, Esq., with an accompanying Letter of
General Lafayette. 8vo. Tallahassie, 1827. See the North Am. Review,
Vol. XXVI., p. 478.
[101] Oration delivered by Colonel James Gadsden to the Florida
Institute of Agriculture, Antiquities and Science, at its first Public
Anniversary, Thursday, Jan. 4th, 1827. See the North Am. Review, Vol.
XXV., p. 219.
[102] Message of the President in relation to the Survey of a Route
for a Canal between the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean; with
the Report of the Board of Internal Improvement on the same, with a
general map annexed, February 28, 1829. A flowery article of ten pages
may be found on this in the Southern Review, Vol. VI., p. 410.
[103] Titles and Legal Opinions on Lands in East Florida belonging to
Richard S. Hackley, 8vo., Fayetteville, (N. Car.,) 1826, pp. 71. See
the North American Review, Vol. XXIII., p. 432. Hackley’s grant is
laid down on Williams’ Map.
[104] A View of West Florida, embracing its Topography, Geography,
&c., with an Appendix treating of its Antiquities, Land Titles, and
Canals, and containing a Chart of the Coast, a Plan of Pensacola, and
the Entrance of the Harbor. 8vo. Phila., 1827, pp. 178.
[105] The Territory of Florida; or Sketches of the Topography, Civil
and Natural History of the Country, the Climate and the Indian Tribes,
from the First Discovery to the Present Time. 8vo. New York, 1837.
[106] The War in Florida; being an Exposition of its Causes and an
accurate History of the Campaigns of Generals Gaines, Clinch and
Scott. By a late Staff Officer. 8vo. Baltimore, 1836, pp. 184.
[107] History of the Florida Campaigns. 12mo. Charleston, 1837.
[108] In the Quarterly Anti-Slavery Magazine. (Giddings, Exiles of
Florida, p. 99, note.)
[109] A Narrative of the Early Days and Remembrances of Oceola
Nikkanoche, Prince of Econchatti, a young Seminole Indian. Written by
his Guardian. 8vo. London, 1841, pp. 228.
[110] The Origin, Progress, and Conclusion of the Florida War. 8vo.
New York, 1848.
[111] The Exiles of Florida; or, the Crimes Committed by our
Government against the Maroons, who fled from South Carolina and other
Slave States, seeking Protection under Spanish Laws. 8vo. Columbus,
(Ohio,) 1858.
[112] Memoir to accompany a Military Map of Florida South of Tampa
Bay, compiled by Lieutenant J. C. Ives, Topographical Engineer. War
Department, April, 1856. 8vo. New York, 1856, pp. 42.
[113] A Winter in Florida and the West Indies. 12mo. New York, 1839.
[114] Letters from the United States, Canada and Cuba. New York, 1856.
[115] Sketches of St. Augustine, with a View of its History and
Advantages as a Resort for Invalids. By R. K. Sewall. 8vo. New York,
1848, pp. 69.
[116] The History and Antiquities of the City of St. Augustine,
Florida, comprising some of the most Interesting Portions of the Early
History of Florida. 8vo. New York, 1858.
[117] Memoire sur la Floride du Milieu, Comptes-Rendus, T. XIV., p.
518; T. XV., p. 1045.
[118] Comptes Rendus, XV., p. 1047.
[119] Repertorium ueber die ---- auf dem Gebiete der Geschichte
erscheinenen Aufsätze, u. s. w. Berlin, 1852.
[120] _Bacalaos_, the Spanish word for codfish.
[121] See A. v. Humboldt’s Introduction to Dr. T. W. Ghillany’s
Geschichte des Seefahrers Ritter Martin Behaim, s. 2-5, in which work
these two maps are given.
[122] Many of the names on this map are also on the land called Terra
de Cuba, north-west of the island Isabella, Cuba proper, on the globe
of Johann Schoner, Nuremburg, 1520. A copy of a portion of the globe
is given by Ghillany in the work just mentioned. For an inspection of
the original maps of Ptolemy of 1508 and 1513, I am indebted to the
kindness of Peter Force, of Washington.
[123] Otros conocieron ser tierra firme; y de este parecer fue
siempre Anton de Alaminos, Piloto, que fue con Juan Ponce. Barcia,
Introduccion al Ensayo Chronologico.
[124] Herrera, Dec. I., Lib. I., cap. iii., p. 91.
[125] For a description of this and other maps of America during the
sixteenth century, see Dr. Ghillany, ubi suprà, p. 58, Anmerk. 17.
[126] See G. R. Fairbanks, History and Antiquities of St. Augustine,
pp. 113, 130, for descriptions of the two latter. A “Geog. Description
of Florida” is said to have appeared at London, in 1665. Possibly it
is the account of Captain Davis’ attack upon St. Augustine.
[127] Descriptio Indiæ Occidentalis, Lib. IV., cap. xiii. (Antwerpt,
1633.)
[128] Southern Review, Vol. VI., p. 410, seq.
[129] Report of F. L. Dancy, State Engineer and Geologist, in the
Message of the Governor of Florida, with Accompanying Documents, for
1855, App., p. 9.
[130] A Description of the Province of Carolina, p. 2, London, 1727.
[131] Trans. Hist. and Lit. Com. of the Am. Phil. Soc., Vol. I., p.
113.
[132] Hist. of the American Indians, p. 358.
[133] Gilii’ Saggio di Storia Americana, Tomo III., p. 375.
[134] Rex qui in hisce Montibus habitabat, Ao. 1562, dicabatur
Apalatcy; ideoque ipsi montes eodem nomine vocantur, is written on the
map of the country in Dapper’s Neue und Unbekaute Welt (Amsterdam,
1673,) probably on the authority of Ribaut.
[135] The plums mentioned by these writers were probably the fruit
of the Prunus Chicasaw. This was not an indigenous tree, but was
cultivated by the Southern tribes. During his travels, the botanist
Bartram never found it wild in the forests, “but always in old
deserted Indian plantations.” (Travels, p. 38.)
[136] See Appendix III.
[137] Histoire Naturelle et Morale des Illes Antilles de l’Amerique,
Liv. II., pp. 331-353. Rotterdam, 1658.
[138] History of the Caribby Islands, London, 1666.
[139] Geographia Exactissima, oder Beschreibung des 4 Theil der ganzen
Welt mit Geographischen und Historischen Relationen, Franckfort am
Mayn, 1679. This is a German translation of D’Abbeville’s geographical
essays. I have not been able to learn when the last part, which
contains Bristock’s narrative, was published in French.
[140] America. London, 1671.
[141] De Nieuwe en Onbekeende Weereld. Amsterdam, 1671.
[142] Die Unbekante Neue Welt. Amsterdam, 1673.
[143] The British Empire in America, Vol. I. London, 1708.
[144] Geschichte von Amerika, B. H. Halle, 1753. The articles in
these volumes were selected with much judgment, and translated by
J. F. Geyfarts and J. F. Schrœter, Baumgarten merely writing the
bibliographical introductions. It contains a curious map entitled
_Gegend der Provinz Bemarin im Königreich Apalacha_.
[145] The Chikasah asserted for themselves the same origin, and even
their Mexican relatives were said to visit them from time to time.
(Adair, Hist. of the North Am. Indians, p. 195.)
[146] Numerous references showing the prevalence of this error are
adduced by D’Orbigny, L’Homme Americain, Tom. II., p. 275, et seq.
Among later authors who have been misled by such authorities are
Humboldt, (“Reise nach dem Tropen, B. V., s. 181,”) and the eminent
naturalist F. J. F. Meyen, (Ueber die Ur-Eingebornen von Peru, s. 6,
in the Nov. Act. Acad. Cæsar. Leopold. Carolin. Nat. Cur. Vol. XVII.,
Sup. I.)
[147] Writers disagree somewhat as to the situation of this
fountain. Hackluyt (Vol. V., p. 251) and Gomara (Hist. de las Indias
Occidentales, Cap. XLV., pp. 31, 35) locate it on the island Boiuca
or Agnaneo, 125 leagues north of Hispaniola. Some placed it on the
island Bimini,--which, says Oviedo, is 40 leagues west of Bahama (Pt.
I., lib. xix., cap. xv., quoted in Navarrete,)--a name sometimes
applied to Florida itself, as on the Chart of Cristobal de Topia
given in the third volume of Navarrete. Herrera, La Vega, Fontanedo,
Barcia, Navarrete and most others agree in referring it to Florida.
Fontanedo confuses it with the river Jordan and the Espiritu Santo or
Mississippi. Gomara (ubi suprà, p. 31) gives a unique interpretation
to this myth and one quite in accordance with the Spanish character,
namely, that it arose from the rare beauty of the women of that
locality, which was so superlative that old men, gazing upon it, would
feel themselves restored to the vigor of youth. In this he is followed
by Ogilby. (America, p. 344.)
[148] See Appendix I. The later Indians of Florida seem to have
preserved certain relics of a superstitious veneration of the aqueous
element. Their priests had a certain holy water, sanctified by blowing
upon it and incantation, thought to possess healing virtues (Nar. of
Oceola Nikkanoche, p. 141;) Coacooche said that when the spirit of
his twin-sister came to him from the land of souls, she offered him a
cup of pure water, “which she said came from the spring of the Great
Spirit, and if I should drink of it, I should return and live with her
for ever.” (Sprague, Hist. Florida War, p. 328.)
[149] Parallel myths are found in various other nations. Sir John
Maundeville speaks of the odoriferous fountain of youth near the river
Indus, and Ellis mentions “the Hawaiian account of the voyage of
Kamapiikai to the land where the inhabitants enjoy perpetual health,
where the _wai ora_ (life-giving fountain) removed every internal
malady and external deformity or decrepitude from those who were
plunged beneath its salutary waters.” (Polynesian Researches, Vol I.,
p. 103.)
[150] Fontanedo, Memoire, pp. 17, 18, 19, 32, 39. Gomara, Hist. de las
Indias, cap. XLI., p. 31.
[151] Intro. to the Ensay. Cron.; Fontanedo makes the same statement.
[152] Despues de establecido los Españoles en las Islas de Santo
Domingo, Cuba, y Puerto Rico, averiguaron que los naturales
conservaban algunas ideas vagas de tierras situadas à la parte
septentrional, donde entre otras cosas maravillosas referian la
existencia de cierta fuente y rio, cuyas aguas remozaban à los
viejos que en ella se bañaban; preocupacion tan añeja y arraigada en
los Indios, que aun antes de la llegada de los españoles los habia
conducido à establecer allì una colonia. Viages y Descubrimientos,
Tomo III., p. 50.
[153] L’Art de Verifier les Dates, Chronologie Historique de
l’Amerique, Tome VIII., p. 185.
[154] Herrera, Dec. I., Lib. IX., cap. XI., p. 249.
[155] Barcia, Ensay. Cron., Año 1698, p. 317, Careri, Voyage round the
World, in Churchill’s Coll. Vol. IV., p. 537.
[156] William Bartram, Travels, p. 227.
[157] See Labat, Voyage aux Isles de l’Amerique, Tome I., p. 136, and
Hughes, Nat. Hist. of Barbadoes, p. 5.
[158] Jucaias a conjecturis junctas fuisse quondam reliquis magnis
insulis nostri arbitrantur, et ita fuisee a suis majoribus creditum
incolæ fatentur. Sed vi tempestate paulatim absorpta tellure alterne
secessisse, pelago interjecto uti de messenensi freto est autorum
opinio Siciliam ab Italia dirimente, quod una esset quondam contigua.
De Novo Orbe, Dec. VII., cap. II., p. 468, Editio Hackluyti, Parisiis,
1587.
[159] On this topic consult Baumgarten, Geschichte von Amerika, B.
II., s. 583; Jefferys, Hist. of the French Dominion in America, Pt.
II., p. 181; Adelung, Allgemeine Sprachenkunde, Th. II., Ab. II., s.
681; Barton, New Views of the Tribes of America, p. lxxi.; Hervas,
Catalogo de las Lenguas conocidas, Tomo I., p. 387.
[160] See Appendix II.
[161] Hist. of the North Am. Indians, p. 267.
[162] Trans. Am. Antiq. Soc. Vol. II., p. 103 seq. Bossu found the
tradition of De Soto’s invasion rife among the Alibamons (Creeks) of
his day. (Nouv. Voyages aux Indes Occident. I’t. II., pp. 34, 35.
Paris, 1768.)
[163] Memoires Historiques sur la Louisiane, Tome II., p. 301.
[164] The Cherokees plastered their houses both roofs and walls inside
and out with clay and dried grass, and to compensate for the lowness
of the walls excavated the floor as much as three or four feet. From
this it is probable they were the “Indi delle Vacche” of Cabeza de
Vaca “tra queste case ve ne havea alcune che erano di terra, e tutte
l’altre sono di stuore.” (Di Alvaro Nunnes Relatione in Ramusio,
Viaggi, Tom. III., fol. 327, B.) A similar construction was noticed by
Biedma in Acapachiqui where the houses “etaient creusées sous terre
et rassemblaient à des cavernes,” (Relation, pp. 60, 61,) by the
Portuguese Gentlemen in Capachiqui, (Hackluyt, Vol. V., p. 498.) and
by La Vega among the Cofachiqui, (Conq. de la Florida, Lib. III., cap.
XV., p. 131.) Hence the Cherokees are identical with the latter and
not with the Achalaques, as Schoolcraft erroneously advances. (Thirty
Years with the Indian Tribes, p. 595.) I suppose it was from this
peculiar style of building that the Iroquois called them _Owaudah_, a
people who live in caves. (Schoolcraft, Notes on the Iroquois, p. 163.)
[165] Adair, Hist. of the N. Am. Inds., pp. 413, 420, 421; Wm.
Bartram, Travels, pp. 367, 388; Le Page Dupratz, Hist. of Louisiana,
Vol. II., pp. 351-2.
[166] Hist. N. Am. Inds., pp. 422-3.
[167] François Coreal, Voyages, Tome I., p. 31; Catesby, Account of
Florida and the Bahama Islands, p. viii.
[168] Hist. N. Am. Inds., p. 116.
[169] Nat. Hist. of E. and W. Florida, pp. 71, 83.
[170] Mems. Hist. sur la Louisiane, Tome II., p. 301.
[171] George White, Hist. Colls. of Georgia, p. 423. It has also been
described to me by a gentleman resident in the vicinity.
[172] See the Christian Advocate and Journal for 1832, and the almost
unintelligible abstract of the article in Josiah Priest’s American
Antiquities, pp. 169, 170, (third edition, Albany, 1833.) Though
the account is undoubtedly exaggerated, it would merit further
investigation.
[173] See Appendix II.
[174] I give these according to the orthography of Baumgarten, who may
differ slightly from other writers.
[175] Oratio Dominica Polyglotta, Amstelædami, 1715. He does not state
where he obtained them.
[176] Hewitt, History of South Carolina, Vol. I. p 156.
[177] El Cacique principal de Apalache, Superior de muchos Caciques,
Barcia, Ensay. Cron., p. 323.
[178] Roberts, Hist. of Florida, p. 14.
[179] Schoolcraft’s Ind. Tribes, Vol. V. p. 259.
[180] Schermerhorn, Report on the Western Indians in Mass. Hist.
Colls. Vol. II. (2 ser.,) p. 26; Alcedo, Hist. and Geog. Dict. of
America, Vol. I., p. 82.
[181] Views of Louisiana, p. 150.
[182] Trovarono terre grandi piene di genti molto ben disposte, savie,
politiche, e ben’ ordinate. Bartolome de las Casas, Istoria della
Distruttione dell’ Indie Occidentali, p. 108. Venetia, 1626.
[183] Barcia, Ensay. Cron., p. 71.
[184] Memoire, p. 13.
[185] At what time or by whom Tampa Bay was first so called I have
not been able to learn. Its usual name in early narratives is Baia de
Espiritu Santo, which was given by De Soto; sometimes from separate
discoveries it was called Bahia Honda (Deep Bay,) El Lago de San
Bernardo, Baie de St. Louis, and by the Indiana Culata (Barcia,
Ensayo Cron. p. 342, Torquemada, Monarquia Indiana, Lib. I., Cap.
VI.) Herrera in his map of the Audiencia de la Española marks it “B.
de tampa,” and after him Gerard a Schaagen in the Nov. et Accurat.
Americæ Descriptio.
[186] Williams, Hist. of Florida, pp. 36, 212. Ellicott’s Journal, p.
247. Robert’s Hist. of Florida, p. 17.
[187] Guaicum officinale; the _el palo_ or _el palo santo_ of the
Spaniards.
[188] Barcia, En. Cron. Año 1566.
[189] See Prior’s Journal in Williams’ Florida, p. 299. The name Miami
applied to a tribe in Ohio, and still retained by two rivers in that
State, properly Omaumeg, is said to be a pure Algic word, meaning,
People who live on the peninsula. (Amer. Hist. Mag. Vol. III., p.
90.) We are, however, not yet prepared to accept this explanation as
applicable to the word as it appears in Florida.
[190] Barcia, Ensay. Cron., p. 49, and compare the Hist. Notable, p.
134.
[191] For these facts see Fontanedo’s Memoire, _passim_, and Barcia,
Años 1566, 1567.
[192] Bernard Romans, pp. 291-2.
[193] Desde los Martires al Cañaveral, Herrera, Dec. IV., Lib., IV.,
cap. VII.
[194] Barcia (En. Cron. p. 118) says Ais commences twenty leagues up
the St. Johns river; but distances given by the Spanish historians
were often mere guesses, quite untrustworthy.
[195] Basanier, Hist. Notable, pp. 133-4.
[196] Vignoles, Obs. on the Floridas, pp. 74-5.
[197] Biedma, Relation, p. 53; the Port. Gent. in Hackluyt, V., p.
492; La Vega, Lib. II., cap. x., p. 38.
[198] Irving’s Conquest of Fla., p. 84, note.
[199] Barcia, Año 1567; Fontanedo, pp. 20, 35.
[200] Basanier, Hist. Notable, pp. 190-1, 108-9, 140 sq.
[201] Jusqu’à Mayajuaca, dans la contrée de Ais, vers _le lieu planté
de roseaux_. Fontanedo, Memoire, p. 35. Cañaveral is a Spanish word
signifying the same as the expression I have italicised.
[202] Basanier, Hist. Not. p. 90.
[203] Ibid.
[204] Basanier, Hist. Not. p. 8.
[205] Hackluyt, Vol. V., p. 492, Fontanedo, p. 15.
[206] Les Floridiens ne sement, ne plantent, ne prennent rien ni à la
chasse, ni à la pêche, qui ne soit à la disposition de leurs chefs,
qui distribuent, et donnent, comme il leur plait, etc. François
Coreal, Voiages, Tome I., p. 44. The chiefs on the Bahamas possessed
similar absolute power. (Peter Martyr, De Novo Orbe, Dec. VII., cap.
I., p. 467.)
[207] Basanier, Hist. Not., p. 132.
[208] Basanier, pp. 9, 141.
[209] Fontanedo, pp. 10, 11.
[210] Basanier, Hist. Not. p. 7.
[211] Travels, p. 456.
[212] E. G. Squier, Aborig. Mon. of N. Y., App. pp. 135-7; Serpent
Symbol, pp. 90, 94, 95.
[213] Adair, Hist. N. Am. Inds., p. 205.
[214] They came to meet Narvaez playing on such flutes, “tañendo unas
Flautas de Caña,” Cabeza de Vaca, Naufragios, cap. V.
[215] Bernard Romans, p. 62.
[216] Francisco Ximenez, Origen de los Indios de Guatemala, p. 179.
[217] De Morgues, Brevis Historia, Tab. XXI.
[218] Lettre écrite par l’Adelantade Soto, etc., p. 46.
[219] Brevia Historia, Tab. XXX., and compare the Histoire Memorable,
p. 261.
[220] Naufragios, cap. III.
[221] God’s Protecting Providence, p. 62. This style of building was
common among the Caribs, and may have been derived from them.
[222] Basanier, Hist. Not., pp. 8, 101.
[223] See Mackay, Progress of the Intellect, Vol. II., p. 143, note
152, and authorities there quoted.
[224] Brevis Historia, Tab. XXXV.; Baumgarten, Geschichte von Amerika,
B. I., s. 87.
[225] Klemm, Culturgeschichte der Menscheit, B. II, s. 179.
[226] Basanier, Hist. Not., pp. 43 sqq.
[227] On the Trinity in aboriginal American religions, see Count
Stolberg in the Wiener Yahrbücher der Literatur, B. XVI., s. 278.
[228] God’s Protecting Providence, p. 12.
[229] God’s Protecting Providence, pp. 38, 39.
[230] Hist. of the North Am. Indians, p. 22. He embraces all tribes
“from Hudson Bay to the Mississippi,” and adds that they had no
lascivious or Priapean images or rites, in which he is equally at
fault.
[231] Man hat weder bei den Sudamericanern noch bei den Nördlichen
eigentliche Götzenbilder oder I dole bemerkt. Culturgeschichte
der Menschheit, B. II., s. 172. This is confined of course to the
“Yägervolker.”
[232] Barcia, Ensayo Cron. Año 1566, p. 94; the Port. Gent. in
Hackluyt, Vol. V. p. 491, mentions this as existing among the tribes
near Tampa Bay.
[233] Moris apud illos est primogenitum masculum Regi victimum
offerre, etc. Brevis Historia, Tab. XXXIV.
[234] La Reprinse de la Floride, p. 264.
[235] Wm. Bartram, Travels, p. 263, and compare Adair, Hist. of the
North Am. Inds. pp. 238-9.
[236] Brevis Historia, Tab. XL. Basanier, Hist. Not., pp. 10, 11.
[237] Mackay, Progress of the Intellect, Vol. II., p. 129.
[238] Tucururu or Tacatacuru was on the Atlantic coast south of St.
Augustine, between it and Santa Lucea. (Barcia, En. Cron., p. 121.)
[239] Hervas, Catalogo de las Lenguas de las naciones conocidas, Tom.
I. p. 387. Madrid, 1800-1805.
[240] Mithridates, oder Allgemeine Sprachenkunde, B. III., s. 285.
[241] Gallatin, Trans. Am. Antiq. Soc., Vol. II., p. 178.
[242] Basanier, Hist. Not. pp. 67, 69, 72; Coppie d’une Lettre venant
de la Floride, p. 244.
[243] Trans. Am. Antiq. Soc., Vol. II., p. 106.
[244] Hewitt, Hist. of S. Car., Vol. I., p. 222. He gives 1714 as the
date of this occurrence. But see Carroll’s Hist. Colls. of S. Car.,
Vol. II., p. 353.
[245] On the Yemassees consult Hewitt, ubi suprà; Barcia, En. Cron.
Año 1686; the tracts in Carroll’s Hist. Colls. of S. Car., Vol. II.,
pp. 106, 246, 353, 355; Roberts, Hist. of Florida, p. 15; Notices of
E. Florida, by a recent traveller, p. 57.
[246] On the migrations of this tribe consult the Colls. of the
Georgia Hist. Soc. Vol. I., pp. 145-6; Vol. II., pp. 61, 71; John
Filson; The Disc., Settlement, and Pres. State of Kentucké, App.
3, p. 84; Gallatin in Trans. Am. Antiq. Soc., Vol. II., pp. 84,
95; Notices of E. Fla., by a recent traveller, p. 59; Narrative of
Oceola Nikkanoche, p. 70 et seq.; Moll’s Map of the Northern Parts of
America, and Sprague’s Hist. of the Florida War.
[247] Travels, pp. 388-9, and see p. 486.
[248] Barcia, Ensayo Cronologico, Año 1686, p. 287.
[249] Jedediah Morse, Rep. on Ind. Affairs, App. p. 93, Archæol-Amer.,
Vol. I., p. 273, and others.
[250] Other forms of the same are Little St. Johns, Little Savanna,
Seguano, Suannee, Swannee. It was also called the Carolinian river.
[251] H. R. Schoolcraft, Notes on the Iroquois, p. 161. Adair,
however, says they recorded themselves to be _terræ filii_. (Hist. N.
Am. Inds., p. 257, but compare p. 195.)
[252] For the individual nations composing the confederacy see Romans,
Hist. of Fla., p. 90; Roberts, Hist. of Fla., p. 13, and Adair, p. 257.
[253] Giddings (Exiles of Florida, p. 3) gives the incorrect
translation “runaways,” and adds, “it was originally used in reference
to the Exiles long before the Seminole Indians separated from the
Creeks.” The Upper Creeks called them Aulochawan. (American State
Papers, Vol. V., p. 813.)
[254] Establishment of the Colony of Georgia, pp. 10, 12, in Peter
Force’s Historical Tracts, Vol. I.
[255] Major C. Swan, in Schoolcraft’s Hist. of the Indian Tribes. Vol.
V., pp. 260, 272.
[256] _Smilax_, _China_, and _Zamia pumila_.
[257] On the civilization of the Seminoles, consult Wm. Bartram,
Travels, pp. 192-3, 304, the American Jour. of Science, Vol. IX.,
pp. 133, 135, and XXXV., pp. 58-9; Notices of E. Fla., by a recent
Traveller, and the works on the Florida War.
[258] Narrative of Oceola Nikkanoche, p. 75. The author supposed this
was to receive the injunctions of the dying mother, but more probably
it sprang from that belief in a _metasomatosis_ which prevailed, and
produced analogous customs in other tribes. See La Hontan, Voiages,
Tome I., p. 232; “Brebeuf, Relation de la Nouv. France pour l’an 1636,
ch. IX.” Pedro de Cieza, Travs. in Peru, ch. XXXII., p. 86 in Steven’s
Collection.
[259] Notices of East Fla., by a recent traveller, p. 79. For the
extent and meaning of this singular superstition, see Schoolcraft,
Oneota, pp. 331, 456; Algic Researches, Vol. I., p. 149, note; Hist.
of the Indian Tribes, Vol. III., p. 66; Gregg, Commerce of the
Prairies, Vol. II., p. 271; Bradford, American Antiquities, p. 415;
Mackay, Progress of the Intellect, Vol. I., p. 146, and note^{15}.
[260] Narrative of Oceola Nikkanoche, p. 77.
[261] C. Swan in Schooloraft’s His. Ind. Tribes, Vol. V., p. 260.
[262] By the whites I refer to the descendants of the English of
the northern states. While under the Spanish government, up to the
first Seminole war, their nation was said to be “numerous, proud
and wealthy.” (Vignoles, Obs. on the Floridas, App., p. 215.) This
was owing to the Spanish laws which gave them equal privileges with
white and free colored persons, and drew the important distinction
that they could hold land _individually_, but not _nationally_. How
different these beneficent regulations from the decree of the Florida
Legislature in 1827, that any male Indian found out of the reservation
“shall receive not exceeding thirty-nine stripes on his bare back,
and his gun be taken away from him.” (Laws relating to Inds. and Ind.
Affairs, p. 247, Washington, 1832,) and similar enactments.
[263] Roberts, First Disc. of Fla., p. 90.
[264] Collections of Georgia Hist. Soc. Vol. II., p. 318.
[265] Ibid., p. 73.
[266] Travels, p. 211.
[267] Nat. History, p. 91.
[268] Report on Indian Affairs, p. 33.
[269] Cohen, Notices of Florida, p. 48.
[270] Sprague, Hist. of the Fla. War, p. 19.
[271] American State Papers, Vol. VI., p. 439.
[272] Hist. of the Fla. War, p. 97.
[273] Ibid., p. 409.
[274] Ibid., p. 512.
[275] Ibid.
[276] Relation de la Floride apportée par Frère Gregorio de Beteta, in
Ternaux’s _Recueil_. They did not touch the coast beyond the Bay of
Apalache nor much south of Tampa Bay. Both Barcia (En. Cron. Año 1549)
and Herrera (Dec. VIII., Lib. V., cap. XIV., XV.) say they entered the
latter, but this cannot be, as the supposed description is entirely
inapplicable. For other particulars see Eden’s translation of Peter
Martyr, (fol. 319, Londini, 1555.)
[277] The authority for this, as well as most of the facts in this
chapter where other references are not given, is Barcia’s Ensayo
Cronologico.
[278] Sometimes called Santa Maria or St. Marys; now Amelia Island,
so named, from the beauty of its shores, by Gov. Oglethorpe in 1736.
(Francis Moore, Voyage to Georgia, in Ga. Hist. Soc.’s Colls. Vol. I.,
p. 124)
[279] Called by the natives Ylacco or Walaka, the river of many lakes;
by the French Rivière Mai, as Ribaut entered it on the first of that
month; by the Spaniards Rio Matheo, Rio Picolato, on some charts by
mistake Rio San Augustin, Rio Matanca and Rio Caouita, and not till
much later Rio San Juan, which the English changed to St. Johns, and
St. Whan.
[280] Barcia, p. 123, and cf., p. 128.
[281] Williams, Florida, p. 175.
[282] Though Drake left nothing but the fort, and the dwellings were a
second time destroyed by Col. Palmer, in 1727, yet Stoddard (Sketches
of Louisiana, p. 120) says houses were standing in his time bearing
the date 1571!
[283] Hackluyt, Vol. III., p. 432. Pedro Morales adds, “The greatest
number of Spanyards that have beene in Florida these sixe yeeres, was
300.”
[284] Torquemada, Monarquia Indiana, Lib. XIX., cap. XX., p. 350.
[285] Nat. and Civ. Hist. of Fla., p. 175.
[286] Torquemada, Monarquia Indiana, Lib. XIX., cap. XX., p. 350;
Barcia, Años 1603 and 1612.
[287] L’interieur, non plus que les parties de l’ouest et du Nord
n’est pas en notre pouvoir. Voiages aux Indes Occidentales, T. I., p.
27.
[288] He published two Cedulas Reales for this purpose, bearing the
dates Oct. 20, 1680, and Sept. 30, 1687.
[289] Barcia, p. 317; Careri, Voyage round the World, in Churchill’s
Coll., Vol. IV., p. 537.
[290] God’s Protecting Providence, pp. 77-8.
[291] Maintenant ils sont presque touts Chrètiens. Louys Morery, Le
Grand Dictionnaire Historique, ou le Melange Curieux, Vol. I., Art.
_Apalaches_. (Amsterdam and La Haye, 1702.)
[292] See the Report on Oglethorpe’s Expedition, and Col. Moore’s
Letter to the Governor, in Carroll’s Hist. Colls. of S. C., Vol. II.
[293] Williams, View of W. Fla., p. 107.
[294] Alcedo, Dict. of America, Vol. I., p. 81.
[295] God’s Protecting Providence, pp. 68-9.
[296] Herman Moll, Thesaurus Geographus, Pt. II, p. 211, 4th ed.
London, 1722.
[297] Dickinson, God’s Protecting Prov., p. 63.
[298] Roberts, Hist, of Fla., p. 15, and Francis Moore’s Voyage to
Georgia.
[299] Travels, p. 233.
[300] Travels in E. Fla., p. 32, Darlington, Mems. of Bartram and
Marshall, p. 284.
[301] Nat. Hist. E. and W. Fla., pp. 277-8.
[302] Nat. and Civil Hist. Fla. Preface and p. 175.
[303] See his letter on the Antiquities of the State in Williams’ View
of W. Fla., pp. 105-110.
[304] The War in Fla., by a late Staff Officer, p. 5; see also, the
account of Black Hoof in Morse’s Rep. on Ind. Affairs, App. p. 98, and
cf. Archæol. Am., Vol. I. p. 273.
[305] Dr. Stork, Des. of E. Fla., p. 8.
[306] Capt. Robinson, in Roberts, p. 97.
[307] Roberts, Hist. of Fla., p. 5.
[308] Parliamentary History, Vol. XV., Col. 1301, Art. XX.
[309] Travels, p. 65.
[310] Jour. of Travels in E. Fla., p. 25.
[311] Travels, p. 99.
[312] Ibid., p. 521.
[313] Travels, p. 99.
[314] Au sorty du village d’Edelano, pour venir au port de la rivière
il faut passer par une allée, longue environ de trois cens pas et
large de quinze, aux deux costez de laquelle sont plantez de grands
arbres, &c. Hist. Notable, p. 138.
[315] Il y a au sortir du village une grande allée de trois à quatre
cens pas, laquelle et recouverte de grands arbres des deux costez.
Hist. Not. pp. 164-5.
[316] Conq. de la Florida, Lib. II., P. I, cap. ult.
[317] La Vega, Ibid., Lib. I., cap. V., pp. 30-1.
[318] Lafitau in Baumgarten, Geschichte von Amerika, B. I., s. 71;
Schoolcraft, Algic Researches, Vol. II., pp. 52, 190.
[319] Knight, Anc. Art. sect. 162; Mackay, Progress of the Intellect,
Vol I., p. 198, note^{28}; Montfaucon, Antiquities, Vol. II, p. 235;
Görres, Mythengeschichte, B. I., s. 171.
[320] Real Cedula que contiene el asiento capitulado con Lucas Vasquez
de Aillon, in Navarrete Viages, Tom. III. p. 153; Basanier, Hist.
Notable, p. 29, and comp, p. 78.
[321] Real cedula dando facultad à Francisco de Garay para poblar la
Provincia de Amichel, in Navarrete, Tom. III., p. 148. The account
says they were “de diez à once palmos en alto.”
[322] Histoire de la Virginie, Liv. III., p. 259, (Orleans, 1707.)
[323] Notes on the Iroquois, p. 482.
[324] Letters from the Allegheny Mountains, Let. XX. p. 162.
[325] Archæologia Americana, Vol. I.
[326] On the _rôle_ of trees in primitive religions consult Guigniaut,
Religions de l’Antiquitè, T. I., pp. 81, 150, note, 391, 406.
[327] La Vega, Conq. de la Florida, Lib. I., cap. IV., p. 5.
[328] Ibid. Lib. III., cap. XIV., p. 129. cap. XV., p. 131, et sq.
[329] For descriptions of this mode of interment, essentially the same
in most of the tribes from the Mississippi to the St. Lawrence, and
very widely prevalent in South America, consult Wm. Bartram, Travels,
p. 516; Romans, Nat. Hist. Fla., pp. 88-90; Adair, Hist. N. Am.
Inds., p. 183; Lawson, New Account of Carolina, p. 182, in Stevens’
Collection; Beverly, Hist. de la Virginie, pp. 259-62; Baumgarten,
Ges. von Amerika, B. I., s. 470; Colden, Hist. of the Five Nations, p.
16, and many others.
[330] See an instructive notice from Pere le Petit in the Lettres
Edifiantes et Curieuses, T. IV., pp. 261-2, and the Inca, Lib. II.,
pp. 69-70; Lib. IV., p. 188; Lib. V., pp. 202, 231, &c.
[331] Port. Gent, in Hackluyt, V., p. 489.
[332] Nar. of Oceola Nikkanoche, pp. 71-2. The author speaks of one
“that must have covered two acres of ground,” but this is probably a
misapprehension.
[333] I am aware that Mr. Schoolcraft places the pottery of Florida
intermediate between the coarse work of the northern hunter tribes,
and the almost artistic manufactures of Yucatan and Mexico, (see
an article on the Antiquities of Florida, in the Hist. of the Ind.
Tribes, Vol. III.;) but the numerous specimens obtained in various
parts of the peninsula that I had opportunities to examine, never
seemed to indicate a civilization so advanced.
[334] There is an excellent paper on this topic by the well-known
geologist, Lardner Vanuxem, in the Trans. Am. Assoc. Geol. and
Naturalists, for 1840-42, p. 21. sq.
[335] This is not an invariable proof however; see Tuomey, Geol.
Survey of S. Car., p. 199, note.
[336] Second Visit to the United States, Vol. I., p. 252.
[337] Am. Jour. of Science, Vol. XI., (2 ser.) pp. 164-74.
[338] Le case loro sono edificate di stuore sopra scorze d’ostriche, e
sopra di esse dormono sopra cuoi d’animali. Relatione que fece Alvaro
Nunez, detto Capo di Vaca, Ramusio, Viaggi, T. III., fol. 317., E.
[339] On the geology of these bluffs, see the articles by Mr. Allen,
in the first, and Mr. Conrad in the second volume of the Am. Jour.
Science. (Second series.)
[340] Travels, p. 198.
[341] The peculiar hue of the whole St. Johns system of streams has
been termed by various travellers a light brown, light red, coffee
color, rich umber, and beer color. In the sun it is that of a weak
lye, but in the shade often looks as black as ink. The water is quite
translucent and deposits no sediment. The same phenomenon is observed
in the low country of Carolina, New Jersey, and Lake Superior, and on
a large scale in the Rio Negro, Atababo, Temi, and others of South
America. In the latter, Humboldt (Ansichten der Natur, B. I., p.
263-4) ascribes it “to a solution of carburetted hydrogen, to the
luxuriance of a tropical vegetation, and to the quantity of plants and
herbs on the ground on which they flow.” In Florida, the vast marshes
and hammocks, covered the year round with water from a few inches to
two feet in depth, yet producing such rank vegetation as to block up
the rivers with floating islands, are doubtless the main cause. The
Hillsboro, Suwannee, and others, flowing through the limestone lands
into the Gulf, are on the other hand remarkable for the clarity of
their streams. I have drank this natural decoction when it tasted and
smelt so strongly of decayed vegetable matter as almost to induce
nausea. A fact not readily explained is that while the dark waters of
other regions are marked by a lack of fish and crocodiles, a freedom
from stinging musquitoes, a cooler atmosphere and greater salubrity,
nothing of the kind occurs on these streams.
[342] For particulars concerning some of these, see Wm. Bartram,
Travels, pp. 145, 165, 206, 230; Notices of E. Florida, by a recent
Trav., pp. 28, 44; American Journal of Science, Vol. XXV., p. 165, I.,
(2 ser.) p. 39.
[343] Flint, (Travels, Let. XVI., p. 172,) says that neither of those
found in 1810 measured more than four feet. This is an error. He only
saw the female, whose age was not over fourteen, and the squatting
position in which the body was, deceived him.
[344] Conq. de la Florida, Lib. V., P. II., cap. VIII.
[345] In French’s Hist. Coll. of La., Pt. I., p. 61.
[346] Mems. Hist. sur la Louisiane, T. I., pp. 154-5.
[347] Hist. of Louisiana, Vol. II., p. 230.
[348] A New Account of Carolina, p. 191.
[349] Joutel, Jour. Hist., p. 218; Mems. of Sieur de Tonty, p. 61;
Dupratz, V. II., p. 22; Cabeza de Vaca. in Ramusio, T. III., fol. 317,
E.
[350] Lawson, ubi suprà, p. 180.
[351] It was remarked of the mummy found in the Mammoth cave, “In
the making of her dress there is no evidence of the use of any other
machinery than bone and horn needles.” (Collin’s Kentucky, p. 257.)
[352] Archæologia Americana, Vol. I., p. 230.
[353] Whence the French verb _boucaner_, and the English _buccaneer_.
Possibly the custom may have been introduced among the tribes of the
northern shore of the Gulf by the Caribs.
[354] Dumont, Mems., Hist. sur la Louisiane, T. I, p. 240.
[355] De Bry, Peregrinationes in America, P. I., Tab. XXII.; Beverly,
Hist. de la Virginie, Liv. III., pp. 285-6; Lawson, Acc’t of Carolina,
p. 182; Schoolcraft, Hist. Ind. Tribes, Vol. V., p. 693.
[356] See the Inca, Lib. IV., caps. VIII., IX.
[357] See the Am. Jour. of Science, Vol. I., p. 429; Vol. XXII., p.
124; Collin’s Kentucky, pp. 177, 448, 520, 541; Bradford, Am. Antiqs.,
Pt. I., p. 29.
[358] Dumont, Mems. Hist. T. II., pp. 178, 238; Dupratz, Vol. II., p.
221, and for the latter fact, Mems. of the Sieur de Tonty, p. 61.
[359] Medical Repository, Vol. XVI., p. 148. This opinion is endorsed
by Bradford, Am. Antiqs., p. 31.
[360] Humboldt, Krit. Untersuch. ueber die Hist. Entwickelung der
Geog. Kentnisse der neuen Welt, B. I., s. 322; the same reason is
given by De Laet, Descrip. Ind. Occident. Lib. IV., cap. XIV.
[361] “Guañines de oro,” Navarrete, Viages, Tom. III., p. 52; Herrera,
Dec. I., Lib. IX., cap. XI.
[362] Mais on n’y trouve pas d’or, parce qu’elle est eloignè des
mines d’Onagatono, situées dans les montagnes neigeuses d’Onagatono
dernieres possessions d’Abolachi, Memoire, p. 32.
[363] Pedro Morales, in Hackluyt, Vol. III., p. 432.
[364] See Lanman’s Letters from the Allegheny Mountains, pp. 9, 26,
27; White, Hist. Coll. of Georgia, pp. 487-8.
[365] Humboldt, Island of Cuba, p. 131, note.