Notes on the Floridian Peninsula; its Literary History, Indian Tribes and Antiquities

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 1145,312 (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.313

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,314 and the “Osarios,” bone-houses, in Cofachiqui, among the Cherokees.315 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.316

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,317 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,”318 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,319 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,320 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.321 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,322 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 Lyell323 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,324 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.”325

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,326 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,327 “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,328 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.329 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.