Immokalee. Not even a moving-picture show. Where the very pinnacle of excitement is attained by peeping in the door of the poolroom, or watching country gawks shuffle through the figures of a quadrille to the accompaniment of a mouth organ and a discordant fiddle, where "All Indians are pigs." What else is there to do except get drunk at Immokalee? What goes for liquor does not go for food, and it sometimes happens that they completely run out of grits or coffee or sugar. In the closed season, which is also the season of high water, the family Cypress has been known to come into the Hendry County Reservation outward bound with empty bellies. In either case, drunk or hungry, good old Ivey Byrd, the caretaker, looks after them out of his munificent salary of $25 a month. SECTION 13. THE TREND OF 50 YEARS How does Guava camp differ from the camps in the same locality described by Clay MacCauley 50 years ago? In the matter of dress, the great Seminole turban formerly worn by the men has been discarded; buckskin leggins are never seen, mocassins rarely. The white man's breeches are an acquisition since MacCauley's time. In 1880 the women habitually wore only a skirt and the chemise; 4 or 5 inches of brown belly showed between the two garments, and he says they were forever "pulling down their vests." A half cape was occasionally worn even 50 years ago, but the full cape now worn by the women is a development in the direction of modesty achieved in the half century. Styles in coiffures have changed for both men and women. In 1880 * * * the men cut all their hair close to the head, except a strip about an inch wide, running over the front of the scalp from temple to temple, and another strip of about the same width, perpendicularly to the former, crossing the crown of the head to the nape of the neck. At each temple a heavy tuft is allowed to hang to the bottom of the lobe of the ear. The long hair of the strip crossing to the neck is generally gathered and braided into two ornamental queues. To-day men generally follow white fashions, although I did see Charlie Cypress in Fort Myers with his hair trimmed exactly in the old mode, except that the queue was lacking. Seminole women in 1880 wrought their hair into an elongated cone with bangs in front; to-day they pile it high on their heads, comb the front into a pompadour instead of bangs, slick it down with grease, and confine it under a net. Sewing machines were great rarities in MacCauley's day; to-day every camp has them. The rifle and double-barreled shotgun have replaced the muzzle-loader. The second hand Ford is a modern curse of which MacCauley never dreamed. In 1880 the Seminole's cash income came from hides and pelts plus the plumes of the egret, now banned by law. Game was more plentiful; markets not so good and farther away. Wages for guiding hunters and picking beans are new sources of revenue since the Smithsonian survey. When MacCauley made his survey, the only Seminole he could find who spoke any English was Billy Fewell's brother, Ko-nip-ha-tco, who was staying in Fort Myers with Captain Hendry. To-day prac tically every male Indian speaks at least a few words of English, many can carry on a hesitant conversation. Eight or ten are in school. In 1880 Billy Motlo came into Fort Myers and told captain Hendry the Indians were going to kill Ko-nip-ha-tco because he was adopting the white man's ways; in 1930 I met this same Billy Motlo, now an old, old man, come to Miami to receive treatment from the physician paid by his former arch enemy, the Government. This last is the significant change. At Guava camp is the same type of house, the same campfire as of old; but the Indian who builds it knows at least that he is in Florida to stay. With these facts about a typical camp in mind, we are in position to consider the distribution of camps, the deviations from type, and the collective life of the Florida Seminoles. Before proceeding with that interesting subject, however, a word about their habitat. CHAPTER II THE PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT SECTION 1. NATURAL REGIONS Seminoles in Florida range from the headwaters of the St. Johns to Cape Sable, 180 miles from north to south. THE EVERGLADES The core of this region is the Everglades, a marsh about the size of Connecticut, 40 miles wide by 140 long, extending in majestic sweep from the head of Lake Okeechobee to the Bay of Florida and the Ten Thousand Islands. The boundaries of this region are not everywhere definite, but as mapped by the Florida Geological Survey it embraces approximately 3,000,000 acres. The northern end of this region is a shallow saucer 35 miles across occupied by the second largest lake in the United States, Okeechobee. Five canals now connect Okeechobee with the Atlantic on the east; the Caloosahatchee River connects it with the Gulf. In spite of this tremendous diversion of water which formerly spilled over the brim of the saucer in the wet season, there is an outpouring at the southern end of the Everglades through streams emptying into the Bay of Florida as well as through the Shark, the Harney, Rodgers, and Lostmans Rivers above Cape Sable-altogether too large to be accounted for by precipitation. The whole region is underlaid by limestone, and much of the water of the Everglades must be attributed to subterranean sources. There is no configuration to the surface of the Everglades; it is as flat as the surface of the ocean on a calm day. An ascent of 18 feet from sea level will bring one to Okeechobee. In the older, northern, part of this great plain, the Pliocene shell marl and limestone are overlaid by six or eight feet of peaty muck. This depth of muck is the basis for local settlers distinguishing the "Upper Glades" from the "Lower Glades," for in the southern portion a layer of Pleistocene limestone crops out at the surface or is covered by a very shallow deposition of muck. The most characteristic vegetation of the Everglades is saw grass, a sedge with leaves 6 or 7 feet long, edged with teeth capable of tearing a man and his clothing to tatters. In the Upper Glades, say, for half the distance between Okeechobee and the Bay of Florida, this plant occupies such extensive areas that the Seminoles rarely attempt to cross. The Lower Glades are dotted with hammocks capable of cultivation in the dry season and affording sites for a few permanent camps. And the margins of the Everglades are fringed with plant associations as various as pinelands, prairies, and hammocks where cypress, maple, ash, and elm can (or could) be found. 43095 S. Doc. 314, 71-3—2 13 The incredible fertility of the deep muck led to schemes for its utilization. It is too early to say clearly what the outcome is to be. Sugar is grown around the south shore of Lake Okeechobee from Canal Point on the east to Moore Haven on the west, and quantities of garden truck. Garden truck and some citrus cultivation has penetrated the eastern margin of the Everglades. Roland M. Harper, of the Florida Geological Survey, says: Possibly 2 per cent of the Everglades area, and other saw-grass marshes, has been cultivated in recent years. But in wet seasons it is difficult to get rid of the water and in dry seasons the drained peat sometimes catches on fire and the soil then goes up in smoke. Dr. John K. Small, of the New York Botanical Garden, who has studied and written about south Florida constantly for the last 26 years, looks upon the drainage advocates as a herd of wild asses in the wilderness. In the Scientific Monthly of January, 1929, he writes: Various minds have conceived various schemes for the development of the Everglades, or "devilopment" as interpreted by some. Among these ideas "drainage" and "farming" have been prominent excuses for tampering with the Everglades, ravishing directly the "glades" and indirectly the whole of the southern part of the Florida Peninsula. Since the beginning of this century five water highways, preliminary to the dredging of drainage canals, have been added to the natural outlets for the enormous amount of water of this spring. The sudden upsetting of nature's routine of ages did not better matters, to say the least. Droughts and "freezes" are said to be now more frequent than formerly. Large areas of land between the Everglades and the ocean are said on good authority to have been rendered worthless for farming by seriously lowering the water table and eliminating the capillary water supply necessary for the existence of vegetation, particularly cultivated crops. Thousands of acres of humus, deprived of the moisture naturally covering the rocky or sandy foundation of the Everglades, have completely disappeared in smoke, gases, and scant ashes, thus turning the Everglades back to a desert just as it was when it was first elevated from the sea. The Everglades were made for plants and animals to inhabit and delight in; not for man to occupy. This fact should have been evident to a mere tyro. Aside from any indirect devastation caused by drainage, fire has destroyed the humus on many thousand acres. When once started in the dry humus, fire eats in and down, and burns until it reaches water or sand. Fires aerial and subterranean have eaten away many thousands of acres of pure humus in the Everglades during the past decade and the fires are still burning. The Everglades can safely be termed the "Land of Ten Thousand Smokes." Would it not have been a better plan to have closed this land to "devilopment" and had it appear on the maps of Florida as "Lake Okeechobee-Everglades National Park"? THE TEN THOUSAND ISLANDS Where the Everglades emerge from the sea down in Monroe County a labyrinth of channels breaks the land into the Ten Thousand Islands. The delta of the Everglades, as it were; mangrove bordered areas which are neither land nor water, in the process of becoming terra firma, now merely a sportman's paradise. Zane Grey once felt the quality of these appalling solitudes. * I had come to the Ten Thousand Islands and the Everglades to fish and to photograph. And I was finding myself slowly awakening to a profound realization of the tremendousness of this last and wildest region of America * The Everglade region was great through its aloofness. It could not be possessed. It would continue to provide sanctuary to the fugutive from justice, the outlaw, the egret hunter. Assuredly the Seminole had been absorbed by it, as proven by his lonely, secretive, self-sufficient existence. THE BIG CYPRESS SWAMP West of the Everglades in Collier County lies the Big Cypress Swamp. No geographer, so far as I know, has attempted to indicate the precise limits of this region. It is the very essence of dreariness. Along the Tamiami Trail and beside the road which runs north from the town of Everglades is a fringe of truck gardens. Some cattle are grazed in its northern portion. Otherwise the Big Cypress is waste and water. A wilderness where cypress heads, clumps of slash pine, and occasional high hammocks vary the monotony of open prairies. The saw palmetto is abundant; soil is not. Limestone outcrops over much of the region. Most of the Big Cypress is so flooded in the wet season as to be impenetrable except to a man on foot or by ox team. The Indians shove their canoes along the eastern margin when the water is high. In the driest part of the dry season the Cypress can be traversed in a Ford. That is, if one knows his crossings. For Okaloacoochee Slough traverses the Cypress from north to south, and Okaloacoochee is treacherous always. A bog 60 miles long. If the Big Cypress is desolation, Okaloacoochee is the depth of despair. Between Okaloacoochee and the Everglades the bulk of the Seminoles have their homes. FLATWOODS The flatwoods consist of open forests of long-leaf or slash pine, with a rather dense undergrowth in which saw palmetto predominates. The soil is usually a fine grayish sand. Not more than 5 per cent of the flatwoods have been cultivated. PRAIRIES North and northwest of the Everglades are comparatively dry prairies. The soil appears to be the same gray sand as in the flatwoods, the only readily apparent difference being the comparative absence of trees. Shrubs and herbs make up the bulk of the vegetation, with an occasional cabbage palmetto or slash pine. The prairies bordering the Kissimmee River pasture large numbers of cattle. It was to a cracker running cattle on the Kissimmee Prairie that a Chicago packing house recently wired for a carload of 3-year-olds averaging 900. The reply went back, "Don't raise any 3-year-olds averaging 900, but can deliver a thousand head of 9-year-olds averaging 300." Not 1 per cent of prairie acreage is cultivated. INDIAN PRAIRIE Indian Prairie, to the south of the Kissimmee River prairies, is wetter. Islands of pine and high hammock vegetation are more frequent than in the northern prairies, but the outstanding feature is extensive areas of almost pure cabbage palmetto. Some cattle are grazed on Indian prairie; it is not cultivated by the white man except for a bit around Brighton. |