Part 12

The great number of mounds found in Florida afford attractive study to the lover of scientific research. These mounds are of many shapes, heights and areas. They are found in all parts of the State, but are more abundant on or near the coast and along the water courses. Every few months some explorer, armed with shovels, picks and other instruments used in excavating mounds, comes before the public and announces new discoveries, based on new theories. The best possible explanation of the source of these mounds is founded on the theory that they are of Indian origin. One scientist has aimed a happy stroke at writers of our antiquities when he says, “Whoever has time and patience and will use his spade and his eyes together, and restrain his imagination from running riot among mounds, fortifications, etc., etc., will find very little more than the indications of rude savages, the ancestors of the present race.” No better theories can be advanced than those of Major Powell, who says, “Remove the Indian element from the problem and we are left without a hypothesis.” One of the latest mound excavations in Florida was made by Dr. Moore. A thousand skeletons were unearthed as well as many articles of pottery, and other things considered of great value by the explorer. The height and character of the Florida mounds indicate the different uses for which they were built. These mounds vary from three feet to thirty feet in height, and their areas range from a few square feet to four hundred feet square. The shell mounds which are numerous throughout the peninsula seem to have grown without any idea of purpose by the builders, and are merely accumulations of shells and soil. Year after year it was the custom of the tribes to congregate at certain localities for their festivals, and, living on shell fish, the shells in course of time formed vast mounds or elevations. There are a number of small mounds on the outskirts of Kissimmee City. Excavations have been made, and pieces of skeletons, beads, pottery and gold trinkets were exhumed. Other mounds in Florida indicate that they were built for tombs, while others, being composed of strata of sand and other soils, from their height might have been built for outlooks or signal towers. Chroniclers of De Soto’s day describe the manner in which the natives brought the earth to these spots and formed these elevations. The Indians say in Seminole war days these mounds were used to build their signal fires upon. By smoke telegraphy, they communicated war news from one band to another. By this means, with their fleet Indian runners, who acted also as spies, the entire tribe was kept informed of the innermost workings of the white army. In asking a chief about the burial mounds, he answered, “Long time ago heap many people here,” and that their “ancestors buried their dead in mounds so that other bands coming along might not disturb their bones.” Many times the body would be carried a great distance in order to bury in a sepulchre where rested the bones of their ancestors. “Now,” said the chief, “Seminoles no fight, not too many people;” and he buries his dead near his camp.

PICTURE WRITING.

The Seminoles have no picture writing, nor do their minds in any way run to art. They prefer the rough athletics of forest life, which educates them for the chase and makes them the vigorous and hardy people that they are. They would sooner “hook” an alligator than paint the finest picture the brush is capable of producing, and yet there is nothing in the white man’s home they enjoy more than studying the pictures of a book. In this way they may be taught much. Through the teaching by pictures they have learned the story of Pocahontas, and of William Penn, “the red man’s brother.” On an occasion the picture of a heathen Zuni god was shown to an Indian and its meaning explained. The effect produced would have done credit to a Christian believer.

MEDICINE.

The Seminoles have a superstitious faith in the efficacy of certain roots and herbs known to their tribe, the knowledge of which has been handed down from their remote ancestors. The curative property of these plants they never question. A few of the band to-day have carefully concealed about them small pieces of a root, which they call “hil-lis-waw.” This root was gotten by some of their tribe sixty years ago when their people were encamped at Tampa, and has been carefully treasured ever since, having been handed down from father to son. Their faith in the healing powers of this root is marvelous, their idea being that the smallest possible piece being made into a tea would restore life from death almost. Those fortunate enough to own a small piece the size of a pea are considered to have a great treasure. On testing this root it was found to be a simple plant, the great medicinal qualities of which exist largely in the minds of the Indians. They are ignorant as to what the root is and believe it to be very valuable, saying, “So much (what one could hold in the palm of his hand) cost $25.” “Long time ago,” says the Seminole, “chief sick _heap_ too much; by-and-by, big sleep come. Medicine man bring hil-lis-waw, fix ’um quick. Chief get well.”

A late incident occurred, showing the childlike faith of this people. The little son of Ko-nip-pat-cho was taken very ill and when Seminole medicinal efforts failed, the father learned from other Indians that their white friend at Kissimmee City could procure for them the “hil-lis-waw.” A runner was dispatched from the Everglades to the nearest boat landing (a distance of 160 miles from Kissimmee) where a note could be sent in person. This note was given to the Captain--the Indian waiting for the return of the steamer. The Indians reported afterwards, “Boy sick ojus, arms cold--feet cold--big sleep come soon--Indian bring medicine from white friend, boy no die.”

Did not the Great Spirit, Who watches over His children, reward the childlike faith of these Indians?

Pais-haw is the name applied to a plant which the Indians regard as an antidote to the rattlesnake bite. Old settlers tell that they have known of Indians allowing themselves to be bitten by a rattler on a wager of a silver dollar. The Indians after being bitten would go to the woods, a short distance away, and procure their antidote. Returning they would apparently be no worse for the bite. Requesting an Indian to procure some of the roots, he replied, “No find ’em here--by-and-by me go to Okeechobee swamps, find ’em plenty.”

A few weeks later there came through the mail a small box full of roots, neatly done up and addressed by the Indian’s own hand, a perfect copy of name and address as he had learned to write it during his visit.

On sending the roots to the Smithsonian Institute for analysis, the secretary reports that they belong to a species of plant known as _Cyperus_, and adds, “This is one of the large number of reputed cures for snakebites, which have become so regarded from the fact that a person who has been bitten has been known to recover after taking the drug.” The use of water enters largely into the _materia medica_ of the Seminoles, bathing in cold water being one of their principal treatments for fevers. During the war with the whites a soldiers’ camp was found deserted; the Indians immediately appropriated the clothing, blankets and other things. Very soon the loathsome disease of small-pox broke out among them. Ignorant as to the nature of the malady, they immediately applied their bathing remedy. The result was a frightful mortality, few of that band were left to tell the story. In this instance, the Government army gained a victory over their foe without the firing of a gun.

FLORIDA’S ABIDING WORDS OF BEAUTY THE HERITAGE OF THE ABORIGINAL PATHFINDERS.

All through Florida the musical softness, peculiar to the Seminole dialect, is sustained in the names of the lakes and rivers. Each having a history descriptive of its character, or some incident connected therewith.

The old names of the chiefs were very euphonious, such as Osceola, Micanopy, Tusteenuggee, Coacoochee and Tallahassee. These are being displaced by names adopted by the whites, such as Billy Ham, Tommy John and Billy Buster. Accident, too, seems to have credited the aborigines with words not really their own if it be true that “Yankee” is only an attempt made by the Indian to speak the word English, and that pappoose is the effort of the natives to say “baby.” The symphonious cadence of such words as Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Caloosahatchee and Minnehaha has often been noticed.

Tohope Ke-liga is the name of one of the most beautiful lakes in Florida, its Indian significance meaning “fort site.” All around the lake are the old hunting grounds of the Indians and memorable points in Seminole war fame. To-day the Okeechobee drainage canal connects it with the lakes south, plantations surrounding its shores; the thriving city of Kissimmee is situated on its north side and all trace of the Seminole has vanished. The only memorials he has left are his words firmly embedded in the history of his conquerors. Kissimmee river is said to have taken its name from a romantic episode. A young Spanish grandee in a moment of impulse snatched a kiss from a Seminole girl, and the frightened maiden’s childlike plaint to her mother established the name of the river on whose banks the kiss was stolen--Kiss-him-mee.

The romance attached to our beautiful Kissimmee river gives it especial interest and we give it only as a traditional meaning. The present Indians cannot give the English rendition, saying, “Indian long, long time ago named the river,” which is corroborated by the Bureau of Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution, as follows:

In reply to your letter I regret to say that it is impossible to give you the meaning of “Kissimmee.” Several of our ethnologists think the word dates back to the Ais Caloosa, or some other tribe antedating the Seminoles, in which case the meaning will never be known.

Very respectfully yours, W. H. HOLMES, Chief.

So many of the euphonious words abounding in Florida belong to the ancient tribes and were picked up by the Seminoles.

An interesting bit of information was gotten after much care and questioning from Chief Tallahassee as to the meaning of his name--Tallahassee being only a nickname, or white man’s name for him--his Indian name being Fo-so-wa-los-te-nock-ee, meaning chief of the Bird gens or tribe.

The origin of the name of Florida’s State capital dates back to the days that are but traditions to the Seminole.

As the Seminole interprets, “Long, long time ago,” many Indians and houses were on the site where the city of Tallahassee now stands.

One day, as the tradition goes, all the Indians left. Some time after, some Indians came along, Seminoles presumably, and seeing many houses--but Indians “hiepus” (gone), exclaimed, “Tallahassee”--“all gone or deserted.”

We-la-ka is the Indian name for the St. John river and describes it so graphically that the old Spaniards retrograded when they named the “river of lakes” for their patron saint. Ock-la-wa-ha, “crooked water,” appropriately describes the most crooked stream in America. Okeechobee, with her vast expanse of water and over-hanging mists, in Seminole significance means “the place of big water.” With-la-coo-chee, so memorable in Seminole war days as the place of Osceola’s strategic movements, is a long but very narrow stream, meaning, in the Seminole tongue, “Little Big river.” Alachua, “the big jug without a bottom,” We-Kiva, “mystery,” and so on all over the Peninsula do we find names preserved which mark the wanderings of the picturesque Aborigines.

The unwritten, but highly poetical, language of the Florida Indians, should be incorporated into schoolcraft form and preserved with the archives of history for future generations. One who has heard the war shouts, their mythological tales, the words accompanying their dancing tunes, or listened in the darkness of the night, with breathless wonder to the heart-moving dirges sung by wailing women as they move around the corpse of some dead member, the whole scene lit up by the flickering flames of the lurid camp fire, cannot doubt but that the Florida Indian _has_ a literature, and the white race is to blame for its imperfect knowledge of the unwritten but priceless productions of a savage race.

The linguistic perfection of the Seminole language, with its fluent, oratorical powers, shows itself in every speech or talk ever made to the white man.

With linguistic research, the scientist readily finds that man does not invent language any more than a bird does its twittering or a tree its leaves. It requires a whole nation to produce a language.

Of the world’s famous orators we have our Demosthenes of the Greek, Cicero of the Roman, England’s great Gladstone, America with her Calhoun, Clay and Webster; but as yet has the world ever found greater eloquence than in the “talks” of the famous Indian chiefs?

Red Jacket, on the religion of the white man and the red race, is a marvel of eloquence. Then what shall we say of Tecumseh, the great Shawnee, as he delivered his famous talk to General Harrison, or Black Hawk, the captive, in his plea before General Street?

In dealing with the Seminole language we meet with long words and mammoth expressions. The Seminole greeting, “Ha-tee-eten-chee-hick-cha-hit-is-chay,” sounds formidable, yet it only means “Glad to see you.” These, with well-understood Indian phrases, such as “burying the tomahawk,” “going on the warpath,” we employ familiarly without a thought of the tribe we have dispossessed. The time for studying the aborigines of America will soon be over. Only remnants of the tribes remain among us. Old myths and customs are being displaced by new ones, and we can truly see that the red man’s inheritance is nearing the horizon of its destiny.

THE SEMINOLE’S RECESSIONAL.

When the last Seminole goes, he will in every sense be the last. He will leave no history; neither monument. His narrow path through the Savannah lasts no longer than the doe’s road to the ford of the stream. His race have had their joys, their triumphs and their defeats, and then been swept into oblivion.

Like the white plumed egret of the vast forests of the Everglades, he will pass, like the mist. As memories come up, we hear the faint rustle of the leaves and see the dusky forms of those ancient people as they glided through the leaf-carpeted aisles of the forests. We see the happy wigwam homes, gleaming in the red flames of the camp fire and hear the soft lullabies of the crooning mothers; the dusky hero of the chase returns game-laden from the hunt, and, in the picture, framed, as it were, by the boundaries of nature, we see long lines of moving life, the graceful forms of thousands of flying creatures, while the song of the forest minstrel hallows the wooded silence. _It is the land of the Seminole._

Thou, Florida, with thy laughing waters and sunny skies, art the Seminole’s elysium. Thy spreading palms form the only canopy he desires. To part from thy loved scenes would be like separating from his kindred. No, under the shadows of the live oak and the magnolia has he lived, under their shadows let him die.

As the patient Seminole, with swelling heart “moves a little farther, and yet a little farther,” he goes not willingly, but with a sad heart and a slow step. Micanopy, when told by the officers that he might choose between emigration and death, answered, “Kill me here then, kill me quickly.” The same spirit is manifested by the Seminole to-day when he says, “We have never done anything to disgrace the land of our birth, nor the honor of an Indian. For fifty years the pledge to our great father has been kept inviolate. Our tongues are not forked and our feet tread not in the white man’s path. We threw away the rifle and grasped hands with the white skin. We know the white man’s power, and though we love peace, we fear not death. We will not leave the land of our birth. The Great Spirit loves his red children, and says to them, “Your bones must rest with the dust of your fathers.” Brothers, when the pale face came to the shores of our land, our fathers made him a fire from their flint rock to warm by, and gave him hominy to stay his hunger. Brothers, the Seminole wishes no harm to the white race, but his heart heaves and surges as it says, “Let us alone; let us alone. Though you slay us, you shall not move us.”

“A kingdom as full of people as hives are of bees,” wrote the first discoverer to King Ferdinand. Where are they now?

There is something intensely sad in the picture of these sons of the monarchs of that race, who, for centuries held sway on the slopes of the Atlantic. As the Stars and Stripes proudly herald liberty and independence to the comers of all nations, how can we be unmindful of that “charity which begins at home?” The panorama of Indian history passes before us, and we see nothing more tragic than the pictures of the wrongs endured by the native Americans. Let us then deal kindly with the tribes we have dispossessed, whose removal to the swamps has made room for our own enlargement. In the person of these descendants of a now disinherited race, who with shy, frightened faces still hide in the wilderness, we may yet atone in part for the tragedies of the past by making Florida a free, safe and Christian home for this patient and long-persecuted remnant of a once-powerful Indian nation.

May the almoner of justice, under the guidance of an overruling God, protect and keep and cherish these red children of the forest homes.

SUPPLEMENT

The Least Known Wilderness of America

THE LEAST KNOWN WILDERNESS OF AMERICA

TOGETHER WITH THE STORY OF THE RED INHABITANTS

Would you see the Land of the Seminole? Then visit the Everglades of Florida and in the heart of this mystic region--a very uncharted wilderness--you will find a thrilling beauty, and yet a lurking terror; the dark, cypress, laden trees are massed together, now swaying, now quivering, as the Gulf winds circle around them, and they seem like human things, crowding together like shuddering people, frightened by ghosts.

This is the “Big Cypress”--the last foothold of the vanishing red man of America.

This tropic jungle of islets, lagoons and cutting saw-grass prairies is an unexplored treasure house for the man of research--a virgin field for the adventurer, in short a tropic mimosa, with its secrets closely held against the disturbing exploiter--yet awaiting, with sphinx-like calmness, the intrepid traveller, who would dare to explore this Least Known Wilderness of America.

Then why should the American go to the land of the Vikings or to “Darkest Africa” for themes? Florida has the Everglades--grey, misty, water covered.

Scientists have crossed these “weird drowned prairies” as a ship crosses the ocean, yet no well defined lines have been made, and no flagstaffs mark the trail of the adventurous explorer.

The Everglades, properly christened with the red man’s name--Pay-hay-o-kee, or “Grass Water Country,” comprise a territory of more than 5,000 square miles, and, while considered a swamp, the region is more of a shallow sea or lake, thickly studded with thousands of islands, which are covered with thickets of shrubbery and vines. Aquatic flowers, brilliant butterflies and the flutter of bird life add color and animation to the scene.

Here and there in the mysterious depths of the great Florida jungle live the descendants of the bravest, purest blood American Indian--those patriots who refused, nearly a century ago, to desert their country, and, escaping capture by bloodhounds and bullets, hid themselves in the wilds of this tangled Everglade wilderness, and were for years lost to the historian.

All aboriginal history holds much interest, but none is more replete with the tragedies and romance that go to make up life wherever it is lived than the shadowy history of the self-exiled Seminoles about whom so little is known and who have lived this jungle life as lords of a conquered race--proud heroic, with blood as pure as the race who governed the territory long before Columbus sailed from Palos. Monarchs of America’s primeval continent, mystery envelops the Seminoles’ past and the historian can only catch glimpse of the fleeting figures of the ancestors of this peculiar people, who wrote no history, except by deeds.

THE LAND OF THE SEMINOLE

The Caucasian has battered at the gates of this great American Jungle for nearly four centuries, but some impregnable force, directed by a Higher Power than commercialized graft or the greed of selfish men, has kept the gates secure. _It is the Land of the Seminole!_

The Seminole knows every foot of this interminable morass. The stars are his compass; the fantastic tracery of canals, cut by his ancestors through this chaotic tangle of grass water country, are his highways. The appearance of the remote recesses of the Everglades is unlike that of any other region on the globe and is certainly the most bewildering and remarkable on this continent.

EVERGLADE SCENARIO

Were we to unroll the reel of a photo-drama of the Everglades, we would go back thousands of years, when the great billows of the ocean rolled over the space now occupied by this territory; we would see the millions of busy builders of that age, the tiny coral polyps, working on the reefs and shoals; we would look again and see the tempestuous storms and hear the thunder of the circling winds and behold the “breaking up of the great fountain of the deep,” forcing the sand from its depths, until a giant dam was built and the great ocean was excluded. Then it was that the shimmering waters of Lake Okeechobee, “the place of the Big Water” in Seminole dialect, became an inland sea.

We may turn the slide and see the animals of prehistoric days basking in the sunshine or bathing in the limpid waters. The fame of Florida as a health resort was not unknown to the animals of those ancient days, for the remains of these monsters are exhibited today in national museums, with labels reading that “they belonged to animals, probably mammoths, that lived 10,000 to 50,000 years ago.”

Film makers delight in taxing the flights of the mind and Florida’s drama was silenced for thousands of years. The reel makes another turn and we see a Twentieth Century renaissance of adventure, optimism and commercialism. Engineering expeditions entered this region to make surveys for drainage and land selling corporations--the land was sold from the enticing blue paper plat--but according to America’s best engineering corps a large area of this tropic jungle still remained terra incognita--unsurveyed--each surveying corps wisely barricading against criticism of failure by publishing to the speculative world, that upon “800 square miles of this unexplored country no white man had ever placed foot.”

FEDERAL GOVERNMENT INVESTIGATES LAND DEALS

Like a bolt of lightning from a clear sky came the demand--from the United States Government, in 1913, to Florida’s high officials--“Investigate--investigate!”