Early Attempts.—Efforts of Aviles.—Later Missions.—Extent during the most flourishing period.—Decay.
Early Attempts.—Efforts of Aviles.—Later Missions.—Extent during the most flourishing period.—Decay.
Itwas ever the characteristic of the Spanish conqueror that first in his thoughts and aims was the extension of the religion in which he was born and bred. The complete history of the Romish Church in America would embrace the whole conquest and settlement of those portions held originally by France and Spain. The earliest and most energetic explorers of the New and much of the Old World have been the pious priests and lay brethren of this religion. While others sought gold they labored for souls, and in all the perils and sufferings of long journeys and tedious voyages cheerfully bore a part, well rewarded by one convert or a single baptism. With the same zeal that distinguished them everywhere else did they labor in the unfruitful vineyard of Florida, and as the story of their endeavors is inseparably bound up with the condition of the natives and progress of the Spanish arms, it is with peculiar fitness that the noble toils of these self-denying men become the theme of our investigation.
The earliest explorers, De Leon, Narvaez, and De Soto, took pains to have with them devout priests as well as bold lancers, and remembered, which cannot be said of all their cotemporaries, that though the nativesmight possess gold, they were not devoid of souls. The latter included in his complement no less than twelve priests, eight lay brethren, and four clergymen of inferior rank; but their endeavors seem to have achieved only a very paltry and transient success.
The first wholly missionary voyage to the coast of Florida, and indeed to any part of America north of Mexico, was undertaken by Luis Cancel de Balbastro, a Dominican friar, who in 1547 petitioned Charles I. of Spain to fit out an armament for converting the heathen of that country. A gracious ear was lent to his proposal, and two years afterwards, in the spring of 1549, a vessel set sail from the port of Vera Cruz in Mexico, commanded by the skillful pilot Juan de Arana, and bearing to their pious duty Luis Cancel with three other equally zealous brethren, Juan Garcia, Diego de Tolosa, and Gregorio Beteta. Their story is brief and sad. Going by way of Havana they first struck the western coast of the peninsula about 28° north latitude the day after Ascension day. After two months wasted in fruitless efforts to conciliate the natives in various parts, when all but Beteta had fallen martyrs to their devotion to the cause of Christianity, the vessel put back from her bootless voyage, and returned to Vera Cruz.[276]
Some years afterwards (1559), when Don Tristan de Luna y Arellano founded the colony of Santa Mariade Felipina near where Pensacola was subsequently built, he was accompanied by a provincial bishop and a considerable corps of priests, but as his attempt was unsuccessful and his colony soon disbanded, they could have made no impression on the natives.[277]
It was not till the establishment of a permanent garrison at St. Augustine by the Adelantado Pedro Menendez de Aviles, that the Catholic religion took firm root in Floridian soil. In the terms of his outfit is enumerated the enrollment of four Jesuit priests and twelve lay brethren. Everywhere he displayed the utmost energy in the cause of religion; wherever he placed a garrison, there was also a spiritual father stationed. In 1567 he sent the two learned and zealous missionaries Rogel and Villareal to the Caloosas, among whom a settlement had already been formed under Francescso de Reinoso. At their suggestion a seminary for the more complete instruction of youthful converts was established at Havana, to which among others the son of the head chief was sent, with what success we have previously seen.
The following year ten other missionaries arrived, one of whom, Jean Babtista Segura, had been appointed Vice Provincial. The majority of these worked with small profit in the southern provinces, but Padre Antonio Sedeño settled in the island of Guale,[278]and is to be remembered as the first who drew up a grammar and catechism of any aboriginal tongue north ofMexico; but he reaped a sparse harvest from his toil; for though five others labored with him, we hear of only seven conversions, and four of these infantsin articulo mortis. Yet it is also stated that as early as 1566 the Adelantado himself had brought about the conversion of these Indiansen masse. A drought of eight months had reduced them to the verge of starvation. By his advice a large cross was erected and public prayer held. A tremendous storm shortly set in, proving abundantly to the savages the truth of his teachings. But they seem to have turned afresh to their wallowing in the mire.
In 1569, the Padre Rogel gave up in despair the still more intractable Caloosas; and among the more cultivated nations surrounding San Felipe, north of the Savannah river, sought a happier field for his efforts. In six months he had learned the language and at first flattered himself much on their aptness for religious instruction. But in the fall, when the acorns ripened, all his converts hastened to decamp, leaving the good father alone in his church. And though he followed them untiringly into woods and swamps, yet “with incredible wickedness they would learn nothing, nor listen to his exhortations, but rather ridiculed them, jeopardizing daily more and more their salvation.” With infinite pains he collected some few into a village, gave them many gifts, and furnished them food and mattocks; but again they most ungratefully deserted him “with no other motive than their natural laziness and fickleness.” Finding his best efforts thrown away on such stiff-necked heathen, with a heavy heart he tore down his house and church, and, shaking the dust off his feet, quitted the country entirely.
At this period the Spanish settlements consisted of three colonies: St. Augustine, originally built south of where it now stands on St. Nicholas creek, and changed in 1566, San Matteo at the mouth of the river of the same name, now the St. Johns,[279]and fifty leagues north of this San Felipe in the province of Orista or Santa Helena, now South Carolina. In addition to these there were five block-houses, (casas fuertes), two, Tocobaga and Carlos, on the western coast, one at its southern extremity, Tegesta, one in the province of Ais or Santa Lucea, and a fifth, which Juan Pardo had founded one hundred and fifty leagues inland at the foot of certain lofty mountains, where a cacique Coava ruled the large province Axacàn.[280]There seem also to have been several minor settlements on the St. Johns.
Such was the flourishing condition of the country when that “terrible heretic and runaway galley slave,” as the Spanish chronicler calls him, Dominique de Gourgues of Mont Marsain, aided by Pierre le Breu, who had escaped the massacre of the French in 1565, and the potent chief Soturiba, demolished the most important posts (1567). Writers have over-rated the injury this foray did the colony. In reality it served but to stimulate the indomitable energy of Aviles. Though he himself was at the court of Spain and obliged to remain there, with the greatest promptness he dispatched Estevan de las Alas with two hundredand seventy-three men, who rebuilt and equipped San Matheo, and with one hundred and fifty of his force quartered himself in San Felipe.
With him had gone out quite a number of priests. The majority of these set out for the province of Axacàn, under the guidance of the brother of its chief, who had been taken by Aviles to Spain, and there baptized, in honor of the viceroy of New Spain, Don Luis de Velasco. His conversion, however, was only simulation, as no sooner did he see the company entirely remote from assistance, than, with the aid of some other natives, he butchered them all, except one boy, who escaped and returned to San Felipe. Three years after (1569), the Adelantado made an attempt to revenge this murder, but the perpetrators escaped him.
Notwithstanding these drawbacks, at the time of the death of Aviles, a firm and extensive foundation had been laid for the Christian religion, though it was by no means professed, as has been asserted, “by all the tribes from Santa Helena, on the north, to Boca Rattones, on the south, and from the Atlantic to the Gulf of Mexico.”[281]
After his death, under the rule of his nephew, Pedro Menendez Marquez, a bold soldier but a poor politician, the colony seems to have dwindled to a very insignificant point. Spanish historians speak vaguely of many nations reduced by him, but such accounts cannot be trusted. At the time of the destruction of St. Augustine by Drake, in 1586, this town was built of wood, and garrisoned by one hundred and fifty men.[282]Andif we may believe the assertions of the prisoners he brought to England, the whole number of souls, both at this place and at Santa Helena, did not exceed two hundred.[283]Only six priests were in the colony; and as to the disposition of the Indians, it was so hostile and dangerous, that for some time subsequent the soldiers dared never leave the fort, even to hunt or fish.[284]Yet it was just about this time (1584), that Williams,[285]on the authority of his ancient manuscript, states that “the Spanish authorities were acknowledged as far west as the river Mississippi (Empalazada), and north one hundred and forty leagues to the mountains of Georgia!”
As early as 1566, fourteen women had been introduced by Sancho de Arminiega; but we read of no increase, and it is probable that for a long series of years the colony was mainly supported by fresh arrivals.
It was not till 1592, when, in pursuance of an ordinance of the Council of the Indies, twelve Franciscans were deputed to the territory, that the missions took a new start. They were immediately forwarded to various quarters of the province, and for a while seem to have been quite successful in their labors. It is said that in 1594 there were “no less than twenty mission houses.” One of these priests, Pedro de Corpa, superior of the mission of Tolemato (Tolemaro) near the mouth of the St. Marys river, by his unsparing and harsh rebukes, excited the anger of the natives to such a degree that,headed by the chief of Guale, they roseen masse, and murdered him at the foot of the altar. Nor did this glut their vengeance. Bearing his dissevered head upon a pole as a trophy and a standard, they crossed to the neighboring island of Guale, and there laid waste the missions Topiqui, Asao, Ospo, and Assopo. The governor of St. Augustine lost no time in hastening to the aid of the sufferers; and, though the perpetrators of the deeds could nowhere be found, by the destruction of their store-houses and grain fields, succeeded by a long drought, “which God visited upon them for their barbarity,” such a dreadful famine fell upon them that their tribe was nearly annihilated (1600).
In 1602, Juan Altimirano, bishop of Cuba, visited this portion of his diocess, and was much disheartened by the hopeless barbarity of the natives. So much so, indeed, that years afterwards, when holding discussion with the bishop of Guatemala concerning the query, “Is God known by the light of Nature?” and the latter pressing him cogently with Cicero, he retorted, “Ah, but Cicero had not visited Florida, or he would never have spoken thus.”
This discouraging anecdote to the contrary, the very next year, in the general assembly that met at Toledo, Florida, in conjunction with Havana and Bahama, was constituted a Custodia of eleven convents, and in 1612, they were elevated into an independent Provincia, under the name of Santa Helena, with the head convent at Havana, and Juan Capillas appointed first Provincial Bishop.[286]An addition of thirty-two Franciscans, partly under Geronimo de Ore in 1612, and partly sent outby Philip III., the year after, sped the work of conversion, and for a long time subsequent, we find vague mention of nations baptized and churches erected.
About the middle of the century, (1649,) the priests had increased to fifty, and the episcopal revenue amounted to four hundred dollars. At this time St. Augustine numbered “more than three hundred inhabitants.” So great had been the success of the spiritual fathers, that in 1655, Diego de Rebolledo, then Governor and Captain-General, petitioned the king to erect the colony into a bishopric; a request which, though favorably viewed, was lost through delay and procrastination. Similar attempts, which were similarly frustrated, were made by his successors Juan Marquez in 1682, and Juan Ferro in 1689.
Notwithstanding these indications of a lively energy, a very different story is told by the traveller of Carthagena, François Coreal, who visited the peninsula in 1669. He mentions no settlements but San Augustine and San Matheo,—indeed, expressly states that there were none,[287]—and even these were in a sorry plight enough, (assez degarnies.) Either he must have been misinformed, or the work of conversion proceeded with great and sudden rapidity after his visit, as less than twenty years afterwards, (1687,) when by the attempts of Juan Marquez to remove the natives to the West India Islands, many forsook their homes for distant regions, they left a number of missions deserted, as San Felipe, San Simon, Sapola, Obaldiqui, and others. This marked increase was largely owing to a subsidy of twenty-four Franciscans under Alonzode Moral in 1676, and the energetic action of the Bishop of Cuba, who spared no pains to facilitate the advent of missionaries to all parts.[288]
In pursuance of the advice of Pablo de Hita, Governor-General, attempts were renewed in 1679 to convert the nations of the southern extremity of the peninsula, and in 1698, there were fourteen Franciscans employed among them. These Indians are described as “idolaters and given to all abominable vices,” and not a few of the missionaries suffered martyrdom in their efforts to reclaim them.[289]
Towards the close of the century, (1696,) the condition of St. Augustine is described by Jonathan Dickinson[290]as follows:—“It is about three-quarters of a mile in length, not regularly built, the houses not very thick, they having large orchards, in which are plenty oforanges,lemmons,pome-citrons,lymes,figgs, andpeaches: the houses, most of them, are old buildings, and not half of them inhabited. The number of men that belong to government being about three hundred, and many of them are kept as sentinalls at their lookouts. At the north end of the town stands a large fortification, being a quadrangel with bastions. Each bastion will contain thirteen guns, but there is not passing two-thirds of fifty-two mounted.... The wall of the fortification is about thirty foot high, built of sandstone sawed [coquina rock].... The fort is moated round.”
The colony of Pensacola or Santa Maria de Galve,founded by Andres de Pes in 1693, gradually increasing in importance and maintaining an overland connection with St. Augustine, naturally gave rise to intermediate settlements, for which the fertile, wide-spread savannas of Alachua, the rich hammocks along the Suwannee, and the productive limestone soil of Middle Florida offered unrivalled advantages.
The tractable Apalaches and their neighbors received the missionaries with much favor, and it is said that almost all the former were converted;[291]a statement which we must confine, however, to that small portion of the confederated tribes included under this title, that lived in Middle Florida. When Colonel Moore invaded their country in 1703-4, he found them living in villages, each having its parish church, subsisting principally by agriculture, and protected by a garrison of Spanish soldiers.[292]The open well-cleared character of their country, and the marks of their civilized condition were long recalled in tradition by the later Indians.[293]So strong a hold did Catholicism take upon them that more than a century subsequent, when the nation was reduced to an insignificant family on the Bayou Rapide, they still retained its forms, corrupted by admixture with their ancient heliolatry.[294]
On the Atlantic coast, there were besides St. Augustine the towns of San Matheo, Santa Cruce, San Juan,Santa Maria, and others. The Indians of these missions Dickinson[295]describes as scrupulous in their observance of the Catholic rites, industrious and prosperous in their worldly relations, “having plenty of hogs and fowls, and large crops of corn;” and each hamlet presided over by “Fryars,” who gave regular instruction to the native children in school-houses built for the purpose. All these were north of St. Augustine; to the south the savages were more perverse, and in spite of the earnest labors of many pious priests, some of whom fell martyrs to their zeal, they clung tenaciously to heathendom.
Nothing definite is known regarding the settlements on and near the Gulf, but in all probability they were more extensive than those on the eastern shore, peopling the coast and inland plains with a race of civilized and Christian Indians. Cotemporary geographers speak of “the towns of Achalaque, Ossachile, Hirritiqua, Coluna, and some others of less note,”[296]as founded and governed by Spaniards, while numerous churches and villages are designated on ancient charts, with whose size and history we are totally unacquainted. Many of these doubtless refer to native hamlets, while the Spanish names affixed to others point to settlements made by that nation. How much the Church of Rome had at heart the extension and well-being of this portion of her domain, may be judged from the fact that she herself bore half the expense of the military kept in the province for its protection.[297]
Such was the condition of the Spanish missions ofFlorida at their most flourishing period. Shortly after the commencement of the eighteenth century, foes from the north destroyed and drove out the colonists, demolishing in a few years all that the life, and the blood, and the toil of so many martyrs during two centuries had availed to construct. About the middle of the century we have a tolerably accurate knowledge of the country through English writers; and then so few and insignificant were the Spanish settlements, that only one occurred between St. Marks and St. Augustine, while, besides the latter, the only post on the Atlantic coast was a wretched “hut” on the south bank of the St. Johns at its mouth.[298]
Undoubtedly it is to the close of the seventeenth century therefore that we must refer those vestiges of an extensive and early inhabitation that occasionally meet our notice in various parts. Sometimes in the depth of forests of apparently primeval growth the traveller has been astonished to find rusting church bells, half buried brass cannon, mouldering walls, and the decaying ruins of once stately edifices. Especially numerous are these in middle Florida, along the old Spanish highway from St. Augustine to Pensacola, on the banks of the St. Johns, and on Amelia island. The Indians informed the younger Bartram[299]that near the Suwannee, a few miles above Manatee Spring, the Spaniards formerly had “a rich, well cultivated, and populous settlement, and a strong fortified post, as they likewise had at the savanna and field of Capola,” east of the Suwannee, between it and the Alachua plains; but that these were far inferior to those on the ApalachianOld Fields “where yet remain vast works and buildings, fortifications, temples, &c.” The elder Bartram[300]speaks of similar remarkable antiquities on the St. Johns, Bernard Romans[301]in various parts of the interior, Williams,[302]Brackenridge,[303]and others[304]in middle Florida, and I may add the numerous Spanish Old Fields which I observed throughout the peninsula, the extensive coquina quarries on Anastasia (St. Estaca, Fish’s) Island, and the deserted plantations on Musquito and Indian river Lagoons, as unequivocal proofs of a much denser population than is usually supposed to have existed in those regions.
The easy conquest these settlements offered to the English and the rapidity with which they melted away were partly owing to the insufficient force kept for their protection. Colonel Daniels, who led the land force of Governor Moore’s army in 1702, and took possession of St. Augustine, apparently met with no noticeable opposition on his march; while we have it on official authority that the year after there were only three hundred and fifty-three soldiers in the whole province of whom forty-five were in Apalache, seven in Timuqua, nineteen in Guale, and the rest in St. Augustine.
The incursion of the English in 1702-1706, and of the Creeks (Alibamons) in 1705, were very destructiveto the monastic establishments of the north, and though Juan de Ayala, minister of the interior, devoted himself earnestly to restoring them, his labor was destined to yield small profit. The destruction of Pensacola by Bienville in 1719, the ravages of Colonel Palmer eight years later, the second demolition of the settlements in Apalache, between Tallahassie and St. Marks, by a marauding party of English and Indians in 1736, the inroad of Governor Oglethorpe four years subsequent, and another incursion of the English in 1745—these following in quick succession, it may be readily conceived rendered of no avail the efforts of the Franciscans to re-establish their missions on Floridian soil.
Previous to the cession to England the settlements had become reduced to St. Josephs, Pensacola, and St. Marks on the Gulf, Picolati on the St. Johns, and St. Augustine on the Atlantic. When the English took possession, the latter town numbered nine hundred houses and five thousand seven hundred inhabitants including a garrison of two thousand five hundred men.[305]There was a well-built church here as also at Pensacola, while at St. Marks there were two convents, one of Jesuits the other of Franciscans.[306]At this time but very few of the Indians, who are described as “bigotted idolators worshipping the sun and moon,” and “noted for a bold, subtile, and deceitful people,”[307]seem to have been in the fold of the Catholic Church.
Harassed and worn out as the colony was by long wars, and apparently soon to die a natural death, it isnot a matter of wonder that in the tripartite Definitive Treaty of Peace signed at Versailles, February 10th, 1763, Spain was glad to relinquish her right to its soil in consideration of the far superior island of Cuba.[308]Though it was stipulated that all who desired to remain should enjoy their property-rights, and religion, very few availed themselves of the privilege, little loth to forsake a country that had been one continued scene of war and tumult for more than half a century.
With this closes the history of the conversion of the Indians as during the English regime they were lost sight of in other issues, and when the Spanish returned to power such a scene of unquiet turmoil and ceaseless wrangling awaited them as effectually to divert their attention from the moral condition of the aboriginal tribes.
Mounds.—Roads.—Shell Heaps.—Old Fields.
Thedescriptions 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 thistriangle, 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 riverSt. 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 hisremarkable 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 toprove 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 anos 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 sawno 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 prevailedamong 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 beadsin 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. Theyare 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 ofshells. 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., inoriginal connectionwith the shells and debris throughout the mass, by the presence of surface soil, roots, and stumps,in situbeneath 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, theshells 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 fromits 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 ofGnathodon 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, hesays 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 ofPyrula,[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 discoverstraces 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.
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 theState. 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 withinnumerable 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 brinkopposite 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 theexact 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 enlighteningthe 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 onLake 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 infountains 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.