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

by Daniel G. Brinton

As little is recorded about this author pioneer, I may perhaps be excused for turning aside to recall a few personal recollections. It had long been my desire to visit and converse with him about the early days of the state, and with this object, on the 9th of November, 1856, I stopped at the little town of Picolati, near which he lived. A sad surprise awaited me; he had died on the 7th of the month and had been buried the day before my arrival. I walked through the woods to his house. It was a rotten, ruinous, frame tenement on the banks of the St. Johns, about half a mile below the town, fronted by a row of noble live oaks and surrounded by the forest. Here the old man—he was over eighty at the time of his death—had lived for twenty years almost entirely alone, and much of the time in abject poverty. A trader happened to be with him during his last illness, who told me some incidents of his history. His mind retained its vigor to the last, and within a week of his death he was actively employed in various literary avocations, among which was the preparation of an improved edition of his History, which he had very nearly completed. At the very moment the paralytic stroke, from which he died, seized him, he had the pen in his hand writing a novel, the scene of which was laid in China! His disposition was uncommonly aimable and engaging, and so much was he beloved by the Indians, that throughout the horrible atrocities of the Seminole war, when all the planters had fled or been butchered, when neither sex nor age was a protection, when Picolati was burned and St. Augustine threatened, he continued to live unharmed in his old house, though a companion was shot dead on the threshold. What the savage respected and loved, the civilized man thought weakness and despised; this very goodness of heart made him the object of innumerable petty impositions from the low whites, his neighbors. In the words of my informant, “he was too good for the people of these parts.” During his lonely old age he solaced himself with botany and horticulture, priding himself on keeping the best garden in the vicinity. “Come, and I will show you his grave,” said the trader, and added with a touch of feeling I hardly expected, “he left no directions about it, so I made it in the spot he used to love the best of all.” He took me to the south-eastern corner of the neat garden plot. A heap of fresh earth with rough, round, pine sticks at head and foot, marked the spot. It was a solemn and impressive moment. The lengthening shadows of the forest crept over us, the wind moaned in the pines and whistled drearily through the sere grass, and the ripples of the river broke monotonously on the shore. All trace of the grave will soon be obliterated, the very spot forgotten, and the garden lie a waste, but the results of his long and toilsome life “in books recorded” will live when the marbles and monumental brasses of many of his cotemporaries shall be no more.

The next event that attracted general attention to Florida was the bloody and disastrous second Seminole war, which for deeds of atrocious barbarity, both on the part of the whites and red men, equals, if it does not surpass, any conflict that has ever stained the soil of our country.

The earliest work relative to it was published anonymously in 1836, by an officer in the army.[106] He gives an impartial account of the causes that gave rise to the war, the manifold insults and aggressions that finally goaded the Indians to desperation, and the incidents of the first campaign undertaken to punish them for their contumacy. It is well and clearly written, and coming from the pen of a participant in many of the scenes described, merits a place in the library of the historian.

The year subsequent, Mr. M. M. Cohen of Charleston, issued a notice of the proceedings in the peninsula.[107] He was an “officer of the left wing,” and had spent about five months with the army, during which time it marched from St. Augustine to Volusia, thence to Tampa, and back again to St. Augustine. The author tells us in his Preface, “our book has been put to press in less than thirty days from its being undertaken;” a statement no one will be inclined to doubt, as it is little more than a farrago of vapid puns and stale witticisms, hurriedly scraped together into a slim volume, and connected by a slender string of facts. An account of the imprisonment of Oceola and the enslavement of his wife, has been given by the same writer,[108] and has received praise for its accuracy.

In 1836, when the war was at its height, an Indian boy was taken prisoner by a party of American soldiers near Newnansville. Contrary to custom his life was spared, and the next year he was handed over to the care of an English gentleman then resident in the country. From his own account, drawn from him after long persuasion, his name was Nikkanoche, his father was the unhappy Econchatti-mico, and consequently he was nephew to the famous chief Oceola, (Ass-se-he-ho-lar, Rising Sun, Powell.) His guardian removed with him to England in 1840, and the year after his arrival there, published an account of the parentage, early days, and nation of his ward,[109] the young Prince of Econchatti, as he was styled. It forms an interesting and pleasant little volume, though I do not know what amount of reliance can be placed on the facts asserted.

An excellent article on the war, which merits careful reading from any one desirous of thoroughly sifting the question, may be found in the fifty-fourth volume of the North American Review, (1842,) prepared with reference to Mr. Horace Everett’s remarks on the Army Appropriation Bill of July 14, 1840, and to a letter from the Secretary of War on the expenditure for supporting hostilities in Florida.

Though the above memoirs are of use in throwing additional light on some points, and settling certain mooted questions, the standard work of reference on the Florida war is the very able, accurate, and generally impartial History,[110] of Captain John T. Sprague, himself a participant in many of its scenes, and officially concerned in its prosecution. Few of our local histories rank higher than this. With a praiseworthy patience of research he goes at length into its causes, commencing with the cession in 1821, details minutely its prosecution till the close in December, 1845, and paints with a vigorous and skillful pen many of those thrilling adventures and affecting passages that marked its progress. A map of the seat of war that accompanies it, drawn up with care, and embracing most of the geographical discoveries made by the various divisions of the army, adds to its value.

Commencing his history with the cession, Captain Sprague does not touch on the earlier troubles with the Seminoles. These were never properly handled previous to the late work of the Hon. J. B. Giddings, entitled, “The Exiles of Florida.”[111] These so-called exiles were runaway slaves from the colonies of South Carolina and Georgia, who, quite early in the last century, sought an asylum in the Spanish possessions, formed separate settlements, and, increased by fresh refugees, became ever after a fruitful source of broils and quarrels between the settlers of the rival provinces. As they were often protected, and by marriage and situation became closely connected with the Lower Creeks, they were generally identified with them in action under the common name of Seminoles. Thus the history of one includes that of the other. The profound acquaintance with the transactions of our government acquired by Mr. Giddings during a long and honorable public service, render his work an able plea in the cause of the people whose wrongs and sufferings have enlisted his sympathy; but unquestionably the fervor of his views prevents him from doing full justice to their adversaries. He attaches less weight than is right to the strict legality of most of the claims for slaves; and forgets to narrate the inhuman cruelties, shocking even to the red men, wreaked by these maroons on their innocent captives, which palliate, if they do not excuse, the rancorous hatred with which they were pursued by the whites. Including their history from their origin till 1853, the second Seminole war occupies much of his attention, and the treatment both of it and the other topics, prove the writer a capable historian, as well as an accomplished statesman.

It is unnecessary to specify the numerous reports of the officers, the official correspondence, the speeches of members of Congress, and other public writings that illustrate the history of the war, which are contained in the Executive Documents. But I should not omit to mention that the troubles in Florida during the last few years have given occasion to the publication of the only at all accurate description of the southern extremity of the peninsula in existence.[112] It was issued for the use of the army, from inedited reports of officers during the second Seminole war, and lays down and describes topographically nine routes to and from the principal military posts south of Tampa Bay.

The works relating to St. Augustine next claim our attention. Of late years this has become quite a favorite rendezvous for casual tourists, invalids from the north, magazine writers, et id omne genus, whence to indite letters redolent of tropic skies, broken ruins, balmy moonlight, and lustrous-eyed beauties. Though it would be lost time to enumerate these, yet among books of general travel, there are one or two of interest in this connection. Among these is an unpretending little volume that appeared anonymously at New York in 1839.[113] The author, a victim of asthma, had visited both St. Augustine and Key West in the spring of that year. Though written in a somewhat querulous tone, it contains some serviceable hints to invalids expecting to spend a winter in warmer climes.