INDIANS: THE PRIMITIVE PEOPLE
from Walter P. Fuller: St. Petersburg and Its People,
Great Outdoors Publ. ; 1972. (Chapter III.)
There were primitive people living in the present limits of St. Petersburg when the white men came. And there were numerous groups throughout the Pinellas Peninsula. In fact, population on this peninsula was very heavy compared with the rest of Florida and the United States.
Just as Pinellas today is the most thickly populated area in Florida (1420 persons per square mile compared with the State average of 71 - Census of 1960;) in the Sixteenth Century St. Petersburg and the Peninsula were probably the most densely peopled area of Florida.
Best estimates range from 15,000 to 25,000 for the entire State. Of that total as many as 5,000 occupied this peninsula including the central westerly edge of Hillsborough. And these bronze colored people lived here in greater relative numbers for exactly the same reason the Twentieth Century people do - life was more pleasant than in other places and it was easier to exist.
There was a fairly large settlement clustered around Big Bayou and Booker Creek in the Roser Park area. All of the seven mounds marking this settlement have disappeared. The last surviving one, or rather a portion of it, gave the name "Mound Park Hospital" to our present municipal hospital. The largest of these mounds, apparently a kitchen midden, was called Beggs Hill by the pioneers of the 19th century. There was another large concentration of mounds at Pinellas Point and another at Maximo Point. A large part of this latter is, fortunately, well preserved in Maximo Park. There were irregular and scattered shell heaps on Tierra Verde, Mullet Key (Fort De Soto Park), St. Petersburg Beach, Capri Isle and Elnor Key in the mouth of Johns Pass which appear to have been seasonal camps during favorable fishing seasons. In addition, there were considerable burial mounds on Elnor Key and Tierra Verde, the latter being explored somewhat by archaeologists a short time before it was buried by the dredges. With the possible exception of Phillippi Park, the largest mound complex in the County was and still partially is along the shores of Boca Ciega Bay, stretching some two miles along the water, beginning at the Seminole Bridge and extending South to the equivalent of about 15th Avenue North. A third large group, largely still intact, is on Weedon Island. The Phillippi Park mound rivaled the Seminole Bridge concentration in size. Caladesi Island had a large group, so did areas around Tarpon Springs, at Bay View and south of Safety Harbor.
What kind of people were they and how did they live?
For the modern reader to visualize them, he first must completely dismiss from his mind the TV and Movie Indian, the Indian of written fiction, the war bonnets, the war paint, the savagery, the scalping, the daring horsemanship, the colorful wigwam.
The primitives here - then and now, called Indians because Columbus insisted in believing he had found India by a new route - lived a meager, timid, peaceful, ignorant life - difficult now to imagine.
They had no domestic animals except dogs, which were raised for food. They had no metals. They had not discovered the wheel. Their utensils, tools and weapons perforce were made of sea shells, animal bones, stone and wood. They had a very limited agriculture - perhaps corn and pumpkins and herbs - using hoes made of conch shells. They had as weapons clubs, spears, bows and arrows, stone knives. Cooking and eating vessels were of fired clay and ground out stones.
There was no written language. In fact - hard to believe now - tribes living a few miles apart would have differing language, the jungle group for instance would have a language differing somewhat from that at Maximo and Big Bayou.
Government was very simple. Each group had a medicine man and a chief or Cacique. The post was inherited from the female side. This is usual in primitive people because life and survival was less certain on the male side.
Law and order was simplicity itself. There were three crimes that were punishable; theft, adultery, and murder. There were three punishments; torture, banishment or death. In the case of infidelity both parties were punished.
The people were not war-like. The process of acquiring enough food was so strenuous and precarious there was no time for war. Main items of food came from the sea; conchs, clams, oysters, scallops, snails, fish, a vegetable or two, wild fruits and berries, and in hard times, grass and palmetto buds and bark. Small animals and birds were on the menu, notably turtles, gophers, coons, dogs, deer.
One now, knowing their needs, habits and foods, could predict living sites with those tell tale signs humans always leave - garbage and litter. They had to have a non-failing source of drinking water, hence villages were always beside a stream, spring or large pond. Firewood was a constant need - hence nearby forests or seashore where there was a constant drift of wood; shallow waters because they abounded in seafood, particularly shellfish.
The ordinary people would usually live in a communal house of posts and palmetto fans, not unlike Coastal fishermen use in the Keys today. Clothes were scanty or non-existent; moss, woven palm leaves, animal skins, feathers. The Chief had a separate house, frequently round, usually if a large village stood a conical mound of loose sand to protect against surprise raid or attack and to facilitate observation and lend prestige.
There was communication between the villages and tribes. There were traveling tradesmen who evidently were privileged to come and go. They traded in clay vessels, flints, ornaments.
It is heartening to know that even in these limited people, there was a love of beauty and a worship of a God - in their case, a fearful and dim one, visualized in the sun or a soaring eagle, the lightning flash, the roll of thunder. There were individuals who served in a primitive way as priests and doctors. But their women were adorned with strings of beads made of ground and pierced pieces of shell, bright bits of stone, and small animal bones. They were pendants ground from stone and shell. Their pottery was often decorated.
For as do all people, they were swayed by beauty and wondered and worshiped a Supreme Being and a creator of the world and life.
They were peaceful people. They became savage and cruel only in response to the treatment they received from whites, who seized their food, violated their women, dispossessed them from their homes, enslaved them for killing labor in distant lands and as human pack animals.
Thus the primitives were when the white men came, and it is worthy of comment that the American Indian, alone in the known history of the world, survived invasion by a foe superior in weapons, numbers and intelligence. The original Florida Indians the so called Spanish Indians - did not survive but nationally other tribes did. It is estimated that there are today nationally more Indians than there were when the white man came. There were perhaps a half million in the present United States; now 625,000.
Whence came these people?
Anthropological consensus is that ages ago - 10,000 years, 15,000 years, 30,000 years, perhaps 100,000 years ago people from Asia crossed the Bering Straits and slowly over the centuries fanned out over the two American continents. Curiously, along the ridges of the mountains of the western United States, Mexico, Central America, the Andes ridges of South America, they reached their highest civilization. In mathematics, astrology, art, architecture, they equaled or surpassed Egypt. They had apparently a great literature. One of the tragedies of history is that almost every book was destroyed by the Spanish - in the name of religion. They failed to discover and acquire the hard metals; gold, silver, copper they had in endless amounts that inflamed the cupidity of the Spaniards, who spent more than two centuries looting them of this form of wealth. Their only utility metal was bronze. But even these metals had not reached Florida.
They had no domestic animals when the fabulous Cortez with 800 men destroyed the tens of thousands of courageous, dedicated (Aztec) soldiers, his chief aid was their terror at his horses and his bloodhounds. They stood up to the crossbow and guns but fled before the horses and dogs.
Least advanced were these peoples in the coastal Gulf Coast, including those at St. Petersburg, and the Caribs of the West Indies.
As more and more Egyptian influence or similarity appears in art, science and physical appearance, scholars and scientists are swinging to the theory that man entered the Americas from the south end of South America rather than via the Bering Straits and that it was Egyptians and not Mongols who discovered America.
Whether the advent was from the south or the north, it is obvious that the Florida peninsula was the last occupied by the spreading peoples. In Florida when the white men came were the youngest and most primitive of the native Indians.
Puzzlement to scientists and anthropologists until recently, was the fact that the village sites in Florida, including the many within the present limits of St. Petersburg were dated back comparatively few years, two thousand, three thousand or so years. But now it is known that beginning perhaps 6000 years ago, the seas began to rise perhaps a foot a hundred years, and older town sites were submerged and the people retreated to higher ground.
Recently, Dr. Lyman 0. Warren, 7215 Fourth Avenue North, and others have begun discovering under-water village sites under Tampa Bay, Terra Ceia Bay, at Caladesi Island and other points. Perhaps the most notable recoveries have been made through the friendly cooperation of Benton & Co. officials, who have a large shell dredging operation in Tampa Bay. Tools, implements and weapons, as well as mammal bones aged cycles ago are being recovered.
We moderns know where the comparatively recent pre-white peoples lived because of the mounds they left, garbage and refuse of shell and animal bones, and ashes and sand; they are all loosely called Indian Shell Mounds. Thats where the Indians ate and kept house and sometimes slept. The State Board of Health would nowadays be properly horrified, but they survived. Other types of mounds were religious, for the residence of the chief, and for burial. There were forty or fifty mounds of such varied types within present city limits. Many have been destroyed by the forces of "Progress." One unusual mound built of sand, in the form of a turtle, at Ruppert Beach probably was the work of a wandering group of Mississippi River mound builders. Two such mounds in the vicinity of the Lighthouse, Tyrone Boulevard and Park Street, were destroyed recently to allow a residential subdivision. Fortunately Win. Sears, then of the University of Florida, now head of the Anthropological Department of Atlantic University at Boca Raton, conducted a "dig" prior to destruction, upon the urging of Major George D. Robinson, 5347 Dartmouth Avenue, Mercer Brown of the Suwannee Hotel, Tom T. Dunn, 1126 Country Club Road, and others, and the cooperation of the owners, Richard D. Keys, Jr. and Tom Hudson. One mound appeared to be a Chiefs domiciliary mound, the other a religious site. Probably Cacique (Chief) Hirrahigua lived there when the Spanish explorer, Pamfilo de Narvaez, landed on the shore of Boca Ciega Bay about April 12, 1528.
A stroke of fortune was that David A. Watt, an English engineer, who was a pioneer resident on the shores of Boca Ciega Bay, gave to the City of St. Petersburg a portion of his homesite as a park, to be kept in its primitive condition, and a portion of the Hirrahigua village was on this land. It is now named Abercrombie Park, in honor of his father-in-law, the Citys first doctor. The Park is located at Park Street and 38th Avenue North. A stroke of fortune was that a few years ago Ed C. Wright, local capitalist and large land owner, deeded to the City of St. Petersburg for a park, the East Half of Lot 15 and all of Lots 16, 21, 22, 23 and 24, Block 2, Section B, Mound Section of Pinellas Point Addition, located at the Southwest corner of Pinellas Point Drive and Bethell Way (approximately 20th Street,) on which is located a great mound; probably a chiefs domiciliary mound and possibly the site of the highly controversial landing of the greatest of the Spanish explorers, Hernando de Soto, when he came ashore on May 25, 1539.
But little else traces remains of these people except the mounds, and these early people of St. Petersburg, commonly called the Spanish Indians, together with all the other original South Florida Indians, have disappeared. Many were captured early in the Spanish period and sold as slaves for the mines and plantations in the West Indies. Many died of white mans diseases. Others were killed when used as soldiers in clashes between the English and Americans and Spaniards. The end came in 1704 when Col. Thomas Moore, former Governor of South Carolina, swept through all Florida destroying Spanish missions and the Indians to restore a once glamorous military reputation, tarnished when he failed to capture Fort Marion at St. Augustine, in one of the innumerable unofficial wars that flared between the Spanish of Florida and the English and later the Americans, until in frustration Spain gave the State to the United States in 1822. Moore said he enslaved or killed all the Indians "to the end of the firme ground," that is down to the Everglades.
A handful of the original Spanish Indians perhaps have survived on one of the Bahama Islands, heavily mixed with negroes and other Bahamians. No trace of their language survives.
How then do we know so much about them? Largely due to the development in comparatively recent years of the "Carbon 14" method of dating articles of otherwise unknown age. The method is based on a system of measuring the amount of radiation left in an object after it has been exposed to fire. It is believed to be accurate within 50 or 75 years, no matter how many thousands of years have elapsed since the event of fire.
As a result of this dating, many patient archaeologists, digging in the old mounds, carefully charting depths at which pottery and other artifacts occur, have constructed time tables, and by other devices have established dates of occupancy, foods, weapons, types of houses and many other facets of their lives during the varying time periods.
In addition to Dr. Warren and Major Robinson, there are many such skilled people in St. Petersburg. Among them are Frank Bushnell, formerly Professor at Boca Ciega High, now at St. Petersburg Junior College; Walter Askew, gifted 23 year old anthropologist, 5110 - 30th Avenue North, and many persons of the 60-member St. Petersburg Chapter of the Florida Anthropological Society, headquartered at Florida Presbyterian College.
In addition there is the "Searchers," a group of young people of upper Pinellas led by Mr. and Mrs John White, and the Safety Harbor Historical Society led by Gus Nelson and Mayor McGonical.
Frank Bushnell and these last two groups have all since 1964 made notable archaeological digs in Pinellas County, which have in spectacular fashion increased knowledge of the early people and the arrival of the white man to St. Petersburg and Pinellas.
Bushnell apparently located in 1965-1966 the permanent camp site of de Narvaez at the Harold Anderson residence at 1620 Park Street North, the Jungle; as related officially in Volume XIX, Numbers 1-2-3, 1966, "The Florida Anthropologist." The Searchers at its Bay View dig (in a pasture west of Kapok Tree Inn at Seven Oaks) uncovered the site of a Sixteenth Century white European camp and Nelson et al, in 1967, at Philippi Park, unearthed abundant traces of other Sixteenth Century whites.
These exciting discoveries will be discussed further in a chapter dealing with the coming of the white explorers of the early Sixteenth Century.
A notable "dig" was made at Weedon Island mounds by J. Walter Fewkes, of Smithsonian Institution in 1923-24, his findings being recorded in Publication 2787 of the Smithsonian Institution. This was made at the instigation of Eugene Elliott, sales manager for the original stock sale of the Gandy Bridge, and promoter of boom time (1925) subdivisions on North Fourth Street and Weedons Island. The story has a touch of fantasy and humor.
Seeking to create lot selling publicity for his Weedon Island subdivision he "planted" Indian artifacts in the huge mounds on the Island, invited Fewkes down - at Elliotts expense - for a "dig." Fewkes came and his experienced eye soon discovered the "plant," so he quietly started digging in other areas, and to Elliotts amazement, made major history making discoveries. Fewkes finds are preserved in the St. Petersburg Historical Society Museum, 335 - 2nd Avenue, N.E., Museum at the University of Florida and the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
These early Indians were of Timuquan stock, differing sharply from the Indians of North Florida, but similar to the Calusa of Fort Myers - (Calusahatchee River is named after them.) Other tribal names but of the same racial stock were these, Tequesta, of the Miami area, the Aies of Central Floridas East Coast.
None of these Indians are to be confused with the Seminoles, who drifted into Florida in the Eighteenth Century as "runaways" from the Creek tribes of Georgia and Alabama. (Seminole means runaway.)
The Seminoles, North Florida, and South Eastern States Indians are of Muskhogean and Algonquin stocks.
But these early peoples, who left so little trace, and had no influence on their white successors, because of their comparatively heavy settlement of this area, proved by being here, what a pleasant land is this Pinellas Peninsula, on which St. Petersburg is located
John A. Bethell, who settled at Big Bayou in 1859, was by profession a fisherman and boat-builder. He loved hunting and ranged frequently over the peninsula that is now St. Petersburg, and did so with an observant eye and mind. His family was English, having settled in the Bahamas about 1720. Some Bethells eventually moved to Key West. He and his father, William, fished and turtled on Tampa Bay as early as 1849. He makes interesting observations of the numerous Indian mounds in this area in a little book he wrote in 1914. The following is quoted from that book:
"Before and after the Civil War there was a cluster of cabbage palms growing on the sand beach at Point Pinellas, fronting on Espiritu Santo Bay, as it used to be called, which was known as the 'Three Cabbages. In 1884 the government surveyors cut down two of the palms, leaving only one, since known as the 'Lone Palm, as being a better mark for true bearings in running lines.
"It also answered as a bearing to a very large mound in a northwesterly direction and about three-quarters of a mile distant. This mound differs in shape and construction from any other mound in this section, or possibly in the State. In 1872, when Dr. Van Bibber was exploring the West Coast for a location for a sanitarium, and Professor Agassiz was looking up curiosities for the Smithsonian Institution, Captain Eugene Coons met and brought them to my place at Big Bayou. I then piloted them through the Point and to this mound. (This 1872 dating is undoubtedly in error, 1882 is probably intended. Editor)
"After inspecting it, they concluded that it was built in layers of earth and shell to the depth of about three feet to each layer. Though they could hardly tell for a certainty, from the fact that the mound was so thickly covered over with saw palmetto that it was a very difficult matter to tell precisely how thick the layers were or whether the earth and shell were mixed as they went on. An excavation in the north side, since made by employees of the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences, would seem to disprove the separate layer theory. Other mounds constructed of earth and shell seem to show that the shells were mixed in with the earthy material to better keep it in position.
"There are three or more circular excavations like sinkholes or pond bottoms, from which the earth was taken. The present county road along the section line skirts the largest of the holes, beyond which to the south and but a stones throw from the road stands the mound.
"As the mound stands on the high timbered land about a quarter of a mile from the present beach line, the transportation of the shell thither is a problem. The remains of a causeway reaching the top of the mound and gently sloping toward the south may have assisted in making the deposit of shell. The mound is elongated in an almost east and west line. The slope of the sides is abrupt, except on the south, as mentioned. The top at the south end had once been leveled off for fifteen or twenty feet and terraced over.
"It must have been in existence many years, perhaps ages, from the fact that when I first saw it, in 1849, it had pine trees growing on it equally large as any in the neighborhood. I did not see the mound again until 1859, and it was then in a good state of preservation. But since the Civil War vandal hands have preyed upon it so often that now there is scarcely a vestige of the terrace to be seen.
"About three-quarters of a mile west and fronting on the bay, G. W. Bennetts cottage site is the eastern extremity of an interesting ridge or mound, which curves northward and westward, traversing about a quarter of a mile, and comes back along Maximo Road to the bay, then recurves eastward twenty rods or more along the waters edge, with the extremity again thrown back toward the west like the end of a monsters tail. It encloses ten or more acres, and is generally called a serpent mound. (Sensational discoveries are currently being made in this mound. Editor)
"This mound is constructed of earth and shell mixed, and the slope of the landward side is quite steep, so much so that it may have been used as a fortification. From Maximo Road west and along the bay is a regular tumble of mounds of all shapes and sizes. Covered with a hammock growth of palms, oaks, cedars and shrubbery, this extends another quarter mile to near Point Maximo. These are also of earth and shell, with a large percentage of shell.
"Jutting out from this mound-base run two long straight ridges or spurs in a northerly direction to a length of several hundred feet, and still six to eight feet high. They resemble railroad embankment or old earthworks. Perhaps it was intended to complete the quadrangle for a defensive purpose. A short distance north, at the edge of a bayhead, is still to be seen a waterhole where the earth excavated was thrown up in the middle of the two basins, making a solid passageway between. These relics are of genuine interest and should be preserved, as far as possible. West of Point Maximo is a less striking continuation of the shell works for a good many yards.
"There are many isolated mounds in the lower Point. There was a handsome group on the Kempe property at Big Bayou, and the big oyster shell mounds at St. Petersburg were many. It is a pity that they were not preserved intact, in a public park.
"It is very evident that many years ago there was no Booker Creek, but all solid land where it now runs, from the fact that on each side of the creek, several hundred yards northwest from high bridge, and opposite each other, are two embankments of oyster shell that at one time must have been one very large mound spanning the present creek. Possibly some heavy cloudburst flooded the flatwoods to the north westward, coursed its way through the land as it sloped downwards and undermined the mound or forced a passage through it and washed the land away, which was the making of the creek. There is a descent of about fifteen or twenty feet from the bayhead above Ninth Street bridge, and when the flatwoods is flooded the fall of the water is so great that it gradually washes out the creek and keeps it open." (This violent change in contour probably occurred in the great hurricane of September 23-25, 1848. Editor.)
A real mystery - what appeared to be fortifications - is also briefly discussed in the Bethell book. Under the title of "Old Fort at Big Bayou," Bethell says:
"On the north side of Big Bayou, near the entrance, stand several massive live oaks that mark the spot of a once heavily timbered hammock of oaks, pines, cabbage palms, sweet bay and various other kinds of trees, that were growing on it until the year 1859, when Abel Miranda bought and cleared it for cultivation. Whilst clearing the land he made a very unlooked-for discovery in finding the ruins of an old fortification made entirely of oyster and conch shells, evidently built by the discoverers of Tampa Bay, as a protection against the hordes of aborigines that were usually on the warpath.
"This fort covered about an acre of ground and had but three walled sides. One side faced northeast, one northwest and one southwest. The southeast side was not walled up, simply because the northeast and southwest wings extended to the waters of the bayou.
And again it may have been left open for retreat by boats in the event of an attack by an enemy, and the garrison not able to hold their own. The walls on the northeast and northwest corners were at least three feet high and gradually sloped to about two feet at the waterfront.
"This enclosure had two openings, at the northeast and northwest corners, about fourteen feet wise, possibly intended for sally ports. A remarkable circumstance about the enclosure was that the ground inside was about two feet lower than the land around the fort on the outside. There were cabbage palms, oaks and pines growing in the embankment as large as any in the hammock. How high this shell had been piled up originally, how long and by whom, is a mystery that will never be revealed.
"A great deal of shell remains there yet to mark the spot where the fort once stood, though in clearing the land the shells were leveled and the timber piled on them and burned to get it out of the way. Besides, much was hauled off and burned in kilns for fertilizer.
"It is very evident that there has been some fighting done on that spot, from the fact that in clearing we found inside the enclosure quite a number of arrow heads, some with shafts nine and one-half inches long, in a finely polished state, while some were very crude."
This structure fits no situation known to have occurred in this area. Obviously the breastworks were built by people who wanted to keep retreat by sea open or who felt no fear from sea attack. Yet the water depth nor area was sufficient for large boats to have supported the defenders of the fort. No account of the early Spanish explorers hints of any land forts. Narvaez and de Soto established camps but no forts. De Leon never made it to shore.
The age of the trees mentioned by Bethell indicates a construction time between one and two hundred years prior to 1859, which makes it fit no wars, nor the English occupation of 1763-1783. English records were very voluminous and precise. Besides, Indians used guns -not bows and arrows- at that time.The invasion by Colonel Moore and his 1500 Creek Indians in 1704-08 fits timewise, and the peaceful disposition of the original Florida Indians may have changed by 1704-08, and as Moore came overland they may have hastily thrown up the earthworks, planning to escape by water as a last resort.
Time, as it has so often before, may solve this enigma, but the chances seem remote.