The History of Florida (11 page)

proof

Selected Soil Orders and Suborders.

United States Department of Agricul-

ture.
Principal
Kinds
of
Soils,
Orders,

Suborders
and
Great
Groups
. 1:7,500,000.

Rev. ed., 1985.
National
Atlas
of
the

United
States
of
America
.

The Land They Found · 47

flood seasonal y because of high water tables and underlying hardpans or

limestones that are close to the surface. Here are found flatwoods of pines

and palmettos, areas used to run cattle beginning in the nineteenth century.

Modern drainage and agricultural practices have allowed the cultivation of

oranges and other crops. Swamps are common where no modern drainage

has been built. In precontact times, maize cultivation extended to the Fort

Myers–Fort Pierce Inlet line, but was confined to natural y higher, drained

soils and man-made ridges.

South of the Fort Myers–Fort Pierce Inlet line, the soils are al of wet types

(Aquents, Histosols, and Aquepts), and the original vegetation was wet—

pine savannah, cypress swamps, and sawgrass or other types of marshes

depending on location. Where hammocks rise above this wet environment,

oaks and some tropical hardwoods grow. There is some evidence that Na-

tive Americans exploited these hammocks and the other potentials of south

Florida well before the Seminole and Miccosukee made them a refuge dur-

ing the nineteenth-century Seminole Wars. Twentieth-century drainage

works reclaimed some of this area south of Lake Okeechobee and disrupted

the natural flow of water into the Everglades. Sugarcane and some winter

vegetables grow on these drained areas today.

The Pleistocene barrier islands of Georgia and the Carolinas and to a

proof

lesser degree those of Florida’s east coast separate shal ow bays and the

mouths of rivers such as the Satil a, Altamaha, and St. Lucy from the At-

lantic Ocean. Live-oak maritime forests on the landward sides of the is-

lands and on the mainlands opposite, especial y around river mouths, are

associated with soils capable of growing maize, beans, squash, and other

plants but in amounts limited by the small extent of those soils and the dif-

ficulties of clearing the oaks. These forests, and the marshes that fringe the

bays, provide rich sources of protein in the form of turkey, deer, raccoons,

turtles, and migratory birds. The bays and marshes shelter fish, shel fish,

and, within the marsh, edible tuberous roots. Native Americans exploited

all of these resources as did later European and African settlers.8 After the

United States took over Florida, the live-oak groves along its east coast were

reserved for the U.S. Navy, which cut them to provide the natural y curved

timbers needed for the ribs of wooden warships. As the cutters moved on,

small farmers sometimes replaced them.

A few attempts have been made to correlate the locations of Native Amer-

ican settlements, especial y on the central ridge and northern hills, with

particular soil types, but so far the results are suggestive only.9 More impor-

tant for vil age sites in the peninsula (and some later European settlements)

48 · Paul E. Hoffman

are sources of surface freshwater and the ecotones associated with them. In

Georgia and the Carolinas, settlements other than those on the coast were

sited where freshwater, floodplain soils, and adjacent uplands offered ideal

combinations for agriculture and hunting and gathering.10 In the penin-

sula, aside from the rather dense cluster of Timucuan-speaking vil ages on

the lower St. Johns River and along the back bays and rivers to the north

(into southern Georgia), Native American vil ages were strung at intervals

along the central ridge and clustered in the Madison-Tal ahassee Hil s area.

Around Tampa Bay, Sarasota Bay, and Charlotte Harbor were other clus-

ters of vil ages supported primarily by maritime resources supplemented by

some maize-bean-squash agriculture on the poor-quality gray-white sandy

soils of the area and some hunting of deer and other animals and the gath-

ering of nuts and berries. Modern home owners who try to maintain lush

lawns in these areas know well that such soils demand high costs in water

and fertilizers. Lacking the technologies that make such lawns possible, Na-

tive Americans and pre-twentieth-century European settlers had to make

do with what the land would allow to grow. A consequence was frequent ro-

tation of their plantings and the clearing of new fields as the old lost fertility.

Not surprisingly, those pioneers mostly ran cattle and tended small gardens

and groves and were few in number. South of the Fort Myers–Fort Pierce

proof

Inlet line, Native American vil ages whol y dependent on marine resources

and wetland plants occupied coastal high ground locations and, as in the

case of the Calusa, islands like Key Marcos.

While the qualities of the land for agricultural and other uses have been

critical determinants of human settlement in the Floridas, the numerous

rivers that flow through La Florida have also played a role. Large and smal ,

all of La Florida’s rivers are navigable in small boats and canoes deep into

the land before the waters either narrow and become shallow to the point of

being impassable or—as in the case of the Altamaha, the Savannah, and the

Chattahoochee—encounter the fall line rapids at the foot of the piedmont.

The rivers of the Carolinas and Georgia and the Chattahoochee and other

rivers that flow from the piedmont were, before twentieth-century flood-

control work, subject to flash flooding along their lower courses. Moreover,

they were/are fringed by dense swamps and forests that made their banks

unsuitable for human habitation, especial y as they approach the coast.

Nonetheless, they provided the freshwater that makes the coastal marshes

so productive of exploitable marine life. Other rivers such as the St. Johns,

St. Marys, Suwannee, St. Marks, Hil sborough, Peace, and Miami did not

flash-flood, although they can flood some of their margins during periods

The Land They Found · 49

of very heavy rains. Native American settlements were found along their

courses and around their mouths where other factors such as soils were

favorable. Shorter rivers arising on the upper coastal plain were less likely

to flood and were often without heavy forests along their margins, but few

Native American settlements occupied their banks. We know little of how

Native Americans used these natural routes for commerce or exploited the

fish, turtles, and birds that frequented these waters and the ecotones along

their shores.

For Old World settlers, on the other hand, the rivers clearly were routes

for communication and trade, al owing settlers to reach agricultural and

other natural resources beyond those found along the coasts and to bring

those products to market.11 For the Spaniards, the St. Johns, the Suwannee,

and the St. Marks were avenues for commerce at various times in the six-

teenth and seventeenth centuries, joining the bays behind the Atlantic bar-

rier islands (and the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico) as parts of their commu-

nications system. That system tied the missions and garrisons together and

allowed the transportation of the agricultural products of Guale (roughly

modern coastal Georgia) and Apalachee and the hides from ranches in cen-

tral Florida (near Paynes Prairie) to market and of supplies from the larger

Atlantic world to missions and garrisons. The English during their control,

proof

and the Anglo-Americans entering Spanish Florida after 1784, mostly used

the St. Johns and the St. Marys as routes into the interior, to wild orange

groves (along the St. Johns), lands to be farmed, and forests to be tapped for

naval stores. In the nineteenth century, small steamboats on the St. Johns

were the preferred means to reach trails and then roads that gave access to

the central ridge’s healthful air around Brooksville, a refuge (like St. Augus-

tine) for the tubercular. Only slowly did a few of the peninsula’s other rivers

(aside always from those that joined the bays behind the barrier islands)

become avenues of commerce. But in time, the use of larger ships that drew

more water than what was found in most of Florida’s rivers, railroads, and

paved highways moved commerce away from the water, leaving the rivers

and bays largely to recreational fishermen and boaters.

One aspect of Florida’s hydrography that remained a puzzle until the

nineteenth century was what connections, if any, existed between the wa-

ters of the St. Johns and Kissimmee Rivers, the Everglades and the Peace and

other rivers of southern Florida. Spanish and English maps reflect the
hope

that somehow all that water would allow a cross-peninsula route that might

even be navigable by small sailing ships. But there is no such natural route.

The climate of the Southeast and the peninsula is, with soils, drainage,

50 · Paul E. Hoffman

and the frequency of fires, another major component of the area’s ecology.

Average frost-free days range from 300 in central Florida to 270 to 210 over

the Georgia-Carolinas coastal plain (according to elevation), to about 210

in the piedmont. This long growing season al ows as many as two crops

in Florida and fairly secure ones elsewhere if rainfal is adequate during

the growing months and temperatures are not too high. In general, both

summer rainfall and temperatures are modulated by the movement of the

Bermuda High, which controls airflow from the south and southeast to the

northwest over northern Florida and the Georgia-Carolinas area. When

the High is “onshore,” drought and very hot conditions can develop over

the coastal plain and piedmont; when “offshore,” rainfal can be adequate

and temperatures somewhat reduced during July and August. South of the

northern Florida hil s, summer rainfall and temperatures are governed by

the strength of the trade winds, daily patterns of evaporation and thunder-

storm formation, and tropical storms.

Everywhere, but especial y in northern Florida, lightning strikes from

thunderstorms are common. Northern Florida has up to ninety days a year

of lightning, making that part of the state one of the more active lightning

areas in the world. Strikes are somewhat less common farther south.

Lightning-caused fires were essential for maintaining the longleaf pine

proof

forests of the northern hil s. There and in some other areas those fires served

to clear out accumulated understory plants. Native Americans who hunted

deer and then the “cracker” settlers who ran cattle set fires for the same

purpose when lightning fires did not do an adequate job. In these cases, the

goal was to encourage the growth of grasses that fed deer and cattle.

The normal annual rainfall pattern is one of sometimes prolonged and

heavy rains during the passage of cold fronts and Gulf of Mexico–gener-

ated lows during the winter months (November to March), followed by late

afternoon and evening thunderstorms during the summer months (June-

September) as evaporation provides moisture that condenses into thun-

derstorms. Annual totals range from about 40 inches along coastal areas,

50 inches over much of the interior of the peninsula, and 60 inches in the

southern Appalachians.

Within this general weather pattern, spring rainfal is critical for agri-

culture. In the northern parts of the peninsula, spring rainfall seems to be

influenced by the same large-scale climate fluctuations that tree-ring stud-

ies have shown operate over Georgia (especial y) and the Carolinas. Chro-

nologies derived from these studies show repeated alternations of below-

and above-normal rainfall (that is, rainfall that is more than one standard

The Land They Found · 51

deviation below or above the running mean), changes that imply crop fail-

ures, especial y in years when rainfal is wel below normal. Thus regard-

ing the settling of Santa Elena and the first Jesuit mission (1566 and 1570,

respectively), the “lost colony” on Roanoke Island (1587), and Jamestown

(1606–1612), we know that rainfal was wel below normal for periods of

years associated with each event, a fact that helps to explain the added stress

that the new European presence and demand for food placed on Native

Americans in those areas and their usual y hostile responses.12 A correlation

with below-normal rainfall over Georgia has also been found for some later

years during the first Spanish period (1565–1763), when maize harvests at St.

Augustine are recorded to have been well below expectations.13 Further cor-

relations of agricultural fortunes with rainfall patterns in northern Florida

may be possible because the documentary record gets progressively better

after the middle of the nineteenth century. As yet no proxy studies have

determined historical rainfall patterns for the rest of the peninsula in the