Florida: Past and present: together with notes from Sunland, on the Manatee River, Gulf Coast of South Florida: its climate, soil, and productionsUpham, Samuel C. (Samuel Curtis)
History
Florida: Past and present: together with notes from Sunland, on the Manatee River, Gulf Coast of South Florida: its climate, soil, and productions
Upham, Samuel C. (Samuel Curtis)
Florida -- Description and travel; Florida -- History; Manatee County (Fla.)
If there is one thing above all others of which we feel justly proud, it
is our superb climate. The "glorious climate of California," and the
sunny clime and golden skies of Italy bear no comparison with it. It is
indescribable, and must be seen and felt in order to be fully
appreciated. A Baptist clergyman--Hard-shell--who visited Braidentown
last winter, was so fascinated and infatuated with the climate and
surroundings that he said he verily believed that he was then nearer
Paradise than he ever expected to be again while in the flesh.
A timid person occasionally asks, "Are there Indians still in Florida?"
A remnant of the once warlike Creeks and Seminoles--scarcely two hundred
souls, including males, squaws, and papooses--still have an abiding
place on the Caloosahatchee, the Kissimmee, and in the Big Cypress
Swamp, south of Lake Okeechobee. They are peaceably disposed, and only
mingle with the whites when they visit the country stores to dispose of
their peltry and game and replenish their ammunition. Chipco and the
elder Tigertail, two of their former chiefs, have been called to the
"happy hunting-grounds" during the past two years. The former was a
centenarian, having attained the green old age of one hundred and ten
years. He participated in the Dade massacre, near Brooksville, in 1835.
The latter died by the visitation of God, having been killed by
lightning while crossing the Kissimmee in his canoe. The Indians have
several negro slaves in their secluded camps, who have never been
informed that the Emancipation Proclamation of the martyred Lincoln
loosened their shackles and made them free men.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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