September 28 to October 3, 2016—Tomoka
I hadn’t made a reservation anywhere for these few days because I was hoping to take Brenda to a hotel for her birthday. But the place I had in mind, an old hotel on the water in Jacksonville Beach, didn’t accept pets. Originally we thought that staying in hotels periodically would be a treat but it doesn’t really appeal to us now—would probably discombobulate the cats and a hotel stay doesn’t really offer anything we don’t already have, at least not enough to justify the expense. Can’t remember what I did actually get for her birthday but whatever it was, or wasn’t, I’m sure she remembers.
Instead of the Casa Marina in Jax Beach we stayed a few days in Tomoka state park outside of Daytona Beach. Pretty much the same as the previously described camps—tropical jungle sea islands. We met some folks who had a troupe of dancing tropical birds (not with them) that had earned them an appearance on the TV show America’s Got Talent.
Below is a local artist’s homage to the Tomoka people, hidden deep in the park.
We drove to a couple of nearby attractions. One was what was said to be the largest live oak (“live oak” is the species name; it is the one you see Spanish moss hanging from) in Florida, 500 years old.
The other was the ruins of Bulow Plantation, a vast sugarcane plantation and sugar-making operation in the early 1800s. The operation was the largest and richest in northeast Florida—hundreds of acres of sugarcane, now grown over in native plants, and a major factory operation for crushing, reducing and solidifying the sugar. The young Jon Bulow that inherited the plantation while in his early twenties was lucky that he had a lot of African slaves nearby to help him keep it going. They chipped in with the cutting of the cane (and also the cultivation of his rice fields) and the decidedly arduous work of boiling it down to make sugar and molasses. Fortunately for young Bulow there were 200 such slaves living right nearby to help him establish and maintain one of the most celebrated plantation houses in the region. We’ve seen scores of magnificent plantation houses on our travels. My first impression used to be, “wow, what cool buildings with those massive columns and vast porches.” Now all I can see is plantation owners sitting on those verandas sipping cold drinks watching bandanna’d heads going up and down in the cotton or cane or tobacco fields, and all I can hear is the snap of a whip. Has someone written a book about all the impressive structures that never would have been built without slave labor?
In this region, southern coastal Georgia and very northeast coastal Florida, a favored building material, and road material, of early settlers was “tabby,” made by burning oyster shells to make lime and mixing it with sand, water, crushed oyster shell and ash. It is a basic concrete and some buildings constructed from it in the 18th century still stand as historical sites. The name Tybee Island is thought to derive from a corruption of the word tabby. Bulow’s sugar factory was built from a similar material called cochina. It is basically a type of tabby that forms naturally in the ground over centuries. It can be cut from the ground in blocks which harden as they cure above ground.
Bulow, like his father, had decent relations with the local Seminole Indians. When the federal government waged war on the Seminoles in the 1830s, for failing to act submissive like the other Indians, the army arrived at Bulow plantation to make it a base for pursuing the Seminole. Bulow resisted the attempt, even firing a cannon at the approaching army, for which he was imprisoned for a short time in his own home. His reasoning was that if his plantation was militarized the Seminoles would destroy it. Sure enough, when the army left the Seminoles did just that, burning the wooden plantation house and surrounding slave quarters, and the sugar works. The cochina stone walls of the factory remain intact, as do some of the cochina foundation of some slave cabins.
(remains of Bulow sugar factory.)
I think I am correct in saying that the Seminoles were the only native people who were not beaten into submission by the US government, fighting a guerilla war from the everglades. The army lost thousands of soldiers trying to roust them out, failing. The Mardi Gras Indian tradition of New Orleans, where social clubs construct and parade in elaborate indian costumes, is said to derive from slaves who escaped Louisiana into the everglades and joined the Seminoles. There defiant anthems, with refrains like “we won’t bow down/not on the ground,” celebrate that association. If you have seen the tv series “Treme” that tradition is depicted. Years ago the Paribellos and I toured the museum of Mardi Gras indian costumes, in a modest house in the Treme neighborhood of New Orleans. Go out now and buy the Wild Tchoupitalous album of 1976, one of the greatest records of all time.