Archaeology Magazine - March/April 1987 - 75

The diary of Lieutenant Henry Prince
is a remarkable document. Thinly veiled
between the lines of its fact-filled prose
are the hopes and dreams of an ambitious young West Point graduate. Its
pages tell their tale with the youthful
wonder of a stranger in a truly strange
land. Importantly for our purposes,
Prince was a trained topographical engineer, and entered into his diary detailed observations of landform and
vegetation communities in the Cove, as
well as the situation of Powell's Tbwn
by bearing and distance to the Withlacoochee River one half mile away. It was
our challenge to match the Powell's
Town description from the diaryknown only to scholars since its accidental discovery in an attic in 1979with the geography of the Cove as it
exists today.
We expected to find there items of
hardware: implements, utensils and the

The Seminole attack on an Army fort
in Florida was depicted by a contemporary observer,;
like; trade goods such as black glass bottles and plates; and artifacts of military
origin- uniform coat buttons, firearms,
and balls of lead shot. In accounts of
battles and skirmishes in which Osceola
and his men were involved, the Seminóles are described as wearing Armyblue great coats, standard-issue forage
caps, and even uniform trousers. One of
Henry Prince's first encounters with the
Florida Indian foe occurred in March
1836, when a dead Seminole was
dragged into his camp wearing a "powder horn of the very best rifle powder,"a
leather haversack packed full of bullets,
gunflints, and equipment used to clean
and load a flintlock.
Milanich and I also carefully studied
the Florida State Museum collections of
Seminole brushed pottery before going
into the field, expecting that surface
finds of these diagnostic sherds would
initially help us identify the Osceola site.
Pottery with a "brushed" exteriorproduced by wiping the still moist vessel with bundles of grass, pine needles,
or corn cobs- has roots deep within
Southeastern tradition. First seen as a
minority type in the lower Mississippi
Valley after a.D. 1200, it had spread
throughout the Southeast by the approach of the historic era. Brushed pottery, usually in the form of jars, became

particularly popular among the Creeks
of Georgia and Alabama, who subsequently introduced it into Florida during their migrations of the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries.
Thè experience of our first fieldwork
was to mirror the tribulations of Henry
Prince 146 years before. The Cove of the
Withlacoochee was not a place where
one's ambitions were fulfilled easily; we
had not found Powell's Town. Instead,
we excavated the remains of a single broken pottery vessel buried enigmatically
in a layer of white sand beneath which
was a much earlier prehistoric midden.
I became convinced that we had erred
in our interpretation of the diary. Events
of the following summer were to prove
that this had indeed been the case.
Prince, in his notes, specifically recorded
that the Osceloa camp was on an "oak
scrub elevation," a description that
clearly did not fit our first site. In our
first visit to the new site, on an oak
scrub knob about one half mile west of
a course of the river (and near our first
"Powell's Town" site), sherds of identifiable Seminole pottery were immediately
collected from the surface, as were fragments of bottle glass, a hand-forged
bridle bit (we know the Seminóles were
using horse tack from at least Bartram's
time), and- perhaps most dramatic of
all- an intact three-legged cast-iron
cook pot.
Iron cook pots, of both French and
British origin, appear at many historic
period Indian sites throughout the
Southeast. Similar pots were in use at
the same time by European peasants,
although they were primarily manufactured for Indian trade in the New World.
In Florida, fragments of an iron pot very
similar to the Osceola find were excavated at a British trading post on the
St. John's River, known as Spalding's
Lower Store. The store was in business
from 1774 to at least 1783, and was the
brisk center of commerce for the central
Florida Indian trade. It is likely that
this durable iron pot was obtained in
trade at Spalding's, and then served its
owner a long and useful time. By the
early 1800s this particular style of pot,
made obsolete by new and improved
manufacturing techniques, was no
longer being produced.
By the summer of 1984, after a period of cautious research, we were at last
confident that we had located the
Osceola site, and a program of systematic shovel testing was begun. Results
so far suggest that we may be able to
define activity areas within the campthe cattle pens and the square (attested
to by Prince), storage buildings, dwellings and the like. Charred peach pits and
cow bones indicate that despite their remote location- then and now- the
Seminóles may have relied on food
obtained through cultivation and barter,

not forage.
The idea that the Seminóles did not
readily adopt the ways of the earlier prehistoric peoples in the Cove of the
Withlacoochee- fishing, gathering shellfish from the river, and hunting wild
prey- is strengthened by our excavations at two other war-period Seminole
sites in the area. These sites too had
remained undiscovered until the Prince
diary became available for study. Here,
in an orange grove and in a nearby vegetable garden, we have uncovered the remains of what we have interpreted as
matrilineal clan camps- a form of settlement that existed into modern times
on the South Florida Seminole reservations. Matrilineal clan camps are composed of a matriarch and her husband,
their daughters' families and unmarried
brothers of the principal woman. In the
Withlacoochee Cove, we suspect that
these camps were grouped very loosely
into "towns" although the buildings
themselves were separated by 100 meters or more.
Although subsistence remains are
scarce on these sites, it is likely that cattle continued to be important. The
Prince document and others suggest
that foods derived from wild plant
sources such as coontie, as well as garden crops, were important dietary items,
but we do not as yet have archaeological confirmation of this. There does not
appear to be any direct association between Seminole artifacts and deposits
of midden in the Cove.
Perhaps most surprising of all is the
quantity of brushed pottery present at
the Cove Seminole sites- unexpected because its popularity had been in steady
decline for at least 50 years as trade
goods became more readily available.
And the various kinds of imported
chinaware common at earlier-period
Seminole sites are completely absent
from these early nineteenth-century
sites. Was there a renaissance in native-made pottery as the white man
and his ways fell into increasing disfavor? Women at the individual clan
camps seem to have been making (or
using) pottery, each with her own
unique style of rim treatment- an indication that their society was far from
being in a sad state of disintegration.
Osceola died in 1838, a broken warrior. Although he has long been at rest,
his people have not. They have survived,
even triumphed, amidst the complexities of the contemporary world. Today,
their numbers again approach preSeminole War levels. The current history
of Florida's Seminóles has been clearly
shaped by the twin themes of persistence and change. As we continue our
Seminole project in the Cove of the
Withlacoochee, we remain ever mindful
of how these themes have also shaped
what lies buried in the Florida sands.
March/April
1987 59

Archaeology Magazine - March/April 1987

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