Ride The Wind Private Airboat Charters

The original native inhabitants of Florida had all but disappeared by 1700. European diseases and the losses from nearly constant colonial warfare had reduced the population to a mere handful. Bands from various tribes in the southeastern United States pressured by colonial expansion began moving into the unoccupied lands in Florida. These primarily Creek tribes were called Cimarrones by the Spanish “strays” or “wanderers.” This is the probable origin of the name Seminole. Runaway slaves or “Maroons” also began making their way into Florida where they were regularly granted freedom by the Spanish. Many joined the Indian villages and integrated into the tribes.

Father's Day weekend. Fathers get a free T-shirt and a My Father cigar. Saturday and Sunday, June 20th and 21st. BOOK your private airboat charter with Captain Randy. www.ride-the-wind.com

THE SEMINOLE WAR: “BILLY BOWLEG’S WAR” Hollata Micco, who the Americans knew as “Billy Bowlegs,” was a veteran of the war, the head of a prominent town, and a respected leader who helped keep the Seminole Tribe together after the United States declared the “Florida War” over. He spent the following decade working to ease relations and find a place for the tribe in the new Florida. He found common cause with the American Indian Agent, Captain John C. Casey. The two agreed that it was possible for the Seminole to remain in Florida and made these arguments to the federal government.
Despite this, Indian Removal remained the position in Washington. One of the strongest proponents was Jefferson Davis, the Secretary of War, who would be the president of the Confederate States of America six years later. Davis directed the Army to pressure the Seminole, looking to either convince them to leave or spark an incident that could be used to justify war.
The pressure campaign proved to be a success. In December of 1855, an Army patrol deep in Seminole territory vandalized and looted a Seminole camp. They woke up later that week to a Seminole attack. Only three of the American soldiers survived. In response, the United States declared the third Seminole War. The military had learned the lesson of the Florida War and was prepared for combat in the wetlands environment. With fewer than a thousand Seminole still in Florida, and new American tactics, the war would only last three years.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission’s Florida Python Challenge is returning this summer, giving participants a chance to win a share of $25,000 in prizes while helping protect the Everglades ecosystem.

The competition runs July 10-19 and challenges participants to remove as many invasive Burmese pythons as possible from eight official competition locations across South Florida. This year, Everglades National Park is again one of those locations.

Over 2,500 people died here. Most of them were buried in a hole in the ground with no names. 🌊
Over 2,500 people died here. Most of them were buried in a hole in the ground with no names. 🌊
On September 16, 1928, a Category 4 hurricane made landfall near Palm Beach and pushed the waters of Lake Okeechobee over a poorly engineered earthen d**e. The surge was 20 feet in some areas. The towns of Belle Glade, South Bay, and Pahokee were submerged within hours. It remains the deadliest natural disaster in Florida history and the second deadliest in American history, behind only the 1900 Galveston hurricane.
What followed the storm was its own atrocity. White victims were collected, coffined, and buried in marked graves. Black victims, who made up the majority of the dead, were loaded into trucks and buried in a mass grave at Port Mayaca. A separate mass grave in West Palm Beach held hundreds more. For decades, the site had no marker, no ceremony, and no official acknowledgment.
The d**e that failed had been flagged as inadequate years before the storm. The Army Corps of Engineers knew. The state knew. The people living in its shadow were mostly Black farmworkers and poor white laborers who had no political power to demand better.
What did they teach you about this in school?

They didn't teach this to me in school. My grandfather told me. He helped bury the people

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXInXIPF-64

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