Digging Miami

Digging Miami

UNIVERSITY PRESS OF FLORIDA

Florida A&M University, Tallahassee

Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton

Florida Gulf Coast University, Ft. Myers

Florida International University, Miami

Florida State University, Tallahassee

New College of Florida, Sarasota

University of Central Florida, Orlando

University of Florida, Gainesville

University of North Florida, Jacksonville

University of South Florida, Tampa

University of West Florida, Pensacola

Digging Miami

Robert S. Carr

University Press of Florida

Gainesville

Tallahassee

Tampa

Boca Raton

Pensacola

Orlando

Miami

Jacksonville

Ft. Myers

Sarasota

Frontispiece: Miami Circle with scale.

Copyright 2012 by Robert S. Carr

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America. This book is printed on Glatfelter Natures Book, a paper certified under the standards of the Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC). It is a recycled stock that contains 30 percent post-consumer waste and is acid-free.

17 16 15 14 13 12    6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Carr, Robert S.

Digging Miami / Robert S. Carr.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Summary: An exploration of the archaeological findings of one of Miami’s best archaeologists.

ISBN-13: 978-0-8130-4206-0 (alk. paper)

ISBN-10: 0-8130-4206-2 (alk. paper)

1. Indians of North America—Florida—Miami—Antiquities. 2. Seminole Indians—Antiquities. 3. Excavations (Archaeology)—Florida—Miami. 4. Miami (Fla.)—Antiquities. I. Title.

E78.F6C37 2012

975.9'381—dc23      2012018863

The University Press of Florida is the scholarly publishing agency for the State University System of Florida, comprising Florida A&M University, Florida Atlantic University, Florida Gulf Coast University, Florida International University, Florida State University, New College of Florida, University of Central Florida, University of Florida, University of North Florida, University of South Florida, and University of West Florida.

Contents

List of Illustrations

Preface: More than Just Seashells

1.  Diggers, Scientists, and Antiquarians: History of Archaeological Research

Part I. Prehistoric Miami

2.  The First People: The Cutler Fossil Site

3.  The South Florida Archaic

4.  The Perfect Balance: Adapting to the Land and Sea

5.  Sacred Geography: The Prehistoric Settlement System

Part II. Failed Settlements: The European Legacy

6.  European Contact: The Transition to Extinction

7.  The English and Bahamian Legacy

Part III. Seminole Legacy

8.  Seminole Archaeology

9.  Stockades and Musket Balls

Part IV. Pioneer Miami

10.  The Archaeology of Arrowroot: Miami’s First Industry

11.  Tropical Homesteads: Artifacts of Miami’s Pioneers

Part V. Urban Archaeology: A Past with a Future

12.  The Miami Circle and Beyond

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Notes

References Cited

Index

Illustrations

Chapter 1. Diggers, Scientists, and Antiquarians: History of Archaeological Research

1.1  Portrait of Jeffries Wyman

1.2  Destruction of Miami Burial Mound 8DA14, 1897

1.3  John Goggin in the Everglades, 1949

1.4  WPA archaeologists excavating at Opa-Locka 1, 1934

1.5  Dan Laxson at the Trail site

1.6  Excavating the Cheetum site, 1971

1.7  Discovery of the 1855 Key Biscayne survey marker

1.8  View of the Granada site excavations, 1976

Part I. Prehistoric Miami

Hermann Trappman, A Tequesta Family on the Miami River, 1983

Prehistoric sites of Miami-Dade County

Chapter 2. The First People: The Cutler Fossil Site

2.1  Archaeologists at the Cutler site, 1986

2.2  Map of the Cutler site and excavation units

2.3  Uncovering a jaguar mandible at the Cutler site

2.4  Bifaces and points from the Cutler site

2.5  Limestone turtleback scraper from the Cutler site

2.6  Limestone scraper from the Cutler site

2.7  Human ulna with carnivore tooth perforation from the Cutler site

Table 2.1 Fire-altered bones from the Cutler Fossil site

Chapter 3. The South Florida Archaic

3.1  Aerial photo of Weston Pond and solution holes, c. 1968

3.2  Limestone biface from the Cheetum site, 8DA1058

3.3  Chert projectile point from 8DA411

3.4  Incised bone handle from 8DA1058

3.5  Fiber-tempered pottery from Miami-Dade County

3.6  Map of units and human remains at Santa Maria West, 8DA11246

Chapter 4. The Perfect Balance: Adapting to the Land and Sea

4.1  Pottery sherds

4.2  Pottery sherds

4.3  Strombus celt

4.4  Busycon ladle

4.5  Drilled shark teeth

4.6  Bone awls and point

4.7  Stone anchor with pecked design

4.8  Carved pumice float

4.9  Carved shell pendants

4.10  Wooden pestle found in the Everglades

4.11  Map of the Royal Palm Circle, 8DA11

4.12  Map depicting a plan of the MDM parcel solution holes and cemetery, 8DA11

Chapter 5. Sacred Geography: The Prehistoric Settlement System

5.1  Aerial photo of Dade Circle, 1926

5.2  Indian canoe trail in the Everglades, c. 1910

5.3  Flagami Island after 16 inches of rain, 1981

5.4  Robert Carr at the Flagami site, 8DA1073, 1981

5.5  Dan Laxson at Madden’s Hammock, 8DA45, 1959

Part II. Failed Settlements: The European Legacy

Hermann Trappman, Approaching the Polly Lewis Homestead on the Silver Bluff, Biscayne Bay, 1983

Spanish and English-Bahamian colonial sites of Miami-Dade County

Chapter 6. European Contact: The Transition to Extinction

6.1  Portrait of Pedro Menéndez de Avilés

6.2  Bronze Bible hinge from 8DA11

6.3  Eighteenth-century rosary bead from 8DA11

6.4  Three brass bells, from 8DA11 and 8DA34

6.5  Wooden statuette of a corsair from Elliott Key

6.6  Wooden statuette of the Virgin Mary from Elliott Key

6.7  Majolica sherds

6.8  Olive jar found in the eastern Everglades

6.9  Carnelian bead and Punta Rassa pendant

Chapter 7. The English and Bahamian Legacy

7.1  Terracotta tobacco pipe bowl from 8DA2132

7.2  Menu cover for Black Caesar’s Forge

Part III. Seminole Legacy

Hermann Trappman, Construction of Fort Henry, 1983

Seminole and Seminole War sites of Miami-Dade County

Chapter 8. Seminole Archaeology

8.1  Perforated William and Mary half-penny, 1689–94

8.2  Persian snuff box lid from 8DA411

8.3  Trade beads from the Brickell Trading Post

8.4  Lightkeeper’s cap insignia from 8DA45

8.5  Copper ornaments from 8DA411

8.6  Copper ladle from 8DA411

8.7  Lead musket-ball mold

8.8  Kaskaskia projectile point from 8DA411

8.9  Glass knife from the Bamboo site, 8DA94

Chapter 9. Stockades and Musket Balls

9.1  Flask sherd depicting Zachary Taylor from 8DA411

9.2  Military buttons from 8DA411

9.3  Musket ball and minie ball from 8DA411

9.4  Gerdes map of Fort Dallas, 1849

9.5  Pipe bowls from Fort Dallas

9.6  View of Fort Russell by Capt. John Rodgers Vinton

9.7  Whiteware with fort motif from Fort Desolation

Part IV. Pioneer Miami

Hermann Trappman, Operations at the Arch Creek Coontie Mill, 1983

Pioneer sites of Miami-Dade County

Chapter 10. The Archaeology of Arrowroot: Miami’s First Industry

10.1  Photo of coontie (Zamia pumila)

10.2  Aerial photo depicting Woods’s mill race, 1926

10.3  Curry comb from Arch Creek Mill, 8DA1655

10.4  Gerdes map of Ferguson Mill, 1849

Chapter 11. Tropical Homesteads: Artifacts of Miami’s Pioneers

11.1  Maude and Belle Brickell, c. 1900

11.2  Kaolin pipe with effigy of eagle’s claw

11.3  Brickell porcelain doll leg

11.4  William Jennings Bryan at Villa Serena

11.5  African Bahamian settlement in Coconut Grove

Part V. Urban Archaeology: A Past with a Future

Guy LaBree, Tequesta Skyline, 1984

Map of the Miami Circle depicting test units and features selected for faunal analysis

Chapter 12. The Miami Circle and Beyond

12.1  Aerial photo of the Miami Circle

12.2  Miami Circle foundation basins

12.3  Deptford Stamped pottery sherd from the Miami Circle

12.4  Eye basin cut into the bedrock at the Miami Circle

12.5  Shark skeleton at the Miami Circle

12.6  Shell buzzard ornament from 8DA1058

Preface

More than Just Seashells

If urban archaeology in Miami has accomplished anything during the past thirty years, it is that it has forged a sense of community from the flotsam of artifacts and sites representing ten thousand years of human endeavor. To reach back and touch the source of who we are and to know that Miami is more than the dream of entrepreneurs to create a tourist mecca and a city built on top of dredged rock and sand is to move closer to the truth.

Archaeology matters because we are curious and vain about ourselves. We are often temporal-centric in believing that we are living in the best of times and astonished that humans could have been fulfilled in that ancient dark age of B.C. (before computers). Though living in the high rise of civilization may have its rewards, with endless choices of products, restaurants, and leisure time, it is the look backward that can illuminate our understanding of who we are. Below our high-rise view of modern life is the basement of civilization, where concrete blocks are underlain by nineteenth-century red bricks, and below the bricks are the wooden post molds of Indian houses constructed a thousand years before.

Who is to say with authority that today’s Miami is somehow superior to the ancient Miami of endless forests and sweet water rushing seaward in the Miami River from the Everglades. We have reshaped the land, cut its forest, and bulldozed most every square foot in the county at least once. Some downtown properties are on their fourth generation of new buildings, each construction preceded by the demolition of an older building that had become obsolete. Only the hammock forests that survive at Simpson Park, Alice Wainwright Park, and the Deering Estate at Cutler have missed the ache of heavy equipment gouging deep into the muck and limestone, stripping the skin of rich organic soils to create the economy of modern life.

It is this enterprise of progress that continues to erase the monuments and traces of the indigenous people and historic pioneers. Ironically, it is this same progress that has uncovered much of the archaeological record described in this book. The yin-yang of archaeological discovery is that it is often the very act of new development that creates the opportunity to discover what has lain dormant for centuries. It is a favorable testimony to county and city governments that the permit that allows new development often requires another permit to document the vestiges of the archaeological record that may be disturbed or destroyed. Surprisingly, this oversight has accounted for over 90 percent of Miami-Dade County’s archaeological discoveries. By 2012, forty-two archaeological sites and zones had been designated within the county. Interestingly, state and federal preservation laws had no effect on the discovery or preservation of the Miami Circle. Likewise, all of the sites uncovered on Brickell Avenue and at Crandon Park on Key Biscayne after Hurricane Andrew would have been destroyed during the post-hurricane cleanup if not for local ordinances. The rich archaeological deposits at Villa Serena would have been lost to landscape redevelopment if not for the implementation of the City of Miami preservation ordinance. And there are dozens of other examples throughout the county of local efforts creating a public good by documenting and preserving sites that are exempt from any state or federal regulations.

Who benefits from local historic and archaeological preservation? We do. By becoming custodians and not just consumers of the land, we assure our community that the important monuments of the human experience will not disappear or be marginalized by appearing only in photographs, interpretive signs, or displays of artifacts in a museum. Not that these interpretative measures lack great educational value, but preservation of an archaeological site can assure the public a sense of place and provide a bank of scientific data that can be carefully assessed by future scholars.

Protecting the past need not involve the taking of property. In some cases, pending developments have required green space areas and archaeological sites can be used to meet those green space requirements. It’s worth noting that since 1980, all of Miami-Dade County’s archaeological designations have proceeded without lawsuits because existing regulatory land-use guidelines have been balanced with a respect for private property rights.

Common sense and bureaucratic flexibility allow sites to be documented by archaeological investigations and innovative preservation, such as the last sliver of the Tequesta village site buried at the Hyatt Convention Center in downtown Miami. When it was announced that a swimming pool would be excavated on the parcel’s preservation area, the solution was to create an alternative design and construct an elevated swimming pool on piers that destroyed less than 10 percent of what would have been lost. When architect Raul Rodriquez designed a structure to sit above the Miami River Rapids site rather than use deep footer trenches, his innovative approach helped preserve much of that important site.

Planners, government regulators, and archaeologists should not see this juggling act between preservation and development as forces in opposition, but as a way for the public good and private property owners to find common ground, a process that involves adequate surveys and education to identify areas of known and potential sites and a comprehensive due diligence by developers and property owners to minimize surprises with regard to what may be hidden beneath the earth.

1

Diggers, Scientists, and Antiquarians

History of Archaeological Research

South Florida is a region generally unfamiliar to American archaeologists. Until the 1980s, relatively few archaeologists conducted research in the area, in part because of several geographic and educational forces. First, the remoteness of the area contributed greatly to the lack of investigations. Before Henry Flagler’s Florida East Coast Railroad arrived in the newly formed city of Miami in 1896, getting there was difficult and usually involved traveling by water. While the railroad brought tourists and settlers, few archaeologists traveled to South Florida. Second, most of Miami-Dade County’s coastal prehistoric sites were quickly destroyed or built over during Miami’s first building boom, which lasted from 1896 until the bust of 1925. (Ironically, many of the sites that had been covered and preserved by fill in the 1920s were uncovered in the 1980s and 1990s during a building boom that spread southward from downtown Miami to Brickell Avenue, uncovering a scientific bonanza of artifacts and information.) Third, although the University of Miami had been established in 1926, courses specializing in Florida archaeology were not offered until recently. South Florida was not the home of a four-year state university until the 1960s. The absence of a state academic institution meant that professional archaeologists, traditionally employed by state colleges, rarely had the opportunity to be employed south of Gainesville (home of the University of Florida). It is no accident that until the 1980s the largest number of prehistoric sites of any of Florida’s counties was recorded in Alachua and Leon Counties, where long-established state universities are located. Until the 1960s archaeological projects often were situated within driving distance of universities.

The documentation and preservation of Miami-Dade County’s archaeological resources did not begin in earnest until protective legislation was enacted. The federal Historic Preservation Act of 1966 established guidelines to help preserve and conserve archaeological sites located on federal property, such as Everglades National Park and Biscayne National Park. These standards eventually filtered down to state, county, and municipal levels. The Florida Division of Historical Resources (FDHR) began in 1967 under the authority of Florida Statute 267. However, because of the agency’s small budget, and with an office only in Tallahassee, an additional seven years elapsed before state archaeologists were able to conduct investigations in southeastern Florida. It was not until 1981 that Dade County (so named prior to 1997’s name change to Miami-Dade) passed its own historic preservation ordinance, followed by the city of Miami’s ordinance in 1986. It was only after these local ordinances were in place that archaeological sites received protection and requirements for their documentation if threatened by development.

Despite circumstances that discouraged scientific archaeological research in southern Florida prior to protective ordinances, artifacts and information from the area’s prehistoric culture were collected and cataloged by a large number of people, from winter visitors and explorers to scientists and avocational archaeologists. What follows is a summary of those contributions, but undoubtedly, the full story could be a book in itself.

Explorers and Surveyors

Even though Spanish colonization proceeded vigorously throughout much of the Caribbean and South America during the sixteenth century, the Spanish domination of Florida moved at a slow pace, encountering greater resistance from the Indians and fewer material rewards for the colonizers’ efforts. However, many of the Spanish visitors in early Florida left valuable records that document not only Spanish intentions but also Native American customs.

One of the most important witnesses to southern Florida’s Native American cultures was Hernando d’Escalante Fontaneda, who was shipwrecked in the 1540s and rescued by the Pedro Menéndez de Avilés expedition seventeen years later. Fontaneda lived with the Indians during those years and learned their languages and customs. The description of his captivity is one of the most important eyewitness accounts of sixteenth-century Native Americans in southern Florida.¹

Gonzalo Solis Meras, the official chronicler of the Menéndez expedition, recorded their encounters with the Tequesta and Calusa Indians. Descriptions of Indian religion were also contained in letters written by a Spanish priest, Brother Francisco Villareal, who had attempted, unsuccessfully, to maintain a Jesuit mission at the mouth of the Miami River. Extensive records have been translated into English and are now accessible in books and articles about the Calusa.²

Among the most valuable sources of information on Florida Indians are the illustrations of Timucuan culture by Jacques Le Moyne, who accompanied the French colonists on the St. Johns River in northern Florida in 1564. Although the Timucua lived several hundred miles north of the Tequesta and Le Moyne used artistic license in his renderings, the Timucua shared many details of dress, ornament, and customs with the Tequesta. A late-seventeenth-century account by the shipwrecked Pennsylvania Quaker Jonathan Dickinson near Hobe Sound also contains observations about the customs of the Indians and their attitudes toward the English, which by that time had become distinctly pro-Spanish.³

The transition from observing Tequesta Indians and their culture firsthand to reporting only their abandoned villages occurred in the eighteenth century, after the last of the Indians from southern Florida had been relocated to Cuba in 1763. It is appropriate that the first description of a South Florida archaeological site is the abandoned Spanish fort and village of Tequesta, which was described by the English surveyor Bernard Romans in 1775 during his visit to the Miami River: At its mouth are the remains of a savage settlement.⁴ After Romans’s visit, there are no descriptions of South Florida antiquities until the beginning of intensive government surveys of Florida’s interior. In 1847, this alluring description of a mysterious site in the eastern Everglades was provided by surveyor George McKay:

On the subject of the settlement of the islands of the Everglades, I saw nothing that indicated civilization, excepting upon a small island … where are to be seen fallen walls of a stone building, broken earthenware, and bottles of a shape I have never before seen, and of an age I will not venture to determine.⁵

Two years earlier, McKay had discovered a circular earthwork while conducting a survey along the Miami River at present-day NW Twelfth Avenue. In his field notes he described an old redoubt surrounded by a ditch that formed a circle 200 feet in diameter. Within the center of the redoubt were earthworks in the form of a cross. The antiquity of the site was indicated by a large pine tree that had grown on top of the earthworks after its construction.⁶

McKay’s discoveries were probably never shared with the scholars of his day, many of whom were involved in a raging debate about the origins of the people who had built the mounds and earthworks of eastern North America. Even if scholars had been aware of the Miami River earthwork, they almost certainly would have classified it as a European fortification, or in the very least, a monument built by any group of people but Native Americans. During the nineteenth century, mounds all over America were being probed, potted, and excavated to produce evidence that could affirm one theory or another about the origin of the mound builders. Some scholars gave credit to colonists from Atlantis, others to the Phoenicians, Irish monks, the Lost Tribe of Israel, and even the De Soto expedition. Most of these scholars believed that the American Indians were not capable of building mounds and that all monuments and artifacts that reflected any degree of civilized art, engineering, or thinking must have an Old World origin. This type of scholarship represented the prevailing intellectual atmosphere and reflected a national policy of forced Indian emigration and of a reservation system that attempted to terminate Native American culture.

Archaeologists, Antiquarians, and Diggers

Jeffries Wyman, often regarded as the father of forensic anthropology, was the first scientist to excavate in what is now Miami-Dade County (fig. 1.1). In 1869, Wyman, the first curator of Harvard University’s Peabody Museum, arrived in Biscayne Bay on the yacht Azalea and described some of the mounds at the mouth of the Miami River. Through the efforts of Christopher Eck a complete transcription of his South Florida diary entries is available.⁷ Among some of the most interesting entries are the following:

Concluded to spend another day [March 9, 1869] here instead of moving on—Went on shore after breakfast & dug in the shell-heap in front of Mr Hunts house—Large quantities of bones pottery & shells—the accumulation of long series of years 3 to 4 ft thick. Bones of fish, turtle, coon, birds, deer, shark verteb. Very common—two pieces of worked bone & two or three chisels of conch shell.⁸

Hunt’s house was on the north bank of the Miami River at the Fort Dallas officers’ quarters. This location would later be known as the Granada site component of the Miami One site, 8DA11.

Figure 1.1. Jeffries Wyman, first director of the Peabody Museum, was the first archaeologist to investigate the prehistoric mounds of Miami. Courtesy of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology.

On March 10, Wyman began an exploration of a mound on the north side of the Miami River west of the Granada site. His work there represents the earliest scientific investigation of a rock mound in southern Florida:

Spent whole day in excavating mound on the Miami. This is a few rods from right bank & ¼ mile from mouth—60 ft long 40 broad & 11 high of an oval shape & covered with a young growth of trees…. Long diameter very nearly N. & S., deviating (—help of Andrew & Mr Hunt) into side yesterday & found loose stones—too late to make complete exam.

Light rain, followed by great numbers of mosquitoes. Conical trench nearly to center—throwing out many tons of stone—for we worked steadily.

Thursday, March 11th, 1869

Started soon after breakfast for mound. Capt. of A[zalea], Capt. Crowell, Henry & Andrew worked till noon; built & in shield & finished excavations but found nothing buried. No trees of great age on top. Having opened the mound beyond the center & [searched] to right and left. Mound consists of large stones in middle on which smaller ones had been piled.

Failed to find any contents returned at noon, just in time to escape a thunder shower. Hunt & Crowill came on boat & lunched. Heat disagreeable air sultry—Thermom. 76°—Barom. 29'90".⁹

Although his documentation of the Miami sites was minimal, Wyman’s investigation of mounds on the St. Johns River in northern Florida was important, proving that the mounds were manmade and predated the time of the historic Indians.

In 1876, Henry E. Perrine (son of the famous botanist murdered at Indian Key) amused himself by excavating a burial mound near Biscayne Bay in present-day Charles Deering Estate Park while he visited the Addison family. He provided the following account:

Using the pick and spade we soon came to skulls and bones of both adults and children, the skulls in nearly every instance showed that they had been buried with the face downwards, and with the toes toward the center of the mound.¹⁰

Perrine collected two of the best preserved skulls with the intention of delivering them to the Academy of Natural Sciences in Buffalo, New York. He forgot to pack them on his return trip north, however, and their present location is unknown.

Perhaps the most ambitious of the nineteenth-century investigators was archaeologist Andrew Douglass, who in 1884 arrived at the mouth of the Miami River on his yacht Seminole. He visited three mounds near the river, first meeting and receiving permission from William Brickell to visit a mound located south of the Brickell House. Douglass also noted that Brickell believed that the Brickell House had been built on top of a mound:

On Wednesday morning I started to find Brickell’s mound by going in boats along the bayshore and striking into the dense scrub to a live oak that was quite conspicuous. It was not more that 200 yards from the shore but among brambles and Spanish bayonets and wild lime trees loaded with fruit which the men found refreshing. The mound was covered with the same dense vegetation. It proved to be about 10 ft high with a base diameter of about 120 feet. I dug out a space about 16 ft square on the summit; it was intensely hot and we were compelled to send the boat for a tent fly to shade us, as it was impossible to work in the sun. By 3 P.M. we had completed the excavation and had found numerous burials about 4 feet below the surface and of great antiquity. The only object I secured was a little earthenware cup or pot of great beauty for such material I think very remarkable. It was quite whole, not even having the bottom knocked out as is the invariable custom in such deposits. It was found in the centre of the mound and within 6 inches of the surface. It was this fact that probably preserved it from our shovels, for when the banks caved in it dropped out like a lump of earth. It is 4 ½ in high, 5 in long and 4 in broad.¹¹

Additional information on this mound’s location was secured by avocational historian William Straight, who obtained another description of the mound’s location from the catalog entry of the earthenware cup at the American Museum of Natural History. The entry indicated that the pottery vessel was found 8 inches beneath the surface of a mound referred to as the Brickell Mound, located 500 yards south of the Miami River and 300 yards west of Biscayne Bay. Based on that description, the mound’s location is approximately between present-day SW Eighth and SW Ninth Streets, east of Miami Avenue. This location is likely in error because Gilpin in his 1890 diary indicates that this elusive mound is actually located south of the Brickell House, later recorded as 8DA15, and thus the 300 yards west should read 300 feet. According to the photo provided by the Smithsonian to William Straight, the earthenware bowl is decorated with an intricate pattern of herring-bone incising and punctuates that is not typical of southern Florida ceramic decorations.¹² It was likely imported from some other region outside of Florida. It also is possible that the reconstructed exotic bowl was incorrectly assigned at the Smithsonian, the result of a cataloging error.

Douglass subsequently met with J. W. Ewan, who ran a store on the river’s north bank. Ewan led Douglass a quarter-mile through a great tangle of briars and wild lime trees to the largest of Miami’s mounds (8DA14):

It was built of stones and about 15 feet high, 150 feet long and 75 broad at the base. It was quite impossible for me to dig such a mound with my force had I been so disposed…. This had several burials upon it fenced in and with headstones. The interments were of soldiers and officers of Fort Dallas which in 1856 & 7 was the name of the post here, so that alone would have prevented my excavation.¹³

Douglass would have been shocked if he had known that 21 years after his visit this magnificent mound and the soldiers’ graves would be destroyed to build the Royal Palm Hotel. Douglass explored the south bank of the Miami River and described the third mound he encountered:

We found it about 150 yards back from the river, but much to our disappointment it was not a sand mound but built of rocks like the one described [previously]…. Neither of these rock mounds is circular but as it were ridges. This one was 75 ft long on top and