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Treasure chest of Hernando' prehistory still locked

By Dan DeWitt, Times Columnist
In print: Thursday, April 3, 2008

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Horatio Dexter, sent by the federal government to document Indian tribes in Florida, found a settlement of 20 houses just southeast of present-day Brooksville.

The inhabitants, he wrote, were "remarkable for their cleanliness, providence and industry.''

Their cattle grazed on a natural 180-acre prairie, and they had cleared another 320 acres for crops such as pumpkins and corn. Before being attacked two years earlier by rival Indians, Dexter wrote, the settlement had been "the seat of the Seminole Nation.''

Dexter's 1823 report describing the village of Chocachatti is one of several clues that Hernando County just may have been the birthplace of Seminole culture, said Brooksville historian Roger Landers.

Even if it were not — and there are several contenders around the state — the larger point is this:

Hernando is unusually rich in archaeological sites and unusually lacking in archaeological documentation.

And that, in turn, means a lack of protection.

When developers come to the county with plans for projects, planners decide whether they need an archaeological study. Decisions are usually based on a list of historic features called the Florida Master Site File — which sounds far, far more comprehensive than it really is.

Landers, for example, knows of 44 historic cemeteries in the county while the site file lists only 10.

As for Chocachatti, the file includes the possible location of the town center and not much else, said site supervisor Chip Birdsong, of the state Division of Historical Resources.

"It looks like not a lot has been done there,'' he said.

Landers, with other members of a year-old private group, the Hernando Preservation Foundation, had hoped to create a county map showing all the known sites in the county and likely locations of those that have yet to be discovered.

That this effort has, so far, gone nowhere shows that worthwhile public programs are already being drained by falling revenues. (Hear that, you antitax zealots?)

The county could offer no money, only in-kind services, to help match the $8,800 state grant the foundation had applied for, said county planning director Ron Pianta.

The foundation's application was one of 12 submitted this year to Historical Resources. The agency will be able to pay for, at most, two of these, a review board decided this week, because its pool of funds for such grants has dropped in one year from $279,000 to less than $100,000.

What will the study accomplish, if it ever receives funds?

First, it will list documented sites, including cemeteries and previous archaeological digs.

It will also identify natural resources that might have drawn Indians, such as deposits of chert, used to make tools and weapons. And it will include terrain that was attractive to Indians for the same reasons it appeals to current residents.

The Seminoles of Chocachatti, for example, probably built homes across the hilltops around the prairie to avoid swarming mosquitoes and to catch the evening breeze.

Where are the most likely spots to find their home sites? And how many of these might hold clues about the birth of the Seminoles?

For now, of course, we just don't know.