Unsettled History As we mark the 200th anniversary the Seminole War, each of us in Gainesville has a responsibility to evaluate our relationship to this land’s history of colonialism. BY DAVID HENSLEY ILLUSTRATION BY INGRID WU
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ince I moved to Gainesville, I’ve gone down the Gainesville-Hawthorne trail to Payne’s Prairie and La Chua trail to put the concerns of my life behind me. It’s a place with a rhythm and life of its own, seemingly so far away from the city and the human world, yet right in our backyard. There are traces of the human world at La Chua though, and a mostly forgotten human story to be told about it too. At the entrance to the trail, past the old stables, lies a sinkhole where great blue herons wade, and alligators sunbathe on the banks. This is “a la chua,” a Spanish corruption of “chua,” an indigenous word for the sinkhole spoken by the Potano or Timucua people, who have lived here since ancient times. Though seemingly surrounded by wilderness, this sinkhole is in fact the center of this land’s human history, including imperialism. Exactly 200 years ago, the First Seminole War was being fought in northern Florida, a continuation of a generations-long conflict that ultimately led to the forcible removal of indigenous people from their land. This includes the land where Gainesville sits today. 06 | T H E F I N E P R I N T | thefineprintmag.org
This history shaped Florida as we know it. Yet it’s scarcely remembered, found only at the margins of white Gainesville’s consciousness in local names or brief mentions on historical markers. As we mark the 200th anniversary of the outbreak of the Seminole War, each of us in the Gainesville community has a responsibility to evaluate our relationship to this land’s history. Many of us have largely forgotten the deeper history of imperialism, slavery and ethnic cleansing that is as much our own local history as it is the history of United States. For thousands of years, people — called the “Cades Pond” and “Alachua” cultures by archaeologists — lived among the wetlands, lake and rivers in the area around today’s Payne’s Prairie, where they caught fish and gathered food. Their descendants continued this way of life, only to be disrupted in the 1500s by Spanish conquistadors, who introduced disease, slavery and the mission system. The Spanish forced indigenous people to work as cowhands alongside enslaved African people in their hacienda system, altering their ancient way of life in the process. One of the most important haciendas was located more or less at the location of the modern stables at La Chua. After Spain ceded Florida to Britain in
the mid-1700s, many of those indigenous and African people remained on the prairie and continued ranching. When British botanist William Bartram visited them in the 1770s, they identified themselves to him as Seminoles. In 1812 — with tacit support from the new American government — Daniel Newnan led paramilitaries from Georgia to “punish” the Seminole for harboring free African people. For these efforts, Newnan is honored locally with the name of Newnan’s Lake east of Gainesville, near where he fought with King Payne, the Seminole leader who lends his name to the prairie. The elderly Payne died as a result of the battle. “If we’re going to start unnaming things, [Newnan] would be right at the top of the list,” said County Commissioner Robert Hutchinson, who grew up in the area around the lake. As far as the American government was concerned, sheltering people seeking refuge from slavery made the Seminoles thieves and troublemakers — never mind that they were on their own ancestral land. Yet, six years after Newnan, Andrew Jackson would lead similar punitive raids into the panhandle to capture slaves, sparking the First Seminole War. “When the United States achieved political independence from Great Britain,