Blue Hole Spring or Big Spring

Blue Hole Spring is a greenish and murky pool location in Jackson County Florida. The small pool that is separated from the main pool by a land bridge is alternatively, crystal clear and blue. In the days before, slaves would use the caves near Blue Hole for worship. They also used the original spring as a natural refrigerator keeping meats preserved.
Later the Baptist churches in the area held there baptisms there at Blue Hole Spring.


orignal photograph credit :R. Means,
from the Florida Geological Survey

who came here first? RIGHT.

excerpt from TNGenWeb: The Keetoowah Society

Myth-understanding and Early America

There is little doubt that the first contact between Africans and Native Americans did not occur within the contexts of European colonial expansion in the early sixteenth century. Though most texts detailing red/black relations on the Southern frontier begin with Africans among the explorations of Spaniards De Allyon, De Leon, Cordoba, De Soto, and Narvaez, evidently contact was much older. It is an underappreciation of this often untold history of the deep relationship between Africans and Indians that lies at the root of modern misunderstanding of much of American history.

Long before Christopher Columbus, Africans had been using favorable sea currents and small boats to come to the Americas. One of the reasons that Columbus was sent on his return voyage was "a report of the Indians of this Espanola who said that there had come to Espanola from the south and south-east, a black people who have the tops of their spears made of a metal which they call `guanin' (gold)." [6] The North Equatorial Current runs from West Africa to the Caribbean Islands and Southeastern United States; Thor Heyerdahl, in his Kon Tiki and Ra expeditions, proved that even the smallest boats could make this passage. [7]

There is also ample evidence of pre-Columbian contact with Africans in a variety of settings in Mesoamerica. The African characteristics of Olmec sculptures, similarities between African pyramids and reed boats and their counterparts in Mesoamerica, and pictographic/linguistic similarities between Northern African and Muscogean cultures are all evidence of ancient contact. [8] Upon observing the Olmec sculptures in 1869, Dr. Jose Melgar y Serrana reported "As a work of art, it is without exaggeration a magnificent sculpture, but what astonished me was the Ethiopic type represented. I reflect that there had undoubtedly been Negroes in this country." [9]

Dr. Leo Wiener proposed that African traders from Guinea founded a colony near Mexico City from which they exerted a cultural and commercial influence extending north to Canada and south to Peru. He also suggests that Native American ancient cultures, including the Maya, Aztec, and Inca civilizations, were directly or indirectly of African origins. [10] Historians and scientists from Augustus Le Plongeon in the nineteenth century to Barry Fell in the latter half of the twentieth century have asserted African contact with ancient America. [11] Whatever the truth is, it is certain that it was along the coastal rim of the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico where the early explorers encountered most African-Indians and tri-racial mixtures. [12]

Taking the African presence in ancient America seriously causes us to reframe our understanding of the relationship between African Americans and Native Americans in the Southeastern United States. What are the implications of this research for understanding Native American attitudes regarding race; moreover, what are the possibilities of African influence in the development of the temple mound culture in the Southeastern United States? Does this historic background explain the ease in which in which Africans learned to speak and translate indigenous languages and the ready assimilation of runaway slaves into Native American communities? It is not the purpose of this paper to fully explore the meaning of this critically underexplored phenomena, but to simply offer up the possibility of a thicker description of southeastern culture. [13]

Modern historians believe that the first Africans to be encountered by Native Americans were those who accompanied the early Spanish explorations of the Southeastern United States. Estavanico, "an Arabian black, native of Acamor," who accompanied Narvaez into Florida distinguished himself by his linguistic ability and "was in constant conversation" with the Indians. [14] In 1540, Hernando de Soto encountered the Cherokee and kidnapped the Lady of Cofitachequi, a prominent Cherokee leader. Escaping from De Soto, she returned home with an African slave belonging to one of De Soto's officers and "they lived together as man and wife." [15] Black slaves also played a critical role in Luis Vazquez de Ayllon's aborted colony in South Carolina; a slave revolt occurred in the colony and many of the African slaves fled to live among the Cherokee. [16]

It is important to understand the purpose of these early Spanish explorations in the Southeast. Ponce de Leon's 1512 patent from the Spanish authorities provided that any Indians that he might discover in the Americas should be divided among the members of his expedition that they should "derive whatever advantage might be secured thereby." [17] De Ayllon's 1523 cedula authorized him to "purchase prisoners of war held as slaves held by the natives, to employ them on his farms and export them as he saw fit, without the payment of any duty whatsoever upon them." [18]

When De Soto landed in Florida with his soldiers in 1539, he brought with him blood-hounds, chains, and iron collars for the acquisition and exportation of Indian slaves. Hundreds of men women and children were captured by de Soto and transported to the coasts for shipment to the Caribbean and to Spain. [19] A Cherokee from Oklahoma remembered his father's tale of the Spanish slave trade, "At an early state the Spanish engaged in the slave trade on this continent and in so doing kidnapped hundreds of thousands of the Indians from the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts to work their mines in the West Indies." [20]

Slavery as a phenomenon was not unknown to the Cherokee Nation or to Native Americans. However, it is distinctively different in both its content and its context as that which was practiced by the European. Rudi Halliburton in Red Over Black, his extensive work on slavery in the Cherokee Nation, concludes that "slavery, as an institution, did not exist among the Cherokees before the arrival or Europeans." [21] Booker T. Washington concurs, "The Indians who first met the white man on his continent do not seem to have held slaves until they first learned to do so from him." [22]

The Cherokee atsi nahtsa'i, or "one who is owned," were individuals captured or obtained through warfare with neighboring peoples and often given to clans who lost members in warfare. [23] To the extent that these individuals existed outside of the clan structure, they were in essence "outsiders" who lived on the periphery of Cherokee society. It was up to the clan-mothers, or "beloved women" of the Nation to decide upon the fate of these individuals. [24] If they accepted these "outsiders" as replacements for those individuals who had lost their lives in battle, these individuals became members of the clan and thus the nation. [25] If the "outsiders" were not accepted into the clan, then they served as the "other" in promoting clan self-understanding and solidarity. [26]

There was not a race-based understanding of "difference" within Native American cultures as that which had come to exist within the European mind over the hundred years following the discovery of the New World. Race as an identifying component in interaction did not exist within the traditional nations of the early Americas; into the nineteenth century the Cherokee were noted for their cultural accommodation. [27] William McLoughlin stressed the importance of clan relationships or larger collective identities (e.g., Ani-Yunwiya, Ani-Tsalagi, Ani-Kituhwagi) within indigenous nations as the critical components in their interactions with outsiders; race was not considered a critical element in perception or hostility. [28] In her pivotal work Slavery and the Evolution of Cherokee Society 1540-1866, Theda Perdue states that the Cherokee regarded Africans they encountered "simply as other human beings," and, "since the concept of race did not exist among Indians and since the Cherokees nearly always encountered Africans in the company of Europeans, one supposes that the Cherokee equated the two and failed to distinguish sharply between the races." [29] Kenneth Wiggins Porter, an African American historian, concurs with this conclusion: [we have] "no evidence that the northern Indian made any distinction between Negro and white on the basis of skin color, at least, not in the early period and when uninfluenced by white settlers." [30]

However, racism and religious intolerance were critical components in the European dispossession and enslavement of Native Americans in the colonial period. Originating in the Aristotelian concept of natural rights, the concept of white supremacy as it developed in the sixteenth century ran along these lines:

Those, therefore, who are as much inferior to others as are the body to the soul and beasts to men, are by nature slaves. He is by nature born slave who...shares in reason to the extent of apprehending it without possessing it. [31]

in the family

my sister sent this email two years ago. (she was supposed to be working at the time... not sendng email)
can you tell storytelling runs in the family?

I recall many things from my childhood and some things still resonate with me today. For instance, my Aunt Honey, as she was affectionately called, was a school teacher in Quincy, Florida. She always wore dark A-line dresses with stockings knotted at her thighs. As soon as she arrived home from work, she would unknot those stockings, and free her legs for the evening! She wouldn't take them all the way off, the nylon would just hang out around her ankles until her shoes and other clothing were removed.

I would always know when Honey was approaching. That loud, comforting swish, swish sound preceded her, and on Sundays, the swish was even louder and coming from all directions as all of the women in the house and at church were accompanied by that familiar sound. Although I didn't know it at the time, it was the sound of the nylons rubbing together at the thighs! Not knowing why, or what was making the sound, I knew that it only happened when Honey, or other ladies were all dressed up! For many years, and until recently (today), I associated being dressed up with that swish, swish sound. The louder it was, the more fabulous your outfit must have been, I thought.

Last week, that swish, swish sound was following me around! Not that I hadn't heard it before, but it seemed to be echoing through the halls at my office. After walking 50 or so feet from the break room back to my side of the suite, I made a bee-line for my co-worker's office and before I could ask the dreaded question, she told me that she could hear me coming from the other side of the suite! I told her that I was dressed up and was supposed to make that sound while walking! She then shared the secret to silencing those loud undergarments, and I didn't believe it until 10 minutes ago!

As I slipped into a new pair of stockings (excuse me, pantyhose), I remembered the advice from my co-worker. As I gently pulled each leg to its opposite side, I couldn't wait to see if her theory worked and to hear the sound of silence. Low and behold, as I walked through the corridor, no one heard me coming until I asked the question, "Did you hear me walking down the hall?" As I glanced in my startled co-worker's office, she could only laugh and tell me, I told you so! She was right! Just because I look good in my pulled together outfit, doesn't mean I have to sound like I look good!

So, Ladies, take off those pantyhose and turn them inside out! Unless, of course, you already know this trick -- I would advise to leave them on the "wrong side!"

Swish, swish . . .

Wilma (Cookie)