344 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 73 
other occupants of the eastern shore, who were always rather better 
inclined toward the Spanish Government than wore the Calusa. 
Until recently this fate of the old Florida tribes was remembered by 
some of the oldest Creek Indians. 1 Possibly the Calusa may have 
emigrated in the year mentioned and returned with the return of the 
Spaniards 20 years later, but it is improbab 1 ^ that southern Florida 
was ever entirely abandoned. At any rate some of these people were 
in occupancy of the territory about Charlotte Harbor and the Caloosa- 
hatchie River in the period of the Seminole war. They took no part 
in this contest during its earlier stages. They made no treaties 
with the Americans and at no time agreed to remove to the west. 
Comparatively unnoticed, they remained in their old haunts, car- 
rying on a considerable commerce with Havana, and looking to that 
city as their trading point. Williams describes their condition in 
the first half of the nineteenth century as follows: 
The inhabitants of several large settlements around the Caxirnba Inlet, the heads 
of the Hujelos, St. Mary's, and other southern streams, never appeared at the agency 
to draw annuities, but lived by cultivating their fields, hunting, trading at the Spanish 
ranchos, bartering skins, mocking birds, and pet squirrels, for guns, ammunition and 
clothing, and sometimes assisting in the fisheries. This race of Indians would have 
remained peaceable to this day had not an order been issued from the agency requiring 
them all to remove. They never agreed to remove, either personally or by their 
representatives; and they were easily excited to fight rather than leave the homes of 
their ancestors. Their knowledge of the country and their long connection with the 
Spanish traders and fishermen afforded perfect facilities for supplying the Seminoles 
with arms and munitions of war, and those facilities are at this time improved to our 
great injury. 2 
They were first seriously disturbed when the Seminole, hard pressed 
in their seats near the center of the State, moved southward into 
the Everglades. There they intrenched themselves and induced 
the Calusa, or "Spanish Indians," as they are called in the docu- 
ments of the time, to take up arms in their interest. In 1839 Colonel 
Harney had gone to Charlotte Harbor to establish a trading post 
for the Indians, when his camp, consisting of 30 men, was attacked 
by 250 Indians and 18 were killed. 3 In retaliation for this injury 
Colonel Harney fell upon the Spanish Indians, under their chief 
Chekika, July 23, 1839, killed Chekika and hung six of his followers. 4 
The next year Doctor Perrine, a botanist living on Indian Key, 
who was devoting himself to the culture of tropical plants, was 
killed by Chekika's band. This happened on the 7th of May, 1840. 5 
Other depredations were also committed by them. If they are the 
1 See p. 188. 
2 John Lee Williams, The Territory of Florida, 1837, p. 242. 
3 Fairbanks, Hist, of Florida, p. 191. 
1 Ibid., p. 194. But Fairbanks dates the event too late. 
6 Ibid., p. 191 
