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COVER Jehu J. Blount’s general store, corner N. W. First and Hendry streets in Fort Myers, was opened in 1873. It also served as the town’s first post office. The photograph is of Florida Schultz Heitman and her friends. She was the daughter of George Schultz, telegrapher for the International Ocean Tele- graph Company, and wife of Harvie Heitman, a prominent Fort Myers businessman. The picture was taken in the 1890s. It is from the Fort Myers Historical Museum. The THE FLORIDA HISTORICAL SOCIETY Volume LXII, Number 4 April 1984 COPYRIGHT 1984 by the Florida Historical Society, Tampa, Florida. Second class postage paid at Tampa and DeLeon Springs, Florida. Printed by E. O. Painter Printing Co., DeLeon Springs, Florida. (ISSN 0015-4113) THE FLORIDA HISTORICAL QUARTERLY Samuel Proctor, Editor Jeffry Charbonnet, Editorial Assistant EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD Herbert J. Doherty, Jr. University of Florida Michael V. Gannon University of Florida John K. Mahon University of Florida (Emeritus) Jerrell H. Shofner University of Central Florida Charlton W. Tebeau University of Miami (Emeritus) J. Leitch Wright, Jr. Florida State University Correspondence concerning contributions, books for review, and all editorial matters should be addressed to the Editor, Florida Historical Quarterly, Box 14045, University Station, Gainesville, Florida 32604-2045. The Quarterly is interested in articles and documents pertaining to the history of Florida. Sources, style, footnote form, originality of material and interpretation, clarity of thought, and interest of readers are considered. All copy, including footnotes, should be double-spaced. Footnotes are to be numbered consecutively in the text and assembled at the end of the article. Particular attention should be given to following the footnote style of the Quarterly. The author should submit an original and retain a carbon for security. The Florida Historical Society and the Editor of the Florida Historical Quarterly accept no responsibility for state- ments made or opinions held by authors. The Quarterly reviews books dealing with all aspects of Florida history. Books to be reviewed should be sent to the Editor together with price and information on how they can be ordered. Table of Contents THE CHICORA LEGEND AND FRANCO-SPANISH RIVALRY IN La Florida Paul E. Hoffman 419 CHANGING FACE OF JACKSONVILLE, FLORIDA: 1900-1910 James B. Crooks 439 FROM ORANGE TO GREEN “GOLD”: THE ROOTS OF THE ASPARAGUS FERN INDUSTRY IN FLORIDA Robert D. Manning 464 NORTH FLORIDA AND THE GREAT STORM OF 1873 Mary Louise Ellis 485 NOTES AND DOCUMENTS: FLORIDA MANUSCRIPT ACQUISITIONS AND ACCESSIONS 497 BOOK REVIEWS ............................................................................... 502 BOOK NOTES .................................................................................. 535 HISTORY NEWS .............................................................................. 544 DIRECTORS’ MEETING .................................................................... 554 INDEX To VOLUME LXII . 563 BOOK REVIEWS BECALMED IN THE MULLET LATITUDES, AL BURT’S FLORIDA, by Al Burt reviewed by E. W. Carswell FROM SCRATCH PADS AND DREAMS: A TEN YEAR HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH FLORIDA, by Daniel L. Schafer reviewed by James P. Jones THE PAPERS OF HENRY CLAY, VOLUME 7, SECRETARY OF STATE, JANUARY 1, 1828- MARCH 4, 1829, edited by Robert Seager II reviewed by Edwin A. Miles LIBERTY AND SLAVERY: SOUTHERN POLITICS TO 1860, by William J. Cooper, Jr. reviewed by F. N. Boney THE RULING RACE, A HISTORY OF AMERICAN SLAVEHOLDERS, by James Oakes reviewed by Julia Floyd Smith BLACK SOUTHERNERS, 1619-1869, by John B. Boles reviewed by Peter H. Wood BOOKER T. WASHINGTON: THE WIZARD OF TUSKEGEE, 1901-1915, by Louis R. Harlan reviewed by David R. Colburn TRIED AS BY FIRE, SOUTHERN BAPTISTS AND THE RELIGIOUS CONTROVERSIES OF THE 1920s, by James J. Thompson, Jr. reviewed by Dennis E. Owen THE NEW RELIGIOUS POLITICAL RIGHT IN AMERICA, by Samuel S. Hill and Dennis E. Owen reviewed by Steven F. Lawson POLITICAL PROCESS AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF BLACK INSURGENCY, 1930-1970, by Doug McAdam reviewed by James Button THE SELECTED ESSAYS OF T. HARRY WILLIAMS, by T. Harry Williams reviewed by La Wanda Cox DIXIE DATELINE: A JOURNALISTIC PORTRAIT OF THE CONTEMPORARY SOUTH, edited by John B. Boles reviewed by Jesse Earle Bowden WITH SHIELD AND SWORD: AMERICAN MILITARY AFFAIRS, COLONIAL TIMES TO THE PRESENT, by Warren W. Hassler, Jr. reviewed by K. Jack Bauer A GALLERY OF SOUTHERNERS, by Louis D. Rubin, Jr. reviewed by Stephen J. Whitfield SHADOWS OF THE INDIAN, by Raymond William Stedman reviewed by Harry A. Kersey, Jr, TRIBALISM IN CRISIS: FEDERAL INDIAN POLICY, 1953-1961, by Larry W. Burt reviewed by R. T. King ORDINARY PEOPLE AND EVERYDAY LIFE, edited by James B. Gardner and George Rollie Adams reviewed by Leonard Dinnerstein THE CHICORA LEGEND AND FRANCO-SPANISH RIVALRY IN LA FLORIDA by PAUL E. HOFFMAN ITH the first light of Monday, June 24, 1521, Pedro de W Quexo and Francisco Gordillo discovered a new land which they named the Land of St. John the Baptist in honor of the saint whose feast day it was. Entering a river, later called the Jordan for the same reason, they established contact with a village or native group called “Chicora.“1 Thus began the Chicora Legend, a legend that ultimately described the land of Chicora as a new Andalusia, a land abounding in timber, vines, native olive trees, Indians, pearls, and, at a distance in- land, perhaps gold and silver. Flowing through this land was a great river, so wide and deep that it could be described as a “gulf” reaching deep into the land. This vision of Chicora and its river moved Spaniards and Frenchmen during the next sixty years to explore and attempt to settle along the coast of the present-day Carolinas. Paul E. Hoffman is associate professor of history, Louisiana State Uni- versity, Baton Rouge. He received a grant from the Council on Re- search, Louisiana State University, in 1978 which made the research for this article possible. 1. The name seems to have been given in 1525 during the second voyage. It first appears on the Vespucci map of 1526. See Juan Vespucci, World Map, manuscript at the Hispanic Society of America, New York, color reproduction in William P. Cumming, R. A. Skelton, and David B. Quinn, The Discovery of North America (London, 1971), 86-87, re- produced in black and white in William P. Cumming, The Southeast in Early Maps (Princeton, 1958), plate 2. Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas, História general de los hechos de los Castellanos en las islas y tierra firme del Mar Oceano, 17 vols. (Madrid, 1934-1957), VII, 310, states that the river was named for a member of the crew, but this is an error. John Gilmary Shea, who repeats Herrera, goes on to make a further error by placing the Jordan at or near Cape Fear (following Villafañe) and in- correctly interpreting the Spanish text he was following to the effect that the river found in 1521 was called the “San Juan Baptista.” See John G. Shea, “Ancient Florida,” in Justin Winsor, ed., Narrative and Critical History of America, 8 vols. (New York and Boston, 1884-1889), II, 239. Diego Luís Molinari seems to have been the first modern author to straighten the matter out by noting that the Jordan River was identified with St. John the Baptist. See Diego Luís Molinari, El Nacimiento del Nueuo Mundo, 1492-1534 (Buenos Aires, 1941), 124-26. [419] 420 FLORIDA HISTORICAL QUARTERLY This study seeks to explain why Spaniards and Frenchmen tried to found colonies on the east coast by showing how the Chicora Legend changed with time and motivated these groups. A basic assumption made throughout is that place designations in some of the Spanish sources cannot be reconciled with each other and that that fact is itself an important but heretofore over- looked clue to the history of the legend and its effects on those who knew of it.2 A second assumption is related to the first: that sources remote in date from the events in question are less likely to be accurate than those close to the event. Previous students of this topic have not made these assumptions and have, in conse- quence, further muddied our understanding of the events in question. Quexo and Gordillo initially entered what is now the Santee River, but within a few days had moved their ships to Winyah Bay just to the north. It was that estuary that Peter Martyr later described as a “gulf reaching into the land.” At some point on its eastern shore Quexo took a solar latitude reading and re- corded that he was 33½° North.3 After spending twenty-two days trading with the Indians, exploring in the immediate area, and arguing about whether and how to capture the Indians so that they could be taken to Española to become slaves (slaving was the purpose of both expeditions before they joined in the Bahamas), the captains induced some sixty natives to board the ships. They then raised their anchors and dropped down an outgoing tide to the sea 2. My position on this matter is thus the reverse of Shea’s who concluded that “conjecture is idle” in view of the apparent divergence of latitudes given by the documents for the Ayllon voyage, quoted with approval in Woodbury Lowery, The Spanish Settlements Within the Present Limits of the United States, 2 vols. (New York, 1901-1905), I, 155, note 2. Lowery’s discussion of Chicora is found in ibid., I, 153-68, II, 34-35. Other scholars who have dealt with this topic are Carl O. Sauer, Sixteenth Century North America: The Land and the People as Seen by the Europeans (Berkeley, 1971), 69-76, 197, and Paul Quattlebaum, The Land Called Chicora: The Carolinas Under Spanish Rule with French In- trusions, 1520-1670 (Gainesville, 1956), 46-48, passim; see also Johann G.