Sunland Tribune Volume 29 Article 4 2003 "Letter from Okeechobee" 1880s Editorial of Gabriel Cunning to Bartow Informant and Tampa Sunland Tribune Michael Reneer James M. Denham Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/sunlandtribune Recommended Citation Reneer, Michael and Denham, James M. (2003) ""Letter from Okeechobee" 1880s Editorial of Gabriel Cunning to Bartow Informant and Tampa Sunland Tribune," Sunland Tribune: Vol. 29 , Article 4. Available at: https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/sunlandtribune/vol29/iss1/4 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Sunland Tribune by an authorized editor of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. "Letter From Okeechobee" 1880s Editorial Of Gabriel Cunning To Bartow Informant and Tampa Sunland Tribune Michael Reneer and Dr. James M. Denham of Boully's informants wrote irregularly, think justice demands that Gabriel Gunning's "Letter from Okeechobee" Okeechobee should be heard," became a mainstay in the first six months wrote Gabriel Cunning on June of the paper's existence. 30, 1881. So began Cunning's As the county seat of Polk County, brief but interesting career as correspon­ Florida, Bartow offered many prospects to dent to the Bartow Informant and Tampa Boully and other migrants seeking a new Sunland Tribune. Gabriel Cunning's given start in the post Civil War era. In 1880, name is unknown; his home and real iden­ Polk's population stood at slightly more than tity is likewise unknowable. And yet, letters 3,100 inhabitants. Even so, this total was from a man calling himself Gabriel Cunning poised to advance rapidly. At the time and claiming a home in "Okeechobee Cunning addressed readers of the Bartow County"! appeared in the Bartow Infor­ Informant, cattle and subsistence farming mant from June to December 1881. was the chief economic pursuit of pioneers Cunning also penned three missives to the in the Lower Peninsula. Indeed, the cattle Tampa Sunland Tribune in 1878 and 1881. industry was the true key to riches for the His humorous and informative letters pioneers of South Florida. Before the Civil reprinted here shed light on the social, eco­ War, the cattle trade with Cuba was sub­ nomic, and political times of the lower stantial, but after the war it brought consid­ Florida frontier in the 1880s. erable wealth to the region. At the end of the The first issue of the Bartow Informant Civil War, the focus of trade shifted from appeared only two weeks before the first supplying Confederate and Union forces to installment from Gabriel Cunning. The supplying Cuba. In the decade after the war, proprietor of this new journalistic enter­ pioneers shipped almost 200,000 head of prise was D.W.D. Boully, who emigrated to cattle from Florida to Cuba.2 In 1878, for Bartow after a failed attempt in the news­ example, the Tampa Sunland Tribune re­ paper business in Blountsville, Alabama. It ported that cattlemen shipped 8,012 head of was common practice for small-town nine­ cattle worth $112,168.00 from the Tampa teenth century newspapers such as Boully's Bay ports of Tampa and Manatee.3 While Informant to make use of guest "infor­ cattle shipments from Tampa Bay were sub­ mants" or "correspondents" to provide stantial during these years, it is unlikely that readers with information on places and they ever equaled the numbers shipped events from nearby locales. Such articles from Punta Rassa, in Charlotte Harbor, spurred community interest and were Florida's oldest shipping point. In 1879, F.A. eagerly sought after by the general reading Hendry, of Fort Myers, estimated that in the public. In addition to Cunning's "Letter five previous years an average of 10,000 from Okeechobee" column, Boully's paper head of cattle, at a price of $14 per head, included letters and articles from Manatee were shipped each year from Punta Rassa.4 County, Charlotte Harbor, Hernando Citrus and vegetable growing also attract­ County, Ft. Meade, and Tampa. While some ed migrants. Nearly every edition of news- 13 papers published in Tampa, Orlando, Bartow Kississimee River. Below Fort Bassinger, and other South Florida towns contained and located near the western shore of Lake articles for perspective migrants extolling Okeechobee, was the village that grew the various advantages of certain crops and around abandoned Fort Center. It is likely the availability of land. By way of example, · that Cunning addressed his readers from on September 4, 1879, the Tampa Sunland one of these two settlements. Just to the Tribune, in an article titled "Culture and south of these two settlements lay the Shipment of Vegetables," lauded the ease Caloosahatchee River. South Florida's earli­ and profitability with which garden peas, est settlers speculated on the feasibility of cucumbers, tomatoes, potatoes, and squash­ connecting the river to the lake, but by es could be grown in South Florida. 1879, these high hopes were about to be re­ But if Cunning and his neighbors in the alized. In the spring of that year, a Tampa southern peninsula were to truly prosper, newspaper reported that J.L. Meigs, a U.S. they needed communication and trans­ Surveyor, had arrived in Fort Myers "on his portation links to the isolated region. They way to the headwaters of the Caloosahatchee yearned for iron rails to reach their isolated to give the river a thorough survey, and to communities. Cunning's dispatches speak make a report upon the feasibility, of open­ to these aspirations. In 1867, telegraph ing the Okeechobee into the river." F.A. messages could be received at Punta Rassa Hendry of Fort Myers, and a number of his and, in 1884, the first trains chugged into associates, were conducting an indepen­ Tampa. By that time thousands of migrants dent survey of their own.11 were heading to the region to invest in cit­ While this trackless region was home to rus groves. Phosphate strikes in the late the Seminole, cattlemen, panthers, and on­ 1880s attracted hundreds of others.s ly a few hardy homesteaders, local citizens Cunning also writes of Hamilton Disston's were optimistic about the fertility of the soil purchase of four million acres of land from and the desirability and prospects of out­ the state of Florida for $.25 per acre. side immigration. One newcomer boasted Disston's dream was to use the latest tech­ that "Okeechobee is one of the finest lakes nology to drain the overflowed lands. in Florida with only 2 islands in it with fine Through this scheme thousands of acres of hammock and prairie land nearly all around land could be sold at cheap prices to it suitable for cane, com, rice or vegetables migrants who could grow citrus and a mul­ also for fruits, oranges, guavas, bananas, titude of other tropical crops. Cunning pine apples &c. The Indians have fields and speaks to this scheme plus speculates on raise fine com, potatoes, pumpkins, and the nefarious political machinations that bananas, which all grow finely and with made it possible. little cultivation. Lovers of picturesque In 1880, only three counties and only a scenery should made a trip through, when few settlements graced the southern part of the canal is completed, plenty of game of the peninsula south of Polk County: nearly all kinds, and fish in abundance."12 Manatee (pop. 3,500), Dade (pop. 257) and Cunning addressed readers of the Monroe County (pop. 11,800).6 Miami Informant and the Sunland Tribune at the (which would become the region's only real time when White Conservatives had retak­ city) contained just a few dozen people in en control of state government. Florida had 1880. Because the vast majority of Monroe overthrown Radical Republican rule four County's population resided in the island years earlier. Florida's Bourbon governors, village of Key West, no more than 5,000 George Drew and William D. Bloxham, souls would have lived in the southern brought their economic policies to a public peninsula south of Bartow. This total in­ eager for better times. It was a policy of low cluded approximately 200 Seminoles living taxes, slashed state expenditures, and land in five villages. 7 Only a few cattle trails and giveaway schemes calculated to lure primitive roads, cut primarily by the army's Northern investment capital to the state to corps of engineers during the Seminole develop the · state's ··resources and lure Wars, linked distant frontier outposts such migrants to Florida's open spaces. By 1880, as Pine Level (Manatee County Seat), the in Florida, as in the rest of the South, the village of Manatee (now Bradenton),8 Fort Republican Party (now discredited among Green, Fort Ogden,9 Fort Myers, and Fort white Southerners as the party of Carpet­ Bassinger,10 on the west bank of the baggers, Scalawags, and African-Americans), 14 became a marginalized victim of the solid Okeechobee county presents induce­ Democratic South. Cunning's letters are re­ ments to emigration far superior to any flective of white conservative public opin­ county in Florida, or to any other state or ion of the time. Readers of the Informant territory on the continent. One of its great and Sunland Tribune would have reveled in advantages is, that it has room enough for his stories. Both were Conservative Demo­ all who may come, possessing all that vast cratic papers in a state increasingly taken expanse of country extending from the over by Bourbonism.13 Atlantic ocean on the east, to the empire of Cunning addressed the readers of the Manatee on the west; bounded by the sand Informant and the Sunland Tribune in the mountains, or backbone of Florida, on the manner and style of the southern humorists north, and running south to infinity; of the ante- and post-hel- including the great ium periods.