South Florida’s largest underground river is known as the Long Key Formation.
The Long Key River runs for several hundred miles beneath highways and homes, cities and wild places, mostly through limestone. It begins near Lake Wales, northwest of Lake Okeechobee, and currents southward toward the Everglades.
The river flows beneath State Route 80, Alligator Alley and the Tamiami Trail-the region’s only east-west highways. The underground river flows beneath sawgrass, swamp, mangrove fringe and Florida Bay.
The Long Key River then rises to within about 35 feet of the earth’s surface at Flamingo, and abruptly descends deep underground as it flows beneath Florida Bay-a freshwater column traveling an isolated course beneath salt water. By the time the river gets to Marathon and Long Key, its limestone conduit is 158 feet beneath the sea bottom.
Limestone can accurately be called a skeletal structure by virtue of having been formed by the calcium remains of long-dead sea creatures. The limestone skeleton upon which modern Florida exists is porous, delicate, unpredictable. Craters in the limestone can and do appear suddenly. They are formed when the limestone scaffolding gives way, and implodes. Sinkholes, they are called. In South Florida, sinkholes occur commonly. They have swallowed houses, whole business districts and portions of highway.
Sinkholes are an incisive reminder of how fragile our peninsula really is.
We were approaching what appeared to be a sinkhole now-a crater-sized lake surrounded by cypress. As we neared it, I could feel the temperature drop, as if the dome of cypress was absorbing sunlight. Within the dome, the crater was a pool of black water that was carpeted with fire flags and lily pads, white and yellow flowers blooming.
In my earphones, I heard James say, “See the marsh way to the north?”
I looked to see a broad expanse of swamp plain near what appeared to be an abandoned limestone pit.
He said, “We call that Lost Lake. The reason is, there’s another sinkhole out there, a lake without no bottom. But you can’t see the shape of the lake unless water in the swamp gets real low. Used to be, tarpon would show up there about this time every year. But it hasn’t happened for a while.”
A tarpon is a saltwater game fish: a chromium-scaled pack animal that migrates into the Florida littoral each spring. All my life, I’d heard rumors that there were certain inland lakes where tarpon would appear as abruptly as they disappeared-the implication being that the lakes were connected by underground tunnels with the open sea. Some were well known: Rock Lake, Tarpon Lake, Deep Lake and Lake Sampson. I’d visited a couple of them.
We were headed for a tree island now. As James banked toward it, I heard Tomlinson say, “This is starting to look familiar. Man, I think I know where we are. We’re getting close to Sawgrass, aren’t we?”
James told him, “If you cut straight across the prairie, it’s only a mile or so to the back boundary.” Then he said what sounded like, “Up ahead is Chekika’s Hammock.”
Tomlinson repeated the name phonetically, “Che-kii-ka’s Hammock.”
“Uh-huh. Back in eighteen forty, it’s where the white soldiers caught Chekika, an Indian. They said he murdered Dr. Perrine and six or seven other people down on the Florida Keys. Chekika, he was a big man. A Calusa, like Joseph. When the soldiers caught him, they hanged him. Ask her to show you the tree. It’s still there.”
DeAntoni said, “Ask who to show us the tree?”
Tomlinson answered for James: “Billie Egret. This is where she lives.”
Tomlinson, my intuitive friend. chapter nineteen
Billie Egret, tribal chair of the Egret Seminoles, had inherited Joseph Egret’s height, his elongated wedge of a nose and his eyes. She had liquid eyes; black, intense eyes that seemed to add weight to the air when she stared at you.
She was staring at me now, as she said, “My father once told me he considered you more like a son than just some cracker boy. So I guess that could make the two of us brother and sister in a way. He also told me you kept your brain where your heart should be. True?”
There are rare people who exude sufficient confidence that they can direct outrageous questions at strangers, yet make the question sound reasonable, even flattering. She was one of those few.
I said, “Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with that.”
I watched her smile for the second time since our arrival. “Guess he was right, huh?”
We were standing in a clearing between four pole houses-chickees-that were built around a central fire pit. The chickees consisted of a sapling floor built a couple of feet off the ground beneath a roof of palm thatching. The cooking chickee was open on all sides. There was a pump for water, a wood-burning stove and a porcelain sink that drained onto the ground.
We’d already seen the tree where, according to the woman, Chekika had been hanged a hundred-and-fifty-some years earlier. The “Hanging Tree,” she called it, her inflection making it a proper noun.
It was a massive Madeira mahogany, long dead. Put three or four men at the base, and they might be able to circle their arms around it. Most of the upper limbs were broken off; woodpeckers had riddled it with striated holes, but it was still solid. Perched on the highest knob was one of the rarest birds in the Everglades, a snail kite. The snail kite sat one hundred feet above, indifferent to us, a large, hawkish looking male, cobalt blue.
“When we were kids,” Billie told us, “Joseph used to talk about Chekika, because Chekika was his great-grandfather. Which means he’s my great-great-grandfather. He was what the old people, the elders, called a Spanish Indian.
“It’s because the government sent the last band of Calusas to live in Cuba. They had to learn Spanish. They gave them a spot on a hill just west of old Havana, but it wasn’t their home; it wasn’t Florida. So they paddled back. More than a hundred miles of open water in dugouts.
“Chekika was different. Like my father. Now like us.”
We listened to the woman talk about it. She said if the American military had attacked Indians down on the Keys, it would have been called an engagement. But because it was Chekika who initiated the attack, history referred to it as a massacre.
There is a predictable variety of bitterness associated with the cliche thinking that every conquest-minded European was evil, and all indigenous peoples were noble. But there was no hint of that in her voice.
She told us that there are five hundred and fifty federally recognized tribes in the United States. The largest, the Cherokee and the Navajo, have close to a million members. Some of the smallest tribes have fewer than a dozen men and women left; are on the verge of extinction.
“For the enemies of Native Americans,” she said, “extinction has always been the favorite option.”
She told us that her band, the Egret Seminoles, were just one unrecognized tribe out of two-hundred-and-forty-some groups petitioning, trying to get the federal government to verify all the research that had been done, to grant confirmation, and make it official.
She spoke matter-of-factly, like an interested historian. She looked the part, standing there in her park ranger khaki shorts and man’s rainbow-banded Seminole shirt, strings of traditional glass beads around her neck. An interesting-looking woman: a little over six feet tall, narrow-hipped, flat-chested with good shoulders, high cheekbones beneath velvet cocoa skin, her hair cut short. Plus those eyes. Star tlingly intense eyes.
I liked her frankness; her no-nonsense manner.
When Tomlinson placed both his hands on the tree, closed his eyes for a moment, saying, “There’s a powerful spirit in this creature; it’s still strong and alive-” she cut him off abruptly, saying, “If you’re doing that for my benefit, please stop.”
As Tomlinson turned to her, smiling, she added, “Sorry. It’s just that I don’t have much patience with the whole Indian stereotype business. We don’t worship nature-never did. We don’t all have fuzzy animal names. We’ve never had shamans-that’s a Russian word-and the only people who give any
credence to that ridiculous book, Black Elk Speaks, are New Age whites who have more money than brains. Turquoise Indians, I call them, because they wear turquoise like it’s supposed to mean something.”
Still smiling, Tomlinson said something heavy and guttural that surprised the woman, then made her laugh. It also seemed to cut through the awkwardness of strangers meeting. Seemed to put her at ease. She answered Tomlinson in the same singsong language, before adding, “I’m impressed. That’s a Maskoki maxim I haven’t heard since my grand-mother died. Very appropriate, too.”
Now she didn’t seem to mind at all when Tomlinson placed his hands on the Hanging Tree again, eyes closed, and asked, “How often is she struck by lightning?”
Billie Egret answered, “A lot,” walking away.
She’d already put DeAntoni in his place, too. The first thing he’d asked her after stepping off the airboat was, “Did you know a Geoff Minster?” To which she replied, “You wouldn’t be here if I didn’t. And you’re not going to stay here long unless you agree to talk about it on my terms.”
Her terms, it seemed, included getting to know us better before she volunteered information. “She’s getting the feel of us,” Tomlinson whispered to me as we followed her back to the main camp.
Now she took a seat at a table beneath one of the chickees, and spoke generally, telling us about herself, what she was doing. She owned a condo in Coral Gables-she was working on her doctorate in political history at the University of Miami-but she lived here much of the time with two older aunts and three much older uncles. The six of them, along with Ginny Egret and James Tiger, made up the voting board of the Tribe of Egret Seminoles, Inc., a trademarked corporation formed to ensure that the tribe-once formally recognized-had both a business and political infrastructure in place.
“Under the corporation, we also created the Egret Seminole Land Development Enterprise,” she said. “We did it to explore how we can best use the little bit of land we own jointly, and the possibility of purchasing-or annexing-property that adjoins ours.
“That’s how I met Geoff. He came to me as the front man for Jerry Singh. They had a business offer. Singh wanted to sell us thirteen hundred acres of adjoining land on a long-term deferred loan, and at a price next to nothing. In return, we’d allow him to build and manage a casino resort.”
DeAntoni said, “He wanted to sell you church property.”
“Yes, and he still does. Singh bought the land cheap when he was first starting out. Back when it cost next to nothing because it’s mostly swamp. A little later, if you don’t mind getting your feet wet, I’ll walk you to where the property lines meet.”
Billie told us she felt the casino idea was plausible and the potential for profit was huge. But, as she explained to Minster, even if she did get the tribe to go along with the idea, it wouldn’t be easy. There was a lot of red tape involved; several government agencies to deal with. First and foremost, though, the Egret Seminoles had to successfully petition the Department of Interior’s branch of Acknowledgment and Recognition.
So she and Minster had spent a lot of time together, trying to work out the details.
She said, “The main problem is that the U.S. government is constantly… daily… perpetually devising ways they can erode Indian sovereignty. The gaming industry is their favorite target. Have you ever heard of James Billy?”
“I was talking about him on the way here,” Tomlinson told her. “A tough old ’Nam vet who really got the tribe on its feet.”
“That’s him. When I’d go on a rant about protecting tribal sovereignty, he’d tell me, ‘Hell, honey, sovereignty ain’t nothin’ but who’s got the biggest gun!’ In the final analysis, he was absolutely correct.
“So now we’re working on getting our guns together. Back in the nineteen fifties, when James was growing up, less than a half-dozen Seminoles had even graduated from high school. Today, we dress our warriors up in three-piece suits and pay them to fire off injunctions instead of bullets. So that’s how I got to know Geoff.”
There was an odd modulation when she said his name, Geoff. Was I imagining a hint of tenderness?
No.
Because she then added, “I hope you’re right about him still being alive. I don’t believe it, but I hope you’re right.”
The way she said it was like she cared about the guy. Cared about him a lot.
Why was there a Sawgrass maintenance truck backed into what looked to be a long-abandoned limestone quarry?
That’s what Billie wanted to know.
It was a white, ton-and-a-half GMC, double tires in the back with a skid-mounted tank in the bed and Sawgrass decals on the doors. A dark-haired man in coveralls was standing at the rear of the truck, doing something with a wrench.
It was the quarry I’d seen on the way in.
“That’s odd; he’s on our property,” she said. “He’s got no business being in here. What I don’t understand is, Why would he want to be there?” Meaning a shallow, marl-looking pit fifty yards or so wide, with an access road that was overgrown with brush. The road ended abruptly where the truck was parked, backed up to the wall of the quarry as if it were a bunker.
I thought, Dumping garbage, but said nothing. A man alone, not dozing, not eating. It was the only explanation that made sense.
We’d walked a mile or so north. Had waded through a couple of sections of sawgrass and water, which DeAntoni didn’t like. Wild animals, he said, made him jumpy.
“All the snakes and crap Florida’s got. Alligators. We’ve already seen enough big gators, sister. So no more, okay? Then you got your black widows, scorpions, plus that hurricane business with a wind that comes blowing down and puts the snatch on people.”
Billie chuckled when he added, “Hell, you Indians can have the freaking place, far as I’m concerned.”
Most of our walk was on high ground. Dry, too, after one of the driest winters in the state’s history, but starting to green now that we were entering the rainy season.
We’d followed the woman through pinelands and grass prairie, through stands of young cypress where she pointed out ghost orchids growing wild, swamp lilies and leather ferns. She knew the names of all the birds, too: wood storks, hawks and great egrets with their reptilian eyes.
Once, she stopped, knelt and touched a finger to a paw print that was bigger than my hand. “Black bear,” she said. “A big one. Big and healthy.”
She said she often found panther tracks in the area, too.
When I inquired, she told me she’d noticed a significant increase in the amount of wildlife in the ’Glades since her childhood, particularly gators and wading birds. “But that doesn’t mean the Everglades is back to the way it was when Chekika and Osceola were alive. And there may be a lot more damage to come.”
Her reasoning surprised me. She said she felt the biggest threat to the region now came from the state and federal governments, and a mega-billion-dollar project called the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan.
“But that’s a good thing,” Tomlinson argued. “The scientists, most of them, anyway, say we need to make the ’Glades a free-flowing water system again. Restore the Kissimmee and increase the amount of wetlands by a couple of hundred thousand acres.”
That, Billie told him, is exactly what scared her.
In explanation, she first listed a string of environmental disasters masterminded by government scientists and engineers. Back in 1912, they used biplanes to seed the Everglades with a paper-barked, Australian tree called the melaleuca. The exotic tree reproduced like wildfire and displaced whole regions of natural habitat. Then they did the same with casuarinas, or Australian pines. “Environmentally safe windbreaks,” state biologists called the tree at the time.
It was government “experts” who transformed the Kissimmee from a hundred miles of pristine river into a fifty-six-mile ditch, renaming it C-38 Canal. The results were ruinous.
Then, in 1957, at the southern base of mainland Florida, governmen
t engineers dug the Buttonwood Canal to drain the area north of Flamingo and provide easy boat access to the mangrove backcountry. For the first time in history, the canal allowed fresh water, laden with decaying sediments, to flow directly into Florida Bay.
Again, the results were disastrous. It all but destroyed the fishery in Florida Bay, yet state biologists balked at admitting the truth, or taking responsibility. It wasn’t until 1982 that the canal was finally plugged.
“I don’t trust them,” Billie said. “Government scientists use Florida like a lab rat. They say they want to return the natural flow of water? The Everglades used to include nearly all the land south of Orlando. It’s less than half that size now. When they started draining the sawgrass, tree islands like Chekika’s Hammock got bigger. The bigger islands provided more habitat for wildlife that’d been forced inland by development.
“So what’s going to happen when they cover half the original land mass with the whole, original amount of flowing water? They’re going to flood us out, that’s what. When water reduces the amount of uplands habitat, where’re the bear, the deer, the people-where’re we supposed to go. Miami?
“This has been one of the driest winters ever, but the water’s already come up so much here that some of the trees are getting root rot. Our island’s shrinking.”
She added, “This place is delicate. The ’Glades has spent the last hundred years adapting to change, evolving, surviving. Now they want the area to go through the whole process again, but in reverse.” Sounding emotional for the first time, she added, “Anything as beautiful as the Everglades has to be fragile. Like a butterfly.”
Tomlinson was listening to her, not agreeing but not disagreeing, either. In a soft voice, he said, “Everglades. Yes, this place is the real Magic Kingdom.”
The man driving the white pickup truck with the skid tank in back didn’t want us to see his face.
My interpretation. Something about the way he behaved when Billie called out to him, “Hey, mister! Mind if I ask what’re you doing down there?”
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