Wonderful Pine Island, Bocilla Island, and their surrounding islands are part of the Greater Charlotte Harbor Region which extends from Cape Haze south to Sanibel Island inclusive and is 872 square miles in size. This lush ecosystem is a living community of plants, animals and humans nurtured by warmth, surrounded by water, and energized by sunlight. If eco means "home', and system means "standing together," then this great, regional ecosystem is a home standing together.
Bocilla Island Club is an heir of this "home standing together." We are surrounded by a vast and nurturing body of water. The Greater Charlotte Harbor Region is 872 square miles in size and drains a 4,700-square-mile watershed area in west-central Florida. Historically, it comprises much of the homeland of indigenous people known as the Calusa who along with their predecessors, the Paleo-people and Archaic people, have left their heritage as essential components. We of Bocilla Island Club are the lucky recipients of this legacy.
Formerly, historical accounts about Florida began with Juan Ponce de Leon but further research indicates that he was not the first "discoverer of Florida," but he did honestly name it La Florida, after seeing the beautiful flowers of Easter. He thought it was an island. He gets credit for the name but not discovery. The Calusa people already had a Spanish-speaking person with them before he arrived. Actually, indigenous people had been occupying Florida for 13,487 years before he arrived. The Spanish-speaking person living with Calusa told how he had committed atrocities in Puerto Rico in 1508. The natives heard that Ponce took men and women captives, sold them as slaves, killed nearly every indigenous person, and appointed himself as leader and conqueror of the depopulated island. After a time he tried it again with the Calusa in 1513 but he was repelled. He came back in 1521 and was killed. The rest of the story is in the section titled The Truth About Pirates and Ponce de Leon.
Similarly, the tales of pirates and buried treasure lore that surrounds the islands can be traced only as far back as train brochures and restaurant menus. Little of it is true, but it can be fun to read and to think of it as fun-fiction. On boating tours you will learn that many famous people have inhabited the surrounding islands from American presidents, the Canadian Prime Minister and his family, to actors and actresses, artists, authors, and celebrities. This is true. They still come to this region to chill out.
Pine Island Sound and Charlotte Harbor are a fishing paradise. It wasn't always like this. It was perfectly dry about 15,000 years ago. Ice-Age Paleo-people fished springs and small streams in the northern part of Florida. The peninsula of Florida was covered with pine tree forests, remnants of which still exist here today. Hence the names "Pine" Island and "Pine" Island Sound.
If you look at a map of today's Florida you can see how wide the peninsula is. Now imagine it twice as wide. That's how wide it was when the Gulf coastline existed 400 miles further west 15,000 years ago. Paleo-humans used spears to fish and to hunt camels, llamas, horses giant armadillos, mastodons, deer, bear, sloths, and wildcats on this enormous, dry continental shelf. A bison skull from 10,000 years ago was deposited with a stone spear point embedded in its forehead. Another spear point was deposited by Paleo-people on a pine-forested, wind-blown, ice-age, sand-dune now called Useppa Island, and this hunt occurred before Useppa was even an island.
For the next 4,000 years, ice-age melt-water from the north blasted tons of water into the Gulf of Mexico. The sea rose about 395 feet. Sea-levels along the coastline fluctuated greatly and became relatively stabilized about 6,000 years ago. Today we can say that Pine Island Sound is 6,000 years old. It was cooler and drier then.
Until sand Barrier Islands accumulated in the Gulf, Pine Island Sound was not yet either a Sound or an Estuary because fresh water was not impounded. The Peace River, Myakka River, and Caloosahatchee Rivers simply flowed out to an ocean of salt water. Only six islands in today's Pine Island Sound had enough wind-blown, ice-age, sand dune elevation to withstand the original, salty, flooding of 6,000 years ago. These became: Pine Island, Useppa Island, Cabbage Key, Mondongo Island, Patricio Island, and Burgess/Little Bokeelia Island. All had cores made of wind-blown, ice-age sand, all were open to the Gulf before Barrier Islands formed, and all still have evidence of indigenous fishing cultures from different eras.
How Barrier Islands Made Pine Island Sound
Between five and six thousand years ago Archaic-period people fished along island shorelines, mostly catching salt-water fish. It was not an estuary yet; salinity was high. The six islands mentioned above were open to the sea. Evidence of occupation included spear points, sharks, rays, mollusks, bi-valves such as oysters and clams, and bits of charred wood from pine trees. Eventually the artifact assemblages became more estuary-oriented with lower salinity as the barrier islands accumulated. Many fish species are adapted to live in semi-salty water.
How did the barrier islands form? First, they needed sand. Fortunately, the west coast of the Florida peninsula has a remarkable flowing current from north to south which contains white, quartz-crystal sand originating from millions of years of rivers eroding the Appalachian Mountains. The beautiful beaches of the Barrier Islands formed and accumulated along the Gulf coast between 5,500 and 3,000 years ago. They are still morphing, moving, and changing. Sharks, dolphins, whales, snook, cobia, mackerel, tarpon, and other species of fish migrated, fed, bred, and played along the Gulf coast.
The first two barrier islands to form were Gasparilla, northwest of Pine Island, and Sanibel which is due south of Pine Island. Both Gasparilla and Sanibel Islands have evidence of the earliest fishing cultures such as fish cleaning, shucking shells, smoking fish for preservation, and building thatched huts for villages. Gasparilla has preserved at least nineteen ancient fishing sites. Sanibel has preserved at least eleven ancient fishing sites.
The rest of the barrier islands became Cayo Costa, North Captiva, and Captiva. Captiva Island was cut into two sections when the 1921 hurricane blew out Redfish Pass, causing upper Captiva to be called North Captiva Island. Captiva has preserved at least seven ancient mounds. North Captiva has preserved at least two indigenous fishing mounds on either side of an ancient pass which is now closed. Cayo Costa has preserved at least five ancient mounds indicating fishing activity around passes that were filled in later by storms.
Today, the Greater Charlotte Harbor Region is much more productive for fishing in the Sound than it was when the barrier islands formed and lowered the salinity just a bit. Sediments that accumulated over time from the Peace, Myakka, and Caloosahatchee Rivers have provided a perfect bed for nurturing vast amounts of seagrass meadows, over 65,000 acres in this Region.
Why are seagrass meadows so important? Not only do they provide dissolved oxygen which is essential for fish and plants, but their grass structure supports the microorganisms that form the base of the food web. A golden film made up of microscopic epiphytes (plants that live on, but do not take from, these grass blades) feed baby fish, baby shrimp, baby sea horses, baby sea stars, baby crabs, baby lobsters, and other tiny organisms, and is known as the "cradle of the ocean." When combined with the second-largest mangrove forest in Florida (second only to the Everglades region), this estuary feeds and breeds 220 species of fish.
Who Were the Calusa?
The Calusa sphere of influence extends from Cape Canaveral to Tampa and all the way down to the Keys. Calusa people occupied the Pineland site for 1,660 years beginning about 50 A.D. and built the second largest Calusa city, the first largest being an oyster fishery on Cape Haze.
In this local environment where fresh water meets the sea, the Calusa became wealthy without having any money. Their good, healthy lifestyle depended on fishing, and they built a highly complex society.
The net-fishing and spear-fishing Calusa people were described by Europeans as "great fishers and divers." They developed a trade network not just in Florida but up the east coast as far as New York, up the Mississippi as far as Canada.
They were dominant and received tribute from indigenous people in Florida and on the upper continent who didn't even speak the same language. They built fish ponds with weirs, established water gates, dug canals and channels, and made many different kinds of nets and tools to fish. They invited water into their many villages among the islands--hence the heights of their mounds with water accessibility.
Catching Fish
Today's fishers look to the tidal charts and the season for knowing when to catch fish at the right time. The Calusa looked to the movements of the heavenly bodies for clues about when or where the fish were running. Their highest deity was described as one in unity "who governed all things universal and the movements of the heavenly bodies." In the middle of the State of Florida are earthen mounds dedicated to determining the sun and star movements of solstices and equinoxes. At least one of the linear earthen mounds in the middle of the state points directly to Pineland for either an equinox or a solstice. Other alignments exist along both the east coast and west coast of Florida. The complexity of the linear earthen mounds shows intelligence and ingenuity in passing down important information to descendants, for example, how to read the skies about such mundane things as when to fish for what species and what to expect when fishing.
We know that during the Winter Solstice (December 21st) the sun sets exactly in the middle of Captiva Pass. Solstice has meaning. Winter is coming, water will be slightly lower and slightly more salty. Which species survive in saltwater conditions? We know that the Pinfish was a staple of the Calusa, as it tolerates higher salinity. It is in the winter months that Redfish "pile up on the flats". Sheepshead are abundant inshore in winter. Spanish Mackerel school up and are close to shore too. Spotted Sea Trout are available year-round. Mullet are schooling in winter. Shellfish are "best" in winter, especially after several cold spells. Clams are more easily gathered because of low tides. Penshells washing up on beaches taste like scallops. Some species die in water temperatures lower than 70 degrees.
Calusa Legacy
In the late 1600s, the Calusa with their amazing technology for netfishing were teaching Cuban Commercial Fishermen from Havana how to use nets for catching schools of mullet instead of using less lucrative deep-water methods of hook-and-line fishing for off-shore fish such as grouper. Other coastal fishermen such as the Creek people of Georgia and Yemassee people of South Carolina were also fishing in Pine Island Sound, after having negotiated with the Calusa king for fishing rights here.
A replica of a fishing net that appeared on the shoreline of Pineland in the archaeological record dating to about 1,370 years ago fills an entire wall in the classroom at the Calusa Heritage Trail. Calusa netmakers used twisted sabal palm fibers (which has high tensile strength) and tied sheet-bend knots to assemble their nets. Cypress-wood net floats have been found with cordage still attached. Net weights to anchor the nets were made of Ponderous Ark shells with holes drilled in them using sharpened columns from Lightning Whelk shells and Horse Conch shells.
Their perfectly made, rectangular, flat, net-mesh gauges were made of shell, bone, and wood. They determined how far apart the knots should be to catch the size of the fish that were running at the time, whether small, medium, or large. This fishing gauge was passed down to later fisherfolk settlers and to late-1800s Cuban fisherfolk who fished this region, then passed down to European-Americans, and finally today's American fisherfolk. Through every era the net-mesh gauges were the same sizes within millimeters. This is a revered, handed-down connection with Calusa people, the last living connection.
The Calusa used spear fishing as well, and were praised for their speed and accuracy, especially for spearing fish like moving targets racing through the passes between the Barrier Islands. Spearpoints could be carved of wood, stone, or bone.
Calusa preferred to use large shells for cutting tools and clamshell knives. They had very sharp knives with handles made of wood or bone, and lashed the knife blade with deer sinew and sticky resin from pine and gumbo-limbo trees. They used serrated sharks' teeth to make a very long knife something like a machete, or a two-handed saw, which could decapitate a large fish. They scaled fish with local bivalve shells such as Venus Sunray and other sharp-edged clams that fit their hands.
They carved bone and combined it with wood (using sticky resin and twine) to make enormous C-shaped fish hooks with barbs. They carved throat gorges of deer bone like huge toothpicks with twine wound around the middle to catch bottom-feeding fish. Their fishing line was made by twisting palm fibers into sturdy, tight twine. Their sinkers were made from the internal column of large Lightning Whelk shells or Horse Conch. Sinkers could be long or short, notched horizontally to wind a string around it to attach to fishing lines. Sometimes they were notched on both ends, and were very abundant in assemblages as if every Calusa person wore them around their neck and carried them wherever they went. A single quartz crystal sinker was a rare, high-status trade good.
Calusa are said to have used two types of fishing canoes (based on 1,100 indigenous canoes found preserved in the muck off Newnan Lake in central Florida.) If they were going into deeper waters, craftsmen carved high, long bows from enormous cypress trees for deepwater dugout canoes. If they were going into shallower waters or canals, they carved low, wide bows with a rectangular shape. Their choice of wood for their vessels were cypress and pine. They carved pointy paddles and poles for shallow waters.
When the Calusa king traveled, they made a catamaran by tying two canoes together with a platform in the middle and with awnings of hoops and matting, as described by the Spanish in the 1500s. Mats were made of woven palm fibers. An additional toy canoe was found with an outrigger still attached.
On Useppa Island around 1300 years ago, a Calusa diver died from "diving too deep for too long in waters too cold," according to a modern forensic pathologist who studied the remains. Calusa divers were very important at that time. Useppa supported a large shell-tool workshop for trade, and large Lightning Whelks were a commodity. Other workshops existed on Buck Key and other islands. Some of these shell tools ended up in Canada, the Cahokia Mounds of Illinois, and into the Mississippian cultures. The Lightning Whelk shell tools were so revered for their durability and for their clockwise spiral, which had a spiritual meaning, that they modeled pottery which resembled the orginal shell.
A Spanish report described how an indigenous fisherman killed a whale by jumping on the back, stabbing the blow hole repeatedly until its lungs filled with blood, riding the animal to the bottom until it died, then bringing it up, butchering the whale on the beach, perhaps distributing the meat, and reserving the ear bones for the burial of his chief who had died. He then deposited the dry ear bones into the wooden box holding the dead chief, which perhaps had sacred meaning.
Calusa Diet
Their record of fish caught by Calusa includes these species found in the assemblage in the most abundance: Pinfish, Pigfish, Sharks, Crevalle Jack, Sheepshead, Mackerel, Mullet, Redfish, Mangrove Snapper, Black Drum, Spotted Seatrout, Sand Seatrout, Hardhead Catfish, Gafftopsail Catfish, Gulf Flounder, Mangrove Killifish, Toadfish, and Striped Burrfish.
Pigfish and pinfish turned out to be the major staple of the Calusa diet. Animals with shells counted for only about 15% of the meat diet of Calusa; the majority of their meat diet was finfish. They grew gourds and used them as floats for nets. Their kitchen-garden vegetables from which they cast seeds were related to butternut squash, wild cucumber, and wild spinach. They ate prickly pear cactus pods as greens, known today as "nopales," and also ate the sweet prickly pear (after removing the spines.) They ate grains and seeds parched by the fire, and fruits and berries in season.
Shell mounds can be deceiving. More shells are seen on the surface than fish bones; but when samples are taken to the lab, the counts of fishbones and species of finfish far outnumber the meat-weight of the shellfish. Evidence of dip-nets and other netfishing apparatus have been found in archaeological assemblages. So have the tiny vertebrae and fishbones down to 4 millimeters in size. Evidence of enormous fish such as sharks and jacks as well as large mammals such as Monk seal, deer, dolphin, and manatee were reserved and presented to chiefs and nobles who sometimes had to feed many visitors and dignitaries at once.
Spanish-Cuban to American Era
Following the demise of the Calusa in the early to mid-1700s, Cuban Commercial Fishermen sailed due north from Havana, Cuba about 250 miles to Pine Island Sound and parts of Charlotte Harbor from the mid-1700s to about 1835.
According to the book, "Fisherfolk of Charlotte Harbor, Florida," by Robert F. Edic, a number of Cuban fisheries established fishing ranchos on various islands with thatched huts, a source of fresh water, storage, and docks. One owner was Jose' Caldez, whose boat named Joseffa became the name of the islands upon which they lived to fish--Useppa. Many fisheries thrived--at least 35 were shown on various maps during various periods, and they brought hundreds of thousands of pounds of salted mullet, mullet roe, and other fish to Cuba for the Lenten Season.
Cubans and American fisherfolk came back to Pine Island Sound to fish after the War Between the States (1860s.) In the 1870s, a representative for the U.S. Commission of Fish and Fisheries surveyed this region reporting: "The Captiva fish ranch run by Captain Pierce and thirty 'Conchs' [a term for people from Key West] produced 660,000 pounds of salted mullet and 49,500 pounds of dried mullet roe. On south Cayo Costa, Jose Sega, the head ranchero along with 26 fishermen, yielded about a quarter of that amount. Ranchero Taribio Padilla ('Captain Pappy') [on north-central Cayo Costa] and his crew of 23 Spanish and one American produced about the same. One on Gasparilla Island's northern end was run by Captain Peacon and 30 'Conchs.' It produced 555,000 pounds of mullet and 44,000 pounds of roe."
Cuban Commercial Fisherman sailed to this region at least until the end of the 1890s, perhaps beyond. Cuban fishing smacks had large sails. They kept their fish alive in live wells in the bottom of the boat. They salted their catch and had to pay for the salt before their fish could be brought to Cuba. Photos and narratives show how their wives and children were housed in thatched huts on stilts over the water at the edge of islands such as Useppa Island, Regla Island, and Chino Island. The Spanish-American War intervened in 1898. In the early 1900s, wealthy American visitors from the north were staying in hotels dedicated to sportfishing.
Fish Houses of Pine Island Sound
The Fish Houses of Pine Island Sound mark how the end of the 1800s brought new technology that changed the fishing industry forever: ice factories. With gigantic 300-pound blocks of ice, commercial fishermen could stop using salt as a preservation practice and make a better living preserving fresh fish on ice sent by train to fish markets. The two ice factories in Punta Gorda operated on electricity--and the largest one eventually became the Florida Power and Light Company.
The fish houses or "fish shacks" as originally called, were built on stilts over water in the early 1900s for commercial fishermen and their families to stay rent-free if they could bring their catch to the ice house associated with the company that built it. Fish houses were not necessarily attached to the stilts. Shacks could be moved by bringing a barge under the shack at low tide--then lift the shack at high tide and deposit it on another set of pilings--to follow the fish runs of the time.
From the docks at Punta Gorda, run boats would carry supplies, mail, iced fish, nets to be repaired, and schoolchildren daily to the schoolhouse on Cayo Costa. In 1928 after a hurricane destroyed the schoolhouse, a new schoolhouse was built on Punta Blanca Island courtesy of Barron Collier, who owned Useppa Island and its lavish resort hotel.
The Punta Gorda Fish Company already owned a dock and ice house on Punta Blanca Island, shown on charts as Point Blanco. A new village grew on Punta Blanca Island. The village consisted of the new schoolhouse, school teacher's cottage, worker accommodations, two marine railways, a 110 foot slip for Collier's yacht in the C-shaped cove behind the southern part of the island, a general store with mail sorting, water and gas tanks, and work sheds to repair boats. None of this exists today except for a remnant of the marine railway and some concrete ruins. It is today a part of Cayo Costa State Park, and you can go there by boat for fishing, picnicking, and exploring the island.
Ice houses were placed by several different fish companies about ten miles apart between Charlotte Harbor and Estero Bay. Several competing fish companies had docks in Punta Gorda in the early 1900s because the railroad ended there. Some squabbles ensued on the water when out-of-state commercial fishermen came to fish Pine Island Sound. Somehow most of these were settled, one way or another, and most could see that there were enough fish for all.
While fisherfolk were making a living and sending their children to school, Barron Collier's grand hotel was attracting celebrities who were hungry for the excitement of World-Class Tarpon Fishing.
Names of those who caught these enormous fish were etched on tarpon scales the size of a man's hand, and posted on the walls of Useppa's Izaak Walton Club, named for the 1653 author of the book entitled, "The Compleat Angler." Club members included Teddy Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover, Gloria Swanson, Shirley Temple, Zane Grey, Mary Roberts Rinehart, and the Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, and Rothschilds.
Commercial fisherfolk still occupy the waters of Pine Island Sound and are highly regarded by local people and fishers. Some of their descendants still live on Pine Island. Ancestors are honored from the historic past. Some names are Padilla, Coleman, Spearing, Woodring, Ballard, Martin, Pierce, Darna, Peacon, and more. This is the Greater Pine Island fishing legacy, and Bocilla Island Club members are part of it. Happy Fishing!
