The Historical Society of Avon ParkAVON PARK, FL · EST. 1886
Menu
Admin Sign-In

1880 federal census recorded four Seminole camps and thirty-two individuals on Fisheating Creek, resolving commercial site error

A widely circulated local history claim states that an 1881 federal survey recorded thirty-seven extended Seminole families living along Fisheating Creek, in the country immediately south of Highlands County.[fisheating-outpost] Investigation of the original nineteenth-century federal census records reveals that this figure is a conflation of a statewide aggregate total with a single local settlement.[maccauley-1887][kersey-1981-census]

In the winter of 1880–1881, the Reverend Clay MacCauley conducted the first systematic post-war federal census of the Florida Seminoles on behalf of the Smithsonian Institution’s Bureau of Ethnology and the United States Census Office, establishing an enumeration date of October 1, 1880.[maccauley-1887][kersey-1981-census] MacCauley identified exactly 208 Seminole individuals in the entire state of Florida, constituting thirty-seven families distributed among twenty-two camps across five distinct regional settlements.[maccauley-1887]

The uncited commercial narrative published by the Fisheating Creek Outpost mistakenly attributed the statewide total of thirty-seven families to the Fisheating Creek settlement alone.[fisheating-outpost] MacCauley’s official tabulated report documents the actual local distribution across Florida as of October 1, 1880:[maccauley-1887]

  • Big Cypress Swamp (Monroe County, in the “Devil’s Garden”): 10 camps, 73 individuals (42 male, 31 female).[maccauley-1887]
  • Miami River (Dade County, on the Little Miami River): 5 camps, 63 individuals (32 male, 31 female).[maccauley-1887]
  • Fish Eating Creek (then Manatee County, later Glades County): 4 camps, 32 individuals (15 male, 17 female).[maccauley-1887]
  • Cat Fish Lake (Polk County, between Lake Pierce and Lake Rosalie): 2 camps, 28 individuals (16 male, 12 female).[maccauley-1887]
  • Cow Creek (Brevard County, northeast of the Kissimmee River entrance to Lake Okeechobee): 1 camp, 12 individuals (7 male, 5 female).[maccauley-1887]

Demographics and clan structure at Fisheating Creek

MacCauley’s survey recorded thirty-two people at the Fish Eating Creek settlement, situated on the creek approximately five miles west of its entrance into Lake Okeechobee.[maccauley-1887] The demographic breakdown comprised fifteen males and seventeen females, making Fisheating Creek the only settlement in Florida where females outnumbered males.[maccauley-1887]

The age distribution at Fisheating Creek recorded two children under five years of age, two girls between five and ten, two boys between ten and fifteen, four youths between fifteen and twenty, fifteen adults between twenty and sixty, and seven elders over sixty years of age.[maccauley-1887] MacCauley also documented the death of an elderly woman named O-pa-ka at Fisheating Creek during the preceding year.[maccauley-1887]

In tribal governance and clan representation, Fisheating Creek was represented by one member of the Tiger clan and one member of the Snake clan on the tribal council.[maccauley-1887] MacCauley also noted that while the northern settlements did not hold the Green Corn Dance, the Muscogee-speaking Cow Creek Seminoles traveled to Fisheating Creek or Big Cypress when they wished to participate in the annual festival.[maccauley-1887]

Settlement geography relative to Highlands County

Fisheating Creek rises in the headwaters of western Highlands County before flowing south and east through Glades County into Lake Okeechobee. MacCauley’s 1880 census placed the four Fisheating Creek camps near the creek’s lower course toward Lake Okeechobee, outside modern Highlands County.[maccauley-1887] The northernmost Seminole settlement in 1880 was at Cat Fish Lake in eastern Polk County, near lakes Pierce and Rosalie, headed by Täl-la-häs-ke and comprising twenty-eight individuals in two camps.[maccauley-1887]

No camps, families, or individuals were recorded within the territory of modern Highlands County in 1880, corroborating later federal census analyses showing that late nineteenth-century Seminole domestic life was clustered at peripheral wetland margins rather than along the Lake Wales Ridge.[maccauley-1887][kersey-1981-census]

References

Where this comes from

Evidence
corroborated — More than one independent source agrees.
Review
unverified — Drafted from sources but not yet checked by a volunteer.
Rights
society

Sources

  1. Clay MacCauley, The Seminole Indians of Florida (Fifth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1883-'84) (1887) · official
  2. Harry A. Kersey, Jr., The Florida Seminoles and the Census of 1900 (1981) · secondary
  3. Fisheating Creek Outpost, Camp History (Fisheating Creek) (2026) · secondary

Something here wrong, or incomplete? The Society would rather know. Tell a volunteer.

Have a question about this record?

← Back to collection

Ask A.P.

Ask the archive

    Try asking:

    0 / 500

    A.P. answers only from the Society's own archive and cites what it used. Questions are not linked to you; search history is stored on your device only (how it works).Ask a volunteer for anything it cannot answer.