Plantations

We've tried to absorb some of the history beyond the Spanish colonization of this area, namely a little about the slave era. Ruins of two plantations leave complicated impressions. Today the sites can  seem almost serene, but also eerie. And, of course, disturbing.

These were not the stereotypical white-columned mansions with belles in hoop skirts, but more modest cotton and sugar cane operations.

I've been trying to picture working 12-16 hours a day ladling impurities out of giant boiling vats of sugar cane syrup on a hot, humid summer day. These photos of the ruins don't tell the story, but might give a sense of the atmosphere.

Or harvesting Sea Island cotton when the temps are over 100. Or picking the seeds out of the cotton (the cotton gin didn't work well on this type), which I tried and found nearly impossible.

Add in non-agricultural jobs like clearing land, working at the sawmill, or cooking. Add in insects, heat, humidity, and illness, and a cramped home, two rooms for your whole family.

These houses once had palm-thatch roofs. There was a "driver," one of your peers elevated to a position of responsibility, living in a better house and keeping an eye on you.

Perhaps most chilling was a description of children being taken into the fields, because there was nowhere else for them to be, and enduring sun, insects, and the occasional hungry alligator.

And then there were the people who were displaced to make room for all this, the small native groups that eventually united and were called Seminoles. Despite fierce resistance they were first forced onto a Central Florida reservation and then condemned to that terrible walk into exile in Oklahoma.

We've read all these thing before. The sugar mill and cotton plantation ruins brought that terrible history home in a new way.