The Florida Folklife Reader

The Florida Folklife Reader

The Florida Folklife Reader

Edited by Tina Bucuvalas

www.upress.state.ms.us

The University Press of Mississippi is a member of the Association of American University Presses.

Key Largo to Marathon: A Report on the Folklife of the Upper and Middle Keys by Brent Cantrell appeared in South Florida Magazine. Guest editor, Tina Bucuvalas. Vol. 3 (Summer 1990): 19–22.

African American and West Indian Folklife in South Florida by Joyce M. Jackson appeared in South Florida Magazine. Guest editor, Tina Bucuvalas. Vol. 3 (Summer 1990): 11–18.

The Patronal Festival of Vueltas in Cuban Miami: ‘No One Loses, They Always Win!’ by Tina Bucuvalas was presented at the American Folklore Society Meeting, Jacksonville, Florida, October 1992.

Michael Kernahan: A Life in Pan by Stephen Stuempfle was published as a booklet by the Florida Folklife Program, Florida Department of State, Tallahassee, 1999.

Folklife of Miami’s Nicaraguan Communities by Katherine Borland appeared in Nicaraguan Folklife in Miami/La Vida Tradicional Nicaraguense en Miami, edited by Brent Cantrell. Occasional Papers, No. 2. Miami: Historical Museum of Southern Florida/Folklife Program, 1993. Pp. 1–9.

Exploring Peruvian Music in Miami by Martha Ellen Davis was presented at the Latin American Studies Association Meeting, Gainesville, Florida, March 2003.

The Seminole Family Camp by Ormond H. Loomis appeared in A Guide to the 33rd Annual Florida Folk Festival, May 24–26, 1985. White Springs: Florida Folklife Program, 1985.

Sacred Steel by Robert L. Stone appeared in FHC Forum (Winter 2004): 28–31.

‘The Rest Is Up to You and Me’: Sunday Morning Band and Ritual Identity in the Florida Panhandle by Jerrilyn McGregory was presented at the Florida Folklore Society Meeting, Ybor City, 1998.

Maritime Folklife appeared in A Guide to the 35th Annual Florida Folk Festival, May 27–29, 1987. White Springs: Florida Folklife Program, 1987.

Copyright © 2012 by University Press of Mississippi

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

First printing 2012

∞

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The Florida folklife reader / edited by Tina Bucuvalas.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-61703-140-3 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-61703-141-0 (pbk. : alk. paper) —

ISBN 978-1-61703-142-7 (ebook) 1. Folklore—Florida. 2. Florida—Social life and customs.

       I. Bucuvalas, Tina.

GR110.F5F564 2011

398.209759—dc22                                                            2011013551

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

For Alexandra & Chloe Curran

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Key Largo to Marathon

A Report on the Folklife of the Upper and Middle Keys

BRENT CANTRELL

African American and West Indian Folklife in South Florida

JOYCE M. JACKSON

The Patronal Festival of Vueltas in Cuban Miami

No One Loses, They Always Win!

TINA BUCUVALAS

Michael Kernahan

A Life in Pan

STEPHEN STUEMPFLE

Folklife of Miami’s Nicaraguan Communities

KATHERINE BORLAND

Exploring Peruvian Music in Miami

MARTHA ELLEN DAVIS

The Seminole Family Camp

ORMOND H. LOOMIS

Sacred Steel

ROBERT L. STONE

Musical Practice and Memory on the Edge of Two Worlds

Kalymnian Tsambóuna and Song Repertoire in the

Family of Nikitas Tsimouris

ANNA LOMAX WOOD

Eternal Be Their Memory!

STAVROS K. FRANGOS

Richard Seaman’s Presence within Florida’s Soundscape

GREGORY HANSEN

Legacy and Meaning in the Changing Sacred Harp Tradition

of the Okefenokee Region

LAURIE K. SOMMERS

Nativism and Cracker Revival at the Florida Folk Festival

MARTHA NELSON

The Rest Is Up to You and Me

Sunday Morning Band and Ritual Identity in the Florida Panhandle

JERRILYN MCGREGORY

Maritime Folklife

FLORIDA FOLKLIFE PROGRAM / FLORIDA DEPARTMENT OF STATE. INTRODUCTION BY NANCY MICHAEL, ORAL TRADITIONS BY NANCY NUSZ, BOATS BY DAVID TAYLOR, FISHING GEAR BY ORMOND H. LOOMIS, MUSIC BY PETER ROLLER, FOODWAYS BY MERRI BELLAND

Selected Florida Folklife Bibliography

Appendix I

Early Folklife Research in Florida

Appendix II

Public Folklife Programs in Florida

Contributors

Index

Acknowledgments

THERE ARE MANY PEOPLE TO THANK FOR THEIR GENEROUS CONTRIBUTIONS of time and information. No one could have a better colleague than Kathleen Monahan, director of Cultural and Civic Services for the City of Tarpon Springs, who provided the time and enthusiastic support necessary for this book. Mike Knoll, of HistoryMiami, gave generously of his insights and assisted in collecting images for a number of the essays. I am truly grateful to Jody Norman, State Archives of Florida, who always saw to it that images and other materials were delivered with the speed of light. Susanne Hunt, Florida Department of State, graciously provided needed permissions and materials. Marisella Veiga provided wise counsel in Spanish translation issues. Craig Gill, editor-in-chief of the University Press of Mississippi, provided strong support and encouragement from beginning to end. Anne Stascavage, managing editor at the University Press of Mississippi, and copy editor Debbie Upton were instrumental in bringing this work to fruition.

My cherished colleagues, who have brought to public attention the richness in talent and skills of Florida’s incredible tradition bearers, have been the inspiration for and foundation of this volume. And as generations of Florida ethnographers have known, there is no separation between us and the people about whom we write—in the process of learning and teaching, appreciating and being appreciated, we have shared and immeasurably enriched one anothers’ lives.

My continuing gratitude goes to my children, Alexandra and Chloe Curran, for tolerating a mother often missing in the field.

Introduction

AS A CALIFORNIA EX-PATRIATE, I APPROACHED MY FIRST ETHNOGRAPHIC contract position in Florida with low expectations. In the 1980s, few Californians considered that they could exist elsewhere—and especially not in Florida, with its slow-driving retirees and right-wing refugees. I was to conduct an ethnographic survey of Miami-Dade County, with a special emphasis on Latin American culture, for the Florida Folklife Program. Peggy Bulger, who supervised the project, drove with me to Miami through a blinding tropical storm. She stayed long enough to introduce me to several neighborhoods and to the staff at the Historical Museum of Southern Florida, where I would have an office. I found an apartment in the Miami Beach compound of the Scull sisters, eccentric twin Cuban painters who always appeared in clothing styles evocative of 1950s Havana, then I embarked on a quest to document south Florida’s people and culture.

It was love at first sight.

I marveled at the jumble of urban and rural (chickens roaming the streets of Hialeah or the hallucinatory sight of tugboats hauling huge commercial ships past quiet suburban houses on the Miami River), the shady coolness of enormous ficus trees and the fantastic colors of tropical flowers contrasting with the hot gritty streets of industrial neighborhoods, the glitz of abundance next to the hopelessness of absolute poverty, cultures colliding and merging—and looming over all the towering clouds of the tropical Atlantic in a brilliant sky. It was the most complex place I had ever been, it was a mess, and I have never been able to get enough of it.

As I have subsequently journeyed throughout Florida, I have found countless other fascinating niches offering their own distinctive blends of cultural traits and natural beauty. To my way of thinking, Florida is the most remarkable state in the nation. Not only is it blessed with a semitropical climate, beautiful natural inland areas, and over a thousand miles of warm seas and sandy beaches, but Floridians themselves are every bit as colorful and vibrant as the tropical foliage they nurture.

THE ESSAYS

Although several publications detail the traditions of specific Florida regions or folk groups, to date no single work provides an overview of Florida folklife. This book brings together essays written by folklorists, anthropologists, and ethnomusicologists on an array of topics. Some of the essays are new, while others appeared in ephemeral publications that never reached a wide audience. In particular, the Florida Folklife Program and the Historical Museum of Southern Florida¹ produced dozens of essays, booklets, exhibition catalogs, recordings, and musical liner notes by folklorists who have achieved national respect—and many of those essays address topics that have not otherwise been examined. Since the writers often address multiple genres, topics, or groups, I have organized the book in geographical sequence from south to north, with the final essay covering maritime folklife statewide.

Many of Florida’s diverse folk groups have been documented by ethnographers. In northern Florida and southern Georgia, Laurie K. Sommers spent several years exploring Legacy and Meaning in the Changing Sacred Harp Tradition of the Okefenokee Region. Several essays are the result of field surveys organized by the Historical Museum of Southern Florida. Joyce M. Jackson wrote about African American and West Indian Folklife in South Florida for a survey of the traditional arts of the African Diaspora. Katherine Borland’s Folklife of Miami’s Nicaraguan Communities reflects her documentation of Nicaraguan culture in Miami for a field project. Likewise, Brent Cantrell’s Key Largo to Marathon: A Report on the Folklife of the Upper and Middle Keys grew out of the only comprehensive folklife survey of the Keys by a public organization.

Many of the best examinations of Florida’s occupational folklife have resulted from group research projects initiated by the Florida Folklife Program. Thus I have included their collective essay on Maritime Folklife: Introduction by Nancy Michael, Oral Traditions by Nancy Nusz, Boats by David Taylor, Fishing Gear by Ormond H. Loomis, Music by Peter Roller, and Foodways by Merri Belland.

Two essays deal with the unique built environments created by Florida folk groups. Ormond H. Loomis contributed a detailed study of chickee architecture and its use in The Seminole Family Camp. The study was precipitated by an invitation by the Florida Folklife Program to have Seminoles build a camp at the site of the Florida Folk Festival. Stavros K. Frangos’s Eternal Be Their Memory looks at the unusual gravesites in Tarpon Springs’s Cycadia Cemetery.

Florida’s traditional music is among the most diverse and exciting in the nation, and we are lucky to have many fine music specialists. In ‘The Rest Is Up to You and Me’: Sunday Morning Band and Ritual Identity in the Florida Panhandle, Jerrilyn McGregory documents the little-known Sunday Morning Band tradition in Florida’s Panhandle. Robert L. Stone achieved national recognition for his groundbreaking discovery of an exhilarating musical genre in the House of God churches, which he explores in Sacred Steel. In Exploring Peruvian Music in Miami, Martha Ellen Davis recounts the process of investigating Peruvian music and discusses its function in the community.

By definition folklife is the product of communities, but the soul of our traditions is the people who maintain and enhance them. There are several fascinating profiles of individuals who have achieved excellence within their cultural traditions. Michael Kernahan: A Life in Pan by Stephen Stuempfle examines the art of the steel drum maker and musician. In "Musical Practice and Memory on the Edge of Two Worlds: Kalymnian Tsambóuna and Song Repertoire in the Family of Nikitas Tsimouris, Anna Lomax Wood provides a detailed ethnomusicological and contextual analysis of a Tarpon Springs family and the unusual musical traditions they preserved. Richard Seaman’s Presence within Florida’s Soundscape" by Gregory Hansen explores the life and art of an old-time fiddler.

Not a week goes by in the Sunshine State without the possibility of attending dozens of fascinating community celebrations. Tina Bucuvalas discusses the changes in a Cuban patronal festival tradition in response to new conditions in Miami. Martha Nelson worked several years for the Stephen Foster State Folk Culture Center in White Springs, the home of the Florida Folk Festival. Her Nativism and Cracker Revival at the Florida Folk Festival is a probing examination of the development and implementation of the festival.

FLORIDA’S FOLK

Florida has so many different facets that it represents many things to many people. Outsiders often regard it as a destination where fantasy is reality or sometimes reality seems like fantasy. For north Floridians it is a slowmoving, rural part of the old South, while south Florida moves at a frenetic, café cubano-fueled Latin pace. Its high-tech industries lead the exploration of both space and the ocean, yet it is the home of the oldest city in the United States and a national leader in historic preservation efforts. Florida encompasses those identities and more, then combines them with its subtropical environment to produce many unique cultural syntheses. But in order to understand Florida it is essential to know more about its people.

The Seminole and Miccosukee are among the few native peoples who organized after Europeans colonized the Americas. As a result of conflicts with Europeans, Americans, and their allies, fragments of many Native American groups from Georgia, the Carolinas, and Alabama fled south. After settling in Florida, they were joined by survivors from local indigenous groups and in time they developed their own distinctive culture—though the core were Creeks from Georgia and Alabama. The early Seminole were hunters, traders, and warriors, and they gradually established agricultural villages with cattle and took advantage of the rich maritime resources. By the end of the eighteenth century, there were many Seminole towns in northern and central Florida. The Seminole wars of the early nineteenth century drove the Seminole deeper into the wilds of south and central Florida to avoid conflict and removal to Oklahoma. By the late nineteenth century, fewer than five hundred remained, but in the twentieth century they fared better. By the end of the century the Seminole and Miccosukee had made great strides in political autonomy and economic viability, while maintaining much of their traditional culture. In addition to these groups, the Panhandle is home to bands of Poarch Creek, Perdido Bay Creek, and Choctaw Indians.

Florida’s Crackers are descended from the rural white settlers of Celtic heritage who migrated from Alabama, Georgia, and the Carolinas. Their culture reflected many traits derived from rural Scotland and Ireland: they maintained an economy based on open-range herding; a leisurely lifestyle with an emphasis on hospitality, food, drink, and outdoor sports; a strong sense of honor, self-reliance, and tenacity; and a tendency to take the law into their own hands. In Florida, they adapted to different regional environments. Some developed ranching traditions that combined British and Spanish techniques, while others survived by fishing, growing sugar cane, or collecting bird plumes. In the central north they raised hogs, gardened, and hunted wild game, while those near inland waters hunted gators and caught catfish. Many Floridians still take pride in their Cracker heritage, though today they are a small percentage of the population and reside primarily in northern and central rural areas.

African Americans first came to Florida as participants in Spanish explorations and settlements. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, many African-born blacks fled south to Florida, where military service and conversion to Catholicism offered a release from slavery. By the mid-seventeenth century, communities of free blacks lived in St. Augustine and Fort Mose, a fortified town built by the Spanish for runaway slaves and the first legally sanctioned black town in North America. Others preferred to associate with the Seminole in a benign form of servitude. These black Seminoles maintained separate villages, where they raised crops and cattle and worked as translators and advisors to the Seminole.

African Americans continued to flow into Florida throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In 1887, Eatonville became the first black incorporated municipality in Florida. Known as the home of the famed African American folklorist, anthropologist, and novelist Zora Neale Hurston, it continues its legacy of proud self-government to this day. While most black Floridians trace their roots to Georgia, Alabama, or the Carolinas, a significant portion have family ties to the Caribbean islands. Especially in south Florida, there are also many black Hispanics who hail from Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, or Peru.

Florida has had strong continuous connections with Latin America and the Caribbean since colonial times. From early European contact to the present, but especially since the early 1960s, there has been substantial immigration from Latin America. The U.S. Census Bureau estimated Florida’s 2009 population at 21.5 percent (or over 3,985,600) Latin/Hispanic—making them our largest minority group. Florida’s Latin communities are dominated by peoples from the Caribbean, whose culture emphasizes a synthesis of European and African-based cultural elements.

The peoples of Florida and Cuba have long crossed the narrow passage between them on the tides of history—often profoundly changing and influencing each other. Throughout the Spanish colonial period, Florida came under Cuba’s governmental and religious jurisdiction. Cuba provided most settlers and supplies to the Florida frontier, resulting in a constant interchange of people and trade. Later, the first unsuccessful struggle for Cuban independence (1868–1878) led to the emigration of many Cubans to Key West and New York. At the same time, several cigar manufacturers relocated to Key West to avoid paying American tariffs. By the mid-1870s, forty-five factories employed fourteen hundred workers who rolled about 15 million cigars each year. The cigar workers’ custom of listening to lectores read from newspapers, essays, and political tracts while they worked created an educated and politically sophisticated society. In the mid-1880s, some manufacturers relocated to Ybor City, near Tampa, or returned to Havana in order to avoid strikes by Key West workers. The transplanted industry flourished in Tampa/Ybor City, and by 1900 a Cuban population of over thirty-five hundred worked there in the cigar factories or related industries.

It is estimated that over one million Cubans emigrated as a result of the profound social and political changes instituted by Fidel Castro’s government in the mid-twentieth century—and the majority settled in Miami. In establishing new homes and businesses, they created a dynamic world financial center with powerful links to Latin America and the Caribbean.

Cubans are not the only Latin American immigrants to make a significant impact. In the last thirty years, there has been an unprecedented influx from Puerto Rico, Mexico, Nicaragua, Colombia, Peru, Honduras, and other countries—bringing with them varying blends of Spanish, African, and Native American cultures. Puerto Ricans are the second-largest group statewide and are the dominant Latin group in Orlando and Tampa. Florida’s Mexican population has been increasing rapidly since the 1990s, especially throughout central Florida.

Many West Indians have settled in Florida, where they are often referred to as the Islanders. English speakers from Jamaica, Trinidad/Tobago, and other islands share many cultural elements and often live in contiguous neighborhoods. The largest West Indian population is from the Bahamas. Bahamians were fishing and scavenging wrecks on nearby Florida’s southeast coast and the Keys by the early nineteenth century. By the mid-nineteenth century, many had found good jobs fishing, turtling, or sponging and settled permanently in the Keys. They constituted a third of Key West’s population by 1892. From the late 1890s, Bahamians flocked to south Florida for jobs in agriculture, construction, railroad and maritime services, and tourism. They created their own buildings, churches, fraternal organizations, and artistic societies, and have maintained their heritage through a continued flow between Florida and the Bahamas. A smaller number settled in maritime Gulf Coast communities such as Cortez, Tarpon Springs, and Cedar Key.

Since its early independence, Haiti has suffered a succession of oppressive dictatorships which have impelled many to seek better conditions elsewhere. During the 1970s and 1980s, tens of thousands fled the harsh political and economic circumstances to Florida. While Haitians live throughout the state, Miami’s Little Haiti and North Miami particularly bustle with shops, restaurants, nightclubs, and community events.

Florida supports a wide variety of ethnic European and Middle Eastern communities. It has one of the largest Jewish populations in the country, especially in the southeast from Palm Beach County to Miami-Dade County. Jewish settlement commenced early in Florida’s history, but most families settled here from the 1920s through the late twentieth century. In 1905, hundreds of experienced divers, captains, and crew members from the Greek Islands began immigrating to Tarpon Springs to support the burgeoning commercial sponge business. Although the sponge business has diminished, Tarpon Springs remains a commercial maritime community with a strong Greek character. In Jacksonville, there is a substantial community from Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria that dates from the early twentieth century, and there are Iranian and Turkish enclaves in most major cities. Throughout Florida, there has been substantial settlement by a variety of other European-based ethnic groups from the northern and midwestern regions of the United States. In south Florida, there is a concentration of Finnish residents in Palm Beach County, and a large community of French Canadians in Hollywood. Near Tampa, Masaryktown was settled by Slovaks and Czechs; Dunedin has a strong Scottish ethnic identity; and St. Petersburg is home to many East Europeans.

A diverse array of Asian and Pacific Island peoples call Florida home. Florida’s first Asian settlers were in Delray Beach, where the Yamato colony founded in the first decade of the twentieth century brought young Japanese to grow pineapples for shipment to northern markets. The U.S. Census Bureau revealed that over 463,000 Asians and Pacific Islanders had sought greater economic stability, abundant farmland, better educational opportunities, escape from political unrest, or closer proximity to family members. They maintain a strong desire to express their native cultures, adapt them to their current circumstances, and pass them on to future generations. Southeast Asians are among the fastest-growing groups. In particular, the Vietnamese community is gaining momentum in numbers and economic importance throughout central Florida.

In addition to communities based on a single folk group, pockets of unique cultural syntheses exist in several regions. Many residents of St. Augustine still trace their ancestry to the Spanish colonists as well as the New Smyrna colonists of the British era (1763–1783). In 1768 the Scottish physician Andrew Turnbull received over 100,000 acres south of St. Augustine to grow agricultural products for export. Having served as the British Consul in Smyrna in Asia Minor, Turnbull believed that Mediterranean peoples would be well suited to Florida and recruited Minorcan, Greek, Corsican, and Italian colonists from Europe. Because they were not awarded their promised freedom or land after completion of their contracts, some seven hundred colonists fled to St. Augustine in 1777. There they created an enduring economic niche for themselves by employing maritime and agricultural skills from their Mediterranean homelands. Although time has obscured much of their heritage, some traditions persist—especially those involving occupations, domestic arts such as foodways, and religious life. It is interesting to note that by 1786, St. Augustine’s population was 50 percent Minorcan, Italian, or Greek; 31 percent free African; 9 percent British; 5 percent Spanish or Spanish colonial; and 4 percent Native American—in many ways, providing the precedent for today’s multicultural Florida.

As part of a larger culture area stretching along the Gulf of Mexico from east Texas, Florida’s Gulf Coast shares with the Caribbean islands a semitropical physical environment and a history of colonial development by the Spanish and French. Moreover, Caribbean settlers entered the region through Savannah, Mobile, Pensacola, and New Orleans, bringing with them a blend of African and Latin cultures. In the Panhandle there are reminders of this heritage in the distinctive Gulf Coastal vernacular houses, with low-pitched roofs, central dogtrot hallways, tall foundation pillars, and detached kitchens, that survive in old Pensacola. A few boatbuilders still make bateaux that derive their name and shape from their French heritage. And in Pensacola, long-surviving Catholic communities maintain Mardi Gras traditions.

Similarly, Ybor City owed much to Latin and Caribbean influences. From the mid-1880s, the transplanted cigar industry flourished, with thousands of white and black Cubans working in the cigar factories or related businesses by the turn of the century. They were joined by large numbers of Spanish and Italian immigrants. These three communities existed in harmony for decades, even publishing a trilingual newspaper, La Gaceta. They established a wide range of clubs, mutual aid societies, dance halls, and cantinas—some of which, such as Centro Asturiano, Circulo Cubano, and La Union Martí-Maceo, survive today.

According to the 2000 census, Latins/Hispanics were about 62.5 percent of Miami-Dade County’s population and blacks accounted for 19.5 percent. Thus Florida’s largest city contains a majority Latin American population, a large black minority with a significant Caribbean element, and a significant Jewish population. The result is the gradual development of a unique local culture that synthesizes aspects of all cultures.

The Florida Keys curve more than one hundred miles south and west from Miami to Key West, the southernmost city in the continental United States. In the eighteenth century, the Spanish used the Keys as a base for fishing, pirates hid in the coves and channels, and Bahamian wreckers salvaged cargoes from ships destroyed on the coral reefs. Claimed at times by Spain, England, private American citizens, and the United States, by the mid-nineteenth century the Keys were inhabited by a mixture of Americans, Cubans, Bahamians, and Spaniards. The wrecking, sponge, and cigar industries employed most of the Key West population, while fishing and agricultural activities dominated the Upper Keys. Long periods of isolation had a formative effect on the people of the Keys, or Conchs—many of whom never left the islands until the railroad was completed in 1912. These elements produced a traditional life unique to the Keys.

Florida’s abundant natural resources have also generated a variety of folk groups who practice traditional skills and occupations distinctive to various regions. Water, in particular, is an important element of life in Florida. Traditional culture associated with both marine and inland waters is extensive and several aspects of Florida’s fishing industry are unique in the United States. For example, in the Everglades Anglo gladesmen, Seminoles and Miccosukees, and African Americans formerly traveled the interior glades and mangrove fringes to hunt alligators, deer, turtles, and frogs or to fish. The people who settled the Everglades developed unique modes of transportation to navigate the wilderness in search of fish and game. Seminoles and Miccosukees built dugout canoes and Anglo gladesmen created the glade skiff. These modes of transportation and the skills necessary to make them have all but vanished, now largely replaced by the airboat—a south Florida invention used in wetlands worldwide.

Florida preserves extensive rural areas where people raise crops and animals. For years Florida was the leading beef-producing state east of the Mississippi River, and today it remains in the top five. Florida ranching has evolved from many different cultural traditions, though the most important sources were the marshy coastal areas of Andalusia, Spain, and the hill regions of Britain and Ireland. The Spanish and British took these traditions to the West Indies, where they were adapted to the tropical climate and combined to create ranching systems used throughout the Americas. For example, Florida cow hunters or cowmen still crack their whips near the cow’s ear, nose, or leg in order to move the cow in the required direction. They also use cow dogs to flush strays from hammocks, scrub, and swamps that riders cannot penetrate; control cattle from the sides and front as cowmen drive the cattle from the rear; and gather cattle into tight groups by circling them while barking and nipping. Many objects used by cowmen are imbued with a high level of aesthetic excellence, for craftsmen still create beautiful and functional saddles, cow whips, branding irons, and spurs.

With its mild climate, ample rainfall, and long growing season, Florida is one of the nation’s leading agricultural states. It leads the nation in citrus and provides 80 percent of the nation’s winter vegetables, but the production of tropical crops—primarily by Latin American and southeast Asian farmers—distinguishes it from other agricultural regions.

CONCLUSION

Florida’s environment and peoples have created distinctive complexes of traditional life unlike those of any other American region. Its location and history bind it as tightly to the Caribbean as to mainland America.

While some of Florida’s cultural syntheses developed from the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries in locations such as Key West, Tampa, St. Augustine, and Pensacola, they have intensified today with large-scale immigration from Cuba, South and Central America, the Caribbean, Africa, and Asia. Although south Florida leads other regions in the development of a contemporary cultural synthesis, all parts of Florida are affected. Orlando and Tampa are rapidly evolving, but even sleepy north Florida is experiencing a significant change as Floridians of all backgrounds drift north in search of greater economic opportunities and less-crowded conditions.

Note

1. The Historical Museum of Southern Florida changed its name to HistoryMiami in 2010.

The Florida Folklife Reader

Key Largo to Marathon

A Report on the Folklife of the Upper and Middle Keys

BRENT CANTRELL

THE HISTORICAL MUSEUM OF SOUTHERN FLORIDA’S FOLKLIFE PROGRAM completed a project to survey the folklife of the Florida Keys in 1989. The last general survey of Keys culture was conducted in the 1930s when the WPA Writers’ Project documented folk arts throughout Florida, including the Keys. Since then, there have been only limited and sporadic efforts to research Keys folk arts.

Long periods of isolation had a formative effect on the people of the Keys, often called Conchs. Many never left the islands until the completion of the railroad in 1912. The Conchs made their livelihood through the harvest of the land and sea, sometimes supplemented by smuggling and tourism. The isolated nature of the Keys, combined with the mixture of Anglo, Bahamian, and Cuban settlers, produced a traditional life unique to the area. Rapid development of the Keys in recent decades and the influx of outsiders have added new forms to Keys folklife.

Many of the oldest and most developed of the traditional arts found in the Keys are associated with maritime industries and occupations. Maritime commerce, fishing, sponging, and trapping have always been central elements of life in the Keys, and the arts, skills, and craftsmanship of the maritime occupations are held in high esteem by both longtime residents and newer arrivals. Even those residents who have little to do with the sea recognize the preeminence of the fishing captains and the people who supply them.

At the center of activity are the fishermen and trappers. There are two distinct types of professional fishermen in the Keys: commercial fishermen and fishing guides. The former make their living by catching fish or crustaceans in large quantity and selling them to local fish houses; they work with a crew and often go out with several other boats. Guides, on the other hand, work alone, taking sport fishermen to likely spots and instructing them in technique.

Crew of Take It Or Leave It fishing off Islamorada. Photo by Brent Cantrell. Courtesy of Historical Museum of Southern Florida.

Fishermen carry tremendous traditional knowledge. Boat captains who catch fish must have knowledge of their equipment, weather, the typography of the seabed, and the behavior of their quarry. This knowledge is gained over years, or even decades, of apprenticeship. In the case of commercial fishermen, most work first as a deckhand and then as a mate on a successful captain’s boat. Some of the most capable fishermen are from families who have been fishing in the Keys for several generations. Techniques and knowledge are passed from one generation to another, and at any given time there may be several family members earning a living by fishing.

Fish are notoriously capricious, and successful fishermen rely on friends and family for tips, pointers, and help at sea. While nominally in competition with each other, captains will share information about location, tackle, and techniques. There is often a great sense of comradeship and friendly competition among commercial fishermen, though it is governed by a complex etiquette system. Successful fishermen seem to feel an obligation to pass on information to others; in return, they receive respect and recognition from their peers.

Commercial fishing as practiced for generations in the Keys may be ending. The recent influx of new residents has brought pressures on the environment that have in turn resulted in an ensemble of new laws governing fishing and boating. These new regulations are forcing men whose families have fished the Keys for a century to give up the profession. Sport fishing, conversely, is doing well. Sport-fishing guides rely on the thriving tourist industry, which seems in no danger of collapse.

Besides the fishermen themselves, there is a host of related occupations dependent on the sea. Foremost is boatbuilding. Boatbuilding technology has changed considerably since World War II. Before the war, boats built in the Keys were of wood. Their construction required an intimate knowledge of woods and the properties of timber. After the war, plywood became widely available and builders switched from planks to that strong, relatively lightweight material. Finally in the sixties, craftsmen began shifting to fiberglass and resins, which are not only lightweight and strong, but also resist decay. Some of the older boatbuilders in the Keys have worked with all three methods.

William Roberts of Tavernier, a third-generation boatbuilder, began working in his father’s shop in the thirties and, over the years, has built scores of wood, plywood, and fiberglass boats. Though he has built boats for many different purposes, he is well known for his backcountry skiff, a small, shallow draft boat designed for use in Florida Bay. Roberts and most other commercial boatbuilders have worked primarily with fiberglass for the last several years, but the art of wood and plywood boatbuilding is not dead, and wooden boats may be glimpsed under construction in back yards throughout the Keys.

Sail making, an