Scholars say they know where the ancient Fort Caroline is - in Georgia

[Tacachale]

Scholars say ancient Fort Caroline nowhere near Jacksonville

Two researchers Friday morning told an international conference of scholars that they have solved the mystery of 450-year-old Fort Caroline, the doomed French fort that was wiped out by the Spanish and then vanished, seemingly forever.

Its location has been the most enduring puzzle in Jacksonville, where amateurs and professionals have searched for it, over more than a century, in vain.

They could keep looking for another century and still never find it, say scholars Fletcher Crowe and Anita Spring.

That's because the fort was not in Jacksonville. It wasn't even in Florida.

Instead, they claim, it is some 70 miles north, on the Altamaha River, south of Darien, Ga.

From Matt Soergel at Jacksonville.com

http://jacksonville.com/news/metro/2014-02-21/story/scholars-say-they-know-where-ancient-fort-caroline-and-its-nowhere-near#ixzz2tynEGtVj

[Tacachale]

Here's some more. In my opinion a bit too unequivocal considering nothing has been found yet.

Oldest fortified settlement ever found in North America

In an announcement likely to rewrite the book on early colonization of the New World, two researchers today said they have discovered the oldest fortified settlement ever found in North America. Speaking at an international conference on France at Florida State University, the pair announced that they have located Fort Caroline, a long-sought fort built by the French in 1564.

"This is the oldest fortified settlement in the present United States," said historian and Florida State University alumnus Fletcher Crowe. "This fort is older than St. Augustine, considered to be the oldest continuously inhabited city in America. It's older than the Lost Colony of Virginia by 21 years; older than the 1607 fort of Jamestown by 45 years; and predates the landing of the Pilgrims in Massachusetts in 1620 by 56 years."

Announcement of the discovery of Fort Caroline was made during "La Floride Française: Florida, France, and the Francophone World," a conference hosted by FSU's Winthrop-King Institute for Contemporary French and Francophone Studies and its Institute on Napoleon and the French Revolution. The conference commemorates the cultural relations between France and Florida since the 16th century.

Researchers have been searching for actual remains of Fort Caroline for more than 150 years but had not found the actual site until now, Crowe said. The fort was long thought to be located east of downtown Jacksonville, Fla., on the south bank of the St. Johns River. The Fort Caroline National Memorial is located just east of Jacksonville's Dames Point Bridge, which spans the river.

However, Crowe and his co-author, Anita Spring, a professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of Florida, say that the legendary fort is actually located on an island at the mouth of the Altamaha River, two miles southeast of the city of Darien, Ga. Darien is located near the Georgia coast between Brunswick and Savannah, approximately 70 miles from the Jacksonville site.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/02/140221111218.htm

[Tacachale]

According to the Times-Union,

Their theory that Fort Caroline is on the Altamaha is not a new one. A writer named Richard Thornton has also made that claim in various postings on the internet.

This is the "Mayans in Georgia" guy we've discussed on Metro Jacksonville before:

http://www.metrojacksonville.com/forum/index.php/topic,14006.0.html

Here's a link from Thornton on Fort Caroline, be careful of popups:

http://www.examiner.com/article/building-this-famous-florida-attraction-caused-history-to-go-astray

[Jumpinjack]

If the excavations find remnants of the fort on Rhett's Isld, what then would happen to Ft. Caroline National Monument?

[CityLife]

If the excavations find remnants of the fort on Rhett's Isld, what then would happen to Ft. Caroline National Monument?

It becomes a putt-putt golf course.

[thelakelander]

Riverfront property on a bluff in Jacksonville? Ummm....a new gated housing development.

[Tacachale]

It's still owned by the National Parks Service, and it's likely either the city or the state would take it over if the NPS wanted to get rid of it.

[Tacachale]

Call it a kneejerk, but there are a number of things that would cause me to doubt this. UNF's Buzz Thunen mentioned one of the big ones in the FTU article:

...UNF archaeologist Robert "Buzz" Thunen, presented a paper to the same conference on Thursday, arguing that Fort Caroline was on the St. Johns — it just hasn't been found yet. Thunen and his UNF colleague Keith Ashley have been searching for years.

On Thursday afternoon, Thunen had heard just the broad outline of Spring and Crowe's findings. At that point, he was skeptical.

"I really have no way to judge it," he said. "I find it a little far-fetched if they're putting it as far north as the Altamaha, but I have to wait to really evaluate it. So we'll see."

There is one key fact of history that indeed suggests Fort Caroline was in Jacksonville: the bloody end of the French fort in 1565. That's when Spanish troops marched overland to the fort from their newly founded camp at St. Augustine, slogging through a hurricane for several days.

If the fort were indeed in Georgia, how could that march have been made in that time? How could the Spanish have crossed the St. Johns?

Crowe acknowledged those questions. "Anyone who makes (our) claim has to establish how the Spanish were able to march overland to the fort," he said.

Crowe and Spring say they believe they have an answer: The Spanish actually marched from a camp on the St. Marys River in Georgia, following Indian trails that led them to the fort on the Altamaha.

Once there, the slaughter began.

...

The articles don't seem to indicate the scholars checked the Spanish records to determine whether this suggestion matched up. Working from memory, it doesn't seem likely.

[CityLife]

I agree Taca that it is a long way from being taken as gospel, but the potentially wrong translation, the maps, and Indian translations do plant a seed of doubt. Also, having read about the details of the expeditions of Lewis and Clark and Stanley, I don't think its inconceivable that the Spanish could have found a way to cross the St. Johns and march a longer distance in a short time period.

There, he says, he found a poor translation from the French, a translation made more than 400 years ago. That led to a confusion between the words "above" and "below" the line of 30 degrees of latitude, which is roughly where Jacksonville is.

Crowe claims that bad translation became accepted as fact, and lived on and flourished for centuries.

"We're claiming that the whole myth that Fort Caroline is east of Jacksonville is based on poor translations," he said.

Crowe and Spring say they also reexamined ancient maps, some of which had labeled the Altamaha as the River May, which has long been thought to be the French name for the St. Johns.

Various geographical puzzles in the early writings of the French suddenly make sense when one looks at the maps knowing that Fort Caroline was on the Altamaha, Spring said.

And linguistic evidence, looking at Indian words described by the French, shows that the language the natives were speaking was from Georgia, not Florida, Spring added.

Looking at the mouth of the Altamaha, there are quite a few islands and places that it could have been located (if it was there). Going to be hard to find it.

[Overstreet]

Given the length of time and the way the river wanders a bit Fort Caroline is probably somwhere east of Mayport. I suspect it was washed away.

Some of those same type scholars were claiming that Paul Revere didn't ride and warn the town the British were comming.

The national park is more than the fort. It is the Timucan Preserve & Fort Caroline area.  It includes the Theodore Roosevelt area.

http://www.nps.gov/timu/index.htm

[John P]

Riverfront property on a bluff in Jacksonville? Ummm....a new gated housing development.

It would make a great location for the seaglass tower.

[Tacachale]

Another major problem is the Indian geography. The people who lived on the St. Johns were Mocama, a Timucuan group. The people in the Altamaha area were Guale, who spoke a different language (also called Guale). The science daily article mentions this:

One reason scholars claimed that Fort Caroline was located near Jacksonville is because, they believed, the local Indian tribes surrounding the fort spoke the Timucuan language, the Native American language of Northeast Florida.

"We proved that the Native Americans living near the fort spoke a language called Guale (pronounced "WAH-lay")," Spring said. "The Guale speakers lived near Darien, Ga. They did not live in Northeast Florida, where Jacksonville is."

However, in his account, Fort Caroline founder Rene Laudonniere calls Saturiwa, the paramount chief in the area where Fort Caroline stood, by the title of "Paracousi" or "Paracusi". This was a Timucua term for a chief. Where would Laudonniere have gotten this word if not from a Timucua group? Even if the term was used in Guale, how could it be "proved" that it wasn't Timucua as the scholars claim?

Additionally, Saturiwa's chiefdom (which was called, confusingly enough, "Saturiwa") included a village and island named Allicamany or Alimacani. This can be firmly placed as Fort George Island, since years later the Spanish built a major mission to the Mocama, San Juan del Puerto, at this village. For the scholars to be right, two different Indian groups speaking different languages must have both had an island and village called "Alimacani".

As one more example, Laudonniere is clear that the Saturiwa's enemies, the Outina or Utina, were located up river from them. This placement fits the archaeological evidence for the St. Johns River area. Even ignoring the Saturiwa chiefdom for a moment, the Utina, later known to the Spanish as the Agua Dulce, can be definitively placed along the St. Johns north of Lake George. So far I'm not seeing anything that would account for this discrepancy.

I'm going to contact Buzz Thunen here at UNF to hear his take on it.  Props to the scholars for presenting a well considered new theory about one of the great historical mysteries, but to me it sounds like it requires a lot of historical documents and archaeological evidence to be wrong, and wrong in the same ways, to be plausible.

[Jumpinjack]

Love it... and the plot thickens!

[spuwho]

I found this article.

http://www.examiner.com/article/william-bartram-visited-the-actual-site-of-fort-caroline-georgia

Um, it is pretty inflammatory towards Jacksonville and accuses the local political scene in the 1930's of "cooking" history to get federal dollars during the depression and win votes for Roosevelt.  They accuse the local government once again in the late 60's of coercing funding for the site in return for votes for LBJ.

Same writer did a follow up article here.

http://www.examiner.com/article/florida-highjacks-discovery-of-fort-caroline

I might add that the Fort Caroline site in Jacksonville is a "National Memorial" which much different than a National Landmark". So some of the accusations made in the Examiner article weren't fully vetted.

So anyway....here it is.

William Bartram visited the actual site of Fort Caroline in Georgia

If the evidence was a snake, it would have bitten Florida and Georgia historians many times. On November 20, 2013, a Cherokee historian stumbled upon that snake asleep in a 250 year old book.

It is the greatest historic preservation scam ever in the United States. In the depth of the Great Depression during the 1930s, economic leaders in Jacksonville, Florida were searching for an attraction to draw tourists, headed to St. Augustine and Miami, off of US Highway 1 and into Jacksonville. They needed something that was nationally significant and more "red blooded American" than the Spanish town of St. Augustine. What would be better than the "long-lost site of Fort Caroline," the tragic attempt of French Protestants to establish a place of refuge in the New World?

Fort Caroline was constructed by approximately 250 French colonists in 1564. Most of the colonists were Protestant Huguenots, but it was a government financed project of King Charles of France. Between September 20 and 22, 1565 the majority of colonists were killed in battle or hung by a Spanish army. In 1566 Spanish engineers reconstructed the three sided burned-out ruins of Fort Caroline into a much stronger, four-sided Fort San Mateo. In 1568 a joint French-Native American army killed or hung its Spanish garrison.

The captain of Fort Caroline, Captain René de Laundonnière, stated that Fort Caroline was constructed on an island above the brackish water of tidal marshes, 12 miles upstream from the head of navigation for large sea-going vessels. During the 1730s, Darien, GA was established at the Altamaha River's head of navigation for large sailing ships. By then, the Spanish had been gone from the region for 45 years.

Without a shred of historical or archaeological evidence, Jacksonville's economic leaders and Florida's politicians came together to announce that Fort Caroline was located near Jacksonville. No French, Spanish or English document had ever placed Fort Caroline on the St. Johns River.

All European maps produced in the late 1500s and throughout the 1600s showed Fort Caroline to be a few miles inland on the west side of Georgia's Altamaha River. All French Colonial Era maps labeled the Altamaha River as the May River. This is the name that French Captain René de Laundonnière had given it.

The St. Johns River was not even accessible by ocean-going ships until the 1850s, when the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers dredged a channel through the shallow seven mile outlet of the St. Johns River. Jacksonville's original name was Waterford because humans and livestock were able to walk across the St. Johns River in the vicinity of where Fort Caroline National Monument is now located.

National politics came to bear on the fabrication of history. President Roosevelt needed the support of Florida's powerful senators and representatives to push through the New Deal. Word got out that powerful economic interests were behind this project. Not a single historian or archaeologist raised a public protest against this fabrication of history.

The City of Jacksonville purchased a tract of land that was admirably suited for tourism and called it Fort Caroline's site. There is absolutely nothing about this location that matches De Laundonnière's description, except that it is on the South Atlantic Coast. Jacksonville then purchased a massive tract land at the mouth of the St. Johns and gave it to the United States government for a U. S. Navy base. The base was named Mayport in order to provide "proof" that the St. Johns River was the real May River.

An economic development scheme changes the history books

In the seventy five years since the Fort Caroline deception began, taxpayers money has been repeatedly spent in fruitless archaeological efforts to find some evidence of a 16th century presence of French colonists along the St. Johns River. The National Park Service has expanded the theme of a failed French colony into a regional recreation and cultural attraction. Although the National Park Service makes it clear that the actual location of Fort Caroline is unknown, virtually all books, tourist brochures and web sites call the fake location of Fort Caroline, the actual location. Contemporary detractors of the National Park Service's expenditures in the Jacksonville Area are swatted aside with a response that "no credible eyewitness ever described an alternative location for Fort Caroline."

In 1951 the land purchased by Jacksonville as the site of Fort Caroline was given to the National Park Service to become a national park. After a decade of unsuccessful archaeological investigations, the Johnson Administration agreed to build a scaled-down replica of Fort Caroline in return for Florida Congressional support for the Civil Rights Act. Today, most visitors to Fort Caroline National Monument are completely unaware that they are visiting a fake historic site. Incredibly, in 1966 the Department of Interior put the fake Fort Caroline on the National Register of Historic Places even though nothing of historical note has been found at the site.

René de Laundonnière's book, "Trois Voyages," provides the most detailed and reliable 16th century descriptions of the indigenous peoples of the Lower Southeast. He launched at least six expeditions up the May (Altamaha) River to the Georgia Mountains in order to establish trading relationships with the Indians in the Coastal Plain, Piedmont and Mountains of Georgia. After the arrival of about 600 more colonists, he planned to establish a capital of New France roughly where Athens, GA is now located – at the headwaters of freight canoe travel on the Oconee River. Athens is immediately east of the Georgia Gold Belt.

During the late 20th century, Florida archaeologists and historians used the false location of Fort Caroline as a benchmark to fabricate a complex description of northeast Florida's past. It mixed archaeological facts and sometimes vague Spanish archives with a fabricated history of the French colonial efforts. This has created many misconceptions by the public. It has also put some very amusing passages in books written by the scions of Florida archaeology . . . when they try to equate the Georgia Mountains and Indians described by de Laudonniére to the geography and Native peoples of Florida.

The Natives that the Spanish called the Guale, never called themselves the Guale. The name came from a town named Wahale on St. Catherine's Island, GA. The word means "Southerners" in the Creek language. The Indians that the Spanish called the Timucua never called themselves the Timucua. That word was derived from the Tamacoa Province about 30 miles up the Altamaha River in Georgia. Phonetically, Tamacoa, would sound like Thamagua to English speakers. The Tamacoa spoke a language similar to the provinces in northeast Florida. The tribes at the mouth of the Altamaha spoke a South American language called Tupi. Nevertheless, the Spanish grouped all the provinces into one Spanish administrative province named Timucua.

Sometime in the 1600s the real Tamacoa moved away from the clutches of the Spanish Empire to a tributary of the Oconee River. They joined the Creek Indian Confederacy and continued to live in the same location a few miles north of present day Athens, GA until 1785 when their land was ceded to the United States. The county seat of Jackson County was developed on their village site. It was originally named Thamagua, but is now named Jefferson.

After retired United States Congressman, Charles C. Bennett, published an English translation of De Laudonniére's book, named "Three Voyages," it became the primary reference on Fort Caroline. However, there is a serious problem with his book. Wherever 16th century French and English versions of "Trois Voyages" stated "we paddled up the May River in a northwest direction to reach the Thamagua . . . or . . . to reach the Apalache in the mountains," Bennett deleted the words "in a northwest direction" and "in the mountains." You see, the St. Johns River flows southward and Florida does not have any mountains.

A Cherokee researcher stumbles upon Bartram's eyewitness account

Marilyn Rae is a Cherokee researcher in the People of One Fire. She is a direct descendant of the last hereditary principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, Pathkiller. After co-authoring two books with this writer on the Creek Indians of northern Georgia, Marilyn is deeply absorbed in the research to create the definitive book on the origins and early history of the Cherokee Indians.

On November 20th, 2013, Rae was browsing through "The Travels of William Bartram," an 18th century book, which describes the famous botanist's exploration of the southern British colonies between 1773 and 1776. Rae was astonished to come upon a passage that apparently described the ruins of Fort Caroline and Fort San Mateo . . . exactly where Captain René de Laundonnière said they were. Her discovery will turn the history books upside down and cause a great deal of consternation in the National Park Service. Rae is still astounded that no historian or archaeologist ever realized the significance of Bartram's words. She was looking for Cherokee history, not a political bombshell.

Here it is:

"The north channel, or entrance, glides by the heights of Darien, on the east bank, about ten miles above the bar, and, running from thence with several turnings, enters the ocean between Sapello and Wolf islands. The south channel, which is esteemed the largest and deepest, after its separation from the north, descends gently, winding by M`Intosh's and Broughton islands; and lastly, by the west coast of St. Simon's island, enters the ocean, through St. Simon's Sound, between the south end of the island of that name and the north end of Jekyl Island. On the west banks of the south channel, ten or twelve miles above its mouth, and nearly apposite Darien, are to be seen, the remains of an ancient fort, or fortification; it is now a regular tetragon terrace, about four feet high, with bastions at each angle; the area may contain about an acre of ground, but the fosse which surrounded it is nearly filled up. There are large Live Oaks, Pines, and other trees, growing upon it, and in the old fields adjoining. It is supposed to have been the work of the French or Spaniards. A large swamp lies betwixt it and the river, and a considerable creek runs close by the works, and enters the river through the swamp, a small distance above Broughton Island. "

America does, indeed, have a hidden history.

[RMHoward]

I wonder if the term "overland" is as a generic term so as to be differentiated from travel "by ships at sea"?   If so, the case for a fort across from Darien Ga. becomes more likely.