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

[Tacachale]

^Well, it was moved, but always within the same vicinity. The original, temporary fort was built at the Timucua village of Seloy in 1565. Archaeological discoveries place this at the Fountain of Youth State Park. In April 1566, the fort was burned and the Spanish began making plans for a more permanent fort across the harbor on Anastasia Island. In 1572, the Spanish moved St. Augustine to its present location on the mainland.

However, there's no evidence that the original Seloy site was on the St. Marys River, and that it was then moved 70 miles south to the current location. That's a pretty big hole. In fact, it's even more dubious considering that the Spanish had their sights set on expanding north to South Carolina, to Santa Elena on Parris Island.

[civil42806]

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.

This is the guy who claimed mounds in Georgia were actually 5-sided Mayan pyramids in Georgia, even though the Mayans aren't known for building 5-sided pyramids, and there are plenty of mounds built by natives throughout the Southeastern US. Fittingly, his Fort Caroline theory relies on there being a conspiracy to cover up the "truth" only he knows. Fletcher Crowe and Anita Spring's hypothesis puts Fort Caroline in a similar place, but it shouldn't be compared to Thornton. Even just from what's in the press releases they're much bigger on the evidence, even though I have very serious doubts they're right.

come on its a 5 sided pyramid and it was on the internet so how could it not possibly not be true.  But these "researchers"  do have a habit of making huge pronouncement before any peer review dont they

[Ocklawaha]

If memory serves me right (and perhaps Tacachale knows) there were some Myan or Myan like small jewelry trinkets found in SW Florida some years ago, Ocala? Tampa? Ft. Myers? But even if this is true all it proves is that the Myans could paddle a mean canoe! To leap from things like this into the Myan's built Atlanta, or the French landed in Georgia is simply reckless. Perhaps we should launch an investigation on why the St. Johns River flows north... just to see if there is any truth to the old adage that is because Georgia SUCKS.

[Tacachale]

^That sounds like the Miami Circle. When it was discovered back in the 90s one of the theories were that it was built by Maya or other Central Americans, as it had a somewhat similar layout, and "Maya-like" objects were found. The local natives, the Tequesta, weren't known to have created such elaborate structures, so of course everyone's mind went toward the most famous pre-Columbian architects.

It turned out to be just another case of underestimating Native Americans - the area was full of Tequesta artifacts, and other similar sites have been found. At this point the consensus is it's a native Tequesta site. Thanks to wide-ranging trade routes there were objects that originated far away from South Florida, like axes from the Appalachians, but not quite as far as Mexico so far as I know.

It wouldn't surprise me if we did find some artifacts from Central America (or further) in Florida at some point. Maize, for instance, comes from there. But it wouldn't mean that every artifact came from Central America. Like you say, it just means some great travelers were involved, not that the locals were so incapable of creating impressive monuments that foreigners had to come in to do it for them.

[Jumpinjack]

Don't mean to stray too far from the Ft. Caroline topic but you are right about the complexity of the native American cultures which is little known by most people. We have been visiting the prehistoric mounds in Georgia from the Woodland period. These cultures were very sophisticated and great travelers throughout the southeast and north into Wisconsin.



Temple area which may have been village

Ceremonial mound at 57 feet high

[SunKing]

the Examiner article is almost as bad as the researchers claim itself.  Both the oral and written historical record of Ft. Caroline in Jacksonville predates the article.

Further, the Bartram article mentions an abandoned Spanish or French fort on a river in Georgia.  Seriously?  there were probably a hundred of these by the mid 1700s.

[Tacachale]

Awesome pics, Jumpinjack.

[Jumpinjack]

^Thanks, Tacachale. Kolomoki Mounds west of Albany, GA. Definitely worth a visit.

[spuwho]

There used to be a large collection of Timucuan mounds around the Trout, Arlington and St Johns. The last known ones recorded were near  University and Cesery. Historical reports showed most of them were leveled or plowed under by homesteaders. Reports of finding bones and other artifacts were in some of the accounts.

I think Lakelander covered it in one of his neighborhood stories.

[Ocklawaha]

Exactly Tacachale, I think the article I read suggested that they had found some jewelery that 'seemed' to be of Myan origin.' Immediately I flashed to the great 101 day voyage of the Kon-Tiki  which proved the Humbolt Current in the Pacific capable of taking the giant raft from Callao naval yard in Peru, 4300 miles (8000 km) until the raft was washed up on the Raroia reef in Polynesia. Who's to say the Gulf Stream was any less of a trade inducer? You can ride in in a glorified bath tub from Cartagena to the Straits of Florida effortlessly.

Other evidence for this is found in in Bartolome de Las Casas' abstract of the log of Crstóbal Colón (Columbus) where they found a block of wax on the island of Cuba. At the time the European honeybee had not been introduced in the America's and the ONLY wax producing variety was a sting-less bee found in the Mayan Empire. So were the Mayan Seafarers? YOU BET!

In the log of Fernando Colón, Cristóbal Colón's son:

"Having come to the island of Guanaja, the Admiral sent ashore his brother Bartholomew, with two boats. They encountered people who resembled those of the other islands, but had narrower foreheads. They also saw many pine trees and pieces of earth called cálcide which the Indians use to cast copper; some of the sailors thought it was gold....by good fortune there arrived at that time a canoe long as a galley and eight feet wide, made of a single tree trunk like the other Indian canoes; it was freighted with merchandise from the western regions around New Spain. Amidships it had a palm-leaf awning like that on Venetian gondolas; this gave complete protection against the rain and waves. Underneath were women and children, and all the baggage and merchandise. There were twenty-five paddlers aboard, but they offered no resistance when our boats drew up to them."

A Spanish Galley was some 25 meters long, this translates that the Mayan Ocean traders were in 82' long 'gondola like craft.'  Friends of ours regularly make the trips from various South and Central American points to Florida in a 32' sail boat!

We don't have a lock on pranksters in the 21st Century either. Witness the Poteau, Shawnee, Turkey Mountain Runestones, which bears the same 'Viking' inscriptions, IN OKLAHOMA! Oh and another the Kensington Runestone in MN.

The reading of the "Elder Futhark" style runes is probably "GNOMEDAL" (meaning "Gnome Valley", or perhaps a personal name "G. Nomedal").

The difficulty of using the Heavener Runestone to demonstrate Viking exploration of the area is that the Elder Futhark had become obsolete by the 8th century, long before the Viking expeditions to Greenland and Vinland. Also, only six of the eight characters are correct Elder Futhark runes. A transliteration would read "G [rough backwards N] O M E D A [backwards L]". This leaves us cold with some 18th or 19th century clown screwing with our minds across the centuries.

Lastly: Since y'all are interested in this, from my roots, The Spiro Mounds:

University of Oklahoma led WPA workers on a controlled excavation of the site in 1936 to salvage as much knowledge as possible about this unique site.. (Hopefully those Damned Sooners didn't screw this up)

The "Smoker", an effigy pipe from the Spiro Mounds. The pipe measures more than a foot in length and was made at the Cahokia site near St. Louis in the 1100's and brought to Spiro as part of the exchange between chiefdoms.
See more on smoking ceremonies in eastern Oklahoma.
   
Six mounds form a circular grouping around an oval plaza on the western side of the site. The largest of these is known as Brown mound. Steeply sloping on three sides, the mound had a walkway on the fourth, southern side which led to a building on top of the mound. This may have been a mortuary house where the dead were prepared for burial.

The eastern group of mounds, about a quarter mile from Brown mound, consisted of mounds where important leaders were buried with elaborate ceremony and grave goods. The preservation of delicate basketry, feather capes, and cloth was remarkable. Unfortunately, many of these fragile artifacts were destroyed in the plundering of the mounds by treasure hunters.

Trade goods found at the Spiro site include copper from the Great Lakes, shell beads from the Gulf of California, and conch shell from the Gulf of Mexico. They show the extensive trade networks connecting different cultures across the continent at the time.

Wonder if Pedro Menendez or Jean Ribault used U-Haul or '3 Men and a Truck?' ...Hey it could have happened!

[Ocklawaha]

I think Lakelander covered it in one of his neighborhood stories.

Yeah Spuwho, I went up and did my own unofficial dig one day and came back with a handful of 'ancient' railroad spikes! In fact did the same thing on North Main not too long ago and learned/discovered some facts I NEVER knew before. LOL!

[Ocklawaha]

It may be just a cricket or a critter in the trees
It's givin' me the jitters in the joints around my knees
I think I see a shadow and it's fuzzy and it's furry
It's a whooz-it, it's a whatz-it
Who's that? Who's there? Who's where?
(Wizard Of Oz - The Jitterbug Lyrics
Deleted Scene)

This has been fun, Tacachale, I'd love to hear yours and the others opinions on the so-called Turnbull home ruins in New Smyrna Beach. This is a location where I tend to disagree with all of the 'local historical societies' as I think these ruins are from a latin heritage. Elgin Castle, Dunkeld or St.Andrews cathedrals in Scotland, all large stone block ruins much grander then anything that was in New Smyrna don't have anywhere near the foundational buttressing that this 'house' supposedly had.

[spuwho]

It may be just a cricket or a critter in the trees
It's givin' me the jitters in the joints around my knees
I think I see a shadow and it's fuzzy and it's furry
It's a whooz-it, it's a whatz-it
Who's that? Who's there? Who's where?
(Wizard Of Oz - The Jitterbug Lyrics
Deleted Scene)

This has been fun, Tacachale, I'd love to hear yours and the others opinions on the so-called Turnbull home ruins in New Smyrna Beach. This is a location where I tend to disagree with all of the 'local historical societies' as I think these ruins are from a latin heritage. Elgin Castle, Dunkeld or St.Andrews cathedrals in Scotland, all large stone block ruins much grander then anything that was in New Smyrna don't have anywhere near the foundational buttressing that this 'house' supposedly had.

It was supposed to be a storehouse for the indigo and sugar cane the Turnbull plantation was going to export.  But the plantation workers rebelled and left for St Augustine. If it hadn't been buried under by the Spanish that coquina would probably be worse off for wear.

http://www.visitflorida.com/en-us/articles/2013/freelance-articles-2013/turnbull-ruins-new-smyrna-beach-ketcham.html

[spuwho]

A listing of all remaining Florida Indian mound sites can be found:

http://www.moundhouse.org/index.php/information/florida-archaeological-mound-sites

[MajorCordite]

Nice presentation Spuwho.  However, your statement: "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." is not correct.  There have been several light houses built at the mouth of the St. John's.  Two of the earliest ones were built in 1830 and 1833.  There was a large and shifting sand "bar" at the mouth of the St. Johns but ship captains and pilots were well aware of these natural formations and they waited off shore till high tide and then with shallow draft vessels (some were quite large) they crossed the bar and followed the river channel inland.  Zephaniah Kingsley had a rather large ship, a bark, with a copper clad bottom and sailed in and out of the St. Johns as early as the 1820's and 1830's. By 1840 he traveled frequently back and forth to Haiti to visit his son -- all done before the river was dredged. And he surely was not the only boat in town.

Also, have you looked at the NOAA marine/nautical maps for the Altamaha River entrance?  Certainly no deep water port now or even back then.  The Altamaha has a tremendously large sand bar or shallow area extending north, south and even east of the river entrance.  A lot of facts to consider.

Also, looking at early French maps from that time period are quite comical.  Scale is horrendously off, and in areas that were not surveyed they fabricated all the stuff on the edges of the map.   An early French map shows a giant river running from the Atlantic to the Pacific dead across Canada. I'll see if I can post a picture.

There seems to be a trend today to completely discredit historical facts with Holy Grail type findings.  Of course history is not etched in stone but I'm very dubious of all these internet scholars who are "reporting" all these new discoveries.  Interesting stuff.  I'm not quite convinced.  Too many erroneous assumptions.  IMHO.