Last week I visited the Fort Center Archaeological Site located in Glades County a few miles west of Lake Okeechobee. This was one of my favorite visits as I continue researching my upcoming historical fiction novel Calusa Gold. If you have been to Europe or the Middle East, you likely saw Roman ruins 2000 or more years old. In Rome, the Coliseum still stands as a clear reminder of that ancient culture. However, you could drive past Fort Center and probably even hike through the site and not realize a people just as interesting as the Romans once thrived there.
To get to the the Fort Center site, you have to drive about a mile on an unpaved road west of State Route 78. Once you park, it is about a 2.5 mile hike out to the mounds and other features. The entire site is part of the Fisheating Creek Wildlife Management Area. For the hike, I relied on a set of excellent directions on the Fort Center page of the “Florida Hikes” website. I followed this on the 6.5 miles hike, and it was a very big help.
Several months ago I purchased a book, Fort Center: An Archaeological Site in the Lake Okeechobee Basin by William H. Sears. Dr. Sears and his teams of researchers and students from the University of Florida and Colgate University conducted detailed field research at Fort Center over a six-year period starting in 1966.
The Native American people that settled in the Fort Center area are called the “Belle Glade Culture,” and while they appeared long before the Calusa Tribe, which is the focus of my book, Fort Center contains man-made mounds similar to the ones the Calusa built.
The following images show a mound referred to as “Mound 10” in Dr. Sears’ book, and it is the only one at Fort Center not completely overgrown with trees and brush.
Dr. Sears devotes many pages of his book to details and analysis of the man-made charnel pond at Fort Center. The Belle Glade people once built a platform over the pond on which they conducted cremations. Eventually the platform collapsed. Sear’s book states they found remains of about 150 people in the pond. When you go to these Florida sites, the mounds are often not very obvious, but the charnel pond was very clearly a pond. It was almost dried up when I went there on June 6, but I imagine it does fill up more as it rains more in the summer.
While walking around the pond, I thought about the effort it must have taken for the native people to dig it nearly 2000 years ago without any machinery. Dr. Sears’s book describes how the pond and adjacent Mounds A & B were part of a large ceremonial complex at Fort Center.
The following picture is from the northern side of the pond. According to a map in Sears’s book, the charnel platform would have been on the left side of this picture.
Fort Center had several informative signs posted in the area. This one, which is next to where I took the previous picture, contains details about the pond complex:
In my research on the Calusa, I learned that they relied mainly on fish, shellfish, and other animal sources for most of their diet. While they ate some plants, they did not conduct widespread agriculture like many other groups. Some archeologists including Sears found maize/corn pollen found at Fort Center, which they felt indicated the Belle Glade natives grew maize as part of their diet. This apparently became controversial among scientists, and the consensus now is that they did not grow corn at Fort Center.
According to Sears, the Belle Glade natives grew maize in the Great Circle portion of the site. Other scientists feel the Great Circle contained a large central mound and that it had possibly had something to do with ceremonial function of the area.
I found this discussion of maize especially interesting when I read one of the other signs that listed some of food the people ate including: opossum, mole squirrel, muskrat, cotton rat, raccoon, fox, goose, deer, turkey, frog, siren, nine species of turtle, alligator, gar, mudfish, and a variety of other fish. With this much variety, maybe they were similar to the Calusa and did not rely on agriculture very much.
Mentioning the Calusa brings up another question. The Belle Glade Culture developed long before the Calusa came into power, but did the two groups come into contact? I have learned that Calusa influence spread north along the Gulf Coast to just below Tampa Bay where they ran into into Tocobaga lands and on the east coast up to the Cape Canaveral region. Fort Center is in the center of the state along Fisheating Creek, which was probably accessible to the nearby Ortona site by canoe. Archeologists have concluded that the Calusa did have influence at Ortona, so it seems likely to me that they did know of Fort Center.
Taking this a little further, Sears writes, “I see no reason to believe that the Calusa, apparently a small but highly organized society from the Caloosahatchee estuary, ever came inland to Fort Center or anywhere else for ceremonies, as has been suggested.” So, there appears to be no evidence about Calusa involvement at Fort Center, but I have a hard time believing that Calusa canoes never passed through the area.
Finally, as I mentioned all the animals the people ate at Fort Center, I should mention the variety I saw during my hike. In the parking lot, I saw this sign:
I didn’t see any bears, although I would like to see one in the wild, from a safe distance. I did, however, see the following:
I didn’t see any snakes, but I know they are in the area. I also didn’t see any alligators, although the creek looked like a perfect habitat for them.
I hope you visit Fort Center too. Let me know what you think. Thanks for reading.