Marjory Stoneman Douglas - The Everglades

T HE problem of research in a comparatively unknown area like the Everglades is a curious one. No comprehensive book on the subject has ever been written before this attempt. There is little actual source material, in spite of much descriptive writing. One has to depend on the memories of people. But, most fortunately for me, a few sound studies of various phases of the Everglades have just been completed. So my heartfelt thanks go out to people everywhere, scientists or old-timers, who have given me so generously of their knowledge or their own exhaustive studies.

When Hervey Allen asked me to do this book, I was overwhelmed with the realization that although I had lived in South Florida for many years and had known some parts of the Ever glades, I had no idea at all what they were or where I could begin to write about them. So I began, as I so often have done, by asking John Pennekamp, editor of the Miami Herald and now a member of the Everglades National Park Commission. He sent me directly to Garald G. Parker, head of the U.S. Geological Survey, whose remarkable studies of the geology and ground water of the Everglades are the first thorough studies ever made. Mr. Parker gave me my first clear idea of the single nature of the Glades area, with its characteristic, the saw grass. From him I was sent to C. Kay Davis, Project Engineer for the U.S. Soil Conservation Service, on whose work for Everglades conservation the whole future of the Everglades is based. Mr. Davis turned over to me all the resources of his department, and John Stevens, associated with Mr. Davis, carried on my education. Generous assistance was also given by Mr. R. V. Allison, head of the Florida Everglades Experiment Station.

To Ernest F. Coe, without whose vision and single-minded devotion there never would have been even the beginning of an Everglades National Park, I have been indebted for many years for information, field trips and constant encouragement.

In the hitherto almost untouched and certainly unco-ordinated study of archaeology, I was incredibly fortunate that Mr. John M. Goggin, after years of special research, had just completed the first chronology and over-all study of the prehistoric Glades Indians, in connection with his work with the Graduate School of Anthropology at Yale University. From the very beginning, Mr. Goggin gave me whole-heartedly from the store of his own scholarship, and patiently checked and re-checked my presentation of his intricate and fascinating subject.

Mr. Mathew Stirling, chief of the Bureau of Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution, who made the great diggings at Belle Glade, and Mr. Gordon Willey of the same department, were most generous and helpful.

For the early history of African slaves I wish to thank Dr. Melville J. Herskovitz of Northwestern University for aid even beyond his books, and Mrs. Maxfield Parrish and, again, John M. Goggin, on the subject of Negroes and Seminoles in the Bahamas.

In all matters relating to the vast subject of Glades horticulture I received great help from Dr. John C. Gifford, Dr. David Fairchild, Dr. Eleanor Scull, Dr. Walter Buswell, Mr. B. S. Clayton of the Everglades Experiment Station and Mr. A. H. Andrews of Estero. The late Dr. Frank M. Chapman was my great preceptor on the subject of the birds, as well as the late Dr. Gilbert Pearson, Mr. John H. Baker, Jr., of the National Audubon Society, Mr. Daniel B. Beard of the Fish and Wild-life Service, and Mr. Irvin Winte and Mr. Homer Rhode, Jr., state game wardens. Mr. Maxwell Reed kept me from too great confusion concerning pre-historic mammals, and the late Dr. Thomas Barbour, Mr. Marshall Bishop and Mr. George Coffin were sources of information about living creatures here today.

In the field of history, Mr. David 0. True, secretary of the Historical Association of Southern Florida, gave me most valuable assistance, from beginning to end, with special reference to the interesting controversy on the landing of Ponce de Leon. I was completely overwhelmed by the eager generosity which historians everywhere displayed toward me in regard to original ideas and manuscripts; the late Mr. A. J. Wall, then president of the New York Historical Society, Dr. Mark F. Boyd, Mr. Julian C. Yonge and Mrs. Alberta Johnston for the Florida Historical Society; Mr. W. T. Cash, State Librarian; Miss Dorothy Darrow of the Ft. Lauderdale Library, Mrs. Frances Parsons and Mrs. Allen Cross of the Miami Public Library, Miss Peggy Beaton of the Coral Gables Library and Miss Josephine Wirth of the Coconut Grove Library, were con stantly helpful.

Mrs. Lucian G. Spencer sent me Captain Spencers fine manuscript on the Indians which few have ever seen, and no one was more generous with original material than the late Mr. Howard Sharp of Canal Point whose excellent history of the Okeechobee region was never completed.

For more light on the difficult subject of the Indians in the Everglades today, I have to thank Deaconess Harriet M. Bedell of the Glades Cross Mission, Everglades, Florida, Mrs. Frank Stranahan of Ft. Lauderdale and Mr. Kenneth 0. Marmon of Ft. Myers, Special Commissioner to the Indians. Mr. Robert F. Greenlee of Ormond, Miss Marianne Sweitzer of Yale University and Mrs. Ethel Cutler Freeman of the Natural History Museum of New York were all most generous. Here again John M. Goggins knowledge was inexhaustible, and I believe we will in future be able to look to the work of Miss Ada Mae Tiger among her own people for information even more valuable than that she was good enough to give me.

The most important contributions to this book came not from books but from the minds and memories of innumerable people who have lived in and about the Everglades for many years. I could never list them all. I dont know the names of half the people with whom I leaned on bridges or drank cokes in Trail stations or hailed from fishing docks or gossiped with in lonely houses, on hidden roads, on beaches or by solitary rivers or on the corners of crowded streets. But my grateful recognition goes to those good friends everywhere whose knowledge has become part of my own thinking: Mrs. Ada Price, Mr. A. H. Andrews, Mr. Lou Staton and Mr. Laurence Dubbitt of Estero; Mr. Graham Copeland and Mr. and Mrs. Senghaas of Everglades; Mr. Smallwood of Chokoloskee; Mr. and Mrs. Tooke of Lostmans River; Mrs. Tommie Barfield and Captain Albert Addison of Marco; Mr. Carl Hanton and Judge Nathan G. Stout of Fort Myers; Mrs. Jane Walker and the girls in the drugstore at La Belle; Mr. R. Y. Patterson of Clewiston; Mr. Thomas E. Wills, Jr., and Mrs. S. P. Parsons of Belle Glade; Mrs. W. J. Krome of Homestead; Mr. Wirth Munroe, Mrs. Florence P. Haden, and Mr. Charles Frow among many others in Coconut Grove; and in Miami so many friends and old-timers that it would be like reprinting the directory. However, I must thank especially Mr. Isidor Cohen, Mr. John C. Gram-ling, Ruby Leach Carson, Senator F. M. Hudson, Karl Squires and John M. Baxter. And before anyone else, my thanks go to the first friend I had in Florida, from whom I learned most of all about old Florida, Mrs. Frank B. Stoneman.

Finally, since transportation in and around and over the Glades is an adventure in itself, I am more than usually grateful for friends and companions who provided and shared automobiles, canoes, motor boats, houseboats, row boats, airplanes and dirigibles, or were good at clearing paths with machetes: Miss Marion I. Manley, Mrs. Frank C. Cox, Captain C. C. von Paulsen, Mr. C. Kay Davis, Mr. and Mrs. Peter Van Dresser and Mr. John de Groot, Mrs. Barfield, Deaconess Bedell, Mr. William S. Hard, Miss Elinor Smith, Mr. Gardner Royce, Mr. John M. Goggin, and the indefatigable illustrator, Mr. Robert Fink.