Swamplandia

The Ten Thousand Islands are a chain of islands and mangrove islets that lie along Florida’s southwestern Gulf Coast. This area includes the Ten Thousand Islands National Wildlife Refuge and portions of Everglades National Park and is largely uninhabited. The region was used and inhabited by Indigenous peoples for thousands of years prior to colonization. The Calusa people were some of the area’s first known inhabitants and are considered by modern-day Seminole to be ancestral. The Calusa were accomplished sailors. They dug and constructed intricate networks of canals throughout the Ten Thousand Islands, which they navigated in a distinctive kind of dugout canoe that was similar to vessels that would later be used by the Seminole. They lived mostly in the interior portions of the Ten Thousand Islands, and fished for mullet, pigfish, pinfish, and catfish and collected shellfish like conchs, lobster, crab, and oysters. They made contact with Spanish colonial forces in 1513, but remained prominent in the region until the 1700s, when many were wiped out by European diseases and territorial displacement. The Calusa people are best known today for the creation of massive mounds of shells, which calcified, increased the elevation of countless islands, and are in many places still visible today. They can be observed in Mound Key Archeological State Park.

After the erasure of the Calusa people, the Seminole people made the Ten Thousand Islands their home, and established trade routes and trading posts along many of the same channels once used by the Calusa people. The Seminole traded alligator hides, deer, various kinds of food and dry goods, and eventually created arts, crafts, and carved items for sale and trade with peoples, both Indigenous and those of settler descent, outside of the Seminole Nation. They built structures called Chickees that were easily, sturdily constructed and were meant for temporary use. Although initially designed to facilitate travel and trade, they became instrumental during the Seminole wars, and were later used in area tourism. Many of the Chickees are still visible today, although they can typically only be accessed by canoe or other watercraft. Both the Calusa shell mounds and Seminole Chickees play an important part in Swamplandia!’s narrative, and they ground the story within local, Indigenous history in southwest Florida.