Free The History of Florida by Michael Gannon Page A

marked the
    line between Spanish La Florida and French La Louisiane. Thirty-one years
    later, the United States accepted and then surveyed the 31° border under the
    Treaty of San Lorenzo of 1795 (Pinckney’s Treaty). Final y, in 1822, when
    Congress organized the Territory of Florida, it used the Perdido River to
    mark its western boundary.
    The Spanish mariners who first saw the shores of La Florida encountered
    what appeared to their untutored eyes to be unbroken forests of pines and
    mixed pines and hardwoods running from the sea to the great stands of
    fire-tolerant longleaf pine trees that marked the edges of the piedmont in
    the Carolinas and Georgia and covered the northern highlands of the pen-
    insula. Along the shore and on the backs of coastal islands were hammocks
    of live oaks where soils were appropriate. The river valleys that ran to the
    sea were thickly grown with multiple hardwood species. On the piedmont,
    the oak-pine-hickory forest appeared, while on some slopes of the Appala-
    chian Mountains the dominant forest was the oak-hickory-elm association
    now largely lost to Dutch elm disease. Appearing uniform, these vast bands
    of forest were in fact mosaics of many floristic communities, communi-
    ties determined by soils, rainfal , drainage, temperature, and the shaping of
    the forests by lightning fires, insects, and Native American agricultural and
    proof
    hunting practices, including the use of fire. Faunal diversity accompanied
    this floral diversity, although most species were too small for use as food.2
    Less clearly in peninsular Florida than farther north along the coastal
    plain, the rising and retreating of the Atlantic and the warping of the North
    American geologic plate have shaped as many as a dozen step-like, if dis-
    continuous, “terraces” in what geologists classify as three sections (lower or
    outer, middle, and upper or inner) of the coastal plain. The soils on these
    coastal terraces were once back barrier marsh surfaces, bay bottoms, and/or
    areas of al uvial deposition and are general y acidic sands of low fertility and
    high moisture content during the rainy season. In general, they are classified
    as Aquults, although areas of Humaquepts occur along the Georgia coast.3
    Inland swamps, marshes, and low areas that flood during the rainy season
    reflect this geologic history. Hardpans (horizons of nearly impermeable
    clay) underlay some areas, notably on the east and west coasts of Florida
    where the soils are Aquods. These hardpans result in rainy-season flooding
    and the famous pine flatwoods that some British-era “planters” exploited
    for naval stores and that today support the pulpwood industry where sub-
    divisions have not sprung up. Scarps or even sand hills (in Georgia and
    the Carolinas) mark the edges of the terraces and provide gradations in
    44 · Paul E. Hoffman
    moisture from wetter (close to the water) to drier on the uplands, gradations
    that define ecotones where floral and faunal diversity is greater than on the
    terrace below or above. Ecotones can also be found around ponds and lakes
    and along stream beds, especial y in central Florida.4
    The Piedmont has a similar topography of terraces although the soils are
    more fertile and better drained by numerous small streams flowing into the
    rivers that drain to the east or south. In general, the soils are mostly reddish
    Udults. Native Americans and modern farmers used and use the friable,
    quality soils of the valley floodplains associated with the smaller streams.
    De Soto’s men (1539–40) and Juan Pardo’s soldiers (1566–68) recognized
    these areas as places suitable for Spanish agricultural settlement.5 Histo-
    rian Eugene Lyon believes that had Pedro Menéndez de Avilés lived long
    enough, he would have claimed the upper Wateree River Valley (explored
    by Pardo) as part of the marquisate Philip II had promised him if he success-
    ful y settled La Florida.6 Had Spanish settlement developed in this