Driving an hour-plus to see heaps of dirt isn't many people's idea of a good time, especially early on a Sunday morning. Driving through the formidable traffic along stretches of U.S. 19 in Pinellas isn't much fun either, nor is getting lost in Tarpon Springs. But Indian mounds, those piles of ancient refuse that, over the past few hundred years, have emerged as some of the last vestiges of Native American habitation still in existence, hold a certain charm. A charm that makes long jaunts through a sizable stretch of west-central Florida worth the trouble.
I took a navigator (local musician Bob Sarabia), a handful of maps and a sense of adventure on this daylong trip, starting from my home base in Sarasota. The goal: to see as many mounds as possible in a single day.
Just what is an Indian mound? "Different kinds of mounds are for different functions and existed at different time periods," says USF anthropology professor Nancy White. "The earliest mounds [circa 3,000 years ago] were shell mounds, probably just accumulated garbage." (The mounds are easily identifiable by the sun-bleached shells that litter their surface.) Once people saw that by building on top of this garbage they could stay high and dry, more mounds began appearing. Around 2,000 years ago, White says, Native Americans began building mounds to honor their dead. More recently, mounds were used for habitation, much like pyramids in Central America, but without the large blocks of stone.
Asked why there are so many mounds in the area, White says that it was simply a matter of density. "The South was densely populated back then," she says, "and the more people you have, the more mounds."
The more mounds you have, unfortunately, the more people you have looting artifacts from them, a point White stresses in our interview. "If you encourage people to visit mounds as a forgotten cultural resource, you should remind them that not only is it illegal to dig or remove artifacts on public land, but they're also taking away scientific information that can be used by future generations."
The mounds aren't easy to find. We wander fruitlessly through the Tarpon Springs area before we find the first one on our itinerary in Anclote River Park (1119 Baillie's Bluff Road, Holiday), where a sign out front says in big, bold letters INDIAN MOUND. The sign tells the sad story of the area's former inhabitants, the Timucuans, who were decimated around 1500 by Spanish weapons, rival tribes and diseases. Most mounds in this area were stripped, the shells used for road construction, a common practice in the early 1900s.
We continue south, passing a sad little gopher tortoise with its head nudging against a power company's fence. Its options, short of gnawing through the metal, were to either set up camp permanently on this, the treeless side of the road (doubtful), or to head back across the busy thoroughfare. We stop. Get out. Bob saves a life.
Mounds abound in St. Pete. The Jungle Prado Mound (just south of 1700 Park St. N.), is — much like the one at Anclote River Park — perfectly situated on the bay. Overlooking both the water and Saffron's Caribbean Cuisine, bordered by giant old oaks and cabbage palms, it looks like a golf course hill more than an archaeological feature. In 1528, Panfilo de Narvaez, by all accounts a rotten conquistador, may or may not have landed at Jungle Prado, from where he launched an expedition of 600 men up the Florida coast. Though that's still the subject of much debate, it is known that when Saffron's was built in the 1920s, an Indian cemetery and Spanish sword were found. We find only the sweet smell of jerk chicken and, oddly enough, a chicken coop.
Across the peninsula is the Weedon Island Preserve (1800 Weedon Drive N.E., St. Petersburg), the site of a burial mound, a large shell midden (aka trash pit), a fine new history center and… another power plant. The mound is on the plant's property; park officials will tell you that Progress Energy's security guards keep their eyes peeled for wayward amateur archaeologists, and will gladly escort you away from the power plant (and the mound). Nevertheless, Weedon Island is a significant stop. Why? Because of the mortuary vessels — ceramic burial offerings unique to Weedon Island culture — that archaeologists discovered in the 1920s. You can view some of these artifacts at the history center, located on a stretch of Weedon Island road you won't get booted from.
Just north of the Skyway are at least two mounds you can visit — one at Maximo Park, and another on 20th Street. The former, dubbed the Maximo Point Site (34th Street S. and Pinellas Point Drive, St. Petersburg), is a long serpentine mound that (big surprise) overlooks the water. It runs more or less parallel to the shoreline, cut off at its east end by I-275. Though not very distinctive (it's covered by nature paths and a disc golf course), this is perhaps the most scenic place on your daylong mound expedition.
The Pinellas Point Temple Mound (62nd Avenue S. and 20th Street, St. Petersburg), about five minutes' drive east of Maximo Park, is wedged between two houses. This was the site of a brutal killing, as the historical marker indicates. Fray Luis Cancer de Barbastro, a Dominican friar, was on a goodwill trip through this area in 1549. The locals didn't want to be his friend, however, so they clubbed him to death.
Death by clubbing, an archaic sword, a picturesque picnic destination, funerary objects, the potential to save a gopher tortoise's life — these are just a handful of reasons to visit local Indian mounds. Indeed, there are quite a few more mound sites to explore, from Palmetto to Safety Harbor, and most are open to the public. Five or six mounds may be too many to squeeze into a single day; if this trip was any indication, though, every one of them has a story to tell.
This article appears in Nov 16-23, 2005.