BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 187: The Lost Tale of Prospect Bluff with Archeologist Jeffrey Shanks

Backcountry Hunters & Anglers Podcast & Blast with Hal Herring

Zack Williams

Outdoors, Wilderness, Sports, Fishing, Outdoor, Hunting, Sports & Recreation

4.6 • 853 Ratings

🗓️ 20 August 2024

⏱️ 118 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Join Hal and Florida archeologist Jeffrey Shanks for a lost tale of British Marines and Jamaican privateers, American maroons, Creek Indian warriors, rogue Choctaws, religious prophets, and the bloody and tenacious struggle for freedom.

The Apalachicola National Forest in Florida’s Panhandle holds some of the most remote swampland wilderness in the US, forbidding blackwater mazes of cypress and black gum and tupelo, whining with biting and stinging insects, the natural home of alligator and cottonmouth, redbreast bream and bass. It also holds some of the most fascinating and complex history in America.

On the far western edge of north Florida’s Apalachicola National Forest, there is a place called Prospect Bluff, a slight rise in the land that overlooks a channel of the mighty Apalachicola River itself. It’s the site of Fort Gadsden, a modest construction that played a small role during the First Seminole War, and then was abandoned during the American Civil War.

In 2018, Hurricane Micheal, a Category Five storm, wreaked havoc on the Panhandle and on the Apalachicola National Forest. On Prospect Bluff, massive oak trees, three hundred years old and more, were uprooted. Forest Service and National Park Service archeologists surveying the damage to the site found curious artifacts in the excavations left by the roots of the toppled trees. At some point, lots of human beings had lived here, and they had built a powerful fortification. They had farmed and traded and been well-prepared for war, which did indeed come to them. The story that came to light is one of the most complicated and fascinating episodes in American history, with echoes and ripples out as far as the Bahamas, Trinidad, Sierra Leone and Nova Scotia, where the descendants of the men and women who fought and died at Prospect Bluff are living right now.

Transcript

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0:00.0	If you lose the most incredible, not just lessons, but the adventure of history.
0:18.6	It really is incredible. It's an incredible story of our history, our shared history that almost nobody knows.
0:25.0	Right, you know, you know, probably not by accident, I'm afraid, you know, to some degree.
0:32.0	The real significance of this place is that that
0:37.0	community that was there from 1814 to 1816. That's why it's so significant. Today the site is a
0:48.7	national historic landmark which is the highest level of recognition that a historic site can get in the United States.
0:57.0	We can't understand where we're at right now if you don't know how we got here. And that means really knowing how we got here, good, bad,
1:08.0	and ugly, warts and all.
1:09.4	Hey everybody, Hal hearing, backcountry Hunters and English Podcasts and Blast.
1:15.0	Hey, I'm fired up this morning to announce that Savage Arms is going to be sponsoring this
1:21.6	podcast and that has a special significance to me
1:25.5	because I'm sitting here holding the Savage Arms Stevens model, theories M, 20-gau, single- barrel shotgun that I got for my ninth birthday.
1:38.5	I have had that since 1973. It is polished off, it's silvered up, it's scratched. I passed it on to my
1:50.0	son when he was in 10, I think. that would have been in 2010 and all I've done in all
1:56.1	those years is to change the replace the ejector on that shotgun has shot thousands upon thousands of rounds.
2:06.0	So, this whole thing is very important to me.
2:12.0	When people have come This whole thing is very important to me.
2:14.2	When people have come to me who are new hunters and they're asking me about a deer or elk rifle, I always say first, I say the Savage 110, and that, so Savage has been in business
2:29.5	125 years and the one-10 is the longest continuously manufactured both action
2:36.8	rifle ever. In the ad thing here it has a model for every type of hunter or shooter of course.
2:45.5	About 20 years ago came out with the acutrigger on that rifle and on other savage rifles as well
2:58.0	which is one of the most copied triggers on the market. Savage is producing more Rinfire models than any other brand.
	...

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