Yaupon Holly: Nature at Florida Caverns

Yaupon Holly, a wild shrub found at Florida Caverns State Park and throughout the region, produces more natural caffeine than any other native plant in North America. 

Southeastern Native Americans - including the Muscogee (Creek), Yuchi, Seminole, and others - used it as a primary ingredient in the preparation of the "black drink." 

Learn more from Asst. Park Manager Billy Bailey of Florida Caverns by clicking the play button above:

Word "Chipola" is hundreds of years old

By Dale Cox

The Chipola River as seen from the air.

Marianna – The traditional story often told in books and articles about Jackson County  - and repeated on many websites - is that the word “Chipola” originates from the Choctaw language and means something akin to “sweet water.” The interesting tale dates back many decades, but unfortunately, it probably is not true.  The Choctaw never lived in Jackson County and there is no evidence that they named the Chipola River.

Early writers probably confused the little-known Chacato with the Choctaw. The names are similar and the Chacato were living in what is now Jackson County when the Spanish arrived in 1674. Their primary homeland was in the rich lands between the Chipola River and Holmes Creek.

Spanish missionaries settled among the Chacato and established the missions or churches of San Nicolas and San Carlos. A third visita or part-time station was built at a place called San Antonio. San Nicolas was a few miles northwest of Marianna, San Antonio was near Campbellton, likely in the Daniel Springs area, and San Carlos was probably near Orange Hill in what is now Washington County.

Blue Springs (or Jackson blue Spring) was called "Calutoble"
by the Spanish. It is mentioned in the 1677 report that also
includes the first use of the word "Chipola."

In 1675, however, the Chacato warriors rebelled and drove out the missionaries. Spanish soldiers retaliated by burning San Nicolas and San Antonio. Most of the Chacato survivors fled to the Coushatta (or Coosada) towns in Alabama, although some who had converted to the Christian faith moved closer to the Spanish capital at Mission San Luis in today's Tallahassee.

The war against the Chacato soon expanded to include the Chisca (possibly the Yuchi?) who lived in what is now Walton County. Chisca warriors raided Spanish settlements around Mission San Luis from a fortified village somewhere in southern Walton or Okaloosa Counties.

Apalachee Christian militia responded in 1677 with a raid that located and destroyed the Chisca stronghold. The soldiers passed through Jackson County and the report of the expedition’s commander includes the first known written use of the word “Chipola.”

Crossing the Chattahoochee River at a site now covered by Lake Seminole, Captain Juan Fernandez de Florencia reported that the Apalachee commander and his 197 men marched west into Jackson County in September of 1677. After camping at a pond somewhere north of Grand Ridge, the force continued Blue Springs (Jackson Blue Spring) which the captain described as “a spring which is named Calutoble, whence a river runs toward the south.”

Paddlers enjoy the headwaters of the Chipola River at
Lily Pad Adventures near Campbellton, Florida

The route of the expedition then angled to the northwest across today’s Dogwood Heights area to the natural bridge of the Chipola River at Florida Caverns State Park. There, the Apalachee commander told the captain, his men camped “in a great forest called Chipole; and the next day knelt to pray.”

The 1677 account was the first documented use of the word “Chipola” and it applied to the vast floodplain swamps and not the river itself. This puts the assumption that that the word meant "sweet water" into doubt.

The expedition was guided by friendly Chacato warriors and the word is undoubtedly Native American in origin, so it is logical to conclude that it was from the Chacato language. The exact meaning, however, has been lost to time.

The Alabama-Coushatta of Texas are descendants of the Chacato but report that "Chipola" has no meaning in their language today.

Based on its usage, "Chipola" - which today provides the name for a river, a college, and numerous businesses and nonprofit agencies - probably means something like "big swamp" or "big forest."

Learn more about the Spanish and Native American history of Jackson County in Dale Cox's book:

#93 Irwin's Mill Creek (100 Great Things about Jackson County, Florida)

Irwin's Mill Creek in Jackson County, Florida

Irwin's Mill Creek, a beautiful clear-water stream, is #93 on our list of 100 Great Things about Jackson County, Florida.  Please click here to see previous installments on the list.

Once called the Ekanachattehatchee or "Red Ground Creek," Irwin's Mill Creek is fed by small springs just north of the Alabama state line. It flows to the southeast through Alabama's Chattahoochee State Park and across the line into the northeast corner of Jackson County. It flows into the Chattahoochee River just north of the State Highway 2 bridge into Georgia. The nearest landing is at Neal's Landing Park.

Irwin's Mill Creek

The creek is an ecological treasure. Very few spring-fed streams flow into the Chattahoochee River and Lake Seminole, but Irwin's Mill Creek looks more like one of the beautiful spring runs that feed the Chipola River than it does one of the sloughs and backwaters of Lake Seminole. It winds through a stunning floodplain swamp and at most times of the year is so clear that the bottom is clearly visible.

Historically, it flows through one of the most significant spots in Jackson County. The famed Money Pond, which supposedly holds the treasure of the pirate and adventurer William Augustus Bowles ("Billy Bowlegs"), is near and the creek forms the northern limits of the 18th century Creek Indian town of Ekanachatte ("Red Ground"). Please click here for more on the Money Pond.

Irwin's Mill Creek

Even before the late 1700s and the time of Bowles and Ekanachatte, the creek was a major landmark.The Spanish first pushed west from Mission San Luis (present-day Tallahassee) during the 1600 to bring the Christian faith to the Chacato (or Chatot) Indians. This tribe lived between the Chipola River and Holmes Creek in western Jackson County, northeastern Washington County and southwestern Houston County, Alabama. They were closely allied with a neighboring tribe that the Spanish called the Chisca but which many researchers believe were the ancestors of the modern Yuchi.

Irwin's Mill Creek

The Yuchi today are considered by the U.S. Government to be part of the Creek or Muscogee Nation, but historically they were an independent people. They have their own language, customs, ceremonial practices and traditions. They helped incite the Chacato people to rebel against and drive out the Franciscan missionaries, an act that brought the wrath of the Spanish military down on both groups.

When the Spanish first arrived, it appears that the Chisca or Yuchi lived in a village along the banks of Irwin's Mill Creek. The fled west into Walton and Okaloosa Counties after the Chacato rebellion, but for nearly one century afterward the site of their village on Irwin's Mill Creek was known as the Chiscatalofa Old Fields. The word "Chiscatalofa" literally means Chisca Town.  A village by that name remained associated with the Lower Creeks until their removal on the Trail of Tears in the 1830s, but the original Chiscatalofa was in the northeast corner of Jackson County.

Irwin's Mill Creek

When the Red Ground Creeks arrived to establish Ekanachatte in the 1760s, they settled on the Chiscatalofa Old Fields since they were easier to clear for farming than the surrounding old grown forests.

After Ekanachatte was destroyed in 1818 and while Florida was still a Spanish colony, American settlers began to drift into the vicinity and settle on the abandoned fields of the village. Among those who established farms along what they called the "Conchatty Hatchy" were Joseph Brown, William Brown, Joseph Brooks, William Chamblis, James Irwin, Adam Kimbrough, William McDonald, William H. Pyke, George Sharp and Allis Wood.

James Irwin, one of these settlers who arrived in 1819-1820, built a dam and watermill on the creek where it crosses from Alabama into Florida. The dam and ruins of the mill still survive and represent the oldest American structural remains in Jackson County.

From that time until today, the stream has been known as Irwin's Mill Creek and it is one of the 100 Great Things about Jackson County, Florida.