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Community Sunday Favorites: The Healing Properties of the Manatee Mineral Spring

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The Manatee Mineral Spring was used by Indians and was found by Manatee's first white settler, Josiah Gates, who settles nearby in January 1842. It served Branch Fort when the early settlers campled nearby for protection from the Seminole raid of 1856

BRADENTON -- Visible above a canopy of live oaks and palms that shaded the thick brush along the Manatee River, one lone pine served as a marker. Just a few hundred feet beyond the landmark, a famous Native American village that utilized a mineral spring for medicinal purposes occupied the lush hammock surrounding it. Countless ages of aborigines had subsided near this spring. Its magical properties lured them to the peculiar place where they practiced mysterious ceremonies and painted their bodies with red dye both in celebration and in warfare. 

 

They farmed and fished, with nets woven of palm fiber, and hunted game, with arrows and spears. A chief Calusa priest assumed supreme authority over the southern territories, and to the north resided the Timucuan tribe. The spring was a trysting place for Indian maidens whose lovers from the northern regions met them there in the moonlight. Legends of hope and heartbreak all seem to include the spring, as its very existence was impetuous to life itself.

 

Perhaps it was the precious water of the spring with its supposed supernatural properties that invigorated the bodies of the natives and guided them to drive Ponce de Leon out of the area upon his arrival in 1521. But even the restorative waters could not protect the 35,000 natives in the region from contracting the foreign born disease that accompanied future explorers on their greedy plight for gold.

 

The introduction of Europeans to Florida was swift and cruel. Spanish explorers searched every village looking for bullion. The armies interrupted the harmonic balance of life on the Manatee River, for they required vast supplies and soldiers were desperate enough to destroy anything that stood in their way. The natives were armed with bows that could shoot through several thicknesses of chainmail, but were still no match for the soldiers and their powerful commanders.

 

Pafilo Narv‡ez landed at the mouth of Tampa Bay in 1528 with 400 men and 80 horses. Although his journey was ill fated, he left a wicked mark on a once peaceful land. Any Indian villages in his path became forging stations and the inhabitants subject to torture and slavery.

 

A tambourine band gathers at the pavilion at the Manatee Mineral Spring. Recognizable in the photos are at bottom Charles Combs, Frances Neeshaw, Amelia Curry, Ella Curry, Nellie Ferguson and Ward Curry

Before the native nation could recover from Narvaez’s bout, Hernando DeSoto arrived on May 18, 1539 at Shaw’s Point, another known Indian village.  From there he began one of the world’s greatest exploration and military expeditions. Starting at his landing place and heading west, it is likely that he too drank from the waters of the mineral spring, never realizing that it was more valuable to the natives than any mythological Fountain of Youth. Desoto traveled another 4,000 miles through the jungles to the banks of the Mississippi River in search of riches and immortality. 

 

Besides a legacy of disease and death, the explorers left behind in Florida free-range cattle, horses and hogs originally brought from Europe. The Seminole Indians in became the first cow hunters, domesticating herds of cattle and riding Spanish ponies. But when the first Seminole War started in 1817, the tribe was pushed farther south and Manatee County became a temporary sanctuary for Seminoles and runaway slaves. A group of black Seminoles eventually took refuge along the Manatee River. They too discovered the healing properties of the mineral spring and inhabited a neighboring area; they called their village Angola.

 

Manatee County’s first settler, Josiah Gates, left Fort Brook in the fall of 1841 with plans to claim his quarter before the rush when the U.S. government officially released the lands during the Armed Occupation Act of 1842. Accompanied by his brother in law, Miles Price, they sailed south on the Margaret Ann. As the boat sailed down the coast, a number of islands came into view one of which was populated by three or four palmetto shacks occupied by Spanish fishermen. The anglers were friendly, and led Gates to what they considered the most sacred place on the Manatee River. One Spaniard, who spoke English, shared with them a tale of a famous Indian Village. Gates was enchanted by the story and went ashore. He found a narrow path packed hard by the weight of Indian moccasins. It was there under the majestic live oaks and tall pines that he saw it: a circular pool about 12 feet in diameter – the mineral spring.

 

The gazebo at the Manatee Village Historical is a copy of the original one that stood near the Manatee Mineral Spring. 

The area that once witnessed the destruction of native culture and later provided an asylum for those escaping slavery and persecution was now a promising heartland of new beginnings. There were only about 100 Seminole remaining in the territory; they were now considered fugitives in their own country.

 

In 1846, Dr. Franklin Branch purchased the portion of Gates’ acreage that included the spring. Branch was born in 1802 in Orwell, Ver., studied medicine at Castleton Medical College and graduated in 1825. He and his second wife, Matilda Vashti Wilson, moved to Manatee with plans to build a sanatorium and utilize the healing properties of the mineral spring to treat patients. However, before the sanatorium could be completed, the buildings he constructed were instead fortified with sable palm trunks for protection against the Seminoles as the Third Seminole War raged around them.

 

Instead of patients, residents of Manatee occupied the structures of what became know as ”Fort Branch.“ Branch delivered three babies and treated a variety of ailments during that time. The crowded conditions at the fort, plus a shortage of food, encouraged disease. Whooping Cough and Measles broke out during the nine months of the "siege".

 

Following the death of his wife, Branch sold his landholding to Captain John Curry of Key West and Branch and his family moved to Tampa to re-establish his medical practice. The Manatee River settlements were left without a physician all during the Civil War.

 

Pipes are all that is seen of the formerly free-flowing Manatee Mineral Spring that greeted the earliest settlers to the Manatee settlement. The modern site of the spring is near a small park on 14th Street East.

The Curry’s lived on their property in the Village of Manatee for many years and the spring became known as ”Curry Boiling Spring.“ In 1880, they sold a tract of their extensive estate to newcomer Dr. George Casper. In the contract, Casper granted the Curry family ”free ingress and egress to any medicinal spring situated on said land, that they many have the full use, enjoyment and privilege of the waters of the same.“

 

By 1903, the mineral spring was included as part of the Manatee City Park and all residents could now enjoy its restorative waters, but the three shell mounds that surrounded the spring, the only remnants of the Native nation that had utilized it for thousands of years, were completely removed. The shell was exploited in the paving of roads in the area. The following year, the park was fenced and a gazebo erected for use by the public for picnics and celebrations.

 

Today the property that holds the mineral spring remains a public park and the spring that lured the first pioneer presumably still flows within its cement encasement. The only evidence of its existence is an oddly positioned metal culvert. Spring’s Creek, the tributary that allowed for its flow into the Manatee River, has been filled to accommodate traffic on Manatee Avenue. The once medicinal waters are mixed with storm water runoff and hopelessly diluted before being emptied into the Manatee River. A replica of the gazebo located at Manatee Village Historical Park is all that remains of the famous local landmark.

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