In the basement of a research building at Mission San Luis, remnants of dugout canoes sit on shelves, some protected in white boxes.
Thousands of years ago, the canoes would sit on one bank of a waterway or lake, waiting to be rowed across. Canoes were communal, used by the Indigenous people of the time who needed to get from one side to another.
The latest archaeological research shows the oldest dugout canoe the state has in the Florida archives is 8,000 years old. In Tallahassee, the Florida Department of State houses these important artifacts in temperature and humidity-controlled climates. Some are kept in the Division of Historical Resources and others are submerged in preservation tanks in the R.A. Gray Building.
Canoes were something of a transportation revolution for Native Americans who had neither wheeled vehicles nor pack animals until the arrival of Europeans, Democrat writer and Tallahassee historian Gerald Ensley wrote in 2010.
“I think canoes are a big deal,” retired University of Florida archaeology professor Barbara Purdy said at the time. “They were a way to transport goods and people across waterways when there were no highways. (Ancient Indians) could not have done what they did if not for the fact they manufactured canoes.”
On display in the R.A. Gray Building is a 700-year-old canoe that was discovered in Lake Munson in 2010.
Recent headlines focus on Lake Munson as a body of water plagued by pollution. Repeated sewage spills and harmful algae blooms have contaminated the lake over decades. But 14 years ago, the slimy sludge of Lake Munson gave Tallahassee something good to talk about.
“The Lake Munson canoe was rescued after state officials were alerted by a local resident who saw evidence of private citizens trying to remove it from the muck. It is illegal to take artifacts from federal or state land (all navigable waters and their bottoms belong to the state),” wrote Ensley.
A state archaeologist at the time told Ensley that people try to sell them on Ebay or at artifact shows, “but typically, if you don’t know how to preserve them, they will rot and become junk.”
The Lake Munson canoe is 23 feet long and has platforms at each end that were probably used to stand on and spear fish.
In that Fort Walton time period (1000 A.D. to 1450 A.D.), archaeologists believe, it was possible to travel from Tallahassee to the coast on waterways that have now receded.
The find was not unique in Florida. The state has the most dugout canoes in the western hemisphere, said Sam Wilford, the deputy state archaeologist for the State of Florida.
As of Ensley’s writing in 2010, state and university officials had documented more than 350 canoes found by state archaeologists. Perhaps the most significant find came in 2000, when 87 canoes — some of which were 5,000 years old — were discovered at Newnan’s Lake near Gainesville. Many were found right next to each other.
Most dugout canoes are made out of cypress trees. First, the soft wood is burned out, and what’s left is scraped with shell tools. Wilford said it’s a “laborious process” that can take months.
“Accidents happen,” he said, and someone can end up burning holes in the canoe in the process and have to start all over again.
Members of the Seminole Tribe of Florida still make dugout canoes today, and some use modern tools like chainsaws and power sanders.
“Even though we may not need baskets and canoes for our daily lives at this point in our history, the knowledge and stories they have to teach are still so important,” canoe artist Pedro Zepeda told History Miami Museum in 2019.
This story is part of TLH 200: the Gerald Ensley Bicentennial Memorial Project. Throughout our city’s 200th birthday, we’ll be drawing on the Tallahassee Democrat columnist and historian’s research as we re-examine Tallahassee history. Read more at tallahassee.com/tlh200. Ana Goñi-Lessan can be reached at agonilessan@gannett.com.