"Shadow Country" Country

February 27, 2010 We listened to Peter Matthiessen's "Shadow Country" en route to Chokoloskee Island, to stretch our Chokoloskee Island experience.

"In 1898, 42-year-old Edgar J. Watson became a living legend when a book credited him with shooting the outlaw queen Belle Starr nine years earlier. The descendant of a prominent South Carolina family, the legal or common-law husband of five women, the father of possibly 10 children, a leading pioneer on the southwest coast of Florida and a man killed by a large group of his neighbors in 1910 ..." in the land of walking trees, the mangroves.

Established in 1906, the Smallwood Store Ole Indian Trading Post and Museum stayed open and active until 1984.

Here we were told that Chokolskee isn't really an "island" at all, rather just a huge mound of seashells accumulated by early inhabitants, the Native Americans, with a smattering of soil on top.

In 1887 Ruby Tigertial, a Seminole native, wore at least two hundred strings of beads. "It was an effort for her to move her head ..."

Not a fitting souvenir for two vegetarians: "White Trash Cooking I" and "II".

Ha ha ha! Okay, not so funny... kinda creepy.

-P