Today I spoke to a Garden Festival at the Treasure Coast Unitarian Universalist Church in Stuart, Florida. There were Master Gardeners, and two specialists from the University of Florida, artisans selling garden pottery, and stainglass plus several larger vendors selling flowers. People from the community came and visited our grounds looking for flowers to plant in their gardens this winter. I spoke, I felt sadden by my subject. It was a beautiful day. A great day for a garden festival.
I said:
This is the land of Ais, known to the the first Europeans as the Indians of the coast. They were a tall, healthy people who fished along the inlets, and rivers and planted crops. What we now call the Indian River was once known as River of Ais. There were 25000 Ais living here when the Spanish came in 1513. By 1610 the last Ais was dead. The Spanish enslaved the Ais people, and disease, forced labor, and the violence of oppression overcame an ancient community of fishers, growers and manufacturers. They built houses, including civic houses, developed manufacture of baskets, pottery, cooking ovens, colored woven clothing, and jewelry. They practiced settled agriculture.
To the people of this land the world was "alive with spirit." The animals and plants were relatives, and all the creatures lived together in one family under the loving care of our mother earth and our father sky - the earth world was a sacred realm in which people lived, and moved and had their being. They celebrated the earth. The people of this land spoke to animals, and sang to the plants. Dances celebrated planting and tending of plants. They told stories of each of the plants that sustained them in every day of their lives.
They found the world as a blessing. It was intregal to their lives to live in harmony with the world. Music and dance were an central part of the Ais everyday life, but these enchanting sounds and graceful movements were lost along with the people themselves. We have only tiny glimpses into that culture, such as the use of gourds for rattles, a drum created by beating on a large rock with a club, and flutes made from reed, cane or bark. The women were reported to have donned shell belts, formed themselves into a large circle, and danced with a side stepping motion around a central fire at a certain ceremony whose meaning is now lost. Based on knowledge of other communities we can assume it was a celebration of the renewal of the plants that they grew. These people are lost, however, we can imagine the haunting sound of those tinkling shells in the night.
These are the crops grown by the Ais for thousands of years before Columbus.
· maize · gourd · beans · citrons · squash · sunflowers pumpkins
Wild Plants Collected for food, baskets, fishing gear, clothing, housing.
· acorns · palm berries · smartweed · hickory nuts · wild cherries · plums · persimmon· bullrush · blackberries · blueberries nut sedge elderberries huckleberries· buttonbush peppervine poke weed watershield ground cherries amaranth · sea grapes bristlegrass broomgrass coco plums
· spatterdock cattail coontie · yucca ache prickley pear cabbage palm· morning glory sea oats water lily· saw palmetto
· goosefoot rivercane yaupon
The native people lived in relation with this land. Some people will say the Ais were animists, that they pre-modern, and superstitious. I am not impressed with such ideas.
I believe that they lived with wisdom, a wisdom that arose from their relationship to the earth, a wisdom that allowed them to relate to the storms and the rains and the dry times as well. For us in this beginning of a new millenium, we need to ask does are present way of living with this land, shows the wisdom that sustained the Ais, who resided here and sustained the environment for over six thousand years.
Today you will be hearing much discussion of native plants, and how much less intrusive these plants are to the Florida environment. I believe there is wisdom in cultivating native plants. I think they might also teach us about living in this place, this land of the Ais.
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