by jacquelyn horkan, editor
"I was sitting in a "sto’
do’," as the "Crackers" say, waiting for a clerk to load some
"number eights," when my friend said, "Look at the cowboys."
Frederic Remington, Harper’s
Weekly
In 1895, on assignment for Harper’s Weekly, Frederic
Remington discovered Florida’s own version of the frontier.
Florida’s cow hunters, as they were called, tended herds of
the untamed, scrawny descendants of the stock introduced by Spanish rancheros in the early
1500s. The cattle ran wild through the piney woods, scrub flats, and palmetto thickets
that covered southwest Florida from Fort Meade to Fort Myers.
In his illustration, A Cracker Cowboy, Remington chose for his
model one Morgan Bonapart "Bone" Mizell. A small man who spoke with a lisp,
Bone’s sharp wit and uncompromising toughness smoothed his way through into his rough
and ready profession.
According to legend, Bone once marked a particularly ornery cow
as his own by biting a hole in both of her ears. Once, after overindulging in his favorite
cheap booze, Bone passed out. His friends then built a circle of fire around him and poked
him with sticks to wake him up. Bone lifted his bleary head, remarked, "Dead and gone
to hell — ‘bout what I expected," and went back to sleep.
Unimpressed by Bone and his cohorts, Remington wrote of them in
words dripping with scorn: "As a rule, they lack dash and are indifferent riders, but
they are picturesque in their unkempt, almost unearthly wildness."
That wild, unearthly, and unkempt world is gone, but perhaps if
you listen closely, over the racket of the cars and the air conditioners, you’ll hear
the faint echo of the cracking whips that gave the "Cracker Cowboys" their name.
September/October 1999 -- Florida
Business Insight, PO Box 784, Tallahassee, Fla. 32302
(850)224-7173, insight@aif.com |
