Stories of the Upper Keys V

Some names associated with the islands of the Florida Keys are pretty straightforward. Plantation Key is a perfect example. According to F.H. Gerdes 1849 publication, Reconnaissance of the Florida Reefs and All the Keys, "The island below Cayo Largo now called on chart Long Id. is called Plantation Island for the fact of there having formerly been here a plantation belonging to English wreckers from Abaco Island."

The island of Key Largo represents another great example. When Dutch cartographer Johannes Vingboons drew a chart of Cuba and the surrounding area in 1639, he identified the largest of the islands making up the Florida Keys archipelago as Caio des 12 Leguas or, the Island of Twelve Leagues. A nautical league is approximately 3.5 miles in length. The island would also appear on charts as Cayo Largo. In English, the Spanish largo translates to long. Suffice it to say, Key Largo is an apt name.

Tavernier Key, found in the Atlantic shallows just offshore of the southern tip of Key Largo, also appeared on the 1639 Vingboons chart. It was not marked as Tavernier Key, but the island’s earliest recorded name, Caio di Tabanos. The island would continue to appear on various maps and charts between 1639 and 1775 with names using some variation of the tabano theme. Tabano is the Spanish word for horsefly. Apparently, the island was known for biting flies.

What is pertinent about the place name Tabano is that in Spanish the letter “b” is pronounced with a “v” sound. Back in high school I had a friend named Phil Cordoba and for the first two days of our freshman Spanish class, we had the same teacher. Phil transferred out of the class because the teacher pronounced his name as the written “b” and failed to use the appropriate Spanish inflection. Just as Phil’s last name Cordoba was supposed to have been pronounced Cordova, tabano would have been pronounced tavano.

A local story occasionally retold suggests that the name Tavernier was the result of a sailor coming ashore and asking, “Is there a tavern near here?” While an excellent story, it is all fiction. The name Tavernier likely came to fruition as a result of the bastardization of the name Cayo Tabano, which, over time (and especially as English cartographers began to map the area), would have been written phonetically. In what was likely the same fashion that the name Cayo Hueso eventually became bastardized into Key West, Cayo Tabano morphed into Kay Tavernier.

Both names for the island, Cayo Tabano and Kay Tavernier, appeared on Gauld’s 1775 chart.

The origins of some of the island names prove more of a mystery than others. Located approximately three miles west of the southern tip of Key Largo is Bottle Key, apparently named because the island appears fairly bottle shaped. South of Bottle Key is a particularly interesting collection of islands known as the Cowpens Keys whose history is not so straightforward. The islands that today straddle the passage known as the Intercoastal Waterway have a colorful, if not questionable, local lore attached to them.

One of the more legendary tales associated with the Cowpens suggests they were so named because during the construction of Henry Flagler’s Over-Sea Railway, manatees were once corralled there and slaughtered in order to feed those men installing the tracks of his Key West Extension. One peculiar twist in this tale suggests it was Flagler’s crews who first introduced manatees to the area to be used as a food stock. The idea is pure poppycock. Manatees have been grazing the seagrass meadows and enjoying these clear warm shallows for thousands of years.

While there seems to be no historical data to back up the premise that the Cowpens were ever used to corral manatees by fishermen, it is possible that the protective harbor the islands create became known as the Cowpens because manatees could often be found congregating within its relative safety. Simply put, they became known as the Cowpens because manatees hung out there.

In any case, though vigorously protected today by the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972, historically the indigenous peoples, European explorers, and early settlers once hunted the marine mammals for not just their meat, but their hides. When John James Audubon first explored the Florida Keys in 1832 he described a local guide who lived on Indian Key thusly: “For years his employment had been to hunt those singular animals called Sea Cows or Manatees, and he had conquered hundreds of them, 'merely,' as he said, because the flesh and hide bring 'a fair price' at Havannah.”

What is perhaps most troubling about the idea that Flagler was using manatee meat to feed his men is that by the time railroad workers had arrived in the area, manatees had long since been a protected species. It was 1893, more than a dozen years before Flagler’s crews began building his railroad, that Florida’s first manatee protection law was passed. In 1907, those laws were stiffened with penalties for harming or killing a manatee assessed a $500 fine and/or six-months of jail time.

The question is, would Flagler have so knowingly risked breaking such an established law when fresh fish, lobster, and turtle meat was so readily accessible?

Brad Bertelli is a published author of four books on Florida and Florida Keys history. As well as operating Historic Upper Keys Walking Tours, he is s the curator of the Keys History & Discovery Center, located at the Islander Resort. His column will appear every other week in The Reporter. Reach Brad with comments and questions at WhyPanic@aol.com.

This story was originally published September 9, 2016 at 1:24 PM with the headline "Stories of the Upper Keys V."