Selling Vero Beach: Settler Myths in the Land of the Ais and Seminole

The true story of Vero’s creation is full of tall tales

BY JANIE GOULD

Have you have ever wondered why two Vero Beach landmarks — Pocahontas Park and the Pocahontas Building — carry the name of the legendary Indian maiden who wasn’t a Seminole and who never set foot in the town? It was more than just the fanciful creation of an early developer — it was a marketing strategy.

Pocahontas, a member of the Powhatan tribe in pre-colonial Virginia, apparently was the first Native American person to see the first shipload of 104 English men and boys, when they landed at Jamestown in 1607. The story of her life — and her relationship with John Rolfe, who married her and took her back to Britain — has inspired countless books and movies, including two Disney musicals. She was also an inspiration to land speculators, late in the 19th century’s Gilded Age. That’s when boosters, hoping to attract white settlers to the Indian River region, created myths about the Seminoles and other indigenous people — stories that often featured the ultimate “good Indian,” Pocahontas. 

Absent from this promotional literature were mentions of the 1842 Armed Occupation Act, which encouraged whites to settle in Florida’s “dangerous Indian lands,” and the three bloody Seminole Wars fought in Florida. By the time the last one ended in 1858, most of the Seminole and Miccosukee tribes had been removed to the West. But by the time the Indian River area was being developed, the reality had dimmed that many white pioneers in Florida had favored that permanent displacement of the state’s of Native residents.

Kristalyn Marie Shefveland, an associate professor of history at the University of Southern Indiana, wrote Selling Vero Beach: Settler Myths in the Land of the Ais and the Seminole to explore the mythologies that helped fuel the development of Vero Beach and the Indian River region. In it, she takes a deep intellectual dive into the selective memories and changed perceptions that shaped Florida’s growth at the dawn of the 20th century. 

PROFITABLE LEGENDS

In 1912, the Indian River Farms Company, of Davenport, Iowa, bought and drained 55,000 mostly underwater acres in what would become Indian River County. Then, the company set the stage for its own reimagining of history.

“While Northerners began to settle the region in the 1880s, the Indian River Farms Company created a romantic narrative to sell land to potential Yankee colonizers,” Shefveland writes. “Herman J. Zeuch was the principal propagandist and organizer of this endeavor and stood to gain the most.”

She recounts how Zeuch had used Indigenous names in previous settler projects in Canada. In Vero, he changed the name of his Bayhead Hotel — a hub for prospective land buyers — to the Sleepy Eye Lodge. Sleepy Eye was a Dakota chief “known for his friendliness to white settlers,” Shefveland writes.

“The name also recounted folk tales that Sleepy Eye had never ‘spilt a drop of blood of the white man,’” she continues. “Zeuch likely unconsciously picked Sleepy Eye as a reminder of the frontier past.”

Shefveland notes that Indian River Farms leaders picked Native names for numerous streets and buildings in Vero, when they laid out the town in 1914. Twentieth Street — now known more or less affectionately as the eastbound twin pair — was named Osceola Boulevard. That was a nod to the Seminole leader once feared as a bloodthirsty warrior who had come to be lauded as a “noble savage.” Other early street names included Kickapoo Lane, Shawnee Trail and Apache Road. The street that runs from north to south in front of St. Helen Catholic Church was called Ute Pass before it became 20th Avenue. Today’s 13th Avenue, in front of the downtown post office, was named Pueblo Drive. Besides the Pocahontas Building, there was the Seminole Building — diagonally across the street on 14th Avenue. The Pueblo Arcade is nearby.

Citrus growers throughout Florida often used colorful images of “Indian maidens” as eye-catching marketing tools on the crates they used to ship their oranges and grapefruit to markets in the North. Of the 3,147 vintage citrus labels held by the University of Florida, more than 300 sport portraits of women who are vaguely Indigenous, the author notes.

“And that imagery buttressed what others settling there claimed: Florida was first discovered and last to be settled,” Shefveland says. 

MORE MYTHOLOGIZING

Florida’s Spanish colonial past also played a role in 20th century land development. Juan Ponce de Leon, who landed in “La Florida” on Easter in 1513, purportedly searched the territory for the fabled “fountain of youth,” but never found it. The 19th century writer Washington Irving claimed in his work that the fountain was fact rather than fiction. Four centuries after Ponce de Leon, workers for Indian River Farms dug four artesian wells to show off to customers and dubbed them fountains of youth. “The company drilled a well at Sleepy Eye Lodge, on the demonstration farm, and a settler home, [the Barbers] and in the heart of town they drilled an artesian well at Pocahontas Park in January 1914,” Shefveland writes.

She also explores the life and legacy of Waldo Sexton, who built the Driftwood Inn, Ocean Grill restaurant, Patio restaurant and other one of a kind structures. Like Indian River Farms, Sexton made use of Florida’s Spanish colonial past — drawing inspiration from Mediterranean-style mansions designed by Palm Beach architect Addison Mizner. Sexton also used Native people in his promotions. He and partner Arthur McKee built the tourist attraction McKee Jungle Gardens in 1932; by 1940, they had added a Seminole village and hired members of the tribe to live in it.

“Like settlers before him, Waldo constructed his Florida, but going beyond naming streets or buildings with vaguely Spanish and Native inspiration, Waldo created and archived spaces all over the region that continue to shape settler memory about the concept of ‘old Florida,’” the author says.

Shefveland is a meticulous researcher who used a wide array of primary and secondary sources, both scholarly and popular, to weave her story. She has produced a narrative that should be appreciated by any serious student of Florida history.

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SELLING VERO BEACH: SETTLER MYTHS IN 

THE LAND OF THE AIS AND SEMINOLE

Kristalyn Marie Shefveland

University Press of Florida

Gainesville, FL

2024