Grounds and Artifacts at Mission San Luis 2

This is another view of the vegetable garden on the grounds of Mission San Luis in Tallahassee, Florida. The Apalachee Indians had different work for both women and men. The men cleared fields, hunted and fished for food, did the building and made tools. The women collected wild foods, tended the gardens and crops, reared children, cooked, made clay dishes and pots, ground corn and grains and prepared skins.

Pictured here is one of many clay pots found on the excavation site. It has a piece of leather skin covering it. The rattle (I'm guessing what that is) is made from an animal hoof and some kind of dried gourd.

The other photo shows some woven baskets in the process of being made. The same type of weave was used for the table coverings and for the beds around the inside of the walls of the Council House.

The Council House was used for all kinds of things besides meetings. There were religious and ceremonial activities, including dances, rituals and preparations for war.

Grounds and Artifacts at Mission San Luis

The grounds at Mission San Luis are beautifully manicured. I was surprised when I went to Tallahassee to hear that they have 4 distinct seasons. In St Petersburg, we are more sub-tropical and our seasons kind of blend together. We have no bare trees to speak of, and our grass is green all year unless there's a drought. There are also hills and mountains in Tallahassee unlike St Pete, where everything is flat. One would never guess both cities are in the same state.

In the foreground is one of the gardens where vegetables are grown. Right now, there's not much growing because it is Winter, but in the Spring and Summer, it is full of seasonal veggies. If you look closely, you can see the Friary in the background. I have more on that to show in a future post. It is still a working Friary today.

This artifact was recovered during the excavations I mentioned in an earlier post. I have no idea what it is used for, but I'm amazed at all the carving the natives did with primitive tools. Those swirls must've taken a long time to carve into that stone. It could be clay and they had some sort of mold; I'm not sure, but it looks like stone to me.

In the photo below, that definitely is a jaw, but if you look closely, there are rows of teeth like a shark. I don't know where they'd find a shark skeleton, since they're about 85 - 100 miles of the shore. It is also skewed and I can't figure out how they did that, or what they planned on doing with it.

These artifacts make me more curious about their culture, how they lived and worked and the technology they had. We only know so little about the Apalachee way back in the day around 300 years ago. Life must've been pretty tough for them.

Apalachee Council House Interior

This is a 7-shot panoramic image of the inside of the Apalachee Council House. If you saw my blog last night, you saw the outside. You'll have to click on this photo to see all the detail.

The women were not allowed in the Council House during meetings, but they came in here to do some of their work. The tables contain various artifacts of things in progress, like some unfinished baskets, Hickory nuts, they gathered and several pelts they were drying.

In the center of the room, there is a pile of wood they burned 24/7. The smoke went out the open hole in the top. When I asked the guide what kept the rain out, she told me the heat of the fire and the smoke evaporated the rain immediately so it (the rain) didn't get in and get the place all wet.

Under the tables are little black holes. They're called smug pots. They burned corn cobs in them to keep out the mosquitos. Along the edges of the hut are beds made from woven Palm fronds. Nothing was ever wasted. They'd crack the Hickory nuts and make mush out of them. The meat and inner shell was used to make a tea that had enough caffeine as several pots of coffee. The outer shell was boiled down to make paint and dye for their furniture and clothing.

All the tools were handmade.

I'll be posting detailed shots of some of the artifacts from inside the Council House in later posts.

Seaboard Air Line Caboose

The Seaboard Air Line Caboose is on display in the Big Bend area of the Tallahassee Museum. This car ran from 1924 to 1963. Inside the caboose, one can see the sink, icebox, water, a stove, closets and bunks which were used by the crew.

There were 10 cabooses in all with each caboose having their own slogan, which was keyed to the last number. According to this plan, this one should be, "Look Around Getting Down".

The Seaboard Air Line Railroad was in operation from 1900 to 1967, when it merged with the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad. It then became the Seaboard Coast Line Railroad. In the '50's, the route mileage was a little more than 4,000 miles.

According to Wikipedia, Air line, in the days before air travel became a reality, was a common term for the shortest distance between two points: a straight line drawn through the air (or on a map), ignoring natural obstacles. Hence, a number of 19th century railroads used "air line" in their titles to suggest that their routes were shorter than those of competing roads.

Lake Seminole in HDR

Today I took my students to Lake Seminole Park for a lesson on exposure. This is one of the original images I made with the class. This image looked like it would make an excellent HDR study, so I tried it with this one. When I downloaded my photos to my computer, I noticed that I deleted the -2 stop exposure by mistake, so I made a pseudo HDR. I'm surprised it came out so well from one image.

The second image is the HDR image. As you can see, this one is much, much better. I don't like HDR when it's done over the top. It seems to present unnatural colors and a lot of noise, and I'm very happy with the way this one turned out. It's much brighter, the colors are more saturated and vibrant, and it's natural and believable.

Settings used for the original image are, ISO 200 because it is a cloudy day and the sensor needs more light for a proper exposure, Aperture Priority mode, which I use for about 95% of all my photography. The shutter speed was 1/100 at F7.1, which is the sharpest or sweet spot of my lens, 0 exposure compensation, with partial metering off the trees, which was the most important part of the scene (actually the greenery and reflections), 36mm with my 18-55mm lens.