The Seminole Who Came to Trade
Near Fort Lauderdale, Florida
Long before Fort Lauderdale had streets or streetlights, the New River was a Seminole highway. The families who had survived the wars and stayed hidden deep in the Everglades still needed goods they could not make themselves, and so they poled their dugout canoes down the river to trade. When Frank Stranahan opened his post here in the eighteen nineties, it became an important trading point for Seminole families.
They brought what the wetlands gave them, alligator hides, deer and otter and raccoon pelts, and the delicate white plumes of egrets, which were worth a small fortune in the northern hat trade. In exchange they took away staples and manufactured goods, and Seminole families often camped at the post for days at a time. Trust mattered in this trade, and Frank earned it.
He and a handful of honest traders like him became a vital part of the Seminole economy in these years. The relationship went both ways, and it helped a people who had refused to leave Florida hold on to their independence in the swamps just west of this river.
