Everyone hears about Columbus and his historic trip. He even has a special holiday named after him! The fool was lost and landed on a small island in 1492. He believed his island was India, yet he became famous! Has anyone ever noted that it is my name that the continent of North America is named after! I traveled at least four times to the Florida Coast starting in 1498. All right! So they were not recorded. They were secret missions for King Ferdinand of Spain. He wanted to continue the trading of slaves and his Queen was very much against it. He hired me to continue the trading of slaves without the Queens knowledge. Because of this I am mentioned in history books almost as an afterthought. Even Ponce De Leon is remembered for his silly search for the fountain of youth! It is enough to drive a sane explorer mad?

I know I should be above complaining. It is not an attractive quality in a lady or either gender for that matter. It is just that when people think about me, they picture a wealthy matron having tea parties. Don't even try to deny it. You probably don't even know about my business sense or progressive methods I implemented. Did you know I had a huge cattle ranch called Meadow Sweet Pastures (80,000 acres) with 1,000 heads of cattle from Texas and 17 Brahma bulls that were heat tolerant? My Hereford bulls died from tick fever. This vexed me, so investigated scientific methods. I wrote to the state agriculture departments, agencies and universities, and put into practice many of their new experimental practices. I was one of the first ranchers in the state to dip my cattle and rid them of their tic problems. I also had experimental farms where I grew watermelon and celery. I had all sorts of plans, but unfortunately died before I could begin them.

If anyone deserves to complain it is the Seminole people and myself. After the Second Seminole War we were forced to live on the reservation in Florida. It was a period of grace, before the American soldiers would force us to leave Florida all together. Like many other Native American stories, even our reservation began to be over run by settlers. I was able to stall the negotiations for a period of time, but it was bound to end up in another war. I knew we could not win. In the end I was forced to move out west to a different reservation with 139 of my people in 1858. There were some Seminoles that escaped into the interior of Florida. They lived in the wild swamp country, where they could stay hidden for many years.

If you think you know someone in Sarasota County's past, that has a good reason to complain about their place in history, write it up and e-mail it to the educator. It could end up as a permanent complaint in the History Out of The Box complaint section.