The Suwannee River is a federally designated wild river. It is the only major waterway in the southeastern United States that is still unspoiled. The Suwannee flows from the Okefenokee Swamp in southern Georgia to the Gulf of Mexico in Florida. It winds for almost 266 miles through swamps, high limestone banks, hammocks of hardwood, and salt marshes. It also has fifty-five springs along the way. The river’s limestone outcroppings and a drop in elevation create Florida’s only whitewater rapids at Little Shoals and Big Shoals located several miles upstream from the city of White Springs.

Indians on the Suwannee River
Tumucuan Indians were living on the banks of the Suwannee River when the Spanish explorers came to what is now north Florida in the 1530s. The Suwannee River formed the boundary between the Timucuan on the east and the Apalachee Indians on the west.

To the Timucuan of north central Florida, the Suwannee was a river sacred to their Sun God. To them, the Moon of the Suwannee put the colors of the rainbow into the earth. The Sun drew the colors out in flowers.

The Timucuan Indian word Suwani means Echo River. Some think that is the origin of the Suwannee River’s name. Others say Suwannee means River of Reeds, Deep Water, or Crooked Black Water. Tannic acid from decaying palmetto roots and vegetation causes the blackness of the water.

In the 1700s the Seminole Indians, or “wanderers” from the Creek tribe of Georgia were on the Suwannee. Old logs buried deep in the river were perhaps once parts of rafts on which they drifted down from Georgia.

White Sulphur Springs on the Suwannee was considered to be a sacred healing ground. Warring tribes could come to bathe in and drink the mineral waters while putting aside their disagreements.

Steamboats on the Suwannee River
The steamboat Madison, a floating country store, was on the Suwannee before the Civil War. Captain James Tucker owned and operated the sternwheeler. He carried items that he traded for money, cowhides, beef, tallow, chickens, eggs, hogs, deerskins, venison, beeswax, honey, gum resin, lumber, cotton, or whatever else came his way.

The Madison wasn’t large. But her whistle was loud and heard for miles along the river. It called farmers, woodsmen, and planters to come to the boat landing on the run with their goods. Sometimes the Captain and crew threw down nickels as they docked. There was a wild scramble on shore. A nickel was worth a lot back then.

When the Civil War began, Captain Tucker raised a company of Confederate soldiers. He took them aboard the Madison. One night they slipped out from the Suwannee and captured a federal gunboat.

 History

At the time of the Spanish exploration of the area in the 1530s, the river banks were inhabited by the Timucuan people, who named it Suwani, meaning "Echo River". In the 18th century, Seminoles lived by the river. The steamboat Madison operated on the river before the Civil War, and the sulphur springs at White Springs became popular as a health resort, with 14 hotels in operation in the late 1800s.

Music

Suwannee River, Florida

This river is the subject of the Stephen Foster song "Old Folks at Home", in which he calls it the Swanee River. Foster had named the Pedee River of South Carolina in his first lyrics, then changed it to Swanee because he thought it sounded better. Foster never saw the river he made world famous. Al Jolson's song, also spelled "Swanee", boasts "the folks up North will see me no more when I get to that Swanee shore".

Both these songs feature strumming banjos and reminiscences of a plantation life more typical of 19th century South Carolina along the Peedee than among the swamps and small farms of the coastal plain of Georgia and Florida.

Don Ameche stars as Foster in in the 1939 fictional biopic Swanee River.

When crossing the river by car today, the sign greeting visitors announces that they are crossing the Historic Suwannee River, complete with the first line of sheet music from the song. "Old Folks at Home" is the state song of Florida. There is a Foster Museum and Carillon Tower at Stephen Foster Folk Culture Center State Park at White Springs. The spring itself is called White Sulphur Springs because of its high sulphur content. Because of a belief in the healing qualities of its waters, the Springs were long popular as a health resort.

In English parlance something going "up the Swannee" means something going badly wrong; analogous to "up the creek without a paddle.