After our exhilarating airboat ride and swamp buggy tour at Boggy Creek, we snaked our way north towards Orlando and decided to have a picnic lunch in the Orlando suburb of Kissimmee. This town is located at the doorstep of Walt Disney World complex and offers a variety of tourist class accommodations near historic downtown Kissimmee. The historic downtown districts feature walking tours, antique shops, shopping, dining, or sightseeing.
According to the City of Kissimmee’s web site”local historians have offered many variations of the origin of the city’s name. Most agree that Kissimmee is a modern spelling of a tribal word. The book Florida Indians and the Invasion from Europe by Jerald T. Milanich, links “Kissimmee” to a village of the Jororo, one of Florida’s lesser-known tribes. Historian John Hann researched Spanish documents about missions estabilshed to convert the Jororo and other groups to Christianity in the late 1600’s. Spanish records indicate that a mission was built near the tribe’s main village, also called Jororo. Another mission was called Atissimi. Milanich writes, “Hann suggests that the name...