Chickee
Chikee or Chickee ("house" in the
supported by posts, with a raised floor, a thatched roof and open sides. Chickees are also known as chickee huts, stilt houses, or platform dwellings. The chickee style of architecture—Modern use
Chickees continue to be used by Native American villages of the Miccosukee in the Everglades.[3] Some upscale homes in southern Florida feature chickee-inspired buildings as garden or poolside structures. A few restaurants in Florida still use this indigenous design to attract visitors.
Chickees are also used in backcountry areas of Everglades National Park including along the Everglades Wilderness Waterway where mangroves or wetlands prevent camping on dry land. Made and maintained primarily for backcountry campers, these wooden structures stand several feet above the water and can usually accommodate four to five campers. These structures have portable restrooms. Some "double chickees" are linked by a walkway and can accommodate eight to ten people. There are about eight to ten chickees in one village. Chickees are very helpful, especially in the rain. Similar structures, while not referred to as chickees, are present further north, in the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge in southern Georgia.
See also
- Palapa – a structure with thatched roof and open sides in Mexico
Notes
- ^ Seminole Tribe of Florida - Chickee Archived 2012-02-04 at the Wayback Machine, accessed August 14, 2009
- ^ Austin, Daniel W. (1997). "The Glades Indians and the Plants they Used. Ethnobotany of an Extinct Culture." The Palmetto, 17(2):7 -11.[1] Archived 2006-05-25 at the Wayback Machine, accessed August 30, 2012
- ^ Lundin, Leigh (August 2006). "Swamped". Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine (8). New York. Archived from the original on 2010-11-20. Retrieved 2010-02-02.