In the spring of 1774, William Bartram, a naturalist, artist, and author of Travels, sailed past Palatka, and the Seminoles called him “Puc-Puggy,” meaning “Flower Hunter.” He gathered plant specimens on his visits to Florida, and his book included illustrations of flowers, animals, and people he encountered. On a second trip to the region in the fall of 1774, he rode a Seminole horse along Indian hunting tracks to the same Indian town he had passed in spring, where he enjoyed a feast of watermelons and oranges on the riverfront of Palatka. He wrote that he and his party were received and entertained friendlily by the Indians, with the village chief conducting them to a grand, airy pavilion in the center of the village, a structure known as a chickee that the Seminole still build in Florida today. Bartram respected the native people he met, and when he sailed past a Seminole settlement on the riverfront of what is now Palatka, he observed young people fishing and shooting frogs with bows and arrows, little children running off at his approach, older youth smiling and calling to him, and elderly people outside their dwellings on the shore; he said they were civil and appeared happy in their situation.