Pre 1150 AD - The Woodland and Mississippian Cultures of Eastern North America
The more "modern" American culures are split into two groups, known as the
Woodland period
(1000 BC – 1000 AD) or the later overlapping
Mississippian culture
period (800–1500 AD).
The Woodland period is defined by the development of technology, including the introduction of ceramics and (late in the Woodland period) the bow and arrow, the adoption of
agriculture,
mound-building,
and increased
sedentism.
These characteristics developed and spread separately.
Sedentism and mound building appeared along the southwest coast of Florida,
Horr's Island,
and in the lower
Mississippi River Valley,
Watson Brake,
and,
Poverty Point,
well before the end of the Archaic period.
Ceramics appeared along the coast of the southeastern United States soon after.
Agriculture spread and intensified across the Woodland area throughout the Woodland and Mississippian culture periods, but appeared in north central and northeastern Florida only after about 700 AD, and had not penetrated the middle and lower Florida peninsula at the time of first contact with Europeans in the 1500s.
1100s AD - The Timucua Tribe of North and Central Florida
The Timucua people are believed to be relatively new to North America.
The Timucua were probably the descendants of Arawak invaders, who arrived on the coast of Florida around 1150 AD.
The Timucuan language is derived from the Wareo dialect of the Arawak language of northern South America.
The immigrating people retained much of their own culture, including White Drink ceremonies, human sacrifice, and canabalism, while also taking on some of the customs of the Mississippian (Muskogean) mound-builders that they displaced throughout Florida and Georgia.
The name Timucua (pronounced "tee-MOO-qua") was first recorded by the French as Thimogona.
This is likely a misprint for Thimogoua or Tymangoua, which came from the exonym used by the northeast Saturiwa chiefdom (of what is now Jacksonville) to refer to their enemies, the Utina peoples, on the west side of the St. Johns River.
Even though both peoples spoke the same language, the Spanish began to use the term more broadly for all peoples in the north and central Florida area.
Another theory, is that their name may have been derived from the Spanish pronunciation of the Timucuan word atimoqua, which means “lord” or “chief.”
In the 1500s, they designated the area north of the Santa Fe River, and between the St. Johns and Suwannee Rivers, as the Timucua Province, which they incorporated into the mission system.
The dialect spoken in that province became known as "Timucua" (now usually known as "Timucua proper").
During the 1600s, the Province of Timucua was extended to include the area between the Suwannee River and the Aucilla River, thus extending its scope.
Eventually it became the common term for all peoples who spoke what is known as Timucuan.
[Timucuan Man]
“They be all naked and of goodly stature, mighty, faire and as well shapen… as any people in all the worlde, very gentill, curtious and of good nature… the men be of tawny color, hawke nosed and of a pleasant countenance… the women be well favored and modest…”
—
Jean Ribault, French Explorer (1560s)
In appearance the Timucuan people were described as tall and well made.
Spanish explorers were shocked at the height of the
Timucua,
being well built and standing four to six inches or more above the Spanish men who topped at 5'6" tall.
Perhaps adding to their perceived height was the practice of Timucuan men of wearing their hair in a bun on top of their heads.
Measurement of skeletons exhumed from beneath the floor of a presumed Northern Utina mission church (tentatively identified as San Martín de Timucua) at the Fig Springs mission site yielded a mean height of 5'4" for nine adult males and 5'2" for five adult women.
However, the conditions of the bones and teeth indicated that the population of the mission had been chronically stressed.
The Timucua were dark-skinned with black hair.
They went almost entirely naked except for the breechcloth, woven from moss or crafted from various animal skins, but covered their bodies with an elaborate tattooing, which were gained by deeds, usually in hunting or war.
The elaborate tattoos were created by poking holes in the skin then rubbing ash or pigments into the holes.
“The forepart of their bodies and arms they also paint with pretty devices in azure, red, and black, so well and properly, that the best painters of Europe could not improve upon it”
(Captain Jean Ribault,1564)
“Most of them are painted on the body and on the arms and thighs in beautiful patterns.
The pigments cannot be removed because they are pricked into the flesh.”
(Nicolas le Challeux, 1566)
Timucua tribes who lived inland from the sea painted their faces red, while those on the coast used black to paint their faces.
The tattoos were gained by deeds.
Children began to acquire tattoos as they took on more responsibility.
The people of higher social class had more elaborate decorations.
Chief Outina was described, in 1564 by the French artist Jacques le Moyne, as being painted red and walking alone in solitary grandeur in the middle of his warriors.
"All these chiefs and their wives paint the skin around their mouths blue and are tattooed on the arms and thighs with a certain herb which leaves an indelible color.
This process is so severe that it sometimes makes them sick for 7 or 8 days.”
(Jacques le Moyne, 1564)
Much of what we know about early Timucuan culture comes not from the Spanish, but from the French.
In 1564, French Huguenots, that were seeking refuge from religious persecution in France, founded
Fort Caroline
along the St. Johns River, in present-day Jacksonville.
Europeans encountered many groups of indigenous peoples in Florida.
After an initial conflict, the Huguenots were able to establish friendly relations with the local Timicua in the area.
Their recorded information on various groups ranges from numerous detailed reports to the mere mention of a name.
The sketches and notes made by Jaques le Moyne, one of the French settlers, are one of the few primary resources about the Timicua.
The narrative and descriptive illustrations of Le Moyne, the French Huguenot (1564), shed much light on the home life, war customs, and ceremonies.
Documented confessionals of Pareja also give us a good idea of their beliefs and religious practices.
[Timucua Tribe]
[Range of the Timucuan Tribes in Florida]
By historical times, much of Florida was occupied by Taino-speaking peoples who had migrated from the Caribbean. They like all Arawak speakers, came originally from Amazonia.
Among the better known of these Taino peoples of Florida are the Tekesta peoples, in Southern Florida, and the Timucua tribe of Northern Florida.
The Timucua from Northern Florida participated in a broad Southeastern American culture, but preserved distinctive aspects of their Caribbean origin.
The Timucua were a major group of peoples in northeastern Florida and southeastern Georgia speaking a common language.
The Timucua were the people living in the Northeast and North Central portions of
Florida
, including what would become Lake County.
At the time of European contact, Timucuan speakers occupied about 19,200 square miles in the present-day states of Florida and Georgia.
The territory occupied by Timucua speakers stretched from the Altamaha River and Cumberland Island in present-day Georgia as far south as Lake George in central Florida, and from the Atlantic Ocean west to the Aucilla River in the Florida Panhandle, though it reached the Gulf of Mexico at no more than a couple of points.
The Timucua territory was vast and consisted of different environments, including: coastal beaches, salt marshes, forests, rivers, lakes, and swamps.
The Timucua probably numbered between 200,000 and 300,000 people that were organized into various chiefdoms, which all spoke a common language.
In 1492 AD, it is estimated that there were about 100,000 - 350,000
Native Americans
living in the area now known as Florida.
Accepting the conservative estimate of 100,000, the distribution was thought as this:
Timucuans in the northeast, 40,000;
Apalachee and Pensacola in the northwest, 25,000;
Tocobaga in the west-central, 8,000;
Calusa in the southwest, 20,000;
Tequesta in the southeast, 5,000;
Jeaga, Jobe, and Ais (pronounced 'ice') in the east-central, 2,000.
There were others, as well as sub-groups, i.e., Saturiwa, Santaluces, Boca Ratones, Tocobaga, etc.
An archaeological dig in St. Augustine in 2006 revealed a Timucuan site dating back to between 1100 and 1300 AD, predating the European founding of the city by more than two centuries. Included in the discovery were pottery, with pieces from the Macon, Georgia, area, indicating an expansive trade network; and two human skeletons. It is the oldest archaeological site in the city.
Timucuan village and inhabitants depicted on a painting in the United States Capitol
Timucua Language
Much can be learned from studying the Timucua language and comparing it with other languages.
Historians have been able to trace the Timucua people to a place in the Amazon where ancestors of the groups probably lived over 4,000 years.
Researchers propose that the Timucuan language is a Caribbean creole that derives from the Arawak language group of Amazonia that is spoken by the Warao people.
However, it was later influenced by North American languages when these peoples left South America and invaded Florida.
They took on some of the linguistics of the native Muskogean tribes in southeast of North America, whom they replaced.
In this respect, the Timucuan language resembles other Taino languages, but it seems to have emerged at a somewhat earlier point in Caribbean Arawak linguistic history.
The separation of Taino and Carib languages had occurred even earlier.
Like most Native Americans, the Timucua had no known written language and the various Europeans who heard them speak attempted to write the words phonetically in their individual languages. We have a detailed record of the language today from Spanish and French missionaries, who needed to know the language to convert the Timucua to Christianity. This is quite remarkable, since many other early American languages were lost. The fact that knowledge of the Timucua language persists is a unique fact, since there have not been speakers of the language since the 1800s.
Other aspects of the Timucuan culture emerged from the study of their language.
We can learn which concepts were considered immportant enough to have more detailed words to describe them.
Some words are:
Mother: Isa
Father: Ite
Sun: Ela
Moon: Acu
River: Ibi
Fish: Cuyu
Societal Culture
There was a marked sexual distinction typical of Southeastern American culture, as they had a division of labor between males and females that affected many aspects of daily life.
In their dress, men wore a woven fiber breechcloth, sashes, and deerskin moccasins for travel, while Timucuan women instead wore skirts of Spanish moss.
In cold weather, both women and men put on feather or skin matchcoats, although worn differently.
In warm weather, young boys and girls generally wore nothing.
Men
A Timucua man's daily tasks would have consisted of making weapons for hunting and fighting, hunting large animals like deer, growing crops, participating in games, and fighting in tribal conflicts.
Women
A Timucua woman would spent their days helping with crops, hunting small game, preparing meals, tending to the huts, and taking care of children.
According to Laudonnière, “the women do all the business at home”.
While they had more daily tasks than men, their work was less intensive and dangerous.
Women also participated in ritual dances.
Both men and women shared in the agricultural duties. Le Moyne wrote that the men prepared the ground for planting, while the women made holes and dropped in the seed.
Marriage
The Timucua were monogamous, except for chiefs who would have two or three wives.
When a couple married, they would join the wife’s clan.
Timucua culture was matrilineal, meaning that they traced their ancestry through the family of their mother’s side. Even the heirs of a chief would be his nephews and nieces through his sister.
According to Le Challeux, the men “each has his own wife, and they protect marriage indeed very rigorously”.
Also, Laudonnière wrote:
"They marry, and every one hath his wife, and it is lawful for the king to have two or three, yet none but the first is honored and acknowledged for queen, and none but the children of the first wife inherit the goods and authority of the father."
The king's marriage was a great ceremony, as described by Le Moyne:
"When a king chooses to take a wife, he directs the tallest and handsomest of the daughters of the chief men to be selected.
"Then a seat is made on two stout poles and covered with the skin of some rare sort of animal, while it is set off with a structure of boughs, bending over forward so as to shade the head of the sitter.
"The queen elect having been placed on this, four strong men take up the poles and support them on their shoulders, each carrying in one hand a forked wooden stick to support the pole at halting.
"Two more walk at the sides, each carrying on a staff a round screen elegantly made, to protect the queen from the sun’s rays.
"Others go before, blowing upon trumpets made of bark, which are smaller above and larger at the farther end and having only the two orifices, one at each end.
They are hung with small oval balls of gold, silver, and brass, for the sake of a finer combination of sounds.
"Behind follow the most beautiful girls that can be found, elegantly decorated with necklaces and armlets of pearls, each carrying in her hand a basket full of choice fruits and belted below the navel and down to the thighs with the moss of certain trees, to cover their nakedness.
"After them come the bodyguards.
"With this display the queen is brought to the king in a place arranged for the purpose, where a good-sized platform is built up of round logs, having on either side a long bench where the chief men are seated.
"The king sits on the platform on the right-hand side.
The queen, who is placed on the left, is congratulated by him on her accession and told why he chose her for his first wife.
"She, with a certain modest majesty, and holding her fan in her hand, answers with as good a grace as she can.
"Then the young women form a circle without joining hands and with a costume differing from the usual one, for their hair is tied at the back of the neck and then left to flow over the shoulders and back; and they wear a broad girdle below the navel, having in front something like a purse, which hangs down so as to cover their nudity.
"To the rest of this girdle are hung ovals of gold and silver, coming down upon the thighs, so as to tinkle when they dance, while at the same time they chant the praises of the king and queen.
"In this dance they all raise and lower their hands together."
Children
Tho ancient Floridians observed taboos duriing a woman's menstruation, as well as childbirth. Several huts in a Timucua village were dedicated to women who had just given birth. Men were forbidden from making contact with women during these times nor eating food that was touched by a menstruant woman. While confined to these huts, women had to use a different fire and could not eat meat nor seafood.
Mothers cared for their children until they reached an age when they were old enough to start performing tasks themselves. When children reached the age of 11 or 12, they participated in typical adult tasks like pottery making or fishing. By the afe of 15 or 16, they were considered adult members of society.
Clan and Family Structure
Society was based on the clan system, and Pareja (1612) gives an interesting account of the intricate system of kinship relations.
Because of population decline associated with European contact, Timucua lineages segmented into a large number of clan settlements consisting of people considered to be inlaws.
If a young couple within a settlement wished to marry, to avoid incest their clan would segment so that the two parties came to represent different clans and therefore became marriageable.
Social segmentation led to a large number of small lineages and clans, which greatly weakened the Timucua.
To achieve the solidarity needed for defense against the white invaders, lineages would consolidate into larger lineages by means of exogenous marriage bonds.
The clans were grouped into phratries, usually bearing animal names, and certain chiefships or functions seem to have been hereditary in certain clans.
This system was retained even by the mission converts.
Religion
Little is known of the Timucuan religion, since they practiced much of it in secret and what was apparent was destroyed by the French and Spanish missionaries, as they converted to Christianity.
They worshipped primarily the sun and the moon, but they had other "gods" as well.
In a community, there would be wise men who functioned as priests, along with shamans who were able to mediate supernatural powers to serve the needs of the community.
The Timucuan shaman, through a trance was able to prophesy, diagnose a disease, locate stolen objects, and foretell the weather.
Human sacrifice was a regular part of their religious rituals.
The victims were often infants belonging to their own tribe.
A shaman of a tribe held more religious power than others, while the chief held the most religious power of all.
Shamans were said to predict the future, perform a blessing, put a curse upon someone, cure people, and even manipulate the weather.
While today we have seperated medicine from religion, many cultures of the past considered them to be connected.
This belief was also shared by the Timucua.
Shamans usually performed a double duty as priest and doctor or herbalist.
They would use the local plants to treat and heal people with illnesses.
The shamans would also perform rituals, to hopefully please the gods, in order to cure sick people.
The ritual involved removing evil from the body of the ill person, since the Timucua believed that evil was the cause of a person's sickness.
They placed white feathers, arrows, or deerskin in front of the sick person in order to purify them.
They would make offerings to the gods using the leaves of the bay plant.
They practiced quarantines as sick people had to use a separate fire and eat separate foods from those who were not sick.
Shamans would be involved in almost every part of life, including: planting crops and childbirth.
They would also perform blessings over simple tasks like finding a new place to fish or grinding maize into flour.
Shamans were extremely important for hunting, due to the dangers involved.
During a hunt, the shaman would speak prayers to make sure that the men did not do anything that would bring harm to the village.
The Timucua were very superstitious.
They thought that if a Timucua man ate the meat of a deer, that he shot himself, it could mean cause the man to never kill another deer again.
"The subjects of the Chief Outina were accustomed every year, a little before their spring – that is, in the end of February – to take the skin of the largest stag they could get, keeping the horns on it; to stuff it full of all the choicest sorts of roots that grow among them, and to hang long wreaths or garlands of the best fruits on the horns, neck, and other parta of the body.
Thus decorated, they carried it, with music and songs, to a very large and splendid level space, where they set it up on a very high tree, with the head and breast toward the sunrise.
They then offered prayers to the sun, that he would cause to grow on their lands good things such as those offered him.
The chief, with his sorcerer, stands nearest the tree and offers the prayer; the common people, placed at a distance, make responses.
Then the chief and all the rest, saluting the sun, depart, leaving the deer’s hide there until the next year.
This ceremony they repeat annually."
- Le Moyne, Narrative, p. 13 (ill.).
The chiefs were held in such high opinion that it resulted in a kind of "chief cult" which was accompanied by human sacrifice:
"Their custom is to offer up the first-born son to the chief. When the day for the sacrifice is notified to the chief, he proceeds to a place set apart for the purpose, where there is a bench for him, on which he takes his seat.
In the middle of the area before him is a wooden stump two feet high, and as many thick, before which the mother sits on her heels, with her face covered in her hands, lamenting the loss of her child.
The principal one of her female relatives or friends now offers the child to the chief in worship, after which the women who have accompanied the mother form a circle, and dance around with demonstrations of joy, but without joining hands."
She who holds the child goes and dances in the middle, singing some praises of the chief.
Meanwhile, six Indians, chosen for the purpose, take their stand apart in a certain place in the open area; and midway among them the sacrificing officer, who is decorated with a sort of magnificence, and holds a club.
The ceremonies being through, the sacrificer takes the child, and slays it in honor of the chief, before them all, upon the wooden stump. The offering was on one occasion performed in our presence."
- Le Moyne, Narrative, p. 13.
Politics and Warfare
An engraving depicting Timucua men participating in archery competition.
- Theodore de Bry
The tribe itself was made up of 30 to 35 chiefdoms, speaking several different dialects of the Timucuan language.
Each chiefdom had hundreds of people in assorted villages within its purview.
While alliances and confederacies arose between the chiefdoms from time to time, the Timucua were never organized into a single political unit.
Early every morning the council in a settlement would meet to discuss the affairs of the chiefdom, smoke, and sometimes participate in games.
Important council meetings opened with a "White Drink" ceremony that helped purify the men , so that they would find it easier to interact.
The drink was actually black in color, but was also know as "white drink", because of it was considered to have purifying properties.
The drink is often referred to as "black" or "white" interchangeably.
This White Drink was a highly caffeinated Cassina tea, that was brewed from the leaves of the local yaupon holly tree.
Its main constituent was caffeine, and it was drunk hot like coffee to focus thought and enhance intellectual powers.
This drink was integral to most Timucua rituals and hunts.
The drink was posited to have an effect of purification, as those who consumed it often vomited immediately.
It was related to the maté drink of Central and South America and is thought to perhaps have been brought over by the Arawak-speaking peoples that migrated from Amazonia, from which the Timucua were believed to have descended.
During ceremonies, a pipe would be lit and smoke blown in the four cardinal directions by one person after another according to their status.
The Timucua adopted a variation of the North American game of chunkey to resolve a judicial dispute.
This involved using beautifully fashioned concave disks of stone about 45 centimeters in diameter.
When rolled, the stone takes an irregular path, and each player throws a long pole toward the point they think the stone will eventually stop.
The object is to throw just before you think the stone will fall over.
The pre-Columbian era was likely marked by regular small tribal wars with neighbors.
The Timucua chiefdoms sometimes formed loose political alliances, but did not operate as a single political unit.
Scalping and mutilation of the dead were universally practiced and there is evidence also of cannibalism.
One of the engravings based on Jacques le Moyne's drawings, depicting Athore, son of the Timucuan chief Saturiwa, showing René Laudonnière a monument placed by Jean Ribault.
Timucua Village
[Le Moyne Print - A Fortified Village]
The Timucua were semi-nomadic, so during the mild Fall and Winter months, the Timucua lived in the inland forests. Timucua settlements seem to have been generally quite small.
It is thought that a Timucua settlement would have consisted of a small number of round timber houses with palmetto palm thatched roofs arranged in a semi-circle around a central plaza equiped with a large post for the traditional Timucua games.
On some larger settlements, there would have been an artificial mound for a temple, another for the chief's residence, and a large “townhouse” (sometimes incorrectly described as a communal dwelling) for tribal gatherings in the center of the public square.
These towns were compactly built with a stockade of tall wooden poles around their villages for protection against attack.
Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve and Fort Caroline National Memorial
Hunting and Fishing
The Timucua relied heavily on fresh and salt water marine animals.
Many tribes would migrate to the cooler seashores during the hot summers.
Here they would fish and collect oysters and shellfish.
The Timucua were skilled at building canoes that were used for fishing.
Fish and seafood, as a primary source of protein, were incredibly important to the Timucua diet.
Fish were filleted and dried or boiled.
Fat from the fish was also used as an oil in sauces or as a kind of butter.
The evidence of their culture still exists today, as oyster shells and other kinds of food trash were stacked generation after generation in the same mounds, known as shell middens, still found around Florida’s coastal areas.
They offer archaeologists important information about the diet of the Timucua.
They hunted aligators (by thrusting a long pole down their throats), sea cows (manatees), and occasional nearby whales.
Timucuans also hunted game, including deer, bear, turkey, and possibly even eastern bison.
Meat was either boiled in a broth with nuts or cooked and dried on a wooden rack over a fire, called a barbacoa, from which derives the English word "barbecue".
Hunting was a dangerous task, but was worth it as the animal yielded a lot of meat and their pelts were highly valued.
Animal bones were also used as weapons or other types of tools, so that every part of the animal was used in wome way.
Due to a later dependency on British trade, much of Florida's deer population was destroyed by the Natives for the deerskin needed to exchange for tools, cloth, and ammunition.
After the establishment of Spanish missions between 1595–1620, the Timucua were introduced to cattle, chickens, and hogs that were brought over by early Spanish exlporers.
Farming Methods of The Timucua
The Timucua were agricultural, though they depended more on game, fish, oysters, and wild fruits, then other northern cultures.
These early American farmers used "slash and burn" techniques, which is a common method of clearing the land by burning the trees and brush to add nutrients back into the soil. The soil would be toiled thus mixing in the nitrates from the wood ash, which makes an effective fertilizer. Then they prepared the soil with hoes and the women planted seeds with dibble sticks.
Guards stood in wooden watchtowers to protect the crops from birds and foraging animals.
Apparently, two crops were planted annually, and they practiced field and crop rotation.
A common practice in Eastern North America was to grow what were known as the three sisters: maize (corn), beans, and squash.
The corn stalk would provide a support structure for the vines of the bean plants, and the squash would provide ground cover to deter weed growth.
Corn was ground into flour and used to make corn fritters.
The women would also gather wild fruits, palm berries, acorns, and nuts
The people of Florida also cultivated a small low growing palm, known as the
Zamia or Koonti plant and harvesting the root for grinding into bread flour.
They also cultivated the tobacco that they needed for religious ceremonies .
Cultigens were probably brought into Florida from the North to supplement or displace the traditional Taino dependence on marine resources in the South.
The harvest was dried and stored in stone warehouses to protect it from spoilage and insects.
The Timicua were known to utilize a communal food storage system, which suggests crop surpluses were common.
Their crops were stored in granaries to protect them from vermin and the elements.
Archaeological evidence suggests a quite mature agricultural trade economy among the Apalachee and Timucua of northern Florida based on Indian corn, beans, squash, and vegetables.
In fact, de Soto's four-year expedition through "La Florida" could not have taken place without their appropriation of enormous amounts of food from local populations.
After the establishment of Spanish missions between 1595–1620, the Timucua were introduced to popular European crops, including: barley, cabbage, cucumbers, figs, garbanzo beans, garlic, European grapes, European greens, hazelnuts, various herbs, lettuce, melons, oranges, peas, peaches, pomegranates, sugar cane, sweet potatoes, watermelons, and wheat.
The native corn became a traded item and was exported to other Spanish colonies.
[Timucua Harvest Ceremonies]
The Spanish Slave Trade and Plunderers
It is believed, by some, that the Spanish slavers were the first Europeans to arrive in the area of Florida.
Early in the 1500s, Spanish pillagers penetrated Florida in search of precious metal and slaves.
Evidence from maps show that, maybe as early as 1502, the Spanish slave traders in Cuba already knew of the existence of the land of Florida and likely sailed there in order to capture and enslave the native tribes and take them back to Cuba.
The
Spanish sent several exploration expeditions through the Central Florida area during the first half of the 1500s.
Their purpose was primarily to look for gold and other exploitable natural resources.
Most of their impact fell on the Timucua.
The Timucua may have been the first American natives to see the landing of Juan Ponce de León near St. Augustine in 1513.
However, this notion is up for debate, as some historians now agree that the Ponce de León landing point was more likely much further south in Ais territory, near what is today Melbourne Beach.
If so, Timucuan contact with that particular expedition was unlikely.
Later, in 1528, Pánfilo de Narváez's expedition landed near Tampa in order to conquer the Timucua, but he did not find the precious metal he expected and also food supplies there were inadequate.
Narvaez led his small army along the western fringes of the Timucua territory from Tampa bay northward to explore the country of the Apalachee and beyond.
Although they, too, lacked gold, he appropriated sufficient grain from them to keep his band alive.
However, facing the stiff resistence of the Apalachee, he had to abandon any idea of a permanent settlement, and his band continued on westward into what is now Texas and eventually reached New Spain (Mexico).
Of the 260 who started out, only three survived.
Unfortunately their account is sketchy, but they spoke of an arid and poor land.
In 1539, Hernando de Soto, who had been appointed Governor of Cuba and La Florida.
Hernando de Soto went over nearly the same route as Narváez, as he landed with 622 men in Tampa Bay.
He found the Americans living in a small town of timber houses with thatched roofs.
The chief's house was near the beach on a high defensive mound, and opposite to it was a temple surmounted by a wooden bird with gilded eyes.
He was in a search for wealth and opportunities for colonization.
Having not found any significant wealth in the area of Tampa Bay, de Soto attacked the surrounding region in order to rob, kill and enslave them as he led his army through the western parts of Timucua territory.
On the east coast of Florida, a silversmith was allegedly spared by Natives to fashion silver articles for his captors that they salvaged from shipwrecks.
A proposed route for the first leg of the de Soto Expedition, based on Charles M. Hudson's Map
They visited a series of villages of the Ocale, Potano, Northern Utina, and Yustaga ranches of the Timucua on his way to the Apalachee domain
(see list of sites and peoples visited by the Hernando de Soto Expedition).
De Soto's historians mentioning some 20 tribal or local names within the region, including Yustaga and Potano.
People often abandoned their settlements at his approach.
Like de Narváez before him, de Soto eventually marched north in the search for greater amounts of food and wealth.
His army seized the food stored in the villages, forced women into concubinage, and forced men and boys to serve as guides and bearers.
The army fought two battles with Timucua groups, resulting in heavy Timucua casualties.
The Timucua were not as warlike as the Apalachee to the North or the Calusa state of Arawak speakers to the South, although they were certainly capable warriors.
They preferred to find ways to avoid overt conflict.
For example, they would place the head of an enemy on a post outside public buildings or hang his limbs from trees to warn off possible enemies.
Older male captives tended to fare poorly, as sacrificial killings were common place, but women and children were adopted and came to lead normal lives.
De Soto was in a hurry to reach the Apalachee domain, where he expected to find gold and sufficient food to support his army through the winter, so he did not linger in Timucua territory.
De Soto eventually reached the large settlement of Cofachiqui (in modern Georgia), led by a female chieftain who greeted him in a shaded canoe.
In order to avoid disaster, she ordered that all available white and yellow metal be given to de Soto.
This meant copper and the mica sheets which artisans fashioned into ornaments.
However, her efforts were in vain, because there were no local pearls, de Soto's men looted the burial ground to seize 158 kg of the freshwater pearls that were buried there and proceeded to scalp and kill everyone they could (scalping was practiced in early Europe by the Alemani and Franks as a way to destroy a person's charisma).
Eventually, de Soto gave up on Florida because of its lack of gold and the Apalachee were quite effective in their own military defense.
They were excellent fort builders and constantly harassed his troop.
His negative reports discouraged further attacks against the chiefdoms in Florida until the mid-1600s.
1562 - French Huguenots
Between 1562 to 1564, the French Huguenots under the leadership of Ribault and Laudonnière attempted to form settlements at the mouth of the St John River.
In 1562, as the Spanish were unsuccessful in establishing any viable settlements or defensive forts in the Southeast portion of North America, the French Hugeuenots were able to attempt their own claiming of the land.
However, they were no more successful than the Spanish. The Timucua people resisted this conquest attempt just as effectively as they had resisted being colonized by the Spanish.
Again in 1564, the French Huguenots made an atttempt at settlement. Led by René Goulaine de Laudonnière they founded Fort Caroline in present-day Jacksonville and attempted to establish further settlements along the St. Johns River.
After initial conflict, the Huguenots were able to establish friendly relations with the local natives in the area, primarily the Timucua under the cacique Saturiwa.
They explored the interior along the stream and became acquainted with the tribes of Saturiba (Satouiroua) and Timucua (Thimagoa), as well as with the Potano (Potanou) and the Yustaga (Hostaqua) that had already been visited by De Soto.
One Frenchman, Jacques le Moyne de Morgues, was able to create sketches of the Timucuans which have been of enormous interest to ethnographers studying the culture.
The Huguenots tried to convert the Timucuans to Christianity. Though they were unsuccessful and were converted themselves to the habit of tobacco smoking.
After the establishment of Fort Caroline, the French Huguenots came in contact with the Utina.
On one occasion they sent a contingent to help them to defeat the neighboring Potano.
A missionary letter dated to 1602 estimates the Utina population as 1,500, in this case thought to be an obvious understatement.
This tribe, known as the Utina or Timucua, is noteworthy for having given its name to the peoples of the Timucuan or Timuquanan stock now regarded as part of the Muskogean family, and as having been, next perhaps to the Potano, the most powerful tribe of this southeast American group.
In the following year, 1565, the Spaniards under the command of Pedro Menéndez de Avilés caught the Huguenots in a surprise attack and ransacked Fort Caroline, killing everyone but 50 women and children and 26 escapees.
The Spanish killed everyone there who did not swear they were Catholic.
Despite thei peaceful relations, the Timucuan were persuaded to join in the Spanish attack upon the Huguenots at Fort Caroline.
The rest of the French had been shipwrecked off the coast and picked up by the Spanish, who executed all but 20 of them.
This brought all French settlements in Florida to an abrupt end.
1560s - St. Augustine and the Spanish Catholic Mission System
Pedro Menéndez de Avilés was a Spanish admiral and explorer from the region of Asturias, Spain.
He is remembered for planning the first regular
trans-oceanic convoys.
He was welcomed by the chief of the Timucua village of Seloy, where he stayed for a year.
In 1565, after defeating the French and removing them from La Florida, the Spanish, under Avilés leadership then founded
St. Augustine as their capital and began the oldest continuously inhabited European established settlement in North America.
The history of the Timucua changed forever after the Spanish city of St. Augustine became the principal center of the Spanish Catholic mission system that spread mostly through the land of the Timucua throughout northeastern Florida.
Within a few years, the Spanish garrisons were established and missionaries founded missions in each main town of the Timucuan chiefdoms, first under the Jesuits and later under the Franciscans.
Many of the indigenous peoples were forced into the system of
Spanish Catholic Missions in Florida.
Those that would not convert and join the system "willingly" were usually murdered or taken as slaves by the Spanish.
Other indigenous groups had sporadic contact with the Spanish without being brought into the mission system, but many of the peoples are known only from mention of their names in historical accounts.
All of the known Eastern Timucua tribes were incorporated into the Spanish mission system.
However, even during their time in the mission system, the Acuera appear to have maintained a "parallel" religious system, with their traditional shamans practicing openly among their Christianized tribesmen.
The Acuera lived along the Ocklawaha River.
After the Timucuan Rebellion of 1656, the Acuera left the mission system and appear to have remained in their traditional territory, as they maintained their traditional religious and cultural practices.
They are the only known Timucuan chiefdom to have successfully escaped the mission system, remain in their original territory, and retain much of their traditional culture and religious practices.
In spite of one or two revolts, in which several missionaries lost their lives, the Timucuan tribes in general, particularly along the Eastern coast, accepted Christianity and civilization and became the allies of the Spaniards.
The most noted of the missionaries was Father Francisco Pareja, who arrived in 1594.
After 16 years of successful work, he retired to the City of Mexico, where he wrote a Timucua grammar, dictionary, and several devotional works.
These, along with earlier French narratives, are the source of practically all that is known of the language, customs, beliefs, and organization of the Timucuan tribes.
Fate of the Timucua
By 1595, the Timucua population was estimated to have been greatly reduced from 200,000 to 50,000 and only thirteen of the 35 chiefdoms remained.
Due to the impact of Spanish colonizers, along with the immigration of new peoples from the North, such as the Creek, not much of the original culture survived among the Timucuan people.
In the early 1600s, Spanish explorers led by Alvaro Mexia encountered the Timucuan village of Nocoroco (now known as Tomoka State Park, in Ormond Beach).
The village was located along the river, making it a prime spot for fishing, which was the Timucuan’s main source of food.
In 1699, the Quaker Dickenson visited several of the mission settlements and noted the great contrast between the Christian Indians and the savage tribes of the southern peninsula among whom he had been a captive.
Many of the Timucua died from exposure to Eurasian infectious diseases, such as smallpox and measles, to which they had no immunity. Others died from warfare with both the Spanish slavers and colonizers, English raiders from the Carolinas, and immigrating northern tribes. By 1700, the population of the tribe had been reduced to an estimated 1,000.
Around 1703, the British began a series of invasions.
With the help of their "savage" Native mercenaries, the Creek, Catawba, and Yuchi, they destroyed the Spanish mission system.
The British had been more successful in establishing a permanent presence in North America than either the Spanish or French.
One reason for the British success was because they brought in cheap manufactured goods such as utensils and tools, rum, and guns.
They also had greater self-sufficiency by reason of their larger numbers.
In exchange for these goods, the British took deer skins and slaves.
This trade eventually made the southeastern tribes dependent on the British for tools, cloth, and ammunition, as they lost their land to an encroaching agricultural economy.
The British traders in Charleston, South Carolina gave guns to the Northern tribes in order for them to launch their slave raids. These raids by the Creek and other northern tribes were particularly successful against the Florida mission Indians, because they had lost any ability to defend theselves.
Hundreds of people were killed or carried off into slavery by the invading tribes.
The surviving remnant took refuge close to the walls of St. Augustine.
However, with the decline of the Spanish power in North America, and the imigration of the Creeks and Seminole, the native Timucua and colonizing Spanish populations rapidly declined.
This opened the way for immigration from the North by other Native Americans who eventualy prevailed in Florida and came to be known as the Seminoles.
A census in 1711 found 142 Timucua-speakers living in four villages under Spanish protection.
Another census in 1717 found 256 people in three villages where Timucua was the language of the majority, although there were a few inhabitants with a different native language.
The population of the Timucua villages was 167 in 1726.
By 1759 the Timucua under Spanish protection and control numbered just six adults and five half-Timucua children.
In 1763, following the Seven Years' War, when Spain ceded Florida to Great Britain, the Spanish took the less than 100 Timucua and other natives mainly to Cuba and New Spain (Mexico).
Research is underway in Cuba to discover if any Timucua descendants exist there. Some historians believe a small group of Timucua may have stayed behind in Florida or Georgia and possibly assimilated into other groups such as the Seminoles.
By the late 1700s, it is thought that all of the indigenous peoples of Florida were gone, having been replaced by the immigrating Seminole tribe, which was already forming as a unique tribe in the early 1700s.
Today there survive a small group of people in Florida who are of Timucuan heritage who would like to unite on that basis, even though they have lost much of their language and culture. Peoples of Taino descent, such as the Timucua, are trying to recover as much of their cultural heritage as they can and gain the tribal recognition necessary to win some control over their circumstances.
Many Timucua artifacts are stored at the Florida Museum of Natural History, at the University of Florida, and other museums.
More Information:
Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve
12713 Fort Caroline Road, Jacksonville, Florida 32225
[Contributors: Jason Brown]