Florida's Early Residents
Who were the first people to live in Florida?
Some people today think that the Seminoles have lived in Florida since antiquity. However, this is not exactly true. While they may have remnants of genetic ties to a few of the early peoples, there were several diverse cultures throughout Florida, before the creation of the Seminole culture in the late 1700s.
These earlier cultures were as distinct as the environments of Florida. They were often seperated into forest, freshwater (lakes and rivers), and ocean dwellers. However, some tribes migrated seasonally among all of them.
There are also several distinct time periods, when certain cultures thrived and took over others: Paleo, Archaic, Transitional, Woodland and Mississippian (Mound Builders), Timucua (Carribean), and Seminole.
[Evolution of Projectile Points in North America]
(Note: While the following dates are currently accepted by many scientists, the science and technology behind the dating of pre-historic sites and artifacts is constantly shifting and changing. Dates should be thought of more as a way to reference a basic before and after timeline; they should not be considered as concrete facts.)
Scientists and Historians rarely agree, so the main dating periods for the early Floridians are as follows:
By analyzing stone artifacts,
Ripley Bullen divided pre-Archaic Florida into four periods, Early Paleo-Indian (10,000-9,000 BC), Late Paleo-Indian (9,000-8,000 BC), Dalton Early (8,000-7,000 BC), and Dalton Late (7,000-6,000 BC).
However, Barbara Purdy defined a simpler sequence, Paleo Indian (10,000-8,000 BC, equivalent to Bullen's Early and Late Paleo-Indian) and Late Paleo (8,000-7,000 BC, equivalent to Bullen's Dalton Early).
Jerald Milanich places the end of the Paleo-Indian period at about 7,500 BC.
More recent discoveries have pushed the beginning of the Paleo-Indian period in Florida to an earlier date.
The Clovis Culture has been considered to be the oldest Paleo culture to appear in Western North America.
However, even earlier dated material from the Paleo period in Florida is from the Page-Ladson site, where points resembling the pre-Clovis points found at Cactus Hill, Virginia have been recovered from deposits (dated to 12,638-12,295 BC), about 1,500 years before the appearance of the Clovis culture.
Florida Artifacts
The first people arrived in Florida before the extinction of the Pleistocene megafauna. Human remains and artifacts have been found in association with the remains of Pleistocene animals at a number of Florida locations.
A carved bone depicting a mammoth was found near the site of the
Vero Man
(skeletal remains found at Vero Beach).
Other Early Native American Archaeological Discoveries in Florida:
Melbourne Bone Bed
Page-Ladson
Little Salt Spring
Cowhouse Creek
Cutler Fossil Site
Devil's Den
Harney Flats
Helen Brazes Site
Melbourne
Nalcrest
Polk County Canoe
Silver Springs
Timucuan Historic Preserve
Warm Mineral Springs
Bison antiquus skull with an embedded projectile point has been found in the
Wacissa River
Early Tribal Cultures in Lake County
The area of Lake County was some of the oldest inhabited land in Florida. Even thousands of years ago the area's mild weather, excellent growing conditions, and abundance of fish and game, drew the first peoples to call this region their home. Evidence of their presence has been found throughout Lake County. There are over one thousand identified archeological sites in Lake County.
In the 1880s, artifacts were discovered within Native American Mounds along Lake Emma in Villa City.
[c. 1885-1895 Villa City Mound Excavation]
During trips to Florida in the late 1800s and early 1900s, archaeologist Clarence Bloomfield Moore discovered and collected artifacts in Villa City. He was an early expert in Native American archeology. Some of these artifacts made it into the Smithsonian Institute.
Paleo People of Florida
Paleo comes from the Greek word meaning old or ancient. The term is generally used to describe pre-historic cultures of whom there is no written record.
Florida at the end of the Pleistocene (Ice Age) was very different from what it is today.
Due to the vast amount of water that was frozen in ice sheets during the last glacial period, the sea level was at least 330 feet lower than current levels.
The area of Florida had almost twice as much land area and the water table was much lower.
This is why some early Native American sites have been found under modern ocean waters.
Artifacts have also been found at sites in flooded river valleys as much as 17 feet under the Gulf of Mexico.
Additional suspected sites have been identified up to 20 miles offshore under 38 feet of water.
The climate was also cooler and drier.
There were few rivers or springs in Florida.
The few water sources that existed were in the interior of Florida where rain-fed lakes and water holes were located over relatively impervious deposits of
marl soil, or deep sink holes partially filled by springs.
Animals and humans would have congregated at these sparse water holes to drink.
This concentration of animals would have also attracted the early paleo hunters.
Many paleo artifacts and animal bones with butchering marks have been found in Florida rivers.
Florida has archaeological evidence of some of the earliest settlements in North America.
Discoveries from Florida sink holes may date from the end of the Wisconson glaciation.
Discoveries of organic materials are rare in Florida.
Due to the warm, wet climate and often acidic soils, they are usually found only where the material has remained continuously under water.
However, archaeologists have found bones that show direct evidence that the Paleo people of Florida hunted mammoths, mastodons, Bison antiquus, and giant tortoises.
The bones of other large and small animals, including ground sloths, tapirs, horses, camelids, deer, fish, turtles, shellfish, snakes, raccoons, opossums, and muskrats are associated with these sites.
Also due to the lack of organic materials, stone tools are often the only clues to dating prehistoric sites without ceramics in Florida. Large projectile points, which are often called "arrowheads", were actually spear points. A slender arrow shaft could not support the weight of such a heavy tip.
These smaller
projectile points, known as true arrowheads, are small and narrow. These began to appear during the Woodland period, after larger mammals began to disappear and hunters had to rely on smaller prey. This also coincided with the invention or adoption of the bow as the primary hunting tool in the Americas.
Some of these small arrowheads were even specifically designed to go through water for fishing.
Both the spear and arrowhead projectile points have distinctive forms that can be fairly reliably assigned to specific time periods, as technology and styles changed.
[Evolution of Projectile Points in North America]
During the early Paleo period in Florida, before 8,000 BC, projectile points used in Florida included:
Beaver Lake, Clovis
Folsom-like
Simpson
Suwannee
Tallahassee
Santa Fe points
Simpson and Suwannee are the most common early Paleo points found in Florida.
Points used in the late Paleo period, 8000-7000 BC:
Bolen
Greenbriar
Hardaway Side-Notched
Nuckolls
Dalton
Marianna
The Bolen point being the most commonly found.
Most projectile points associated with early Paleo peoples have been found in rivers. However, projectile points of the late Paleo period, particularly Bolen points, are often found on dry land sites, as well as in rivers.
Paleo peoples in Florida used a large variety of stone tools besides projectile points.
These tools include blades, scrapers,
spokeshaves,
gravers,
gouges, and
bola stones.
Some of the tools, such as the Hendrix scraper of the early Paleo period, and the Edgefield scraper of the late Paleo period, are distinctive enough to aid in dating deposits.
A few underwater sites in Florida have yielded Paleo artifacts of ivory, bone, antler, shell, and wood.
Other tools include an eyed needle made from bone, double pointed bone pins, part of a
mortar carved from an oak log, and a non-returning boomerang or
throwing stick made from oak.
The Archaic Period in Florida
The
Archaic period in Florida is claimed to have lasted from 7500 or 7000 BC until about 500 BC.
Bullen divided this period into the Dalton Late, Early Pre-ceramic Archaic, Middle Pre-ceramic Archaic, Late Pre-ceramic Archaic, Orange, and Florida Transitional periods.
Purdy divided it into a Preceramic Archaic period and an Early Ceramic period.
Milanich refers to Early (7500-5000 BC), Middle (5000-3000 BC), and Late (3000-500 BC) Archaic periods in Florida.
Why did the people stop being nomadic
and start farming?
By 4,000 BC, the rising temperatures, following the cooling period resulting from the rapid deglaciation of the Younger Dryas event, allowed the Paleo peoples of Florida to end their nomadic lifestyle and begin living in villages along the St. Johns River year-round. This led to what is known as sedentism - the practice of living in one place for extended periods of time. The Younger Dryas Event also led to rising sea levels, causing Florida to lose much of its land mass under the ocean and changed much of Florida's water based inland environments.
Several cultures become distinguishable in Florida in the middle to late
Archaic period.
In northeast Florida, the pre-ceramic
Mount Taylor period
(5000-2000 BC) was followed by the ceramic
Orange culture
(2300-500 BC).
Ceramics appeared along the coast of the southeastern United States and by 2,000 BC, the sedentary residents of Volusia began creating ceramics by fashioning clay pottery made sturdy by using the plant fiber of Spanish moss.
Emerging cultures, that stretched along the eastern coast from southeastern Canada all the way to Florida, that followed the Archaic period are generally placed in the Woodland period (1000 BC – 1000 AD) or the later 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 (living in one place). 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.
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.
What led to the end of these people
and the emmergence of a new tribe
that took over most of Florida?
Read more about the Timucua next to find out!