Early Native American Tribes in Florida
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 Natives 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.
During trips to Florida in the late 1800s and early 1900s, 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-Indigenous People of Florida and 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
Florida at the end of the Pleistocene 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 Native American hunters.
Many Paleo-indigenous 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-indigenous 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.
The slender arrow could not support the weight of such a heavy tip.
True arrowheads are small and narrow.
Some were even specifically designed to go through water for fishing.
These smaller projectile points used for arrows, are beleived to appear much later, along with the invention of the bow.
Both of these projectile points have distinctive forms that can be fairly reliably assigned to specific time periods, as technology and styles changed.
The Clovis Culture has been considered to be the oldest culture to appear in Western North America.
However, the earliest dated material from the Paleo-Indian 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.
Scientists and Historians rarely agree, but 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).
Later discoveries have pushed the beginning of the Paleo-Indian period in Florida to an earlier date.
Jerald Milanich places the end of the Paleo-Indian period at about 7,500 BC.
During the early Paleo-Indian 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-Indian points found in Florida.
Points used in the late Paleo-Indian 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-Indians have been found in rivers. However, projectile points of the late Paleo-Indian period, particularly Bolen points, are often found on dry land sites, as well as in rivers.
Paleo-Indians 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 Paleoindian period, and the Edgefield scraper of the late Paleoindian period, are distinctive enough to aid in dating deposits.
A few underwater sites in Florida have yielded Paleoindian 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 is cclaimed 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.
By 4,000 BC, after a global warming trend, the Paleo-Indians were living in villages year-round along the St. Johns River.
By 2,000 BC, these Volusia residents were fashioning clay pottery made sturdy by using the plant fiber of Spanish moss.
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).
Pre-historic sites and cultures in the eastern United States and southeastern Canada 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.
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.
[Contributors: Jason Brown]