By Cole Davis
Riverbend News
Most Floridians are aware of the fact that the Seminole may be the most well-known Indian tribe native to the state. FSU football and John Anderson music probably haven’t hurt in this regard. We know about Andrew Jackson and the Seminole War. We know about their resilience and their stubbornness to remain “undefeated.” We Floridians know much less, off-hand, about the people who lived before the Seminole in the area that is today Suwannee and the surrounding counties.
As many as 35 separate Indian tribes lived, fought over, conquered, and lost the land that is now Hamilton, Lafayette, and Suwannee counties. All of these groups contended for the area incessantly from about 1100 to 1300 AD. It was only till the Spanish arrived that the conglomeration of groups anthropologists now called the “Timucua” was given that name. This was not due to the fact that they operated as a single political unit, rather, it was because all the tribes in the area spoke the Timucua language.
Long thought to be the group of natives who encountered Juan Ponce De Leon when he landed on the northeast coast of the state, it is now believed that De Leon landed south of Timucua territory. So, that means the first European contact this group of natives had was with the man we delved into a few weeks ago, Hernando de Soto. We’ve talked about De Soto’s trail, the mystery of its whereabouts, and the natives his men encountered in the area we live in today. Those were the Timucua.
Their habits were similar to other indigenous groups native to the southeast United States and the Caribbean. Like the Creek, their agriculture depended on corn, squash and beans. The symbiotic method of growing these crops together, and on top of each other, was called “three sisters” by the natives because of how well the crops seemed to help each other out as they grew. Interestingly, their method of slowly cooking meat over an open fire, or barbacoa, was a culinary ancestor, and the linguistic ancestor, of what we enjoy today as barbecue.
Their story changed forever after St. Augustine was established. Missionaries were sent out from that city along the Spanish road to Pensacola and the Timucua were subjected to disease and warfare. The tribes were dispersed as Spanish rule gave way to British rule. By the nineteenth century, groups that splintered off from the Timucua, along with members of the Creek, Yamassee, Chickasaw and Choctaw nations formed the Seminole tribe whose name we are familiar with today. Like De Soto’s trail, the Timucua remain mysterious, and we know relatively little about that nation that lived in our region hundreds of years ago. Much of what we know has been derived from archeological digs and these artifacts are stored at UF’s Florida Museum of Natural History.