Native American

About 1,000 years ago, agricultural communities were established in what would become the Southeastern and Midwestern United States, and what is called the Mississippian culture flourished.

Keith Ashley is an archaeologist and research coordinator at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville. Ashley’s research is demonstrating a link between Native Floridians and the thriving Mississippian culture.

“Mississippian World is a term that we’ve kind of superimposed as archaeologists,” says Ashley. “Basically these were Chieftain level groups, meaning that they had institutionalized inequality. They had chiefs who controlled more than one village. They were involved in intensive maize agriculture. They were involved in these far flung trade and exchange networks, and they had these large mound complexes with platform mounds that probably were the platforms for chiefly residence.”

On maps of the Mississippian World, peninsular Florida is excluded. New archaeological evidence uncovered by Ashley demonstrates that Native Americans living in Northeast Florida were part of an extensive trade network that extended to present day St. Louis.

“The Mississippian World’s delineating groups were intensive maize agriculturalists, and the groups here weren’t,” says Ashley. “But they were clearly involved in interaction networks and trade with them.”

In addition to growing maize, or corn, the Mississippian cultures were known for their construction of platform mounds, on which they would build houses, towns, temples, and burial buildings. The largest chiefdom of the Mississippian World was at a ceremonial complex at Cahokia, located near present day Collinsville, Illinois, across the Mississippi River from St. Louis, Missouri.

“Cahokia probably sprang up about 1000 AD, and then by about 1250 it’s in decline and by 1300 it’s gone,” says Ashley. “In its wake, what you see are a lot of other rival chiefdoms that sprout up. You see these chiefdoms rise and fall throughout the area. Sometimes they group together, other times they just break down, so it’s a really dynamic landscape.”

Ashley says that the St. Johns culture of Northeast Florida roughly coincides with the Mississippian World. The St. Johns Period begins about 500 AD, and continues until European contact, 1,000 years later.

“They’re fishers, collectors, hunters,” says Ashley. “The people in Northeastern Florida really gravitate to the Mississippian interaction network and become part of it. I think they have a resource that people in the landlocked areas of Alabama, Georgia, and Missouri want, and that’s shell.”

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, Clarence B. Moore documented some significant archaeological sites in Florida. Moore did much of his work in the Jacksonville area, excavating the Grant Mound and the Shields Mound, where he uncovered some spectacular artifacts. Some of the artifacts were made with copper, mica, galena, and other minerals common in the Mississippian World, but not Florida.

Ashley believes that these artifacts, including a pair of copper ear decorations found by Moore at the Grant Mound, help to prove contact between Florida natives and other Native Americans who were very distant geographically.

“These small little ear pieces maybe a couple of inches in size, look like a face,” says Ashley. “They would have had a long nose pultruding from them. So far, we’ve only found seven complete pairs of those in copper in the entire United States, and all of them, we believe, are manufactured at Cahokia.”

Ashley has expanded on the information gathered by Moore in Jacksonville, discovering distinctive pottery and other artifacts that further support the idea of Native Floridians interacting with distant neighbors to the north.

“We found a small little point called a Cahokia Point near Shields Mound,” Ashley says. “We had archaeologists from Cahokia look at it, and they told us that, yes, this is a Cahokia point, and it looked like any point that they would find at Cahokia.”

In between the St. Johns culture Indians and the Mississippian Indians, was a pocket of hunter gatherers who also had contact with Northeast Florida residents about 1,000 years ago.

Chemical analysis of distinctive pottery found near Jacksonville shows that some comes from central Georgia, while the design was also used adopted by Native Floridians.

“Maybe female potters, who learn how to make Okmulgee pottery, marry into St. Johns communities in Jacksonville, and they bring their native pottery technology with them.”

William Bartram fought alligators, befriended Seminoles, and meticulously documented the flora and fauna of eighteenth century Florida.

His book “Travels through North and South Carolina, East and West Florida, the Cherokee Country, the Extensive Territories of the Muscogulges, or Creek Confederacy, and the Country of the Chactaws, Containing an Account of the Soil and Natural Productions of Those Regions, Together with Observations on the Manners of the Indians,” known today as “Bartram’s Travels,” is a classic work of Florida literature.

William Bartram was a naturalist, botanist, artist, and explorer who followed in the footsteps of his father, John Bartram.

“Without his father’s influence, William would have never gotten interested in botany,” says J.D. Sutton, actor and author of the one-man play “William Bartram: Puc Puggy’s Travels in Florida.”

“Following the French and Indian War when Spain ceded Florida to England, John Bartram had been named botanist to the King of England. He charged John to explore the Florida territory to see what might be there, what the potentials were in the country,” says Sutton.

In 1765, the 14 year old William Bartram joined his father on an expedition up the St. Johns River. William was so taken with Florida that he attempted to establish himself as a farmer at Fort Picolata, but the effort failed. He returned to Florida in 1774 as part of a four year trek through what is now the southeastern United States, documenting the plants, animals, and inhabitants of the region.

Bartram sailed to Amelia Island and toured Indian mounds. He took the Intracoastal Waterway to the St. Johns River, exploring the area that would become Jacksonville. He traveled up and down the St. Johns River and visited what are now Micanopy, the Paynes Prairie Preserve State Park, Astor, and Blue Spring. Later in 1774, he traveled the Suwannee River.

While collecting seeds and meticulously documenting Florida’s natural environment, Bartram interacted with Seminole Indians. He found the native population to be very friendly and welcoming. The Seminoles gave Bartram the nickname “Puc Puggy,” which means ‘flower hunter.”

“I think it was kind of a put down which he didn’t quite get,” says Sutton. “He was just honored to be named ‘the flower hunter’ by the chief, and given permission to explore the territory around Tuscawilla for collecting medicinal herbs and plants, and writing about them and identifying them, and sending them on to England and to his father’s garden in Philadelphia.”

Part of what makes Bartram’s “Travels” such a useful resource and engaging work today are its detailed drawings. Bartram was a skilled artist.

“He was a brilliant illustrator,” says Sutton. “His drawing of the franklinia tree that they found on the Altamaha River is probably his best known. But he did pages and pages of illustrations which were then hand-colored and sent to his patron in London. They’re still there in the British Museum.”

When Bartram’s “Travels” was first published in 1791, it was not universally praised. Some critics found the writing style overly Romantic. Some doubted the authenticity of Bartram’s accounts of his fighting with snakes and alligators, and his relations with the Seminoles. The Florida that Bartram described seemed so exotic to some readers that they compared his book to the fantasy “Gulliver’s Travels” by Jonathan Swift.

Bartram’s “Travels” is admired and respected by modern audiences.

“It’s a great time capsule of what Florida was like in the mid-1700s,” says Sutton.

“He talks about flocks of the Carolina parakeet so numerous they block the sun. We don’t have that anymore, because they’re extinct, but we’ve got that visual image of what it was like. He describes gopher tortoises, which they hadn’t seen before, that are so big that a man could stand on top of them. They’re wonderful images, and that’s what makes Bartram fun.”

J.D. Sutton will perform his one-man show “William Bartram: Puc Puggy’s Travels in Florida” at Harry P. Leu Botanical Gardens in Orlando, Thursday, April 16 at 7:00 pm. The free performance is presented by the Orange Audubon Society. Sutton’s Chautauqua-style presentation includes an interactive element with the actor answering audience questions as William Bartram.

Bartram would feel right at home among the lush Florida foliage of Leu Gardens.

Dr. Ben Brotemarkle is executive director of the Florida Historical Society and host of the radio program “Florida Frontiers,” broadcast locally on 90.7 WMFE Thursday evenings at 6:30 and Sunday afternoons at 4:00, and on 89.5 WFIT Sunday mornings at 7:00. The show can be heard online at myfloridahistory.org.

When Juan Ponce de León “discovered” Florida in 1513, native people had been living here for more than 10,000 years.

The native population had complex societies, elaborate systems of trade, and their own ancient religions. They had villages with large ceremonial centers surrounded by buildings built on shell mounds. Villages throughout this land had council houses built of wood and thatch that could hold more than 1,000 people.

At the time of European contact, there were a dozen tribes in “La Florida” with their own distinctive cultures.

While many of Florida’s tribes were sophisticated hunters and fishermen, the Apalachee in the Panhandle were accomplished farmers. They grew corn, beans, pumpkins, and other crops. The Apalachee food storage system was so effective that when the Spanish came to that region, they found enough food to feed hundreds of people and horses for many months.

The Timucua people formed a confederation of more than 40 powerful chiefdoms. The Timucua territory stretched from the east coast of north Florida far down into central Florida. When Ponce de León first set foot on this land, 200,000 Timucua lived here. They had the Bear Clan, the Quail Clan, the White Deer Clan, and many others. The children belonged to their mother’s clan and had to marry outside of their own clan, which united the society and promoted peace.

It was the Ais people that Ponce first encountered as he made stops along the Florida coast in 1513.

Ais villages could be found throughout what is now Brevard County. Their territory began north of today’s Titusville and continued down the east coast all the way into present-day Martin County. When a small group of Ponce’s men came ashore, the Ais gave them a greeting that let them know they were not welcome.

The people living around what is now the Tampa Bay area were known as Tocobaga. They were skilled fishermen and hunters. The Tocobaga did some farming as well, creating a tool for digging called the adz by tying a shell to a curved branch.

The Calusa Indians in southwest Florida had a powerful chief who lived at what we call Mound Key. This great chief demanded tribute from the leaders of other tribes, including the Mayaimi, Tequesta, and Jaega in south Florida, and perhaps even the Ais on the central east coast.

The Calusa territory encompassed most of southwest Florida, from present-day Charlotte Harbor to the Florida Keys. They built a canal system on the island of Mound Key where they had temples and other important buildings. Like many other people of this land, the Calusa depended heavily on fish and shell fish for their existence, but developed a trade system with inland people.

Frank Hamilton Cushing’s archaeological excavations at Key Marco in 1896 demonstrate that the Calusa were creative people, making colorful masks for use in their religious ceremonies and carving unique works of art.

One of the most intriguing Calusa artifacts is a mysterious six-inch wooden carving of a kneeling feline figure known as the Key Marco Cat.

It was the Calusa who put a stop to Ponce de León’s exploits in Florida. When Ponce came back to Florida in 1521 with the intention of establishing a permanent colony here, the Calusa attacked the Spanish crew. Ponce was wounded and taken to Cuba where he died.

Ponce’s death did not stop the Spanish, or the French and British who followed.

Over the next century and beyond Europeans worked to change Florida’s native cultures by making them abandon their ancient religions and accept Christianity. They enslaved and killed native Floridians by the thousands. Finally, the unfamiliar diseases the Europeans brought to the “New World” proved to be too much for the indigenous people to fight.

In the centuries following European contact, the great native societies of Florida collapsed and the people disappeared. Those last remaining were probably absorbed into other Native American groups such as the Seminoles, who arrived in Florida from the north in the 1700s.

When Ponce de León came here in 1513, it was the beginning of an exciting new era in Western culture, but the beginning of the end for Florida’s indigenous societies.

Dr. Ben Brotemarkle is executive director of the Florida Historical Society and host of the radio program “Florida Frontiers,” broadcast locally on 90.7 WMFE Thursday evenings at 6:30 and Sunday afternoons at 4:00, and on 89.5 WFIT Sunday mornings at 7:00. The show can be heard online at myfloridahistory.org.