South Florida is a biological island, its plant communities circumscribed by the southern limits of frost. Its peoples were distinct from those to the north and were less studied by scholars. In recent years the pace of research has increased, but there has been no attempt at synthesis since John M. Goggin wrote his still-unpublished manuscript on the Glades nearly half a century ago. Prehistoric Peoples of South Florida assembles the available knowledge and discusses competing theories, and does so in terms that are understandable to the general reader. McGoun outlines a cultural system that maintained an impressive continuity for 10,000 years—before being destroyed by two centuries of European contact.
South Florida is a biological island, its plant communities circumscribed by the southern limits of frost. Its peoples were distinct from those to the north and were less studied by scholars. In recent years the pace of research has increased, but there has been no attempt at synthesis since John M. Goggin wrote his still-unpublished manuscript on the Glades nearly half a century ago. Prehistoric Peoples of South Florida assembles the available knowledge and discusses competing theories, and does so in terms that are understandable to the general reader. McGoun outlines a cultural system that maintained an impressive continuity for 10,000 years—before being destroyed by two centuries of European contact.
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Overview
South Florida is a biological island, its plant communities circumscribed by the southern limits of frost. Its peoples were distinct from those to the north and were less studied by scholars. In recent years the pace of research has increased, but there has been no attempt at synthesis since John M. Goggin wrote his still-unpublished manuscript on the Glades nearly half a century ago. Prehistoric Peoples of South Florida assembles the available knowledge and discusses competing theories, and does so in terms that are understandable to the general reader. McGoun outlines a cultural system that maintained an impressive continuity for 10,000 years—before being destroyed by two centuries of European contact.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780817306861 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Alabama Press |
| Publication date: | 04/30/1993 |
| Pages: | 152 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.40(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Prehistoric Peoples of South Florida
By William E. McGoun
The University of Alabama Press
Copyright © 1993 The University of Alabama PressAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8173-0686-1
Chapter One
Caciques and Conquistadors Aboriginal Peoples in the Menéndez Period
Neither the cacique nor the conquistador was taking any chances. The two Spanish brigantines were drawn up broadside to the shore with their artillery concentrated on the landward side and a large supply of hail-shot on hand. When the conquistador disembarked he was accompanied by thirty soldiers, each with his fuse lit so he could fire his matchlock arquebus quickly. Against this superior firepower the cacique arrayed superior manpower. He was accompanied by 300 archers as he took his seat on the platform the conquistador had provided on the beach.
Thus did Gonzalo Solís de Merás (1964:141) describe the meeting at which prehistory gave way to history in South Florida. The conquistador was Solís de Merás's brother-in-law, Pedro Menéndez de Avilés. As adelantado of Florida, Menéndez had a franchise to explore Florida and profit from its resources as brig as he followed certain Spanish guidelines.
Five months previously, in September of 1565, Menéndez had established at St. Augustine what would become the first permanent European settlement in today's mainland United States of America (Solís deMerás 1964:88-89), subsequently routing the French who had established a foothold on the St. Johns River (Solís de Merás 1964:115-127).
Menéndez had more than one reason for visiting the cacique (a term the Spanish borrowed from the Taino culture of Hispaniola) at his headquarters on the Bay of Juan Ponce in Southwest Florida. (Most believe that is today's Estero Bay and that the cacique's capital was on Mound Key, though some hold out for Charlotte Harbor and the Pine Island area.) One very personal reason was to find his son, Don Juan Menéndez, whose ship had foundered possibly on this very coast (Solís de Merás 1964:68).
Don Juan Menéndez was not the only Spaniard who might be found. The cacique's sway extended southward to the Florida Keys and northward at least on occasion to the Tampa Bay area, putting him close to the Havana-Veracruz shipping lanes (Wright 1981:40). His people had captured possibly 250 shipwrecked Spaniards over the years (Connor 1925:39) and offered up a number of them as human sacrifices (Solís de Merás 1964:139). Escalante Fontaneda, another Spaniard who had been held captive, told of the killing of forty-two captives, including his older brother (Menéndez de Aviles, as translated in Hann 1991:301).
The younger Menéndez would not be found, even though Fontaneda told of having seen him (Fontaneda 1973:33). Solís de Merás (1964:139) says the rescue of captives was the primary reason for the conquistador's visit to the cacique. Later he would have another reason. In the summer of 1566, during a trip up the St. Johns River, he would be told of a cross-state waterway that emptied into the Gulf of Mexico in the cacique's territory (Solís de Merás 1964:205). This made a Spanish presence important for strategic reasons vis-á-vis the French (Lyon 1976:141-142).
The cacique was Carlos II, leader of the Calusa, and he had his own reasons for wanting to talk. The Calusa's chief rivals for power were the Tocobaga, whose headquarters were at what is now known as Safety Harbor on Old Tampa Bay (Lewis 1978:54). Carlos saw in these well-armed visitors a valuable ally in smashing the Tocobaga once and for all (Solís de Merás 1964:223). That the rivalry was longstanding is shown by the account of Juan Ortiz, a Spaniard who was held captive by the Tocobaga people to the north for twelve years and who tells of a Calusa raid and Tocobaga counter-raid prior to 1539 (Steele 1972:120, 123). Archaeological evidence suggests a Calusa incursion into the Tampa Bay area in historic times (Willey 1982:120, 124), and Spanish sources tell of back and forth struggles during the 1560s (Lewis 1978:26).
Carlos also may have wanted an ally against rivals within the Calusa. His father, Carlos I, had usurped the chieftainship (Goggin and Sturtevant 1964:123), and Carlos himself was viewedby some as an usurper (Lewis 1978:33). Spanish accounts tell of plottings, revolts, and assassinations (Zubillaga 1946:306-308, 310-311, 337, as translated in Goggin and Sturtevant 1964:194), Solís de Merás says Carlos' subjects feared Don Felipe, the Calusa "captain general," more than they did the cacique himself (Solís de Merás 1964:151), and Stephen Edward Reilly believes the Carlos-Felipe rivalry was the chief reason the cacique sought the alliance (Reilly 1981:409-410). Later, Felipe would tell the Spanish that he was the designated heir of Carlos I's predecessor and that thus both Carloses had assumed an office that was rightfully his (Zubillaga 1946:309-311, as translated in Goggin and Sturtevant 1964:193).
Nomenclature is a source of confusion. In Lewis's system, "Calusa is used to designate the tribe or culture, Caios, the principal town, and Carlos, the name of the principal chief" (Lewis 1978:19; emphasis is his). I follow that system regarding the culture and its chief, while referring to the town as simply "the Calusa capital" to lessen confusion. As for the Tocobaga, "Often, the same name is used for the province, the largest town and the chief" (Bullen 1978:50). The only way out is to refer simply to "the Tocobaga people" or "the Tocobaga leader" while calling the capital by its present-day name, Safety Harbor.
Neither the cacique nor the conquistador got what he wanted. Menéndez did take Carlos to Safety Harbor on his ship but refused to engage in military operations against the northerners (Solís de Merás 1964:223, 228). As for the internal rivalry, both Carlos and Felipe would wind up dead by Spanish hands within three years (Zubillaga 1946:296, as translated in Lewis 1978:29; Connor 1939:39). Further, the rivalry never worked out to the Spaniards' advantage. In a showdown, the Calusa would put aside whatever differences they had internally to present a united front against the Spanish; "'Divide and conquer' was not an alternative (for the Spanish) in South Florida," says Jeremy Stahl (1986:174).
Carlos did agree to free the captives he held, but only after Menéndez had tricked him into coming aboard ship where the Spanish had the upper hand. Carlos did enter into an alliance with the Spanish sealed by the gift of his sister (Solís de Merás 1964:142, 144). But, neither the marriage nor the alliance endured.
As a Catholic, Menéndez was reluctant to consummate a polygynous union with Doña Antonio, though he may have done so; Solís de Merás is ambiguous on this point (1964:149-151, 190). While the Calusa were receptive to outside ideas of which they approved (Lewis 1978:44), they were fiercely independent and would not countenance the constant interference in their affairs by the military-clerical settlement the Spanish established among them.
The Calusa leaders were willing to add the Spanish god to their pantheon, but not to give up their traditional deities, as the Jesuit Father Juan de Rogel insisted they must (Lyon 1976:202). For one thing, the sacred and the secular formed a seamless garment in Calusa society (Lyon 1976:205). For another, a chief s legitimacy depended upon his mastery of the traditional religious knowledge (Zubillaga 1946:289-290, as translated in Goggin and Sturtevant 1964:192). The Indians who attended Rogel's first catechism lessons "all took off" once the priest ran out of maize to give them, and the situation never really improved during his presence (Zubillaga, as translated in Hann 1991:239, 260-261).
The Spanish presence among the Calusa was to be both short-lived and violent, Carlos's pledges of friendship notwithstanding. Carlos plotted to kill Menéndez on at least three occasions (Solís de Merás 1964:143; Connor 1939:45, 67) and continually harassed the Spanish outpost set up near the Calusa capital late in 1566 under the command of Captain Francisco de Reinoso.
The Calusa attacked a boat party during the establishment of the settlement, killing three Spaniards and bouncing a spear off Menéndez's breastplate (Connor 1939:67). Later, a Calusa party attempted to capture Rogel and make of him a human sacrifice (Zubillaga 1946:607-608, as translated in Lewis 1978:34). Eugene Lyon (1976:201) says "The Spanish were like men besieged in their blockhouse-they dared not leave it without armed guard." The Spanish documents translated by Jeannette Thurber Connor (1939:31-81) tell a tale of virtually uninterrupted Indian hostility, not only by the Calusa but by other Indian groups throughout South Florida.
By the spring of 1567 Reinoso had had enough. He maneuvered Rogel-who opposed violent countermeasures-into going to Havana, then seized and killed Carlos and his closest advisers. In his place the Spanish installed Don Felipe (Zubillaga 1946:296, as translated in Lewis 1978:29). Things seemed to have gotten no better for the Spanish even though Felipe had been to Havana (Connor 1939:39) and took the lead among the Indians in accepting Christianity (Solís de Merás 1964:151). Reilly says his "great reverence" for the cross was merely an attempt to counter Carlos' influence with the Spanish (Reilly 1981:409), and it did not take Rogel long to realize the superficiality of Félipe's conversion (Zubillaga 1946:203, as translated in Hann 1991:244). "He has made me very suspicious that he is not proceeding ... with as much sincerity as I would like," the priest wrote. Felipe said a lot of the right things, but his actions belied his words. He would not allow his daughter to be baptized when she was seriously ill and kept stalling Rogel on abandoning aboriginal religious practices (Zubillaga, as translated in Hann 1991:244-248, 262).
Felipe was if anything more dangerous because he was a more powerful leader than Carlos (Lewis 1978:31). A good example of his ruthlessness is the way he had fifteen chiefs slain to avert a rebellion, then danced with his supporters around the heads of four of them (Vargas Ugarte 1935:91). Even so, he could not keep four other chiefs from going over to the Tocobaga (Zubillaga, as translated in Hann 1991:262).
When the Calusa in 1569 attacked a landing party sent out by Pedro Menéndez Marquéz, nephew of the conquistador, Menéndez Marquéz retaliated by killing Felipe and twenty of his supporters (Connor 1939:39). Calusa leadership then passed to Don Pedro, a first cousin of Carlos (Fontaneda 1973:31; Zubillaga 1946:309-311, as translated in Goggin and Sturtevant 1964:194). That did not help, either. Pedro also had been to Havana, but would not accept Christianity and "became worse" than he had been before the Spanish first sought his friendship (Fontaneda 1973:31). In the face of yet more hostility, Reinoso ordered the outpost abandoned (Vargas Ugarte 1935:107). Thus ended the formal Spanish presence among the Calusa, only three years after it had begun.
What was this Indian society that proved so impervious to Spanish attempts to control it? It certainly met the anthropological definition of a chiefdom-a society in which a certain kinship group had acquired a preferential access to resources and power-and seemed well on the way to breaking the bonds between heredity and power and thus becoming a state (Kottak 1974:193-194). This last is based upon the irregularity of the succession to power, as compiled by John M. Goggin and William C. Sturtevant.
It also could have been a venerable society. The archaeological evidence suggests that the people inhabiting the Charlotte Harbor-Estero Bay area were extending their influence eastward by A.D. 1400 (Griffin 1988:142) and both northward and southward at least by A.D. 1200 (Griffin m.s.:13; Goggin 1964a:123; Willey 1982:555) and possibly as early as A.D. 800 (Widmer 1988:279). This influence in turn suggests the sort of power possible only in a society where the leaders can compel obedience.
Further, these people appear from the archaeological record to be indistinguishable from the historic Calusa (Milanich and Fairbanks 1980:234). The only reason there is any uncertainty at all is the difficulty of identifying any excavated archaeological site unequivocally with the historic Calusa (Milanich and Fairbanks 1980:243). Only within the past few years has anyone felt confident enough to identify a site as Calusa; Widmer (1988:86-87) does so with regard to a burial mound on Pine Island in Charlotte Harbor. There is a strong presumption that when Indian and Spanish artifacts are found together in Southwest Florida that the Indian articles were used by the Calusa, but the evidence remains in most cases less than conclusive.
The power wielded by the cacique was evident to Spanish observers. Two Spaniards deliveredby east coast Indians to René Laudonniére, founder of the short-lived French presence in Florida, told him that Carlos was "the strongest and most powerful Indian in the country, a great warrior having many subjects underhis sovereignty" (Laudonniére 1975:110). The survivors of one Spanish shipwreck were brought to him even though the wreck took place at least 200 miles from his capital (Solís de Merás 1964:221). His house was large enough to hold 2,000 persons, and he received visitors while positioned alone on a raised seat "with a great show of authority" (Solís de Merás 1964:145-146). He wore special ornaments-a gold object on his forehead and bead bands on his legs (Zubillaga 1946:310, as translated in Goggin and Sturtevant 1964:191)-and was greeted in a special manner. The subject would kneel, raising his hands palms up, and the chief would place his hands atop them (Goggin and Sturtevant 1964:192).
The ability to amass and maintain such power had both material and spiritual aspects; Jerald T. Milanich and Charles H. Fairbanks (1980:243) cite "the subsistence potential of both the Southwest Florida coastal waters and the savannahs and wetlands of the Okeechobee Basin and ... the need to maintain exchange routes," a matter that will be discussed in more detail below. Equally vital, especially in convincing his people that he was the one to follow, was the cacique's mastery of the Calusa religious system, as noted previously. Laudonniére says the two Spaniards told him, "The [Calusa) king was held in great reverence by his subjects and ... he made them believe that his sorceries and spells were the reason why the earth brought forth her fruit." Once or twice a year he would withdraw to perform secret rites-to observe them meant quick death-and at harvest time a Spaniard would be sacrificed (Laudonniére 1975:110).
What we know of Calusa theology is due largely to the letters of Rogel. The Indians "say that each man has three souls. One is the little pupil (niñeta) of the eye; another is the shadow that each one casts; and the last is the image of oneself each one sees in a mirror or in a calm pool of water," he wrote. Rogel said the Calusa believed that only this first soul remained with the body at death and the Indians went to the graveyard to consult with it-or, in Rogel's view, with the devil-in order to know what would happen in other times and places. The deceased "also tell them that they should kill Christians and other evil things. And when someone becomes ill, they say that one of the souls has left him and the shamans go there to search for it in the [woods] and they say that they bring it back, making the same movements as people make who are driving some sheep or goat into a corral that does not want to be shut up. And then they put a great deal of fire at the door of the house and at the windows so that it will not go out again. And they say that they put it back in the man again through the nape of the neck.... They have another error also, that when a man dies, his soul enters into some animal or fish. And when they kill such an animal, it enters into another lesser one so that little by little it reaches the point of being reduced into nothing" (Zubillaga 1946:278-281, as translated in Hann 1991:237-238).
"The oneness (unidad) of God and his being the creator of every good, they admit to. They also believe those who govern the world to be three persons, but in such a manner that they say the first one, who is greater than the other two, is the one to whom the universal government of the most universal and common things belongs, such as the heavenly movements and the seasons, (tiempos), etc. And the second one is greater than the third, that to him belongs the government of the kingdoms, empires, and republics. The third one ... is the least of all and the one who helps in the wars" (Zubillaga, as translated in Hann 1991:238-239).
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Prehistoric Peoples of South Florida by William E. McGoun Copyright © 1993 by The University of Alabama Press. Excerpted by permission.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Illustrations....................viiIntroduction: The Theory and the Area....................1
1. Caciques and Conquistadors: Aboriginal Peoples in the Menéndez Period....................9
2. On the Trail of Big Game: The Paleoindian Presence in South Florida....................39
3. Living Off the Land: The Enduring Hunting and Gathering Societies....................53
4. Earthworks and Effigies: Hopewellian-Related Societies Around the Big Lake....................71
5. Down to the Sea and the Shells: The Shift of Power to Southwest Florida....................93
6. The Road to Extinction: Aboriginal Peoples after the Menéndez Period....................109
Bibliography....................115
Index....................137