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The Tampa Tribune
Published: February 16, 2013
Updated: February 16, 2013 - 2:40 PM
After Ponce de Leon landed near St. Augustine 500 years ago, then sailed beneath "La Florida" and north up the Gulf Coast, he found the land of flowers was populated and defended by a tribe of Native Americans whose name, translated into English, was "Fierce People."
Members of that thriving Calusa civilization fished, hunted, traded and even had a natural remedy to keep mosquitoes from biting. They ran an empire stretching to the East Coast and south into the Keys. Charlotte Harbor was their Rome.
Today in Port Charlotte, history came to life with more than a dozen Calusa-crazy volunteers intent on showing how the lost tribe of Florida lived before Europeans consigned the indigenous people to the dust of history.
Braving a chilly breeze off Charlotte Harbor, the re-enactors hunted for fish with spears, cooked fake seafood and snakes on an open pit with imaginary fire, and even greeted emissaries from neighboring tribes in a living, interactive exhibit.
"This is as authentic as possible, of Florida's pre-history," said April Watson, an archaeological doctoral student at Florida Atlantic University. She is consulting on the exhibit, which is one of more than 100 such events planned throughout the state to commemorate the 500th anniversary of Florida's recorded history.
People in Tampa interested in catching a glimpse of this history are out of luck, even though the Tampa Bay area played a significant role in the discovery of La Florida.
None of the 130 commemorative events, collectively known as Florida 500, takes place in Tampa. Other than the Florida State Fair, which this year has adopted a Spanish conquistador theme, and an exhibit at the Tampa Bay History Center, the region has been bypassed by organizers of the events.
Still, there is Fort De Soto State Park and DeSoto County; there is the Hernando De Soto Trial that marks the Spanish conquistador's overland trek from Manatee County north to the Mississippi River; there is Hernando County, the city of Hernando and various schools named in honor of the explorers.
But no local historical group has organized an event marking the 500th anniversary.
"It's pretty shocking," said J. Michael Francis, Hough Family Chair of Florida Studies at the University of South Florida in St. Petersburg, whose field of study focuses on the last days of the indigenous people and the beginning of the Spanish influx in Florida.
"I wish I knew why," he said. "It's difficult to comment on because I've only been here a short time, but it's surprising there is not something going on here because this was probably the landing spot of two of the most important expeditions of the 16th Century."
Dozens of events are scheduled to the south, though, and with good reason.
The Calusa numbered in the thousands, covering Central and South Florida from coast to coast with their influence.
Calusa meant "Fierce People," Watson said, and they were among the first to survive, and thrive, through efforts other than tilling the soil. They hunted and fished, and subsisted on and traded what they caught with others, she said. They developed a political and commercial structure, she said, well before the Spanish arrived.
"They were the only tribe the Spanish were not able to conquer," she said. "And it was a Calusa arrow that killed de Leon.
"They were one of the most powerful groups in Florida," she said. "Most people don't know how tough these people were."
A paper published by Darcie MacMahon, director of exhibits; and William Marquardt, curator of archaeology, both at the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville, states: "The Calusa were a fascinating but little-known Native American people who controlled the entire southern half of Florida when Europeans first arrived in the early 1500s."
Their domain included more than 50 villages.
"They were headquartered in the Charlotte Harbor area," said MacMahon in an interview, "but their political influence and dominance spread from south of Tampa Bay on the West Coast to Cape Canaveral on the East Coast through the Florida Keys."
They literally held an empire, she said, and collected tribute from all the indigenous tribes in that area.
"It was not exactly like trade," MacMahon said, "It was almost like taxation. The Calusa commanded tribute from all over South Florida."
Their civilization was doomed when the lumbering Spanish ships arrived, she said. Within 200 years, the Calusa were gone, victims of European diseases, slavery and being driven from their homeland.
"The Calusa were not happy about Europeans coming into their domain and they must have learned about the Spanish presence in the Americas because when the Spanish first arrived, they were ready for them," MacMahon said.
"Unlike native people in North Florida, they managed to remain fairly aloof from the Spaniards," she said. "The population decimation and cultural decimation that happened earlier in European contact, really took a couple hundred years to profoundly affect the Calusa."
Much of what is known of the tribe's culture comes through writings of European explorers. The rest is derived from what archaeologists have dug up in burial mounds or in excavations of village sites, some of which are submerged in shallow tidal basins along the coast of Southwest Florida.
The Calusa left no written record, and their history is spoken best through the artifacts they left behind. Those artifacts indicate the culture began more than 1,500 years ago; they were "an inventive, artistic and spiritual people who prospered from the immense bounty of their coastal world," said the paper written by MacMahon and Marquardt. "They harvested more than 50 fish species and more than 20 kinds of mollusks and crustaceans. They ate shellfish, crabs, land and aquatic turtles, ducks, deer, rodents, and other animals; but fish were the main staple food."
Their influence did not reach Tampa Bay, MacMahon said.
"The Tocobaga people lived in the Tampa Bay area," she said, "and they were competitive with the Calusa."
Both cultures were forced to deal with Spanish invaders half a millennium ago.
The Spanish explorers and subsequent waves of European missionaries had differing interactions with the indigenous cultures -- sometimes peaceful; sometimes not.
De Leon probably was the first to make contact with the Calusa. Historians say he likely came ashore near Charlotte Harbor and then farther north, probably on Anna Maria Island near Bradenton.
The welcome was not cordial. Calusa warriors attached his landing party, and drove the Spanish from the region.
In 1521, de Leon returned to Florida with a charter to establish a colony, landing near Sanibel Island on the Southwest Florida coast. Again he was driven off by the Calusa. In the battle he received a leg wound that became infected and killed him.
A few years later, P?nfilo de Narv?ez led the first known exploration of Tampa Bay.
Launching his expedition from Cuba in 1528, de Narv?ez landed on the Pinellas peninsula and marched overland to Tampa Bay, where he met and irked the Tocobaga. The locals told Narv?ez that gold could be found farther north, in the land of Apalachee, and that's what it took to be rid of the Spanish conquistadors, at least for the time being.
Part of the living history exhibit in Port Charlotte today was a visit from a Tocobaga warrior to the Calusa village. The Tocobaga had materials to make arrowheads, and the Calusa didn't, so the two tribes traded what they had.
Monty Watson played the part of the Tocobaga warrior, greeting the Calusa chief and his wife beneath swaying palms on the shore of Charlotte Harbor. The chief and his wife were portrayed by Scot and Jill Shively of Punta Gorda, both docents at a local museum. They had 21st century clothes under grass skirts and shirts.
"We have to be more modest that the Calusa probably were," Scot Shively said.
Watson explained what was happening to the modern onlookers, later adding:
"Contact with the Spanish was a life-changing event for the Calusa. That was the beginning of the end for them."
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