Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
History
Florida has the oldest recorded history of any US state, and it might qualify
as the most bizarre too. Something about this swampy peninsula invites ex-
aggeration and inflames desire, then gleefully bedevils those who pursue
their visions. Spanish explorers chased rumors of golden cities, yet only a
funhouse mirror separates them from Disney and its promised Magic King-
dom. The constant in this state is wild-eyed speculation, great tides of immig-
ration, and inevitably, a crash. It certainly makes for great storytelling.
Seminole & Indian Resources
Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum (
www.ahtahthiki.com
)
The Museum (
www.flamuseum.com
)
Heritage of the Ancient Ones (
www.ancientnative.org
)
First Inhabitants & Seminoles
Florida's original inhabitants never organized into large, cohesive tribes. For some 11,500
years, they remained split into numerous small chiefdoms or villages, becoming more
settled and agricultural in the north and remaining more nomadic and warlike in the south.
The Apalachee in Florida's Panhandle developed the most complex agriculture-based so-
ciety, but other tribes included the Timucua in northern Florida, the Tequesta along the cent-
ral Atlantic Coast, and the fierce Calusa in southern Florida. Legends say it was a poison-
tipped Calusa arrow that killed Spanish explorer Ponce de León.
The most striking evidence of these early cultures is shell mounds or middens. Florida's
ancestral peoples ate well, and their discarded shells reached 30ft high and themselves be-
came the foundations of villages, as at Mound Key.
When the Spanish arrived in the 1500s, the indigenous population numbered perhaps
250,000. Over the next 200 years, European diseases killed 80% of them. The rest were
killed by war or sold into slavery, so that by the mid-1700s virtually none of Florida's ori-
ginal inhabitants were left.
