Ocale Tribe, or Etocale tribe. Meaning unknown, but perhaps connected with Timucua tocala, “it is more than,” a comparative verb.
I A possible exception to this statement was the temporary entrance of a small body of Coweta Indiana under Secoffee, or the Cowkeeper.
Ocale Connections. This tribe belonged to the Timucuan or Timuquanan linguistic division of the Muskhogean linguistic family.
Ocale Location. In Marion County or Levy County north of the bend of the Withlacoochee River.
Ocale Villages. Uqueten (first village approaching from the south), and perhaps Itaraholata.
Ocale History. This tribe is first mentioned by the chroniclers of the De Soto expedition. He passed through it in 1539 after crossing Withlacoochee River. Fontaneda also heard of it, and it seems to appear on De Bry’s map of 1591. This is the last information that has been preserved.
Ocale Population. Unknown. The Timucua, in the wide extent of the term, are estimated by Mooney (1928) to have numbered 13,000 in 1650, including 3,000 Potano, 1,000 Hostaqua, 8,000 Timucua proper and their allies, and 1,000 Tocobaga. In a letter dated February 2, 1635, it is asserted that 30,000 Christian Indians were connected with the 44 missions then maintained in the Guale and Timucua provinces. While this figure is probably too high, it tends to confirm Mooney’s (1928) estimate. In 1675 Bishop Calderón of Cuba states that he confirmed 13,152 in the four provinces of Timucua, Guale. Apalache, and Apalachicoli, but Governor Salazar estimates only 1,400 in the Timucua missions that year. Later, pestilences decimated the Timucua very rapidly, and their ruin was completed by attacks of the English and the northern Indians, so that by 1728 the single town which seems to have contained most of the survivors had but 15 men and 20 women. Eight years later 17 men were reported there. Not long after this time the tribe disappears entirely, though it is highly probable that numbers of individuals who had belonged to it had made their homes with other Indians.
Connection in which they have become noted. Within comparatively modern times this name was adopted in the form Ocala as that of the county seat of Marion County, Fla. There is a place so called in Pulaski County, Ky.