Calusa

Pineland Archaeological District – Lee County, Florida

Leave a Comment / Florida, Native American / 7 minutes of reading

The 211 acre Pineland Archeological District was listed as a historic district on the National Register of Historic Places on November 27, 1973. It is located on Pine Island within the Pine Island Sound in Lee County, Florida. The archaeological zone is adjacent to Pine Island Sound. Pineland Archaeological District contains medium-to-large sized shell and sand mounds, pre-European canals, earthen platforms, artificial ponds and effigies created from sandy soil. Many small mounds and occupation sites were destroyed by real estate development during the past 150 years.

The Calusa People

2 Comments / Florida, Native American / 13 minutes of reading

During the 1500s and early 1600s, when Spanish explorers were first making contact with the indigenous inhabitants of the Florida, they made contact with a powerful nation on the southwest coast between Charlotte Harbor and Cape Sable. The first contact was made in 1513 by Juan Ponce de Leon, when he landed at the mouth …

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Muspa Culture, Key Marco and other Platform Villages

Leave a Comment / Florida, Native American / 9 minutes of reading

A cluster of islands on the Gulf Coast of Florida, immediately south of Naples, FL and southwest of Lake Okeechobee once held numerous mounds and town sites. Know as the Ten Thousand Islands Region, it contains the villages and mounds of an unidentified Archaic Period people, the Muspa Culture and the Calusa People, who absorbed …

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Calusa Towns

Leave a Comment / Florida, Native American / 9 minutes of reading

All of the Indians of southern Florida on the western side of the peninsula, from the Timucua territories as far as and including the Florida Keys, belonged to a confederacy or overlordship called Calusa or Calos. On the eastern coast were a number of small independent tribes, each usually occupying only one settlement. The most …

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Guacata

Leave a Comment / Florida, Native American / 4 minutes of reading

Guacata – An inland Calusa village on Lake “Mayaimi” or Okechobee, south Florida, about 1570. Elsewhere in his memoir Fontaneda refers to it as a distinct but subordinate tribe. Guacata, Cuacata – In one place Fontaneda speaks of this as a town on Lake Mayaimi (Okeechobee) and elsewhere as one of the provinces of the …

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Calusa Tribe

Leave a Comment / Florida, Native American / 4 minutes of reading

Calusa Indians. An important tribe of Florida, formerly holding the southwest coast from about Tampa Bay to Cape Sable and Cape Florida, together with all the outlying keys, and extending inland to Lake Okeechobee. They claimed more or less authority also over the tribes of the east coast, north to about Cape Canaveral. The name, …

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Calusa Indians

Leave a Comment / Florida, Native American / 6 minutes of reading

Calusa Tribe. Said by a Spaniard, Hernando de Escalante Fontaneda, who was a captive among them for many years, to mean “fierce people,” but it is perhaps more probable that, since it often appears in the form Carlos, it was, as others assert, adopted by the Calusa chief from the name of the Emperor Charles …

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Calusa Indian Language

Leave a Comment / Florida, Native American / 3 minutes of reading

The Calusa held the southwestern extremity of Florida, and their tribal name is left recorded in Calusahatchi, a river south of Tampa bay. They are called Calos on de Bry’s map (1591), otherwise Colusa, Callos, Carlos, and formed a confederacy of many villages, the names of which are given in the memoir of Hernando d Escalante Fontanedo.

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