Calusa Topics – Access Genealogy

Pineland Archaeological District – Lee County, Florida

The Pineland Archaeological District, covering 211 acres on Pine Island, Florida, is a significant historic district recognized since 1973. Managed by the University of Florida Foundation and other partnerships, this region showcases an array of archaeological features including shell and sand mounds, pre-European canals, and artificial structures attributed to the Calusa Indians, who dominated the area from 500 BCE until after 1700. The district evidences dramatic shifts in sea levels and climate that influenced the area’s habitation patterns. Native Americans utilized the land extensively before significant loss due to real estate development over the past 150 years. Significant components of the site include linear shell middens, monumental earthworks, and architectural residues which reflect the complex societal structures and environmental interactions of its ancient occupants. Presently reduced to around 20 acres of protected land, the remaining site still harbors valuable insights into prehistoric life on Florida’s largest island, historically shaped by both natural and human forces.

The Calusa People

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 of the Caloosahatchee River in southwest Florida. His landing boats were attacked by Calusa war canoes, lined with round shields. Ponce de Leon’s description of the canoes was identical to murals of Chontal Maya war canoes in the Yucatan Peninsula. The region where most of … Read more

Big Mound City Archaeological Zone

Big Mound City is the only site from the Belle Glade culture on the National Register of Historic Places. It was added in 1973 as an example of a Calusa ceremonial complex, but is now understood to have originally been constructed by the same ethnic group that built the Ortona and Wakate towns – probably ancestors of the Mayaimi. Even though its earthworks are about 1000 to 1500 years older than those of Fort Center, the architecture was extremely similar. Its final phase of occupation was probably by an ethnic group either related to the Tekesta or Mayaimi, but under … Read more

Muspa Culture, Key Marco and other Platform Villages

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 the Muspa. The Muspa or Thousand Islands Culture in recent years has been considered a division of the Lake Okeechobee-Glades Culture. The oldest cluster of shell mounds, on what was formerly called Horr’s Island, date as far back as 4700 BC. Another mound there contains … Read more

Calusa Indians in Florida

An early Spanish writer. Gov. Mendez de Canço, writing in 1598 or 1599, says that the Indians of southern Florida did not live in settled villages because they had no corn, but wandered about in search of fish and roots. Fontaneda, whose information dates from a very early period, has the following to say about the Indians of Calos (Calusa): These Indians possess neither gold nor silver, and still less clothing, for they go almost naked, wearing only a sort of apron. The dress of the men consists of braided palm loaves, and that of the women of moss, which … Read more

Calusa Towns

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 important of these appears to have been Ais, located close to what is now Indian River Inlet. The next in prominence, if not in power, were the Tekesta, at or near the present Miami, and between these were the Jeaga, or Jega, in Jupiter Inlet, … Read more

Guacata

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 east coast. A Spanish document in the Lowery collection gives it as a place “in the land of Ays.” It is possible that these people lived on St. Lucie River and camped farther inland than most of the coast people. In that case they would … Read more

Calusa Tribe

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, which can not be interpreted, appears as Calos or Carlos (province) in the early Spanish and French records, Caloosa and Coloosa in later English authors, and survives in Caloosa village, Caloosahatchee river, and Charlotte (for Carlos) harbor within their old territory. They cultivated the ground … Read more

Calusa Indians

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 V, about whose greatness he had learned from Spanish prisoners. Calusa Connections. From the place names and the few expressions recorded by Fontaneda, I suspect that the Calusa were connected linguistically with the Muskhogean stock and particularly with that branch of it to which the … Read more

Calusa Indian Language

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.