Mayaimi
The Mayaimi , Maymi , also Maimi were a North American Indian tribe who lived in an area around Lake Mayaimi (Lake Okeechobee) in southern Florida at the time of European contact . Like the rest of the natives of Florida, the Mayaimi suffered from introduced European diseases and have been considered extinct since around 1750. The Mayaimi should not be confused with the neither ethnically nor linguistically related Miami (Myaamiaki) , who lived south of Lake Michigan .
Residential area and name
The Mayaimi tribal area comprised the entire shore and the wider area around Lake Okeechobee, which was formerly called Lake Mayaimi . They lived there from at least AD 200 to around AD 1750. The origin of the language has not yet been determined, as only ten words and their meanings have been passed down before they became extinct. The current name of Lake Okeechobee comes from the Hitchiti language and means great water . The city of Miami was named after the Miami River, but its name is traced back to Lake Mayaimi.
history
From AD 200 to AD 1150, the ancestors of the Mayaimi lived in a highly developed society with numerous cities connected by canals and dams. They built artificial mounds of earth, called mounds , that were scattered around the lake and were used for both ceremonial and funerals. The Mayaimi culture collapsed around 1150 AD, but the cause for this has not yet been clarified.
The Spaniard Hernando de Escalante Fontaneda was a survivor of a sunk ship off the coast of Florida . He lived among the Indian tribes of Florida for seventeen years and, due to his memoirs written in 1575, is considered the best source for the lost culture of the native people there. He wrote of the Mayaimi that they lived in numerous settlements with thirty to fifty inhabitants or even in many smaller towns with only a few inhabitants. They fed on fish from the lake and game from its surroundings. They used nets for fishing and bows and arrows for hunting. They caught perch and eels and hunted alligators, possums, snakes and turtles. They ground Coontie , that is, flour made from the roots of Zamia pumila . When the tide was high, they withdrew to the flattened tips of the mounds and during this time lived exclusively from fishing.
At the beginning of the 18th century, white slave hunters repeatedly invaded the Mayaimi area with the support of local Indian tribes. They burned the villages, killed most of the adult men, and abducted teenagers and young women to be sold in slave markets in South Carolina . In 1710 a large group of around 280 Mayaimi refugees including the Kaziken arrived in Cuba . In 1738 the Mayaimi built a fort on the coast south of Cape Canaveral to protect them . Spanish missionaries at Biscayne Bay reported that they had sighted Mayaimi survivors in a group of around 100 indigenous people, including Santaluzos and Mayaca . Some members of this group were evacuated to Cuba by the Spaniards when they had to give Florida to Great Britain after the lost war . Other dispersed Mayaimi groups fled inland and joined the Seminoles . The Mayaini have been considered extinct since around 1750.
See also
literature
- Raymond D. Fogelson (Ed.): Handbook of North American Indians . tape 14 : Southeast . Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington DC 2004, ISBN 0-16-072300-0 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ A b c William C. Sturtevant: The Last of the South Florida Aborigines . In: Jeral Milanich, Samuel Proctor (Eds.): Tacachale: Essays on the Indians of Florida and Southeastern Georgia during the Historic Period . University Press of Florida, Gainesville FL 1978, ISBN 0-8130-0535-3 .
- ^ A b John H. Hann: Indians of Central and South Florida 1513-1763 . University Press of Florida, Gainesville FL 2003, ISBN 0-8130-2645-8 , pp. 198-199 .