Tocobaga
Tocobaga , also Tocopaca , was the name of an indigenous chieftainship , as well as its chief and the most important city in the area north of Tampa Bay in central Florida in the 16th century. The tribe was the main representative of the Safety Harbor culture and has been considered extinct since around 1760.
Residential area and culture
During the influential period of the Mississippi culture , numerous social and religious influences came from the north to the indigenous people of Florida. The residential area of the Tocobaga was on the east coast of Florida in the area of Tampa Bay. The chiefdom belonged to the Safety Harbor culture , to which several tribes on the central Gulf coast of Florida are counted. The Tocobaga were the most important representatives of this culture. They were organized into chiefdoms, the members of which were predominantly in villages along Tampa Bay and the Gulf of Mexicolived. The entire area covered about 25 km of coastline and extended up to 30 km inland. Tocobaga is often used to describe all Indians who lived in the vicinity of Tampa Bay during the first Spanish colonial period from 1513 to 1763. However, from Spanish records it appears that there were other chiefdoms with different names.
Each chieftainship had a main town with a central square plaza and at least one temple hill in the form of a flattened pyramid, around 6 m high and 40 m long on each side. It was piled up by working groups who dragged the earth over with load baskets. One or more buildings stood on this elevation, known as the mound , and a ramp led down from above to the plaza. Spanish records indicate that the chief lived on the mound with his family. There were other temple mounds with numerous buildings that served state and sacred purposes. There was also a mound for the dead that was a bit out of the way. Around the man-made hills and the plaza were the houses of the common people, built of posts, entwined branches, and clay.
The Tocobaga society was composed of four classes. The chief and his family formed the upper class, followed by the most important advisors and officials. The third class was the common people and finally the slaves captured in the war , who belonged to the fourth class. According to the Tocobaga belief, every person had several souls. After his death, one of the souls remained in the body while another entered the soul of an animal. Should this animal be killed, the soul passed into the body of a smaller animal. It went on and on until the animal was so small that the soul finally disappeared. Viewed from today, this belief seems like a metaphor for most of Florida's indigenous people. They were unfortunate enough to be the first indigenous peoples to come into contact with Europeans around 1513. In a short time, smallpox and other diseases spread to which they could not develop any resistance. Devastating epidemics and cruel wars against the Spaniards and hostile tribes ensured that most of Florida's natives had literally disappeared by the middle of the 18th century.
history
Tampa Bay in Florida has been visited several times by Spanish explorers. Pánfilo de Narváez probably landed in Tampa Bay in 1528 and crossed the Tocobaga chiefdom on his way north. The Hernando de Sotos expedition apparently reached the south side of Tampa Bay in 1539 and moved through the eastern part of the Tocobaga residential area after occupying the village of Uzita . Hernando de Soto gave a detailed assessment of the tribes and villages in the region. He only observed small villages and tribes whose inhabitants did not pose a threat to the expedition and noted the names of the tribes that lived there: Guacozo, Vicela, Tocaste, Luca, Uzita, Mocoso and Pohoy .
The expedition of the Dominican Luis de Cancer landed in May 1549 in the south of Tampa Bay. The clergyman had the task of converting the local natives to the Christian faith and, if possible, to repair the damage that the conquistadors had previously caused . The expedition encountered Indians who were apparently peaceful and willing to negotiate, who reported about densely populated villages along Tampa Bay. When the Spaniards reached the first villages, they were suddenly attacked. Some were killed, others captured, and Cancer slain the Tocobaga warriors with their clubs.
When Pedro Menéndez de Avilés visited Safety Harbor in 1567 , the name Tocobaga first appeared in Spanish documents. Menéndez's expedition was accompanied by twenty warriors of the Calusa , the traditional enemies of the Tocobaga. Menéndez apparently managed to settle the conflict between the warring tribes. He freed several Europeans and a dozen members of the Calusa who were kept as slaves by the Tocobaga. The Spaniards left a garrison of clergymen and thirty soldiers in Tocobaga to convert the Indians to Christianity. In January 1568, Spanish boats landed in Tampa Bay to supply the garrison crew at Tocobaga. The village was deserted and all the Spaniards in the garrison were dead.
In 1611, Tocobaga and Pohoy warriors ambushed and killed several Christian Indians. They were members of the Christianized Potano who were supposed to bring supplies to the Spanish mission Cofa at the mouth of the Suwannee River . The Spanish then sent a punitive expedition down the Suwannee River to the Gulf Coast in 1612. The Spaniards attacked the Tocobaga and Pohoy, killing numerous tribesmen including the two chiefs. The Spanish attack weakened the Tocobaga so much that Pohoy became the dominant chiefdom on Tampa Bay for some time. In 1677 there was an official inspection of the Spanish missions in the Apalachee province . The Spanish state officials reported from a Tocobaga village on the Waccissa River , about 3 miles from the San Lorenzo de Ivitachuco Mission . The Tocobago living there had the task of transporting products from the Apalachee province to St. Augustine by canoe . They drove along the coast and up the Suwannee River, presumably as far as the Santa Fé River . From here, other Indians carried the goods overland to St. Augustine. The Tocobaga village was mentioned again in official reports in 1683. The fate of the Tocobaga when the British and their Indian allies invaded the Spanish province in 1704 is unclear. When the Spaniards returned in 1718, they found few Tocobaga living on the Wacissa River. The Spanish commandant persuaded them to move to the mouth of the St. Marks River under the protection of a fort. In August of the same year, about thirty Pohoy attacked the Tocobaga settlement, killing eight and kidnapping three other members of the Tocobaga. Between 1720 and 1740, a few Tocobaga still lived in the San Marcos area . When Florida came under British rule in 1763, the surviving natives fled to Cuba with the Spaniards , possibly the last tocobaga with them. The tribe has since been considered extinct.
See also
List of North American Indian tribes
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Alvin M. Josephy: America 1492 The Indian peoples shortly before the discovery . S. Fischer, Frankfurt a. M. 1992, ISBN 3-10-036712-X , pp. 176-179 .
- ↑ a b c d Milanich, Jerald T .: Florida's Indians from Ancient Times to the Present . University Press of Florida, 1998, ISBN 0-8130-1599-5 , pp. 110 .
- ^ Southeast . In: Raymond D. Fogelson (Ed.): Handbook of North American Indians . tape 14 . Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington DC 2004, ISBN 0-16-072300-0 , pp. 213-218 .
literature
- Milanich, Jerald T. (1994). Archeology of Precolumbian Florida . University Press of Florida. ISBN 0-8130-1273-2 .
- Milanich, Jerald T. (1998). Florida's Indians from Ancient Times to the Present . University Press of Florida. ISBN 0-8130-1599-5
- Milanich, Jerald T. (2006). Laboring in the Fields of the Lord: Spanish Missions and Southeastern Indians. University Press of Florida. ISBN 0-8130-2966-X
- Milanich, Jerald T. and Samuel Procter, Eds. (1978). Tacachale: Essays on the Indians of Florida and Southeastern Georgia during the Historic Period . The University Presses of Florida. ISBN 0-8130-0535-3 .
- Sturtevant, William C. (1978). "The Last of the South Florida Aborigines". In Milanich and Procter.