Calusa
Escampaba | |
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Total population | |
Extinct as a tribe | |
Regions with significant populations | |
United States (Florida) | |
Languages | |
Calusa | |
Religion | |
Native |
The Calusa (/kəˈluːsə/ kə-LOO-sə) were a Native American people of Florida's southwest coast. Calusa society developed from that of archaic peoples of the Everglades region. Previous indigenous cultures had lived in the area for thousands of years.
At the time of European contact in the 16th and 17th centuries, the historic Calusa were the people of the Caloosahatchee culture. They developed a complex culture based on estuarine fisheries rather than agriculture. Calusa territory reached from Charlotte Harbor to Cape Sable, all of present-day Charlotte, Lee, and Collier counties, and may have included the Florida Keys at times. They had the highest population density of South Florida; estimates of total population at the time of European contact range from 10,000 to several times that, but these are speculative.
Calusa political influence and control also extended over other tribes in southern Florida, including the
Culture
Early Spanish and French sources referred to the tribe, its chief town, and its chief as Calos, Calus, Caalus, and Carlos. Hernando de Escalante Fontaneda, a Spaniard held captive by the Calusa in the 16th century, recorded that Calusa meant "fierce people" in their language. By the early 19th century, Anglo-Americans in the area used the term Calusa for the people. It is based on the Mvskoke and Mikasuki (languages of the present-day Seminole and Miccosukee nations) ethnonym for the people who had lived around the Caloosahatchee River (also from the Creek language).[2]
Origins
By about 500 BC, the
The Caloosahatchee culture inhabited the Florida west coast from Estero Bay to Charlotte Harbor and inland about halfway to Lake Okeechobee, approximately covering what are now Charlotte and Lee counties. At the time of first European contact, the Caloosahatchee culture region formed the core of the Calusa domain. Artifacts related to fishing changed slowly over this period, with no obvious breaks in tradition that might indicate a replacement of the population.[4]
Between 500 and 1000, the undecorated, sand-
Society
The Calusa had a stratified society, consisting of "commoners" and "nobles" in Spanish terms. While there is no evidence that the Calusa had institutionalized slavery, studies show they would use captives for work or even sacrifice.[5] A few leaders governed the tribe. They were supported by the labor of the majority of the Calusa. The leaders included the paramount chief, or "king"; a military leader (capitán general in Spanish); and a chief priest. The capital of the Calusa, and where the rulers administered from, was Mound Key, near present day Estero, Florida. There is an eyewitness account from 1566 of a "king's house" on Mound Key that was large enough for "2,000 people to stand inside."[5] In 1564, according to a Spanish source, the priest was the chief's father, and the military leader was his cousin. The Spanish documented four cases of known succession to the position of paramount chief, recording most names in Spanish form. Senquene succeeded his brother (name unknown), and was in turn succeeded by his son Carlos. Carlos was succeeded by his cousin (and brother-in-law) Felipe, who was in turn succeeded by another cousin of Carlos, Pedro. The Spanish reported that the chief was expected to take his sister as one of his wives.[6] The contemporary archeologists MacMahon and Marquardt suggest this statement may have been a misunderstanding of a requirement to marry a "clan-sister". The chief also married women from subject towns and allied tribes. This use of marriages to secure alliances was demonstrated when Carlos offered his sister Antonia in marriage to the Spanish explorer Pedro Menéndez de Avilés in 1566.[6]
Material culture
Diet
The Calusa diet at settlements along the coast and
Some authors have argued that the Calusa cultivated
Tools
The Calusa caught most of their fish with nets. Nets were woven with a standard mesh size; nets with different mesh sizes were used seasonally to catch the most abundant and useful fish available. The Calusa made bone and shell gauges that they used in net weaving. Cultivated gourds were used as net floats, and sinkers and net weights were made from mollusk shells. The Calusa also used spears, hooks, and throat gorges to catch fish. Well-preserved nets, net floats, and hooks were found at Key Marco, in the territory of the neighboring Muspa tribe.[9][10][11]
Mollusk shells and wood were used to make hammering and pounding tools. Mollusk shells and shark teeth were used for grating, cutting, carving, and engraving. The Calusa wove nets from palm-fiber cord. Cord was also made from
Housing
The Calusa lived in large, communal houses which were two stories high. When
Clothing and personal decoration
The Calusa wore minimal clothing. The men wore deerskin
Ceremonial or other artistic masks have been discovered and were previously described by the Spanish who first encountered the Calusa. Some of these masks had moving parts that used pull strings and hinges so that a person could alter the look of a mask while wearing it.[16]
Beliefs
The Calusa believed that three supernatural beings ruled the world, that people had three souls, and that souls migrated to animals after death. The most powerful ruler governed the physical world, the second most powerful ruled human governments, and the last helped in wars, choosing which side would win. The Calusa believed that the three souls were the pupil of a person's eye, his shadow, and his reflection. The soul in the eye's pupil stayed with the body after death, and the Calusa would consult with that soul at the graveside. The other two souls left the body after death and entered into an animal. If a Calusa killed such an animal, the soul would migrate to a lesser animal and eventually be reduced to nothing.[17]
Calusa ceremonies included processions of priests and singing women. The priests wore carved masks, which were at other times hung on the walls inside a temple. Hernando de Escalante Fontaneda, an early chronicler of the Calusa, described "sorcerers in the shape of the devil, with some horns on their heads," who ran through the town yelling like animals for four months at a time.
The Calusa remained committed to their belief system despite Spanish attempts to
Evidence shows that the Calusa buried their departed in mounds. After death, a body was placed in a charnel house to let the flesh fall away naturally or, in some cases, a medicine man with long fingernails would scrape the flesh from bone. Afterwards, the bones would be gathered up, placed in a basket, and buried in a mound. These mounds were both for burials as well as religious ceremonies, as the Calusa would gather atop them on "Holy Days to sacrifice aromatic plants and honey".[19]
Language
European contact
The first recorded contact between the Calusa and Europeans was in 1513, when
The Pánfilo de Narváez expedition of 1528 and the Hernando de Soto expedition of 1539 both landed in the vicinity of Tampa Bay, north of the Calusa domain. Dominican missionaries reached the Calusa domain in 1549 but withdrew because of the hostility of the tribe. Salvaged goods and survivors from wrecked Spanish ships reached the Calusa during the 1540s and 1550s. The best information about the Calusa comes from the Memoir of Hernando de Escalante Fontaneda, one of these survivors. Fontaneda was shipwrecked on the east coast of Florida, likely in the Florida Keys, about 1550, when he was thirteen years old. Although many others survived the shipwreck, only Fontaneda was spared by the tribe in whose territory they landed. Warriors killed all the adult men. Fontaneda lived with various tribes in southern Florida for the next seventeen years before being found by the Menendez de Avilés expedition.[21][22]
In 1566
For more than a century after the Avilés adventure, there was little contact between the Spanish and Calusa. Re-entering the area in 1614, Spanish forces attacked the Calusa as part of a war between the Calusa and Spanish-allied tribes around Tampa Bay. A Spanish expedition to ransom some captives held by the Calusa in 1680 was forced to turn back; neighboring tribes refused to guide the Spanish, for fear of retaliation by the Calusa. In 1697
After the outbreak of war between Spain and England in 1702,
In 1711, the Spanish helped evacuate 270 Indians, including many Calusa, from the Florida Keys to Cuba (where almost 200 soon died). They left 1,700 behind. The Spanish founded a mission on Biscayne Bay in 1743 to serve survivors from several tribes, including the Calusa, who had gathered there and in the Florida Keys. The mission was closed after only a few months.
After Spain ceded Florida to the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1763, the remaining tribes of South Florida were relocated to Cuba by the Spanish, completing their removal from the region. While a few Calusa individuals may have stayed behind and been absorbed into the Seminole, no documentation supports that.[25] Cuban fishing camps (ranchos) operated along the southwest Florida coast from the 18th century into the middle of the 19th century. Some of the Spanish Indians (often of mixed Spanish-Indian heritage) who worked at the fishing camps likely were descended from Calusa.[26]
See also
Notes
- ^ MacMahon and Marquardt, pp. 1-2
- ^ a b Marquadt (2004), pp. 211–12; Hann (2003), pp. 14–15
- ^ a b Milanich 1994, pp. 32–35
Milanich 1998, pp. 3–37 - ^ a b Milanich 1993.
Milanich 1995. - ^ a b Marquardt, W. H. (2014). Tracking the Calusa: A Retrospective. Southeastern Archaeology, 33(1), 1–24.
- ^ a b MacMahon and Marquardt, pp. 78-79, 86
Widmer, pp. 5-6 - ^ a b Widmer:224–31
Marquardt 2004:206
Hann 2003:31–2 - ^ Milanich, J. T. (2004). Water World. Archaeology, 57(5), 46–50. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41779812
- ^ MacMahon and Marquardt, pp. 69–70
- ^ a b Marquardt 2004, pp. 206–207
- ^ "Fish Hooks, Gorges, and Leister - Natural & Cultural Collections of South Florida (U.S. National Park Service)". www.nps.gov. Retrieved 2022-08-14.
- ^ MacMahon and Marquardt, pp. 69–71
- ^ MacMahon and Marquardt: The Calusa and Their Legacy p.73
- ^ Hann 2003, pp. 35–36
- ^ Hann (2003), pp. 33–35
- ^ Milanich (2004), pp. 48
- ^ Winn, pp. 16–17
- ^ MacMahon and Marquardt, pp. 82–85, 87
- ^ Munger, Lynn (April 1955). "Explorations of the Calusa Indian Village Sites". Central States Archaeological Journal. 1 (4): 146. Retrieved 25 November 2023.
- ^ MacMahon and Marquardt, pp. 115–116
- ^ Bullen
- ^ MacMahon and Marquardt, pp. 116–117
- ^ MacMahon and Marquardt, pp. 86, 117
- ^ MacMahon and Marquardt, pp. 117–118
- ^ MacMahon and Marquardt, pp. 118-121
- ^ Marquardt 2004, p. 211
References
- Bullen, Adelaide K. (1965). "Florida Indians of Past and Present", in Carson, Ruby Leach and Tebeau, Charlton. Florida from Indian trail to space age: a history. (Vol. I, pp. 317–350). Southern Publishing Company.
- Goggin, John M., and William C. Sturtevant. (1964). "The Calusa: A Stratified, Nonagricultural Society (With Notes on Sibling Marriage)." In Explorations in Cultural Anthropology: Essays Presented to George Peter Murdock. Ed. Ward H. Goodenough. New York: McGraw-Hill, 179–219.
- Granberry, Julian (1994). "Evidence for a Calusa-Tunica Relationship". Papers of the Mid-America Linguistics Conference (MALC). Lawrence, Kansas: University of Kansas. pp. 505–519.
- Granberry, Julian. (2011). "The Calusa: Linguistic and Cultural Relationships". Tuscaloosa, Alabama: The University of Alabama Press.
- Hann, John, ed. & trans. (1991). Missions to the Calusa. University of Florida Press.
- Hann, John H. (2003). Indians of Central and South Florida: 1513–1763. University Press of Florida. ISBN 0-8130-2645-8
- MacMahon, Darcie A. and William H. Marquardt. (2004). The Calusa and Their Legacy: South Florida People and Their Environments. University Press of Florida. ISBN 0-8130-2773-X
- Mahon, John K. (1985). History of the Second Seminole War 1835–1842 (Revised Edition). University Presses of Florida.
- Marquardt, William H. (1992). ed. Culture and Environment in the Domain of the Calusa. Institute of Archaeology and Paleoenvironmental Studies Monograph #1. University of Florida.
- Marquardt, William H. (2004). "Calusa". In R. D. Fogelson (Ed.), Handbook of North American Indians: Southeast (Vol. 14, pp. 204–212). Smithsonian Institution.
- Milanich, Jerald. (1993). ed. "Chapter 10. The Caloosahatchee Region". Florida Historical Contexts. State of Florida Division of Historical Resources. in [1] Archived 2006-01-27 at the Wayback Machine – retrieved March 29, 2006
- Milanich, Jerald T. (1994). Archaeology of Precolumbian Florida. University Press of Florida. ISBN 0-8130-1273-2
- Milanich, Jerald T. (1995). Florida Indians and the Invasion from Europe. University Press of Florida. ISBN 0-8130-1360-7
- Milanich, Jerald T. (1998). Florida's Indians From Ancient Time to the Present. University Press of Florida.
- Widmer, Randolph J. (1998). The Evolution of the Calusa: A Nonagricultural Chiefdom on the Southwest Florida Coast. University of Alabama Press. ISBN 0-8173-0358-8
- Winn, Ed (2003). Florida's great king: King Carlos of the Calusa Indians. Buster's Books. ISBN 0-9658489-3-0.