The main diet of the Tocobaga was fish and shellfish. Mullet (seen in this painting by Hermann Trappman) were plentiful in the rivers and inlets around Tampa Bay.

Where and How They Lived. The Tocobaga Indians lived in small villages at the northern end of Tampa Bay from 900 to the 1500s. Each village was situated around a public area that was used as a meeting place. The houses were generally round and built with wooden poles holding up a roof of palm thatches.

The Tocobaga developed many tools for hunting, cooking, and eating. One such tool was the adz. The adz was made of a shell or pointed stone tied to the end of a curved branch. It was used for digging.

The Tocobaga Native Americans usually wore very simple clothing made of deerskin. Clothing did not play a big role in their culture. Instead, they preferred to decorate their bodies with tattoos and elaborate hand-crafted jewelry.

After the arrival of the French and Spanish, the number of Timucua became smaller with each passing year. The Europeans brought diseases with them that the Timucua easily caught and died from, since their bodies did not have natural resistance to the diseases.

Pedro Menéndez de Avilés

Calusa, North American Indian tribe that inhabited the southwest coast of Florida from Tampa Bay to Cape Sable and Cape Florida, together with all the outlying keys. According to some authorities their territory also extended inland as far as Lake Okeechobee. Their linguistic affiliation is not certain.

The Timucua had dark skin, usually brown, and black hair. They wore clothes made from moss, and cloth created from various animal skins.

British incursions during the early 18th century further reduced the Timucua. The rival European nations relied on Indian allies to fight their colonial wars. The English allied tribes, the Creek, Catawba, and Yuchi, killed and enslaved the Timucua who were associated with the Spanish.

When Europeans first arrived in Florida in the 1500s, the Timucua occupied over 19,000 square miles of land and their population was likely about 200,000. It is one of the goals of the Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve to remember how the Timucua lived since there are no Timucua left to tell their own stories.

They used spears, clubs, bows and arrows, and blowguns, to kill their game. Some of the game that they used for food included bears, deer, wild turkey, and alligators. They smoked the meat over open fires. The women would clean and prepare the animal hides and use them for clothing.

About 500 years ago the native people became known as the Woodland Indians. In North Florida lived two highly organized, farming tribes the Apalachee of the Tallahassee Hills and the Timucuans, located between the Aucilla River and the Atlantic Ocean as far south as Tampa Bay.

1a : a possibly Muskogean people of central and northeastern Florida. b : a member of such people. 2 : the language of the Timucua people.

Timucua is a language isolate formerly spoken in northern and central Florida and southern Georgia by the Timucua peoples. Timucua was the primary language used in the area at the time of Spanish colonization in Florida….Timucua language.

The Treaty of Hartford concluded the Pequot War in 1637, when the colonists made speaking the language a capital offense. Within a generation or so, it became largely extinct. Pequot from both the Eastern Pequot Tribal Nation and the Mashantucket Pequot now speak English as their first language.

If you’d like to know a few easy Seminole words, istonko (pronounced iss-tone-koh) means “hello” in Seminole Creek, and chehuntamo (pronounced chee-hun-tah-moh) means “hello” in Miccosukee.