A computer-generated map of the Pineland Calusa Indian site shows it reconstructed as it existed more than 1,000 years ago.
Posted on 03/14/2004 3:17:49 PM PST by blam
Researchers scour Cuban records for clues to Calusa
By KRISTEN ZAMBO, klzambo@naplesnews.com
March 14, 2004
After years of belief to the contrary, the once mighty Calusa Indians, who lived centuries ago in Southwest Florida, may not be extinct after all.
Nicknamed "The Fierce Ones," the Calusa Indians lived in Southwest Florida from around A.D. 100 to the early 1700s, when they were believed to have been killed off by invading Native American tribes, Spanish soldiers and foreign diseases such as smallpox. Their largest settlement in Florida was on Pine Island at Pineland, now the site of the Randell Research Center, which is conducting archaeological research on the settlement.
Anthropologist John Worth, Randell Research Center director, said that scholars long have believed that the Calusa were pushed east and south by invaders, and that no descendants of the Calusa live in Florida — nor anywhere else — today. But new information shows that a small band of between 60 to 70 Calusa refugees took to their boats and fled to Cuba in the 1760s, and others may have fled earlier.
"Florida Indians now have a connection to Cuba," Worth said Saturday during a news conference at the Pineland excavation site. "I am hopeful that we do have actual living descendants of the Calusa."
Worth, who searched through church parish records in Cuba and Spain during the past two years, said he discovered that one Calusa woman, who traveled to Cuba as an infant in 1711, was baptized into the Catholic church. From there, documents revealed that in 1729 and in 1731 she gave birth to two daughters, Maria Antonia and Maria Casilda.
No records have been found showing whether either girl bore children, or whether other Calusa refugees in Cuba produced heirs. But Worth said it is now believed that Calusa tribe members married Cubans and light-skinned African-Cubans, which may result in anthropologists locating Calusa descendants in Cuba and possibly Miami.
"The chances are probably fairly slim, but the hope springs eternal," Worth said, who plans to return to Cuba in April to review more church records of births, deaths and marriages. "The connection between Cuba and Southwest Florida goes back a lot further than people think."
The girls' mother died in 1766, Worth said, and there was no father listed on their birth records. That may mean they were born out of wedlock, because the Catholic church recorded the birth father's name on all legitimate births, Worth said. Or, it may mean that their mother married a Calusa man or Cuban who was not baptized, so his name would not have been recorded.
The Calusa's may not be a story of extinction, but one of survival and adaptation.
Phyllis Kolianos, vice president of the Florida Anthropological Society, recently unearthed archaeological documents from long-lost files at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., that shed new light on the Calusa settlement on Pine Island, which is west of Cape Coral in Lee County.
Manager of the Weedon Island Preserve Cultural and Natural History Center in St. Petersburg, Kolianos found the much-debated "1,000-page manuscript" on research into this settlement mentioned in letters by noted archaeologist and ethnographer Frank Hamilton Cushing, who put Marco on the archaeological map when he unearthed the Key Marco Cat on Key Marco. The Key Marco Cat is a little wooden-carved statue created by the Calusa that Cushing found in 1896 during an archaeological excavation there.
One of the archivists in the National Anthropological Archives with the Natural Museum of History for the Smithsonian helped Kolianos locate a box containing documents created by Cushing in the late 1800s when he went on an excavation expedition in Southwest Florida. The documents, long ago donated to the Smithsonian by Cushing's family, had sat unperused for years, she said. Other researchers, including those from the Smithsonian, had sought Cushing's "1,000-page manuscript," which actually totaled 708 pages without his notes from Key Marco.
"The manuscripts, plus the journals, hold a lot of new information," Kolianos said.
His detailed manuscripts, journal entries and maps of Pineland in 1895 and 1896 show a much different region than is visible today. Before the documents resurfaced, researchers believed the Calusa settlement on Pineland consisted of two large frontal mounds facing the sea, with a canal running between. Now, archaeologists know the site looked much different, and Cushing's sketches show where mounds once existed and where workers must excavate.
"That will transform the way we interpret and view the Calusa who lived at this site," Worth said.
Stuart Brown, former chairman of the Randell Research Center's advisory board, said later inhabitants pushed down these mounds and filled in their canals.
"The mounds were bigger, wider than we ever imagined," Brown said. "It was not just two big mounds, but mound complexes."
Instead, another three-humped mound was located, and a section containing a cluster of at least six mounds, Worth explained. And the higher the mounds were built, the greater power and political authority the tribe's chief was believed to hold.
"Pineland was the second largest shell-mound site in all of Florida," he said.
The earth used in Calusa Indians' mounds was layered with shells. Volunteers on Saturday scraped carefully at layers of an excavation site, sifting for any ancient artifacts amid the layers of shells and smooth, soot-colored sand.
The scent of orange blossoms wafted through the air as ospreys soared overheard, their cries mingling with the occasional comments from volunteer excavators as they uncovered beads, shards of pottery, broken shell tools and primitive stakes used to secure the homes to the ground.
Archaeologists hope to uncover remnants of the homes — or complete homes — detailing Calusa architecture and the type of structures they lived in.
"No single Calusa house was ever found," Worth said. "We have hints, but I don't know the answer to that."
Kolianos' discovery of Cushing's maps and manuscript points to other excavation locations on the Pineland site, which, Worth said, made Kolianos' find that much more crucial.
Cushing spent five years living with the Zuni tribe in the southwestern United States. As an ethnographer with intimate knowledge of Native Americans, he was able to identify tell-tale signs of their settlements, Kolianos said.
Cushing's manuscripts, journal entries, maps and illustrations are expected to be published in two books in spring 2005 by the University of South Florida.
"I'm just hoping there will be a lot of new research generated from it," Kolianos said.
A computer-generated map of the Pineland Calusa Indian site shows it reconstructed as it existed more than 1,000 years ago.
"The Calusa men were tall and well built with long hair. Calusa means "fierce people," and they were described as a fierce, war-like people."
I wonder if they may be remnants of these people:
European DNA Found In 7-8,000 Year Old Skeleton In Florida (Windover)
Nah. They were probably remnants of a Caucasian tribe. See post#3
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