More information on Southwest Florida Archaeology and Calusa Indian Culture

Rules for visitation to a State Archaelogical Site Vascular plants of the Estero Bay and Barrier Island Environs Suggested reading for Florida Prehistory and Calusa Indian Culture More information on Southwest Florida Archaeology and Calusa Indian Culture You are here:

T H E     C A L U S A     L E G A C Y REDISCOVERING THE FORGOTTEN FLORIDIANS by Arden Arrington Reprinted from American Archaeology Magazine Vol. 1, Number 2, Summer 1997 When Europeans arrived in South Florida a few years after the "Discovery" of the New World, they encountered the "Calos", or "Fierce People," known today as the Calusa. The Calusa were a powerful tributary society who demanded tribute from tribes hundreds of miles away. Calusa society was divided into two distinct castes; commoners worked at tasks ordered by the nobility, providing food, digging canals, and laboring at the construction of immense shell mounds. Captives were taken during intertribal warfare and forced to work alongside Calusa commoners, gathering firewood or drinking water, or caring for the sick. Calusa religious beliefs included the concept of an afterlife. They believed that people had three souls, one represented by the pupil of the eye, another by one's shadow on the ground, a third represented in one's reflection as cast in a calm pool of water. Spanish shipwreck survivors were often captured by South Florida natives, then given as tribute to the powerful Calusa. At times, Spanish captives intermarried with their captors. Some were sacrificed at the behest of Calusa rulers. One such surviving captive, Hernando d'Escalante Fontaneda, wrote of the Florida natives and their customs, language, clothing and food. "Indians are on these islands," wrote Fontaneda, "who are of a large size. The women are well proportioned, and have good countenances. These Indians have no gold, less silver, and less clothing. They go naked, except for some breech-cloths woven of palm, with which the men cover themselves; the women do the like with a certain grass that grows on trees." Spanish priests and chroniclers described elaborate masked ceremonies, ritualized singing and processions of Calusa priests. Historical record tells that the Calusa king maintained the power of life and death over his subjects, who believed he could intercede with the spirits that sustained the bounty of their environment. The king was deemed to have a supernatural affinity with the Gods. He controlled the dissemination of religious knowledge to the commoners, the distribution of weapons, excess food and other worldly goods. Spanish accounts say that Calusa nobles practiced polygamy. The king sometimes took his sister in marriage. Unlike other cultures that achieved such social complexity, the Calusa were fisher-gatherer-hunters who practiced no agriculture. They maintained a distinct, well-organized military whose members were not expected to work at day-to-day tasks. Accomplished artisans, they carved, painted and engraved elaborate ceremonial objects fashioned from animal bone, shell, and tropical hardwoods. Although the Calusa successfully resisted European attempts at subjugation and conversion to Christianity for two hundred years, they had no natural immunity to diseases brought to the New World. By the 1750's, Calusa culture as we now know it had essentially been erased. Next