May/June 2019 GASPARILLA ISLAND 43
Above, trails and signage at Indian Mound Park.
eventually be crossed, bringing "disease and violence" to the
people of the Tocobaga tribe and resulting
in their inevitable extinction within the
next 100 years.
“When the Europeans first arrived
here, people had already
started dying,” John Mc-
Carthy said. “You would
have to imagine that some
of the natives had to have
left the coast, to go as far as
to places like the Everglades
because the coast was where
all the danger took place.”
Dr. George Luer, a professor
who holds a PhD in archaeology
from the University of Florida, has studied
archaeology in southern Florida for more than
40 years. He said the land was likely occupied by many different
Native American tribes.
“We really do not know what the natives called themselves,”
Luer said. “Archaeologists have in the past come up with names
for certain groups and time periods, such as Weeden Island,
Manasota, the Safety Harbor, which are classification names
based on the locality of where the groups and time periods
were first recognized.”
Luer specializes in researching Native American sites such as
shell middens, burial mounds, and coastal ways of life with a
commitment to imparting knowledge of the past and
appreciation for early Florida history while protecting remnants
of its past.
Because American Indian tribes such as the Calusa and
Tocobaga may have roamed throughout Florida’s Gulf Coast,
Luer indicates Florida Indian tribes of all groups may have
passed through and occupied Indian Mound Park over time.
“The Calusa were a multi-ethnic chiefdom, and that is
probably what the Tocobaga were,” Luer said. “Beside the
Calusa and Tocobaga, there might have been other dominate
groups. There was the Tequesta in Miami, the Cuchiyaga in the
Florida Keys, and other groups of American Indians.”
Touring the middens of Indian Mound Park means a travel
back in time to prehistoric life near Florida’s Intracoastal
Waterway. When visitors cross paths with the park's
information plaques, they are not only given a warm welcome
to the park, the plaques also provide general information of
site vegetation and land history, illustrating what life at Indian
Mound Park may have been for the early Florida natives.
Calusa
Indians