Apalachee

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search

The Apalachee are an Indian tribe that historically lived in the panhandle of Florida, called Apalachee Province by the Spanish colonists. They are known to have occupied the site of Velda Mound starting about 1450 CE, but had mostly abandoned it before the Spanish started settlements in the 17th century. They lived between the Aucilla River and Ochlockonee River, at the head of Apalachee Bay. The Apalachee spoke a Muskogean language which became extinct. They first encountered Spanish explorers in the 16th century, when the Hernando de Soto expedition arrived.

They became dispersed by traditional tribal enemies, European diseases, and European encroachment. In the 21st century, their descendants live in Louisiana.


Contents

[edit] Culture

The Apalachee spoke a Muskogean language which became extinct. It was documented by Spanish settlers in letters written during the Spanish Colonial period.

Around 1100, indigenous peoples began to cultivate crops. Agriculture became important in the area that became the Apalachee domain. It was part of the Fort Walton Culture, a Florida culture influenced by the Mississippian culture. With agriculture, the people could grow surplus crops, which enabled them to settle in larger groups, increase their trading for raw materials and finished goods, and specialize in production of artisan goods.

At the time of Hernando de Soto's visit in 1539-1540, the Apalachee capital was Anhaica (present-day Tallahassee, Florida). The Apalachee lived in villages of various size, or on individual farmsteads of .5 acres (0.20 ha) or so. Smaller settlements might have a single earthwork mound and a few houses. Larger towns (50 to 100 houses) were chiefdoms. They were organized around earthwork mounds built over decades for ceremonial, religious and burial purposes. Villages and towns were often situated by lakes, as the natives hunted fish and used the water for domestic needs and transport. The largest Apalachee community was at Lake Jackson on the north side of present-day Tallahassee. This regional center had several mounds and 200 or more houses. Some of the surviving mounds are protected in Lake Jackson Mounds Archaeological State Park,

The Apalachee grew numerous varieties of corn, beans, squash, pumpkins and sunflowers. They gathered wild strawberries, the roots and shoots of the greenbrier vine, greens such as lambsquarters, the roots of one or more unidentified aquatic plants used to make flour, hickory nuts, acorns, saw palmetto berries and persimmons. They caught fish and turtles in the lakes and rivers, and oysters and fish on the Gulf Coast. They hunted deer, black bears, rabbits and ducks.

The Apalachee were part of an expansive trade network that extended from the Gulf Coast to the Great Lakes, and westward to what is now Oklahoma. The Apalachee acquired copper artifacts, sheets of mica, greenstone and galena from distant locations through this trade. The Apalachee probably paid for such imports with shells, pearls, shark teeth, preserved fish and sea turtle meat, salt and cassina leaves and twigs (used to make the black drink).

The Apalachee made tools from stone, bone and shell. They made pottery, wove cloth and cured buckskin. They built houses covered with palm leaves or the bark of cypress or poplar trees. They stored food in pits in the ground lined with matting, and smoked or dried food on racks over fires. (When Hernando de Sotò seized the Apalachee town of Anhaico in 1539, he found enough stored food to feed his 600 men and 220 horses for five months.)

The Apalachee men wore a deerskin loincloth. The women wore a skirt made of Spanish moss or other plant fibers. The men painted their bodies with red ochre and placed feathers in their hair when they prepared for battle. The men smoked tobacco in ceremonial rituals, including ones for healing.

The Apalachee scalped opponents whom they killed, exhibiting the scalps as signs of warrior ability. Taking a scalp was a means of entering the warrior class, and was celebrated with a scalp dance. The warriors wore headdresses made of bird beaks and animal fur. The village or clan of a slain warrior was expected to avenge his death.

The Apalachee played a ball game described in detail by Spaniards in the 17th century. Two teams kicked and hit a small ball, made by wrapping buckskin around dried mud, trying to hit a goal post. There was only one goal, with an eagle's nest set on top. Players scored one point if they hit the post with the ball, and two points if the ball landed in the nest. Eleven points won the game. Spectators gambled heavily on the games.

Up to 50 men played on a team. The best players were highly prized, and villages gave them houses, planted their fields for them, and overlooked their misdeeds in an effort to keep such players on their teams. The giving of challenges for a game and the erection of goalposts involved rituals and ceremonies. The game had few rules and could be quite violent. Serious injuries and even deaths occurred in the games.

[edit] History

The Apalachee were the most advanced indigenous nation in Florida, with a relatively dense population and a complex, highly stratified society and regional chiefdom.[1] They were part of the Mississippian culture and an expansive regional trade network reaching to the Great Lakes. Their reputation was such that when tribes in southern Florida first encountered the Pánfilo de Narváez expedition, they said the riches which the Spanish sought could be found in Apalachee country.

The "Appalachian" place-name is derived from the Narvaez Expedition's naming a village Apalachen (near present-day Tallahassee, Florida.) The Spanish further adapted the Native American name as Apalachee and applied it to the region, as well as to the tribe which lived inland to the north. De Narváez's expedition first entered Apalachee territory on June 15, 1528. "Appalachian" is the fourth-oldest surviving European place-name in the U.S.[2]


[edit] Spanish encounters

A proposed route for the first leg of the de Soto Expedition, based on Charles M. Hudson map of 1997

.

Two Spanish expeditions encountered the Apalachee in the first half of the 16th century. The expedition of Pánfilo de Narváez entered the Apalachee domain in 1528. Spanish attempts to overpower the Apalachee was met with resistance. The Narváez expedition turned to the coast on Apalachee Bay, where it built five boats and attempted to sail to Mexico. Only five men survived their ordeal.

In 1539, Hernando de Sotò landed on the west coast of the peninsula of Florida with a large contingent of men and horses, to search for gold. The natives told him that gold could be found in Apalachee. Historians have not determined if the natives meant the mountains of northern Georgia, an actual source of gold, or to valuable copper artifacts which the Apalachee were known to have acquired through trade. In any case, de Sotò and his men went north to Apalachee territory in pursuit of the precious metal.

Because of their prior experience with the Narváez expedition and reports of fighting between the de Sotò expedition and tribes along the way, the Apalachee feared and hated the Spanish. When the de Sotò expedition entered the Apalachee domain, the Spanish soldiers were described as "lancing every Indian encountered on both sides of the road."[citation needed] De Sotò and his men seized the Apalachee town of Anhaica, where they spent the winter of 1539-1540.

Apalachee fought back with quick raiding parties and ambushes. Their arrows could penetrate two layers of chain mail. They quickly learned to target the Spaniards' horses, which otherwise gave the Spanish an advantage against the unmounted Apalachee. The Apalachee were described as "being more pleased in killing one of these animals than they were in killing four Christians."[3] In the spring of 1540, de Sotò and his men left the Apalachee domain and headed north into what is now the state of Georgia.[3]

[edit] Spanish missions and 18th century war

Flag of the Apalachee Nation

About 1600, the Spanish Franciscan priests founded a successful mission among the Apalachee, adding several settlements over the next century. Apalachee acceptance of the priests may have related to social stresses, as they had lost population to infectious diseases brought unwittngly by the Europeans, to which they had no natural immunity. Many Apalachee converted to Catholicism, in the process creating a syncretic fashioning of their traditions and Christianity.

In 1704 during Queen Anne's War (a Europe-based conflict) English-led forces from the Province of Carolina, made up mostly of Apalachee traditional enemies: Creek and Yamasee Indians, invaded Spanish Florida. They attacked the Apalachee, as well as the Spanish missionaries who lived amongst them. This became known as the Apalachee Massacre. Many of the Apalachee were killed; others who were captured and sold into Indian slavery kept their tribal identity for some time. Nearly 1400 were reported taken as slaves by the Creek and Yamasee Indians to be sold in the British Indian slave trade. The people were essentially defeated and dispersed.

Some surviving Apalachee fled westward, accepting an offer to live in French-controlled Mobile. In 1763 with the British victory in the Seven Years War (known in their American colonies as the French and Indian War, most of these Apalachees relocated to Rapides Parish in Louisiana in order to evade British rule. The British took over La Louisiane, the extensive French territory east of the Mississippi River. The tribe's descendants, known as the Talimali Band of Apalachee, still live in Rapides Parish under the guidance of Chief Gilmer Bennett.[4]

In the early 18th century, the tribe was largely destroyed and dispersed in an attack by traditional enemies, the indigenous Creek and Yamasee peoples, as well as English colonists from South Carolina, as part of Queen Anne's War. Descendants of survivors have continued to live in Rapides Parish, Louisiana, where they later settled.

[edit] Present tribe

As of 2009, Gilmer Bennett is Chief of the Apalachees

Today the tribal office located in Libuse, Louisiana serves approximately 300 members. The tribe has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, along with other news publications. The Public Broadcasting Service show History Detectives aired a special about the tribe in 2006 which featured the archeological find of a historically and artistically significant crystal cross, made by an Apalachee during the Spanish colonial years.[5]

Mission San Luis, the western capital of Spanish Florida from 1656 to 1704, is a National Historic Landmark in Tallahassee. The historic site is being operated as a living history museum by the Florida Department of Archeology.[6] Including an indigenous council house, it re-creates one of the Spanish missions and Apalachee culture, showing the closely related lives of Apalachee and Spanish in these settlements. The historic site received the "Preserve America" Presidential Award in 2006.[7]

[edit] Legacy

Apalachicola, Florida within the original homeland of the tribe, is named after the tribe.

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ "Apalachee Province", History and Archeology, Friends of Mission San Luis, 2008, accessed 1 Feb 2010
  2. ^ Stewart, George (1945). Names on the Land: A Historical Account of Place-Naming in the United States. New York: Random House. pp. 17. 
  3. ^ a b Hudson, Charles M. (1997). Knights of Spain, Warriors of the Sun. University of Georgia Press. 
  4. ^ "The Talimali Band of Apalachee", Northern State University of Louisiana
  5. ^ "Mystery Crystal Cross", History Detectives
  6. ^ Friends of Mission San Luis, Inc. home page
  7. ^ Presentation of the "Preserve America" award by President Bush

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apalachee"