All about the ancient tribes
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.
What tools and weapons did the Apache use?
However, about 300 Apalachee descendants —today the only known descendants of Florida’s original inhabitants—have survived. They currently live in Louisiana and are seeking state and federal recognition as the Talimali Band of the Apalachee Indians of Louisiana, Inc.
Apalachee, tribe of North American Indians who spoke a Muskogean language and inhabited the area in northwestern Florida between the Aucilla and Apalachicola rivers above Apalachee Bay.
Today, most of the Apalachee live in Louisiana. Its tribal office, located in Libuse, Louisiana, serves approximately 300 members.
The Apalachee were part of an extensive trade network that extended north to the Great Lakes and west to present day Oklahoma. The Florida tribe would trade shells, shark’s teeth, and smoked fish for copper, mica, and other minerals not found in their native land. They were the breadbasket for La Florida.
They first encountered Spanish explorers in 1528, when the Narváez expedition arrived. Traditional tribal enemies, European diseases, and European encroachment severely reduced their population.
Apalachee dishes often involved mixing or combining staples like various types of corn, beans, and squash with meat and flavorful ingredients found from Florida forests and marshes: fruits and berries, nuts, and wild herbs. Stews were popular, as were cooked/roasted meat and fish.
Gods representing natural forces guided the Apalachee religious beliefs and worship ceremonies. The sun, moon, rain, and thunder were thought to be divine since these were needed for growing food.
Definition of Apalachee 1a: a Muskogean people of northwestern Florida. b: a member of such people.
The crops they grew included corn, beans and squash, and their supplies of corn and other food in their villages were abundant, according to a member of the exploration party of Hernando de Soto, who arrived 10 years after Narvaez.
The most important foods for the Apalachee were the crops they grew in their fields. They grew corn, beans, and squash (called the “three sisters”). They also harvested wild grapes, acorns, hickory nuts, and blackberries. They fished in the rivers and gathered shellfish and turtles.
The Lake Jackson mounds in the Tallahassee area served as a major ceremonial center for Native Americans from 1000-1650. “Tallahassee” is an Apalachee Indian word meaning “old town” or “abandoned fields.” The area became an abandoned Apalachee village.
Along with their Indian charges, they, too, toiled in the missions, farmlands and ranches. They were responsible for those who lived with them and their welfare, often being the first to rise in the morning and, after bed check and prayers, the last to go to bed.
1000, a group of farming Indians was living in northwest Florida. They were called the Apalachees. The Calusa Indians were originally called the “Calos” which means “Fierce People.” They were descendants of Paleo-Indians who inhabited Southwest Florida approximately 12,000 years ago.
The Timucua were a group of Native Americans who lived in current-day southern Georgia and northern Florida. The Timucua all spoke dialects of the same language, although they were not united politically, living in different tribes with their own territory and dialects.