The Caloosahatchee Period (ca.
500 B.C. - A.D. 1750)
At the time of Spanish arrival in the early sixteenth century, the Indians of Estero Bay and near by Pine Island Sound were known as the Calusa. The Calusa were a powerful chiefdom that dominated the south Florida political landscape collecting tribute from tribes as far away as Lake Okeechobee and the Florida Keys. Their society was divided into commoners and elites and the elite class was entitled to certain foods denied to commoners such as the Caribbean monk seal, which is today extinct in local waters. The position of chief was inherited through family line, and a chief was considered divine.
The Calusa, like their ancestors before them relied heavily on the estuaries for subsistence. For years, the Calusa were considered a cultural anomaly for developing such a powerful and complex society without the aid of agriculture. The idea that the Calusa were able to support their cultural complexity solely through hunting, fishing, and gathering was perplexing, but attributed to the incredible productivity of the sub-tropical estuarine environments they inhabited. Other researchers have suggested that the Calusa may have been aquaculturalists - raising fish and possibly shellfish in ponds and intensifying the natural production of the estuaries. For social scientists a central issue is to explain how Calusa chiefs maintained their power and coerced the labor of others in a land of abundance.
Evidence for cooperative labor investments is most visible in Calusa architecture. Massive mounds were built as foundations for temples and elite residences, and burial containers. Major centers adhered to a specific architectural design that symbolized and reinforced cultural behaviors and beliefs. The Calusa also engineered canals, some over two miles in length. One such canal, crossed an elevation of 12 feet, and was segmented by a series of locks that controlled water levels, which were maintained by a series of feeder ponds. In addition to these extensive earthworks, the Spanish describe houses with doors and windows and a temple that could hold 2,000 people without crowding.
The Calusa resisted Spanish political, cultural, and religious insurgence for 200 years. The first documented contact with Europeans occurred on June 4th, 1513 when Ponce de Leon’s flotilla of three ships anchored for re-supply near what is today San Carlos Bay. The flotilla was attacked by twenty Calusa canoes some of which were tied side by side and all were equipped with barricades protecting the warriors inside. In the ensuing battle five canoes and four Indians were captured, and many others were killed. Two Indian captives and a Spaniard were sent to meet the Calusa chief and arrange a meeting. This was done, but the following morning the flotilla was confronted by a force of eighty canoes prepared for battle that likely represented a force of over 800 Calusa warriors. The show of force was enough to convince the Spaniards to leave. When Ponce de Leon returned in 1521, he was again attacked and this time mortally wounded.
A brief mission effort by the Spanish amongst Calusa at their capital on Mound Key between 1567 and 1569 ended in failure amidst continued tension. A second mission attempt in 1697 lasted only three months before the missionaries were stripped of their clothing and marooned in the Florida Keys. The Calusa made it clear that their interest was in Spanish goods not beliefs.
Despite two hundred years of resistance to European subjugation, the political landscape of Florida was changing. European diseases almost certainly took its toll on Calusa populations and researchers estimate that 80 to 95 percent of all Native American populations succumbed to the foreign contagions. Such mortality would have disrupted hereditary lines of inheritance and fostered internal conflict. In addition, the influx of exotic European trade and wealth items may have encouraged subordinate chiefs to challenge the authority and threaten the power of the high ranking chiefs causing further social disruption. But the ultimate demise of the Calusa would come at the hands of other Indians.
By the 1600s the Spanish had established a line of missions across North Florida, separating the Spanish and British Domains. The British saw the missions as an easy source of Indian slaves and outfitted Yamasee and Creek Indians with guns and sent them raiding into the missions. The missions were destroyed and the Creek and Yamasee Indians pushed south into Florida enslaving and displacing indigenous tribes, while becoming increasingly autonomous. The Calusa fled southwards into the Keys and some were boated to Cuba by Spanish sympathizers. By 1740 the indigenous tribes of Florida had all been enslaved, acculturated, and/or over run by the new inhabitants.
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