The Calusa: Linguistic and Cultural Origins and Relationships

6. Tracing the Calusa Migration

6 Tracing the Calusa migration Accounting for the recurrent regular patterned sound-form-meaning correspondences given in the previous chapter that link the Calusa and Tunica phonological systems, morphologies, and vocabularies, small though the Calusa vocabulary may be, demands a close and detailed look at the archaeological data spanning the area from northeastern Louisiana down the mississippi River, across the northwest Gulf coast and down the west coast of florida to the Calusa area in southwest florida. Contact along this route is clearly necessary to explain the relationship demonstrated by the linguistic data. This distance is, obviously, extremely great, but, given the highly regular language correspondence data, something occurred in the past to connect the two regions, and that “something” must have been quite substantial and ongoing for a considerable period of time. This “feeling ” implied by the Calusa and Tunica language data is reinforced by the evidence of the presence of both natchez and Chitimacha speakers in florida at some now impossible to define chronological point in the past. Until very recent years it would have been largely guesswork to suggest such a far-reaching connection, particularly in this day and age when belief in the possibility of long-distance cultural move- Tracing the Calusa migration / 49 ments, similarities, or even identities is viewed by most American processualist archaeologists—the majority—as imagination or somethingakintohereticalbeliefinblackmagic.Withtheescalating amount of archaeological work done along the Gulf coast from the mouth of the mississippi to southwest florida over the past six decades , recently well summarized by the essays in Rebecca saunders’ and Christopher hays’s Early Pottery: Technology, Function, Style, and Interaction in the Lower Southeast (saunders and hays 2004), in those sectionsofJeraldmilanich’sArchaeologyofPrecolumbianFlorida (1994) dealing with the florida west coast and Weeden island ceramics and cultures, and, particularly, in milanich et al.’s Archaeology of Northern Florida, A.D. 200–900: The McKeithen Weeden Island Culture (milanich et al. 1994), it is now possible to say not only much more concerning Gulf coast cultures and their relationships to one another but to resolve what were informed guesses and suspicions only several decades ago when Dave Davis edited Perspectives on Gulf Coast Prehistory (Davis 1984). The data-based suspicions of Goggin (1949:34–39), Willey (1949:562–568), ford (1952), sears (1956, 1964), ford and Webb (1956:106), Gagliano and Webb (1970), Walthall and Jenkins (1976), Jenkins and Krause (1986), haag (1990), and many others that the northern Gulf coast was either a one-way or more likely a two-way street so far as west–east/east–west long-distance cultural interaction and economic interchange was concerned have certainly been confirmed (see particularly saunders and hays 2004 and milanich et al. 1994). The most cogent and thorough description of the cultural characteristics and peculiarities of this Gulf coast corridor comes without question from Jerald milanich’s Archaeology of Precolumbian Florida (1994) and milanich et al.’s Archaeology of Northern Florida, A.D. 200– 900: The McKeithen Weeden Island Culture (1994). These volumes both 50 / Chapter 6 provide thorough descriptions of the archaeological cultures of the florida Gulf coast periphery and discuss in detail the problems and peculiaritiesofdefinitionofwhatmight,duringrelativelylatedevelopmental times, be called the Weeden Island Corridor, which, under a variety of ceramic type names, runs along the Gulf coast from just north of the Caloosahatchee in southwest florida through the Petite Anse region of coastal Louisiana. Theunusual ceramiccharacteristicsofWeeden island and related wares noted by milanich (1994:155–241) and by milanich and his co-authors in milanich et al. (1994) were also noted earlier, in 1984, by ian brown of the Peabody museum at harvard from sites as far distant from one another as the Petite Anse region of south-central coastal Louisiana and the Tampa bay–manatee River region of the central west coast of florida. brown comments that “Curiously, designs most similar to those associated with complicated stamped in the Petite Anse region occur over 1,000 miles away in the Tampa bay-manatee region of florida”(brown1984:122–123),pointing out that “The materials most closely related to the check and complicated stamping of the Petite Anse region may be the Old bay Complicated stamped . . . common in the Tampa bay-manatee regions in the Late Weeden island period” and adding that in Weeden island i and ii times (ca. a.d. 655–1000) the Tampa bay–manatee region was on the eastern fringe of Weeden island–related...