The Calusa: Linguistic and Cultural Origins and Relationships

1. Investigating the Calusa

1 investigating the Calusa To those who know florida prehistory the word Calusa usually conjuresupvisionsofanextinct ,fiercenativesouthwestfloridapeople, alien yet highly civilized even from our present-day point of view, politicallypowerful,sociallyandreligiouslyhighlystratifiedandcomplex , and very sophisticated in engineering, architecture, and the arts. They occupied and controlled at least some dozens of settlementsthroughoutsouthandsouthCentralflorida ,somequitelarge, and held sway as well over subsidiary towns as far away as the Atlantic coast of florida. Like all societies and all peoples, for the quite legitimate reason of protecting their way of life, the Calusa adamantly resisted the alien spanish intruders of the early to late 1500s and their unusually blatant efforts to hispanicize and, particularly, Christianize them. This they understandably did since their overall social system and religious beliefs were, as in most societies, intertwined parts of a multifaceted whole, and the concepts and practices of that culture and religion were light-years removed from those of proselytizing, culturally insensitive sixteenth-century Christian spainanditsincrediblycruelinquisitionwithitspurposefulandroutinely brutal treatment of all non-Christians, at home and abroad— 2 / Chapter 1 so reminiscent of American actions in the middle east in the late 1900s and early 2000s. Allsucheffortswereconsequentlyandpredictablymetwithclear, firm,usuallypeacefulandpolitebutifnecessaryforcefulrefusal,and they remained so throughout the history of spanish florida in spite ofcontinuousmissionizingeffortsandtheveryshort-termresidence of an occasional priest or priests at the fort of san Antón de Carlos in 1567 and at the equally short-lived mission of san Diego de Compostela in 1697 (macmahon and marquardt 2004:118). Therefore, during the centuries following initial spanish settlement in florida the Calusa were lucky enough to be left more to their own devices than their less fortunate native American neighbors in north, east, Central, and West florida. never conquered, though constantly harassedandunsuccessfullyinterferedwithbyextremelyundiplomatic anddeviousspanishmissionariesandmilitary(Zubillaga1946:272– 311) and the depredations of spanish and, particularly, english slave traders with their yamasee and muskogean allies, and exposed as well to european diseases, they survived in increasingly smaller and smaller numbers. between 1704 and 1711 some were driven to Cuba (Worth 1995, 2003, 2004) until the ultimate absorption of those who had survived by the late-coming seminole and mikasuki peoples in the 1700s and early 1800s, by whom they are still remembered today. As the folklorist–ethnomusicologist frances Densmore recounted 50-some years ago, “The singer [of seminole songs] said . . . that long ago the Calusa and seminole camped near one another and the people of each camp visited freely in the other, learning songs and joining in the dances” (Densmore 1956). Densmore, in fact, has reproduced several Calusa-inspired songs recounted to her by her investigating the Calusa / 3 seminole informants, though they unfortunately contain no helpful Calusa words. in recent years, thanks to the archaeological work done under the aegis of William marquardt of the museum of natural history at the University of florida, thorough and meticulous analysis of the settlement and artifactual patterns of the sites in the southern section of the area inhabited by Calusa speakers has been undertaken in tandem with ethnohistoric and, particularly, extremely detailed biogeographical analysis (macmahon and marquardt 2004; marquardt and Payne 1992). This type of analysis has been augmented as well by the work of Randolph Widmer in his The Evolution of the Calusa:ANonagriculturalChiefdomontheSouthwestFloridaCoast(1988). The mysterious Calusa are thus no longer mysterious from a settlement , artifactual, and very basic ethnographic point of view (see, for example, John hann’s 1991 Missions to the Calusa; marquardt and Payne’s 1992 Culture and Environment in the Domain of the Calusa; The Calusa and Their Legacy, co-authored by macmahon and marquardt in 2004; Randolph Widmer’s 1988 The Evolution of the Calusa cited above; marquardt’s 1988 Politics and Production among the Calusa and his 1999 The Archaeology of Useppa Island: A Summary; the recent doctoral dissertation of Rob Patton written under marquardt’s direction ; and the upcoming doctoral dissertation of Corbett mcP. Torrence , the latter two brought to my attention by John Worth). somehow, however, the Calusa still remain one of the primary enigmas of florida prehistory, as marquardt himself points out in the first sentence of his introduction to John hann’s Missions to the Calusa (hann 1991:xv). Though marquardt and his associates at the Randell Research Center in Pineland have been the stanley-andLivingstones of Calusa area archaeology and have, as have others be- 4 / Chapter 1 fore them, brought the known ethnohistoric accounts on the tribe together, yet still the origins and relationship of the people to other florida and...