Spanish Indians
Spanish Indians was the name Americans sometimes gave to Native Americans living in southwest Florida and in southernmost Florida during the first half of the 19th century. Those people were also sometimes called "Muspas". Seminoles, Muscogees, Alabamas, and Choctaws were also reported to be living in southwest and southern Florida in the early 19th century. Many Native Americans were employed by and often resident at Spanish-Cuban fishing ranchos along the coast of southwest Florida. During the Second Seminole War, a band led by Chakaika that lived in the Shark River Slough in the Everglades was particularly called "Spanish Indians". The residents of the fishing ranchos and, after Chakaika's death in 1840, many people from his band, were sent west to the Indian Territory, and Spanish Indians were no longer mentioned in the historical record. Scholars long regarded the Spanish Indians as likely a surviving remnant of the Calusa people. More recent scholarship regards the Spanish Indians as Muskogean language-speakers who had settled in southern Florida in the 18th century and formed a close association with Spaniards, or were even beginning to form a Spanish-Native American creole people.
Origins
There were a number of different Native American peoples living in southwestern Florida in the late 18th century and early 19th centuries. It was reported in 1823 that there were Seminoles, as well as small numbers of Muscogees, Alabamas, Choctaws, and other tribes, living near Tampa Bay and Charlotte Habor, with some living in the Cape Sable region, and "not more than 50" on the east coast near Cape Florida. People living in the area of Charlotte Harbor were called both "Spanish Indians" and "Muspas", and it was long assumed later in the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century that the Spanish Indians and Muspas were remnants of the Calusa. The Spanish Indians lived in palmetto thatched huts, raised food in mainland farms, spoke Spanish, dealt with Spanish-Cuban fishermen, visited and traded with Havana, and were in communication with other Indian bands in Florida, but had no contact with English-speakers.Calusas
When the Spanish first reached Florida, southwest Florida was the home of the Calusa and other peoples who were closely associated with and dominated by them. Spanish presence in the Calusa domain was sporadic and limited, with the last Spanish attempt to place a mission with the Calusa failing in 1697. After the destruction of the Spanish mission system in northern Florida at the beginning of the 18th century, Yamassees and Muscogulges raided far into the Florida peninsula, killing many of the Florida natives, and capturing others for sale as slaves.Continued raiding by Muscogulges pushed the last Calusas and other peoples into extreme southern Florida. The last 60 Calusas on Key West were evacuated to Cuba in 1760. Bernard Romans reported that the coast between Cape Sable and Cape Romano was the last refuge of the Calusa before they were driven off the continent by the Muscogulges, and that the last 80 families of Calusa left Florida for Havana in 1763, when Florida was ceded to the British by the Spanish.
There are some reports of possible remnants of Calusas remaining in Florida. William Bartram reported that in 1774 an old Muscogee told him about a town called "Calusahatche" on the "Bay of Carlos", occupied by Calosulges which included ancient residents of Florida called "Painted people" and "Bat necks". However, Benjamin Hawkins mentioned the town of Caloosahatchee as being Seminole in 1778-1779. Botanist John C. Gifford found a village on the Shark River in 1904 that he thought was not typically Seminole, but perhaps a mixture of Calusa and Seminole.
Muscogulges
Muskogean-speakers began settling in the Florida Peninsula by the middle of the 18th century. A band of Hitchiti-speaking Oconees, led by Ahaya, settled on the Alachua Savanna sometime around 1750. They later became known as the "Alachua Seminoles".People speaking Muskogean languages may have settled in southern Florida before all of the Calusa left. In the 1950s, Miccosukees living west of Miami told William C. Sturtevant that they remembered the kalasa:Lî, but regarded them as Spanish. They did not remember any Painted people, Bat necks, or Muspas. Frances Densmore recorded 17 songs from a Cow Creek Seminole in 1932 that were said to be Calusa. According to the informant, the Seminole and Calusa had lived peaceably near each other for a while, and learned songs from each other. The two peoples later fought, and the Seminoles defeated the Calusa. Muscogulges dominated all of Florida after the departure of the Calusa in the 1760s, even attacking Spanish fishing vessels along the Florida coast during the Seven Years' War. Bernard Romans reported using a "Spanish Indian" guide at the St. Lucie River in 1769. As Romans elsewhere reported the departure of all Calusa from Florida by 1763, this Spanish Indian was likely a Muscogulge rather than a Calusa.
Spanish records include lists of names of Florida Indians, eventually including hundreds each year, that visited Cuba between 1771 and 1823. Sturtevant notes that most of the names of chiefs and towns recorded by the Spanish appear to be Muscogee. While the remaining names may be Calusa, they may also be Muscogee names distorted by poor transcription and copying errors.
Other peoples
In 1952–1953, Miccosukees living west of Miami told Sturtevant that yathâmpa:Lî had also lived in Florida. The yathâmpa:Lî were said to have been found by the Spanish living south of present-day Ocala. The Spanish traded with and intermarried with the yathâmpa:Lî. At first, Seminoles also traded and intermarried with the yathâmpa:Lî. The Spanish later incited the yathâmpa:Lî to attack the Seminoles. The Seminoles defeated the yathâmpa:Lî and Spanish in a multi-day battle.Neill collected a story from a Cow Creek Seminole informant relating how a people called imá:la, who were big and ferocious, fought with the ko:ico:bî. The imá:la were driven away, but a few returned after the Second Seminole War and took refuge with the Miccosukee. Neill notes that imá:la resembles "Emola", the name of a Timucuan town in northeastern Florida mentioned by René Goulaine de Laudonnière.
Scholarly opinion
In 1952–1953, William Sturtevant interviewed Miccosukees in Florida about the presence of non-Seminole people in Florida. The Florida Miccosukees did not remember any "Bat Necks", "Painted People", or "Muspa" in Florida. The Miccosukee oral history did include the presence of kalasa:Lî, who were generally viewed as being Spanish. The Miccosukees identified of Spanish Indians as Mikasuki-speaking Seminoles. The Miccosukees believed that Chakaika's band, while long separated from them, shared a common ancestry.Neill notes that the Spanish Indians were generally considered to be Calusa until Sturtevant's 1953 paper. Sturtevant stated that there were probably Calusa remnants in Southwest Florida in the early 19th century, and Neill stated it is possible that a few Calusa or Muspa remained in Florida and amalgamated with the Seminoles after the Spanish left. Neill also notes that no 19th century primary source identifies Spanish Indians as Calusa. In 1822, Jedidiah Morse, in a report to the U.S. secretary of war, said that the Calusa were extinct. The Calusa and other Pre-Columbian era Indigenous peoples of Florida, with the possible exception of those called "Spanish Indians", were gone by 1800. By 1829 Whites in south Florida referred only to Seminoles as being present.
Sturtevant concludes that there were several different Indian groups in Southwest florida in early 19th century: Seminoles, persons of mixed Indian and Spanish ancestry, Choctaws, and Calusa. There are Seminole traditions of the presence of other non-Seminoles. The various Indians bands were at first very loosely associated, but later amalgamated into the Seminole tribe. The Spanish Indians were possibly Mikasuki-speakers who arrived in Florida earlier than other predecessors of Seminoles, and became closely associated with the Spanish. While some of the Spanish Indians may have been descended from Calusas, historians have now concluded that, at least in the 19th century, most of those people were descendants of Muscogulges, who elsewhere in Florida became known as Seminoles.
Rancho Indians
One component of the Spanish Indians was "rancho Indians". Spanish fishing vessels from Cuba began fishing along the southwest Florida coast by the 1680s. By the 1740s, Cuban fishermen were employing guides and fishermen from the remaining Indigenous people in the Florida Keys. Many Spanish Indians worked at Spanish fishing stations, known as ranchos, from Jupiter Inlet south on the east coast and from Tampa Bay south on the west coast, and some intermarried with Spaniards. By the beginning of the 19th century, year-round fishing ranchos were established along the Florida coast between Tampa Bay and Estero Bay, and much of the fishing community resided there year-round. Other Seminoles also worked at the ranchos during the fishing season and left during the off-season. In 1831, by one account, four ranchos in the vicinity of Charlotte Harbor had as many as 300 residents total. Another account gave the population of ranchos between Tampa Bay and Charlotte Harbor in that year as 65 Spanish men, 65 Indian men, 30 Indian women, and 50 to 100 children.William Whitehead, customs inspector in Key West, wrote in 1831 that the women at the fishing ranchos were all Indians, and that the color of their children's skins indicated that many were fathered by the Spaniards. William Bunce, who owned a fishing rancho in Tampa Bay, stated in 1838 that he had 10 Spaniards and 20 Spanish Indians working for him, and that most of the Spanish Indians had been born at the rancho, spoke Spanish, and "had never been in the country ten miles in their lives". He said that they worked for the Cuban fishermen from August until March, cultivated small plots and fished in the off-season, but did not hunt. He also said that many of the Spaniards working for him had Indian wives, and several had children and grand-children. Baptismal records from between 1807 and 1827 at a church in Regla include 20 children born to Spanish fathers and their Indian wives, 5 born to Indian women with no recorded father, and 3 with Indian parents.
Augustus Steele wrote to Wiley Thompson in 1835 concerning the legal status of those Spanish Indians. Steele declared that while the Indians and "half-bloods" were descended from Seminoles, they did not claim affiliation with the Seminoles, and were not claimed by the Seminoles. He also stated that they spoke Spanish, and that some had been baptised in Havana, and described them as "Spanish fishermen under the Spanish government", and "incapable of supporting themselves by ordinary Indian means". Steele indicated in a letter to Thompson that the Seminoles did not claim the Spanish Indians as members because they did not want to share the annuities they received from the government. Thompson's reply to Steele ruled that the Spanish Indians were bound by communication and family relationships to the Seminoles, and had to join the Seminoles on the reservation.
John Worth has stated that the Spanish Indians of the ranchos were neither Seminole nor Calusas, but a creole community that emerged in the 18th and early 19th centuries, consisting of Spanish Cuban fishermen and people predominantly descended from Muskogean-speaking people who were present in southwest Florida decades before the Seminoles.