Is This Florida Island Home to a Long-Lost Native American Settlement?

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Archaeologists have uncovered the remains of a possible Indigenous settlement in northeast Florida. As Matt Soergel reports for the Florida Times-Union, researchers from the University of North Florida (UNF) think they’ve finally found Sarabay, a local community cited by French and Spanish writers in records dating back to the 1560s. Its exact whereabouts had remained unknown—until now.

According to a statement, the team discovered a range of Indigenous and European artifacts on Big Talbot Island, located off the coast of Jacksonville. Coupled with cartographic map evidence, the finds suggest that the site once housed a group of Mocama Native Americans (the Mocama have long been considered part of the Timucua—a broader Indigenous network split into 35 chiefdoms). “No doubt we have a 16th-century Mocama community,” dig leader Keith Ashley tells the Times-Union.

Per the National Park Service (NPS), the Timucua lived in northeast and north central Florida from as early as 3000 B.C.; at its height, the civilization boasted a population of between 200,000 and 300,000. The Mocama—whose name roughly translates to “the sea” or “the ocean”—were seafaring people who settled at the mouth of the St. Johns River, notes the Archaeology Lab’s website. They fished, hunted and gathered to sustain themselves.

“May 1, 1562, the daily rhythm of Mocama life just halted then (with the arrival of Europeans)” Ashley told the Times-Union’s Soergel last year. The Mocama found themselves beset by warfare with settlers and other Indigenous tribes, infectious diseases, and other consequences of European colonization. “The long-term impact of that was just going to be disastrous to the Mocama. They only had another 150 years left in northeast Florida. They just didn’t know it yet.”

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/researchers-may-have-rediscovered-long-lost-indigenous-settlement-florida-1-180977973/