The Tocobaga were Native Americans who lived in villages around Tampa Bay dating to about A.D. 1000. They lived near the water's edge and subsisted on a wide variety of fish, shellfish, wild game, and plants from upland areas. Spanish explorers described them as tall, well-formed, muscular people with a high level of civilization, and linguistics suggests their language shared characteristics with tribes such as the Creek, Chickasaw, and Seminole. Their villages were arranged around a public plaza used as a meeting place, with two or more mounds at the center, often including a burial mound and a temple or platform mound topped by one or more buildings. More important villagers had houses around the central public area, while less important villagers lived in huts farther from the plaza, in homes made of poles supporting thatched roofs. The mounds were built from dirt, sand, and shells, with a ramp leading from the plaza to the top. The temple mound was a place of worship where important religious relics were stored and where religious practitioners may have lived, and a nearby charnel house was used to prepare the dead for burial. Archaeological study of these mounds shows how people lived and survived before modern society, and for Native Americans mound sites remain spiritual places for speaking to, thanking, or praying to those buried there. Spanish explorers arrived in the Tampa Bay area in April 1528, bringing disease and violence, and these forces, along with political infighting among other Indian groups, contributed to the Tocobaga's disappearance. Some relocated to the Apalachee and St. Marks River areas during the seventeenth century, but the remaining Tocobaga in the Tampa Bay area were destroyed when colonial raiding parties swept through Florida in 1704, and remnants are said to have been incorporated into various Seminole bands in the 1700s.