A Tribe Lost: Timicua

Before the Spanish explorers and priests arrived in La Florida in 1562, the Timicua numbered around 200,000 and were loosely organized in about 35 chiefdoms across southeastern Georgia and Florida; artifacts unearthed in St. Augustine in 2006 indicate they were there as early as 1100 AD. Their population fell to about 50,000 by 1595, only 35 years after the Spanish arrived, and by 1700 had been reduced to about 1,000; a few years later, none remained. Lacking natural immunity to European diseases, tens of thousands died from smallpox, measles, cholera, chickenpox, influenza, syphilis, and other illnesses, while thousands more were enslaved first by the Spanish and then the English and shipped to Caribbean plantations, and English colonists also waged war against them to remove them from lands the colonists wanted.

Florida · United States