Near Lake Alice in north central Florida, Native American peoples occupied the area for millennia, and around 950 CE the ancestors of the Timucua marked this location as sacred by beginning a cemetery. Several individuals were buried in a central grave, a small earthen mound was built over them, and over time additional burials were placed on the mound surface and covered with earth, especially on the southeastern side, creating an oval-shaped footprint. Although James Bell, an assistant Gainesville postmaster, found no evidence of burials in a limited amateur excavation in 1881, a more thorough scientific excavation by University of Florida archaeologists and students in 1976 confirmed the site’s use for burial. Before disturbance by plowing and early excavations, the mound was estimated to have been about 50 feet in diameter and 6 feet high. After the mound ceased to be used for burials, Indigenous people continued to live in the area and are known to later peoples as the Timucua. Scholars identify those living in this part of North Florida when Europeans arrived in the 16th century as the Potano, named for the Spanish mission San Francisco de Potano established about 10 miles north in 1606. Evidence from archaeology and Spanish colonial records indicates that the descendants of the people buried here were probably part of the region’s Catholic mission system, and that untold numbers of Timucua died from war, forced labor, and disease during the 17th and 18th centuries.
