On a dark moonless night, Pedro Menendez de Aviles, slipped into Tampa Bay at the head of six brigantines. He had been appointed governor of Florida by the Spanish court in Seville.
The vessels drifted past Weedon Island like silent shadows. An Indian guide in the lead ship helps the Spanish navigate the treacherous shallows of the Bay. Menendez signals that the gun ports be opened and the cannons rolled out into place. Blinking into the darkness, the crews of the ships carry out his order as quietly as possible. The ships drift on toward their destination, the primary city on Florida’s Central Gulf Coast.
Tampa Bay has already experienced the Panfilo de Narvaez expedition in 1528 and the De Soto entrada in 1539. These shores had seen the murder of Fray Luis Cancer de Barbastro in 1549 in an early bid to set up a mission system here. Tension whispered through the wispy leaves of the sabal palms and across the inky ripples of the bay.
In the still darkness of early morning, the crews lowers the ships’ anchors. Like a threatening storm, they had creep closer and closer to the sleeping city. In the graying light of dawn, Menendez sent a shallop, a ship’s boat, toward shore to announce his arrival.
The waking city of Tocobaga exploded in panic. The town crier, sounding the alert on a horse conch trumpet, rushed among the houses. People grabbed what belongings they could and fled into the still dark forests. Mothers tried to calm crying babies. Mens urged their wives on, protecting them as best they could from the terror they knew lay ahead.
But Menendez had come in peace.
Spanish Accounts in the 16th & 17th Centuries
Most scholars explore the world of the Tocobaga through the reports of the early Spanish conquistadors and priests who came to Florida in the 16th and 17th centuries. Although these reports do not give us much detail, they do provide historians with some information which paints a picture of the Tocobaga Indians.
1528
The Panifilo de Narvaez expedition swept into what is know called Boca Ciega Bay in South Pinellas County. The chronicler of that doomed party, Cabeza de Vaca, describes their first encounter with the people they meet.
That same day [April 14] the comptroller Alonso Enrigues, ventured to an island in the bay and called to the Indians, who came and stayed with him quite a while, trading fish and venison for trinkets.
The following day [Good Friday] the Governor [Narvez] debarked with as many men as the ship’s little boats could hold. We found the buhios deserted, the Indians having fled by canoe in the night. One of the buildings was big enough to accommodate more than 300 people; the others were smaller. Amid some fish nets, we found a gold bell.
We followed the shore of the bay we had found and after four leagues, captured four Indians. We showed them corn to see whether they knew what it was, for we had so far come across no sign of any. They indicated that they would take us where there was some, and led us to their village at the head of the Bay close by. There they showed us a little corn not yet fit to gather.
We saw a number of crates there like those used for merchandising in Castile, each containing a dean man covered with painted deerskins. The Commisary [Father Suárez] took this for some form of idolatry and burned the crates and corpses. We also found pieces of linen and woolen cloth and bunches of feathers like those of New Spain. And we saw some nuggets of gold.
We inquired of the Indians by signs, where these things came from. They gave us to understand that very far from here was a province called Appalachen, where there was much of everything we wanted.
Keeping these Indians for guides, we proceeded ten or twelve leagues, to a village of fifteen houses, where we saw a large cornfield ready for harvest, some of the ears already dry.
1539
Garcilasco de la Vega in describing the Hernando De Soto expedition of 1539, wrote that Indian men wore breechcloths of multicolored deerskin. He went on to write more about Indian clothing in the following excerpt:
Instead of cloaks, they wore robes that fastened at the neck and extended to the middle of the legs. Some are made of very fine martin fur and smell of musk, whereas others are made of hide and small skins of such animals as bucks, roes, stags, bears, lions, and various species of cats. These skins they dress to utmost perfection, preparing a hide of a bearskin without removing the hair. Thus it remains soft and smooth, and can be worn as a cloak or can serve at night on their beds.
They permit their hair to grow, wearing it up in a large knot on the head. As an adornment, they use a thick skein of thread, of whatever color they wish, which encircles the head and falls over the forehead. In the ends of the skein they tie two half-knots, so that each end hangs over a separate temple down to the bottoms of the ears. The women dress in deerskin, keeping their body modestly covered.
The weapon which the Indians commonly carry is the bow and arrow. It is true that they do possess and are skillful in the use of weapons such as pikes, lances, [atlatl] darts, slings, clubs, sticks and the like. Yet with all their various types of arms, they generally employ only the bow and arrow, because it is more dressy and ornamental for those who carry it.
The bows are of the same height as the men who carry them, and since the natives of Florida are generally tall, theirs are more than two yards in length and are thick in proportion. They make them of oak and other different woods, which are strong and heavy. Thus they are difficult to bend that no Spaniard, regardless of how much he persists, was able to draw a bowstring back as far as his face. The Indians, on the other hand, because of their skill and constant use of this weapon, drew back the cord with great ease, even to the back of the ear; and they make very fierce and frightful shots.
The bowstrings are made with thongs of deerskin. Taking a strip two fingers wide from the top of the tail to the head of the deer, the Indians after first removing the hair, wet and twist this strip firmly. Tying one end to the branch of a tree, they suspend the other end with a weight of one hundred or one hundred and twenty pounds and leave it thus until it becomes like one of the heavy cords.
In order to shoot with safety, so that they trim that arm on the inner side with a half bracer of heavy feathers, in this was protecting it from the wrist to the elbow. This bracer is secured with a deerskin thong which encircles the arm seven or eight times at the place where the bowstring quivers with the greatest force.
DeSoto was delighted to find lots of grass to graze his horses. Garcilaso describes the Spaniards' other discoveries.
They returned with their vessels loaded with many unripe grapes from vines found growing wild in the forests. The grape is not cultivated by the natives of this great kingdom of Florida, and they do not care as much for it as do people of other nations but they will eat it when it is ripe or has been dried.
1565
The next Spanish governor to visit the Tocobaga was Pedro Menéndez in 1565. It is from the account of Gonzalo Solís de Meras that we first meet Tocobaga, the chief whose name is now used for the people of the Tampa Bay region. Historians believe that Safety Harbor was the town that is described in this account. Carlos is the cacique of the Calusa Indians who lived to the south in Charlotte Harbor.
Within 3 days after he reached Carlos, he sailed with all 6 brigantines in the direction of Tocobaga; he took Carlos with him and 20 of his principal Indians; he arrived at the harbor the second day at night. The cacique lived 20 leagues inland, and one could sail up close to the side of his house by a channel of salt water; an Indian of his house by a channel of salt water; an Indian of those who came with Carlos, steered in such a manner toward the north, although it was at night and there was no moon, that with a prosperous wind, the Adelantado arrived one hour before daybreak near the house of Tocobaga, without being discovered, and he ordered the brigantines to anchor with great success.
The Adelantado commanded that a small shallop with 8 rowers, and a Christian of those who had been captives in Carlos – who knew Tocobaga’s language – should go up to the cacique’s house; and he ordered that once near there he should tell him in a loud voice, in his language, to have no fear; that all the men brought by the ships that were there were his friends, Christians in truth; and when he had done so, the Indians awakened, and saw the ships close to the houses, and started to flee, with their wives and children.
The cacique remained quiet with 5 or 6 Indians and one wife; and the day having come he sent a Christian he had to the Adelantado, to tell him that he thanked him greatly for not having killed either him or his people, or burned his village; that his people had fled, and that he had remained in the house of his gods, his house of prayer; that he would sooner die than forsake them; that if the Adelantado wanted to land, to give him life or death, he could do that, for he was awaiting him.
Pedro Menéndez assured Tocobaga that he meant his people no harm, that he had come to make peace.
The cacique was much pleased at what the Aadelantado told him, and he rose: he and his six Indians rendered the Adelantado great homage very humbly, and kissed his hands, and then they sat down again. He replied that he had far from there his principal men and the caciques, his friends and subjects, and that he could not answer the Adelantado without their coming and speaking with them; that the Adelantado should wait 3 or 4 days, and he would send to summon them.
On the fourth day, 29 caciques having assembled, with about 100 principal Indians whom they kept with them. The cacique sent word to Menéndez to come and treat of peace.
In 1567, Menéndez left a settlement of Spanish soldiers in Tocobaga. It has twenty-four houses and a fort built of palm fronds and lumber. The Indians killed the Spaniards and thus it was abandoned.
1575
Juan Lopez de Velasco visited Tampa Bay in 1575 and he too mentions the abandoned fort at Tocobaga. He describes Tampa Bay and mentions that “there is a great mullet fishery in it, which they fish for with nets as in Spain.”
1700s
Because of their extensive knowledge of Gulf coast waterways the Tocobagas settled in North Florida where they obtained contracts to transport goods for Mission San Luis. They handled the shipping of produce from Apalachee and Yustaga to St. Augustine by coastal and river routes to a destination on the Suwanee and Santa Fe rivers. The Tocobagas were also contracted to transport supplies and household goods for the Yustaga tribe whom Spanish authorities had persuaded to relocate to a placed called San Rosa de Ivitanayo.
By the 1720s the Tocobagas begin to disappear from the records. They may have been killed off or captured by raiding enemy tribes. Many died of European diseases and the violence brought by the Spanish conquistadors. Perhaps some moved to Cuba with other Florida Indians. Whatever happened, all we are left with is the legacy of a scattering of mounds where they once worshipped and buried their dead This soil absorbed their blood, sweat and tears. The laughter that rang out along these shores has been silenced We believe that as long as their name is spoken, they cannot be forgotten.
To-co-ba-ga!
Click here for a reading list of books about the Tocobaga and 16th Century Spanish Conquistadors.
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