When the first Europeans landed here, in Florida, they had entered a greater system than just a peninsula jutting out into the Atlantic Ocean. The west coast of Florida was a tapestry woven into the fabric of the Gulf of Mexico. This was a system of estuaries woven into estuaries. Wandering along the shore, where fresh water meets the salty Gulf, those first Europeans were confronted with one of the richest environments in the world. Here, along white sand beaches strewn with colorful seashells, life is both abundant and diverse.
The timeline which points to the first human occupants grows longer every year. When the first people splashed into the crystalline waters of the Gulf of Mexico, it was smaller than it is today. The last great glaciation, the Wisconsin Glaciation, had pulled vast quantities of water out of the ocean and locked it up on land. The ocean level was more than 300 feet lower than it is today. Florida was twice its present size.
Still those ancient waters were rich in life. Those first people would have wondered at clouds of seagulls, at shorelines dancing with shore and wading birds, and at a crush of migratory birds including ducks and geese. Here, the abundance of food could easily slake the appetite of hunters who could hurl spears or bolas to ensnare.
Whether they arrived here 20,000 or 14,000 ago, we may never know. Their story is lost out there, 300 feet below the shimmering waves. Certainly they used that rich estuary. Here, where you live, a very different culture developed. This landscape you see every day, was high and dry. This was the home to the big game hunters, the hunters of mammoths, mastodons, giant sloths, bison, and horse. Evidence suggests that Florida was the last refuge of the great animals.
By thirteen thousand years ago, the last great glaciation was breaking down. First, as the ice turned into melt water, it broke through the St. Lawrence Seaway. Finally, as mountains of ice melted along the glaciers southern edge, the water broke out down the Mississippi Valley. In the seasons of greatest melt, the river flooded a hundred miles wide. Gray with silt and churning massive blocks of ice, the Mississippi River gushed out into the Gulf of Mexico.
All that cold, fresh water must have brought intense changes to the Gulf. Entire environments must have died out and been replaced. Whole populations of shellfish would have vanished. Every year the ocean waters rose. Trees once growing in shallow freshwater swamps, would have been left standing as bleached skeletons surrounded by salt marsh, and still the oceans rose. Islands would have been inundated by the tides rushing in.
Then, suddenly the freezing weather returned to the north—a glacial spike named the Younger Dryas, sent cold winds probing south about 12,900 years ago. Saltwater marshes, cloaked in black sedge, moaned beneath scudding dark clouds from the north. Still, the estuaries held abundance. The Younger Dryas may have been caused by the flow of so much very cold fresh water into the Gulf Stream. The global climate would then have become locked into the new state until freezing removed the fresh water "lid" from the north Atlantic Ocean.
By 11,550 years ago the process had reversed itself again. The warming trend and the rise of the oceans continued. Humans, like you, would have witnessed all this. As intelligent as ourselves, they would have had to adjust to these changing systems. The huge environmental changes were spelling out the last days of the great animals.
2,000 years later, the Clovis culture which had invested so much in the lifestyle of hunters would pass away too. With the passage of years, mammoths and mastodons were lost to memory. Forests, once mown and fertilized by the great herds, became a tangle. Hunting patterns changed with population density.
Wide, freshwater lakes, in what is now Tampa Bay, were flooded by the Gulf 6,000 ago. Old river bottoms were filled in by silt. New islands grew along coastal zones and disappeared again. Generation by generation Florida grew to resemble the shape it is today. Generation by generation the people of this place changed with it. Florida had become a powerful, dynamic but fragile environment.
Along Florida's southern margin, trees from the tropics, mixed with the mangroves. Further north, in the west-central zone, mangroves dominated the intercoastal shoreline. North of that, coastal marshes dominated by sedges spread out to the horizon. Florida had become a landscape best adapted to a maritime lifestyle. A vital fishing industry grew up, complimented by the gathering of shell fish. The interwoven estuaries filled the west coast with opportunities, and slowly over time, cultures adapted to take advantage of them.
Consistent with their long development on this landscape, the native population had a thorough understanding of food resources. Those ancient Floridians were made up of people much like ourselves, intelligent and resourceful, they explored their environmental potential and its far reaching economic trade benefits. As part of the larger systems provided by the Gulf of Mexico, they were well aware of alternative cultural perspectives.
Some modern scholars have tended to focus on a specific aspect of Florida's original people causing the picture to have a regionally compartmentalized feel. In the 1950's it was said that the coastal people lived mostly on oysters. Slowly a variety of other shellfish were added to their diet. Then, the fishing industry was discovered. Each new discovery offers an additional piece of the puzzle.
Many students haven't reckoned "milpa" gardening into the formula, nor fire ecology. The Milpa method of agriculture mimics nature. Plants are planted in their naturally occurring habitat. They are planted next to beneficial plants which would normally share that habitat. Certainly deer, freshwater turtles, alligators, fowl and other non estuarine animals added to the harvest. Were the remains of the fish harvest used as fertilizer for their gardens? Many edible plants and animals were part of the coastal landscape, but the greatest focus was on the rich estuary.
Nets were stretched out to gather in migrating schools of mullet and mackerel during the winter months. The winter winds also brought ducks and geese by the thousands. These food resources could be dried, salted, or smoked. In the summer months, shoals of minnows provided wholesome nutrition. Caught in smaller meshed nets, minnows could be dried on mats in the sun. Shellfish, crabs, and game fish would add to the overall health of the community.
Mound building culture has deep roots in Florida. The clean shell waste from a shellfish industry was recycled into building materials. Waste dumps, often referred to as middens, were mined for foundation materials, the perfect materials for an environment which cycles between drought and flood. Shell fill allows water to drain through it. The shape of the shells allows them to be interlocking, making a stable structure. Mounds made of shell have lasted hundreds of years, some for thousands.
For the native people, humankind was viewed as being part of the natural world. The concept of man against nature didn't really exist. That is not to say that the early residents of Florida's west coast didn't impact their environment. Certainly the reliance on shell as foundation material changed local environments from slightly acid soils, to soils which were more alkaline. In cycles of plenty, populations increased, only to become stressed in times of drought or poor fishing. Certainly the dependency on wood as the only fuel for cooking fires also posed a problem.
Cities, villages, fishing ranchos, and farms sprawled along the Gulf coast. Streams and rivers, bays and bayous, and the inter-coastal water ways between the barrier islands and the mainland were the highways that connected these settlements. This must have seemed an amazing place to those first Europeans.
