| Total population |
|---|
| 300 |
| Regions with significant populations |
| United States (Louisiana) |
| Languages |
| Religion |
| Related ethnic groups |
|
Apalachicola, other Muskogean peoples |
The Apalachee are a Native American people who historically lived in the Florida Panhandle, and now live primarily in the U.S. state of Louisiana. Their historical territory was known to the Spanish colonists as the Apalachee Province. The Apalachee occupied the site of Velda Mound starting about 1450 CE, but had mostly abandoned it before the Spanish started settlements in the 17th century. They first encountered Spanish explorers in the 16th century, when the Hernando de Soto expedition arrived. They lived between the Aucilla River and Ochlockonee River, at the head of Apalachee Bay. The Apalachee spoke a Muskogean language, now extinct.
Traditional tribal enemies, European diseases, and European encroachment severely reduced their population and ultimately led to survivors' migrating to Mobile and then Louisiana by the late 18th century. They settled in present-day Rapides Parish, and most Apalachee now live in Louisiana.
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The Apalachee spoke a Muskogean language which became extinct. It was documented by Spanish settlers in letters written during the Spanish Colonial period.
Around 1100, indigenous peoples began to cultivate crops. Agriculture became important in the area that became the Apalachee domain. It was part of the Fort Walton Culture, a Florida culture influenced by the Mississippian culture. With agriculture, the people could grow surplus crops, which enabled them to settle in larger groups, increase their trading for raw materials and finished goods, and specialize in production of artisan goods.
At the time of Hernando de Soto's visit in 1539-1540, the Apalachee capital was Anhaica (present-day Tallahassee, Florida). The Apalachee lived in villages of various size, or on individual farmsteads of .5 acres (0.20 ha) or so. Smaller settlements might have a single earthwork mound and a few houses. Larger towns (50 to 100 houses) were chiefdoms. They were organized around earthwork mounds built over decades for ceremonial, religious and burial purposes.
Villages and towns were often situated by lakes, as the natives hunted fish and used the water for domestic needs and transport. The largest Apalachee community was at Lake Jackson on the north side of present-day Tallahassee. This regional center had several mounds and 200 or more houses. Some of the surviving mounds are protected in Lake Jackson Mounds Archaeological State Park,
The Apalachee grew numerous varieties of corn, beans, squash, pumpkins and sunflowers. They gathered wild strawberries, the roots and shoots of the greenbrier vine, greens such as lambsquarters, the roots of one or more unidentified aquatic plants used to make flour, hickory nuts, acorns, saw palmetto berries and persimmons. They caught fish and turtles in the lakes and rivers, and oysters and fish on the Gulf Coast. They hunted deer, black bears, rabbits and ducks.
The Apalachee were part of an expansive trade network that extended from the Gulf Coast to the Great Lakes, and westward to what is now Oklahoma. The Apalachee acquired copper artifacts, sheets of mica, greenstone and galena from distant locations through this trade. The Apalachee probably paid for such imports with shells, pearls, shark teeth, preserved fish and sea turtle meat, salt and cassina leaves and twigs (used to make the black drink).
The Apalachee made tools from stone, bone and shell. They made pottery, wove cloth and cured buckskin. They built houses covered with palm leaves or the bark of cypress or poplar trees. They stored food in pits in the ground lined with matting, and smoked or dried food on racks over fires. (When Hernando de Sotò seized the Apalachee town of Anhaico in 1539, he found enough stored food to feed his 600 men and 220 horses for five months.)
The Apalachee men wore a deerskin loincloth. The women wore a skirt made of Spanish moss or other plant fibers. The men painted their bodies with red ochre and placed feathers in their hair when they prepared for battle. The men smoked tobacco in ceremonial rituals, including ones for healing.
The Apalachee scalped opponents whom they killed, exhibiting the scalps as signs of warrior ability. Taking a scalp was a means of entering the warrior class, and was celebrated with a scalp dance. The warriors wore headdresses made of bird beaks and animal fur. The village or clan of a slain warrior was expected to avenge his death.
The Apalachee played a ball game, sometimes known as the "Apalachee ball game", described in detail by Spaniards in the 17th century. The fullest description, however, was written as part of a campaign by Father Juan de Paiva, priest at the mission of San Luis de Talimali, to have the game banned, and some of the practices described may have been exaggerated. The game was embedded in ritual practices which Father Pavia regarded as heathen superstitions. He was also concerned about the effect of community involvement in the games on the welfare of the villages and Spanish missions. In particular, he worried about towns being left defenseless against raiders when inhabitants left for a game, and that field work was being neglected during game season. Other missionaries (and the visiting Bishop of Cuba) had complained about the game, but most of the Spanish (including, initially, Father Pavia) liked it (and, most likely, the associated gambling). At least, they defended it as a custom that should not be disturbed, and that helped keep the Apalachee happy and willing to work in the fields. The Apalachee themselves said that the game was "as ancient as memory", and that they had "no other entertainment ... or relief from ... misery".[1]
No indigenous name for the game has been preserved. The Spanish referred to it as el juego de la pelota, "the ballgame." The game involved kicking a small, hard ball against a single goalpost. The same game was also played by the western Timucua, and was as significant among them as it was among the Apalachee.[2] A related but distinct game was played by the eastern Timucua; René Goulaine de Laudonnière recorded seeing this played by the Saturiwa of what is now Jacksonville, Florida in 1564.[2] Goalposts similar to those used by the Apalachee were also seen in the Coosa chiefdom of present-day in Alabama during the 16th century, suggesting that similar ball games were played across much of the region.[3]
A village would challenge another village to a game, and the two villages would then negotiate a day and place for the match. After the Spanish missions were established, the games usually took place on a Sunday afternoon, from about noon until dark. The two teams kicked a small ball (not much bigger than a musket ball), made by wrapping buckskin around dried mud, trying to hit the goalpost. The single goalpost was triangular, flat, and taller than it was wide, on a long post (Bushnell described it, based on a drawing in a Spanish manuscript, as "like a tall, flat Christmas tree with a long trunk"). There were snail shells, a nest and a stuffed eagle on top of the goalpost. Benches, and sometimes arbors to shade them, were placed at the edges of the field for the two teams. Spectators gambled heavily on the games. As the Apalachee did not normally use money, their bets were made with personal goods.[4]
Each team consisted of 40 to 50 men. The best players were highly prized, and villages gave them houses, planted their fields for them, and overlooked their misdeeds in an effort to keep such players on their teams. Players scored one point if they hit the goalpost with the ball, and two points if the ball landed in the nest. Eleven points won the game. Play was rough: players would pile on fallen players, walk on them, kick them, including in the face, pull on arms and legs and stuff dirt in each other's mouths. Players were told to die before letting go of the ball. They would try to hide the ball in their mouths; other players would choke them or kick them in the stomach to force the ball out. Arms and legs were broken. Players laid out on the ground would be revived by a bucket of cold water. There were occasional deaths. According to Father Paiva, five games in a row had ended in riots.[5]
The origin of the games was the subject of an elaborate mythology. The giving of challenges for a game and the erection of goalposts and players' benches involved rituals and ceremonies, "superstitions" and "sorceries," in the view of Father Pavia. The Apalachee expanded the superstitions to include Christian elements; after losing two games in a row, one village decided that was because their mission church was closed during the games. Players also asked priests to make the sign of the cross over pileups during a game.[6]
The Apalachee are considered by some to have been the most advanced indigenous nation in Florida, with a relatively dense population and a complex, highly stratified society and regional chiefdom.[7] They were part of the Mississippian culture and an expansive regional trade network reaching to the Great Lakes. Their reputation was such that when tribes in southern Florida first encountered the Pánfilo de Narváez expedition, they said the riches which the Spanish sought could be found in Apalachee country.
The "Appalachian" place-name is derived from the Narvaez Expedition's naming a village Apalachen (near present-day Tallahassee, Florida.) The Spanish further adapted the Native American name as Apalachee and applied it to the region, as well as to the tribe which lived inland to the north. De Narváez's expedition first entered Apalachee territory on June 15, 1528. "Appalachian" is the fourth-oldest surviving European place-name in the U.S.[8]
Two Spanish expeditions encountered the Apalachee in the first half of the 16th century. The expedition of Pánfilo de Narváez entered the Apalachee domain in 1528. Spanish attempts to overpower the Apalachee was met with resistance. The Narváez expedition turned to the coast on Apalachee Bay, where it built five boats and attempted to sail to Mexico. Only five men survived their ordeal.
In 1539, Hernando de Sotò landed on the west coast of the peninsula of Florida with a large contingent of men and horses, to search for gold. The natives told him that gold could be found in Apalachee. Historians have not determined if the natives meant the mountains of northern Georgia, an actual source of gold, or to valuable copper artifacts which the Apalachee were known to have acquired through trade. In any case, de Sotò and his men went north to Apalachee territory in pursuit of the precious metal.
Because of their prior experience with the Narváez expedition and reports of fighting between the de Sotò expedition and tribes along the way, the Apalachee feared and hated the Spanish. When the de Sotò expedition entered the Apalachee domain, the Spanish soldiers were described as "lancing every Indian encountered on both sides of the road." De Sotò and his men seized the Apalachee town of Anhaica, where they spent the winter of 1539-1540.
Apalachee fought back with quick raiding parties and ambushes. Their arrows could penetrate two layers of chain mail. They quickly learned to target the Spaniards' horses, which otherwise gave the Spanish an advantage against the unmounted Apalachee. The Apalachee were described as "being more pleased in killing one of these animals than they were in killing four Christians."[9] In the spring of 1540, de Sotò and his men left the Apalachee domain and headed north into what is now the state of Georgia.[9]
About 1600, the Spanish Franciscan priests founded a successful mission among the Apalachee, adding several settlements over the next century. Apalachee acceptance of the priests may have related to social stresses, as they had lost population to infectious diseases brought unwittingly by the Europeans, to which they had no natural immunity. Many Apalachee converted to Catholicism, in the process creating a syncretic fashioning of their traditions and Christianity.
San Luís de Talimali, the western capital of Spanish Florida from 1656 to 1704, is a National Historic Landmark in Tallahassee, Florida. The historic site is being operated as a living history museum by the Florida Department of Archeology.[10] Including an indigenous council house, it re-creates one of the Spanish missions and Apalachee culture, showing the closely related lives of Apalachee and Spanish in these settlements. The historic site received the "Preserve America" Presidential Award in 2006.[11]
Starting in the 1670s, tribes to the north and west of Apalachee (including Chiscas, Apalachicolas, Yamasees and other groups that became known as Creeks) began raiding the Apalachee missions, taking captives that could be traded as slaves to the English in the Province of Carolina. Seeing that the Spanish could not fully protect them, some Apalachees joined their enemies. Apalachee reprisal raids, made in part to try to capture Carolinian traders, pushed the base camps of the raiders eastward, from which they continued to raid Apalachee missions as well as missions in Timucua Province. Efforts were also made to establish missions along the Apalachicola River to create a buffer zone. In particular, several missions were established among the Chatot tribe. In 1702, a few Spanish soldiers and nearly 800 Apalachee, Chatot and Timucuan warriors, on a reprisal raid after several Apalachee and Timucuan missions had been raided, were ambushed by Apalachicolas. Only 300 warriors escaped the ambush.[12]
When Queen Anne's War (the North American part of the War of Spanish Succession) started in 1702, England and Spain were officially at war, and attacks by the English and their Indian allies against the Spanish and the Mission Indians in Florida and southeastern Georgia accelerated. In early 1704 Colonel James Moore of Carolina led 50 Englishmen and 1,000 Apalachicolas and other Creeks in an attack on the Apalachee missions. Some villages surrendered without a fight, while others were destroyed. Moore returned to Carolina with 1,300 Apalachees who had surrendered and another 1,000 taken as slaves. In mid-1704 another large Creek raid captured more missions and large numbers of Apalachees. In both raids missionaries and Christian Indians were tortured and murdered, sometimes by skinning them alive. These raids became known as the Apalachee Massacre. When rumors of a third raid reached the Spanish in San Luis de Talimali, they decided to abandon the province.[13]
When the Spanish abandoned Apalachee province in 1704, some 800 surviving Indians, including Apalachees, Chatots and Yemasee, fled westward to Pensacola, along with many of the Spanish in the province. Unhappy with conditions in Pensacola, most of the Apalachees moved further west to French-controlled Mobile. They encountered a yellow-fever epidemic in the town and lost more people. Later, some Apalachees moved on to Rapides Parish in Louisiana, where their descendants still live, while others returned to the Pensacola area, to a village called Nuestra Señora de la Soledad y San Luís. A few Apalachees from the Pensacola area returned to Apalachee province around 1718, settling near a fort that the Spanish had just built at St. Marks, Florida. Many Apalachees from the village of Ivitachuco moved to a site called Abosaya near a fortified Spanish ranch in Alachua County, Florida. In late 1705 the remaining missions and ranches in the area were attacked, and Abosaya was under siege for 20 days. The Apalachees of Abosaya moved to a new location south of St. Augustine, but within a year most of them had been killed in raids. When Florida was transferred to Britain in 1764, 40 Apalachee families living near Pensacola were moved to Veracruz, Mexico. Eighty-seven Indians living near St. Augustine, some of whom may have been descended from Apalachees, were taken to Guanabacoa, Cuba.[14]
In the years after the United States' Louisiana Purchase, the Apalachees in Louisiana faced encroachment by settlers, and discrimination as a non-white minority, particularly severe after the end of the American Civil War. Under the state's binary racial segregation laws passed at the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, they were classified as "colored" or "black".[15]
The tribe's descendants in Louisiana, known as the "Talimali Band of Apalachee", still live in Rapides Parish under the guidance of Chief Gilmer Bennett. In 1997 they started the process of seeking federal recognition. Since they have become more public, they have been invited to consult with Florida on the reconstruction at Mission San Luis, invited to pow-wows, and invited to recount Apalachee history at special events.[15][16]
Today the tribal office, located in Libuse, Louisiana, serves approximately 300 members. The tribe has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, along with other news publications. The Public Broadcasting Service show, History Detectives, aired a special about the tribe in 2006 which featured the archeological find of a historically and artistically significant crystal cross, made by an Apalachee during the Spanish colonial years.[17]