Mocama

The Mocama were a Native American people who lived in the coastal areas of what are now northern Florida and southeastern Georgia. A Timucua group, they spoke the dialect known as Mocama, the best-attested dialect of the Timucua language. Their heartland extended from about the Altamaha River in Georgia to south of the mouth of the St. John's River, covering the Sea Islands and the inland waterways, Intracoastal. and much of present-day Jacksonville. At the time of contact with Europeans, there were two major chiefdoms among the Mocama, the Saturiwa and the Tacatacuru, each of which evidently had authority over multiple villages. The Saturiwa controlled chiefdoms stretching to modern day St. Augustine, but the native peoples of these chiefdoms have been identified by Pareja as speaking Agua Salada, which may have been a distinct dialect. The Spanish came to refer to the entire area as the Mocama Province, and incorporated it into their mission system. The Mocama Province was severely depopulated in the 17th century by infectious disease and warfare with other Indian tribes and the English colonies to the north. Surviving Mocama refugees relocated to St. Augustine. Together with Guale survivors, 89 "mission Indians" evacuated with the Spanish to Cuba in 1763, after they ceded the territory to Great Britain. Archaeological research dates human habitation in the area eventually known as the Mocama Province to at least 2500 BC. The area has yielded some of the oldest known pottery from what is now the United States, uncovered by a University of North Florida team on Black Hammock Island in Jacksonville, Florida's Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve. The team also excavated more recent artifacts contemporary with the Mocama chiefdoms and some that indicate a Spanish mission. Around AD 1000 peoples of the area were engaged in long-distance trading with Mississippian culture centers, including Cahokia (in present-day Illinois) and Macon, Georgia.