Who was in the family? The mother, father, brothers, and sisters lived together in a hut. Mothers taught girls skills like weaving baskets, making pottery, planting corn, gathering wild fruits, and taking care of children. Fathers did not teach their sons. If you were a boy, you learned skills like hunting, tool-making, canoeing, and hut-building from your uncle. Your father was more like your friend or an older brother. It was your uncle who was in charge of training you and deciding punishments. Boys and girls were considered adults (grown up) by fifteen or sixteen. This means they were married and had their own hut and grown-up responsibilities.

What jobs did kids do? Children did not get to sit in an air-conditioned classroom like kids today. They had lots of chores, like grinding corn into grits, scraping and stretching animal hides, picking beans, weaving rope into fishing nets, and taking out the trash. Everyone helped with the fishing. They did the jobs that did not need a lot of strength or skill.

What jobs did grown-ups do? Men did the hunting and protected the village from other Timucua and dangerous animals. They built huts and canoes and also helped plant the gardens. Women collected wild plants for food, worked in the gardens, made clothes, made baskets and pottery, cooked and preserved all the food, and made big decisions for the village. Older grown-ups that weren’t very strong anymore (like grandparents) were storytellers (live television), guards at the fields, and teachers for young children. Everyone worked together to help the village survive.