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What happened to the Timucuas?All the Timucua are gone now. They’ve been gone since 1767 when the last Timucua person died. They died from many things.
1) The Timucua got diseases like smallpox and the plague. These diseases sometimes killed half of the village, especially very old people and babies. Florida’s Native Americans had no immunities against these diseases.
2) The Timucua were sometimes killed by the French and Spanish. The English, up in the Carolinas, also took many Timucua people as slaves.
3) As the Timucua learned about Spanish culture (way of life), they really liked the Spanish ships and metal tools, their ability to read and write, and their family (inheritance) rules. They stopped acting like Timucua people and started to act more and more like Spanish people. Because of this, the young Timucuas forgot about their own way of life, and the Timucua culture was lost.
4) The Spanish missionaries taught the Timucua people about Christianity. By 1763, the Timucua weren’t living like Florida Native Americans anymore. They were living like Spanish Catholics. In 1763, when Spain gave Florida to England, the last few Timucua went to Cuba with the Spanish.
5) After the Timucua, and other Florida Native Americans like the Calusa, the Ais, the Tocobago, and the Apalachee, had disappeared from Florida, the Seminole people moved into their old lands. The Seminole were originally Creek Indians from Alabama and Georgia. As far as we know, there were never any Seminole Indians on Pelotes Island (northeast Jacksonville, Florida).
COOL FACT: The name "Seminole" probably comes from the word "cimaronne," a Spanish word that meant "renegade" or "Indian living far from a church or town."