What
happened to the Timucua?
ARE THERE ANY TIMUCUA
INDIANS LEFT TODAY? No, the Timucua culture (way of life) has
disappeared. The last Timucua person we know
of died in
WHAT KILLED THE
TIMUCUA PEOPLE? Most of the Timucua people died from the following
things:
1) They caught European
diseases like smallpox and the plague. These
diseases sometimes killed more than half of a village.
The native people had no immunities to help their bodies fight these
diseases. (Many Europeans were also dying from
these diseases.)
2) Timucua people were sometimes killed by
European soldiers.
3) Many were captured as slaves by the
English up in the
HOW WERE THE TIMUCUA
PEOPLE CHANGING? While many Timucua people were dying, the survivors
were changing in the following ways:
1) As the Timucua people
learned about Spanish culture, they were impressed with the Spaniards’ metal tools,
their ability to read and write, and their family (inheritance) rules. Many Timucua people stopped living in their
traditional ways and started acting more like Spanish people. Because of this, many young Timucua people never
learned the old ways. Instead, they used new
tools like metal hoes, cut their hair short, and grew crops to feed the Spanish priests.
2) The Spanish priests taught
Timucua people about Catholicism, and instructed them to change many parts of their daily
lives. As a result, many Timucua gave up parts
of their own culture to become Catholic. In
1763, when
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