5) What were Timucua families like?
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 grown up by sixteen or seventeen. This means they were married and had their own hut and grown-up responsibilities. 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. They did the jobs that did not need a lot of strength or skill. Men did the hunting and protected the village from other Timucuas 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. Everyone helped with the fishing. 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.
What is a clan? Your clan is all the people related by blood to your mother. If you are in the bobcat clan, these people are also in it: your brothers and sisters, your mom’s sisters and brothers (your aunts and uncles), their kids (your cousins) and your mom’s parents (your grandparents), but NOT your dad or any of his relatives. A clan is only your mother’s half of the family. There were many different clans. If you visited another village that had a bobcat clan, they would be your distant relatives, and they would give you a place to stay. Only people in the Deer Clan could be a chief. You could not marry anyone in your clan because it would be like marrying your cousin.