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 The Calusa Tribe. They are such a fascinating group of people that before this class I had never heard of before. I have become super interested with the tribe and some friends and I are planning a trip to Mound Key down in Southwest Florida where the King of the Calusa Stayed, it’s now a Historical Archaeological State Park. In my opinion, the most fascinating thing is the location in which the Calusa tribe chose to inhabit. The Florida Everglades is a shallow, slow-moving grass river (Killmer, n.d., 0:00) and is filled with an endless amount of marine life and a unique set of resources. The Calusa utilized no agriculture as a source of food (Killmer, n.d., 1:30). In fact, the Calusa had no reason to utilize agriculture since they had such a huge impact on smaller tribes the smaller tribes paid regular tribute to the Calusa tribe (Killmer, n.d., 5:11). The Calusa tribe had a much different set of resources available to them making them adapt to the materials they had. Most tribes had animals like bison that they used for not only meat but used every part of the animal for tools and other resources, whereas the Calusa used animals like Sharks by using the teeth for carving tools and weapons, the Skin for sandpaper and the most impressive, shark liver oil as mosquito repellent body paint (Killmer, n.d., 21:00). The Calusa tribe is known to build shell mounds creating artificial hills for an assortment of reasons 2 being to elevate their environment and protect them from storm surges and to help catch breezes for keeping cool and mosquitos at bay (Killmer, n.d., 22:38). I would assume many different tribes of Indians would practice the same thing of building up artificial mounds. I have had a unique experience with this. While inspecting the construction of the First Coast expressway going through green cove springs Florida near the St. Johns River the contractor was digging a pond. While excavating down they hit a layer of embankment made only out of Seashells. Keep in mind we are miles from the ocean and about 2 miles from the river and this shell mound was found nearly 11 feet under the existing elevation. Could it have been an old Indian shell mound?

KIllmer, C.(Host). (n.d.) Title of Specific Podcast [Audio podcast episode]. SJRState, Florida Heritage



One of the better shells that were found in good condition 


            The red mark was the approximate location of where the pond was being excavated. 
















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