Florida’s Prehistory

The first humans in Florida were known as Paleoindians, whose ancestors had migrated from eastern Asia into North America during the Ice Age. These earliest Florida settlers arrived about 12,000 years ago, when the state’s coastline extended farther into the ocean and the peninsula was twice as large as it is today. Around 9000 BCE, as Earth moved out of the Ice Age, with glaciers melting and sea levels rising, new inland sources of water such as springs and lakes were created. The nomadic life of the Paleoindians became more settled due to the stability of these new water resources. A period known as the Archaic began, which saw the development of clay-fired pottery and burial mounds. By 700-500 BCE, these former hunter-gatherers were building village complexes, cultivating corn (in the northern half of the state), and developing sophisticated regional cultures with new political and social institutions.

http://dos.myflorida.com/florida-facts/florida-history/prehistoric-native-people/

Pre-Statehood

After Europeans landed on its beaches, Florida would find itself first under Spanish rule in 1513, next under Great Britain in 1763, and back again in Spanish hands in 1783. A small portion of the future state near what is now the city of Jacksonville was under French control from 1564 to 1565, the year Pedro Menendez massacred the French colony at Fort Caroline and founded St. Augustine, the first continuous settlement in the New World. Under Pedro Menendez de Aviles, the governor of Spanish Florida, Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries were encouraged to convert Indians in the region to Catholicism. Disease, hostile encounters, and impressment into slavery followed. By the 1750s, very few Florida Indians remained in Florida, but Creek Indians from Georgia and Alabama were moving into the territory, and became known as Seminoles.

The French also briefly occupied Pensacola from 1719 to 1722. In 1821, just after the First Seminole War in 1817-18 when General Andrew Jackson pushed the Seminoles farther south, Florida became a territory of the United States. The Second Seminole War lasted from 1835 to 1842. No peace treaty was signed, although many Seminoles were forcibly relocated to Oklahoma.

Read more about the Seminole Wars and major combatants, such as Osceola, Andrew Jackson, and Francis Dade, at the following link.

http://fcit.usf.edu/florida/lessons/sem_war/sem_war1.htm

Read a brief history of the Seminole Tribe and their culture at the link below.

http://dos.myflorida.com/florida-facts/florida-history/seminole-history/

Click the following link for the story of the Fort Caroline massacre and France’s brief history in northeast Florida.

http://www.legendsofamerica.com/fl-fortcaroline.html

Statehood

In 1845, Florida was admitted to the union as the 27th state. One of Florida’s defining economic and cultural features, agriculture, had already made inroads pre-statehood, but increasingly during this period, large holdings were devoted to growing cotton and tobacco growing, raising cattle, and harvesting timber. Sugar cane was grown in the southern part of the state. Citrus had arrived in the 1500s; now it was beginning to be a full-scale industry. During this period, Key West was Florida’s largest city, thanks to trade with Gulf cities and the Caribbean.

This University of Miami link tells the story of Florida’s early statehood using maps.

http://scholar.library.miami.edu/floridamaps/statehood_and_later.php