SifuPhil
R.I.P. With Us In Spirit Only
- Location
- Pennsylvania, USA
If you happen to drive past 11 Magnolia Avenue in St. Augustine, Florida you'll discover Ponce de Leon's Fountain of Youth.
Not a REAL Fountain of Youth, of course - just another tourist trap, but one with a twist: up until 1991, one of their prize exhibits was a Timucua Indian burial ground, complete with skeletons.
credit
A brief history of the Timucua Indians: they were already established and thriving throughout a 19,000 square-mile area of Central and Upper Florida, with a population of 200,000. They were mainly a peaceful people but were subject to the usual inter-tribal wars, always ending them before any major loss of life.
That is, until the arrival of Juan Ponce de Leon and his Spanish cronies in 1513.
Various expeditions by de Leon's men through the territory resulted in the murder of the male Timucuans and the kidnapping and enslavement of women and children. In 1539 Hernando de Soto made his way up the Western edge of Florida with an army of 500 men in search for gold, simultaneously pillaging villages and taking women and children captive.
With the establishment of the first Spanish mission in St. Augustine in 1565 there began the great conversion process, a very simple one - convert or die. By 1595 the Timucuan population had decreased by 75% from the mass killings as well as the diseases brought by the Europeans.
By 1700 the Timucuan population was 1,000. In 1703 the British began killing and enslaving the remaining tribes-people, and by 1752 there were only 26 left. By the time the United States acquired Florida in 1821 only 5 Timucuans remained, and shortly thereafter they became an extinct people.
The discovery of the burial grounds in 1934 at the "Fountain of Youth" was a boon for tourism in the area, and thousands of schoolchildren toured the skeletal remains, while no doubt being told of their primitive, savage past. That those same remains were finally re-interred in 1991 put precious little salve on that particular psychic wound, especially seeing as how a full Catholic burial mass was performed, by the same organization that had not only condoned but actually participated in their wholesale slaughter.
Welcome to Florida!
Not a REAL Fountain of Youth, of course - just another tourist trap, but one with a twist: up until 1991, one of their prize exhibits was a Timucua Indian burial ground, complete with skeletons.
credit
A brief history of the Timucua Indians: they were already established and thriving throughout a 19,000 square-mile area of Central and Upper Florida, with a population of 200,000. They were mainly a peaceful people but were subject to the usual inter-tribal wars, always ending them before any major loss of life.
That is, until the arrival of Juan Ponce de Leon and his Spanish cronies in 1513.
Various expeditions by de Leon's men through the territory resulted in the murder of the male Timucuans and the kidnapping and enslavement of women and children. In 1539 Hernando de Soto made his way up the Western edge of Florida with an army of 500 men in search for gold, simultaneously pillaging villages and taking women and children captive.
With the establishment of the first Spanish mission in St. Augustine in 1565 there began the great conversion process, a very simple one - convert or die. By 1595 the Timucuan population had decreased by 75% from the mass killings as well as the diseases brought by the Europeans.
By 1700 the Timucuan population was 1,000. In 1703 the British began killing and enslaving the remaining tribes-people, and by 1752 there were only 26 left. By the time the United States acquired Florida in 1821 only 5 Timucuans remained, and shortly thereafter they became an extinct people.
The discovery of the burial grounds in 1934 at the "Fountain of Youth" was a boon for tourism in the area, and thousands of schoolchildren toured the skeletal remains, while no doubt being told of their primitive, savage past. That those same remains were finally re-interred in 1991 put precious little salve on that particular psychic wound, especially seeing as how a full Catholic burial mass was performed, by the same organization that had not only condoned but actually participated in their wholesale slaughter.
Welcome to Florida!
