The Haddocks of Wiregrass

St. Marys River Pre-History

St. Marys River. The dark, tannin stained waters of the St. Marys the Indians had called “Tacatacourou,” would for the next 250 years be a turbulent buffer zone between European powers and eventually, the Patriots of the American colonies.

The Timuquan Indians occupied the lands of the coast areas between St. Augustine and the Satilla River and the backwaters of the St. John’s and St. Mary’s Rivers.

There were three divisions of the Timuquan tribe, the eastern one of some 30 villages was called the Saturiba.  Each village had a cacique or leader.

The Timuquas were not united into an Indian “nation” as such, but shared only a common language.

The Saturiba probably did not exceed 2,000 people, with perhaps some 400 warriors for the defense of its territory and people. They were an agricultural people growing corn, beans, squash and even a type of tobacco in southeast Georgia and coastal Florida to Mosquito Inlet and inland along the St. Johns River.

The river villages of the Timuqua were small, consisting of only a few round, palmetto leaf, stick structures arranged in a circle around the home of the chief.

The Timucua had little or no resistance to European introduced diseases and English slave raiders.

By 1717 “only 256 Indians of the Timucuan tongue were left and these were moved to St. Augustine for protection. By 1752, only 157 were left. When the Spanish left Florida in 1763, the 83 remaining were carried to Cuba and the Timucuan culture disappeared.” [Source: Eloise Bailey, Camden’s Challenge, A History of Camden County, Georgia (Kingsland: Camden County Historical Commission, 1976), p. 13.]

Over a century after they vanished into history, their mounds would become picnic sites for residents along the St. Marys River.

The French explorer Jean Ribault, a Huguenot, arrived on the St. Mary’s River in May, 1562 signaling the beginning of the end for Indian occupation in the area. He had been sent to the New World to establish a refuge from the religious civil war which threatened France. He gave the river its first European name, the River Seine—it reminded him of home. [Source: James Robertson Ward Old Hickory’s Town (Jacksonville, Florida Publishing Company, 1982), p. 36.]

The dark, tannin stained waters of the St. Marys the Indians had called “Tacatacourou,” would for the next 250 years be a turbulent buffer zone between European powers and eventually, the Patriots of the American colonies.

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