Apalachicola Reserve, Florida

Cultural History

The Fort Walton people were the first natives encountered by the earliest Spanish explorers. Although there is no record of the first encounters with Native Americans of the region from written history, some European artifacts have been found in a few Fort Walton graves. Indians in northwest Florida, as elsewhere in the southeast, were rapidly devastated, not as much by Spanish weapons as by European diseases. Small pox and even something as harmless as the common cold or flu killed as many as 90 percent of native American groups, who had no natural resistance to foreign germs.

Native populations that did not completely disappear moved around a great deal, probably merging with the remainders of tribal groups to try to continue their way of life. By the late 1600s the Spanish had set up a chain of missions extending westward past Tallahassee, where the Apalachee Indians were settled. Florida's native groups died out rapidly, leaving northwest Florida fairly empty. We know only a few names, such as the Sabacola or Sawokli, the Tawasa and the Chatot. These may have been tribal names or titles of important chiefs or village leaders. Because the Indians had no written language, most of their oral history died with their storytellers.