Along These Shores

Along These Shores. . , Side 1 , Beneath the ground where you stand lie the remains of a large Native American village that once extended along these shores. The people were drawn here by elevated land, freshwater springs, a bay teeming with fish and shellfish and woods rich with game. The sites are represented by vast shell middens containing evidence of the lives of the people who once lived here from about 2,500 years ago until the arrival of Europeans. From the shells and fish bones discarded after meals and communal feasts to the artifacts and features from their activities, and the mounds where they laid their ancestors to rest-all are represented along these shores. The site, or series of sites, makes up a chain of evidence that extends more than a mile north and south along the bay and inland along Whitaker Bayou. Much of the evidence of Native American habitation in the area is gone due to early European colonization and the expansion of Sarasota. Although only a fragment of what was once here remains today, it is what we commemorate, memorialize and preserve., Side 2 , Florida's earliest human residents, the Paleoindians, arrived 13,000 to 15,000 years ago. The climate was cooler and drier, surface water was scarce and our coast was more than 150 miles west of today's shoreline. Mastodons, mammoths, saber cats, dire wolves, giant tortoises, ground sloths and glyptodonts roamed the landscape. The Paleoindian population was small, and evidence of their presence in Sarasota County is mostly limited to isolated artifacts and those found in sinkholes and springs. Warming climate and rising seas led to the formation of bays and resource- rich estuaries around 3,500 years ago. Coastal populations grew over the next 1,000 years, resulting in more diversified regional cultures. Their descendants became the Tocobaga of Tampa Bay and the Calusa of Charlotte Harbor, with many villages in between. The Florida Seminole and Miccosukee, including Upper and Lower Creeks, entered Florida from Alabama and Georgia in the 18th century, although they were related to the earlier Florida groups. They fought three wars against the United States from 1817 to 1856 to resist being forcibly removed from the region. Those who remained are known as the "Unconquered Ones.” Never signing a peace treaty with the United States, they remain a resilient and valued people as sovereign nations in south and central Florida.