The Owl Totem from Hontoon Island

The Owl Totem from Hontoon Island. . , Dredging up a Piece of History , For millennia, the peninsula of Florida was populated by large numbers of indigenous people who used the many navigable rivers as a superhighway to travel, trade and hunt. These natives flourished until the mid 1500s, when diseases accidentally introduced by European explorers began to rapidly decimate them. One of these tribes was known as the Mayaca, and is mentioned in the histories of Pedro Menendez de Aviles. Their lands lay just to the south of the Timucua. , The Mayaca tribe, along with every other tribe located in Florida, vanished as a people. However, they left behind a very unique and beautiful relic of their existence. A team dredging out a yacht basin in 1955 near Hontoon Island discovered a huge log and extracted it from the muck. Noticing that the wood appeared to be shaped and carved, the item was taken to Gainesville, Florida for conservation and revealed to be a large owl totem. Along with the owl, carved effigies of an otter and a pelican were discovered. The owl totem was far larger than the others. , Carved in about 1350 A.D. and made of one solid piece of pine, it is the largest such totem east of the Mississippi River, and for decades was mistakenly thought to be of Timucuan origin. However, recent studies have shown the owl totem to have been carved by the Mayaca. The owl totem must have been of great importance to the Mayacan people. It was carved using tools made from shark teeth, shells, and bone. These tools would have made the process of carving the totem very slow and tedious. , The Importance of the Owl , Owls are very prominent figures in the myths and religion of pre-Columbian Florida natives. This predator bird was regarded as the night spirit's messenger and protector of shaman priests. This primitive image of a supernatural owl touches upon one aspect of the deep, profound relationship the Mayaca people had with the natural world. , The mystery of the original owl totem's meaning deepens when some of the original details are considered. The Hontoon Island owl features eyes that have both human and owl characteristics. The totem's feet have five claws, whereas owls have four. This has led some scholars to theorize that the owl is a portrayal of a changeling , perhaps an owl changing into a human, or a human changing into an owl. Whatever the case, this totem truly is a rare glimpse into the past. Since the Mayaca and their neighbors, the Timucua, are gone from this earth, we may never know what this totem truly represents., [photo captions] , . At Hontoon Island State Park, a replica of the owl totem stands guard over a trail. , . A young owl photographed here in 2014.