The Mayaimi (also Maymi , Maimi ) were Native American people who lived around Lake Mayaimi (now Lake Okeechobee ) in the Belle Glade area of Florida from the beginning of the Common Era until the 17th or 18th century. In the languages of the Mayaimi, Calusa , and Tequesta tribes, Mayaimi meant "big water." The origin of the Calusa language has not been determined, as the meanings of only ten words were recorded before extinction . The current name, Okeechobee, is derived from the Hitchiti word meaning "big water". The Mayaimis have no linguistic or cultural relationship with the Miami people of the Great Lakes region . The city of Miami is named after the Miami River , which derived its name from Lake Mayaimi.
20-534: Maymi may refer to: Mayaimi or Maymi Ricky Maymi Topics referred to by the same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the title Maymi . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Maymi&oldid=932988121 " Category : Disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description
40-731: A few people lived. The game and fish of Lake Okeechobee provided most of the Mayaimis' food. They used fishing weirs and ate black bass , eels, American alligator tails, Virginia opossum , terrapins and snakes, and processed coontie for flour. In high-water season they lived on their mounds and ate only fish. At the beginning of the 18th century, raiders from the Province of Carolina , joined by Indian allies, repeatedly launched raids in Spanish Florida , burning villages, and capturing or killing members of all Florida tribes down to
60-742: A group of about 100 people, which also included Santaluzos and Mayaca people , still lived four days north of the Miami River. Any survivors were presumed to have been evacuated to Cuba when Spain lost control of Florida in the Treaty of Paris in 1763. Several archaeological sites are known from the area occupied by the Mayaimi, including Fort Center , Belle Glade , Big Mound City , the Boynton Mounds complex, Ortona Prehistoric Village , and Tony's Mound . This article relating to
80-575: A platform type with shovel-shaped ends, resembling those used in Central America and the West Indies , rather than the pointed-end canoes used by other peoples in the southeastern United States . Hernando de Escalante Fontaneda , who lived with the tribes of southern Florida for seventeen years in the 16th century, said that the Mayaimis lived in many towns of thirty or forty inhabitants each, and that there were many more places where only
100-517: A predominant type of plain ceramics in the region as early as 950 BC in Perico Island and up to 1700 at Marco Island. By 1949 both Gordon Willet and John Goggin authored complete taxonomies and chronologies for the Glades region. Goggin's dates which began earlier, seem to be closer to the actual dates for the various southern sequences. In 1960, John Goggin and William Sturtevant argued that
120-521: Is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages Mayaimi The Mayaimis built ceremonial and village earthwork mounds around Lake Okeechobee similar to those of the Mississippian culture and earlier mound builders . Fort Center is in the area occupied by the Mayaimis in historic times. They dug many canals as other earthworks, to use as pathways for their canoes. The dugout canoes were
140-601: The Indigenous peoples of North America is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Belle Glade culture The Belle Glade culture , or Okeechobee culture , is an archaeological culture that existed from as early as 1000 BCE until about 1700 CE in the area surrounding Lake Okeechobee and in the Kissimmee River valley in the Florida Peninsula . Major archaeological sites of
160-619: The Jaega lived in the East Okeechobee area. Almost nothing is known of the inhabitants of the Kissimmee Valley during the historic period. Most of the pottery found at Belle Glade culture sites is plain, undecorated (Belle Glade Plain and Glades Plain styles). Wood, bone, shell and shark tooth artifacts have been found at a few Belle Glade sites, but are too few to be used in defining the culture. Earthworks are diagnostic of
180-596: The Belle Glade culture include Belle Glade Mound , Big Mound City , the Boynton Mound complex, Fort Center , Ortona Mound and Tony's Mound . The Belle Glade site, 1.5 miles (2.4 km) west of the city of Belle Glade , which gave its name to the culture, and Big Mound City, 15 miles (24 km) south of Belle Glade, were partially excavated in 1933 and 1934 by a Civil Works Administration project supervised by Matthew Stirling . A report and analysis of
200-456: The Belle Glade culture into three periods; Transitional (1000 – 500 BCE), Belle Glade I (500 BCE – 1000 CE) and Belle Glade II (1000–1700). The more recent Sears chronology divides the Belle Glade culture into four periods; I (1000 BCE – 200 CE), II (200 – c. 700), III (c. 700 – c. 1300) and IV (c. 1300–1700). During the period of European contact, the Mayaimi lived around Lake Okeechobee, and
220-577: The Belle Glade culture, based on the presence of high numbers of Belle Glade type pottery, and in the northern Kissimmee Valley, similar mounds and earthworks. Humans apparently first entered the Lake Okeechobee basin and Kissimmee River valley late in the Archaic period (although there are hints of an earlier, even Paleo-Indian presence). The Belle Glade culture is defined as beginning about 1000 BCE. The older Willey/Bullen chronology divided
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#1732773386067240-585: The Belle Glade culture. Circular ditches appeared early in the Belle Glade culture, by 500 BCE. Habitation mounds and burials in mounds also date to the earliest period. Mounds were also built in Sears' periods II and IV, with mound burials again in period IV. In period IV complexes of mounds and linear embankments were common. Habitation mounds served as dry refuges from flooding during the wet season. Middens are found in oak hammocks near open water. In 2013, Victor D. Thompson UG, and Thomas J. Pluckhahn SFU researched
260-628: The Calusa and the Mayaimi, thus bringing the archaeology full circle to the original view. Subsequent research will definitively prove or disprove the existence in fact of a separate Belle Glade culture beginning in 1000 BC and who engineered the monumental mound complexes independently. The cultural area is defined on the basis of a unique combination of mounds , earthworks and pottery , which have been found around Lake Okeechobee and as far north as Lake Kissimmee . The area has poor, sandy soils, low elevation with low relief (with some higher relief along
280-494: The Calusa and the lake culture worked together. The same decade, William Sears set out to disprove this commonly held view. In 1980 Sturtevant and Jerald Milanich changed the taxonomy adding two additional culture regions, Okeechobee and Caloosahatchee, making the Glade region smaller and more southern. Vague references to the monumental ceremonial mound complexes were used to support the change. No new archaeology and data resulted in
300-473: The changed taxonomy. In 2000, state archaeologist Ryan Wheeler authored yet another south Florida taxonomy adding more regions and totally eliminating a Glades Region. Recently, University of Florida graduate student Nathan Lawres 2015, 2017, 2018), has undertaken research and dating of the Okeechobee region. Besides referencing the prehistoric inhabitants by name, the Mayaimi, Lawres sees "alignments" between
320-413: The site. Besides finding additional mounds and features, their dating showed that Sears' dates were off by 1300 years. The great circle was started around 800 B.C. and soon after the mortuary mound/pond complex was built. These new dates likewise change the chronology. Glade II would have started 800-500 B.C. and would indicate that St. Johns and Weeden Island II culture likewise was earlier. The people of
340-661: The southern end of the Florida peninsula. They sold the captives into slavery, destined for markets from Boston to Barbados . In 1710, a group of 280 refugees from Florida that included the Cacique of "Maimi" arrived in Cuba. In 1738, the Maymi had a "fort" on the coast south of Cape Canaveral . In 1743, Spanish missionaries sent to Biscayne Bay reported that a remnant of the Mayaimis (which they called Maimies or Maymíes) were part
360-491: The theory have never been excavated in the almost sixty years after Sears' work and conclusions at Fort Center in the 1960s. The literature does however reveal an attempt by Sears and others to distance the Calusa culture from any and all of the earthwork projects in the Lake Okeechobee Basin area. Based on the archaeology from 1895 to 1945, a view of a single south Florida culture region was established, based on
380-416: The two sites was published by Gordon Willey in 1948. The best known site, Fort Center, was the subject of major excavations under the direction of William Sears during the 1970s. Other sites are known from test excavations and/or aerial surveys. There is little evidence to support the idea that there was a separate and distinct Belle Glade culture. The sites other than Fort Center necessary to support
400-518: The western and northern edges of the Kissimmee Valley), and many bodies of water and wetlands . The area consists of pine and palmetto flatwoods , wet prairies , hammocks of live oak and cabbage palm , and cypress swamps . The pine and palmetto flatlands of eastern Martin and Palm Beach counties, sometimes called the East Okeechobee area, and the Kissimmee Valley north of Lake Kissimmee to Lake Tohopekaliga may have also been part of
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