A brief history of the Tampa Bay Natives

In 1539, when Hernando de Soto?s expedition landed in Tampa Bay, the native groups that were recorded included: Uzita, Mocoso, Pohoy, and Tocobago (around the bay proper), and Guacozo, Luca, Vicela, and Tocaste (north of the bay). In the 17th century, the name Alafaias appears as another of the Tampa Bay groups. None of these groups appears to have been large; each consisted only of a single village or a group of villages with outlying homesteads. At times some groups formed alliances, and at the time of de Soto?s expedition, several groups were under the domination of an inland chief named Urriparacoxi, possibly a Timucuan, who lived well inland in a northeasterly direction.

The Uzita and The Mocoso

The Uzita occupied the area from the mouth of the Little Manatee River southward to Sarasota Bay. This area contains a number of Safety Harbor period mound and village sites. Uzita territory may also have included several inland sites.

The Mocoso lived on the east side of Hillsborough Bay and on the Alafia and Hillsborough rivers. The area between the Little Manatee and the Alafia rivers was unoccupied, serving as neutral ground between the Uzita and the Mocoso. Although geographically close, these two groups may have spoken different languages or dialects of the same language.

After de Soto` s army left Tampa Bay, the names Uzita and Mocoso do not appear again in Spanish documents. No other expeditions were sent to either group, and no missions were ever established among them. These two groups, who were among the first native Florida Indians to undergo sustained contact with Spaniards, suffered greatly from disease epidemics and from having a significant number of individuals forcibly enslaved as bearers for de Soto?Ls army.

The Pohoy and The Tocobago

A third Tampa Bay group, the Pohoy, probably are the same people called the Capaloey in the de Soto narratives. The people of the Pohoy inhabited some part of upper Tampa Bay (also called the Bay of Pohoy, the Bay of Tocobago, and The Bay of the Holy Spirit (Bahia de Espirito Santo). In 1675 they were said to be living on a river six leagues from the Tocobago, possibly on the Hillsborough River.

The Tocobago were located on Old Tampa Bay in the vicinity of the modern town of Safety Harbor. All of the Tampa Bay groups were fishers who also hunted wild animals and gathered wild plants. But of the peoples living on the bay proper, only the Tocobago had corn, and they may have gotten it from groups to the north.

The Tocobago also maintained a temple and a charnel house in their main village, as probably did each of the towns of the native groups around Tampa Bay.

The information in this section was excerpted from the following book:
Hernando de Soto and the indians of Florida by Jerald T. Milanich and Charles Hudson.