Maximo Park is one of several parks in St Pete that preserve and protect Tocobaga Native American archaeological sites.
For those who don't know, I lived in a converted campervan and traveled around the country, posting photo diaries of places that I visited. But the pandemic has clipped my wings, and I am now holed up in Florida until I can begin traveling again. :)
The Florida Natives, like most pre-contact cultures, had no written language and left no history of their own. Most of what we know about them comes from Spanish accounts. But there have also been archaeological discoveries that shed light on these people and their lives. Many of these are village sites where ceremonial or burial mounds still survive. Most helpful are the “midden mounds”, which are essentially garbage piles where trash and refuse was discarded—everything from kitchen scraps to broken pottery shards. These give us a rare look into the everyday lives of the Natives.
Many middens consist mostly of broken and empty oyster shells and fish bones, illustrating the dependence that most Florida tribes had on the sea. Since Florida has few deposits of flint or chert that are suitable for making stone tools, many Natives here also pressed seashells, bone, and even shark teeth into service for toolmaking: arrowheads, harpoon points, and axe blades were often ground into shape from broken shells, and the heavy shells of whelks and conchs were hafted to wooden handles to use as digging tools or even as war clubs. Intact shells were shaped into spoons, cups and cooking pots. (Although the Florida natives made serviceable pottery, they had few sources of suitable clay to make ceramics.) The exceptionally dense rib bones of the West Indian Manatee were favorite materials for making clubs or hammers.
Sadly, however, many of these midden mounds were destroyed long ago. Some of them were leveled to build modern houses or buildings. Many were bulldozed for use as material for shell-paved roads.
But a handful of middens, as well as some ceremonial mounds, still remain and can be visited today, including a number of Tocobaga sites here in Pinellas County. One of the largest Tocobaga towns, and its political center, was in modern-day Safety Harbor. The remains of the town’s ceremonial temple mound are preserved in Philippe Park. Another temple mound is preserved at Pinellas Point, in Indian Mound Park. There are Tocobaga midden mounds at Abercrombie Park and Jungle Prada de Narvaez Park. In nearby Manatee County is the Portavant Mound site and the Madiera Bickle Temple Mound complex.
Maximo Park, in south St Pete, has walking paths, a disc golf course, boat ramps, and a playground. It also has a number of midden mounds (most of them badly eroded) and the remains of a ceremonial temple mound. Signs explain the history of the area. The site was first occupied by a band of Tocobaga about 5,000 years ago, but did not become a permanent settlement until around 2,000 years ago. It was then continuously inhabited until about 1750, when the Tocobaga, devastated by European diseases and by conflicts with the Spanish, British, and Native American Creeks from Georgia, disappeared.
The park is named after Antonio Maximo Hernandez, who homesteaded this area in 1843 and made his living by fishing out in the Bay.
Some photos from an afternoon at the park.