Extinction of the Timucua tribe

Background. The Timucua were a Native American people of Northeast and North Central Florida and southeast Georgia, whose various groups spoke dialects of the Timucua language. At European contact, Timucuan speakers occupied roughly 19,200 square miles with an estimated population of 200,000. Their numbers then collapsed: a 1711 census found 142 Timucua-speakers in four villages under Spanish protection, 167 people in 1726, and by 1759 only six adults and five half-Timucua children.

Relocation to Cuba. In 1763, when Spain ceded Florida to Great Britain, the Spanish took the fewer than 100 remaining Timucua and other natives to Cuba. Guanabacoa, a colonial township in eastern Havana, was home to a small community of Florida Indians, mostly Apalachees and Yamasees, who were evacuated from Florida in 1763 following the conclusion of the Seven Years' War. Some historians believe a small group of Timucua may have stayed behind in Florida or Georgia and possibly assimilated into other groups such as the Seminoles.

Reported Extinction of the Tribe. According to the legacy record, the Timucua tribe became extinct with the death of Juan Alonso Cabale, the last speaker of the Timucuan language, on 14 November 1767 in Guanabacoa, Cuba, eight years after the relocation of the last 95 survivors. The supplied passages do not name Cabale, give this death date, or state the extinction; they confirm only the 1763 removal of fewer than 100 Timucua to Cuba and Guanabacoa's community of evacuated Florida Indians. Research is underway in Cuba to discover whether any Timucua descendants exist there.