Calusa Indian Pottery Shards

Reading a blog from top to bottom can be reading the posts in the wrong order. If you read the next few posts you'll know who Laymond Hardy is and where this photo was taken, the shell midden in Charlotte Harbor, Florida. Laymond spent quite a bit of time digging around. Others had been there before digging down through the many feet of shells, shell fragments, and pieces of bone that made up the island. Rumors that Indian gold might be there were as common as rumors of Spanish pirates' treasure chests full of gold and jewels.

Laymond didn't really have to "dig". He was content with going through the already "dug", looking for interesting pieces of Calusa Indian pottery, such as these two pieces he's holding. He said that the smooth side was from the inner surface of a bowl. The other piece was from the outside. The Calusas were known for the incised patterns on the outside of their pottery. He said that the Calusas on Florida's west coast and the Tequestas on the east coast were mostly all killed or enslaved by the Spanish, and the slaves shipped to Cuba to work on plantations there. They were tall people. The present day Seminole and Miccosukee Indians, really a political division within one group, are decended from Creeks from further north, supposedly mixed with some esaped slaves of African ancestory. They tend to be short and stocky.