Editing History of Florida (section)

===European contact and aftermath===

[[File:Flindians1723.JPG|thumb|250px|[[Bernard Picart]] Copper Plate Engraving of Florida Indians, circa 1721<ref>{{cite book|editor-last=Bernard|editor-first=Chez J.F.|last1=Bernard|first1=Jean-Frédéric|last2=Picart|first2=Bernard|title=Cérémonies et Coutumes Religieuses de tous les Peuples du Monde|url=https://www.loc.gov/item/50032372/}}<!--Private collection of L.S. Morgan in St. Augustine, FL--></ref>]]

At the time of first European contact in the early 16th century, Florida was inhabited by an estimated 350,000 people belonging to a number of tribes. (Anthropologist [[Henry F. Dobyns]] has estimated that as many as 700,000 people lived in Florida in 1492).<ref>{{Cite news|last=Lord|first=Lewis|date=August 1997|title=How Many People Were Here Before Columbus?|pages=68–70|work=U.S. News & World Report|url=https://www.bxscience.edu/ourpages/auto/2009/4/5/34767803/Pre-Columbian%20population.pdf|access-date=February 16, 2021}}</ref> The [[Spanish Empire]] sent Spanish explorers recording nearly one hundred names of groups they encountered, ranging from organized political entities such as the [[Apalachee]], with a population of around 50,000, to villages with no known political affiliation. There were an estimated 150,000 speakers of dialects of the [[Timucua language]], but the [[Timucua]] were organized as groups of villages and did not share a common culture.<ref name=milanich95>{{cite book|first=Jerald T.|last=Milanich|title=Florida Indians and the Invasion from Europe|date=1995|publisher=University Press of Florida|isbn=0-8130-1360-7}}</ref>{{rp|1–2, 82}} Other tribes in Florida at the time of first contact included the [[Ais (tribe)|Ais]], [[Calusa]], [[Jaega]], [[Mayaimi]], [[Tequesta]], and [[Tocobaga]].

The populations of all of these tribes decreased markedly during the period of Spanish control of Florida, mostly due to epidemics of newly introduced [[infectious diseases]], to which the Native Americans had no natural [[Immunity (medical)|immunity]]. Beginning late in the 17th century, when most of the [[indigenous peoples]] were already much reduced in population, [[Apalachicola Province#Attacks on Spanish missions|peoples]] from areas to the north of Florida, supplied with arms and occasionally accompanied by [[white (people)|white]] colonists from the [[Province of Carolina]], raided throughout Florida. They burned villages, wounded many of the inhabitants and carried captives back to [[Charleston, South Carolina|Charles Towne]] to be sold into [[slavery]]. Most of the villages in Florida were abandoned, and the survivors sought refuge at [[St. Augustine, Florida|St. Augustine]] or in isolated spots around the state. Many tribes became extinct during this period and by the end of the 18th century.<ref name=milanich95/>{{rp|213–228}}

Some of the Apalachee eventually reached Louisiana, where they survived as a distinct group for at least another century. The Spanish evacuated the few surviving members of the Florida tribes to [[Cuba]] in 1763 when Spain transferred the territory of Florida to the [[British Empire]] following the latter's victory against France in the [[Seven Years' War]].<ref name=milanich95/>{{rp|227–231}} In the aftermath, the [[Seminole]], originally an offshoot of the [[Creek people]] who absorbed other groups, developed as a distinct tribe in Florida during the 18th century through the process of [[ethnogenesis]]. They have three federally recognized tribes: the largest is the [[Seminole Nation of Oklahoma]], formed of descendants since removal in the 1830s; others are the smaller [[Seminole Tribe of Florida]] and the [[Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida]].