The Timucua are a Native American people who live in Northeast and North Central Florida and southeast Georgia.

They are the largest indigenous group in that area and consist of about thirty-five chiefdoms, many leading thousands of people.

The various groups of Timucua speak several dialects of the Timucua language.

At the time of European contact, the territory occupied by speakers of Timucuan dialects occupies about 19,200 square miles (50,000 km2), and is home to between fifty thousand and two hundred thousand Timucuans.

It stretches from the Altamaha River and Cumberland Island in present-day Georgia as far south as Lake George in central Florida, and from the Atlantic Ocean west to the Aucilla River in the Florida Panhandle, though it reaches the Gulf of Mexico at no more than a couple of points.The name "Timucua" (from Thimogona) comes from the exonym used by the Saturiwa (of what is now Jacksonville) to refer to the Utina, another group to the west of the St. Johns River.

The Spanish come to use the term more broadly for other peoples in the area.

Eventually it becomeS the common term for all peoples who speak what is known as the Timucuan language.While alliances and confederacies arise between the chiefdoms from time to time, the Timucua are never organized into a single political unit.

The various groups of Timucua speakers practice several different cultural traditions.

The people suffer severely from the introduction of Eurasian infectious diseases, to which they have no immunity.

By 1595, their population is estimated to have been reduced from two hundred thousand to fifty thousand and thirteen chiefdoms remain.

By 1700, the population of the tribe has been reduced to one thousand.

Warfare against them by the English colonists and native allies complete their extinction as a tribe soon after the turn of the nineteenth century.Contents