By Sara Bridget Au

If you’re like many Orlando residents, you’re about to start squiring numerous out of town guests to and from the various attractions on the other side of town. This time of year sees Northern-dwelling friends and family flocking to visit those of us lucky to live so close to the happiest place on Earth. But there is so much more to Orlando and Florida, and a new guide produced by the Trail of Florida’s Indian Heritage with grant funding from the Florida Department of State, Division of Historical Resource, Bureau of Historic Preservation and under the direction of and largely written by an Orlando archaeologist, can help you show off the rest of our local sights to your holiday guests.

The Florida Native American Heritage Trail guidebook honors Florida’s Native American cultures, both past and present, by providing in-depth information for residents and visitors. In text and photos, the booklet describes over 100 sites throughout the state where ancient Florida Native Americans left evidence of their cultures and where contemporary Native Americans thrive and exhibit their cultures. This 36-page booklet is the newest addition to the Florida Heritage Trail series, which includes the Florida World War II Heritage Trail, the Florida Cuban Heritage Trail, and the Florida Black Heritage Trail, the Florida Jewish Heritage Trail, and the Florida Women’s Heritage Trail.

“It is easy to travel through Florida today without realizing that there were ever vibrant native communities here, or that there still are,” says Willard Steele, Tribal Historic Preservation Officer for the Seminole Tribe of Florida. “If the history of the state was measured in time on a 12-inch ruler, the native people by themselves would be the first 11 inches, and would dominate the political scene up to the last 1/8 of an inch.”

Archaeologist Brenda Swann, of Orlando, wrote much of the publication while she was living in Avalon Park. “People first arrived in what is now known as Florida more than 12 millennia ago,” she relates in the booklet. This was during the ice age, and so the land extended 100 miles further into the Gulf of Mexico than it does today, roamed by now-extinct large mammals like mastodons, wooly mammoths and saber-toothed cats. “Few clues remain of these PaleoIndians, but thousands of their stone tools survive to demonstrate their ingenuity and creativity,” writes Swann.

While unearthed items like ceramic bowls and dugout canoes allow historians, archaeologists and anthropologists to piece together much about the lives of Native Americans in Florida before Europeans moved in, a great deal more is known about the displacement and eventual destruction of this culture. Nearby Fort Christmas plays heavily in this history. Founded on December 25, 1837, Fort Christmas was constructed during the Second Seminole war by a force of 2000 U.S. Army soldiers and Alabama volunteers. Now a park and museum, display cases and videos in the reconstructed fort provide a history of Seminole culture, the Seminole war and the early days of white settlement.

With funding from the Florida Humanities Council, the Frank E. Duckwall Foundation and VISIT FLORIDA New Product Development, the Trail of Florida’s Indian Heritage is a non-profit membership network of two heritage interpreters and 26 public sites and has produced three tourism brochures and three archaeological speaker series to promote awareness, responsible visitation and protection of the remaining cultural sites of the original people of Florida.