The Marketplace

This Tocobaga city was located where downtown St. Petersburg – USF Campus – Bayfront Medical – Dali Museum are today.

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Just like any medieval European town at the time period, a Tocobaga marketplace bustled with vendors, traders, customers children, dogs, and even the occasional visiting dignitaries.

The ancient people who lived along the bays, bayous and rivers of the Tampa Bay, belonged to a complex society dating back hundreds of years before the first Spanish expeditions arrived in the 1500’s. They built cities with large temple mounds. They played ball games on the courts at the center of their towns. They conducted the business of their people in large council houses. They fished and hunted and raised crops for a living. Sometimes they traveled south to the Caribbean islands, or north, up the Mississippi River to trade shells, beads, feathers, and dried fish for the things they could not get locally. They were a well-organized society that drew upon their ancient knowledge of this place.

These were the Tocobaga Indians.

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