Chatot
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Contributor note: See Talk:Chato people#Requesting Merge With Chatot |
 Tribal territory of Chatot during the 16th century highlighted | |
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| Extinct as a tribe | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| United States (Florida) | |
| Languages | |
| Muskogean | |
| Religion | |
| Native | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Pensacola, Choctaw and other Muskogean tribes |
The Chatot (also Chacato, Chactoo, or Chato) were a Native American tribe who lived in the upper Apalachicola River and Chipola River basins in what is now Florida. They spoke a Muskogean language, which may have been the same as that of several other peoples in western Florida, including the Amacano, Chine, Pacara, and Pensacola (Hann says they were "closely related linguistically"). The Chatot were involved in a war with the Apalachee and Amacano people in 1639.[1]
Some authors have posited that the Chatot were connected with the Choctaw. Milanich notes that confusion of the names "Chatot" and "Chactato" with the Choctaw of Mississippi may have been responsible for the name of Choctawhatchee Bay.[2] Hann notes that the translator of a Spanish document mis-identified a Chacato chief as Choctaw.[3] Galloway says that the Chatots and Choctaws should not be confused. She notes that chato is Spanish for "flat" or "roman-nosed", and speculates that the Spanish called the people "Chatots" because they practiced artificial cranial deformation.[4]
At the time of first contact with the Spanish, the Chatot lived in the upper part of the Chipola River basin and the adjacent section of the Appalachicola River in the area of the Fort Walton culture, primarily in what is now Jackson County, Florida. A number of archaeological sites in the area, including the Waddells Mill Pond Site, a fortified village site with two mounds, may have been occupied by the ancestors of the historic Chatot. Pottery found in the Chatot settlement area is more closely related to that of Apalachee Province than to that of the peoples of the Pensacola and Mobile bays. The subsistence economy of the Chatots also resembled that of the Apalachees, rather the peoples to their west.[2][5]
The first mention of the Chatot in Spanish records was in 1638, when a representative of the Spanish governor of Florida was able to stop a war between the Chatot and the Apalachee. The next governor visited the Chatot and Apalachicola Province in 1646, when both peoples requested missionaries. The Chatots requested missionaries again in the 1660s.[6]
Two missions were established among the Chatot in June 1674. The first mission, San Carlos Borromeo, was in the principal Chatot village of Achercatane (later listed as Yatcatane), four days journey northwest of Apalachee Province. A second mission, San Nicolas de Tolentino, was established in the village of Atanchia.[7] The missionaries at the two missions claimed to have converted more than 300 Chatots, including the caciques of the settlements, to Christianity by late September. Three warriors complained that they were being pressured to convert, and threatened to have Chiscas living the Chatot villages and in their own nearby village to make trouble for the missionaries and converts. The Spanish lieutenant-governor in Apalachee Province took some soldiers and 25 Apalachees armed with harquebuses to the Chatot missions. The three reluctant warriors were nominally converted to Christianity and the Chiscas were expelled from the Chatot villages while the Spanish-Apalachee party was there.[8]
The Spanish mission of San Carlos de los Chacatos was listed as being in Apalachee Province, but was established to serve Chatots who had moved into the province.[9]
Milanich suggests that the apparent stability of the Apalachee population in the last quarter of the 17th century may have been due to other people, including Chatots, moving into the province.[10]
The Spanish established three or four missions to the Chatot by 1675; Asunción/Asumpción del Puerto, la Encarnación (also called Santa Cruz de Sábacola el menor), San Nicolás de Tolentino (listed only in Geiger, 1940) and San Carlos de los Chacatos. These missions were located near the upper Apalachicola River. The historian John Hann places the missions of Asunción, la Encarnatión and San Carlos in the Apalachee Province of the Spanish mission system in Florida. The historian Maynard Geiger also places Asunción in Apalachee Province, but he places la Encarnación, San Nicolás and San Carlos in the Apalachicola Province. Milanich places San Carlos de Chacatos in Apalachee Province, serving Chacatos who had moved into the province.[11]
Notes[edit]
- ^ Milanich 1995, p. 96; Hall 2000, p. 128; Hann 2006, p. 11.
- ^ a b Milanich 1995, p. 96.
- ^ Hann 2006, p. 22.
- ^ Galloway 1995, p. 168.
- ^ Hann 2006, p. 21.
- ^ Hann 2006, p. 26.
- ^ Hann 2006, p. 29.
- ^ Hann 2006, pp. 29–30.
- ^ Milanich 1995, p. 178.
- ^ Milanich 1995, p. 221.
- ^ Hann 1990, pp. 420, 490, 494; Geiger 1940, pp. 128, 130–1; Milanich 1995, pp. 178, 221.
References[edit]
- Geiger, Maynard (1940). "Biographical Dictionary of the Franciscans in Spanish Florida and Cuba (1528-1841)". Franciscan Studies. 21 (21): V–IX, XI–XII, 1–117, 119–140. JSTOR 43900081.
- Hall, Joseph (2000). "Confederacy Formation on the Fringes of Spanish Florida". Mediterranean Studies. 9: 123–141. ISSN 1074-164X. JSTOR 41166915.
- Hann, John H. (April 1990). "Summary Guide to Spanish Florida Missions and Visitas with Churches in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries". The Americas. 46 (4): 417–513. doi:10.2307/1006866. JSTOR 1006866.
- Hann, John H. (2006). The Native American World Beyond Apalachee. University Press of Florida. ISBN 9-780-8130-2982-5.
- Milanich, Jerald T. (1995). Florida Indians and the Invasion from Europe (paperback ed.). University Press of Florida. ISBN 978-0-8130-1636-8.
- Galloway, Patricia. "Choctaw Genesis, 1500-1700". Nebraska Press. Retrieved 2023-03-08.
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