More on Chief Tomokie

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Chief Tomokie Statue Portrays Myth, Not Man

DISCOVER VOLUSIA
June 11, 1995·By Dana Ste. Claire
It's hard to imagine a more noble monument to the Timucua natives of the Volusia area than the stately Chief Tomokie sculpture in Tomoka State Park.
Here, the stone chief stands majestic, reaching toward the sky, surrounded by a bevy of bow-wielding Timucua braves and Oleeta, the delicate princess. Surely, as evocative as it is, the scene must typify the lifestyles of the Timucua who once lived here.
But it doesn't. The sculpture in all of its folksy grandeur characterizes little of the habits and customs of Volusia's first people.
Yet in deference to its creator, the late Fred Dana Marsh, the Tomokie statue probably never was intended to be true to history. It is just that many of its viewers have interpreted it to be historically right.
Marsh's work was designed after a little-known fictional account of a fierce Indian chief and the Princess Oleeta. Both are mythical characters, contrary to popular belief. The romantic story is but one in a long series of fanciful tales and mistruths that surround the Timucua.
First, there was no Chief Tomokie. And, for the record, there were no Tomoka Indians, despite some well entrenched local folklore. The word Tomoka is a corruption of Timucua, the name of the indigenous peoples of Northeast Florida. Spanish and French explorers, early on having trouble pronouncing Native American words, concocted the misnomer.
But what better leader to preside over the mythical Tomoka tribe than the fictional Chief Tomokie?. History tells us that there were many powerful Timucua chiefs, like Outina and Saturiba, who were, in their own right, worthy of literary account. But Tomokie wasn't one of them.
It was probably Marsh's bigger-than-life creation of Tomokie and his followers that more recently fueled the centuries-old legend of 7-foot-tall Timucua warriors who reigned superior to their Old World counterparts.
This tall tale is nothing more than an exaggeration of Native American stature by diminutive Spanish explorers. Accounts of the New World life by early European discoverers and artists were often embellished for Old World audiences, who were captivated by the Americas and its strange native people.
Archaeological evidence gives us a fairly accurate profile of Florida's first people, and by most accounts they closely resembled today's Native American people - neither tall nor short, just average in stature. Like most contemporary populations of people, there were occasional giants (and dwarfs), but not enough to substantiate a superhuman race.
Although they had some unusual customs, the Timucua were not practicing cannibals, as they are sometimes purported to be. Early explorers recorded many events that were unusual in the eyes of Old World peoples - such as the taking of limbs as trophies during warfare and the storing of dead bodies in ceremonial huts before burial - all of which could have led the Europeans to believe that the American natives were cannibalistic.
It is likely that, for whatever reason, the consumption of fellow natives took place, but for the most part, the Timucua and their prehistoric ancestors made a good living fishing the coasts and hunting the adjacent forests. Their diet was a healthful one, but it didn't cause them to grow to enormous proportions. That is, with the exception of one Chief Tomokie.
So that is the story of Chief Tomokie, fable that it is. The picture was when the statue was new, it has deterioated some. See blog 03-07-15
Monday I didn't write a blog because I was sick as a dog. Something I ate didn't agree with me and I spent the day sleeping except when Oscar or my insides woke me up. Tuesday was a vast improvement and today I feel much better so we did some touring.
Just a few miles up the road is Burtow state park where one of the oldest oak trees lives. It is over 400 yrs old. Picture. Then we took a ride along a scenic waterway and ended up in Flagler Beach but I couldn't see the ocean, it was fogged in. There were bikers all over and restruants with bands and banners beckoning them in. On the way home we found a trail that I thought led to a waterway to see some birds but it didn't. We came back home for lunch and I read my book while Oscar chewed on a palm branch. After his dinner, I left Oscar home and went down to the Halifax River to see if some birds were there. Not much doing and I ended up taking flicks of crabs. They were only about 1 inch long and hard to catch from their hole.
There are fish in the river that jump out of the water twice. They feed on the bottom of the river and to rid their gills of parasites they jump. Fun to watch.
I went into town, about 5 miles and got dinner and headed home for the night.

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