Timucua

I'm always so happy to find cards that are new to me, especially of tribal groups which are under-represented in my collection. I have very few cards of Florida and other SE native people and was super happy to trade with a Postcrosser for this Timucuan man.The Timucua were hunters & fishermen and had retained many of the Mississippian era features including body tattoos, wearing large ear spools, and using shells. Sadly this community was heavily impacted by DeSoto's march thru the SE in the 1540s....most all of Florida's original inhabitants died from disease, warfare, hard labor at Spanish Missions, and being taken in slave raids by native people allied to the English. Some of the remnants blended with Creeks to form the Seminole community in the 1800s.

This card was acquired at the Kingsley Plantation Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve on Fort Jackson Island, Jacksonville, FL.

Bandelier Natl Monument

received 2 more great New Mexico cards from a fellow Postcrosser. Bandelier National Monument is located south of Los Alamos, NM and was home to Ancestral Puebloan peoples who lived in the canyons and on the mesa tops sometime around 1200AD. The large round structure is a Kiva, an underground religious space; climbing the ladder re-enacts man's journey from below ground into the present reality. Environment and social pressure encouraged the people to move to the Rio Grande and establish other settlements in the 1500s.