Acuera

Acuera (Timucua: Acuero?, "Timekeeper")[1] was the name of both an indigenous town and a province or region in central Florida during the 16th and 17th centuries.

A map produced by Jacques le Moyne, who was part of the late 16th-century French attempt to colonize Florida at Fort Caroline, shows a town called Aquouena (Acuera?)

[3][4][5][6][7] "Santa Lucia de Acuera" was one of nine or ten dialects of the Timucua language named by the Franciscan missionary Francisco Pareja in the early 17th century.

[14][15][16][17] With the establishment of Fort Caroline in 1564 by French Huguenots near the mouth of the St. Johns River, the Acuera, along with most other Timucua speakers, came into continuing contact with Europeans.

However, a rebellion in Guale that occurred shortly before the Acuera submission to Spain resulted in almost all missionaries being withdrawn from Spanish Florida.

[18][19][20] The mission of San Blas de Habino was established after 1610 to serve the towns of Avino, Tucuru and Utiaca, which were on the lower to middle Oklawaha River, at intervals of one-and-a-half to two leagues apart.

[Footnote 2] They were probably needed there to serve the river crossing, as the original inhabitants, the Agua Dulce people, were greatly reduced in numbers.

Epidemics of new infectious diseases, which were endemic among the Europeans, caused high mortality rates and severely affected Timucua mission communities in the 1650s.

[25][26] Historical and recent archaeological evidence suggests that conversion to Catholicism may have been limited to either the chiefly class or to refugees from other Timucuan groups forced into missions.

[27][28][29] After the Timucuan Rebellion in 1656, the Acuera seem to have either defied or not been subject to the order of Spanish governor Diego de Rebolledo to consolidate along the Camino Real.

[30][31] During the latter half of the seventeenth century, Spanish records indicate the Acuera maintained a traditional religious and political system, with multiple towns and villages.

[32] Calesa, nephew of the Acuera chief Jabahica, was tried in 1678 by the Governor of Florida for multiple murders (he was accused of six, and admitted in court to three).

In 1648, the cacique of the Utiaca fled with part of his people from San Diege de Helaca and returned to Acuera Province.