Pensacola people

[1] The archaeological culture covers an area stretching from a transitional Pensacola/Fort Walton culture zone at Choctawhatchee Bay in Florida[2] to the eastern side of the Mississippi River Delta near Biloxi, Mississippi, with the majority of its sites located along Mobile Bay in the Mobile-Tensaw River Delta.

[1] (The Fort Walton culture continued to exist in the Florida Panhandle to the east of the Pensacola area into the period of European colonization.)

This site seems like an unlikely place to find a ceremonial center because it is surrounded by swamps and is difficult to reach on foot.

However, it would have been easy access by a dugout canoe, the main mode of transportation available to the people who built the Bottle Creek site.

Cabeza de Vaca reported that the Indians they encountered in the vicinity of what is now Pensacola Bay were of "large stature and well formed," and lived in permanent houses.

Maldonado found a village on the bay, where he seized one or two of the inhabitants, along with a "good blanket of sables."

De Soto ordered Maldonado to meet him at the Bay of Achuse the next summer with supplies for his expedition.

Some tried to relocate to Santa Elena (present-day Parris Island, South Carolina), but were damaged by storms there, too.

[10][11] That same year a letter reported that Panzacola could be reached by canoe by travelling west from San Marcos de Apalachee, placing it twelve leagues from the "Indians of Mobile".

[6] In 1764 a village of Pensacola, Biloxi, Chacato, Capinan, Washa, Cawasha, and Pascagoula had 261 men.