11 Facts About Yustaga

Yustaga were a Timucua people of what is northwestern Florida during the 16th and 17th centuries.

Yustaga were closely associated with the Northern Utina people living on the other side of the Suwannee River, though they appear to have spoken a different dialect of the Timucua language, perhaps Potano.

The Yustaga were among the first Timucua to encounter Europeans, as their location near the Apalachee ensured that several explorers passed through their territory looking for that group.

Westernmost of all Timucua groups, the Yustaga's territory extended into the Florida Panhandle and southwestern Georgia.

The Northern Utina were closely associated with the Yustaga, but spoke a different dialect, known as Timucua proper.

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Dialect spoken by the Yustaga is unclear, as the tribe had not been missionized at the time Father Francisco Pareja, the principal source for the Timucua language and its dialects, undertook his linguistic work between 1612 and 1627.

Yustaga appear to have encountered the expedition of Panfilo de Narvaez when it came through the area in 1528.

However, the name "Yustaga" first appears in the chronicles of Hernando de Soto's 1539 expedition, which describe it as the region immediately east of Apalachee.

Spanish records indicate that the paramount chief of the Yustaga consistently refused to allow missionaries to even enter his territory until the 1620s, over twenty years after missionization had begun among the Northern Utina and other interior groups.

At the start of the mission period the Yustaga Province was by far the most populous, having an estimated 12,000 inhabitants, compared to only 7,500 in the Timucua Province, which at that time included the Northern Utina as well as the Potano and other groups.

Yustaga indicated that the game was played with 50 or even 100 players on a team, and that large crowds would gather to watch the games.