Talk:Indigenous people of the Everglades region

Misquote?

The article include the following quote: "These Indians have no gold, no silver, and less clothing. They go naked except for some breech cloths woven of palms, with which the men cover themselves; the women do the like with certain grass the grows on trees. This grass looks like wool, although it is different from it."

The bolded the is obviously incorrect, but is that how it appeared in original source? I'd check myself if it were available online. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 21:40, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Yah, it's that. Thanks for the heads-up. Let me know if you see any other glaring errors. --Moni3 (talk) 21:49, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Clarification

"The Paleo-Indians then slowly transitioned into the Archaic peoples of the Florida peninsula, most probably due to the extinction of big game. Archaic people were primarily hunter-gatherers who depended on smaller game and fish, and relied more prominently on plants for food."

More prominently than the game and fish, or more prominently than the Paleo-Indians? --Cryptic C62 · Talk 00:46, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Clarified. Thanks for the heads-up on that. --Moni3 (talk) 12:25, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

GA review

GA review (see here for criteria)

---

Just a few spots that should be cleaned up.

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose): b (MoS):

   A few prose bobbles.

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused):

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   Fair representation without bias:

5. It is stable.

   No edit wars etc.:

6. It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.

   a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):

7. Overall:

   Pass/Fail:

Comments

• Lead, second sentence seems a bit awkward to me, but not sure how to reword it.
• Lead, sentence starting "However, 6500 years ago..." I think I'd word it "... and the Paleo-Indians slowly adapted to the new conditions. Archaelogists call the cultures that resulted from the adaptations Archaic peoples." which gives a better explanation and avoids the impression that the people themselves called themselves Archaic.
• Lead, second paragraph. "Missionize"? Eeew... what's wrong with "convert and conquer them"? Missionize sounds like buinsessspeak
• Same section and paragraph, "The Calusa were more powerful in numbers and politics." Perhaps "... more powerful in numbers and political structure."?
• Perhistoric peoples section, You introduce the Paleo-Indians in the lead, but the lead isn't really an introduction, it's a summary of the whole article. You need to introduce them again in this section, not just start out in media res talking about their diet.
• I suggest this wording for the sentence starting "The Paleo-Indian diets...".. try "The Paleo-Indian diets were dominated by small plants and the wild game available, which included saber-toothed cats, sloths and spectacled bears."
• Drop "that comprised Paleo-Indian diets" from the last sentence of the first paragraph. Makes things much simplier.
• First sentence of the second paragraph, see above in the lead about suggestion. Transitioned is really sounding businessspeakish to me.
• Okay, are the Glades III the Calusa? It suddenly jumps from that to Calusa with no tie in between the two.

Overall, very nice article. I'd suggest finding someone skilled at copyediting to go through and do a thorough copyedit, it's wordy and would benefit before FAC in having a good pruning (which I am not capable of doing, sorry. I write wordier than this!).

I've put the article on hold for seven days to allow folks to address the issues I've brought up. Feel free to contact me on my talk page, or here with any concerns, and let me know one of those places when the issues have been addressed. If I may suggest that you strike out, check mark, or otherwise mark the items I've detailed, that will make it possible for me to see what's been addressed, and you can keep track of what's been done and what still needs to be worked on. Ealdgyth - Talk 18:20, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, Ealdgyth.

Second sentence gone. Though "missionize" is a word used by anthropologists in the books I used, I changed it. Everything else changed per your suggestions. Any other suggestions you have before I try to take this to FA I would appreciate. I still have to change that source for the casinos. I'm working on the last article and hope to have it posted to the mainframe this weekend. Thanks for your review. --Moni3 (talk) 18:50, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

No worries. I kept holding myself back from doing it at FA level, not GA level. I do suggest a copyeditor, if you don't find one by the middle of next week, drop me a note and I'll lend my (very poor) efforts at it. Finding someone better than I would be better though!

I put a note on the FA team to focus on this group of articles (which I think brought you to look at its sources last week), but I wanted to finished Restoration of the Everglades first. I won't try to put it up for FA until that's done, I notify the FA Team proposal page, and get someone else to look at it. Hopefully lots of someone elses. Thanks again! --Moni3 (talk) 19:01, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Some comments

• Should Everglades be linked in the first sentence? I know there's probably some guideline cautioning against linking words in the article title, but I feel that this would make for a good exception.
• The journal articles should probably list the specific page numbers that back up the Wiki's claims instead of (what I presume are) the page ranges of the entire articles. BuddingJournalist 21:47, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't know for the first question. I think if that becomes an FAC request I'll go ahead and do it.

And I've never seen the request in the 2nd suggestion, and I hope I don't have to deal with that. For all the journal articles I've used in all the articles I've written... Kill me now.

Thanks for reading it, and the suggestions. --Moni3 (talk) 22:15, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Meh, the first one isn't really that big of a deal. If the second one comes up at FAC, I think I have access to the journal articles through JSTOR, so I can help out there. The second one seems to me to be analogous to providing a page number for book sources. ::shrug:: Well-done with the article though. Prose flows beautifully. Haven't really finished reading yet, but I'll get around to it. BuddingJournalist 22:37, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Oh, God. Seriously. Do you know how many citations I have from journal sources? From all my articles? That would take me months to take care of, and unless it's absolutely going to keep me from getting an FA, and expressly stated at WP:CITE would I try to do that. --Moni3 (talk) 22:43, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Problem with this sentence from the Lead

After more than 200 years of relations with the Spanish, both societies lost cohesiveness. Which societies, the Spanish or the indigenous folk? Graham. GrahamColm^Talk 13:43, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Clarified. --Moni3 (talk) 14:10, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Just one more:

The Paleo-Indians then slowly adapted into the Archaic peoples of the Florida peninsula, most probably due to the extinction of big game.

I don't like the adapted into expression. Does this mean they adapted slowly and became the Archaic peoples? Or did they adapt and join them? The reason given needs a little more explaning. Great article BTW. Graham. GrahamColm^Talk 14:36, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

My original wording was "transitioned into", which seemed accurate enough for me, but an editor during Peer Review didn't like it. Any suggestions? --Moni3 (talk) 14:39, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

How about adapted and became? GrahamColm^Talk 14:45, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Calusa and Timucua survival

I placed some cite tags in the following sentence in the lead: "After more than 200 years of relations with the Spanish, both indigenous societies lost cohesiveness. The remaining Calusa were assimilated into the newer Seminole nation, born of invading Creeks, leftover Timucua, other tribes absorbed by the Creeks, and escaped African slaves." This comes in the wake of a discussion about the shadowy issue of the Calusa survival at Talk:Calusa. The issue is that the wording implies, to my mind at least, that some distinct fragment of the Calusa and Timucua was left behind and joined the Seminole in a fashion similar to the Tuscarora joining the Iroquois Confederacy. I think a change in the wording may fix the problem.--Cúchullain ^t/c 18:31, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

I took a shot at a fix.. Zeng8r (talk) 18:34, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

I did not intend the article to mean that distinct bands of Calusa or Tequesta existed and sought protection from or consciously joined the Seminoles. I don't mind making that clearer, so part of Zeng8r's edits met that goal. However, the second part of his edit changes the aspects of the Seminoles being forced into the Everglades and pursued there by the US military. It says they escaped - what? The previous wording was not unclear at all about why they moved to the Everglades. --Moni3 (talk) 18:49, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

This any better?--Cúchullain ^t/c 19:00, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, and I restored some of the info about the Seminoles coming from the Creeks. Let me know if you would like further info or clarification. I'm happy to do it. --Moni3 (talk) 20:09, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Much better now. Good work team.--Cúchullain ^t/c 20:20, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Hammocks as ancient middens?

An interesting hypothesis here (and other sites). The report places humans in the glades 5,000 years ago, which is somewhere around when the rising sea level would have raised the water table in the area. If the hammocks are indeed based on ancient middens, why did the middens start in those places? Was the water table lower when the midden sites started? Any way, I hope the results are published in a peer reviewed journal soon. -- Donald Albury 20:31, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

This is interesting, and I agree, I'd like to see it in a peer reviewed journal as well. I know that Hontoon Island in central Florida and Fort George Island in north Florida are both still heavily littered with midden material. Whether the islands formed from midden material I don't know. Hontoon Island is pretty big and in the middle of the St. Johns River, so it would be very interesting to know how this happened. However, I do own a copy of Archeology of the Everglades and can read up on this over the weekend. --Moni3 (talk) 21:36, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Does Archaeology of the Everglades have anything about Fort Center? It's not exactly in the Everglades, but it is in the Okeechobee/Belle Glade culture area. I've been working on an article about it (User:Donald Albury/Fort Center), trying to build a narrative around my notes from Sears' book, and then bringing in different perspectives from later works. -- Donald Albury 21:59, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, it does. Are you interested in getting the book, or would you rather I summarize what Griffin says? --Moni3 (talk) 14:54, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

In the long term, I would like to read it. For now, I need to get the article into good enough shape to take it to main space. If you like, you can add whatever is appropriate from Griffin (and any other sources I've missed). Some of Sears' conclusions don't fit in well with my understanding of Florida pre-history, and some of the sources refer to some of his findings as controversial, so I want to cover all the bases. -- Donald Albury 20:52, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Ok. I can summarize Griffin's points. I looked at your sandbox and it seems to be still a little chaotic to my eyes, but no doubt completely in control to yours. I can add Griffin's info to the sandbox talk page or to yours. What would you prefer? --Moni3 (talk) 20:41, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Drop it in the sandbox so it'll be your edit on the article when I move it over. Yeah, it's a mess. I just dumped my notes into the sandbox and now I'm trying to organize it. On the original subject of this section, I was thinking about how some of the islands in Florida Bay are thought to have been hammocks in the Everglades when the sea level was a little lower. I wonder if any archaeologist has ever surveyed any of them. -- Donald Albury 00:52, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Great work

Thanks to the editor(s) who made this a Featured Article. It's great to see strong coverage of Native American peoples on WP. 41.186.11.211 (talk) 04:12, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

Indigenous people vs Indigenous peoples

There seems to be a rather consistent nomenclature on Wikipedia using the title "Indigenous peoples" rather than "Indigenous people", right down to Indigenous peoples and Indigenous people being a redirect. I wonder if this article should be moved to Indigenous peoples of the Everglades region and this become the redirect (basically a reverse), for the sake of consistent naming? --Slivicon (talk) 17:06, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

FAR needed

Unsourced content is the most obvious deficiency in this article. However, I think it may also be missing some recent scholarly sources. (t · c) buidhe 05:28, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

@Moni3:, who contributed the bulk of this article, is no longer active (four edits in the last 18 months). I would be interested in helping, but I have a big backlog of things I want to work on. I did add one potential source (see at the top of the page), and have seen others that might be useful. Donald Albury 16:10, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

Added a couple of more sources to the template above. All are about the archaeology of tree islands, which is not covered in the current article. Donald Albury 23:08, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

Which statements are unsourced? Moni3 (talk) 16:08, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

Welcome back! Examples of content without citations that I see are the the second paragraph and the last sentence of the last paragraph of 'Prehistoric peoples', the last sentence of the first paragraph of 'Calusa', and the last sentence of the first paragraph and the third paragraph of 'Seminole/Miccosukee'. I have not looked to see if that content is covered by sources elsewhere in the article, and I have not reviewed the edit history to see how the uncited content appeared. Copy edits over the year may well have separated content from citations. Personally, I would like to add content, when I find the time, about the use of tree islands based on sources that have become available since you produced this article. Donald Albury 17:14, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

First: last sentence in the last paragraph in Prehistoric Peoples

Second: Last sentence of the first paragraph of Calusa --- both of these passed FAC without citations directly behind them. At the time the general consensus was that not every sentence needed a citation if the source was already cited in the paragraph, which is the case with both of these. Has this changed? If so, just shift the citations to the end of the paragraph.

Third: Seminole --- This is what it read last time I edited: Linguistically, the term "Seminole" comes from the Creek words Sua (Sun God), ma (mother, although in this connotation it is pejorative), and ol (people) to mean "people whom the Sun God does not love", or "accursed".[40] This should be restored. Moni3 (talk) 15:04, 24 November 2022 (UTC)

I don't participate in FA discussions, but I do know that the standards for FA have grown tighter, and articles that passed FA years ago have lost the designation because they do not meet the current standards. As for "Seminole", the derivation at Ahaya#Seminole is supported by at least some historians who write about Spanish Florida. - Donald Albury 18:50, 24 November 2022 (UTC)