Yustaga

The Yustaga were a Timucua people of what is now northwestern Florida during the 16th and 17th centuries. The westernmost Timucua group, they lived between the Aucilla and Suwannee Rivers in the Florida Panhandle, just east of the Apalachee people. A dominant force in regional tribal politics, they may have been organized as a loose regional chiefdom consisting of up to eight smaller local chiefdoms.^[1]

The 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. After decades of resistance they were brought into the Spanish mission system in the 1620s. Like all Timucua groups, they experienced significant demographic decline in the period of European contact, especially following raids by English-allied Indians from the north. Surviving Yustaga eventually moved closer to the Spanish capital of St. Augustine and mingled with other missionized Indians, losing their independent identity.