Tag Archives: Pedro Menendez

    The St. Johns River provided a virtual cornucopia to its inhabitants for millennia. The rich bounty of the coastal riverine environment spawned a unique St. Johns culture. Before 500 BCE, residents had already established a basic lifeway from which the culture developed over the next thousand years. Fishing and shellfish-collecting supplied the bulk of their diet, supplemented by hunting and gathering. So reliable was the river’s reward that it supported permanent settlements long before the introduction of corn-based agriculture in the region. When St. Johns villages grew too large for adjacent resources to support, breakaway villages formed elsewhere …