Grounds and Artifacts at Mission San Luis

The grounds at Mission San Luis are beautifully manicured. I was surprised when I went to Tallahassee to hear that they have 4 distinct seasons. In St Petersburg, we are more sub-tropical and our seasons kind of blend together. We have no bare trees to speak of, and our grass is green all year unless there's a drought. There are also hills and mountains in Tallahassee unlike St Pete, where everything is flat. One would never guess both cities are in the same state.

In the foreground is one of the gardens where vegetables are grown. Right now, there's not much growing because it is Winter, but in the Spring and Summer, it is full of seasonal veggies. If you look closely, you can see the Friary in the background. I have more on that to show in a future post. It is still a working Friary today.

This artifact was recovered during the excavations I mentioned in an earlier post. I have no idea what it is used for, but I'm amazed at all the carving the natives did with primitive tools. Those swirls must've taken a long time to carve into that stone. It could be clay and they had some sort of mold; I'm not sure, but it looks like stone to me.

In the photo below, that definitely is a jaw, but if you look closely, there are rows of teeth like a shark. I don't know where they'd find a shark skeleton, since they're about 85 - 100 miles of the shore. It is also skewed and I can't figure out how they did that, or what they planned on doing with it.

These artifacts make me more curious about their culture, how they lived and worked and the technology they had. We only know so little about the Apalachee way back in the day around 300 years ago. Life must've been pretty tough for them.