Tocobaga

Tocobaga was a sixteenth-century chiefdom of Tampa Bay, whose principal town is identified with the Safety Harbor archaeological site and gives its name to the Safety Harbor culture. Drawing their living from the bay's fish and shellfish rather than maize, the Tocobaga met Pánfilo de Narváez's expedition with fighting in 1528.

The name first appears in Spanish records in 1567, when Pedro Menéndez de Avilés brokered peace between the Tocobaga and the Calusa and left a garrison that was found slaughtered a few months later.

Disease plus Creek and Yamasee slave raids emptied the bay. Some Tocobaga resettled in Apalachee on the Wacissa River, where a remnant survived near San Marcos de Apalachee into the 1730s before disappearing from the records, possibly among the Florida Indians evacuated to Cuba in 1763.