12/03/2021
The Statue of
Chief Tomokie
Sculpted by the late Fred Dana Marsh
It's hard to imagine a more noble monument to the Timucua natives of the Volusia area than the stately 45 foot tall Chief Tomokie sculpture in Tomoka State Park.
The Chief stands majestic, reaching toward the sky, surrounded by a bevy of bow-wielding Timucua braves and Oleeta, the delicate princess.
The sculpture in all of its folksy grandeur characterizes Volusia's first people.
The late Fred Dana Marsh, creator of the Tomokie statue never intended it to be true to history. Marsh's work was designed after a little-known fictional account of a fierce Indian chief and the Princess Oleeta. Both are mythical characters. The romantic story is but one in a long series of fanciful tales and mistruths that surround the Timucua.
There was no Chief Tomokie. And there were no Tomoka Indians, despite some well entrenched local folklore. The word Tomoka is a corruption of Timucua, the name of the indigenous peoples of Northeast Florida. Spanish and French explorers, who, having trouble pronouncing Native American words, concocted the misnomer. But what better leader to preside over the mythical Tomoka tribe than the fictional Chief Tomokie?. History tells us that there were many powerful Timucua chiefs, like Outina and Saturiba, who were, in their own right, worthy of literary account.
Marsh's bigger-than-life creation of Tomokie and his followers fueled the centuries-old legend of 7-foot-tall Timucua warriors who reigned superior to their diminutive Old World counterparts. Accounts of the New World life by early European discoverers and artists were often embellished for Old World audiences, who were captivated by the Americas and its strange native people.
Archaeological evidence gives us a fairly accurate profile of Florida's first people, and by most accounts they closely resembled today's Native American people - neither tall nor short, just average in stature. Like most contemporary populations of people, there were occasional giants (and dwarfs), but not enough to substantiate a superhuman race.
The Timucua were not practicing cannibals, as they are sometimes purported to be. Early explorers recorded many events that were unusual in the eyes of Old World peoples - such as the taking of limbs as trophies during warfare and the storing of dead bodies in ceremonial huts before burial - all of which could have led the Europeans to believe that the American natives were cannibalistic.
It is likely that, for whatever reason, the consumption of fellow natives took place, but for the most part, the Timucua and their prehistoric ancestors made a good living fishing the coasts and hunting the adjacent forests. Their diet was a healthful one, but it didn't cause them to grow to enormous proportions. That is, with the exception of one mythical Chief Tomokie.
Despite its historical shortcomings, the Tomokie statue remains as one of the most interesting examples of outdoor folk art in Florida. The chief can be visited at Tomoka State Park at 2009 N. Beach St. in Ormond Beach.
If you are interested in the restoration, preservation and promotion of this local landmark, please contact the Chief Tomokie Preservation Group at [email protected] or call Bill Partington II at 386-566-3004, 4 Pine Valley Circle, Ormond Beach, Fl. 32174.
You can see a nice picture of the Chief Tomokie Statue at the Tomoka State Park Website.
Information and details for this flyer were sourced from a 1995 article in the Orlando Sentinel Newspaper and were abstracted by Bill Partington II 6.01.2020 ver.1.1
