Florida's native Timucuan Indians lived for hundreds of generations in what is now north Florida and southeast Georgia. Beginning in the 1580s, they were organized into mission villages by Spanish Franciscan priests. While exploitation and epidemics caused native populations to decline, the destruction of Spanish missions early in the eighteenth century by the Carolina militia and their Native American allies also caused the scattering and enslavement of the remaining native populations.
Some of these Native Americans raiders remained and settled in the Timucua's abandoned fields and settlements. Other groups, mainly Creek Indians, left their home territories and relocated in northern Florida. These different tribes, along with runaway slaves from the southern states, became known as the cimarrones, a Spanish word meaning "wild and untamed." The cimerrones or Seminoles, as they became known, established villages on the east and west sides of the Suwannee River.
After Florida was acquired as a US Territory in 1821, waves of settlers from Georgia and the Carolinas immigrated to north central Florida. While most of the earliest settlers in and around White Springs were subsistence farmers, the timber and phosphate booms also brought a variety of investors and laborers anxious to stake their claim in the growing community.
With the development and marketing of the mineral spring in the mid-1800s as a tourist destination, new residents were also able to invest and find employment in the town's hotels, restaurants, and service-related businesses.
Today, the residents of White Springs are a combination of recent arrivals and descendants of the original settlers who continue to practice family traditions.
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