Ahaya

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Ahaya (c.1710–1783), also known as Cowkeeper, was the first recorded chief of the Alachua Seminoles. He came from the Hitchiti-speaking Oconee people in what is now central Georgia. Around 1750, he led his people south into Florida and they settled near the Alachua Savanna, by Payne’s Prairie, where they built the town of Alachua.

The Oconee joined with other Muskogean-speaking groups to form a growing Seminole community in Florida. The British, who took Florida from the Spanish in 1763, called Ahaya and his people Seminoles and gave him gifts after he visited St. Augustine. They nicknamed him Cowkeeper because he led a large herd of cattle.

Ahaya fought the Spanish and stayed loyal to the British during the American Revolution. When Florida was returned to Spain in 1783, he asked to go with the British, saying he would defend his land from Spaniards. He died a short time later in the 1780s.

The name Seminole likely comes from a Spanish word meaning wild or untamed, and the Alachua area gets its name from la Chua, a Spanish ranch in the region. The naturalist William Bartram visited his town Cuscowilla in 1773 and described life there.