What is the history of Tampa, Florida?
The word “Tampa” is a Native Americans in the United StatesNative American word used to refer to the area when the first European explorers arrived in Florida. Its meaning, if any, has been lost to the ages, though it is sometimes claimed to mean “sticks of fire” in the language of the Calusa, a Native Americans in the United StatesNative American tribe. Other historians claim the name refers to “The place to gather sticks”. “Sticks of fire” may also relate to the high concentration of lightning strikes that Tampa Bay receives every year during the hot and wet summer months. ToponymyToponymist George R. Stewart writes that the name was the result of a miscommunication between the Spanish and the Indians, the Indian word being “itimpi”, meaning simply “near it” (Stewart, pg. 231). The name first appears in the “Memoir” of Hernando de Escalante Fontaneda (1575), the a
