Pohoy

Pohoy (also Pojoy, Pojoi, Pooy, Posoy, Pujoy) was a chiefdom on the shores of Tampa Bay in the late sixteenth century and all of the seventeenth century. Following slave-taking raids by Hichiti language-speaking Muscogee people (called Lower Creeks by the English and Uchise by the Spanish) at the beginning of the eighteenth century, the surviving Pohoy people lived in several locations in peninsular Florida. The Pohoy disappeared from historical accounts after 1739.

Tampa Bay was the heart of the Safety Harbor culture area. People in the Safety Harbor culture lived in chiefdoms, consisting of a chief town and several outlying communities, controlling about 15 miles (24 km) of shoreline and extending 20 miles (32 km) or so inland. Ceremonial mounds were built in the chief towns. Chief towns were occasionally abandoned and new towns built. There are fifteen or more Safety Harbor chief town sites known, most of which are located on a shoreline. When the Spanish reached Tampa Bay early in the sixteenth century, there were three or four chiefdoms on the shores of the bay. The town of was at the northern end of Old Tampa Bay (the northwest arm of Tampa Bay), Uzita controlled the south shore of Tampa Bay, from the Little Manatee River to Sarasota Bay, and Mocoso was on the west side of Tampa Bay, on the Alafia River and, possibly, the Hillsborough River. There may have been a fourth independent chiefdom, Capaloey, on Hillsborough Bay (the northeast arm of Tampa Bay), which may have included the Hillsborough River. Milanich states that the name Pohoy is a form of Capaloey.

The Narváez expedition reached Tampa Bay in 1528. That expedition clashed with Uzita before departing inland through Tocobago territory. The de Soto expedition landed in Uzita territory in 1539, and then passed through Mocoso territory, and further north along the Withlacoochee River, the inland towns of Guacozo, Luca, Vicela, Tocaste, all of which may have been Safety Harbor culture settlements. Neither expedition seems to have entered Capaloey territory. The Utiza and Mocoso chiefdoms disappeared within 35 years after the encounter with the de Soto expedition, and Tocobago dominated Tampa Bay when Pedro Menéndez de Avilés visited there in 1567.

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