What is "yustaga"

The Yustaga were a Timucua people of northwest Florida in the 16th and 17th centuries

Yustaga may also refer to:

• USS Yustaga (ATF-165), a fleet tug laid down for the United States Navy in 1945, but converted into a submarine rescue vessel prior to completion and commissioned as USS Skylark (ASR-20) in 1951.
• Yustaga Lodge, #385, is the Order of the Arrow group of boy scouts elected as honor campers in the Gulf Coast Council of the Boy Scouts of America

The Yustaga were a Timucua people of what is now northwestern Florida during the 16th and 17th centuries. The westernmost Timucua group, they lived between the Aucilla and Suwanee Rivers in the Florida Panhandle, just east of the Apalachee people. A dominant force in regional tribal politics, they may have been organized as a loose regional chiefdom consisting of up to eight smaller local chiefdoms.

The Yustaga were closely associated with the Northern Utina people living on the other side of the Suwanee River, though they appear to have spoken a different dialect of the Timucua language, perhaps Potano. The Yustaga were among the first Timucua to encounter Europeans, as their location near the Apalachee ensured that several explorers passed through their territory looking for that group. After decades of resistance they were brought into the Spanish mission system in the 1620s. Like all Timucua groups, they experienced significant demographic decline in the period of European contact, especially following raids by English-allied Indians from the north. Surviving Yustaga eventually moved closer to the Spanish capital of St. Augustine and mingled with other missionized Indians, losing their independent identity.