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Florida natives scavenged wild foods

Source: Early History of the Creek Indians and Their Neighbors #121

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The number of natural products drawn upon in addition to the cultivated plants and animal foods must have been very large, but we have only the reference just given, and one or two others. Ribault makes a statement to the effect that the natives gave them "mulberries, raspberries, and other fruits they found in their way," and there is a reference to the use of chinquapins in one of the De Soto narratives.1 Laudonniere speaks of "mulberries, both red and white," also of grapes.2 The last are also mentioned by Le Challeux s and Spark.4 From Utina the French received upon one occasion two baskets of "pinocks, which are a kind of little green fruit, which grow among the weeds, in the river, and are as big as cherries." 5 It is evident from the context that the berries to which Ribault refers were plucked and eaten fresh.

Among the roots mentioned the kunti of the Florida Seminole is perhaps to be included, though the latitude is rather high for it, or they might have had the original kunti of the Creeks, the China brier. Acorns are referred to by one writer,8 and Spark states that the French resorted to them in their extremity, washing them several times in order to remove the bitter taste,7 from which it may be assumed that they prepared them in
the same manner as the Indians to the north. A marginal extension of the native dietary is indicated by Laudonniere and Pareja. The former says:

"In necessity they eat a thousand rifraffs, even to the swallowing down of coal, and putting sand into the pottage that they make with the meal."8 And from Pareja's catechism it appears that on occasion they ate coal, dirt, broken pottery, fleas, and lice, though some of these may have been taken rather as remedies than as food.9 
(Swanton)