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| The earliest sites found in Miami-Dade County suggest
that people lived in the area during the Late PaleoIndian and Early
Archaic periods, at least by nine or ten thousand years ago. At
a cave-like sinkhole called the Cutler Fossil site excavators found
bones of animals from the late Pleistocene, possibly a dire wolf
den, as well as stone artifacts representative of this early horizon.
Scientists think the area around the Cutler Fossil site was a forested
and surrounded by open, savannah-like grasslands and open marshes
and wetlands. This suggests that water sources were available at
this time in southeastern Florida and that other early sites might
be associated with similar sinkhole features that predate the development
of the Everglades. |
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| Archeological sites dating from the Middle to Late Archaic,
around 5,000 to 2,500 years ago, are better known than the earlier
sites. Archaeologists have found sites from this era within the
Everglades and on the Atlantic Coastal Ridge. Robert S. Carr
and his colleagues describe a site on the Pine Island Ridge in
Broward County that had a scatter of lithic flakes and Middle
Archaic stone tools. Other sites of the Archaic are characterized
by midden deposits and or cemetery sites. Interestingly, fiber-tempered
ceramics are rare or absent at many of the Late Archaic sites
from the area as opposed to coastal shell mounds of the same
time period. |
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| By 2,500 years ago the inhabitants of the Everglades
and adjacent coastal areas had begun making simple, undecorated
ceramic vessels and soon after added an array of simple geometric
designs. Archaeologists recognized that the so-called Glades pottery
designs changed through time and could be used to date the age
of sites. Despite subtle changes in pottery it is likely that the
inhabitants of southeastern Florida at 2,500 years ago are the
ancestors of the Tequesta Indians who met Ponce de Leon some one
thousand years later. The ancestral Tequesta peoples developed
distinctive tools of bone and shell and a diet based on tropical
and subtropical plants and animals. The Tequesta and their ancestors
apparently participated in regional and long-distance exchange
networks, contributing items like pumice, marine shells, shark
teeth, and dried whale meat. In return they received items like
stone tools and minerals for making paint. |
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| European contact with the Tequesta and their neighbors
is recorded primarily in Spanish documents. The Tequesta are one
of the earliest American Indian groups of North America mentioned
by the Spanish. The historian Antonio de Herrera provides an account
of Ponce de Leon’s 1513 and 1521 exploratory trips to Florida,
including a mention of a place called “Chequescha,” which
is likely Tequesta. |
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| Despite the early encounters, intensive contact did
not begin until 1567 when Pedro Menéndez de Avilés
founded a mission at Tequesta as part of a broader plan to establish
a permanent Spanish presence in Florida. The mission was abandoned
after hostility broke out between the Indians and the Spanish soldiers
stationed there. During this period the Tequesta engaged in tributary
and political relationships with neighboring tribes. The Tequesta
were sometimes allied with their neighbors in the Florida Keys,
and they used dugout canoes to hunt right whales, drying their
meat for barter with inland groups. Alliances between groups were
often cemented through marriages, and the chief of the Tequesta
was a “near relative” of the chief of the Calusa, with
whom the Tequesta were some¬time allied and sometimes hostile. |
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| Accounts of the Tequesta become infrequent after
the flurry of contact with the Spanish in 1566-1570. Interestingly,
the name “Tequesta” seems to fall into disuse in Spanish
documents after 1600. |
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| Bishop Díaz Vara Calderón describes
the area in 1675, and indicates that the people of southern Florida
are “13 tribes of savage heathen Carib Indians, in camps,
having no fixed abodes, living only on fish and roots of trees.” Among
these he lists “Vizcaynos,” a reference to those natives
living on Biscayne Bay. Following the collapse of the Spanish missions
in north Florida, increasing attacks and slave raids by Uchise
and Yamasee Indians led a large group of native Floridians to petition
for evacuation to Cuba. |
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| When the Spanish reestablish a mission in 1743 the
site appears to be within the territory of the Tequesta, though
the inhabitants of the mission town are described as remnants of
three groups—Keys, Carlos, and Bocaraton. The accounts of
this late mission attempt are fascinating, since they demonstrate
considerable historical continuity with the archeological record
and earlier accounts of the sixteenth century. |
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| Final mentions of the natives of southern Florida,
however, indicate that in 1763, as the territory was turned over
to the British, most of the surviving Indians moved to Cuba with
their Spanish allies. Despite the accounts that indicate a close
to the native traditions of southern Florida, it seems likely that
some descendants of the Tequesta and their neighbors persisted
in southern Florida after 1763. Several sources indicate that the
eighteenth century Seminole were aware of the Florida natives who
preceded them. |
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