Tequesta

The Tequesta, a native American group in southeast Florida during the colonial period, were encountered in the Miami area by the Juan Ponce de León expedition in 1513. Archaeological evidence indicates the Tequesta and their pre-Columbian ancestors had inhabited the region for at least two thousand years. Their economy was centered on the collection of wild resources, especially fish. Early accounts refer to a chief called Tequesta, who at times was a vassal to the Calusa chief.

In 1566 Pedro Menéndez de Avilés installed a garrison with a Jesuit priest in the main town of Tequesta, but it was withdrawn the following year. In 1568 the Jesuit mission was reestablished, but lasted only to 1570. In 1743 Tequesta was the location of yet another attempt to establish a Jesuit mission and a fort. By then, only remnants of the Tequesta and other south Florida aborigines remained. Disease and warfare had taken their toll, and some Tequesta are thought to have emigrated to Cuba during the eighteenth century.

In 1999 a thirty-eight-foot-wide Tequesta ceremonial stone slab dating from around 100 ce (and dubbed Florida's Stonehenge) was uncovered at a downtown Miami construction site. In 2006 a pair of Tequesta cemeteries were discovered in the downtown area, promising to shed light on Tequesta mortuary practices, disease, and the general health of Tequesta people.

See alsoFlorida; Indigenous Peoples.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Goggin, John M. "The Tekesta Indians of Southern Florida," in Florida Historical Quarterly 18 (1940): 274-284.

Zubillaga, Felix, ed. Monumenta antiquae Floridae (1566–1572) (1946).

Sturtevant, William C. "The Last of the South Florida Aborigines," in Tacachale: Essays on the Indians of Florida and Southeast Georgia During the Historic Period, edited by Jerald T. Milanich and Samuel Proctor (1978).

Milanich, Jerald T., and Charles Fairbanks. Florida Archaeology (1980), esp. pp. 232-237.

                                  Jerald T. Milanich