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First Arrivals
The Archaeology of Southern Florida
Southern Florida’s first inhabitants arrived here as early as twelve thousand years ago. They were descendants of populations that probably migrated to America from northeastern Asia, across a land bridge between Alaska and Siberia. Early peoples in southern Florida hunted mammoth, horse, bison, and other large animals. After the extinction of large game around 9000 B.C., people relied on small mammals, aquatic resources, and wild plants for food. Crucial to their survival was their ability to adapt to southern Florida’s diverse natural environments: a coastal ridge, wetlands, and the ocean.
Over the centuries, Indian populations in southern Florida grew, and larger settlements developed. Pottery and tool production increased. Exchange networks were established with other cultures throughout the southeastern United States. By A.D. 1600, over 300 Indians lived at the mouth of the Miami River, while hundreds more were scattered throughout the Everglades, the coast, and offshore barrier islands.
Artifacts uncovered by archaeologists in southern Florida, along with rare European accounts from the 16th - 18th centuries, are the only evidence we have of the region's earliest inhabitants. By studying this evidence, we can gain a sense of how these peoples developed cultures that enabled them to live in our unique environment for thousands of years.
A Changing Landscape
Late Paleo-Indian to Early Archaic Periods,
10,000 B.C. - 5000 B.C.
In 1985 archaeologists uncovered a cave-like sinkhole in southern Dade County, containing the fossilized bones of animals (such as horse, peccary, dire wolf, and jaguar) that have been extinct for over 10,000 years. Now called the “Cutler Fossil Site,” this hole was once a home for southern Florida’s earliest inhabitants. Just above the layers of fossilized animal bones, archaeologists found a hearth, tools, and human remains. The site area was occupied over a period of many thousands of years: first by Paleo-Indians (10,000 - 7500 B.C.), who occasionally hunted large animals such as mastodon and mammoth, and later by Early Archaic Indians (7500 - 5000 B.C.), who relied on smaller animals and marine resources for food. These early peoples lived in small, dispersed groups. The only artifacts they left behind are stone tools, such as spear points, scrapers, and drills.
During the Late Paleo-Indian period, Southern Florida was cooler and drier than it is today, but was also subject to periods of extreme warming and cooling every few hundred years. Though the shoreline was farther east, the present-day limestone coastal ridge had formed and provided higher ground for human settlement. The southern Florida environment was changing, but it would be another 2000 years before the Everglades, Lake Okeechobee, and Biscayne Bay would form. |
Archaeologist mapping artifacts
inside the Cutler Fossil Site. |
Adapting to the Tropics
Mid - Late Archaic Periods,
5000 B.C. - 500 B.C.
Sea levels began to rise over 9000 years ago, as northern ice sheets melted and the last of the Ice Ages ended. Higher sea levels and a warmer and wetter climate transformed the southern Florida region into a sub-tropical environment with lakes, rivers, ponds, and marshes by 5000 B.C. By around 3000 B.C., the Everglades and Lake Okeechobee formed. The hundreds of small tree islands that dotted the Everglades, along with the coastal ridge, provided dry ground for Archaic Indians and offered small mammals and plants for food. The diet of Archaic peoples also included aquatic animals, such as clams, conch, turtles, and sharks.
Increased food resources and the introduction of pottery led to new methods of preparing food. Archaic Indians first strengthened their pottery by tempering it with fibers or plant materials. They also manufactured axes and adzes from conch shells for working with wood. The production and exchange of shell tools was unique to southern Florida cultures.
With an abundance of food resources, Archaic Indians become more numerous than their ancestors and, eventually, developed permanent villages. Archaeological evidence indicates 5000 years of human settlement in the Everglades.
The River Meets the Bay
The Glades Culture,
500 B.C. - A.D. 1763
| Gradual improvements in technology, along with the rich and diverse resources provided by wetlands, hammocks, and coastal ridges, enabled prehistoric populations to expand in size and spread throughout southern Florida. The Miami River served as a link between the interior Everglades, the coastal upland ridge, Biscayne Bay, and the barrier islands. |
Miami Circle™ under construction |
The mouth of the river was a strategic location at which the Tequesta Indians developed a major village. The village, called “Tequesta,” was located on both sides of the river and supported a large community. Proximity to the Everglades, Biscayne Bay, and offshore reefs gave Tequesta Indians access to a bounty of plants and animals for food and raw materials for the production of tools and crafts.
| In 1998 archaeologists uncovered part of the Tequesta village on the south bank of the Miami River. Carved into the limestone bedrock were postholes to support a large structure, perhaps a ceremonial or chief's house. Decorated ceramics, stone axes, carved bone, and ceremonial offerings were found mixed with the dense bone and shell refuse of the site. This discovery, along with excavations on the north bank of the river in 1978, revealed 2000 years of human settlement at the mouth of the river. |
Miami Circle™ |
The Demise of a Culture
The European Contact Period,
1513 - 1763
Not long after Columbus first visited the New World, Spanish explorers ventured to Florida. In 1513, while mapping the east coast of Florida and recording its natural features, Ponce De Leon first encountered the town of the Tequesta at the mouth of the Miami River. Indian resistance and the daunting sub-tropical environment of southern Florida limited further European contact until 1567, when Pedro Menéndez de Avilés attempted to establish a garrison and a Jesuit mission at Tequesta, in order to convert the Indians to Christianity.
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The mission was abandoned after fighting broke out between the Indians and the Spanish. Attempts at establishing a mission and an outpost in 1743 also failed.
The Tequesta, along with the Calusa, Mayaimi, Jeaga, Ais, and other neighboring tribes, obtained new goods, such as metal wares and tools, from the Spanish. They also succumbed to European diseases for which they had no immunity. Diseases, warfare, and cultural disruption decimated the Indian population. In 1770 Bernard Romans, an English surveyor, came upon the ruins of the 1743 mission on the north bank of the river. He later wrote about the last of the southern Florida tribes: “in 1763 the remnant of these people consisting of about eighty families, left this last possession of their native lands and went to Havannah.”
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