12 Facts About Tequesta

The Tequesta tribe had only a few survivors by the time that Spanish Florida was traded to the British, who then established the area as part of the province of East Florida.

Tequesta tribe lived on Biscayne Bay in what is Miami-Dade County and further north in Broward County at least as far Pompano Beach.

The Tequesta situated their towns and camps at the mouths of rivers and streams, on inlets from the Atlantic Ocean to inland waters, and on barrier islands and keys.

Tequesta were more or less dominated by the more numerous Calusa of the southwest coast of Florida.

The Tequesta were closely allied to their immediate neighbors to the north, the Jaega.

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The Tequesta were once thought to be related to the Taino, the Arawakan people of the Antilles, but most anthropologists now doubt this, based on archaeological information and the length of their establishment in Florida.

The linguist Julian Granberry states that the Tequesta probably spoke the same language as the Calusa, which in his analysis relates to the Tunica language.

Tequesta men consumed cassina, the black drink, in ceremonies similar to those common throughout the southeastern United States.

Spanish missionaries reported that the Tequesta worshipped a stuffed deer as the representative of the sun, and as late as 1743 worshipped a picture of a badly deformed barracuda crossed by a harpoon, and surrounded by small tongue-like figures painted on a small board.

Tequesta felt he had been winning converts until the soldiers executed an uncle of the chief.

Tequesta ordered that Father Monaco and the soldiers be withdrawn, and the stockade burned to deny it to the Uchizas.

Tequesta forwarded the missionaries' plan to Spain, where the Council of the Indies decided that the proposed mission on Biscayne Bay would be costly and impractical.