Tequesta (people)
The Tequesta , also Tekesta , were a North American Indian tribe who inhabited an area on the southeast coast of Florida at the time of European contact . The last Tequesta lived in Cuba in the 1770s and the tribe has been considered extinct ever since.
residential area
The Tequesta lived since the third century BC. In the south-eastern part of the Florida peninsula, which they then inhabited for around 2000 years. The center was on Biscayne Bay , which is now part of Miami-Dade County and the southern half of Broward County . They also lived in the Florida Keys for a time and probably had a village on Cape Sable at the southern end of Florida in the 16th century . Their main town was also called Tequesta and was probably at the mouth of the Miami River since the 11th century . In general, the Tequesta built their villages at mouths of rivers and streams, at inlets from the Atlantic Ocean , at inland lakes, on offshore islands and the Florida Keys.
The most powerful tribe on the southern end of Florida were the Calusa , from which the neighboring tribes and also the Tequesta were ruled. The Tequesta were closely allied with their direct neighbors in the north, the Jaega . Estimates of the population of the Tequesta at the time of first European contact varied between 800 and 10,000, while the corresponding numbers for the Calusa ranged from 2,000 to 20,000. The colonization of the Florida Keys alternated between the two tribes. Spanish documents mention a Tequesta village on Cape Sable, while at archaeological sites Calusa artifacts outnumber those of the Tequesta by a ratio of four to one.
language
The Tequesta language was believed to be closely related to the Calusa language in southwest Florida and the idiom of the Mayaimi who lived around Lake Okeechobee in the middle of the southern peninsula. However, there are only ten surviving words of these three languages whose meanings are known. Scientists had previously assumed that the Tequesta were related to the Taino and Arawak , former residents of the Antilles . Anthropologists , however, question this thesis because of more recent archaeological data and the length of time they have been in Florida. The American geographer Carl O. Sauer called Florida Street one of the most distinctive cultural borders in the New World. Archaeological studies of the Glades culture , to which the Tequesta area also belonged, indicate a continuous development of the pottery tradition from around 700 BC. Until European contact in the 16th century.
Way of life and culture
The Tequesta did not practice any agriculture , but instead fished, hunted and collected the fruits and roots of the local plants. Hernando de Escalante Fontaneda , who lived with Indians in southern Florida for seventeen years in the 16th century, describes their normal diet as fish, turtles, snails, and whales, while the sea wolf was reserved for the upper class. According to Fontaneda, there were also drunk fish and lobsters to a lesser extent. Fish caught included manatees, sharks, sailfish, bottlenose dolphins, stingrays, and various smaller species of fish. Despite the abundance of mussels, oysters and conches, these shellfish were less part of the diet of the Tequesta because their remains were found only to a small extent in the rubbish hills (midden). In contrast, the bones of deer were often discovered during archaeological excavations. The Tequesta also collected wild fruits, such as B. Palmetto berries, cocoa plums, sea grapes, prickly pear fruits, gopher apples, pork plums, palm nuts, false fattening seeds and cabbage plums. There were also roots of various wild plants, such as Smilax spp. and Coontie, which was ground and baked into unleavened bread. Many Tequesta changed their place of residence over the course of a year. For example, most of the residents of the main village moved to the offshore islands or the Florida Keys for three months before the worst mosquito season.
Most indigenous inhabitants of South Florida's lived in houses made of wooden pole, double floors and roofs of palmetto leaves, similar to chickees the Seminoles . These houses had walls made of woven palmetto leaves for protection from the wind or sun. The clothing was minimal. The men wore only animal skin loincloths, while women wore skirts made of Spanish moss or plant fiber that hung from a belt.
Customs and traditions
When a chief died, the corpse's bones were stripped of the flesh. Thereafter, the Tequesta buried the small bones with the remains of the body, and the large bones were stored in a container that the villagers worshiped and worshiped. Another record shows that the Tequesta separated the bones of the dead chief from the flesh, cleaned them and placed them with the bones of the deceased relatives. The meat was burned.
Tequesta men would drink a drink called cassina or black drink at ceremonies . This black drink was common among tribes throughout the southeastern United States. It was a brew made from dried leaves of a special kind of holly ( Ilex vomitoria Ait.) And an integral part of important tribal meetings and ceremonies.
Spanish missionaries' records show that the Tequesta worshiped a stuffed deer as a symbol of the sun. There was also a god of the cemetery in the shape of a bird's head carved into the trunk of a pine tree. This bird's head was kept in a temple in the cemetery along with other symbols. The Tequesta believed that man had three souls: one was in his eyes, the second in the shadow and the third in the reflection. The Tequesta probably practiced the ritual sacrifice of people . Spanish missionaries heard in 1743 of a group of the Tequesta in the Florida Keys who wanted to seal a recently concluded peace treaty in Santaluz on St. Lucie Inlet and for this reason wanted to sacrifice a young girl. The missionaries succeeded in persuading the chief to give up his plan.
history
Juan Ponce de León landed in a bay he called Chequesta on his first voyage of discovery to Florida in 1513 . It was probably what is now Biscayne Bay in Florida. In 1565, a ship from Pedro Menéndez de Avilé's fleet sought refuge from a storm in Biscayne Bay. The main Tequesta village was located here and the Spaniards were warmly welcomed. The Spaniards were accompanied by Jesuits who invited the chief's nephew to Havana , Cuba, to receive a European education. The chief's brother even went to Spain with Menéndez and converted to Christianity there. In March 1567 Menéndez returned to the Tequesta and established a palisade-protected mission on the south bank of the Miami River below the Tequesta village. Menéndez stationed a contingent of 30 soldiers there to protect the mission, which was led by Brother Francisco Villareal . Villareal learned a few words of the Tequesta language from the chief's nephew and was able to convert several tribesmen to the Christian faith. After the soldiers executed the chief's uncle, hostilities broke out and the mission was closed in 1570.
From 1704 the Spaniards began to bring many Florida Indians to Cuba in order to instruct them there in the Catholic-Christian faith. The first group of indigenous people from what is now Key West arrived in Havana as early as 1704, most of whom probably soon died of European diseases. In 1710 another 280 Florida Indians landed on Cuba, 200 of whom died within a short time. The 80 survivors were brought back to the Keys in 1716.
In 1743, the governor of Cuba received a petition from three Calusa chiefs on the occasion of their visit to Havana. The letter was written in good Spanish and criticized the bureaucracy of the Spanish church and government. The chiefs asked that the Spaniards send their missionaries to the Florida Keys and teach the Indians there in the Christian religion. The governor and his advisors finally decided to comply with the chiefs' request. In any case, it was cheaper to send missionaries to the Keys than to send Indians to Cuba. In addition, the Indians were able to save shipwrecked Spaniards in the Keys and keep the English away from the islands. The governor sent the two missionaries Father Mónaco and Alaña from Havana together with an escort to Florida. On Biscayne Bay they built a chapel and fort at the mouth of a river they called the Rio Ratones . It was probably today's Little River or the Miami River, both of which flow into Biscayne Bay.
The Spanish missionaries were not welcomed kindly by the Tequesta who lived there. The natives, named by the Spaniards Key Indians , denied that they had requested missionaries. Nevertheless, they allowed the establishment of a mission because the Spaniards had brought gifts. The Kazike rejected the sovereignty of the Spanish king over his land and insisted on tribute payments in case the Spaniards would build a church or bring settlers into the country. The Tequesta demanded food, alcohol and clothing in return, but refused any work for the strangers. Father Mónaco reported attacks by the Uchiza (presumably Creek) on the mission. The two missionaries planned to have the settlement protected by palisades and 25 soldiers. They also wanted to recruit Spanish settlers to feed the occupation and the Indians with their produce. Father Alaña traveled to Havana, leaving twelve soldiers and a corporal to protect the mission. The governor of Havana was not pleased with the missionaries' proposals. He ordered the return of Father Mónaco and the soldiers to Cuba and had the palisades burned down so that they would not fall into the hands of the enemy Indians. The plan to build a new, better protected mission and settlement on Biscayne Bay was rejected by the Spanish government.
When Spain had to surrender the Florida peninsula to Great Britain in 1763 after the lost Seven Years War in North America , the surviving Tequesta fled to the Florida Keys together with other natives. From there they were brought to Cuba by the Spaniards. Bernhard Romans reported in the 1770s that he had seen abandoned villages on the southeast coast of Florida, but no residents. Other European visitors confirmed this message. At the end of the 18th century, scattered members of the Muskogee or Creek from Georgia and Alabama moved into the almost deserted space and formed a new tribe that was later called the Seminoles .
See also
List of North American Indian tribes
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b The Caloosa Village Tequesta. (PDF) Retrieved January 8, 2017 .
- ^ A b c John H. Hann: Indians of Central and South Florida: 1513-1763 . University Press of Florida, Gainesville, Florida 2003, ISBN 0-8130-2645-8 .
- ↑ a b EarlyTribes: Tequesta. Retrieved January 8, 2017 .
- ^ A b Raymond D. Fogelson (Ed.): Handbook of North American Indians . 14 Southeast. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington DC 2004, ISBN 0-16-072300-0 , pp. 219 .
- ^ A b c William C. Sturtevant: The Last of the South Florida Aborigines . In Jeral Milanich & Samuel Proctor (Eds.). Tacachale: Essays on the Indians of Florida and Southeastern Georgia during the Historic Period. University Press of Florida, Gainesville, Florida 1978, ISBN 0-8130-0535-3 .
literature
- Raymond D. Fogelson (Ed.): Handbook of North American Indians . 14 Southeast. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington DC 2004, ISBN 0-16-072300-0 .