Page 16 - Layout 1

TLBC1021.qxp_Layout 1 9/28/21 9:49 PM Page 14

Special Feature

History of

t is hard to believe that this beautiful
neighborhood we now call home was
Iless than 100 years ago considered land
"unfit for human habitation."
There is no firm evidence of long standing
human settlement of Broward County.
Skeletal remains of big-game hunters who
lived 10,000 years ago have been found as
near as Vero Beach on the east coast and
Charlotte Harbor on the west.
When the big-game became extinct, about
8,000 years ago, the Indians turned to a
diversified pattern of hunting and gathering
and made use of every edible resource they
could find. It is Indians of this type, known
to archaeologists as "Archaic," who were
Broward's first known residents.
They wandered throughout the county at
least 2,000 and probably 4,000 years ago.
The requirements of their existence - fish and
shellfish, game such as deer and bear,
plants such as seagrape and prickly pear -
kept their settlements small and transitory.
The major village of Tequesta, near the
mouth of the Miami River, probably was not
more than a couple of centuries old when
the Spanish visited it in 1567.
South Florida Indians had not, in the past, been
hospitable to the Spanish. In 1521 the Calusa
fatally wounded Ponce de Leon at Charlotte
Harbor and the Tequesta, as the Spanish called
the inhabitants of Dade and Broward Counties,
continued the patterns. A mission established on
Miami River was abandoned within two years
and never revived.
Nevertheless, the Tequesta were on the
decline. Some blame it on disease
introduced by the Spanish, (cont. pg. 16)

14 The Landings & Bay Colony