Ais People

Ais People

The Ais, or Ays were a tribe of Native Americans who inhabited the Atlantic Coast of Florida. They ranged from present day Cape Canaveral to the St. Lucie Inlet, in the present day counties of Brevard, Indian River, St. Lucie and northernmost Martin. They lived in villages and towns along the shores of the great lagoon called Rio de Ais by the Spanish, and now called the Indian River. The name Ais is derived from a great Indian Cacique (Chief).

Little is known of the origins of the Ais, or of the affinities of their language. The Ais language has been tentatively assigned by some authors to the Muskogean language family, and by others to the Arawakan language family.

Observations on the appearance, diet and customs of the Ais at the end of the 17th Century are found in Jonathan Dickinson's Journal. Dickinson and his party were shipwrecked, and spent several weeks among the Ais in 1696. By Dickinson's account, the chief of the town of Jece, near present day Vero Beach, was paramount to all of the coastal towns from the Jaega town of Jobe (at Jupiter Inlet) in the south to approximately Cape Canaveral in the north (that is, the length of the River of Ais).

The Ais had considerable contact with Europeans by this time. The Spanish became acquainted with the Ais in middle of the 16th century. In 1566 Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, founder of St. Augustine, Florida, established a fort and mission at an Ais town, which the Spanish called Santa Lucía. After the Ais attacked the fort, killing 23 of the Spanish soldiers, the fort and mission were abandoned. Spain had eventually established some control over the coast, with the Ais regarding the Spanish as friends (comerradoes) and non-Spanish Europeans as enemies. A number of Ais men knew a little Spanish, and a patrol of Spanish soldiers from St. Augustine arrived in Jece while the Dickinson party was there. There was one man in Jece who had been taken away on an English ship to work as a diver on a wreck east of Cuba. He got away when the ship put in for water in Cuba, and had made his way back to his home via Havana and St. Augustine.