Ais People - Period of Friendship

Period of Friendship

In 1605, the Governor, Pedro de Ibarra sent a soldier by the name of Alvaro Mexia on a diplomatic mission to the Ais Indian Nation. The mission was a success, not only did they firm up an agreement for receiving shipwrecked sailors for a ransom to the Ais but a map of the Indian River area was made. The Ais had many European artifacts from ship wrecks. As there was a group from another English shipwreck in Jece when the Dickinson party reached the town, it may be presumed that European and African survivors of shipwrecks were fairly common along the coast. There was also some trade with St. Augustine. Dickinson reports that one man of Jece had approximately five pounds of ambergris, and that he "boasted that when he went for Augustine with that, he would purchase of the Spaniards a looking-glass, an axe, a knife or two, and three or four mannocoes (which is about five or six pounds) of tobacco."

The Ais did not survive long after Dickinson's sojourn with them. Shortly after 1700 settlers in the Province of Carolina and their Indian allies started raiding the Ais, killing them and carrying captives to Charles Town to be sold as slaves. In 1743 the Spanish established a short-lived mission on Biscayne Bay (in the area of present-day Miami). The priests assigned to that mission reported the presence of people they called "Santa Luces", perhaps a name for the Ais derived from "Santa Lucia", somewhere to the north of Biscayne Bay. The Ais were gone from the area by 1760.