Tequesta - Location and Extent

Location and Extent

The Tequesta tribe lived on Biscayne Bay in what is now Miami-Dade County and at least the southern half of Broward County. Their territory may have also included the northern half of Broward County. They also occupied the Florida Keys at times, and may have had a village on Cape Sable, at the southern end of the Florida peninsula, in the 16th Century. The central town (also called Tequesta) was probably at the mouth of the Miami River. A village had been at that site at least since 1200. The tribal chief was also called Tequesta. The Tequestas arrived in the Biscayne Bay area before the beginning of the Current Era. The Tequestas placed 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. The Tequestas were more or less dominated by the more numerous Calusa of the southwest coast of Florida. The Tequestas were closely allied to their immediate neighbors to the north, the Jaega. Estimates of the number of Tequestas at the time of initial European contact range from 800 to 10,000, while estimates of the number of Calusas on the southwest coast of Florida range from 2,000 to 20,000. Occupation of the Florida Keys may have swung back and forth between the two tribes. Although there is a Spanish record of a Tequesta village on Cape Sable, Calusa artifacts outnumber Tequesta artifacts by four to one at archaeological sites there.

On a map the Dutch cartographer Hessel Gerritsz published in 1630 in Joannes de Laet's History of the New World, the Florida peninsula is labeled "Tegesta" after the tribe. A map from the 18th century labeled the area around Biscayne Bay "Tekesta". A 1794 map by cartographer Bernard Romans labeled this area "Tegesta".