KEYS HISTORY: WHO FIRST CALLED THE FLORIDA KEYS HOME?

Larger than it appears, the archipelago is strewn beneath the Florida peninsula like a broken string of bushy green emeralds across a damp, blue floor. What is the number of islands? There are hundreds of jewels, at the absolute least.

Calculating the precise count is challenging because it is unclear when a spit of land becomes an island.

The Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (N.O.A.A.) estimate that the archipelago consists of about 1,700 islands. That figure demonstrates that the group of islands commonly known as the Keys—the few that were initially connected by Henry Flagler’s Florida East Coast Railway’s steel and are now connected by the Overseas Highway’s concrete and asphalt—are merely a portion of a much bigger group.

How long has the island chain been inhabited? It is more than a thousand years old, and it is likely to be considerably more than that. It is impossible to confirm exact dates. Nonetheless, it appears certain that only a small number of the Florida Keys have been inhabited during the indigenous, pioneer, and contemporary eras of human occupancy.

Contrary to popular belief, the identity of the earliest people is extremely complex and hard to define. Historians, academics, and archaeologists who have uncovered and examined all the facts they could find relate the stories they have told about them. Each person has provided their interpretation of the facts. While some of these histories have endured over time, others have not.

The stories most frequently told about them come from someone who stood outside, looked in, and wrote down their interpretation of what they saw because the people who lived here did not write down their histories. The subject is engaging, exciting, and a little confusing. Nonetheless, it is widely accepted that Calusa, Tequesta, and Matecumbe are the names given to those who initially named South Florida and the Keys home.

Of the original tribes who lived in the southern parts of Florida and the Keys, the Calusa were the most numerous and politically powerful. They physically occupied the west coast of Florida, between Marco Island and Port Charlotte. On the other side of the coast, among the rivers around Miami and Key Biscayne, resided the Tequesta. The early Conchs, known as the Matecumbe, were the inhabitants of the Keys.

The Matecumbe were who? They are occasionally categorized as Shell Indians by archaeologists and historians who have studied them. They relied on what was available because the local environment did not provide pebbles like flint to make tools.

The tools made from seashells were used by the Calusa, Tequesta, and Matecumbe. Whelks were utilized as picks and other digging tools, and clam and scallop shells served as weights for fishing nets. Additionally, conch shells may be utilized to make tools, weapons, and, with little adjustments, musical horns.

An adze might be made from the lip of a huge conch, such as the queen conch. It required effort, but when done successfully, the conch’s lip may be reduced to a portion with a pointed edge intended for scraping. Building dugout canoes was one of the uses for an adze.

It was a crafty endeavor to make a canoe out of a tree stump. After choosing a tree, the log was placed on the ground and a small, controlled fire was started on top of it. After being permitted to burn in a confined space, the flames were extinguished. The dark, brittle, charred wood was scraped away with the adze once the embers had cooled. The new wood beneath was then burned, tamped down, and scraped away until finally a deeper and deeper hollow was carved out of the trunk. Until a vessel appeared, the procedure was carried out repeatedly.

How did the Shell Indians fare? They vanished after living in the Keys and South Florida for a few thousand years. It took a little assistance, and it happened over a terrible amount of time rather than all at once like some magic act.

The oldest continuously inhabited European city in North America is thought to be St. Augustine. It was not the last, as an increasing number of Europeans started to move in search of what they believed to be better opportunities.

Jamestown, Virginia, is regarded as the earliest permanent English settlement, having been established in 1607. Similar to the French Huguenots, the Pilgrims took the Mayflower to this new land in search of religious freedom. In 1620, they touched down. Sometimes, these new communities were built on territory that had been inhabited for thousands of years by indigenous people. The Powhatan attacked Jamestown in 1622 because of this.

It was not the final outbreak of violence. Attacks and encroachment started to happen often. Furthermore, it was not limited to interactions between European colonists and native cultures. Native communities occasionally encroached on the territory of another civilization as a result of being displaced and forced from their homes. The Creek and Miccosukee Indians were driven down the Florida peninsula in this manner.

Good things were never in the horizon because of the conflicts between indigenous cultures, the diseases that Europeans brought, and the need to defend their territories from their occupation. Most people agree that the indigenous people of South Florida and the Keys had vanished by the middle of the 18th century, about 1760. There is no proof of where they went. It was reported that the last 90 or so Calusas departed for Cuba with the Spanish.

It is conceivable that some people were unwilling to give up and leave their ancestral home, though. It is also conceivable that some of these cultures interbred and that subtle remnants of indigenous ancestry continue to permeate contemporary societies. This could be one of the reasons why Miccosukee and Seminole people claim to have lived here for ages.