Tequesta

From Freepedia

This page is about the Tequesta Native American tribe. See Tequesta, Florida of information on the city.

Paleo-Indian tribe in southeastern Florida. The Tequesta, Tekesta, or Tegesta were included in a hegemony of the more powerful Calusa tribe (SW Florida), with a central town (also called Tekesta; Sp. Tegesta) at the mouth of the Miami River.

In March of 1567, the Spaniard Pedro Menendez Marquez ordered the building of a mission, houses and fort within a stockade complex, situated near the south bank of the river below the native village. Marquez left a contingent of soldiers and the Jesuit brother Francisco Villareal to sow Christianity.

After a year of almost ceaseless hostilities, Villareal and a handful of surviving soldiers fled to Cuba. Another Spanish attempt was made the following year when the Tequesta had been pacified, but the mission settlement was abandoned by 1570.