![]() Many Native Americans died from smallpox and measles. In the late seventeenth century, they held a group of English shipwreck survivors captive in the village on the mound for five days.Ĭontact with Europeans proved deadly to the native population of Florida. The Jeaga, who had contact with both the Spanish and English, inhabited this site. The shell mound, or midden, is a trash heap of shells and other refuse discarded by the inhabitants. The best known remnant of an Indian mound in the county is in DuBois Park at Jupiter Inlet (see photo). Inside were platforms along the walls about one foot high, covered with hides.Īrchaeological evidence of the existence of ancient Floridians can be found throughout Palm Beach County. They covered the frame with palmetto thatch. The women wore skirts made of grass, or what is now known as Spanish moss, found hanging from trees.Įarly natives built houses using small wooden poles that they stuck into the ground, bent, and then tied to form an arched frame. They armed themselves with knives, bows and arrows, and clubs. They wore their hair rolled in a knot at the back of the head, held in place with bone pins. Men wore loincloths of woven straw or deerskin that were fastened in back with a kind of silk grass that gave the appearance of a horse’s tail. The leaves were boiled, and the drink was served in a conch shell.Īccording to early European descriptions, the Native Americans were scantily dressed. During special ceremonies, the men would drink a liquid called “cassina”, also known as the “black drink.” It was a tea made from the roasted leaves of the yaupon holly plant. They caught fish by striking them with a staff or by spearing them, then cooked and served it on palmetto leaves. ![]() Palmetto berries were one of their favorite foods. The Jeaga often ate plants, such as mastic, cocoa plum, cabbage palm, saw palmetto, seagrape, hog plum, acorns, and red-mangrove sprouts. Their diet also consisted of fowl, deer, and other land mammals. The Jeaga were hunter-gatherers, relying mainly on marine resources like turtles, snakes, alligators, fish, sharks, and shellfish. The Tequesta people lived in the area between Fort Lauderdale and Miami, and also possibly in southern Palm Beach County. Their neighbors to the north (Martin County to Cape Canaveral) were the Ais. The name has been spelled in various forms: Hobe, Yobe, Jove, Jobe, Xega, Jega, and Jeaga. Their names might have been taken from the name of the tribe’s cacique, or chief. The Spanish called the native Floridians who once lived in northern Palm Beach County “Jobe” and Jeaga. Other groups of early Native Americans inhabited the region around Jupiter Inlet and along the coastal area south to Lake Worth. Those tribes might have been under the political domination of the more powerful Calusa of the southwest coast of Florida. ![]() Along the shores of Lake Okeechobee, two small tribes, the Guacata and the Mayaimi, lived. Several different groups of Native Americans lived in the area of Palm Beach County. These nomads also searched for edible plants and sources of fresh water. They were hunter-gatherers and moved from place to place, following the large animals, or mega-fauna of the day, such as mammoths, mastodons, bears, bison, and giant sloths. By the end of the last ice age, or about 12,000 years ago, the first people were already living in the area we know as Florida. Florida’s unique history began long before it earned its Spanish-based name.
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