Miami: A Young but Turbulent History
Mayaimi
In 1567, two years after Pedro Menendez de Avilez founded the country’s oldest permanent city in St. Augustine, the Spanish explorer arrived in South Florida and encountered an Indian settlement on the banks of what is now the Miami River.
The tribe known today as the Tequestas spoke proudly of “Mayaimi” as they pointed to the river, which had been their lifeline for centuries. Back then, the Miami River was a crystal-clear, rapid flowing channel of water that connected Biscayne Bay to Lake Okechobee via the Everglades.
Historians believe Mayaimi meant either “clear water”, “sweet water”, or “big water.” It was most likely the word they used to describe the entire body of water, from the mouth of the river to Lake Okechobee, which at 730-square miles in south-central Florida, is the second largest fresh water lake in the nation.
The Tequestas, who hunted whales in the Atlantic Ocean and deer in the Everglades, had great respect for the water surrounding them. It is unclear where the Tequestas migrated from. Some believe they ventured down south from the Ohio area. And others believe the Tequestas were actually Aztecs who paddled on over from Mexico.
The Spanish, who were most likely seeking gold, built a mission on the north bank of the river in an attempt to convert the Tequestas to Christianity. But the tribe resisted and eventually died off from disease, battle and enslavement brought on by the Europeans.
Today, the legacy of the Tequestas not only lives on with the name of the city, but Tequesta artifacts are continually being uncovered in downtown Miami as old buildings are being demolished to make room for the new skyscrapers. In 1998, construction workers uncovered the Miami Circle on the south bank of the Miami River, a circular piece of limestone bedrock consisting of chiseled holes that is at least 2,000 years old and may have had some sort of religious or spiritual significance to the Tequestas.
Florida remained mostly under Spanish rule for the next two centuries, with some brief interludes of British and French rule. During this time, South Florida became a haven for runaway slaves, displaced Indians and marauding pirates who preyed on Spanish vessels transporting gold from South and Central America back to Spain.
Several other Indian tribes moved into South Florida from Georgia and Alabama to escape the wrath of the United States land expansion. The Indians were joined by the runaway slaves. The Spanish called the new arrivals “Cimarrones”, which means “wild” and “unruly,” and allowed them to live freely in Florida.
But when the Spanish ceded Florida to the United States in 1819, the Cimarrones became known as the Seminoles, a fierce tribe that waged three wars against the United States in the government’s quest to settle South Florida. The Second Seminole War was the bloodiest and costliest of all U.S./Indian wars, as well as the first time the U.S. found itself fighting an enemy specializing in guerrilla tactics.
Fighting next to the Seminoles were the runaway slaves, who became known as the “Black Seminoles.” In an attempt to quash the stubborn Seminoles, the United States built a military barrack on the north bank of the Miami River and the area became known as Fort Dallas. Historians believe that if it weren’t for the resiliency of the Seminoles, and later the Civil War, in which Florida succeeded from the union a mere 16 years after it became a state, Miami would have been established much earlier.
After the Third Seminoles War, the tribe disappeared into the Everglades, letting the white man have the banks of the Miami River and going down in history as the only tribe to never have signed a peace treaty with the United States. The Seminoles retained their grit throughout the years. In 1979, the Seminoles became the first U.S. tribe to sue the government for its right to operate bingo games on the reservation, which paved the way for modern-day gaming on reservations throughout the United States.
Today, the Seminoles own and operate the Seminole Hard Rock Casino in Broward County. The Miccosukee tribe, one of the original tribes from Georgia that had joined the Seminoles when they entered Florida more than two centuries ago, re-established their tribe in 1960. They now operate the Miccosukee Resort and Gaming west of Miami on the edge of the Everglades.
After the Civil War, veterans from both armies and former slaves moved to South Florida to begin a new chapter in their life, joining the black Bahamians already living there. The Bahamians had been coming to South Florida since the early 1800s to salvage the remains of ships that had wrecked on South Florida’s treacherous reefs. They were called “wreckers” and it was a lucrative trade.
The settlement growing around the Miami River was still being called Fort Dallas as other communities emerged along the coast, including Coconut Grove, Buena Vista, Cutler and Lemon City, which is present day Little Haiti.
Despite a few ramshackle buildings in these communities, modern-day Miami was still a swampy jungle infested with alligators, snakes and panthers. It was a remote area that could only be reached by boat, the Last Frontier of the continuous 48 states. And it became the only city in the country to have been founded by a woman.