A History of the Tequesta Indians in Boca Raton

By Bob Davidsson
        In its unique history, Boca Raton's Barnhill Mound was used and misused as an Indian burial theme park for tourists, part of a Japanese colony farmstead, a Boy Scouts camping and bone-hunting site, and today as green space near the guarded entrance to a private yacht club.
        But for nearly 1,000 years, the Barnhill Mound, located north of Yamato Road and east of U.S. Highway One in Boca Raton, was a ceremonial burial site and center of the so-called "Spanish River Complex" of middens and villages of southern Palm Beach County's original inhabitants - the Tequesta Indians.
        At the time of the European discovery of Florida in 1513, the Tequesta tribe occupied an area extending from the Florida Keys north to Highland Beach in Palm Beach County. The Spanish named the coastal tribe after its main village of "Tekesta," located near the mouth of the Miami River in Dade County.
        Juan Ponce de Leon, named governor of the uncharted "Bimini and the Northern Isles" by King Ferdinand of Spain, entered Biscayne Bay during his voyage of discovery. In contrast to earlier hostile encounters with the Ais Indians north of the St. Lucie Inlet, and the Jeaga tribe at Jupiter Inlet, the proprietary governor of Florida was received peacefully during his brief visit to Tekesta.
        Ponce de Leon called the people of southeast Florida "the Chequesta," which also is the name given to the leader of the tribe in the 16th century. Perhaps it was the peaceful reputation of the Tequesta which inspired two failed attempts by the Spanish to establish Catholic missions near the town of Tekesta in 1567-70 and 1743.
        In March 1567, Pedro Menendez de Aviles, the founder of St. Augustine, built a stockade on the Miami River and left a garrison of 30 soldiers to protect Jesuit missionary Brother Francisco Villareal and Father Juan Rogel in their efforts to convert the Tequesta tribe and include it as part of the Spanish mission system in Florida.
        While serving the Tekesta mission, Lay Brother Villareal wrote two "comedias" or plays to introduce Christian doctrine to the Tequesta Indians. He documented the scripts in a descriptive letter - the first confirmed record of a theatrical performance in North America.
        Their mission was compromised when the Spanish garrison killed the uncle of the Tekesta chieftain during a dispute. The stockade was surrounded and held under a state of siege by the angry Tequesta until Governor Menendez was forced to abandon the mission in 1570.
        A second mission led by Fathers Alana and Monaco, guarded by a weak garrison of just 13 soldiers, met a similar fate in 1743. They were recalled to Havana after just a few months on the Miami River, and the triangular stockade of "Pueblo de Santa Maria de Loreto" was deserted. The Tequesta remained pagans in the eyes of the church.

The Tequesta in Palm Beach County
       The Tequesta shared the geographical area which became Palm Beach County with three other tribes during the period of Spanish exploration in the 16th century. North of Highland Beach were numerous village sites of the Jeaga Indians along both shores of the Lake Worth Lagoon (Rio Jeaga) and their main village of Hobe at Jupiter Inlet.*
        Along the southwestern shore of Lake Okeechobee, were the mound-building Maymi Indians. They shared the big lake with the neighboring Santaluces Indians to the east, a tribe which also utilized the marine resources from the St. Lucie (Santa Lucia) and Indian (Rio de Ais) rivers.
        A source of fresh, potable water was vital to the success and continuity of coastal villages in Palm Beach County. The Tequesta sites near the Boca Raton Inlet utilized the Hillsboro River, while villages further north used the Rio Seco (Spanish River) as their primary water source.
        The native American villages uncovered by archaeologists in Highland Beach and Boca Raton were located in the northernmost frontier of the Tequesta nation. They are identified and grouped as the Spanish River Complex and the Boca Raton Inlet Complex. Chronologically, both sites date back to the "Glades II" period (about 750 A.D.).
        The Spanish River Complex includes the 20-foot high Barnhill Mound, used as both a cemetery and religious ceremonial site. University of Florida researcher Ripley P. Bullen excavated the mound in 1958. He uncovered 72 bodies which through further analysis revealed they were interred between the years 700 and 1300 A.D.
        Researchers believe the Tequesta village adjacent to the Barnhill Mound once housed a population of 150 inhabitants. An additional four middens made of shells and earthen materials also were found in the Spanish River Complex.
        The most recent discoveries were unearthed in Highland Beach during waterfront development in the city. So far, a total of 120 interred Tequesta Indians were uncovered in the Highland Beach sites.
        The Boca Raton Inlet Complex to the south once contained three shell middens and a burial mound. The sites were excavated in 1970, but later destroyed by coastal development.
        A special 2002 edition of "Florida Anthropologist" journal summarized the findings of a team of  experts concerning the "Coastal Tribes of Palm Beach County." By compiling data from Indian village and burial sites, they estimated coastal Palm Beach County supported a pre-Colombian population of 2,225, of which about one-third were Tequesta.
        Determining the population of native Florida tribes is difficult. European explorers and colonists introduced deadly diseases (such as smallpox and measles) which soon decimated native American villages in the 16th century.
        The Tequesta may have numbered 10,000 at the time of Ponce de Leon's visit, about one-third the size of the rival Calusa tribe in southwest Florida. Warfare between the two tribes involved disputes over the distribution of tribute, and control of the Florida Keys and related trade with Cuba.
        In 1957, the remnants of 46-foot cypress dugout canoe was discovered near Boca Raton. The large canoe could hold a crew of 30 Tequesta sailors, and was seaworthy enough to make the two-day voyage to Cuba.
        The Tequesta, like the Jeaga, Santaluces and Ais tribes to the north, were a hunter-gatherer culture utilizing the ocean, its estuaries and the Everglades for food sources. They traded pottery and artifacts with neighboring tribes, and occasionally with the Spanish in St. Augustine.
        Numerous shipwrecks along the southeast Florida coast and Florida Keys brought unexpected wealth to the Tequesta. In addition to ransoms held for castaways and ship cargos, the Tequesta and Jeaga tribes profited from the sale of ambergris (whale amber) which the Spanish valued and was used to make perfume at a time when bathing was a luxury in Europe.
        Like all native Florida tribes, the Tequesta were weakened by continual population decline during the Spanish colonial period due to introduced diseases and occasional inter-tribal conflicts. It was the shock of slave raids during the colonial Queen Anne's War (1702-14) between Spain and England that shattered the tribe.
        Slave merchants in Charleston organized raids by the allied Yemassee, Yuchi and Creek Indians, armed with English muskets, against the tribes in Spanish Florida. The Tequesta lacked European weapons and fled south to the Florida Keys.
        By the time of the short-lived Santa Maria de Loreto mission on the Miami River in 1743, less than 200 "Boca Ratones (Tequesta)," Matacumbe (Keys) and Carlos (Calusa) Indians were counted by the Spanish. Most opted for transport to Cuba when Florida became an English colony in 1763.

E.G. Barnhill's 'Ancient America' Site
        The Yamato colony was a Japanese farming community founded and organized by Jo Sakai in 1905. He purchased 1,000 acres of land in Boca Raton from Henry Flagler's "Model Land Company" and recruited several hundred displaced farmers in Japan to settle and raise pineapples in the new community.
        Their farmsteads were located in northern Boca Raton near Yamato Road, which is named in their honor. The farming community often used an outcropping of coquina limestone, later known as "Jap Rock," for family picnics and swimming at the beach.
         Another landmark of the community was a high dune of white sand dotted with palmettos and sable palms. It was the old Tequesta ceremonial mound soon to become known as the Barnhill Mound.
        The Yamato farmers occasionally used the fine sand from the mound for landfill, but otherwise left it undisturbed. The profits made from pineapples and truck farming were small, and by the beginning of World War II most of the colonists moved elsewhere. The Morikami Museum and Japanese Garden west of Delray Beach is a reminder of this bygone age.
        Esmont Gerrard Barnhill (1895-1987) was a photographer and painter who also was an admirer of native American culture. He collected Indian artifacts and wasn't opposed to turning a profit from their sale. He owned and operated a trading post in Wisconsin.
        During a visit to Boca Raton, he observed the 20-foot high mound north of Yamato Road and with an artist's eye and a merchant's wit knew it to be an Indian burial mound. He purchased the 24-acre site and modestly named it the "Barnhill Mound" in 1953.
        He turned the Barnhill Mound into the featured attraction of a native American theme park for tourists called "Ancient America." A tunnel was dug into the mound where glass panels were installed so visitors could observe old bones and other Indian artifacts.
        An adobe-style storefront was built along highway U.S. One for the sale of his Indian artifacts and tourist trinkets. On at least one occasion, Barnhill hired Seminole Indians as greeters to attract visitors.
        Barnhill promoted and operated his "Burial City" from 1954 to 1958. Like most of his business ventures, "Ancient America" failed to make him a wealthy man, and the theme park closed. Barnhill did have a true admiration for Indian cultures, and allowed a team from the University of Florida to excavate the site soon after its closing in 1958-9.
        After the closing of "Ancient America," Barnhill opened the "Indian Spring Museum" on U.S. One in Palm City. When that business failed, he moved to Kissimmee, where he operated the "Indian World Museum and Trading Post" before his death at age 93 in 1987.
        In 1968, local historians lobbied the Florida Legislature to create a 200-acre "Barnhill Mound Site State Park" and began fundraising for an adjacent museum. The state approved the purchase, but the Palm Beach County Commission chose to fund preservation of Native American historic sites in the J.W. Corbett Wildlife Management Area.
        The County Commission considered placing the Barnhill Mound site on its list of historic places in 1981, but voted to sell it to developers instead. Today, a section of grass-covered mound near the entrance of the Boca Marina Yacht Club is all that remains of the ancient Tequesta site.           
(c.) 2016.
*NOTE: See articles about the Jeaga and Santaluces tribes archived in Older Posts.