What Did The Tequesta Tribe Eat?

The Tequesta tribe lived in an area of south-east Florida, and their diet consisted of food sourced from the local area - including many different types of seafood.

What did the Tequesta tribe eat?
The interesting thing about the Tequesta tribe is that they didn't need to practice any significant form of agriculture or farming.

This was because the area that we now know as Biscayne Bay (including Miami) would have been sufficiently rich in edible vegetation growing naturally.

The proximity to the coast also provided easy access to fishing water, and hunting native animals like deer was also fairly common among the Tequesta tribe.

What was the diet of the Tequesta Indians?
Based on the types of edible plants that would have been growing in the south Florida area at the time, it's safe to say that all the following plants and fruits would have been on the menu:

• Palmetto berries
• Coco-plums
• Pigeon plums
• Hog plums
• Sea grapes
• Prickly pears
• Gopher apples
• Palm nuts
• Cabbage palm

Spanish shipwreck survivor Hernando de Escalante Fontaneda lived with the Tequesta Indians for many years, and left some of the only remaining documentation about their diet.

Based on his writings, we know that all sorts of sea creatures were eaten by the Tequesta, including the following:

• Turtles
• Monk seal
• Shark
• Sailfish
• Porpoises
• Sting-rays

Clams, oysters, trunkfish, lobster and venison featured, too - to a lesser extent - according to various archaeological remains that suggest these foods would also have been eaten.