Who lived in the Everglades before we arrived?
How much fun can you have on our fantastic tours? You guessed it– endless amounts! We have something for everyone. Starting at pickup in our comfortable van, guides will make sure that you enjoy every minute to the drop off after your day of adventure.
The Everglades are such a rich area of excitement, pleasure and education.
As you experience this wild wetland I’m sure you’re curious as to who the native people have been that were able to exist here without our modern conveniences.
About 15,000 years ago Florida was a much larger place offering a vast prairie landscape and large mammals, hunted by the Paleo-Indians. Around 11,000 years ago with climate change came a shrinking of this land to a wet environment full of scrub land and swamps. The larger mammals had become extinct leaving smaller wildlife to be hunted. As a new shift in the climate came around 5,000 years ago, the water pressed even further inland and created similar landscapes that we see today, with Lake Okeechobee flooding regularly into the large area South of it, where we find ourselves now in South Florida.
The two major groups were the Calusa centered around the Ft. Myers area and the Tequesta in the Miami area. These were the groups that the first Spanish Conquistadors encountered on their expeditions for Gold, Glory and God. Soon they were mostly extinct as disease brought from Europe carried them away rather swiftly. Both of these tribes would cross this wet area, but did not necessarily live in it. There were after the ravages of war and disease only a handful of pre-Columbian tribe members left, some taken to Cuba, some to be absorbed into the next wave of settlers.
Who are the current inhabitants of the Everglades that you can easily meet and talk to? These are the Seminole and Miccosukee tribe who came from areas just north of Florida, uprooted by war with the United States. Having fled South they found a home in the Everglades which were almost impregnable to the U.S. Army. This remote watery wilderness offered protection and a way to live. These were our first teachers in how to survive in a to us harsh environment.
There is too much history to cram into one blog but you can learn so much more on our tour.
Enjoy your tour with Everglades Adventure and enjoy seeing a land that has been both home and refuge to so many through many thousands of years!