The area in which the city of Fort
Lauderdale would later be founded was inhabited for more than a thousand years
by the Tequesta Indians. Contact with Spanish explorers in the 16th century
proved disastrous for the Tequesta, as the Europeans unwittingly brought with
them diseases, such as smallpox, to which the native populations possessed no resistance.
For the Tequesta, disease, coupled with continuing conflict with their Calusa
neighbors, contributed greatly to their decline over the next two centuries. By
1763, there were only a few Tequesta left in Florida, and most of them were
evacuated to
