and to emerge. Then, as they melted, the seas returned, submerging the Florida peninsula. Each time the glaciers melted and the seas returned, the water level was lowered because much of the land mass was slowly rising. The lower areas of Florida, however, still held water, creating inland lakes such as enormous Lake Okeechobee.
             The history of South Florida begins with two groups of indigenous people who migrated there about 11,000 years ago. The Tequestas settled on the southeastern coast, and the Calusas established approximately thirty villages south and west of the Everglades. These native peoples are known as the people of the Glades. The Tequestas and Calusas established permanent villages at the mouths of rivers, on offshore islands, and on hammocks. They ate shellfish, turtles, deer, small mammals, and wild plants, and pursued large fish in their dugout canoes. They especially sought manatees, a delicacy latecomers dubbed "pork of the sea." The people of the Glades used no metal or stone. From shells they created picks, drinking cups, hammers, chisels, fishhooks, and other tools and household implements. They used sharks' teeth to make knives, chiseled out cypress logs for canoes, and made pottery from mud. The huge shell mounds along South Florida's coast and on nearby islands mark where these villagers settled. Archaeologists have determined that some mounds were used as burial sites and ceremonial sites. When the Spanish first arrived in the early 1500s, the Tequestas' territory extended north to present-day Pompano and south to the Florida Keys. In the sixteenth century, the Tequestas numbered about 800, and the population of the Calusas was about 2,000. European explorers, missionaries, and settlers all came to South Florida for different reasons, yet they all made their mark on the New World. The Calusas at Manataca had heard word of Spanish cruelty from indigenous traders wh...