swamunI EARLY HISTORY OF THE CREEK INDIANS 31 
In the interior of the country, about Lake Okeechobee, were many 
towns said to be allied with the Calusa chief, and from the names of 
these towns given us by Fontaneda they would appear to have been 
allied in language also. 1 
On the east coast of Florida were a number of small tribes settled 
in the various inlets. From south to north the most important were 
the Tekesta, Jeaga, and Ais. The name Tekesta resembles those of 
the Calusa towns in appearance, and so do the names of several 
smaller places in the same locality, one town, Janar, even having a 
designation absolutely identical with that of a Calusa settlement. 2 
We know little more of the Jeaga 3 and Ais. They had many 
cultural features in common with the Calusa — including a uniform 
hostility to Christian missions — and their languages were at least 
markedly different from Timucua. In 1605 the governor of Florida, 
in commenting on the visit of some Ais Indians to St. Augustine, 
says that the language spoken in that province was "very different 
from this" (i. e., Timucua). He conversed with them by means of 
Juan de Junco, an Indian of the Timucua mission of Nombre de Dios, 
who spoke to the interpreter of the Surruque, a tribe living about 
Cape Canaveral. We might assume from this that the Surruque 
spoke the same language as the people of Ais, but many of them 
were familiar with .Vis on account of the proximity of the two peoples, 
and I am inclined to regard the Surruque as the southernmost band 
of Timuqua upon the Atlantic coast. 
The linguistic position of the Tamahita Indians is uncertain, but 
there is some reason to think that their name will prove to be another 
synonym for Yuchi. This possibility will be discussed at length 
when we come to consider the history of that tribe. 
THE CUSABO 
History 
Little as we know about these people, it is a curious fact that their 
territory was one of the first in North America on which European 
settlements were attempted, and these were of historical importance 
and even celebrity. They were made, moreover, by three different 
nations, the Spaniards, French, and English. 
The first visitors were the Spaniards, who made a landing here in 
1521, only eight years after Ponce de Leon's assumed 2 discovery of 
Florida. Accounts of this voyage, more or less complete, have 
1 Fontaneda in Col. Doc. Ined., v., p. 539; see pp. 331-333. 
" See p. 333. 
3 The Spanish orthography of this word is retained; it was pronounced something like Heaga. 
