Ais people

[4] Prior to contact with European colonizers, the Ais population had grown to several hundred thousand and may have flourished for over 10,000 years.

[5] The best single source for information on the Ais at the end of the 17th century is Jonathan Dickinson's Journal, in which he makes observations on their appearance, diet, and customs.

In 1566 Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, founder of St. Augustine, Florida, established a fort and mission at an Ais town, which the Spanish called Santa Lucía.

[4] Spain eventually established some control over the coast; at first, the Ais considered them friends (comerradoes) and non-Spanish Europeans as enemies.

Three times the Indians gave the order to attack me, and the way I escaped them was by ingenuity and arousing fear in them, telling them that behind me many Spaniards were coming who would slay them if they found them.

[10]In 1605, Governor Pedro de Ibarra sent a soldier, Álvaro Mexía, on a diplomatic mission to the Ais nation.

The mission was a success; the Ais agreed to care for shipwrecked sailors for a ransom, and Mexía completed a map of the Indian River area with their help.

"[12] Shortly after 1700, settlers in the Province of Carolina and their Indian allies started raiding the Ais, killing some and carrying captives to Charles Town to be sold as slaves.

[5] Dickinson stated that the Ais "neither sow nor plant any manner of thing whatsoever,"[14] but fished and gathered palmetto, cocoplum and seagrape berries.

Dickinson describes this as: being a piece of platwork of straws wrought of divers colors and of a triangular figure, with a belt of four fingers broad of the same wrought together, which goeth about the waist and the angle of the other having a thing to it, coming between the legs, and strings to the end of the belt; all three meeting together are fastened behind by a horsetail, or a bunch of silkgrass exactly resembling it, of a flaxen color, this being all of the apparel or covering that the men wear.

[20]He has little to say on how the women dressed, recording only that his wife and female slaves were given "raw deer skins" with which to cover themselves after their European clothing had been taken away.

"[21] The Mayaca, who lived along the upper St. Johns River south of Lake George, appear to have spoken a language related to that of the Ais.