Calusa political influence and control also extended over other tribes in southern Florida, including the Mayaimi around Lake Okeechobee, and the Tequesta and Jaega on the southeast coast of the peninsula.

Florida's climate had reached current conditions and the sea had risen close to its present level by about 3000 BC.

Pottery distinct from the Glades tradition developed in the region around AD 500, marking the beginning of the Caloosahatchee culture.

At the time of first European contact, the Caloosahatchee culture region formed the core of the Calusa domain.

Artifacts related to fishing changed slowly over this period, with no obvious breaks in tradition that might indicate a replacement of the population.

This was made with clay containing spicules from freshwater sponges (Spongilla), and it first appeared inland in sites around Lake Okeechobee.

This change may have resulted from the people's migration from the interior to the coastal region, or may reflect trade and cultural influences.

The Calusa were descended from people who had lived in the area for at least 1,000 years prior to European contact, and possibly for much longer than that.

The capital of the Calusa, and where the rulers administered from, was Mound Key, near present day Estero, Florida.

[7] The Calusa diet at settlements along the coast and estuaries consisted primarily of fish, in particular pinfish (Lagodon rhomboides), pigfish (redmouth grunt), (Orthopristis chrysoptera) and hardhead catfish (Ariopsis felis).

When Pedro Menéndez de Avilés visited in 1566, the Calusa served only fish and oysters to the Spanish.

But Widmer argues that the evidence for maize cultivation by the Calusa depends on the proposition that the Narváez and de Soto expeditions landed in Charlotte Harbor rather than Tampa Bay, which is now generally discounted.

Widmer cites George Murdock's estimate that only some 20 percent of the Calusa diet consisted of wild plants that they gathered.

While no evidence of plant food was found at the Wightman site, archeological digs on Sanibel Island and Useppa Island revealed evidence that the Calusa did in fact consume wild plants such as cabbage palm, prickly pear, hog plum, acorns, wild papaya, and chili peppers.

Cord was also made from cabbage palm leaves, saw palmetto trunks, Spanish moss, false sisal (Agave decipiens) and the bark of cypress and willow trees.

To date, no one has found a Calusa dugout canoe, but it is speculated that such vessels would have been constructed from cypress or pine, as used by other Florida tribes.

The process of shaping the boat was achieved by burning the middle and subsequently chopping and removing the charred center, using robust shell tools.

Not conserved and in poor shape, the canoe is now displayed at the Crane Point Museum and Nature Center in Marathon and is tentatively attributed to the Calusa.

The missionaries recognized that having a Calusa man cut his hair upon converting to Christianity (and European style) would be a great sacrifice.

During Menéndez de Avilés's visit in 1566, the chief's wife was described as wearing pearls, precious stones, and gold beads around her neck.

Hernando de Escalante Fontaneda, an early chronicler of the Calusa, described "sorcerers in the shape of the devil, with some horns on their heads," who ran through the town yelling like animals for four months at a time.

The "nobles" resisted conversion in part because their power and position were intimately tied to the belief system; they were intermediaries between the gods and the people.

These mounds were both for burials as well as religious ceremonies, as the Calusa would gather atop them on "Holy Days to sacrifice aromatic plants and honey".

After ten days, a man who spoke Spanish approached Ponce de León's ships with a request to wait for the arrival of the Calusa chief.

Fontaneda lived with various tribes in southern Florida for the next seventeen years before being found by the Menendez de Avilés expedition.

Menéndez left a garrison of soldiers and a Jesuit mission, San Antón de Carlos, at the Calusa capital.

Hostilities erupted, and the Spanish soldiers killed Carlos, his successor Felipe, and several of the "nobles" before they abandoned their fort and mission in 1569.

[25] After the outbreak of war between Spain and England in 1702, slaving raids by Uchise Creek and Yamasee Indians allied with the Province of Carolina began reaching far down the Florida peninsula.

Ravaged by new infectious diseases introduced to the Americas by European contact and by the slaving raids, the surviving Calusa retreated south and east.

The Spanish founded a mission on Biscayne Bay in 1743 to serve survivors from several tribes, including the Calusa, who had gathered there and in the Florida Keys.