Tequesta People, Met Square, and the Fight for History — The North Star Project Reports, sponsored by The Middle Ground Journal

Tequesta People, Met Square, and the Fight for History — The North Star Project Reports, sponsored by The Middle Ground Journal

In 2013, a developer, MDM Group, was working at Met Square (a site in downtown Miami) and made a shocking discovery. Their original plan was to dig up the area, set the foundations, and build some commercial spaces such as a movie theater, shopping plaza, and a grocery store. But during the course of their digging, they unearthed the remnants of a prehistoric Tequesta village.

The Tequesta people were a Native American tribe that had lived on the southeastern Atlantic coast of Florida since the third century B.C.E. This tribe built their livelihood at the mouth of the Miami River, where the Miami River meets the Atlantic Ocean. This place is of huge historical importance because it was a place of intersection. The Tequesta people had contact with Native…