Early history
The name "Miami" comes from a Native American word for "sweet water". The area was a concentration of water because the Miami River is essentially a funnel for water from the Everglades to the Atlantic Ocean. The word probably comes from the Tequesta or Miami indian tribes who inhabited the area, meaning "sweet water".
Native Americans are known to have settled in the Miami region for about 10,000 years. Its most noteworthy early inhabitants were the Tequesta people, who controlled an empire covering most of South Florida.
Although Ponce de Leon attempted to settle the area in the early 1500s, his men could not defend the territory against the natives, so they kept to the more sparsely populated north. For most of the colonial period, the Miami area was only briefly visited by traveling Europeans when it was visited at all.
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