Ais

The Ais were a hunter-gatherer chiefdom of Florida's Atlantic coast, occupying islands and lagoons from Cape Canaveral south along the waterway the Spanish called the River of Ais, now the Indian River. Towns obeyed a paramount chief at Ais, the people living on fish, turtle, shellfish and gathered palm berries instead of farming.

In 1605 Spanish soldier Álvaro Mexía visited on a mission and, with their help, mapped the lagoon; the Ais agreed to rescue shipwrecked sailors for ransom. Quaker merchant Jonathan Dickinson, shipwrecked among them in 1696, left a detailed journal of their customs at Jece.

Shortly after 1700 Carolinian raiders and Native allies seized Ais captives for the Charles Town slave market. The survivors merged into the Costas after 1703, numbering only 137 by 1711; disease erased the rest by the mid-1740s, and they vanish from records after 1760.