Lake Okeechobee

Lake Okeechobee is a broad, shallow expanse of fresh water in southern Florida. Rainfall raised and lowered its waters with the seasons, and overflow from its southern shore spread across the wetlands of the Everglades. The Mayaimi lived around the lake, which bore their name in early Spanish accounts. Hernando de Escalante Fontaneda, who spent years among the peoples of southern Florida in the sixteenth century, recorded several lakeside towns subject to the powerful Calusa of the southwest coast.