The Calusa people of Southern Florida and its islands were a fierce people who knew very little about farming. They subsisted on hunting and fishing. It is esitmated that the area they once inhabitated had over eight million cubic yards of shell discarded by them, enough to build three Great Pyramids. They made seawalls from large whelk shells, boat ramps from clam shells, and used shell hand tools to dig canals. One of the ways in which the Calusas were able to increase their food production was by means of large-scale fish weirs, traps, and holding pens. Linear keys still visible today in Bull Bay and Estero Bay may be the remnants of elaborate large-scale fishing facilities. The Calusa had several different kinds of watercraft, including seagoing vessels, small cargo canoes, and barges made of platforms connecting two parallel canoes. The Calusa are known to have engineered substantial canals, and artifical islands both within their settlements (e.g., Josslyn Island, Big Mound Key, Mound Key, Pineland, Naples, and the Lake Okeechobee area)and between their larger towns and interior waterways. The paths of these canals are clearly defined on aerial photographs of the area taken prior to modern development, and are described in detail by explorers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

When the Spanish arrived they claimed to have witnessed elaborate rituals with synchronized singing and processions of masked priests. Inside a great temple, was observed walls covered by carved and painted wooden masks. The Calusa king had the power of life and death over his subjects and was thought by them to be able to intercede with the spirits that sustained the environment's bounty. Commoners supported the nobility and provided them with food and other material necessities. Towns throughout south Florida sent tribute to the Calusa.

In 1896, when Frank Cushing visited the Pineland Site Complex, then known as Battey's Landing, the canal was still 30 feet wide and 6 feet deep. The Calusa were characterized by most or all of the conditions known to foster the emergence of ranked societies, and probably functioned intermittently as a weak tribute-based state during the post-contact period.