Evidence of human presence extends for at least 4,000 years based on pottery sherds unearthed from the island's numerous oyster shell middens. It was inhabited by the Guale Indians at the time of the Spanish exploration of the Georgia coast in the early 16th century. Throughout the Spanish mission period the Guale alternately supplied and fought with the Spanish. When English occupation of the area replaced the Spanish in the 1730s, the Guale had moved inland possibly in response to disease and coastal marauding under the Spanish. The earliest English treaties reserved the island as hunting and fishing grounds for the Creek Indians.