Fishing ranchos were fishing stations located along the coast of Southwest Florida used by Spanish Cuban fishermen in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The Spanish fished the waters along the coast of Florida in the late fall and winter of each year, salting the fish, and then carrying the cured fish to Havana by the beginning of Lent. The Spanish fishermen hired Native Americans who lived along the coast as guides and to help with catching and curing the fish, and with sailing to Havana. The Spanish established fishing stations, called "ranchos", on islands along the coast as bases during the fishing season. The Native American workers lived year-round at the ranchos, or moved to the nearby mainland during the off-season to hunt and raise crops. Many of the Spanish fishermen eventually started living at their ranchos year-round. They married or formed relationships with Native American women, and their children grew up at the ranchos, so that many of the workers were of mixed ancestry, Spanish and Native American. All the residents of the ranchos spoke Spanish. One author has suggested that a Spanish-Native American creole society was forming in the ranchos by the second quarter of the 19th century. The fishermen also carried Native Americans from Florida to Havana and back on a regular basis.
The United States acquired Florida from Spain in 1821. Americans were suspicious of Seminole and Spanish Indian connections with the Spanish, believing that the Spanish were supplying the Native Americans with firearms and powder. Americans also suspected the fishing ranchos of harboring slaves that had escaped from American owners. The 1823 Treaty of Moultrie Creek required all Native Americans in peninsular Florida to move onto a reservation that had boundaries well inland from the coasts. The Native Americans associated with the fishing ranchos, and others who lived in southwest Florida, called Muspas or Spanish Indians, did not move to the reservation. During the Second Seminole War (1835–1842), the United States Army rounded up all of the residents of fishing ranchos, and sent almost all of them west with the Seminoles, including people who claimed to be Spanish.