In 1567 explorer Pedro Menendez came to Tampa where he encountered the native Tocobaga tribe. Among the tribe he found and rescued several Europeans who had been taken captive, including Diego Cerón, a man with a remarkable tale of survival.
Cerón told his rescuers that he was part of a small expedition out of Cuba that was shipwrecked nearby. He and the other survivors had run out of all of their supplies and in desperation he decided to use some discarded orange seeds as ammunition. He went into the woods and found a large buck and shot it right in the side but it got away.
A few months later everyone but Cerón had perished and, just as he was sure he was going to join them, he found an orange on the ground. He couldn't believe his eyes and gobbled the whole thing right up. He kept walking and soon he found another, and another.
It wasn't long before Cerón was headed back to camp, pockets full of oranges, when he heard a sound. He turned to see that same buck he shot a few months back but it looked quite different. The buck had two full sized orange trees growing right where it's horns normally would be.
Cerón followed the deer, surviving off of its oranges for years until he was eventually captured by the Tocobaga tribe. The oranges dropped by the buck are said to have seeded the first orange trees throughout Florida.
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