The Ais, or Ays are a tribe of Native Americans who inhabit the Atlantic Coast of Florida.

They range from present-day Cape Canaveral to the St. Lucie Inlet, in the present-day counties of Brevard, Indian River, St. Lucie and northernmost Martin.

They live in villages and towns along the shores of the great lagoon called Rio de Ais by the Spanish, and now called the Indian River.

The name "Ais" is derived from a great Indian cacique (chief).

Little is known of the origins of the Ais, or of their language.

The Spanish become acquainted with the Ais in middle of the sixteenth century.

In 1566 Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, founder of St. Augustine, Florida, establishes a fort and mission at an Ais town, which the Spanish call Santa Lucía.

After the Ais attack the fort, killing twenty-three of the soldiers, the Spanish abandon the fort and mission.

Spain eventually establishes some control over the coast; at the time, the Ais consider them friends (comerradoes) and non-Spanish Europeans as enemies.

A number of Ais men learn some Spanish, and a patrol of Spanish soldiers from St. Augustine arrive in Jece while the Dickinson partyis there.

One Ais man in Jece had been taken away by the English to work as a diver on a wreck east of Cuba.

He got away when the ship put in for water in Cuba, and made his way back to his home via Havana and St. Augustine.