In 1715 the upstart British colony of South Carolina was nearly destroyed in an unexpected conflict with many of its Indian neighbors, most notably the Yamasees, a group whose sovereignty had become increasingly threatened. The South Carolina militia retaliated repeatedly until, by 1717, the Yamasees were nearly annihilated, and their survivors fled to Spanish Florida. The war not only sent shock waves throughout South Carolina's government, economy, and society, but also had a profound impact on colonial and Indian cultures from the Atlantic Coast to the Mississippi River. Drawing on a diverse range of colonial records, A Colonial Complex builds on recent developments in frontier history and depicts the Yamasee War as part of a colonial complex: a broad pattern of exchange that linked the Southeast?s Indian, African, and European cultures throughout the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. In the first detailed study of this crucial conflict, Steven J. Oatis shows the effects of South Carolina?s aggressive imperial expansion on the issues of frontier trade, combat, and diplomacy, viewing them not only from the perspective of English South Carolinians but also from that of the societies that dealt with the South Carolinians both directly and indirectly. Readers will find new information on the deerskin trade, the Indian slave trade, imperial rivalry, frontier military strategy, and the major transformations in the cultural landscape of the early colonial Southeast.

Florida has its own special way of celebrating the holiday.

La Florida del Inca (Lisbon, 1605) is a key text in the history and culture of the Americas. In this chronicle, its author, Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, born in Cuzco, the son of an Inca princess and a Spanish conquistador, offers a unique representation of Hernando de Soto's expedition (1539-43) to the vast territory then known as La Florida. The studies collected here analyze the period of early contact in La Florida, study the chronicle of the Cuzcan writer and the works that influenced it, with the objective of affirming its central place in colonial, cultural, and transatlantic studies and its importance in understanding the intertwined history of the Americas. An introduction, a chronology, a general bibliography, and fifty-six images offer a frame for these sections. The various essays are written in a direct manner, and are free of jargon with the aim of attracting both general and academic readers. Raquel Chang-Rodriguez is Distinguished Professor of Hispanic Literature and Culture at the City University of New York.

In Bioarchaeology of the Florida Gulf Coast, Dale Hutchinson explores the role of human adaptation along the Gulf Coast of Florida and the influence of coastal foraging on several indigenous Florida populations. The Sarasota landmark known as Historic Spanish Point has captured the attention of historians and archaeologists for over 150 years. This picturesque location includes remnants of a prehistoric Indian village and a massive ancient burial mound-- known to archaeologists as the Palmer Site--that is one of the largest mortuary sites uncovered in the southeastern United States. Interpreting the Palmer population (numbering over 400 burials circa 800 A.D.) by analyzing such topics as health and diet, trauma, and demography, Hutchinson provides a unique view of a post-Archaic group of Indians who lived by hunting, collecting, and fishing rather than by agriculture. This book provides new data that support a general absence of agriculture among Florida Gulf Coast populations within the context of great similarities but also substantial differences in nutrition and health. Along the central and southern Florida Gulf Coast, multiple lines of evidence such as site architecture, settlement density and size, changes in ceramic technology, and the diversity of shell and stone tools suggest that this period was one of emerging social and political complexity accompanied by population growth. The comparisons between the Florida Gulf Coast and other coastal regions illuminate our understanding of coastal adaptation, while comparisons with interior populations further stimulate thoughts regarding the process of culture change during the agricultural era. A volume in the Florida Museum of Natural History: Ripley P. Bullen Series