This compilation of historical documents includes letters, reports, and accounts written by Europeans during the colonization of Southwest Florida, offering insights into Spanish contact with the Calusa.

This volume presents new data and interpretations from research at Florida’s Spanish missions, outposts established in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to strengthen the colonizing empire and convert Indigenous groups to Christianity. In these chapters, archaeologists, historians, and ethnomusicologists draw on the past thirty years of work at sites from St. Augustine to the panhandle. Contributors explore the lived experiences of the Indigenous people, Franciscan friars, and Spanish laypeople who lived in La Florida’s mission communities. In the process, they address missionization, ethnogenesis, settlement, foodways, conflict, and warfare. One study reconstructs the sonic history of Mission San Luis with soundscape compositions. The volume also sheds light on the destruction of the Apalachee-Spanish missions by the English. The recent investigations highlighted here significantly change earlier understandings by emphasizing the kind and degree of social, economic, and ideological relationships that existed between Apalachee and Timucuan communities and the Spanish. Unearthing the Missions of Spanish Florida updates and rewrites the history of the Spanish mission effort in the region. Contributors: Rachel M. Bani | Mark J Sciuhetti Jr | Rochelle A. Marrinan | Nicholas Yarbrough | Jerald T. Milanich | Jerry W Lee | Rebecca Douberly-Gorman | Alissa Slade Lotane | John E. Worth | Jonathan Sheppard | Laura Zabanal | Keith Ashley | Tanya M. Peres | Sarah Eyerly A volume in the Florida Museum of Natural History: Ripley P. Bullen Series

This is the first book-length study to use Spanish language sources in documenting the original Indian inhabitants of West Florida who, from the late 16th century to the 1740s, lived to the west and the north of the Apalachee. Previous authors who studied the forebears of Creeks and Seminoles from the Chattahoochee Valley have relied exclusively on English sources dating from the second half of the 18th century, with the exception of John R. Swanton, who had limited access to Spanish records for his classic works from 1922 to 1946. In this history of the region's Native Americans, Hann focuses on the small tribes of West Florida--Amacano, Chine, Chacato, Chisca and Pansacola--and their first contacts with Spanish explorers, colonists, and missionaries. He also gives significant perspective to the forebears of the Lower Creeks, with an emphasis on the late 17th century, when Spanish documents recorded the important events of the interior regions of the Southeast. As Hann's fifth study of Florida natives, this book includes chapters on the Yamasee War and its aftermath and the early 18th-century dissolution of many societies and withdrawal of Spaniards from the region. This volume will be of great interest to archaeologists working in the Lower Southeast, historians and ethnohistorians specializing in Native American or Spanish colonial history, Latin American and Caribbean scholars concerned with Spanish colonial contexts, and anyone interested in Native Americans or Florida history.

Pedro Menéndez de Avilés (1519–1574) founded St. Augustine in 1565. His expedition was documented by his brother-in-law, Gonzalo Solís de Merás, who left a detailed and passionate account of the events leading to the establishment of America’s oldest city. Until recently, the only extant version of Solís de Merás’s record was one single manuscript that Eugenio Ruidíaz y Caravia transcribed in 1893, and subsequent editions and translations have always followed Ruidíaz’s text. In 2012, David Arbesú discovered a more complete record: a manuscript including folios lost for centuries and, more important, excluding portions of the 1893 publication based on retellings rather than the original document. In the resulting volume, Pedro Menéndez de Avilés and the Conquest of Florida, Arbesú sheds light on principal events missing from the story of St. Augustine’s founding. By consulting the original chronicle, Arbesú provides readers with the definitive bilingual edition of this seminal text.

Prehistoric Florida societies, particularly those of the peninsula, have been largely ignored or given only minor consideration in overviews of the Mississippian southeast (A.D. 1000-1600). This groundbreaking volume lifts the veil of uniformity frequently draped over these regions in the literature, providing the first comprehensive examination of Mississippi-period archaeology in the state. Featuring contributions from some of the most prominent researchers in the field, this collection describes and synthesizes the latest data from excavations throughout Florida. In doing so, it reveals a diverse and vibrant collection of cleared-field maize farmers, part-time gardeners, hunter-gatherers, and coastal and riverine fisher/shellfish collectors who formed a distinctive part of the Mississipian southeast.

"From the 1600s through the 1800s, Spanish missionaries came to America to convert Native Americans. [The author] provides in-depth information on their efforts, their varying missionary ambitions, and native peoples' responses to evangelization and conversion efforts. She also provides an ehthohistorical and archaeological perspective on the structure and daily activities of early mission life."--back cover.

This volume considers the responses to the social and institutional norms of the Spanish colonial system along Spain's northern frontier provinces.

"Offering innovative ways of looking at existing data, as well as compelling new information, about Florida's past, this volume updates current archaeological interpretations and demonstrates the use of new and improved tools to answer larger questions"--

Describes the history and culture of the native peoples of Florida, including the Timucua, Calusa, and Apalachee.

"Outstanding. . . . Brings to life the Apalachee and their Spanish conquerors. In clear, concise prose it paints a picture of the Apalachee and their society and shows how their interactions with Spanish explorers, missionaries, and colonists shaped the history of their society."--John F. Scarry, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill The Apalachee Indians of northwest Florida and their Spanish conquerors come alive in this story -- lavishly illustrated with 120 color reproductions -- story of their premier community, San Luis. With a cast of characters that includes friars, soldiers, civilians, a Spanish governor, and a diverse native population, the book portrays the dwellings, daily life, religious practices, social structures, and recreation activities at the mission. From their prehistoric ancestors and first contact with Europeans in the 1500s to their dispersal following attacks by the English and by their Native American allies in the early 1700s, the Apalachee played important roles in the history of Florida and of native peoples throughout the Southeast. The San Luis community near Tallahassee, the most thoroughly investigated mission in Florida, served as Spain's provincial capital in America. From 1656 to its conquest by the English, it flourished as the only significant Spanish settlement in Florida outside of St. Augustine. Written by the two foremost authorities on the Florida Apalachee, this full-color volume offers general readers a compelling combination of archaeology and history. John H. Hann is a research historian at the San Luis Archaeological and Historic Site and a leading scholar on the missions of Spanish Florida. He is the author of Apalachee: The Land Between the Rivers (UPF, 1988), Missions to the Calusa (UPF, 1991), and History of the Timucua Indians and Missions (UPF, 1996). Bonnie G. McEwan, director of archaeology at the San Luis site in Tallahassee, has conducted research in the Southeast, California, Spain, and the Caribbean. She is the editor of The Spanish Missions of La Florida (UPF, 1993). Financed in part with historic preservation grant assistance provided by the Bureau of Historic Preservation, Division of Historical Resources, Florida Department of State, assisted by the Historic Preservation Advisory Council.