"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.

Timucua indians inhabited northern Florida and southern Georgia for 13 millenia before coming into contact with Europeans in 1513 with the arrival of Ponce deLeon. 250 years later, they were extinct. This book attempts to answer questions regarding who they were and how they lived.

It is the winter of 1763. After ruling La Florida for over two hundred years, Spain has been forced to cede its colonial possession to England. Many of the residents of San Agustin, Spain's principal city in La Florida, have already relocated to Havana, Cuba. Only a few days are now left before the last Spanish Galleon leaves with the remaining evacuees. However, not all of the residents of San Agustin are relocating to Havana. Nine Spaniards and their families have chosen to remain in the city and live under British control. Thirty-seven others, led by Franciscan friar Pedro Avilla Menéndez, refuse to leave the land they love but also refuse to be subject to the British. They plan on moving to the uninhabited interior of La Florida where they can live a free life - as their ancestors the Timucua, Yamasee, Apalachee and other Indian tribes indigenous to La Florida did before the arrival of the Europeans. Before he leaves San Agustin, Fray Pedro is persuaded to write his life story and leave it in the safekeeping of his mentor, Padre Guardian of the Franciscans in San Agustin, José de la Cruz. As Fray Pedro begins his narrative, he reveals what has long been known to the Indios he served in the native communities surrounding San Agustin and its indestructible fortification the Castillo de San Marcos. He, himself, is a Timucuan Indian whose birth name is Olatacara. Fray Pedro's narrative explains how he was raised in the traditional ways of the Timucua. He became a hunter and a warrior, defending San Agustin against the British who raided San Agustin with their Creek allies. Then, one terrible day, his life changed forever when a Creek raiding party attacked the small village where he lived, killed his father and abducted his wife, Lalia. After extracting revenge against the British for destroying his family, Olatacara finds solace in becoming a Franciscan friar - until one day when he is forced to return to the ways of the Timucua in the hope of leading his people to a peaceful life away from the Europeans.

Taken from surviving contemporary documentary sources, the author describes the grammar and lexicon of the extinct 17th-century Timucua language of Central and North Florida.

A linguistic analysis supporting a new model of the colonization of the Antilles before 1492 This work formulates a testable hypothesis of the origins and migration patterns of the aboriginal peoples of the Greater Antilles (Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola, and Puerto Rico), the Lucayan Islands (the Commonwealth of the Bahamas and the Crown Colony of the Turks and Caicos), the Virgin Islands, and the northernmost of the Leeward Islands, prior to European contact. Using archaeological data as corroboration, the authors synthesize evidence that has been available in scattered locales for more than 500 years but which has never before been correlated and critically examined. Within any well-defined geographical area (such as these islands), the linguistic expectation and norm is that people speaking the same or closely related language will intermarry, and, by participating in a common gene pool, will show similar socioeconomic and cultural traits, as well as common artifact preferences. From an archaeological perspective, the converse is deducible: artifact inventories of a well-defined sociogeographical area are likely to have been created by speakers of the same or closely related language or languages. Languages of the Pre-Columbian Antilles presents information based on these assumptions. The data is scant—scattered words and phrases in Spanish explorers' journals, local place names written on maps or in missionary records—but the collaboration of the authors, one a linguist and the other an archaeologist, has tied the linguistics to the ground wherever possible and allowed the construction of a framework with which to understand the relationships, movements, and settlement patterns of Caribbean peoples before Columbus arrived.

Discusses the history, language, customs, and daily life of the Timucua Indians who lived in northern Florida and southern Georgia. Includes activities to reinforce information presented.

Personality conflicts and unsanctioned love affairs also had an impact, and McCash's narrative is filled with the names of Jekyll's powerful and often colorful families, including Horton, Martin, Leake, and du Bignon."--Jacket.

This first volume of John Worth’s substantial two-volume work studies the assimilation and eventual destruction of the indigenous Timucuan societies of interior Spanish Florida near St. Augustine, shedding new light on the nature and function of La Florida’s entire mission system. Beginning in this volume with analysis of the late prehistoric chiefdoms, Worth traces the effects of European exploration and colonization in the late 1500s and describes the expansion of the mission frontier before 1630. As a framework for understanding the Timucuan rebellion of 1654 and its pacification, he explores the internal political and economic structure of the colonial system. In volume 2, he shows that after the geographic and political restructuring of the Timucua mission province, the interior of Florida became a populated chain of way-stations along the royal road between St. Augustine and the Apalachee province. Finally, he describes rampant demographic collapse in the missions, followed by English-sponsored raids, setting a stage for their final years in Florida during the mid-1700s. The culmination of nearly a decade of original research, these books incorporate many previously unknown or little-used Spanish documentary sources. As an analysis of both the Timucuan chiefdoms and their integration into the colonial system, they offer important discussion of the colonial experience for indigenous groups across the nation and the rest of the Americas. A volume in the Florida Museum of Natural History: Ripley P. Bullen Series

Provides an account of America's first real Thanksgiving, celebrated by the Spanish and the native Timucua in St. Augustine, Florida, in 1565 with a feast that may have included a pork stew, wild turkey, corn, and beans.

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