Timucua Indians

When Spanish and French explorers first landed in Florida early in the 16th century, Timucua speakers occupied more land area and were more numerous than any other aboriginal group. This is their first detailed history, a major study that places its author in the forefront of Spanish colonial historians working in the United States. The Timucua are the only native people of Florida whose language survives in literature in sufficient quality and quantity to permit significant study. Relying on previously unused documents, this account of the Timucua traces their experience from first contact with Europeans to their exile to Cuba in 1763 and their final eradication. Beginning with the question of their number and their locations in northern Florida and southern Georgia, John Hann examines the Timucua's contacts with various European groups, starting with Ponce de Leon's expedition. He includes a detailed presentation of their experience under the mission regimes and covers such topics as the Europeans' descriptions of the people, their language, culture, and political structures, the derivation of their language, and the meanings of their place-names and titles. He also resolves confusion over the extent of the territory of a Timucua subgroup known as the Mocama and discusses other Florida native peoples who moved into Timucua territory as refugees during the first half of the 18th century.

Incorporating the 13most current archaeological and historical investigation, this second 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 volume 1 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 this volume, 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.

Combining broad chronological syntheses and regionally specific case studies, this volume presents up-to-date findings about plant use by prehistoric and early historic peoples who lived in the Eastern Woodlands of North America. The contributors stress that current depictions of the subsistence strategies, settlement patterns, and social relations of these earliest Americans need to be reformulated to accommodate our new understanding of both the importance of native crops and the variability in peoples' foodways.

The relationship between American Indians and European colonialists has come under increasing scrutiny as the myth of America as virgin land has been shattered. Steele continues this reassessment and argues that recent research in ethnohistory, sociology of contact and military history invites a complete overhaul of North American military history.