This compilation of historical documents includes letters, reports, and accounts written by Europeans during the colonization of Southwest Florida, offering insights into Spanish contact with the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This compilation of historical documents includes letters, reports, and accounts written by Europeans during the colonization of Southwest Florida, offering insights into Spanish contact with the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

In the opening years of the eighteenth century, fierce Calusa Indians rule the coast of Southwest Florida. Pirates patrol the area, looking for Indians to capture and sell at the slave auction in Charles Town, South Carolina. One evening, Calusa girl Mara is kidnapped by pirates, and dragged aboard Captain Hannah Dunne's frigate, the Devil Ray. In the months that follow, Mara's journey takes her through a terrible storm at sea, a visit to Blackbeard's hideout, and finally to her new home on an indigo plantation near Charles Town. On the plantation she uncovers secret plans for a slave rebellion, and she is forced to make desperate choices that will change her life forever.

The Evolution of the Calusa attempts to explain how, why, and under what circumstances a complex chiefdom evolved on the southwest Florida coast, apparently without an agricultural subsistence base, and how far back in time it developed.

"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.

Calusa Responses to the Spanish Missionary Enterprise in Post-Contact Florida This dissertation examines the cultural, political and religious dynamics surrounding Calusa contact with the Spaniards. Throughout the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, missionaries intended to impose Catholicism, Spanish culture and royal power among the Calusa. Yet Calusa leaders, whose influence depended on their detailed practice and knowledge of their native religion, refused to relinquish any aspect of their authority. Since soldiers accompanied missionaries, the Calusa saw the missions potentially as a means of defense, initially against local native rivals, and eventually against Indian allies to the British. Yet as a result of the limited number of soldiers that accompanied the missionaries, the missions did not provide any significant measure of protection or defense. The missions also failed in their primary purpose of initiating religious conversion and cultural change among the Calusa. While Calusa contact with Spaniards and other Europeans allowed for the introduction of European items into their native material repertoire, these goods were appropriated instead to fit within a native cultural context. While the Calusa did not survive the warfare and disease ushered in by European imperialism, they were able to withstand the political, religious and cultural changes that the Spanish tried to initiate. Eighteenth-century missionaries observed the Calusa still practicing traditions and rituals that had persisted for centuries.

The Calusa's historic repulsion of 16th-century Spanish occupiers.