Missions to the Calusa
14 days return policy
Shipping & Delivery
Product details
- ISBN 9780813080758
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 29 Oct 2024
- Publisher: University Press of Florida
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
When Europeans arrived in southwest Florida in the early sixteenth century, they encountered a complex and powerful society. The Calusa have posed an enigma to many anthropologists and historians.
This work provides missing information on the ethnography of the Calusa, a society that inhabited the area of Florida now known as Charlotte, Lee, and Collier counties. This compilation of historical documents includes many reports never before translated into English, including letters from Pedro Menéndez, reports from King Charles II and governors, bishops and soldiers, and eyewitness testimony from priests and laypersons about mission efforts from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries.
John Hann introduces Spanish contact with the Calusa from the early seventeenth century, focusing particularly on the ill-fated Franciscan attempt in 1697 to convert the Calusa to Christianity. His voluminous documentation for this effort is particularly valuable for its description of the role played by the Crown in instigating the mission despite little enthusiasm from religious authorities.
William H. Marquardt is associate curator in archaeology and director of the Southwest Florida Project at the Florida Museum of Natural History on the University of Florida campus. He also directs “The Year of the Indian,” an archaeology/education project that includes volunteer-assisted excavations at archaeological sites in southwest Florida.
