No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.
Ruling "the republic of Indians" in seventeenth-century Florida
... 21 While Franciscans were there to pacify the indigenous population by converting them into good Catholics and enculturating them into Hispanic culture, the Spanish colonial government also expected the missions' native inhabitants to provide economic and military sup- port. 22 The missions supplied St. Augustine and other Spanish communities with agricultural produce and served as the prime labor force, thereby integrating the converted Indian population into the Hispanic world system. In effect the colony's survival ultimately rested on the backs of the mission Indians. ...
... From multiple identities emerged a nascent, singular identity-that of a native Catholic Indian living under the Spanish flag. Existing social boundaries increasingly lost meaning during the seventeenth century through generational turnover (those newly born into Catholic communities knew less of the "old ways") and the highly charged, racialized social context of late seventeenth century La Florida (see Bushnell 2006). This identity was unnamed and unrecognized by ecclesiastical sources, secular bureaucrats, and the foreign visitors to the colony that were responsible for the recorded history that is so well known. ...
Beginning in the late sixteenth century, a series of Spanish missions was built in coastal Georgia and northern Florida. These
missions were designed to convert and “civilize” the indigenous peoples of the region and establish a Spanish presence in
the southeastern United States. The colony was not a success, and the missions were destroyed by the English by 1706. The
native population fared poorly and suffered massive loss of people due to epidemics and colonial period hardships. In this
paper, I discuss microevolutionary analyses of archeological skeletal samples representing the native populations from the
region. Analyses document changing patterns of variation and intergroup biological integration through time. Formal evolutionary
interpretations are offered, but these are reinterpreted with respect to the social and historical context of the time period.
Specifically, patterns of variation suggest a nascent Catholic Indian identity was emergent in Spanish Florida when the missions
were destroyed. While this may indicate an evolutionary and historical “dead end” for the indigenous peoples of Florida, further
interpretation of the data with respect to the later history of the early Seminole people suggests a continuous biological
history can be inferred, linking Spanish period (seventeenth century) and Seminole period (eighteenth century) peoples of
Florida within a unified historical narrative. This complex, ephemeral history has repercussions for interpreting evolutionary
genetic data within a strict cladistic framework. In addition, this research contributes a humanistic component to the evolutionary
sciences with respect to cultural patrimony and oral traditions, in this case, of the Seminole peoples.
Mission Cemeteries, Mission Peoplesoffers clear, accessible explanations of complex methods for observing evolutionary effects in populations. Christopher Stojanowski's intimate knowledge of the historical, archaeological, and skeletal data illuminates the existing narrative of diet, disease, and demography in Spanish Florida and demonstrates how the intracemetery analyses he employs can provide likely explanations for issues where the historical information is either silent or ambiguous. Stojanowski forgoes the traditional broad analysis of Native American populations and instead looks at the physical person who lived in the historic Southeast. What did that person eat? Did he suffer from chronic diseases? With whom did she go to a Spanish church? Where was she buried in death? The answers to these questions allow us to infer much about the lives of mission peoples.
The year 2013 marked the tercentennial of Fr. Junípero Serra’s birth. That same year, historian Steven Hackel anointed Serra (1713-1784) California’s Founding Father, thereby echoing the glory attached to such American greats as John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and Thomas Jefferson. But Hackel also noted that Serra remains “America’s least understood founder,” with a legacy that is today decidedly “divisive … contentious and contested.”
Many popular observances of the Serra tercentennial celebrated his role as a visionary, lauding the energetic Franciscan from Mallorca who walked the length of what is today the Golden State despite a badly ulcerated leg. Along the way, he built the legendary mission chain and battled Spanish civic leaders in his effort to provide Christian leadership to California’s Indians. A poll held in 1984, the bicentennial of Serra’s death, showed that two-thirds of Californians considered him the most important person in the history of the state. Many, however, see Serra in a less favorable light, pointing to the role of these very Spanish missions in devastating the indigenous populations. Some even view Serra’s Franciscan missions as death camps (“Auschwitz with roses”) reflecting an imperialist policy of genocide and ethnic cleansing.
This paper will summarize the most noteworthy recent research on Fr. Serra’s California mission legacy, then contrast him and his life’s work against other Franciscan missionary activities across the Spanish Borderlands, with an emphasis on the Pueblo Southwest and the Mississippian Southeast. The Founding Father of Alta California arrived there with a late medieval identity forged on the island of Mallorca, steeled in the Colegio de San Fernando in Mexico City, and field-tested at the missions of the Sierra Gorda (near present-day Querétaro). Although certainly aware of the classic missionary writings produced by Franciscans and others, Serra’s personal and theological mindset derived mostly from the early experiences that had transformed a Mallorcan villager into a promising priest and university professor in his homeland.
Born to a poor family, Serra was raised by a stern father who believed in the strictest discipline. The young Serra quite literally “grew up beneath the bell, its tolling setting and signaling the rhythms, moods, and the rituals of his life.” He worshiped at the Convento de San Bernardino, where the church bells called him to daily Mass, chiming away the hours of each and every day. Rapid tolling of the bell alerted the people of Petra to joyous occasions. Slowly ringing bells carried the sad news of death to the community. Unlike the punishments meted out by tyrants or kings, Serra would later write, the physical discipline delivered by ideal fathers (including his own) signified “acts of pure love.” As an adult, Serra incorporated his childhood experiences into both his rigorous personal discipline (including self-flagellation) and his missionary outreach, which sometimes involved floggings and other harsh discipline applied to Christianized Indians who had been led astray.
After donning the Franciscan habit at the age of 16, Serra, until then called Miquel Joseph, became Junípero, taking as his namesake the complicated and headstrong early companion of St. Francis. Serra knelt at the end of his probation year to pledge the three keystone Franciscan vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. And like his fellow fledgling Franciscans of the time, he took an additional oath to defend the Doctrine of Immaculate Conception. Serra came to identify himself as a “front-line missionary, a man who would go to the tip of the Catholic spear … to conquer the New World’s infidels.” In 1749, he joined a number of other Mallorcan Franciscans who traveled to Mexico as missionaries, bringing with them a late-medieval mindset and theological practice largely marginalized from greater Spanish society.
In the tradition of St. Francis, as expounded in the arguments and teachings of Ramon Llull, Serra believed that Christian conversion should be accomplished by reason rather than by the sword. Franciscan theologian Joseph Chinnici argues that Serra maintained an apocalyptic “theo-vision” that did not project into the future, but rather hearkened back to “the ideal of the primitive Church … and beyond that toward Eden … encouraging Franciscans like Serra to ‘live history from...
In the late fall of 1597, Guale Indians murdered five Franciscan friars stationed in their territory and razed their missions to the ground. The 1597 Guale Uprising, or Juanillo's Revolt as it is often called, brought the missionization of Guale to an abrupt end and threatened Florida's new governor with the most signifcant crisis of his term. To date, interpretations of the uprising emphasize the primacy of a young Indian from Tolomato named Juanillo, the heir to Guale's paramount chieftaincy. According to most versions of the uprising story, Tolomato's resident friar publicly reprimanded Juanillo for practicing polygamy. In his anger, Juanillo gathered his forces and launched a series of violent assaults on all five of Guale territory's Franciscan missions, leaving all but one of the province's friars dead. Through a series of newly translated primary sources, many of which have never appeared in print, this volume presents the most comprehensive examination of the 1597 uprising and its aftermath. It seeks to move beyond the two central questions that have dominated the historiography of the uprising, namely who killed the fve friars and why, neither of which can be answered with any certainty. Instead, this work aims to use the episode as the background for a detailed examination of Spanish Florida at the turn of the 17th century. Viewed collectively, these sources not only challenge current representations of the uprising, they also shed light on the complex nature of Spanish-Indian relations in early colonial Florida.
The Seminole Indians were Creek Indians from Georgia and Alabama who migrated to Florida for several reasons, including much conflict from not only other native groups but European pursuits. This thesis documents the early Creeks coming into northwest Florida, and thereby contributes to the larger research question of Seminole ethnogenesis. By compiling not only the confusing and often unclear historical documentation, but also the archaeological record, this thesis examines Creek/Seminole archaeological sites along the Apalachicola River and lower Chattahoochee River and matches them up with known historical towns to see where and when the Creek Indians were coming into Florida within this valley and when these groups were being referred to as Seminoles. Another question addressed is why the sites, either known historical or archaeological, all fall in the northern portion of the project area and on the west bank of the rivers. The significance of this research is to try to correlate archaeological sites with historic towns and get a better understanding of which native groups are being referred to as Seminole, when they came into Florida, where they were settling, and what the settlements look like archaeologically.
This project examines the intimate role slave claims played in the animosities which quickly developed from the acquisition of the Florida territory to the outbreak of the Second Seminole Indian War. By focusing on the Indian Agency and its first administrator, Gad Humphreys, this connection is made by suggesting that the territory's legislators were unwilling to allow the coexistence of Seminoles and blacks on the Florida frontier. The presence of these communities threatened developing Middle Florida plantations with significantly increased risks of both slave runaways and insurrection. In response, settlers and government officials pressed Humphreys to see not only that the Seminoles were pacified, but also that runaway slaves were apprehended and returned to their owners. The agent, however, held fundamentally different opinions on the subject of adjudicating these controversies than did the citizens under his direction, and his superiors in the War Department.
When Humphreys regularly supported Seminole claimants in the often-bitter property contests, his actions were met with the disapproval of his superiors-particularly Governor William Pope DuVal-who felt that his first duty was to ensure the development of the territory's plantations. The claims of Margaret Cook and Mary Hannay, in particular, strained these once respectful relationships to the point where DuVal sought to have Humphreys removed on various charges of misconduct relating to his direction in the controversies. An investigation was initiated into a number of allegations, yet focused on his conduct in slave controversies, and found that far from acting inappropriately, Humphreys had performed his duty with exceptional integrity. Ultimately, however, DuVal's effort was successful. Humphreys was superceded in 1830 by John Phagan-an agent much more willing to take the harsh measures necessary to have the numerous slaves claimed by the territory's citizens surrenders.
In examining the actions of Humphreys, the Indians under his charge, and the legislators he reported to, slave claim controversies of the 1822-1830 period clearly illustrate the centrality of the slavery issue on the Florida frontier, and inextricably connect slavery to the outbreak of the Second Seminole Indian War.
This article explores the consequences for the native population of the Colombian Chocó of the emergence, over the course of the eighteenth century, of an elite of caciques and indios mandones or principales whose functions of powers far exceeded those of the warrior chiefs that had traditionally acted as leaders of their people. Appointed for the purpose of facilitating the collection of tribute and the supply of labour to European settlers, caciques and mandones were almost universally rejected by native communities during the early phases of Spanish colonisation (c. 1630–1690), and they disappear from the historical record after Independence. Eighteenth-century sources, however, not only record the existence of a clearly defined elite of mandones or principales in villages across the region, but show these individuals engaging actively with the colonial authorities, on behalf of their communities, at local and audiencia levels. This article argues that, at a time of a much strengthened European presence in the region, caciques and mandones came to understand their roles in ways that were entirely different from those intended by the Spanish, and in so doing acquired the legitimacy that had eluded their seventeenth-century predecessors. Far from serving merely as intermediaries between settlers and indigenous populations, indios mandones acted as negotiators on behalf of the indigenous population, whose task was to defend and/or advance the interests of the communities they had been appointed to control.
The more sweeping an argument, the more necessary that it be grounded firmly and incontrovertibly in a body of evidence. Henry Dobyns has recently asserted that there were some 700,000 Timucuan Indians in Florida ca. 1500. In doing so he marshals data from a number of sources to persuade readers that the sharp decline in numbers he postulates is to be attributed to numerous epidemics. In this paper I argue that Dobyns has been derelict in his use of sources and thereby forfeits the right to have his arguments accepted.