>Date: Sun, 31 Jan 1999 11:56:57 -0700
>From: "Jerald T. Milanich" <[log in to unmask]>

>My new book "Laboring in the Fields of the Lord--Spanish Missions and
>Southeastern Indians" is even now on its way to the Smithsonian Institution
>Press warehouse (1-800-782-4612) however the best buy is on-line from
>amazon.com. It is written for general audiences and students, though the
>Select Bibliography references much of the recent work in the Southeast.
>Here's a blurb I wrote about the book [If anyone knows other list-servs that
>might be interested would you cross-post this note? Thanks.]
>
>Laboring in the Fields of the Lord--Spanish Missions and Southeastern
>Indians (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1999, xiv+210 pp; contents, preface,
>select bibliopgrahy, index, illustrations and maps)
>
>The missions of La Florida, Spain's name for the southeastern United States,
>have been one of American history's best kept secrets. Beginning in the
>1560s first Jesuit and then Franciscan friars established more than 150
>missions among native peoples from south Florida to the Chesapeake Bay. The
>densest distribution was in coastal Georgia and northern Florida.
>
>Few people today are aware that a century and a half before there was a San
>Francisco in California, a San Francisco mission existed in northern Florida
>where it flourished for more than a century. San Antonio, Santa Diego, Santa
>Fe--all were missions that once served southeastern Indian groups just as
>missions with the same names were home to Indians in Texas, California, and
>New Mexico.
>
>By the time Spain relinquished La Florida to Great Britain in 1763 only two
>missions and less than one hundred Indians remained. What once had been a
>wide-flung mission system impacting the lives of thousands of native people
>over many generations had been destroyed.
>
>With the removal of the Hispanic presence from La Florida memories of the
>missions soon faded. The wood and thatch mission buildings, like the native
>peoples whom they served, disappeared from the landscape. Unlike in
>California, Texas, or the American Southwest where a continued Spanish
>influence inspired public awareness of past missions and a Hispanic
>heritage, the missions of Spanish Florida were lost.
>
>Starting in the late 1940s several generations of archaeologists, aided by
>documentary evidence, began to search for the north Florida missions. By the
>end of the 1970s a handful of field projects had been carried out. It was
>thought that those excavations, along with information provided by
>historians, had pretty much uncovered the story of the La Florida missions.
>
>Today we know that is not true. Research carried out since 1980, much in the
>last several years, is literally rewriting the history of the missions and
>the native people who lived at them. Even as once forgotten missions are
>being brought to public attention, new perspectives on those missions are
>emerging and old histories are being rewritten. New facts are being
>integrated into a revisionist rendering of the missions, one that casts the
>mission system as a formidable economic strategy built on the bodies of the
>native people. Together archaeology and history are a powerful tool to give
>voice to those people who for two centuries labored in the fields of
>colonial America.
>**************************
>
>Jerald T. Milanich
>Florida Museum of Natural History
>P.O. Box 117800
>Gainesville, FL 32611-7800
>352-392-6791
>FAX: 352-392-3698
>http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu
>
>
Anita Cohen-Williams
Listowner of HISTARCH, SUB-ARCH, SPANBORD
Acting Listowner of MUSEUM-L
Contributing Editor, Anthropology page, http://www.suite101.com
http://www.angelfire.com/ca/cohwill/index.html
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