Customer Reviews

Florida Indians and the Invasion from Europe

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Many years ago I happened to visit the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville. As an anthropologist who worked in Asia and taught in Australia, I wasn't extremely familiar with Florida history, but I thought I knew something about the Indians. I had even spent a couple days on the Mikasuki reservation many years before then. Florida's native Americans were the Seminoles and Mikasuki, right ? Wrong ! I was stunned to learn of the true pattern on that fortuitous visit. By the 1760s, Florida's original population of some 350,000 had totally disappeared, the last few survivors dying as refugees in Cuba.

On a subsequent visit to Gainesville, a couple years ago, I bought Jerald Milanich's book, planning to get a more complete picture. I am very glad I did. This is a most excellent book, written for people who may not have professional backgrounds in archaeology, anthropology or history. The author hits just the right note. Everything is explained most clearly and readably. The twelve thousand year history that came to an end in the 18th century is traced through archeological discoveries. The great number of maps is a delight, while he includes some interesting photographs too. Milanich describes Florida as it must have been when the Spaniards arrived in the early 1500s. He tells of their efforts at exploration, colonization, at conversion, and their brutal repression of resistance, which coupled with wave upon wave of new diseases, almost completely wiped out Florida's native population. The French attempted briefly to colonize the area too. You will learn that "Florida" once extended up the Georgia coast into South Carolina. This area was known as Guale. For those of us reared on Anglo-centric American history, Milanich's book is an eyeopener. The life around the Spanish missions is depicted, the life that was destroyed finally by raids from the north by Carolina colonists, English forces, and allied Indians. These violent incursions, which brought thousands of Indian slaves to the Carolinas or sent them to be sold in the West Indies, finished the awful job of genocide. Florida is a land of ghosts. Today, amidst the urban sprawl and commercial mess of much of that state, nobody gives a thought to the Calusa, the Apalachee, the Timucua, the Jororo, the Tocobaga, the Mayaca, the Tequesta, and so many others, some whose very names may not survive. But when you paddle down one of those palmetto-lined rivers, past turtles and alligators, thrilled to see deer or otter, herons and ducks, or when you visit the former capital of Spanish Florida, St. Augustine, you might give a thought to the original Floridians. Florida is still dotted with archaeological reminders of them. Milanich has not neglected to tell us where. I suspect this is THE book on Florida Indian history.

Mr. Milanich has really outdone himself. His descriptions of the native Floridians and their interactions with Europeans is forthright, honest, and most of all backed with excellent research. This book is a great addition to anyone's library, especially if you're from Florida.

I made the mistake of reading "Florida Indians and the Invasion from Europe" by Jerald Milanich after I read his "The Timucua" which I gave 5 stars.

This book is much weaker. Taking more of a bird's eye view, Milanich divides up the indigenous peoples of Florida by region and then offers a tale that has been told better elsewhere--including some of Milanich's other works--about the effects of Spanish and French settlement in Florida.

The chief flaw of the book is the tone. Milanich makes no bones about it--he's writing a prosecutor's brief against the Spanish. Milanich's narration is annoying. He is strangely informal in this work and often offers casual but strange asides--even offering scholars as the umpires between the Spanish and the Indians' view on invasion before smugly telling readers the Indians were right to consider it an invasion based on only two books. While I agree with his assessment, there have been scores of books on the subject. There is no need to trivialize his own point. The book came out in 1995, a few years after the controversy of the 400th anniversary of the Columbus expedition. Milanich's writing seems to reflect that moment--and seems a bit off almost 20 years after it. Granted I am writing this review on the ninth anniversary of 9/11 but I think it is fair to say that different cultures and peoples still have a hard time understanding one another despite the passage of centuries. That's a bit easier to understand in 2010 than it was in 1992 when the Soviet Union was dead or in 1995 when some scholars were even kicking over the idea of "the end of history." Sorry. History--and human tragedy and folly--continues and no people, country or faith have a monopoly on vice or virtue.

Despite these flaws, this is not a bad book. Milanich presents a decent if not particularly enthralling narrative which is helped out by a nice selection of pictures and--thankfully--maps. Milanich is, as always, excellent on archeology, anthropology and geography. This last part is most helpful as he shares where Indian sites and missions were located in concise but helpful modern terms.

Still, if the book is not bad, it is much worse than some of the author's other works. Reading it fifteen years after it was first printed, I kept thinking the book seemed to offer more insight into the time it was written than the time it was supposed to cover.

I was happy to get this book it was a good deal and in good condition