Customer Reviews

Timucua (Peoples of America)

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This book, written by Dr. Jerald Milanich of the Florida Museum of Natural History, is the one of the best syntheses available for the general reader of a Native American culture which was destroyed nearly two and half centuries ago.

The Timucuan Indians, who occupied the territory that today is the northern third of peninsular Florida and southern Georgia, were one of the largest cultural groups in the Southeast at the time of European contact in 1513. Their culture was one of the oldest in the region as well; archaeological study of sites within Timucuan territory suggests that there was great continuity between historic Timucuan lifeways and ancestral cultures going back to the Archaic period, more than 4,000 years previously.

The Timucua were one of the first Native American groups encountered by European explorers, with the arrival of Juan Ponce de Leon in 1513, and the expeditions of Narvaez and De Soto. Not coincidentally, their culture was also one of the first to completely disappear, with all known Timucuan Indians gone by the late 1700's, victims of disease and the stresses of colonization.

This book is a wonderfully readable synthesis of all that is known historically and archaeologically of a remarkable, vanished people. I recommend it heartily to anyone with an interest in history, archaeology, or anthropology, whether general reader or specialist.

A very good read with a summary that covers many years of studies in Florida. Many long awaited answers can be found in this volume. This volume is a great synthesis of all the information found at many different sites in Florida and Southern Georgia. Thanks to all of the archaeologists who have worked to answer all these questions.

Jerald Milanich had no easy task in assembling a readable survey of the Timucua people. A tribe of Native Americans based in north Florida and south Georgia, the Timucua were at ground zero of European colonialism and, by 1767, were no more. It was a demographic nightmare. Milanich relies on French and Spanish sources as well as archeology to create as thorough a portrait we will ever get of the Timucua. He offers an interesting look on their religion, political system, trade and livelihoods but most of the book focuses on the years of Spanish rule. The book is very readable and, while Milanich is clearly sympathetic to the plight of the Timucuans, he is able to praise Europeans when he feels it is merited--for example, Francisco Pareja, a Franciscan who was able to compile a dictionary of the Timucuan language. The book is very readable and offers as good a picture as we will ever get of this long vanished people.