Since writing the original review, our organization found that all French, Spanish and English maps place Fort Caroline near the mouth of the Altamaha River in Georgia. We recently found a passage in "The Travels of William Bartram" where he visited the ruins of Fort Caroline on the Altamaha River. Using Bartram's descriptions and satellite imagery, we found the footprint of Fort San Mateo, which was built on top of Fort Caroline. Therefore, the book is really about the Native Americans of Georgia and South Carolina, not Florida. The Fort Caroline at Jacksonville is a fake that was built after Florida archaeologists were unable to find the site of the real fort in Florida. Now we know why. The books is still a very valuable resource.
It is the biggest secret of early North American history. In 1562, 1563 and 1564 French Huguenot colonists, based near present day Beaufort, SC, went on numerous expeditions into the interior of what is now South Carolina, Georgia and North Carolina. One journey into the mountains of Georgia and western North Carolina lasted five months. On that expedition, the French named the Georgia and North Carolina Mountains, "Les Montes Apalachien" in honor of their Apalachee Indian inhabitants. These Apalachee later became a division of the Creek Indian Confederacy.
The translated memoir of René Goulaine de Laudonnière, Captain of the colony, brings those expeditions to life. It also describes in detail the last days of the French colonies in South Carolina and Florida. The South Carolina colony was abandoned because of starvation, while Fort Caroline, on the St. John's River in Florida, was massacred by the Spanish.
In stark contrast to Hernando de Soto's passage through the North Carolina Mountains in the spring of 1540, the French enjoyed very friendly relations with the natives of the Southern Highlands. The Spanish generally treated Natives brutally, while the French Protestants treated them as equals. René Goulaine de Laudonnière describes intimate details of the lifestyles of the various peoples he met, usually from a very sympathetic perspective. He was also a botanist, so the reader is introduced to the early encounters with North American plant species by Europeans.
De Laudonnière's big mistake was becoming involved with a war between two Native American provinces. However, his indiscretion provides the reader with eyewitness accounts of Native American warfare prior to the availability of European firearms. The reader is also given eyewitness accounts of the Apalachee Indian (Muskogean) inhabitants of northern Georgia mining and working gold. Apparently, the Apalachee towns in the North Carolina Mountains mined some silver, and another tribe in Tennessee harvested copper nuggets from the surface. De Laudonnière states that his men observed silver and copper ore in these regions, but does not go into details.
Why are the French Huguenot expeditions into the Southeast's interior not mentioned in most history books? These expeditions claimed the region for the King of France. Spain also claimed the Georgia gold-bearing mountains, but did not establish a trading post there until 1646. Thirty years later, France and Great Britain began a second Hundred Years War for control of the Southeast. Maps printed on the Mainland of Europe generally labeled South Carolina and the Georgia Mountains as Florida Francaise. These maps clearly stated that the gold-bearing Appalachian Mountains were discovered in 1562 by the French and claimed by the King of France. Maps produced for or by Great Britain did not mention the French expeditions.
In the early 1700s British Crown officials organized 14 tribes in SW Virginia, Tennessee and western Carolina into a new tribe they called the Cherokees. The Cherokees soon occupied the lands in North Carolina that had been lived on for centuries by tribes allied with France, such as the Shawnees. Great Britain won the French and Indian War in 1763. To the victor goes the spoils. The United States inherited maps that presented the British Crown's perspective of North American history. Any aboriginal tribes who had been French allies were deleted from the region's collective memory.
This book is recommended highly to any person interested in the early history of the Southeastern United States and its indigenous peoples. It is far more readable and credible than the translations of the de Soto and Juan Pardo Expeditions.
Richard L. Thornton
National Architecture & Native American History columist for the Examiner
Author of "Itsapa: the Itza Mayas in North America."
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