Laboring in the Fields of the Lord : Spanish Missions and Southeastern Indians

by Milanich, Jerald T.

• ISBN13: 9781560989400
• ISBN10: 1560989408
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-04-01
• Publisher: Harpercollins

Summary

One of the great secrets of American history, more than 150 Spanish mission churches once dotted the landscape between modern Miami and the Chesapeake Bay. Built between the 1560s and 1760s, the missions were concentrated in what is now northern Florida and southern Georgia, but until recently their existence -- and their influence on the region's native groups -- has remained virtually undetected. The wood and thatch buildings burned or rotted away, and sweeping epidemics gradually wiped out the entire populations of the Timucua, Guale, and Apalachee Indians. Drawing upon archaeological and historical research conducted during the last twenty years, archaeologist Jerald T. Milanich contends that the southeastern mission system, conceived as a way to save souls while converting a potentially hostile population into an essential labor force, was central to the Spanish colonial enterprise. He describes how Spanish officials and friars first baptised native chiefs in elaborate ceremonies, then took advantage of the chiefs' traditional powers to demand agricultural and other work from their followers. Corn, the colony's principal currency and export, was grown, harvested, shucked, ground into meal, and transported by Christianized Indians. The author also discusses the selective cultural changes the friars imposed: they allowed Indian groups to continue to build council houses and play a traditional, soccer-like game but worked hard to replace the practices of native shamans with baptisms, masses, and Catholic burial rites. While the Indians of northern Florida and southern Georgia adapted to European rule more readily than their southwestern counterparts, the Spanish colonization ofthe Southeast took place against a backdrop of native revolts, widespread disease, and dwindling populations. Revealing the vital roles played by both European and Native American groups in the two-hundred-year Spanish reign over "La Florida, " Laboring in the Fields of the Lord documents one of the least-known colonial encounters in the history of the Americas.

Table of Contents

PREFACE	xi
1 IN SEARCH OF A ONCE FORGOTTEN LAND	1	(28)
2 A PORTRAIT OF THE LAND AND ITS PEOPLE	29	(26)
3 A CLASH OF CULTURES	55	(27)
4 BLACK-ROBED FRIARS AND MILITARY OUTPOSTS	82	(22)
5 FRANCISCAN FRIARS AND NATIVE CHIEFS	104	(26)
6 BORN UNDER THE BELL	130	(27)
7 EPIDEMICS, REBELLION, AND CHANGE	157	(18)
8 A PEOPLE DESTROYED; A LAND FORGOTTEN	175	(22)
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY	197	(8)
INDEX	205