"The Legacy of Columbus" by Jerald T. Milanich in "Archaeology" (March/April 1992, Vol. 45, No. 2, pp. 38-42) Of the 17 years that I have been in this land I have spent all of them among the Indians. And, thus, because I know from such experience and from knowing the language of this Province of Timucua and from having made expeditions into the hinterland [northern Florida], I am aware of their capacity and customs ... they come to Mass very willingly and take part in the chanted divine services and some already know how to read and write. -- Letter of Father Baltasar Lopez of the San Pedro mission on Cumberland Island, Georgia, September 15, 1602. By 1602 Franciscan priests had established a network of missions in Spain's new colony of La Florida. Archaeological research in the past decade has begun to reveal the story of these mission villages, the Franciscan friars and lay brothers who served them, and the Native Americans who lived and died in them. While past historical research has often focused on the events that led to the founding and eventual destruction of these mission enclaves, historians and archaeologists are today seeking a better understanding of the interactions between the native people and their Spanish overlords. There were at least 50 missions in Spanish Florida, arranged along two main routes of travel. One line ran along the Atlantic coast, from St. Augustine northward into Georgia. The Spaniards called this region the Province of Guale, named for the native people who lived there. The other route extended from St. Augustine westward through the Province of Timucua to the Province of Apalachee in the Florida panhandle. How aboriginal societies were affected by missionization is suggested by historical documents. Priests sought to Christianize the natives, to instruct them in the Catholic faith and, in so doing, acquaint them with Spanish culture. To do this, it was first necessary to change behavior deemed by the priests to be pagan or in conflict with Christian teachings. Mission Indians also provided a labor force for the Spanish colony, bearing foodstuffs and supplies between St. Augustine and interior ranches, farms, and settlements. Indians also worked the ranches and farms and were conscripted as labor for government projects in St. Augustine. At times the conflict between native traditions and Spanish practices led to open rebellion. In 1597, early in the mission period, a rebellion in the Province of Guale resulted in the killing of four priests and a lay brother. Following the rebellion, touched off in part by a priest who objected to a chief's having more than one wife--a traditional practice--the Franciscans withdrew from the province for seven years. Nearly 60 years later, participants in a rebellion in the Province of Timucua deliberately spared the priests, focusing instead on Spanish officials who had tried to force village chiefs to carry supplies. Both rebellions were relatively short-lived, and in both instances officials of the Spanish military government tried and then executed or imprisoned the instigators. In time, the missions and their Indian converts became caught in the struggle between Britain and Spain for control of the southeastern seaboard. From 1680 to 1704, British buccaneers and, later, soldiers from Charles Towne raided the missions. The coastal Guale enclaves fell first, followed by the interior missions in Timucua and Apalachee. Aided by Indian allies, English troops burned missions, killing or abducting literally thousands of Indians. The remaining Guale and Timucua people fled to the St. Augustine area, where they died off after about 1730. One group of Apalachee survivors moved westward toward Mobile. Some joined other native groups, and one band was living in Texas as late as 1834. But they, too, eventually died off. Until recently this period of history was all but forgotten. Mission buildings, made of wood, thatch, and wattle and daub, had rapidly decomposed in the humid environment. Furthermore, the Spanish had left no descendants in the area. Lost to history for nearly three centuries, these missions are now being probed by archaeologists. On the coastal barrier islands of Guale and in the forests and fields of Apalachee and Timucua the remains of several of these missions are yielding important new information. Huge charred support posts and remnants of clay floors suggest the presence of mission churches as large as 45-by-75 feet. Some were quite elaborate, with plastered walls. Interior posts, fallen timbers, and wall debris indicate the locations of sacristies, naves, sanctuaries, and other church features. Bell towers also must have been present, since fragments of bells have been found. Not all churches were so elaborate. Some were little more than open, thatch-roofed pavilions. When a mission Indian died, he or she was interred in a shallow grave dug into the church floor. Wrapped in a shroud, sometimes hooked with a small brass straight pin, each body was buried in Christian fashion with arms crossed or hands clasped on chest. At times crosses, small religious medallions, or reliquaries were placed with an individual, attesting their faith. Bioanthropologists Lisa Hoshower and George Armelagos of the University of Florida have analyzed interments from mission San Martin de Timucua in northern Florida. Multiple burials and demographic and osteological evidence suggest epidemics accounted for many deaths among the mission villagers. Spanish accounts make it clear that deadly epidemics periodically swept the territory. Research by Hoshower and Armelagos and by Clark Spencer Larsen (see page 43) is providing important perspectives on the impact of the mission system on the health and diet of the Christianized Indians. Additional information on mission diet comes from charred and preserved plant remains and from animal bones found in and around mission buildings, especially the convents (residences for the priests) and kitchens. Old World fruits--cantaloupe, watermelon, and peach--were grown at the missions, and wheat and hazelnuts have also been identified. Wheat flour was used for bread, as well as the communion host. Pigs and chickens were raised both for food and for export to St. Augustine. there is some evidence that as these animals were added to the diet, the use of some wild meat sources, notably fish, declined. Artifacts suggest still other ways in which the life of the native people was altered by the missions. Although some crafts--pottery making, for example--continued, others, such as the manufacture of elaborate status-oriented items of ground stone or shell, did not. This may reflect both the loss of craft skills as well as the decline in importance of high-status village and inter-village chiefs. Even in pottery making there is evidence of change. A detailed study of Guale pottery by Rebecca Saunders of the University of Florida has shown that a stamped sun/world motif, which decorated Precolumbian pots, became greatly simplified in the mission period, pointing to a possible change in native beliefs. At one site pots were stamped with cross motifs, a design absent in earlier times. The Spaniards took advantage of native skills and sought to make them more efficient by giving the Indians new tools and teaching them new techniques. In addition to traditional vessels, native ceramicists made pottery and other items in the shapes used by the Spanish, including plates, pitchers, bowls, and even candlesticks. Some evidence suggests that mission pottery was fired at higher temperatures than earlier wares, perhaps reflecting Spanish technology. With new plants came iron hoes, machetes, and other tools, which could be used to increase production of crops, especially of corn, which was exported from missions to St. Augustine. Archaeological evidence also points to ways the Spanish altered the very fabric of native settlement patterns. Kenneth Johnson of the University of Florida, working in norther Timucua, found Precolumbian village sites occurring in circular clusters several miles across and adjacent to trails. During the mission period the circular clusters became elongated along the roads, presumably a change introduced by the Spanish to allow them easier access to the missions and their adjacent villages. Each settlement cluster contained a mission and a resident priest. The extent to which the Spanish deliberately altered aboriginal clear after Johnson found missions in northern Timucua well north of the main mission road leading from St. Augustine to Apalachee. Detailed documentary accounts from 1675 place many missions on that road, but the presence of the more northerly missions was puzzling. Spanish pottery at the northern sites indicated they all dated from the first half of the seventeenth century, before the time of the 1656 rebellion. Subsequent archival research by John Worth of the University of Florida suggests that, following the rebellion, the governor of Spanish Florida relocated the missions farther south along what would become the main mission road. Another example of how the Spanish altered native communities comes from the post-1656 Apalachee mission of San Luis de Talimali in modern Tallahassee. Investigations by Gary Shapiro and, more recently, by Bonnie McEwan, both of the Florida Bureau of Archaeological Research, show that despite the presence of a traditional Apalachee Indian council house and a circular plaza, the village areas of the site were laid out on a European- inspired grid plan, in sharp contrast to the crescent-shaped villages without internal patterning found at two pre-1656 missions in Timucua. Churches and council houses, kitchens and convents, artifact patterns and settlement patterns--these remnants of the missions are one legacy of Columbus. Spanish Florida was the northernmost colony in Spain's New World empire, and the missions were on the very fringes of that empire. The Guale, Timucua, and Apalachee, unlike the Creek, Cherokee, Choctaw, and other Southeast Indians to the north who were not incorporated into the mission system, died off. The Florida and coastal Georgia people disappeared, and only a few of their place-names on our modern landscape remind us they once lived there. By the mid-eighteenth century, Creek peoples began to move southward from Alabama and Georgia into depopulated northern Florida. They would become the Seminole and Miccosuki who live in Florida and Oklahoma today. Meanwhile, the Franciscans shifted their efforts westward to California, where, in the last half of the eighteenth century, new missions with names like San Francisco, San Diego, and Santa Barbara took root. Reprint permission granted by the publisher.