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

Milanich, Jerald T.

ISBN 10: 1560989408 / ISBN 13: 9781560989400

Published by Smithsonian Institution Press, 1999

About this Item

Seller Inventory # mon0004209359

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Laboring in the Fields of the Lord: Spanish Missions and Southeastern Indians
• Publisher: Smithsonian Institution Press
• Publication Date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1560989408
• ISBN 13: 9781560989400
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Very Good

About this title

Synopsis

This book is dedicated to Michael Gannon and explicitly updates his 1965 The Cross in the Sand but views the subject from a different perspective: Where Gannon focused on the mission effort from the missionaries' point of view, Jerald T. Milanich is interested in the way Florida missions affected and were affected by the southeastern Indians they attempted to convert. In eight chapters he outlines the problem of the "lost" missions and the archaeology that has rediscovered them; describes the indigenous peoples of Florida at the time of contact with Europeans; recounts the major events of Spanish exploration; describes early Jesuit missions that failed; introduces the Franciscan missions that succeeded; provides detailed descriptions of Indian life in the mission settlements; traces significant Indian resistance to colonization and missionization; and finally recounts the collapse of the mission system under the inexorable onslaught of English attacks.

About the Author

Jerald T. Milanich is curator in archaeology for the Florida Museum of Natural History and author of many books on Florida history and archaeology, including Frolicking Bears, Wet Vultures, and Other Oddities: A New York Journalist in Nineteenth-Century Florida (UPF, 2005) and Florida Indians: From Ancient Times to the Present (UPF, 2002).