In a pictorial record of Florida's ancient Indians, an artist's detailed paintings and drawings based on historical evidence and his own research re-create the appearance of the lifestyles and cultures of the state's pre-Columbian peoples.
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 population of the Timucua, Guale and Apalachee Indians.
When the conquistadors arrived in Florida as many as 350,000 native Americans lived there. Two and a half centuries later, Florida's Indians were gone. This text focuses on these native peoples and their lives, and attempts to explain what happened to them.