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Native Peoples, Cultures, and Places of the Southeastern United States
Florida's Indians from Ancient Times to the Present
Great for professional archaeologists and general public.
224 pages, Paperback
First published September 30, 1998
3 people are currently reading
83 people want to read
About the author
Jerald T. Milanich
56 books4 followersJerald T. Milanich is an American anthropologist and archaeologist, specializing in Native American culture in Florida. He is Curator Emeritus of Archaeology at the Florida Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida in Gainesville; Adjunct Professor, Department of Anthropology, College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Florida; and Adjunct Professor, Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Florida. Milanich holds a Ph.D in anthropology from the University of Florida.
Milanich has won several awards for his books. Milanich won the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Florida Archaeological Council in 2005 and the Dorothy Dodd Lifetime Achievement Award from the Florida Historical Society in 2013. He was inducted as a Fellow into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2010.
Milanich's research interests include Eastern United States archeology, pre-Columbian Southeastern U.S. native peoples, and colonial period native American-European/Anglo relations in the America. In May 1987 he was cited in a New York Times article:
Milanich is married to anthropologist Maxine Margolis, also a professor at the University of Florida. They are the parents of historian Nara Milanich, who teaches at Columbia University.
Milanich has won several awards for his books. Milanich won the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Florida Archaeological Council in 2005 and the Dorothy Dodd Lifetime Achievement Award from the Florida Historical Society in 2013. He was inducted as a Fellow into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2010.
Milanich's research interests include Eastern United States archeology, pre-Columbian Southeastern U.S. native peoples, and colonial period native American-European/Anglo relations in the America. In May 1987 he was cited in a New York Times article:
Milanich is married to anthropologist Maxine Margolis, also a professor at the University of Florida. They are the parents of historian Nara Milanich, who teaches at Columbia University.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 27, 2018
Note: Before I begin, I wanted to point out that I am going to use the term "American Indians" instead of "Native Americans" to refer, in a very general way, to the precolumbian people living in the Americas, as well as their descendants. In theory, both terms should be avoided, and specific tribal names (Caloosahatchee, Seminole, Timicua, etc.) should be used instead. But sometimes I will refer to more than one specific tribe at a time, or perhaps all of precolombian people living in the Americas, so I'll need a more general term too.
Why "American Indians"? Doesn't it rely on the misnomer Columbus gave these people because he thought he had landed in India instead of modern-day Hispaniola? Isn't it a term coined and used by oppressors?
Well, for one, it is the name preferred by the American Indian Movement, the largest indigenous rights advocacy group in the United States. Russel Means, the Oglala Lakota activist from South Dakota who founded the movement in the 1960s, thinks that to use another term would erase the Indians' long history of oppression. At an international conference of Indians from the Americas held in Geneva, Switzerland, at the United Nations in 1977, he said: "We were enslaved as American Indians, we were colonized as American Indians, and we will gain our freedom as American Indians and then we can call ourselves anything we damn please."
Furthermore, if we use the term "Native Americans", what does that make people who were born in the United States but have descendants from another country? For example, I was born in Florida, but my parents' parents come from Italy, France, and Poland. Where would I be "native" to? Obviously the debate isn't about me, but using the term "Native American" runs the risk of lumping people of indigenous and non-indigenous descent together.
Finally, in the most recent survey of its kind, a 1995 Census Bureau survey asked indigenous Americans about their preferred name. They found that 50 percent preferred the term American Indian, 37 percent Native American. At the end of the day, some people are OK with either term, but I'll lean toward "American Indian" when referring to the population very generally. In other instances, especially when talking about individuals, I'll refer to their tribal affiliation.
~*~
When I was growing up, it was cool to talk shit about Florida. It was a lifeless place with no “culture”, a state that everyone dreamed of leaving. You were even cooler if you did get to escape. But now after reading this I feel like it’s no longer mature of me to write off my hometown or the state where I grew up as boring. There is SO MUCH interesting history. After growing up a little and gaining some critical/temporal/geographic distance, learning about the histories of other people (because I thought they were more exotic), I can now see the precolombian Floridians as the creative, resourceful bad-asses that they really were.
But a doubt lingers: Am I doomed to believe that a culture must seem exotic and “other” for it to be interesting or considered a valuable object of study? Does studying something always require other-izing it, converting it into an object? Mapping it among European values?
Regardless, in comparison to the rest of the ancient people in the world, the Florida Indians did some really interesting things. They had a complex ritual system for burying their dead. They made beautiful pottery, masks, and wooden sculptures of eagles and panthers (“Beautiful”. Am I fated to interpret these things through the aesthetic criteria of the west? Is this art, does it belong in a museum, or should it be called something else?). The Glades Indians constructed large mounds of shells and soil and connected them with canals hundreds of meters long to make gigantic, strangely-shaped earthworks projects that you can see from an airplane. The Indians south of Okeechobee terraformed the soggy wetlands by creating an intricate network of canals to connect one river to another. Then, in canoes, they traversed these canals that were sometimes miles long! They could even travel over sizeable elevation changes, in their canoes, with a series of dams.
I don’t think Milanich spent enough time talking about the conquest and its atrocities, probably because he is more of an archaeologist than a historian. He does recount some of the conquistadors’ fascinating failures, though, like Narváez, who started his voyage with 600 people in an attempt to set up colonies along Florida’s gulf coast, but was constantly attacked and misled by the tribes he encountered. After years of hopeless backtracking, the remaining 250 members of the original crew attempted to escape by sailing across the gulf to reach Mexico (which was a lot farther than they thought). In the end, expeditions from another famous and cruel conquistador, de Soto, encountered Narváez’s coastal camp. There were only four remaining survivors.
I love to see the times when the conquistadors lost. But their losses were nothing compared to the utter devastation that the Indians experienced. To this day, only a handful of Apalachees living in Louisiana can trace their ancestry to any original Florida tribe. Even the Seminoles are a conglomeration of other Mississippian tribes from the north. They were pushed further and further south (ultimately to the very bottom of Florida) due to pressures from the Spanish, French and Americans.
I wish Milanich talked more about the impact of colonialism. The Seminole Wars only get a couple of sentences, and he could have talked more about how the Indian Removal Act of 1830 (it was literally called that) forced the Seminoles out of their territories into the inhospitable, insect-infested swamps of the Everglades. Or how the massive drainage projects in the early 1900s dried up any possibility of an economic comeback. Or the depressing literacy and poverty rates of those living on reservations today.
Anyways, I have a renewed interest in my home state. I never knew where all the geographical names in Florida came from. I didn’t know that there were still 2 indigenous languages spoken in Florida. I didn’t know about all the ways the Indians were systematically fucked over, time and time again. Why did we never learn about this in school?
Why "American Indians"? Doesn't it rely on the misnomer Columbus gave these people because he thought he had landed in India instead of modern-day Hispaniola? Isn't it a term coined and used by oppressors?
Well, for one, it is the name preferred by the American Indian Movement, the largest indigenous rights advocacy group in the United States. Russel Means, the Oglala Lakota activist from South Dakota who founded the movement in the 1960s, thinks that to use another term would erase the Indians' long history of oppression. At an international conference of Indians from the Americas held in Geneva, Switzerland, at the United Nations in 1977, he said: "We were enslaved as American Indians, we were colonized as American Indians, and we will gain our freedom as American Indians and then we can call ourselves anything we damn please."
Furthermore, if we use the term "Native Americans", what does that make people who were born in the United States but have descendants from another country? For example, I was born in Florida, but my parents' parents come from Italy, France, and Poland. Where would I be "native" to? Obviously the debate isn't about me, but using the term "Native American" runs the risk of lumping people of indigenous and non-indigenous descent together.
Finally, in the most recent survey of its kind, a 1995 Census Bureau survey asked indigenous Americans about their preferred name. They found that 50 percent preferred the term American Indian, 37 percent Native American. At the end of the day, some people are OK with either term, but I'll lean toward "American Indian" when referring to the population very generally. In other instances, especially when talking about individuals, I'll refer to their tribal affiliation.
~*~
When I was growing up, it was cool to talk shit about Florida. It was a lifeless place with no “culture”, a state that everyone dreamed of leaving. You were even cooler if you did get to escape. But now after reading this I feel like it’s no longer mature of me to write off my hometown or the state where I grew up as boring. There is SO MUCH interesting history. After growing up a little and gaining some critical/temporal/geographic distance, learning about the histories of other people (because I thought they were more exotic), I can now see the precolombian Floridians as the creative, resourceful bad-asses that they really were.
But a doubt lingers: Am I doomed to believe that a culture must seem exotic and “other” for it to be interesting or considered a valuable object of study? Does studying something always require other-izing it, converting it into an object? Mapping it among European values?
Regardless, in comparison to the rest of the ancient people in the world, the Florida Indians did some really interesting things. They had a complex ritual system for burying their dead. They made beautiful pottery, masks, and wooden sculptures of eagles and panthers (“Beautiful”. Am I fated to interpret these things through the aesthetic criteria of the west? Is this art, does it belong in a museum, or should it be called something else?). The Glades Indians constructed large mounds of shells and soil and connected them with canals hundreds of meters long to make gigantic, strangely-shaped earthworks projects that you can see from an airplane. The Indians south of Okeechobee terraformed the soggy wetlands by creating an intricate network of canals to connect one river to another. Then, in canoes, they traversed these canals that were sometimes miles long! They could even travel over sizeable elevation changes, in their canoes, with a series of dams.
I don’t think Milanich spent enough time talking about the conquest and its atrocities, probably because he is more of an archaeologist than a historian. He does recount some of the conquistadors’ fascinating failures, though, like Narváez, who started his voyage with 600 people in an attempt to set up colonies along Florida’s gulf coast, but was constantly attacked and misled by the tribes he encountered. After years of hopeless backtracking, the remaining 250 members of the original crew attempted to escape by sailing across the gulf to reach Mexico (which was a lot farther than they thought). In the end, expeditions from another famous and cruel conquistador, de Soto, encountered Narváez’s coastal camp. There were only four remaining survivors.
I love to see the times when the conquistadors lost. But their losses were nothing compared to the utter devastation that the Indians experienced. To this day, only a handful of Apalachees living in Louisiana can trace their ancestry to any original Florida tribe. Even the Seminoles are a conglomeration of other Mississippian tribes from the north. They were pushed further and further south (ultimately to the very bottom of Florida) due to pressures from the Spanish, French and Americans.
I wish Milanich talked more about the impact of colonialism. The Seminole Wars only get a couple of sentences, and he could have talked more about how the Indian Removal Act of 1830 (it was literally called that) forced the Seminoles out of their territories into the inhospitable, insect-infested swamps of the Everglades. Or how the massive drainage projects in the early 1900s dried up any possibility of an economic comeback. Or the depressing literacy and poverty rates of those living on reservations today.
Anyways, I have a renewed interest in my home state. I never knew where all the geographical names in Florida came from. I didn’t know that there were still 2 indigenous languages spoken in Florida. I didn’t know about all the ways the Indians were systematically fucked over, time and time again. Why did we never learn about this in school?
December 15, 2021
This is my first book on Florida history. So I don’t have much to work on. But while quite readable, half way through I was getting flashbacks to my history texts in college. Surprise surprise it’s a college printed book. What appreciate about this book is that it finally made me realize that Native American Floridan history is more than just “the Seminoles”.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews