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A clearly written narrative for anyone interested in Native American studies. Long before the first European explorers set foot on Florida soil, numerous Native American tribes hunted, honored their gods, built burial mounds, and coexisted with one another in pockets of settlements across the state. This book explores the importance of archaeology in preserving the past for future generations, how archaeologists do their work, and even how young people can gain hands-on experience on a real dig. The authors provide detailed descriptions of 185 sites on the Native American Heritage Trail that mark important historical events, as well as a calendar of important dates that highlights the history, culture, setbacks, and successes of Florida's Native Americans.

Who owns the past and the objects that physically connect us to history? And who has the right to decide this ownership, particularly when the objects are sacred or, in the case of skeletal remains, human? Is it the museums that care for the objects or the communities whose ancestors made them? These questions are at the heart of Plundered Skulls and Stolen Spirits, an unflinching insider account by a leading curator who has spent years learning how to balance these controversial considerations. Five decades ago, Native American leaders launched a crusade to force museums to return their sacred objects and allow them to rebury their kin. Today, hundreds of tribes use the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act to help them recover their looted heritage from museums across the country.

The years AD 1500-1700 were a time of dramatic change for the indigenous inhabitants of southeastern North America, yet Native histories during this era have been difficult to reconstruct due to a scarcity of written records before the eighteenth century. Using archaeology to enhance our knowledge of the period, tis book presents new research on the ways Native societies responded to early contact with Europeans. Featuring sites from Kentucky to Mississippi to Florida, these case studies investigate how indigenous groups were affected by the expeditions of explorers such as Hernando de Soto, Pánfilo de Narváez, and Juan Pardo.

The Great Florida Seminole Trail is the first comprehensive illustrated guide to Florida's historic and cultural sites that directly relate to the Seminole Indians, covering Seminole history from when they first migrated into the state in the 1700s to the tragic Seminole wars to contemporary Seminole culture. The guide covers all parts of the state that can be visited today, including the old Negro Fort site in the Panhandle, the Alachua Savannah near Gainesville, the Dade Battlefield in Bushnell, the Smallwood Store in the Ten Thousand Islands, Indian Key in the Florida Keys, and the destroyed sugar plantations near St. Augustine.

A growing controversy in recent years has arisen around the use and abuse of Native American team mascots. The Cleveland Indians, Atlanta Braves, Washington Redskins, Kansas City Chiefs, Florida State Seminoles, and so forth--these are just a few of the images and names popularly associated with Native Americans that are still used as mascots by professional sports teams, dozens of universities, and countless high schools. This practice, a troubling legacy of Native-Euro-American relations in the United States, has sparked heated debates and intense protests that continue to escalate. Team Spirits is the first comprehensive look at the Native American mascots controversy. In this work activists and academics explore the origins of Native American mascots, the messages they convey, and the reasons for their persistence into the twenty-first century.

This unique reader presents a broad approach to the study of American Indians through the voices and viewpoints of the Native Peoples themselves. Multi-disciplinary and hemispheric in approach, it draws on ethnography, biography, journalism, art, and poetry to familiarize students with the historical and present day experiences of native peoples and nations throughout North and South America–all with a focus on themes and issues that are crucial within Indian Country today.

There is no question that European colonization introduced smallpox, measles, and other infectious diseases to the Americas, causing considerable harm and death to indigenous peoples. But though these diseases were devastating, their impact has been widely exaggerated. Warfare, enslavement, land expropriation, removals, erasure of identity, and other factors undermined Native populations. These factors worked in a deadly cabal with germs to cause epidemics, exacerbate mortality, and curtail population recovery. Beyond Germs challenges the "virgin soil" hypothesis that was used for decades to explain the decimation of the indigenous people of North America.

Early in this century, the Florida Seminoles struggled to survive in an environment altered by the drainage of the Everglades and a dwindling demand for animal hides. This revised and expanded edition is the only book available on the cultural tourism activities of an Indian tribe. Often told in the words of the many Seminoles interviewed for this book, this is a tale of unbelievable success against all odds as the Seminoles went from abject poverty to striking the first major international deal by a tribe with the purchase of the Hard Rock Cafe in 2006. Winner of the Florida Historical Society's Harry T. & Harriette V. Moore Award.

The history of the Seminole Indians in Florida embodies a vital part of the tragic history of native and white American conflict throughout the entire United States. Drawing on widely scattered scholarship, including the oldest documents and recently discovered material, Covington gives us a complete account of the Florida Seminoles from their entrance into the state almost three hundred years ago, through the great chiefdoms of Micanopy, Osceola, and Billy Bowlegs, to the current political reality of democratic elections. Covington brings the history of the tribe into this century as he describes the beginning of Seminole relocation to reservations, their participation in World War II, the inroads of Christianity in the 1940s, and the changes in tribal education, government, and agriculture and business ventures in the past three decades.

This is the first book-length study to use Spanish language sources in documenting the original Indian inhabitants of West Florida who, from the late 16th century to the 1740s, lived to the west and the north of the Apalachee. In this history of the region's Native Americans, Hann focuses on the small tribes of West Florida--Amacano, Chine, Chacato, Chisca and Pansacola--and their first contacts with Spanish explorers, colonists, and missionaries. He also gives significant perspective to the forebears of the Lower Creeks, with an emphasis on the late 17th century, when Spanish documents recorded the important events of the interior regions of the Southeast.