Few people today are aware that a century and a half before there was a San Francisco in California, a San Francisco mission existed in northern Florida where it flourished for more than a century. San Antonio, Santa Diego, Santa Fe--all were missions that once served Florida Indian groups, just as missions with the same names were home to Indians in Texas, California, and New Mexico.

The missions of La Florida, Spain's name for the southeastern United States, have been one of American history's bes kept secrets. Beginning in the 1560s, first Jesuit and then Franciscan friars established more than 150 missions among native peoples from south Florida to the Chesapeake Bay; the largest number were in northern Florida. By the time Spain relinquished La Florida to Great Britain in 1763 only two missions and less than one hundred Indians remained. What once had been a mission system impacting the lives of thousands of native people over many generations had been destroyed.		Map of La Florida showing location of San Luis. *

With the removal of the Hispanic presence from La Florida memories of the missions soon faded. The wood and thatch mission buildings, like the native peoples whom they served, disappeared from the landscape. Unlike in California, Texas, or the American Southwest where a continued Spanish influence inspired public awareness of past missions and a Hispanic heritage, the missions of Spanish Florida were lost.

Starting in the late 1940s several generations of archaeologists, aided by documentary evidence, began to search for the north Florida missions. By the end of the 1970s a handful of field projects had been carried out. It was thought that those excavations, along with information provided by historians, had pretty much uncovered the story of the La Florida missions.

Today we know that is not true. Research carried out since 1980, much in the last several years, is literally rewriting the history of the missions and the native people who lived at them. Even as once forgotten missions are being brought to public attention, new perspectives on those missions are emerging and old histories are being recast. New facts have been integrated into a revisionist rendering of the missions, one that portrays the mission system as a formidable economic strategy built on the labor of the native people. Together archaeology and history are a powerful tool to give voice to those people who for two centuries labored in the fields colonial Florida.

About the lecturer:
Milanich is a Curator and Program Director at the Florida Museum of Natural History as well as a Professor of Anthropology at UF. He is also a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of Archaeology magazine.

* Note: the image used above has been borrowed from the website for the Mission of San Luis.