The Spanish Missions of La Florida ed. by Bonnie G. McEwan (review)

144BOOK REVIEWS experiences,which could help serve to meet the needs of CathoUcs working in war-torn areas around the world today. Donald J. Dietrich Boston College American The Spanish Missions ofLa Florida. Edited by Bonnie G. McEwan. (GainesvUle: University Press of Florida. 1993. Pp. xxvi, 458. $49.95 clothbound; $24.95 paperback.) The 400th anniversary of the "martyrdom" of the five Servants of God, Pedro de Corpa and Companions, on the coast of present-day Georgia in September, 1597, renders timely a review of this volume, indispensable for a knowledge of the first 200 years of CathoUc evangelization Ln the Southeast. In this case the knowledge is provided as a result of joining to the historians' analysis of literary remains the archaeologists' reading of the physical traces left in the sands and sou. Brought together in this anthology are sixteen archaeological reports originaUy pubUshed in a special issue of The Florida Anthropologist (Vol. 44, Nos. 2-4 [1991]), and intended to provide an update on mission archaeology.The subject is the "Florida Crescent," a mission system with its fulcrum at St. Augustine and extending north to St. Catherines Island, off Brunswick, Georgia, and west to Mission San Luis in TaUahassee. The authors are the archaeologists whose competency, dedication, and labors have in two decades made known a largely ignored era ofAmerican history, dispeUed romantic images, and cast an impartial light upon the meeting of the Hispanic and native American cultures. Historians wiU find their reports technical but essential raw material for writing the history of the Florida missions. In the first essay, David Hurst Thomas of the American Museum of Natural History outlines his five-year search for the mission on St. Catherines (Santa Catalina de Guale), where the use of remote sensing technology led Ln 1981 to the uncovering of the remains of the church, friary, and well. It was at this mission that Father Miguel de Añon and BrotherAntonio de Badajoz were kiUed on September 17, 1597. Thomas discerned the Lines of the original church destroyed in the Guale rebelUon which took their lives, as weU as of the second church, which flourished from 1604 untU its destruction by British forces in 1680. In the campo santo or burial ground, here and generaUy in Florida under the church, were found the remains of at least 431 individuals, an abundance of crosses, medallions, and medals testifying to the Catholic faith of the Guale population.Thomas outlined a plan for future exploration of the native pueblo and the Spanish dwellings and fields mentioned in contemporary documents. Rebecca Sanders then takes up the story with a description of the excavations (1985-1990) on Amelia Island, further south Ui Florida, where, on the site of an earUer mission of Santa Maria deYamassee, the friars in 1686 relo- book reviews145 cated Mission Santa Catalina and the Guale people. This mission became the northern frontier until it too was abandoned, Ln 1702, before the marauding British. Kathleen Hoffman reports on the 1988 archaeological project at the Franciscan friary in St. Augustine. The friary, first constructed in 1588, just four centuries before the archaeologists sought its traces,was named San Francisco.The buUdings on its site are today known as St. Francis Barracks and serve as the headquarters of the Florida Department of MiUtary Affairs.This miUtary occupancy began with the British occupation of 1763, but the buUdings have also served Spanish and laterAmerican mUitary forces. From 1606 to 1763,however, it was the headquarters of the Franciscans Ln Florida and Cuba, the seat of the Custody and later Province of Santa Elena, and its church of the Immaculate Conception was perhaps St.Augustine's most popular place of worship. It was here that the relics of the "martyrs" of St. Catherines were brought and venerated in 1603. One small example of the utiUty of archaeology to church history emerges from Hoffman's examination of Indian domestic pottery remains in the Franciscan refuse heaps of the late seventeenth century.This was a period when displaced Indian populations from elsewhere in Florida sought refuge from British torches in St.Augustine. Noting the evident prevalence ofnon-local Indian pottery at the mission, a phenomenon not...