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of the contact. Slave raiding expeditions along the Atlantic coast began early in the 1500s (Saunders 1992), and both French and Spanish efforts to claim this region resulted in short-lived 16th-century settlements ranging from Florida to South Carolina. As a point of contact for the Central American and Caribbean segments of the Spanish empire, the Atlantic coast may have been particularly prone to catastrophic disease incidents (Brose 1984; Deagan 1990b; Hann 1996; Saunders 1992). The demographic, historical, archaeological, and bioarchaeological data suggest that such was the case. The isolated interior in which the Apalachee resided did not suffer these conditions until after the Spanish initiated peace between Apalachee and their neighbors (post-1650), at which time a period of lax sociopolitical circumscription (more migration) ensued. Althoughthe1528 Narváez expedition contacted the Apalachee and de Soto actually wintered there in the years 1539–40, the effects of introduced diseases were apparently minimal. Hann (1988) has proposed that the hostile nature of the interaction between European and indigenous communities best explains this anomaly. Indeed, the preponderance of data suggests that the Apalachee were given wide berth by their contemporaries . Linguistically distinct from neighboring groups and perennially at war with neighboring groups, the relatively populous province of Apalachee may have experienced a degree of isolation, represented in settlement distributions and accounts of geographic buffer zones physically isolating the polity. UltiFigure 8.1. Graphic representation of the differential response proposed for Apalachee and Guale. Important dates are listed along the bottom with individual sample dates of use represented by the length of the arrow bars. The large ‘x’s’ represent the approximate timing of the demographic transition within each province when population sizes began to decline signi¤cantly. 162 Chapter 8 mately, it may have been the success of their precontact sociopolitical strategy that saved Apalachee from the worst of the mission experience. Isolated and at war, things regionally may have seemed problematic. Internally, however, Apalachee was a large, vibrant, and populous nation and would remain comparatively so throughout much of the 17th century. Ranjel, a de Soto Chronicler, recorded: If their hands and noses were cut off they made no more account of it than if each of them had been a Mucius Scaevola of Rome. Not one of them, for fear of death, denied that he belonged to Apalache; and when they were taken and asked from whence they were they replied proudly: “From whence am I? I am an Indian of Apalache.” And they gave one to understand that they would be insulted if they were thought to be of any other tribe than the Apalaches. (Ranjel in Bourne 1904:80) This strong sense of identity may have served the Apalachee well throughout their history. Conclusions In this book I have attempted to tether multiple lines of evidence for the purpose of incorporating a paleogenetic perspective on the historical transformation of indigenous populations in 17th-century Spanish Florida. I approached contact period anthropology from four perspectives, each of which carries tenuous and untestable assumptions: (1) bioarchaeological indicators of health, metabolic stress, and morbidity; (2) basic burial demographic information speci¤c to distinct cemeteries; (3) historical and ethnohistorical texts; and (4) paleogenetic analyses of population genetic variance transformations. Reasoned consideration of inherent weaknesses, and subsequent triangulation, of these data sources provides an opportunity to re¤ne the regional and local histories of Florida’s indigenous communities. Evidence against the position that there were a uniform response and similar disease and morbidity experiences among Florida’s converted is overwhelming . This is consistent with the work of others in this region (Larsen 2001) and the hemisphere in general (Larsen and Milner 1994). When synthesized, the preponderance of evidence suggests a regionally compartmentalized response to colonization rather than widespread and ubiquitous population size decline beginning immediately after, or even preceding, direct European contact. This book, therefore, becomes part of the growing literature in historical anthropology that dismisses colonialism as a monolithic institution (Baker and Kealhofer 1996; Henige 1986, 1998; Larsen and Milner 1994; Milner 1980, 1996). There is no biological response to colonialism in La Florida but rather biological responses to changing social conditions. Con®ating Apalachee and Guale Local and Global Histories 163 under the banner of La Florida ignores the distinct experiences and histories of these populations. Adopting the data sources and perspectives of bioarchaeology has contributed to this regional scholarship in a manner unavailable to the historian and archaeologist. Bioarchaeology’s broad consideration of both behavioral (activity patterns, disease, and...