One of the earliest comprehensive studies of Florida's cultural landscape, this 1859 work captures a pivotal moment in American historiography. Brinton, a pioneering American archaeologist and ethnologist, assembled what was known at the time about the Florida peninsula: its indigenous tribes, its sparse but fascinating literary record, and its material antiquities. The result is a document of remarkable scope, part ethnography, part literary criticism, part archaeological survey, all produced before systematic archaeology had really begun. For readers interested in the history of how Americans understood the indigenous past, this book is invaluable. Brinton documents the Seminole, Timucua, Calusa, and other tribes, drawing on early Spanish accounts and the few available sources. He also surveys what colonial-era literature existed about Florida, making this unusual among regional histories of the era. The book reveals both what 19th-century scholars knew and how they understood it, a window into a formative period of American historical thinking.
