Missions in the Calusa.

Nolan, Charles E.

John H. Hann has produced a comprehensive English source book concerning the Calusa Indians of South Florida and their neighbors as seen through Spanish eyes. The volume was prepared to supplement source material from recent archaeological excavations concerning South Florida Native Americans (p. i).

The central event of this volume is the 1697 Franciscan mission to the Calusa. Part One deals with this mission, its background, and its immediate aftermath. Parts Two and Three provide additional documentation about the Calusa in the late sixteenth and early eighteenth centuries respectively. Within each part, documents are grouped "in roughly chronological order" (p. 49) and are preceded by a brief, informative commentary. Each part in turn is preceded by a short introduction. William H. Marquardt, whose companion volume on archaeological and paleo-environmental findings was in preparation, wrote a brief general introduction to the book.

The Calusa Indians whom Europeans encountered in South Florida in the early sixteenth century formed a "complex and powerful society" with their own religious beliefs, rituals, and art. The Calusa remain enigmatic to historians because they achieved this sophistication while living as fishers, hunters, and gatherers rather than farmers (p. xv). By the mid-eighteenth century, inter-tribal wars, fed by European colonial hostilities, had virtually exterminated the Calusa.

The Franciscans' brief mission to the Calusa in late 1697 was based on the presupposition that the Native Americans sincerely wished to be incorporated into the Catholic Church (baptized); Spain simply needed to provide the missionaries to accomplish this task. In fact, the mission was marked by lack of appreciation for contrasting cultures, mutual distrust, physical violence, and, in the end, the missionaries' flight. Hann notes that one fortuitous result of the mission was the subsequent detailed accounts of Calusa and the failed mission (pp. 42-45).

The heart of the documents that Hann has gathered and translated is the historical portrait that emerges of the Calusa themselves. The documents provide numerous passages on the Calusa's religious beliefs and practices as seen and interpreted by the Spanish. The Indians' great respect for and rituals concerning the dead were striking (pp. 423-424). Some Calusas equated conversion with enslavement (p. 89). On one occasion, they demanded that their own religion remain in place after conversion and that their tradition of not punishing children be respected (pp. 328, 421).

The volume provides valuable documentation for understanding the Spanish missionary endeavor in Florida. Spanish policy dictated that the mission be accomplished "by gentle means and without violence," while at the same time safeguarding the missionaries themselves (p. 211). In practice, the cross and the sword often went hand in hand. The missionaries viewed their apostolic task as a "holy conquest" (pp. 90-91). In frustration at the Calusa's obstinate resistance to conversion, one report requested that missionaries' "conquest of their souls" be supported by a military escort of twenty to twenty-five soldiers for the protection of the Indians as well as the missionaries (pp. 424-431).

The missionaries undertook their task with zeal, but often without special training. In his 1690 order to the Franciscans, the king requested missionaries who were mature, skilled in native language, and experienced in teaching and administering the sacraments to the Indians (pp. 92-95). The documents do not indicate, however, that the Florida Franciscans went through a formal program of acculturation and missionary orientation as did their contemporary colleagues in Mexico and Texas.

Unlike modern Christian missionaries, the Spanish Fathers and Brothers as well as colonial officials approached their apostolic endeavor with little understanding of or appreciation for Indian culture in general and religion in particular. The Calusa were "heathens" (pp. 56, 95), held in tyranny by the devil and destined for eternal punishment (p. 88), motivated only by self-interest (p. 210). The Calusa's religious rites were idolatries, obscenities, and crude superstitions (pp. 170, 422); their way of life was based on false beliefs (p. 165); their wish for conversion was motivated solely by a desire for gifts (p. 166). According to one missionary, the Indians "and all their forebears have been enemies of God" (p. 242). Another said the indicators of Indian conversion would be to burn idols, to dress "in a Spanish manner, and to be instructed in all things of the Christian faith" (p. 244).

The Calusa's religious beliefs and practices were more deeply ingrained than the missionaries anticipated (pp. 422-424). Traditional religious beliefs, rituals and practices such as polygamy were not easily exchanged for the Christian proclamation of a truer knowledge of the creator and a more certain understanding of afterlife.

This volume also provides a fascinating portrait of both the theory and the concrete workings of the Patronato Real. Colonization and evangelization went hand in hand as government, military, and religious leaders saw the need to both pacify and convert Native Americans. However, petty conflicts frequently impeded effective implementation of this secular-religious mission and the bureaucratic labyrinth often interminably delayed even necessary actions. In 1617, the Florida Franciscans accused the local governor of sacrificing the Spanish evangelization mission to greed for the amber trade (pp. 12-18). In 1680, the king, acting on the advice of the Council of the Indies, ordered Cuban officials to initiate the mission to the Calusa; the mission was delayed seventeen years by the financial and political in-fighting of local personnel (pp. 30-41 and Section One documents). The plan to bring the remaining Calusa to Cuba in 1710 was killed by bureaucratic procrastination and in-fighting. In 1720, the king was still awaiting a report that had been requested in 1711 (pp. 344-345). In 1730, the king, rightly frustrated at the lack of response from local officials, ordered the implementation of his long-delayed mandate (pp. 382-389).

Hann is meticulous in documenting his source material and conscientious in pointing out the physical limitations of the film or photocopies from which he worked (pp. 133-134, 299-305, 418-419).

Hann's translation is "as literal as possible while maintaining intelligibility" (p. xiii). The reader must therefore often struggle through long, winding bureaucratic prose. A single sentence segment is illustrative: . . . and the branch that could be used for this purpose, in addition to the alms that are collected, and the places where the 270 Indians alluded to might be staying, who, the dead bishop advises, had been reduced to the holy faith, and . . ." (p. 385). Some words in such a literal translation are confusing: "fiscal" instead of bursar," visitor" instead of "visitator"; "advice boat" (p. 403).

The material itself - repetitive bureaucratic reports - makes this book difficult, at times torturous reading. The documents are filled with obsequious protocol (thanking the king for his religious zeal), frequent repetitions of the same facts, and continuous self-justification and finger-pointing. But this is just what Hann intended to provide-detailed, overlapping documentation concerning the Calusa as seen though Spanish eyes - rich source material for both novice and experienced historians to digest or interpret. Hann has made a valuable contribution not only to Native American and early Florida history but also to a better understanding of the Spanish missionary effort in the future United-states.