October 17, 2019 - 6:00 pm -8:00 pm
The Beaches Museum Chapel
The Indigenous communities of Florida were far more numerous and powerful than the straggling Spanish town of St. Augustine or the short-lived French community of Fort Caroline. At its height, all of “Spanish” Florida consisted of only 1,500 people. But in the early sixteenth century, the Indigenous population of present-day Florida was well over 300,000. Using her own research on the Yamasee Indians (who had homelands on Amelia Island, in St. Augustine, and elsewhere), Dr. Denise Bossy debunks the major myths of Spanish conquest.
Bossy is an Associate Professor of History at the University of North Florida. She received her Ph.D., M.Phil., and M.A. from Yale University, and her B.A. from Princeton University. She specializes in local history, especially cross-cultural relations between American Indians, Europeans, and Africans in early Florida and the Southeast. She is the prize-winning author of many articles and book chapters, and the editor of the book “The Yamasee Indians: From Florida to South Carolina” (published in 2018 by the University of Nebraska Press). Her current book project is “A History of the Yamasee Indians,” and her research has been supported by numerous institutions including the National Endowment for the Humanities and UNF.
This event is free to Beaches Museum members with a suggested $5 donation for non-members. Please visit the Beaches Museum website www.beachesmuseum.org or call 904-241-5657 for further information.
