First Encounters: Spanish Explorations in the Caribbean and the United States, 1492-1570

by Jerald T. Milanich (Editor), Susan Milbrath (Editor)

An excellent paradigm of what historical archaeology and history have to offer in illuminating out past. Skillfully edited…Milanich and Milbrath have impressively skimmed the cream of the past decade of research.” –Bruce D. Smith, Smithsonian Institution

Drawing on the most recent historical and archaeological research, First Encounters describes the period of early Spanish contact with New World peoples. This series of highly readable essays reports original research and investigations mounted over the last ten years, a decade of remarkable breakthroughs in our knowledge about significant events in the first decades after 1492.
In nontechnical language the authors invite us to play Watson to their Sherlockian investigations. We are made privy to the modus operandi of anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians as they assemble clues from historic documents, topographic features, and excavated artifacts to map out the neighborhood boundaries of Puerto Real, Hispaniola, abandoned in 1578, or to establish which sites in the southeast United States can legitimately claim that “de Soto slept here.” We learn how Columbus’s ship Niña must have smelled on her 1498 voyage, how the discovery of a pig mandible helped nail down the site of Anhaica, de Soto’s 1539-1540 winter camp.
 Over 150 illustrations of rare artifacts and an extensive bibliography enrich this entertaining and informative volume, which introduces the Columbus Quincentenary Series, a scholarly celebration of the 500th anniversary of Columbus’s voyages.Jerald T. Milanich is curator and Susan Milbrath assistant curator at the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville.

Genres: Nonfiction, History

232 pages, Paperback

First published October 28, 1989

About the author

Jerald T. Milanich is an American anthropologist and archaeologist, specializing in Native American culture in Florida. He is Curator Emeritus of Archaeology at the Florida Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida in Gainesville; Adjunct Professor, Department of Anthropology, College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Florida; and Adjunct Professor, Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Florida. Milanich holds a Ph.D in anthropology from the University of Florida.

Milanich has won several awards for his books. Milanich won the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Florida Archaeological Council in 2005 and the Dorothy Dodd Lifetime Achievement Award from the Florida Historical Society in 2013. He was inducted as a Fellow into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2010.

Milanich's research interests include Eastern United States archeology, pre-Columbian Southeastern U.S. native peoples, and colonial period native American-European/Anglo relations in the America. In May 1987 he was cited in a New York Times article:

Milanich is married to anthropologist Maxine Margolis, also a professor at the University of Florida. They are the parents of historian Nara Milanich, who teaches at Columbia University.

Reviews

[Rob Smith, Jr. · Rating 1 out of 5]

What a mess! This is a series of essays with illustrations strung together that have a goal, by way of the title, to depict first encounters by the Spanish explorers. That is generally done. But it's mighty sketchy as the focus are a handful of explorers and everything is done by practically every writer to paint a picture of nice innocent Spanish explorers who are being brave and finding a new world. What is nearly completely ignored is the vicious ways of the Spanish explorers. The writers that do indicate some violent tendencies go so far as to excuse them and condemn the indians and French for being violent. What really rots in all this is that as each Spanish tale is unfolded vats of archaeological evidence is given to support the trips...that is, except the evidence that exists to tell the tale of the death spread in the name of Spain and Catholicism by the same Spanish explorers. How can a writer map out so much and leave out so much? How can one part completely brush over what Menendez did to the French...twice? The writer of Menendez spends all kinds of verbiage about the Menendez trip and the archaeological evidence of it all - except the cutting off of French heads. Did the writer find the incident to disturbing to write? Wouldn't the editors pull the writers chain and point out something was left out? Nope. Again, any indication of violence is brushed aside and pages are written about disease killing off the indians. Suddenly archaeological evidence is not needed about disease and hearsay is warmly embraced. The last section of this book is the worst. It meanders over artists depictions of the New World and motivations and reasoning behind the artwork. After the other chapters being tied to archaeology suddenly there's an aesthetic examination of artistic interpretation. There are far better histories out there and this is a waste to be avoided. If politics are the reasons for the white washing of history what else can be trusted in what is written?