From Ponce de Leon to Sir Walter Raleigh: Early European Arrivals in Southeastern North America

Few people know the events that occurred in the North American Southeast before the Pilgrims’ arrival at Plymouth Rock. By 1620, the coast of Atlantic America had been extensively explored and charted by dozens of Europeans and several colonies had already been attempted. This history covers all the Spanish expeditions into Southern Atlantic America and the Gulf Coast, and the early French and English infringements into what the Spanish would ruthlessly defend as their territory. The unveiling of North America was often violent, as the Indigenous people valiantly fought to protect their cultures against the onslaught of Europeans. Interactions between the people of the two worlds generally started out friendly, but soon deteriorated as the Europeans took food and land from the local populations by force. European diseases would further decimate Indigenous populations, emptying their land for colonial farms and weakening their ability to resist the growing onslaught. Drawing extensively on eyewitness reports from the explorers themselves, this book reveals the full, complex story of the European discovery and settlement of Florida and the coastal Southeast.

James F. Hancock is a university distinguished professor (emeritus) at Michigan State University. He is the author of several books and lives in Scarborough, Maine.