Colonizers and Colonized: Indigenous Allies and the New Spanish Colonial Culture of the 1559-1561 Tristán de Luna y Arellano Settlement on Pensacola Bay, Florida

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Colonial Ventures and Native Voices: Legacies from the Spanish and Portuguese Empires", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Indigenous allies on Spanish expeditions of expansion, conquest, and colonization in the Americas throughout the 16th century are well documented. The Tristán de Luna Settlement effort was dispatched from New Spain to La Florida with 12 ships and 1,500 colonists. Luna’s complement included Mexican-born Spaniards, essentially first-generation New Spaniards, as well as 200 Aztec Indians from the Valley of Mexico, who were probably the first generation of post-colonial Aztecs. Both groups represented unique populations distinctively different than their Pre-conquest and Spanish-born counterparts. Focusing on the Aztec ceramics recovered from the recently discovered Luna Settlement site, including results of neutron activation analysis (NAA), this research characterizes a New Spanish colonial assemblage and explores the significance and experiences of indigenous peoples who were, at once, colonizers and colonized, and their role in 16th century Spanish imperial expansion in the Americas.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Colonial Ventures and Native Voices: Legacies from the Spanish and Portuguese Empires   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow