Dr. J. Michael Francis speaks on “Murder, Martyrdom, and the Struggle for La Florida: Rethinking Spanish Florida’s Mission History, 1565-1606,” at 2 pm, Sunday, Nov. 21, the next event in the Threads of Memory Lecture series. (Free with museum admission; Sundays free to NM residents.)
Francis's talk will introduce audiences to the remarkable, yet relatively unknown, history of the earliest Franciscan missions in what is now the United States. His talk includes the 1597 murders of five Franciscan friars stationed in the northern realm of Spanish Florida, a fascinating 16th-century murder mystery that will audiences to question the nature of Spanish rule in colonial Florida.
In 2008, Francis’ students in a Spanish paleography course translated a letter referencing the Guale Indian uprising in which the friars were killed. Through their translation, the students discovered they couldn’t prove a long-held belief that the friars were martyred for chastising a baptized Indian who had married a second wife. Instead, Francis said, the friars may have disrupted Guale politics, or were somehow themselves responsible for their deaths.
“There’s no smoking gun in any of the investigation,” Francis told The Florida Times-Union at the time.
“I was under this mistaken impression that everything had already been done about Spanish Florida,” Francis said. “But what these students found in their projects is that it’s in its infancy. There are 50 more years of projects to be done.”
The Guale Indians (pronounced “wally”) were some of the first people whom Europeans met when exploring north of Mexico into what is now coastal Georgia.
Francis’ book about his research into the event, Politics, Murder, and Martyrdom in Spanish Florida: Don Juan and the Guale Uprising of 1597, will be published this year by the American Museum of Natural History.
Francis received his doctorate in Latin American History from the University of Cambridge. Since 1997, he has taught at the University of North Florida, where is a professor of history. Among his numerous honors and awards, in 2010 Francis was named the Jay I. Kislak scholar at the Library of Congress, where he will be scholar in residence for the 2010-2011 academic year. He also has a four-year Research Associate appointment at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
Upcoming in the Threads of Memory Lecture Series:
Sunday, Dec. 19, 2 pm: “Navio Quebrado: The Wreck of La Belle and the Failed French Colony in the Southwest,” lecture by maritime archaeologist Eric Ray.
Sunday, Jan. 2, 2 pm: “Kissin' Cousins: The Spanish Vihuela and the Modern Classical Guitar," performance by composer, guitarist and educator Greg Schneider.
Sunday, Jan. 9, 2 pm: “Tejiendo el Hilo: Weaving the Threads of History,” lecture by State Historian Rick Hendricks.
The Threads of Memory: Spain and the United States (El Hilo de la Memoria: España y los Estados Unidos) features nearly 140 rare documents, maps, illustrations and paintings – many of which have never been displayed outside of Spain -- from a 1602 field drawing of a buffalo to portraits of President George Washington. For five centuries, Spanish explorers, colonists and diplomats have played key roles in American culture. This exhibit explores the first 300 years of those encounters – from the friars who made first contact with Native peoples through Spain’s timely assistance to American forces in the Revolutionary War.
Each week throughout the exhibit, which closes on Jan. 9, 2011, the museum will feature lectures, musical performances, panel discussions and more to further explore the role Spain has played in shaping America as it is. After its debut in the museum’s Albert and Ethel Herzstein Changing Exhibits Gallery, the exhibit travels to the El Paso Museum of History and the Historic New Orleans Collection.
The exhibition is sponsored by the Fundación Rafael del Pino and, along with the Archivo General de Indias (General Archive of the Indies), is co-organized with the State Corporation for the Spanish Cultural Action Abroad (Sociedad Estatal para la Acción Cultural Exterior, or SEACEX), in collaboration with Spain’s Ministries for Foreign Affairs and Cooperation and Culture.
In New Mexico, the exhibition and lecture series are presented with special support from BBVA Compass Bank, the city of Santa Fe, Wells Fargo Bank, Heritage Hotels, Santa Fe University of Art & Design and the Palace Guard.
