This talk discusses the narrative of Hernando Fontaneda de Escalante, a 16th century former captive and a Creole man born in Cartagena de Indias, who lived for seventeen years among the Calusa Indians of Florida. His account is considered one of the most extensive repositories of information about the Calusa, yet it has received little sustained attention from literary scholars. The presentation explores how his text engages juridically with Spanish conquest, resulting in the emergence of a genre we might call a “narrative of unsettlement.”

Anna Brickhouse is Professor of English at the University of Virginia.

Sponsored by the Center for Cultural Studies with staff support provided by the Institute for Humanities Research, UCSC.