Summary:
In 1591, Flemish goldsmith Theodore de Bry and his sons published a book that still shapes how we picture the Timucua to this day. Supposedly its imagery was based on paintings by French painter Jacques LeMoyne, who was stationed at Fort Caroline… but was it really? And how accurate is the picture they present of local indigenous life?
Bibliography:
Laudonnière and Fort Caroline: History and Documents by Charles E. Bennett, 2001 (available at JPL)
The DeBry Collection provided by University of Geneva, 2023, at https://bodmerlab.unige.ch/constellations/de-bry
Secret Jacksonville: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful, and Obscure by Bill Delaney, 2021 (available at JPL)
“Timucuan Village” by EverGreene Painting Studios in U.S. Capitol Westward Expansion Corridor, 1994, viewable at https://www.aoc.gov/explore-capitol-campus/art/cox-corridors-murals
Painter in a Savage Land: The Strange Saga of the First European Artist in North America by Miles Harvey, 2008 (available at JPL)
Three Voyages by René de Laudonnière (translated by Charles E. Bennett), 2001 (available at JPL)
The New World: the First Pictures of America by Stefan Lorant, 1946, at https://archive.org/details/newworldfirstpic00lora/mode/1up (also available at JPL)
“The Devil in the Details: What are Brazilian war clubs and Pacific seashells doing in 400-year-old engravings of Florida Indians?” in Handfuls of History by Jerald Milanich, 2017 (available at JPL)
"Fact or Fiction: Theodore DeBry's 1591 Engravings of Early Florida Indians" by Jerald Milanich in Adventures in Florida Archaeology, 2016, at https://myfloridahistory.org/fhsai/magazine/2016
Representations of the Overseas World in the DeBry Collection of Voyages 1590-1634 by Michiel van Groesen (available via interlibrary loan)
Image Credit:
“Theodor de Bry's Engravings of the Timucua,” by Theodor de Bry, 1591, at https://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/254323
Music Credit:
“The Last Timucuan,” by Emmett Carlisle
Voice actors (in order of appearance):
- Jacques Le Moyne, a French artist and cartographer: Fulton Burns
- Richard Hakluyt, a British Anglican priest: Isaac Brown
- “A Brief Narration of Those Things Which Befell the French in the Province of Florida in America,” a book published by Theodor de Bry: Shelby Ellis
