Hernando de Escalante Fontaneda

Hernando de Escalante Fontaneda was a Spanish shipwreck survivor who lived among the Native Americans of Florida for 17 years. His circa 1575 memoir, Memoria de las cosas y costa y indios de la Florida, is one of the most valuable contemporary accounts of American Indian life from that period. The manuscript can be found in the General Archive of the Indies. In all, he produced five documents describing the peoples of Native Florida.