"Florida has had many frontiers. Imagination, greed, missionary zeal, disease, war, and diplomacy have shaped its historical boundaries. Bodies of water, soil, flora and fauna, the patterns of Native American occupation, and waves of colonization have defined Florida's frontiers. Paul E. Hoffman tells the story of those frontiers and how the land and the people shaped them during the three centuries from 1562 to 1860." "For this new study of Florida's frontier heritage, Hoffman has drawn from a broad range of secondary works and from his research in Spanish archival sources of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Florida's Frontiers presents an important chapter in the history of the United States and will be a welcomed addition to the history of the Sunshine State."--Jacket.