For the study of Spanish Florida's missions and natives the 1630 memorial by Fray Francisco Alonso de Jesus is a most important document that, strangely, has been little used to date. It ranks in significance with the 1675 letter of Bishop Gabriel Díaz Vara Calderón covering his pastoral visitation of Florida, published in 1936 by the Smithsonian Institution Press in a translation by Lucy N. Wenhold. Fray Alonso's memorial covers some of the same ground as the bishop's letter, but contains additional information dating from almost a half century earlier just before the beginning of the formal evangelization of the province of Apalachee. Fray Alonso covers topics such as the characteristics of the land, its trees and plants and minerals, its Indians and their customs, appearance, clothing, houses, council house, languages, government, inheritance system, tribute payment to native leaders, games, music, and dance, burial practices in heathen times, heathens who were clamoring for baptism in 1630, the number of doctrinas and villages and places belonging to the doctrinas, the number of Christians and catechumens, and the manner of construction of the churches.
Council house sales, homelessness and contact with the criminal justice system: Evidence from the NCDS and BCS70 birth cohorts
