One of the better documented accounts of the early Indians of Florida is found in the memoirs of Don d'Escalante Fontaneda, who was shipwrecked around 1549 when he was 13 years old. He was taken captive by the Calusa Indians of Florida and lived with them for 17 years before being released and returned to Spain.

Some seven years later, the mature Fontaneda wrote his memoirs, which was the first written document of Florida's earliest history, and is considered to be a basic source of information on the history and ethnography of the early Indians of Florida.

In 1854, Buckingham Smith of Washington, DC, translated and edited this rare manuscript into English. The University of Miami at Coral Gables, Florida, reprinted "The Memoirs of Don d'Esdalante Fontaneda Respecting Florida" in 1944. The original manuscript is currently housed at a library in Spain, but many Florida universities maintain translated copies of it in their Special Collections departments.

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