The Timucua Indians lived in the Northeast and Central part of Florida. They are the Indian tribe that gave curious Europeans their first picture of Native Americans. These were paintings done by artist Jacques LeMoyne, who came with a French expedition to North Florida in 1564. His assignment was to map the coast and to portray the natives. The Timucua Indians were a tall, handsome people, noted for their heavily tattooed bodies. They survived living with French and Spanish explorers for many years, but their numbers slowly dwindled. The Timucua Indians, who once had numbered 15,000, became a vanished tribe by the mid-eighteenth century. In their 2,000 years of occupation, the Timucua Indians did little to alter the natural landscape. Their remaining burial and ceremonial mounds and shell middens are like an unwritten book about the people who lived here. In addition to introducing the reader to Florida's Timucua Indians, this book describes the importance of anthropology and archaeology, identifies important documenters of Timucua Indian history, and describes several historical Timucua Indian mounds and middens that exist today.