| Abstract: |
For over 500 years Apalachee society was organized in a hierarchical manner, with a small number of hereditary elite occupying the top of the social and political pyramid. That structure endured through several dramatic transformations: the abandonment of chiefly centers in the late fifteenth century, the intrusion of Spanish forces in the sixteenth century, and incorporation into the Spanish colonial empire in the seventeenth century. Throughout the polity's life, the elite maintained distinct identities, separate from those of their fellow Apalachee. However, the ideological underpinnings that legitimated elite status and prerogatives clearly changed over time. I argue here that efforts by the elite to obtain and maintain their positions involved the construction of distinct elite identities (and attendant symbolic markers). Furthermore, the (re)construction of elite identities contributed to several of the major transformations of Apalachee society, including the seventeenth-century acculturation (Hispanization) of the Apalachee.
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