Mount Royal is an ancient American Indian site that includes a burial mound, the remains of a Spanish mission, and an associated village. The mound was built around 1,000 years ago by the Freshwater Timucua or their ancestors, and members of this same group later populated the Spanish mission of San Antonio de Anacape beginning in the late sixteenth century. The site drew the attention of notable observers and investigators over centuries, including naturalist William Bartram, who visited in 1766 and 1774 and described a magnificent Indian mound, surrounding old fields and groves, and a broad, carefully formed highway leading to an artificial lake. In the nineteenth century, Bartram's observations figured prominently in debates about the origins of such mounds. Clarence B. Moore excavated the large mound in 1893 and 1894, uncovering human burials and artifacts including shell implements, stone tools and ornaments, beads, pottery, and copper objects; he concluded that the copper artifacts were made by ancient American Indians, and archaeologists later recognized them as representative of the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex of the Mississippian period. Archaeologist B. Calvin Jones, who worked for the State of Florida from 1968 to 1998, investigated the area south of the mound beginning in 1983, with additional work in 1994 and 1995, and found evidence of an American Indian village occupied before and after European contact, as well as American Indian houses, European buildings from the Spanish mission period, and artifacts linked to both sixteenth-century Jesuit efforts and later Franciscan missions, helping corroborate the association with San Antonio de Anacape. The mound is the final resting place for many Timucua and is considered a sacred space by many people today.