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Inca Garcilaso de la Vegas La Florida del Inca (1605) is an account of the 1539-44 De Soto invasion of Mississippian chiefdoms inland of the Florida peninsula and the first history of the Americas by an Indigenous American historian to be published on a printing press. This article examines Pierre Richelets Histoire de la Floride (1670), the first translation of La Florida del Inca from Spanish into any other language, and the only French translation of this work. At first glance, Richelet's translation appears to adapt the source text to the conventions of seventeenth-century relations de voyage (travel narratives). However, I argue that Richelet' translation is better understood as an experiment in paraphrase, a form of translation that challenges the balance of power between author and translator. This article attends to Richelets translation practices in the context of seventeenth-century theories of paraphrase, compares the translation and source text, and considers the author's and translators work as lexicographers. I demonstrate that Richelet claimed an identity as a paraphraste and as a lexicographer by enacting violence over a source text by an Indigenous American author. At the same time, this article reveals Garcilasos enduring presence in early French theories of translation, where his work was instrumental in charting the distinction between paraphrase and metaphrase.