The History of Florida (24 page)

The Missions of Spanish Florida · 109

Title page of a diction-

ary and grammar to

proof

the language of the

Timucua natives of

Florida, compiled by

Franciscan missionary

Francisco Pareja in 1614.

in western Timucua, the ball game had lost most of its religious overtones

by the 1670s.

The Spanish intrusion had its most decisive impact in the material sphere

on agriculture in adding many new cultigens and introducing new activities

such as raising chickens and hogs, dairy farming, and animal husbandry in

general. In contrast to missions in California and elsewhere, chickens, hogs,

and cattle belonged to individual Indians or to Indian communities. Dispo-

sition of the cattle was controlled by Indian leaders, not the friars, but friars

control ed communal plantings of maize, wheat, and other crops in sup-

port of the church and feeding of the poor and incapacitated. In Apalachee

by 1695, the two keys for the building in which produce was stored were

entrusted to the chief and another leading man chosen by the governor’s

deputy. Export of produce to St. Augustine and Havana increased the area

110 · John H. Hann

under cultivation and, consequently, the labor performed by ordinary Indi-

ans. The degree to which the laborers benefitted, if any, is not known.

For Florida’s aboriginal peoples, the coming of the Europeans and adop-

tion of the mission way of life under Spanish auspices were disastrous in

the long run. Their population col apse was an inevitable consequence of

their encounter with the pathogens of Old World peoples. But in many cases

their extinction resulted from preventable human factors: a political y and

economical y motivated struggle for empire among English, Spanish, and

French; the English determination to oust the Spaniards from Florida and

eliminate native peoples who had allied with the Spaniards; and the Eng-

lish demand for Indian slaves. Without such human factors, some of the

missionized peoples eventual y would have acquired immunity to the new

diseases and may have survived to the present, as did their Creek neighbors

and many southwestern native groups.

Notes

1. Gabriel Díaz Vara Calderón, letter to the queen, 1675 Archivo General de Indias

(Sevil e), Santo Domingo, 151; microfilm furnished by Wil iam H. Marquardt. Cf. Lucy

L. Wenhold, ed. and trans.,
A
17th-Century
Letter
of
Gabriel
Díaz
Vara
Calderón,
Bishop
of
Cuba,
Describing
the
Indians
and
Indian
Missions
of
Florida
(Washington: Smithsonian proof

Miscel aneous Collections, vol. 95, no. 16, 1936).

2. Fray Francisco Alonso de Jesus, “1630 Memorial of Fray Francisco Alonso de Jesus

on Spanish Florida’s Missions and Natives,” edited and translated by John H. Hann,
The

Americas
50, no. 1 (July 1993):88.

Bibliography

Boyd, Mark F., Hale G. Smith, and John W. Griffin.
Here
They
Once
Stood:
The
Tragic
End
of
the
Apalachee
Missions.
Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1951.

Gannon, Michael V.
The
Cross
in
the
Sand:
The
Early
Catholic
Church
in
Florida,
1513–1870.

Rev. ed. Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1983.

———. [pseud. Charles W. Spellman]. “The ‘Golden Age’ of the Florida Missions, 1632–

1674.”
Catholic
Historical
Review
51, no. 3 (October 1965):354–72.

Geiger, Maynard, O.F.M.
The
Franciscan
Conquest
of
Florida
(1573–1618).
Washington: Catholic University of America, 1937.

Hann, John H.
Apalachee:
The
Land
Between
the
Rivers.
Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1988.

———. “Demographic Patterns and Changes in Mid-Seventeenth-Century Timucua and

Apalachee.”
Florida
Historical
Quarterly
64, no. 4 (April 1986):371–92.

———
.
History
of
the
Timucua
Indians
and
Missions.
Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1996.

The Missions of Spanish Florida · 111

———. “The Indian Vil age on Apalachee Bay’s RíoChachave on the Solana Map of 1683.”

Florida
Anthropologist
48, no. 1 (March 1995):61–66.

———. “The Mayaca and Jororo and Missions to Them.” In
The
Spanish
Missions
of
La

Florida,
edited by Bonnie G. McEwan, pp. 111–40. Gainesvil e: University Press of

Florida, 1993.

———
.
Missions
to
the
Calusa.
Gainesville: University of Florida Press/Florida Museum of Natural History, 1991.

———. “St. Augustine’s Fal out from the Yamasee War.”
Florida
Historical
Quarterly
68, no.

2 (October 1989):180–200.

———
.
Summary
Guide
to
Spanish
Florida
Missions
and
Visitas
with
Churches
in
the
Sixteenth
and
Seventeenth
Centuries.
Washington: Academy of American Franciscan His-

tory, 1990 (reprint from
The
Americas
56, no. 4 [April 1990]:417–513, with il ustrations

added).

———. “Twilight of the Mocamo and Guale Aborigines as Portrayed in the 1695 Spanish

Visitation.”
Florida
Historical
Quarterly
66, no. 1 (July 1987):1–24.

———. “Visitations and Revolts in Florida, 1656–1695.”
Florida
Archaeology
7
(1993).

Kessel , John L.
Kiva,
Cross,
and
Crown:
The
Pecos
Indians
and
New
Mexico
1540–1840.

Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1987 (original y published Washington:

National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, 1979).

Lyon, Eugene.
Richer
Than
We
Thought:
The
Material
Culture
of
Sixteenth-Century
St.
Augustine.
St. Augustine:
El
Escribano,
St. Augustine Journal of History, St. Augustine

Historical Society, 1992.

Oré, Luis Jerónimo de.
The
Martyrs
of
Florida
(1513–1616).
Translated by Maynard Geiger.

New York: Joseph F. Wagner, 1936.

proof

Vargas Ugarte, Ruben. “The First Jesuit Mission in Florida.” In
Historical
Records
and
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ies,
edited by Thomas F. Meehan, 35:59–148. New York: United States Catholic Histori-

cal Society, 1935.

Worth, John E. “The Timucuan. Missions of Spanish Florida and the Rebellion of 1656.”

Ph.D. diss., University of Florida, 1992.

7

Raids, Sieges, and International Wars

Daniel L. Schafer

In the middle years of the seventeenth century, Spain’s La Florida colony en-

tered a period of steep decline from which it never recovered. Epidemic dis-

eases, including yellow fever, smal pox, and plague, swept away thousands

of Native Americans at the coastal and inland Franciscan mission vil ages.

By 1655, only 26,000 Christian Indians remained at the thirty-eight mission

vil ages. Four years later, a measles epidemic claimed 10,000 more lives. La

Florida had become what the historian Amy Bushnell has called a “hollow

peninsula” with only two population centers: the provincial capital of St. Au-

proof

gustine situated on the Atlantic coast at the northeast of the peninsula, and

the Apalachee province located approximately 180 miles to the west amidst

the rich agricultural lands of today’s Leon and Jefferson Counties. A vast

and mostly deserted core lay between, with a small number of farms and

cattle ranches controlled by floridanos (persons of Spanish descent born in

Florida) situated near the road from St. Augustine to Apalachee. Corn and

other provisions transported from Apalachee by Native Americans subject

to the Spanish-imposed labor levy represented a vital food supply for resi-

dents of St. Augustine.

Also along the road from Apalachee were strategical y located mission

vil ages populated by the survivors of epidemics, hostile attacks by pirates,

predatory Indian warriors from La Florida, and after 1670, warfare between

English and Spaniards engaged in a contest for empire. By 1690, Guale vil-

lages along the Georgia coast and sea islands had been abandoned and the

surviving residents relocated to three Mocama missions within fifty miles

of St. Augustine. The once numerous Timucua from Potano and along the

St. Johns River had also suffered drastic demographic decline and been re-

located to mission centers along the road from St. Augustine to Apalachee.

As the demographic decline continued, the annual levy of laborers sent

· 112 ·

Raids, Sieges, and International Wars · 113

proof

Castillo de San Marcos, St. Augustine, Florida. Courtesy of the National Archives, Kew,

England.

to St. Augustine by the local chiefs bore more heavily on the surviving men

in the vil ages. The burden intensified after Jamaica was conquered by Eng-

lish forces in 1655. Fearing an attack on La Florida, Governor Diego de Re-

bolledo demanded that 500 Apalachee and Timucua warriors be sent to St.

Augustine, which led to a Timucua rebellion. By the time it was suppressed,

many alienated mission Indians had migrated north of Spanish-controlled

zones to join with the Apalachicola and Yamassee, who would later be

known as the Lower Creek.

La Florida was victimized by hurricanes, drought, and severe food

shortages, as wel as raids by Native Americans and attacks by pirates. In

1668, Captain Robert Searles led a band of 100 murderous buccaneers on a

midnight raid through the streets of St. Augustine. While Spanish soldiers

fled to the woods or cowered in the fort, the raiders plundered houses and

churches, kil ed sixty persons in the streets, and kidnapped women and

children for ransom. Alarmed by the escalating violence, the viceroy of New

Spain at Mexico City sent additional soldiers to the garrison and authorized

114 · Daniel L. Schafer

funds for a stone fort to protect St. Augustine. Construction began in fall

1672, but the Castillo de San Marcos was not completed until 1695.

Even before construction began, a greater threat to the survival of La

Florida occurred approximately 215 miles north of St. Augustine. In April

1670, acting under authorization of a charter granted by Charles II, the True

and Absolute Lords and Proprietors of Carolina established a colony of 130

English men and women on the Ashley River, today at Charleston. English

colonials from Barbados followed, bringing enslaved Africans with them.

By 1690, they had accomplished what the Spanish at La Florida were unable

to do in two centuries of colonial rule: establish a permanent and expand-

ing base of settlers with a prospering economy based on cattle, naval stores,

cultivation of rice, and exports of deerskins obtained in trade with Native

Americans.

The Carolina colonists’ interaction with Native Americans had a debili-

tating impact on Spanish Florida. Seeking to advance beyond their initial

coastal settlements, the Carolina leaders took advantage of traditional hos-

tilities between the natives of the region, providing trade goods and firearms

to one group of Native Americans and encouraging them to attack another.

The Westoes of Savannah River attacked and destroyed the coastal Indians

and opened the way for inland expansion of English settlements. By 1680,

proof

however, it was the Westoes who were standing in the way. English traders

therefore struck alliances with the Apalachicola and Yamassee and encour-