The History of Florida (27 page)

province at peace, a few Spaniards were able to export oranges to Charleston

and to begin exploiting the forests for shipments of lumber and naval stores.

Smal numbers of Creek began moving into vacant lands near today’s

Tal ahassee that, prior to the 1704 invasion led by James Moore, had been

inhabited for centuries by thousands of Apalachee. Chief Tonaby settled a

vil age of approximately 300 Creek, and a larger vil age was located nearby

at Lake Miccosukee. Farther south, on the west bank of the Suwannee River

near the Gulf coast, a vil age of 300 to 400 Creek led by a chief known as

the White King was established in the late 1750s. These newly settled Creek

vil ages benefited from proximity to trade opportunities at the fort on the St.

Marks River, recently renovated and frequented by merchants who traveled

to St. Augustine and Havana.

Other Creek migrants came to the Alachua Savanna near the former

ranch of La Chua where cattle stil grazed wild in the grasslands. Chief Cow-

keeper and his brother Long Warrior had moved from the Chattahoochee

River in central Georgia circa 1750 to settle Cuscowil a (near present-day

Micanopy) with several hundred men, women, and children. The num-

bers of Creek migrants at Alachua and Apalachee were small at first, and

their early settlements may have been seasonal camps where Creek hunters

obtained skins to sell to European traders. By 1763, however, the seasonal

proof

habitations had become permanent towns. As Brent R. Weisman discusses

later in this volume, the migrants were in the process of transforming their

identity from Creek to Seminole.

After generations of failing to promote immigration to Florida, Spanish

officials final y brought 363 settlers from the Canary Islands to St. Augustine

in 1757. They settled on empty land north of the town between the Castillo

and Fort Mose. According to the historian Paul E. Hoffman, three hundred

more “Isleños” arrived the following year and settled outside the southern

wal of the town. The population of Florida was slowly increasing during the

years of peace following 1748, still concentrated on the east in the vicinity of

St. Augustine, and on the west at Apalachee and near the fort at St. Marks.

But the total number was miniscule in comparison to the thousands of in-

digenous Native Americans the Spaniards under Pedro Menéndez de Aviles

had encountered in Florida in 1565.

These promising signs of progress were endangered in January 1762,

when Spain once again declared war on England in the final year of the

Seven Years’ War (1756–63). It had been a massive international conflict

fought in Europe and the Americas, even in India and the Philippines. In

North America, it was known as the French and Indian War. Fears of Indian

126 · Daniel L. Schafer

raids originating in Georgia or Carolina were rekindled in St. Augustine, but

the significant military operations took place to the north and west of Flor-

ida. However, the trade arrangements that Spanish governors had worked

out with British colonial merchants in New York and Charleston were sus-

pended. Once again, licenses were issued to captains of privateer vessels,

and captured cargoes of vital provisions were unloaded at St. Augustine’s

wharfs.

The most important event of the Seven Years’ War, as far as Spanish res-

idents of Florida were concerned, was the capture of Havana by English

troops in August 1762. The war ended only a few months after Havana fel .

During peace negotiations, Spanish officials decided that restoration of the

rich sugar island of Cuba was more important than retaining Florida. In the

Treaty of Paris signed in February 1763, Florida was exchanged for Cuba.

The residents of Florida were told that the Crown would provide transporta-

tion to new homes in Cuba for colonists who departed St. Augustine within

thirteen months. With the exception of three families, all the Spanish resi-

dents of St. Augustine decided to say good-bye to Florida. Another eighty

families, possibly the last remnants of the Calusa Indians from southwest

Florida who had resettled near the fort at St. Marks, were transported to

Veracruz. The Creek who had recently migrated to Apalachee and the lower

proof

Suwannee remained. Englishmen who began arriving in July 1763 were al-

ready cal ing them “cimmarones,” for “runaways,” or people who moved

from their traditional vil ages to become Seminoles in Florida.

In
The
Oldest
City:
St.
Augustine,
Saga
of
Survival
, St. Augustine native Jean Parker Waterbury described the “transfer of an entire population out of

Florida to Cuba, some three thousand men, women and children, soldiers,

slaves, Indians and priests, Germans and Catalans, floridanos, Canary Is-

landers, free blacks, the mix which made up St. Augustine for so many de-

cades.” Thirteen hundred Spaniards left in August 1763; the others followed

four months later. Only the floridano families of Francisco Xavier Sanchez,

Manuel Solana, and Luciano de Herrera remained, along with a transplant

from New York named Jesse Fish whose roots in Florida reached back to the

1730s. He would find kindred spirits among the incoming English colonials

from Georgia and South Carolina, and the Scots, English, and Irish that

moved their families into the houses of the old Spanish city.

Raids, Sieges, and International Wars · 127

Bibliography

Arnade, Charles W. “Raids, Sieges, and International Wars.” In
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of
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, edited by Michael Gannon. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1996.

Ashley, Keith H. “Straddling the Georgia-Florida State Line: Ceramic Chronology of the

St. Marys Region AD 1400–1700).” In
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125–99. New York: American Museum of Natural History, 2009.

Bushnel , Amy.
The
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.

Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1981.

———. “The Noble and Loyal City, 1565–1668.” In
The
Oldest
City:
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———. “Patricio de Hinachuba: Defender of the Word of God, the Crown of the King,

and the Little Children of Ivitachuco.”
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3, no. 3 (1979).

———. “Republic of Spaniards, Republic of Indians.” In
The
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Coker, Wil iam S. “Pensacola, 1686–1763.” In
The
New
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, edited by Michael Gannon. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1996.

Deagan, Kathleen, and Darcie MacMahon.
Fort
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. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1995.

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South
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proof

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Apalachee:
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. Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1988.

———.
A
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and
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. Gainesvil e: University Press of Florida, 1996.

Hann, John H., and Bonnie G. McEwan.
The
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Florida’s
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. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002.

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———. “Fort Mose. Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose: A Free Black Town in Spanish

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8

Pensacola, 1686–1763

William S. Coker

The Sieur de La Sal e’s 1685 voyage to the Texas coast created near-panic

among the Spanish officials in New Spain (México). It also prompted Spain

to plant a colony on the northern Gulf coast, although some years passed

before it was done.

Eleven expeditions by land and by sea searched for the La Salle colony.

The first of the sea expeditions, that of Juan Enríquez Barroto and Antonio

Romero in 1686, examined the Bahía Santa María Filipina, the site of the

proof

Luna colony of 1559–61. The pilot, Ensign Juan Jordán de Reina, called the

bay “the best that I have ever seen in my life.” He also noted that the Indians

there referred to the bay as Panzacola, a Choctaw word that means “long

haired people,” because the men and women both wore their hair long.

This was not the earliest reference to Panzacola, also spelled Pansacola.

A 1657 report listed Pansacola as a satellite vil age of San Juan de Aspalaga

in the Apalachee area and the name of its cacique as Manuel. Pansacola was

also a common surname there. Interestingly, the natives who occupied the

Pansacola vil age in 1657 were Apalachee. It is believed that some Pansacola

were in that area at a much earlier period. There were also some Panzacola

in the Choctawhatchee and Mobile areas at a later date. But those met by

Jordán de Reina in 1686 were a separate tribe. Seven years later, in 1693,

Laureano de Torres y Ayala visited Pensacola Bay and found the Panzacola

vil age abandoned. He reported that these natives had been exterminated

by their mortal enemies, the Mobila. About 1725, some forty Panzacola and

Biloxi were living on the Pearl River, but whether they were survivors from

the Pensacola Bay vil age is unknown. Little is known about the Panzacola

natives after 1725.

· 128 ·

Pensacola, 1686–1763 · 129

Jordán de Reina’s glowing report of the Bahía de Panzacola prompted

officials to recommend a settlement there to prevent the French from oc-

cupying the bay. The viceroy sent Captain Andrés de Pez, one of the ad-

vocates of the Panzacola site, to Spain to obtain permission and support

for such a settlement. Because of Panzacola’s superior harbor, Pez recom-

mended abandoning San Agustin de la Florida (St. Augustine) and making

Panzacola the capital of La Florida. For only half of the money spent on St.

Augustine, 48,000 pesos annual y, he stated, Spain could maintain a fort

at Pensacola and have an excel ent harbor to go with it. In addition, the

Indians at Pensacola (the English spel ing) were ready to be converted to

Christianity.

The Council of War in Madrid disapproved Pez’s plan, but Carlos II, king

of Spain, ordered that Panzacola be settled without abandoning St. Augus-

tine. The council acquiesced but directed that first a scientific survey be

made of Pensacola Bay.

The viceroy sent two expeditions to Pensacola Bay in 1693. The first, by

sea, was headed by Admiral Pez, accompanied by Dr. Carlos de Sigüenza

y Góngora, a noted retired professor from the University of México, and

Captain Jordán de Reina. They rechristened the bay Bahía de Santa María

de Galve, for the Virgin Mary and the viceroy, the Conde de Galve. The

proof

only site still bearing a name given it in 1693 is Punta de Sigüenza (Point

Sigüenza), the western end of Santa Rosa Island. After their survey of the

bay, Sigfienza joined Pez as one of the staunchest supporters of a settlement

there.

Laureano de Torres y Ayala, governor-to-be of St. Augustine, com-

manded a land expedition that arrived at Pensacola Bay on 2 July 1693. His

report indicated that Pensacola was a good port that could easily be fortified

but that it lacked building stone.

As a result of these expeditions, a royal order issued on 13 July 1694 di-