The History of Florida (14 page)

60 · Eugene Lyon

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Pedro Menéndez de Avilés (1519–74), Adelantado de la Florida, Comendador de Santa

Cruz de la Zarza, Orden de Santiago.
Engraving based on a painting, reproduced from

Cesáreo Fernández Duro,
Armada
Española
(Madrid, 1895–1903). It was Menéndez who,

on 8 September 1565, founded Florida’s and the country’s first permanent European

settlement, St. Augustine.

the storm prevented Ribaut from a quick return, Menéndez struck out over-

land to Fort Caroline. At dawn on 20 September, he attacked the fort, sur-

prised the French defenders, and put most of them to the sword.

Renaming the captured fort San Mateo (St. Matthew), the adelantado left

a Spanish garrison there and returned to St. Augustine. Meanwhile, Ribaut’s

ships had been wrecked along the coast as far south as Cape Canaveral. Two

groups of shipwreck survivors, straggling northward along the beaches,

reached an inlet of the sea south of St. Augustine. Apprised of this, Mené-

ndez took a body of soldiers there and persuaded many of the Frenchmen,

including Ribaut himself, to surrender. Except for a few captives he spared,

Menéndez had Ribaut and the rest killed. Thereafter, the little inlet would

be cal ed Matanzas, meaning “place of slaughter.” Menéndez’s actions at Fort

Settlement and Survival · 61

Caroline and Matanzas would take their place in history and would tend to

overshadow the whole complex story of Spain’s colonizing effort in Florida.

Menéndez realized now that his supplies were critical y short. He

marched south to Cape Canaveral, destroyed a small fort built there by sur-

vivors from Ribaut’s fleet, met the cacique of Ais, and appointed a Spanish

governor for the area. Leaving a contingent of troops there, the adelantado

took a small boat for Havana. Once in the Cuban port, he linked up with his

forces from Asturias, meeting his nephew, Pedro Menéndez Marqués, and

another key lieutenant, Esteban de las Alas. Next the adelantado arranged

for supplies to be sent to Florida. Thereafter, meat, corn, cassava, squash,

and livestock were regularly dispatched from Cuba and Yucatan to the pen-

insular garrisons.

Commandeering a ship, Menéndez next sailed for southwest Florida,

seeking the outlet of his imagined cross-peninsular waterway. At the chief

town of the Calusa, located on Mound Key in Estero Bay, the Spanish leader

had an amicable meeting with the cacique Carlos and arranged for the free-

ing of several captives. Among those was a shipwrecked Spaniard from

Cartagena, Hernando de Escalante Fontaneda, who became an interpreter

for the Spaniards and later wrote a memoir about his Florida experiences.

Meanwhile, in the Florida garrisons, a harsh winter set in before Mené-

proof

ndez’s supply network could begin to function. The garrison left on the east

coast rebel ed, moved southward, and founded Fort Santa Lucía. Condi-

tions there deteriorated as Indian friendship turned to enmity. The mu-

tinous spirit spread to San Mateo and St. Augustine; it was rooted in the

semi-independent nature of the hired soldiers and their captains. By mid-

February, mutineers from San Mateo and St. Augustine, looking for a means

of escape from Florida, were actively working to complete a half-built ship

the French had left on the ways. Several of the captains and noncommis-

sioned officers were also disaffected. After a supply ship entered the port of

St. Augustine, the rebels struck. Seizing and confining Don Pedro de Valdés,

the adelantado’s son-in-law, they captured the ship and prepared to depart.

Although Valdés managed to free himself and attacked the mutineers, they

sailed away, as did the vessel from San Mateo. Altogether, more than 200

soldiers deserted Florida. Shortly afterward, Menéndez arrived in St. Au-

gustine with the Santa Lucía mutineers, whom he had picked up at sea.

Having restored order and reinforced the garrisons, he sailed northward in

a small craft to explore farther.

He passed the sea islands of the Georgia coast, meeting their native in-

habitants and taking possession of each area for the king. That coast looked

62 · Eugene Lyon

proof

Sites of settlement and exploration during the period of Spanish expansion in La

Florida, 1565–87, are shown here in bold. Spanish claims under the name La Florida

extended north to Newfoundland and westward indefinitely from the Atlantic. Other

sites in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico are shown for reference.

promising to Menéndez, as the people were numerous and seemed more

pacific in nature than the Timucua or their neighbors, the Mocama. At East-

ertide of 1566, Menéndez neared the Point of Santa Elena, a place of legend-

ary fertility and plenty, and founded a city on present-day Parris Island. He

appointed Esteban de las Alas as regional governor and departed once more

for St. Augustine.

The adelantado returned to his first city to find that the fort had been

burned by hostile natives and many of the supplies destroyed. He undertook

yet another voyage to secure the Cuban supply line; while he was gone, the

royal reinforcement fleet arrived in St. Augustine with shiploads of supplies

and 1,500 soldiers. One of the companies of newly arrived troops was sent

with its captain, Juan Pardo, to strengthen the garrison at Santa Elena.

Settlement and Survival · 63

A powerful incentive for Menéndez and his followers was nonmaterial:

as fervent Catholics, they coveted the spiritual merit to be gained by suc-

cessful y evangelizing Florida’s native populations. To further that aim, the

adelantado had arranged for members of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), those

noted “shock troops of the Counter-Reformation,” to send missionaries to

Florida. But the other side of the coin of Spanish–Native American relations

was the Spaniards’ expectations of native service, to be met through the

repartimientos
and
encomiendas
granted elsewhere in the Spanish Indies.

None of these jointly cherished expectations could be realized without sat-

isfactorily resolving the relationships with the present occupants of Florida,

whom the Spaniards called Indios. Those diverse peoples, who represented

long-established cultures and lived in ordered, hierarchical societies, were

spread over the wide reaches of Menéndez’s new domains.

By now, the Spaniards had met many of the peoples of Florida: Timucua,

Surruque, Ais, Jeaga, Calusa, Tequesta, Mocama, Guale, and Orista. To

Menéndez, Indian relations were al of a piece. He meant to establish a

benevolent overlordship over them, bringing peace to warring groupings,

eradicating heresy and unbelief, and spreading the gospel among them. He

planned, conforming to the Jesuit modus operandi, to build a school in

Havana to educate the children of their leaders. He also hoped to establish

proof

fort-missions in peninsular Florida and Guale and also westward on the

route to México. It was for this perceived devotion to his church that the

Guale called the adelantado Mico Santamaría, Holy Mary’s Chief of Chiefs.

To overcome the language barriers between Europeans and Native

Americans, the Spaniards employed interpreters. Those men, usual y ran-

somed Spaniards or Frenchmen who had learned the native languages in

captivity, acted also as cultural brokers. They made negotiations possible

between the Europeans and the representatives of the diverse indigenous

cultures in Florida. Thus it was possible for Menéndez and his lieutenants

to negotiate treaties of fealty, tribute, and submission to Philip II. At times,

in order to undergird negotiations, the Spaniards took or even exchanged

hostages with the Indians. Stil , there remained many mutual misunder-

standings among the parties to these cultural exchanges.

An example of such misapprehensions was Menéndez’s preoccupation

with the relationship between the Timucua, who had col aborated in the

time of Laudonnière and would again in the time of Dominique de Gour-

gues. The adelantado believed that the creed of the French Protestants,

whom he termed “Lutheran heretics,” was at many points similar to the

64 · Eugene Lyon

“Satanic” beliefs of the Indians. For that reason, his suspicions continual y

affected his relationship with the Timucua.

Despite the treaties signed with Florida’s native groups, troubles persisted

and even multiplied. When the first group of Jesuit missionaries came to

Florida in the supply ship
Pantecras,
the ship’s pilot missed the St. Augustine

harbor entrance, got lost, and put into the inlet near the St. Marys River,

now Florida’s northeast boundary. There the Jesuit priest Pedro Martínez

went ashore in a small boat seeking directions. He and three crewmen were

kil ed by the Mocama, and the Jesuits had their first New World martyr.

The surviving missionaries were posted to missions at Tequesta, on the Mi-

ami River at Biscayne Bay, and at San Antonio de Padua, built at the main

Calusa vil age at Mound Key on the Gulf. In both places the missionaries

were accompanied by a small Spanish garrison. They dedicated themselves

to learning the Indian languages and acquainting the Indians with the main

symbols and basic beliefs of Christianity, the latter facilitated by the use of

some cloth picture books of Christian doctrine developed in México.

But the Spaniards’ attempts to impose the Christian religion upon the na-

tive people, their claimed right to interfere in native leadership succession,

and their propensity to requisition food from Indian stores alienated the In-

dians, who began to fear for their own survival and for the survival of their

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cultural identity. Now warfare also broke out at many places in Timucua.

Soldier-farmers were killed in cornfields near St. Augustine. Captain Pedro

de Andrada and his company were ambushed near Potano in the north

central peninsula; he and many of his soldiers were slain. On the west coast,

at the Tampa Bay fort cal ed Tocobaga, the whole Spanish garrison was mas-

sacred by natives and the fort was evacuated. To counter the Indians’ rapid

arrow fire, Menéndez had to change his war tactics; he ordered 500 cross-

bows for his soldiers and began to dress them in protective padded cotton

armor, first used by Spaniards in the conquest of Yucatan and later by de

Soto in Apalachee.

On Good Friday of 1568, a French nobleman, Dominique de Gourgues,

arrived at the St. Johns River to take revenge upon the Spaniards for the

deaths of Jean Ribaut and many of his followers. Guided by Timucua, the

attacking Frenchmen and their Indian al ies captured the Spanish block-

houses at the river mouth and then took and burned Fort San Mateo. Most

of the defending Spaniards had already fled.

Meanwhile, tensions had mounted between Spaniards and the Calusa

at Carlos. The attempts of the Europeans to impose their sovereignty and

religion final y caused a complete break with the Calusa. Cacique Carlos,

Settlement and Survival · 65

the Spaniards believed, planned to kill them al . Captain Francisco de Re-

inoso forestal ed this by executing the Calusa leader and instal ing an Indian

named Philip as his successor. The Tequesta mission on the lower Atlantic

coast had already failed; the Jesuit there had been unable to convert more

than one old dying woman to the Catholic faith, and a clash between the

soldiers and the Indians led to the withdrawal of the Spaniards.

Painstakingly, on the lower Gulf coast, the Jesuit priest Juan Rogel gave

daily instruction to cacique Philip, his principal people, their wives and chil-

dren. Many of them learned the prayers, and some of the Christian doctrine

coincided with Calusa beliefs, but when the Jesuit pressed the Indians to

renounce their own rites, cut their long hair, and burn the images of their

deities, they refused. The cacique rejected the proposal that he leave his

sister-wife and dismiss his other wives. This dialogue continued, without

notable success for the missionaries, until 1569, when both the garrison and