Florida

Searching for gold and slaves in 1513, Juan Ponce de Leon, the recently deposed governor of Cuba, launched the first organized Spanish venture into what is now the continental United States, in a region the Spanish had named La Florida. To the Spanish at that time, La Florida was a broad region that encompassed present-day Florida as well as large portions of what is now Georgia and South Carolina. Their major interest in La Florida was as a promising place to hunt for slaves. Freebooting slave catchers had in fact raided Florida’s Atlantic coast for several years before Ponce’s 1513 expedition; as a result, he and his men were driven off by a shower of Ais Indian arrows. Trying his luck on the western side of the peninsula, Ponce fared little better with the Calusas, who forced him to return to Cuba empty-handed. But in 1521, with news of Hernan Cortes’s conquest of the Mexica Aztec empire fresh in his mind, Ponce tried again. This time his Florida adventure cost him his life. Wounded by a Calusa arrow, Ponce’s men carried him back to Cuba, where, three days later, he died from his wounds. Ponce’s death and his failure to find either gold or slaves slaked Spanish interest in La Florida for a generation.

When Spanish interest in Florida revived, it was because the route of the Spanish treasure fleets passed from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean through the Florida Straits. Suddenly, the Atlantic coast of Florida became strategic territory. Thus in 1562, when 150 French Huguenots (Protestants) landed on the northeast coast near present-day Jacksonville, the Spanish took quick action. Led by Jean Ribault, a French naval officer, the expedition was part of a plan by Huguenot merchants to colonize the south Atlantic coast and to create a staging ground for attacks on Spanish galleons. In 1674 the French colonists built Fort Caroline on the bluffs above the St. Johns River. To the Catholic Spanish, Fort Caroline represented both a military and a religious threat because the Huguenot presence promised to “corrupt” Natives with Protestantism. Determined to maintain their claim on Florida, the Spanish sent Don Pedro Menendes de Aviles to establish a colony and remove the French. On September 8, 1565, Menendes and a landing party of nearly 600 settlers and soldiers reclaimed possession of Florida. Located just south of the French colony, Menendes named the area St. Augustine after the bishop of Hippo. Receiving word of the new Spanish settlement, Ribault led the bulk of his soldiers on board three ships and sailed south to dislodge the Spanish at St. Augustine. Unaware of Ribault’s pending assault, Menendes led his own troops north to obliterate the French presence. Finding Fort Caroline lightly defended in Ribault’s absence, Menendes’s troops defeated the French and murdered all of those who survived his assault. Shipwrecked and unaware of Menendes’s assault on Fort Caroline, Ribault and his troops marched north only to be surrounded by Menendes’s army. Greatly outnumbered, the French surrendered and Menendes’s ordered everyone killed, sparing a handful of Catholics, musicians, and artisans, whose skills he needed.

For the Spaniards, the removal of the French created the potential for peace on the peninsula. The only question was how the peninsula’s original residents would respond.

Before the Spanish and French arrived, Florida was home to many indigenous groups. Among the many tribes Europeans encountered were the Timucua and Guale in the northeast, the Apalache in the panhandle, and the Calusa and Tequesta across Florida’s southern half. Although these peoples spoke different languages, embraced various spiritual beliefs, and maintained distinct cultural traits, many shared similar experiences. Since most tribes lived near or along the water, fish and shellfish provided a reliable source of their protein. In addition, they cultivated corn, beans, and squash. For most Florida tribes, the land allowed for permanent settlement, and seasonal migrations were not necessary. Beyond Florida’s contemporary boundaries, Native peoples traded with tribes as far away as the Great Lakes region. Trade goods included copper, soapstone, and quartz crystals, but the most significant exchanges came with the arrival of the Europeans.

Florida’s first European settlers lived in a region occupied by the Timucuan tribes. Although speaking a similar language, they were not united as a confederacy and intertribal warfare was common. Each tribe was usually lead by a male chief or cacique, while a lesser chief headed each village. Both the great and the lesser chiefs inherited the power of authority. However, unlike in Europe, power came through the female line of kinship. When the Spaniards first encountered the Timucuans, they determined to alter this route to power. The Spaniards, like other Europeans, accepted their system of monarchy, but took issue with the idea of matrilineal inheritance. This was only one among many areas in which the Spanish attempted to change the traditions of indigenous peoples.

Conflicts frequently arose when Spaniards tried to use force or coercion to transform Natives. While the Spanish challenged certain aspects of all tribal life and often treated Native Americans as potential threats, the colonists were deeply concerned with the state of the Natives’ souls. Wherever the Spanish established a colony, they made great efforts to convert Indians to Catholicism. To meet this goal, the Spanish built a significant chain of MISSIONS across the southeastern frontier.

Among the first people to settle Florida were a group of Jesuit missionaries. Their efforts in Florida marked the first Jesuit missionary work in all of Spanish America. Between 1566 and 1572, they constructed 10 missions in the region. These early endeavors included sites along Chesapeake Bay in present-day Virginia, the coast of present-day South Carolina, and into the southern lands of the Tequesta near what is now Miami. Although the Jesuits harbored ambitious plans for converting the continent’s “heathens,” most Indians did not concur, and they often resisted the missionaries with armed aggression. Fighting between the missionaries and Indians placed a significant strain on the colony’s already scant resources, and, in 1572, the Jesuits left Florida, having failed to meet their goals of conversion. Still, the first missionaries helped solidify Spanish claims to additional lands beyond St. Augustine. The Spanish continued to hope that they could establish a significant Catholic base in Florida.

Missionaries returned to Florida in 1595, but instead of Jesuits, Franciscans were selected to manage the Natives’ souls. Unlike the Jesuits, the Franciscans started in areas close to St. Augustine and worked their way outward into the interior of Florida and along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. Their missions were often placed inside existing villages, and they normally did not attempt to create new towns, as the Jesuits had. By 1655 Franciscan activities reached their peak in Florida when more than 70 missionaries counted more than 20,000 Indian converts. Although the Franciscans enjoyed greater success converting Indians, this was not accomplished without conflict. Periodically, missionaries were forcibly removed from their assigned tribes. Nevertheless, the missionaries’ success enlarged Spain’s sphere of influence across the region. While valuable, however, this influence did not guarantee the Spanish expansion of Florida’s boundaries.

When the British settled Jamestown in 1607, the Spanish had ample reason to be concerned. Virginia slowly became a viable colony, whereas colonial Florida consisted of little more than St. Augustine, several small military installations, and scattered Catholic missions. Spanish Florida did not truly expand until 1698 when Pensacola was founded along the western panhandle. The creation of Pensacola was a defensive move, however, and came in response to French attempts at colonizing the Gulf coast. Thus began a pattern the Spanish would repeat throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. When forced, the Spanish tried to expand, but, generally, they could only watch as their claims were taken by other European powers. Although Spain sought to maintain its presence in the region, Florida’s lack of material wealth undermined its efforts.

A 1591 engraving of Fort Caroline, Florida, by Theodor de Bry, after a painting by Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues (Library of Congress)

The absence of mines, extensive infrastructure, or an economic base limited settlement of Florida. To most outsiders, Florida was a wasteland of swamps, mosquitoes, and hostile Natives. Ironically, other Europeans were even more threatening than Indians. British forces frequently attacked St. Augustine, pirates burned and looted the city numerous times in the 17th and 18th centuries, and Spanish policies of accepting runaway slaves in Florida often provoked military attacks and reprisals. Thus, Florida was a region the Spanish held but could not populate, while the British thought the peninsula a logical extension of their own coastal empire. Nonetheless, even though Florida was unable to expand, Spanish officials deemed it important enough to defend.

Attacks by privateers proved that St. Augustine was a vulnerable outpost, and, accordingly, Spanish officials decided that substantial defenses were necessary for the colony’s survival. Beginning in 1672, the Spanish started building a masonry fort called Castillo de San Marcos. This large coquina fort demonstrated Spanish will to protect passing ships carrying specie from other colonies as they followed the Gulf Stream on the way to Spain. Furthermore, the fort posed a considerable challenge to would-be attackers, although it never proved so threatening as to guarantee peace in Florida. The central tension between Spain’s inadequate settlement and British desires to expand created considerable fear and anxiety along the southeastern frontier.

Throughout the 17th century, British settlers continually moved south, along with a few French traders and colonists, ignoring Spanish claims of sovereignty and moving across West Florida. When the British founded Georgia in 1733, Spain’s loss of Florida appeared inevitable. Still, Spain exerted some influence on frontier politics. The Spanish policy on offering runaway slaves asylum in St. Augustine encouraged Georgia to maintain its own ban on slavery until 1755. Ultimately, the Spanish lost Florida because of the Seven Years’ War rather than from an attack by any British colony.

In the 1763 Treaty of Paris, which ended the war, Spain’s holdings on the continent drastically changed. The Spanish gained French lands west of the Mississippi, but the British took possession of East Florida and completed their control of the Atlantic coast. Surveying their new possession, the British found that Florida offered little potential since its few towns were abandoned by the Spanish and, according to one observer, the area lay in a “state of Nature. . . not an acre of land planted in the country and nobody to work or at work.” Still, St. Augustine’s fort provided additional military support for Britain’s coastal communities, and its fertile inland carried the potential for agricultural wealth. The British were never able to realize such riches, however, since in 1784 Florida was returned to the Spanish Empire. When the American Revolution began, the Spanish in Louisiana saw an opportunity to recover their former territory. Although the Spanish successfully fought the British in West Florida in 1799, they regained Florida through diplomacy, not military action. In the 1783 Treaty of Paris, the British lost all the land they received from their victories in the Seven Years’ War, and Florida reverted to Spanish ownership.

Further reading: David J. Weber, The Spanish Frontier in North America (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1992).

—Shane Runyon and Ronald Schultz