Florida

The Spanish province of La Florida included all of present-day Florida and portions of Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina, and before the implementation of the Spanish mission system, it contained approximately 500,000 indigenous inhabitants organized into chiefdoms spread throughout the province.

Before the arrival of Europeans, Native groups throughout most of the La Florida participated in the MississippiAN mound building culture that represented the apex of indigenous development in the eastern portion of North America. Primarily, the Mississippian presence extended throughout southeastern North America into peninsular northern Florida, but not to southern Florida. Except in southern Florida, Native populations lived in sedentary villages and practiced intensive horticulture of a variety of crops with a primary reliance on corn. They supplemented their diet by hunting and gathering wild plants and various aquatic resources. Most villages were palisaded and centered on a grouping of temple and funeral mounds built around a ceremonial square. The people in southern Florida lived in similarly organized towns. They did not practice horticulture on any significant scale, and they depended more upon the gathering of wild plants and aquatic resources. The indigenous groups that eventually had extensive and constant relationships with the Spanish were the Yamasee, Cusabo, Guale, Apalachee, and Timucua in coastal South Carolina, southern Georgia and Alabama, and northern Florida, and the Ai, Calusa, Tekesta, and Key in southern Florida.

The Spanish first learned of Florida’s existence in the early 1500s, and JuAN PoNCE DE Leon named the region La Florida during his expedition there in 1513. The Spanish used this term to describe all the land they claimed in southeastern North America, from current-day North Carolina to Mississippi, but despite the extent of their alleged claims, they never moved far beyond settling the Atlantic coast of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, the interior of north Florida, and the Gulf coast of Florida and Alabama.

At first the Spanish could not exercise any real control over their claims in La Florida. The expeditions of Ponce de Leon in 1521, Lucas de Ayllon in 1526, PANEiLO DE Narvaez in 1528, Hernando de Soto in 1539, Lois Cancer de Barbastro in 1549, Juan Pardo in 1566, and Tristan de Luna in 1559 all failed to establish a permanent Spanish presence in La Florida. After French Huguenots founded Fort Caroline near modern-day Jacksonville as a base to raid Spanish shipping, the Spanish launched a campaign with enough resources not only to annihilate the French presence but also begin the systematic development of missions and presidios (Spanish fortifications) up the Atlantic coast and across Florida to the Gulf coast. Pedro Menendez de Aviles led this successful attempt in 1565 to create a permanent Spanish presence in La Florida. In the process he established the city of Saint Augustine, which remained the anchor of the Spanish presence in southeastern North America until 1763. La Florida, and specifically Saint Augustine, acted as a base to protect the shipping lanes off the east coast of the Florida peninsula for the Spanish gold fleet that annually left the Americas for Spain. It also was used as a base to maintain Spanish claims in eastern North America. Yet despite their efforts, Spanish influence deteriorated when Native groups, the English, and the French challenged their control in the region.

The Spanish successfully incorporated the Apalachee, Timucua, Guale, Cusabo, and some Yamasee into their mission system before 1600, but they were never able to bring the indigenous groups of southern Florida into their fold. The Jesuits first attempted to christianize the Guale, Cusabo, and Yamasee along the Atlantic coast as well as the tribes of southern Florida, but after the indigenous uprisings among the Guale and Cusabo on the Atlantic coast in the late 16th century, the Franciscans replaced the Jesuits throughout La Florida. After the initial establishment of missions and presidios in the region, the Spanish gradually began to lose their foothold on La Florida until they abandoned all the missions and presidios except those in the vicinity of Saint Augustine and Pensacola. During the period of Spanish occupation in Florida, indigenous populations decreased primarily through the introduction of new diseases from the Old World but also from famine, war, slave raiding (see slave trade) by English-allied Natives during the late 17th century, and the burden of supplying the Spanish presence with food and other vital supplies.

Further reading: Michael V. Gannon, The Cross in the Sand: The Early Catholic Church in Florida, 1530-1870

(Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1965);-,

Florida: A Short History (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1993); John H. Hann, Apalachee: The Land Between the Rivers (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1988); Eugene Lyon, The Enterprise of Florida: Pedro Menendez de Aviles and the Spanish Conquest of 15651568 (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1976); Jerald T. Milanich, Florida Indians and the Invasion from Europe (University Press of Florida, 1995);-, Florida’s Indi

Ans from Ancient Times to the Present (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998);-, Laboring in the Fields

Of the Lord: Spanish Missions and Southeastern Indians (Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1999).

—Dixie Ray Haggard