Florida

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Florida

The name of Florida, which Juan Ponce De León gave to the land he discovered in 1513, was once applied by Spain to all of eastern North America from Tampico to the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. For half a century, hurricanes and Indian hostility defeated one expedition after another: those of Ponce de León (1521); Lucas Vásquez De Ayllón (1526); Pánfilo de Narváez, whose story was told by Álvar Núñez Cabeza De Vaca (1528); Hernando de Soto (1539); Luis Cáncer de Barbastro (1549); and Tristán de Luna y Arellano (1559). In 1565 Philip II responded to the appearance of French forts along the strategic Gulf Stream by naming a new adelantado, the Asturian admiral Pedro Menéndez De Avilés, who drove the French from Florida and established a number of fortified settlements. Most of these succumbed to Indian attacks, often provoked by the raids of hungry soldiers on native granaries. One of these, Saint Augustine, survived, thanks to a set of royal subsidies (the situado) that maintained the presidio, guaranteed the cooperation of chiefs, and supported a growing number of Franciscans.

The missionaries proved their value to the crown by adding an Indian hinterland, province by province: first the Timucuans of the east coast and the Saint Johns River, divided into saltwater and freshwater districts; then the Guales of the Georgia coast; then the Timucuans of central and western Florida; and finally the Apalaches, west of the peninsula and close to the Gulf. At their greatest extent the provinces included some 26,000 Christian Indians.

Spanish and Indian relations passed through several distinct stages: alliances for defense and exclusive trade aimed against foreign interlopers; conquest by the Christian Gospel; uprisings provoked by interference in their political, social, and economic affairs; conquest by the sword; and, finally, the institutionalization of demands on Indian commoners through the sabana system (the communal planting of maize fields for chiefs and other leaders), the repartimiento (a labor levy for public works), and the servicio personal (the diversion of the labor levy to private use). As a result of war, famine, and introduced diseases, each province experienced a decrease in population that increased the burden of supporting the area's chiefs, soldiers, missionaries, and settlers on the natives who were left.

During the first half of the seventeenth century, Spanish soldiers were busy combating Dutch and French enemies, salvaging wrecks, and putting down uprisings, while friars baptized thousands of plague victims and extended the mission frontier. Opportunities for a provisioning trade with Havana led to the opening of new ports on the Gulf and the expansion of ranching and agriculture. This economic development was interrupted by the onset of yellow fever, which attacked Spaniards and Indians alike, followed by epidemics of smallpox and measles. A 1656 rebellion in central Florida, harshly punished, led to the virtual desertion of the province of Timucua. By the 1660s, Florida was a hollow peninsula.

Exterior threats to the captaincy general then began to escalate. Pirates from English Jamaica sacked Saint Augustine in 1668. Traders from Carolina fomented wars among southeastern Indians by exchanging firearms for slaves. And buccaneers seconded La Salle's venture into the Gulf by raiding western ports. The crown reacted by strengthening the defenses of Saint Augustine. The price was high, for the construction of the stone Castillo de San Marcos, coupled with neglect of defenses in the provinces, led to wholesale flight—the commoner's form of resistance. Spain had just responded to French intrusion in the Gulf by establishing a new presidio at Pensacola in 1698, when the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714) forced the French and Spanish colonies into an alliance. Carolina seized the opportunity to attack Florida. From Charleston, Colonel James Moore led two invasions of Florida, destroying Saint Augustine and Guale in 1702 and depopulating Apalache in 1704. Indian raids finished off Timucua in 1706. Eighteenth-century Pensacola, Saint Augustine, and the trading post of San Marcos de Apalache were without a hinterland. The wild cattle of abandoned ranches attracted fugitive slaves and nonaligned Indians. By 1763, when the colony changed hands after the Seven Years' War, these frontiersmen and women were ready to confront the British as the Seminoles (from the Spanish cimarrón, for "runaway").

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Verne E. Chatelain, The Defenses of Spanish Florida, 1565 to 1763 (1941).

John Jay Te Paske, The Governorship of Spanish Florida, 1700–1763 (1964).

Michael V. Gannon, The Cross in the Sand: The Early Catholic Church in Florida, 1530–1870 (1965).

Eugene Lyon, The Enterprise of Florida: Pedro Menéndez de Avilés and the Spanish Conquest of 1565–1568 (1976).

John H. Hann, Apalachee: The Land Between the Rivers (1988).

David J. Weber, The Spanish Frontier in North America (1992).

Amy Turner Bushnell, Situado and Sábana: Spain's Support System for the Presidio and Mission Provinces of Florida (1994).

Additional Bibliography

Landers, Jane. Colonial Plantations and Economy in Florida. Gainseville: University Press of Florida, 2000.

Teja, Jesús. Choice, Persuasion, and Coercion: Social Control on Spain's North American Frontiers. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005.

Amy Turner Bushnell

Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture