European Contact and Settlement
Part
One
To fully understand how Wakulla County became the
place it is today we must first take a look at the Spanish West Indies and the
Spanish conquistadors who “discovered” and colonized Florida. The purpose of
learning about these Spanish explorers is to give the reader an understanding
of how Europeans began their occupation of Florida and how they treated native
peoples of the “new world”, and eventually the native population of Florida,
including present-day Wakulla County. The Spaniard given credit for the
discovery of Florida is Juan Ponce de Leon, who first came to its shores on
April 2, 1513. But he probably was not the first European to make contact with the
natives of what would eventually become the state of Florida.
There are at least four different
maps, dating back to the year 1500, thirteen years before Ponce de Leon’s
Florida landing, that depicts a mass of land above Cuba.[1]
Toward the end of the 15th century, Spain launched several voyages
from its bases in the Caribbean. Many of these expeditions were in search of
new slave labor, to replace the native laborers of Hispaniola, who were quickly
dying off.[2] It is hard to believe that
none of these voyages made it as far as Florida, but, nevertheless, Juan Ponce
de Leon is the one given credit for the European discovery. The theory of
Spanish slavers arriving in Florida years before Ponce de Leon is backed up by
the fact that the local natives were very hostile to him and his men, perhaps
because similar looking men came before and enslaved their friends and family.
The expedition also came across “an Indian who understood the Spaniards,” on
the lower Gulf Coast.[3]
These expeditions to Florida eventually
lead to the establishment of the oldest city in the continental United States,
St. Augustine. With the establishment of St. Augustine, the mission system
began in which the Spanish stretched their influence westward towards
present-day Wakulla County to Christianize the Apalachee living in the area.
Juan Ponce de Leon
In the Spanish village of Santervas de Campos in 1474,
or 1475, historians cannot agree on the exact date, Juan Ponce de Leon was born
to a distinguished family. One of Ponce de Leon’s relatives was Nunez de
Guzman, Knight Commander of the Order of Calatrava, which was a military order
founded in Castile, Spain. Ponce de Leon, as a young man, squired for Guzman
while fighting the Moors, who were Muslim inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula.
Ponce de Leon became an experienced soldier while fighting to reconquer Spain
in 1492. At the same time, Cristobal Colon, better known as Christopher
Columbus, made his famous voyage to the “New World,” coming ashore in the
present-day Bahamas.
Once the Reconquista ended, Spain had
an abundance of young soldiers with no war to be fought. Many of these young
men turned their attention to the newly discovered Americas. In September of
1493, around 1,200 sailors, colonists, and soldiers, including Ponce de Leon,
joined Columbus on his second voyage to the “New World.” They reached the
Caribbean Sea two months later in November of 1493 and arrived at Hispaniola,
the present-day island of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. He eventually traveled back to Spain and got in good favor with Nicolas de Ovando. In 1502, he
returned to Hispaniola with Ovando, who was the newly appointed governor of the
island.
At
the time of European contact, the Taino were the principle inhabitants of
present-day Cuba, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, and the
Bahamas. Ovando wanted to subdue the native Taino people, and in November of 1503
he authorized the massacre of several Taino leaders during a great feast, known
as the Jaragua Massacre. In 1504, Ponce de Leon was sent to put down a Taino
rebellion in Higuey on the eastern side of Hispaniola. Another bloody massacre
ensued, one in which Ponce de Leon was directly involved in.
For his victory over the native Taino people, Governor
Nicolas de Ovando appointed Ponce de Leon as the frontier governor of Higuey.
In 1505, Ovando authorized Ponce de Leon to establish a town in Higuey, which
was called Salvaleon. In 1508, King Ferdinand ordered Ponce de Leon to subdue
the rest of the Taino and enslave them into a labor force to be used in the
gold mines. Around the same time, Ponce de Leon married Leonora, an innkeeper’s
daughter, and together they had four children. Ponce de Leon ordered a large house
to be built for his family which you can visit to this day in the present-day
city of Salvaleon de Higuey in the Dominican Republic.
The
neighboring island, which the Taino called Borinquen, was rumored to have
rivers full of gold. Naturally, this sparked Juan Ponce de Leon’s curiosity and
greed. In 1508, Ponce de Leon received permission to lead the first official
expedition to Borinquen and the island was renamed San Juan Bautista (present-day
Puerto Rico). On July 12, 1508, Ponce de Leon and about fifty men set sail and
landed at San Juan Bay. About two miles away from the bay Ponce de Leon decided
to build a settlement that he called Caparra. The Spaniards main focus on San
Juan Bautista was mining for gold, and that they did. After uncovering a good
amount and running out of supplies Ponce de Leon returned to Hispaniola in
1509. Because of his success there, Nicolas de Ovando appointed Juan Ponce de
Leon governor of San Juan Bautista, one of the last things he did as Governor
of Hispaniola.
Meanwhile,
back in Spain, the political situation in the Caribbean, or Spanish West Indies
as they called it, was changing fast. Diego Colon, the son of Christopher
Columbus, had been waging a legal battle with Spain over the Spanish West
Indies, which he felt he had a title to. The Spanish Crown despised Colon, but
he prevailed in court, and on July 10, 1509, he arrived in Hispaniola,
replacing Ponce de Leon’s friend, Governor Nicolls de Ovando.
King
Ferdinand approved of Ponce de Leon’s appointment as governor of San Juan
Bautista on August 14, 1509 then instructed him to improve the settlement there
and continue mining for gold. Ponce de Leon moved his family to the island, and
established a forced labor system called encomienda
in which natives were required to work in fields or mines. Diego Colon did not like Ponce de Leon, and
appointed Juan Ceron as chief justice, and Miguel Diaz as chief constable of
San Juan Bautista, which overrode the authority of Ponce de Leon. The King then
reaffirmed Ponce de Leon’s authority which he used to have Ceron and Diaz
arrested.
The
innocent Taino were treated very harshly by the Spanish, men who claimed to be
Christians, and staged a small rebellion in 1511. The uprising was put down by Ponce
de Leon and his soldiers. The Spanish were committing nothing less than
genocide when it came to these native peoples, and it would not stop there. Ponce
de Leon and Diego Colon continued to butt heads for years, but eventually Ponce
de Leon was deposed, and Juan Ceron returned to San Juan Bautista and took over
as governor.
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| Peter Martyr 1511 map shows a long shoreline to the north of Cuba |
A map published by Peter Martyr in 1511 shows a long
shoreline to the north of Cuba, labeled the Island of Bimini.[4] Rumors of the Island of
Bimini had made it to King Ferdinand in Spain and not wanting Colon to claim
the island for himself, and wishing to reward Ponce de Leon for years of loyal
service, Ferdinand gave Ponce de Leon an asiento
or the authority and right to seek out this new land. Finding himself very
wealthy and with time on his hands, he accepted the asiento to discover and conquer the land ‘to the north’ called
Bimini.[5]
The asiento
gave specific instructions to Ponce de Leon, such as what to do when they come
in contact with natives and how to distribute gold that may be found. The asiento also stated that whatever land Ponce
de Leon found would be his to govern for life. The only catch to this new
authority was that Ponce de Leon had to pay for the expedition out of his own
pocket. I must point out that nowhere in the contract was the “fountain of
youth”, or rejuvenating waters of any kind mentioned. The story of Ponce de
Leon discovering Florida because he was searching for the Fountain of Youth is
a myth. It was gold, and the glory of God and conquest, not mythical waters,
that Ponce de Leon was after.
The
thirty-nine-year-old Juan Ponce de Leon managed to round up around 200 men on
three ships, the Santiago, the San Cristobal, and the Santa Maria de la Consolacion, and set
sail on March 4, 1513, from San Juan Bautista in search for the Island of
Bimini. The men must have felt a sense excitement for what they might find, and
many dreamed of wealth as the salty air whipped their faces and the sun burned
overhead. The account of Ponce de Leon’s voyage and discovery of Florida comes
from historian Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas who wrote a chronicle about
Spanish exploration of the “new world” in 1601-1615. Unfortunately, his tale is
brief and lacking essential information. We do know the chief pilot was Anton de
Alaminos, the most experienced pilot in the Spanish West Indies. Alaminos
sailed northwest along a chain of the Bahamas, known then as Lucayos. On Easter
Sunday, 1513, the crew spotted a land mass unfamiliar to them but they assumed
it was part of the Bahamas, so they kept sailing around through open waters.
 |
| Ponce de Leon's route |
On
April 2, 1513 the crew again spotted what they thought to be a very large
unknown island. They anchored off the coast and came ashore. Herrera wrote,
“And thinking that this land was an island, they called it la Florida (pronounced
la-floor-e-da), because it was pretty
to behold with many and refreshing trees, and it was flat, and even; and also
because they discovered it in the time of the Flowery Easter, Juan Ponce wanted
to agree in the name, with these two reasons.”[6]
Juan Ponce de Leon most likely anchored and came ashore around present-day Cape
Canaveral, or possibly Melbourne Beach, and some even think as far north as St.
Augustine, which used to be the most widely believed landing site, as the map of his first voyage suggests.
After setting up camp and exploring the area
for a few days the crew raised anchor and set sail south down the eastern coast
of Florida. On April 8, 1513, the fleet experienced an extremely strong current
that pushed them backwards, and even sending the San Cristobal out of sight of the others for days. This was
probably the first encounter Europeans had with the Gulf Stream. Hugging the shoreline,
the fleet continued southward down Florida’s southeastern coast, and on May 4,
they reached, and named, Biscayne Bay. Here, they anchored and went ashore for
fresh water, where they found and explored the Tequesta Miami mound town, at
the mouth of the Miami River, which had recently been evacuated by its
residents. The natives clearly feared these curious men, perhaps because they
had contact with people like this before, and perhaps they were violent.
On May 15, 1513, after eleven days, Ponce
de Leon and his fleet lifted anchor and left Biscayne Bay. The ships began to navigate
around the Florida Keys looking for a passage to reach the west coast of Florida,
which they still believed was an island. Eventually they found Florida’s west
coast, and reached land on May 23. Again, the exact landing spot is unknown,
but it is believed that they anchored at the mouth of the Caloosahatchee River,
near Sanibel Island.[7] Here, the Spanish had two
violent clashes with the native Calusa, whose chief, King Carlos, as the
Spanish called him, lived on Estero Island. The Calusa are noted as having an
intricate culture based on fishing, rather than farming, and they were expert
mariners. The Calusa had the highest population density at this time in
southern Florida, estimates up to 10,000 or more. They approached the Spaniards
and seemed interested in trading at first. Then the encounter turned violent,
and several battles erupted among them. There were casualties on both sides. On
June 4, 1513, another battle took place on Sanibel Island which forced the
Spanish to retreat and leave Florida. After passing through the Dry Tortugas they
arrived in Grand Bahama on July 8, 1513.
At Grand Bahama the fleet disbanded,
but Ponce de Leon did not return to San Juan Bautista until October 19, 1513.
When he returned he found the colony in flames. Some Caribs from a nearby
island, invaded and burned Caparra to the ground killing several Spaniards.
Once again being undermined by Diego Colon, Juan Ponce de Leon left San Juan
Bautista for the Spanish mainland in April of 1514. Once in Spain, Ponce de
Leon enchanted people with stories of Florida and was given rewards by King
Ferdinand. He knighted Ponce de Leon and gave him his own personal coat of
arms, the first conquistador to receive these kinds of honors. Ferdinand also
gave him a new asiento. This contract
further confirmed his right to return to, settle, and govern Florida.
Juan Ponce de Leon’s return to
Florida was delayed due to the passing of his wife, Leonora. During the time
between Ponce de Leon’s two trips to Florida several other explorers took their
own trips to the mysterious land. A slaver named Pedro de Salazar made an
incursion to Florida during his 1514-1516 slaving expeditions. Anton de
Alaminos, Juan Ponce’s pilot on his first trip to Florida, found himself again
anchored at the mouth of the Caloosahatchee River, once in 1517 and again in
1519, the 1519 voyage being the one that discovered that Florida was actually not
an island, but a peninsula attached to a very large land mass. King Ferdinand
died on January 23, 1516, and he had been Ponce de Leon’s strongest supporter. Ponce
de Leon decided it would be best if he returned to Spain yet again to protect
the honors that Ferdinand had granted him. Also, he was feeling anxious about
returning to Florida, especially since he heard there had been unauthorized
voyages to “his” land. In 1521, after learning about the exploits of Hernan
Cortes in New Spain (Mexico), Ponce de Leon wrote a letter to King Carlos I
expressing his intention to establish a permanent fortified colony in Florida and
to establish a mission to convert the native peoples to Catholicism.[8]
Ponce
de Leon set sail for Florida from Cuba on February 26, 1521 with two ships loaded
with 200 would-be settlers including priests, farmers, artisans, horses, and
other livestock. The second landing site is also unknown, but it believed to be
the same as before, the mouth of the Caloosahatchee River. Ponce de Leon never was
able to establish a permanent colony in Florida due to constant attacks from
the Calusa. The natives attacked the Spaniards continuously, and Ponce de Leon suffered
an arrow wound to his thigh which was tipped with poison. The Spaniards again
retreated onto their ships and they withdrew back to Cuba. Juan Ponce de Leon
died in Cuba from his wound in 1521. Five years would pass before another
attempt was made to colonize Florida.
Panfilo de Narvaez and Cabeza de Vaca
In
1470, Spanish conquistador Panfilo de Narvaez was born in Castile, Spain, to a
well-to-do family, one of his relatives being the first Spanish governor of
Cuba, Diego Velaquez de Cuallar. Narvaez came to the “New World” with hopes of
gaining fame and fortune, and when he was 39 years old he participated in the
conquest of Jamaica. As Juan Ponce de Leon was gearing up for his expedition to
find and explore the island of Bimini, Narvaez was leading attacks into the
eastern side of Cuba and presided over the Massacre of Caonao in 1513. This
event is another example of just how terrible the Spanish could be to native
populations. Narvaez and his men marched into the Taino town of Caonao on the
eastern side of Cuba. There they found a great number of horrified people
staring back at them. The Cuban natives had prepared a great feast, and some
2,000 Taino were out in the town square. A large bohio, or dwelling, had five-hundred freighted natives within who
were too afraid to go outside. The Taino offered the Spanish chicken and other
gifts if they would just leave them alone and go away. Suddenly, while the
gifts were being divided up by the soldiers, one drew his sword.
Swiftly,
the other Spaniards drew their swords as well and attacked every Taino man,
women, and child. They even slaughtered the elderly. The bodies of five-hundred
Taino people lay hacked to death inside the bohio.
But the Spaniards were not done just yet, as they ran over to other dwellings
to continue their massacre. The town cleric, “a true man of God”, opposed this
slaughter with a furious wrath. With tears in his eyes, he screamed at the top
of his lungs for the murders to cease. Some of the Spanish soldiers, who had
great respect for the cleric, halted their involvement in the slaughter. Only
forty Taino were spared. The brutal Panfilo de Narvaez, proud of what he and
his men had done, asked the cleric what he thought about what the Spanish had committed
here. The cleric looked at him with both a deep sadness and a furious anger, “I
command you and them to the Devil!” A short fifteen years later, Narvaez got
what he deserved.
In
1519, Panfilo de Narvaez traveled to present-day Mexico. He went there because
the governor of Cuba, Diego Velazquez de Cuellar, a relative of Narvaez,
authorized Hernan Cortes to lead a voyage, then he changed his mind, and sent
Narvaez to bring Cortes back. Governor Velaquez named Narvaez the governor of
Mexico, and sent him after Cortes with 1,400 soldiers on 19 ships. He landed at
present-day Veracruz, Mexico, where he discovered a garrison of troops that
Cortes had left behind, while he and the rest of his men marched to the Aztec
capitol of Tenochtitlan, present-day Mexico City. A fight ensued between
Narvaez’s men and the garrison. Cortes’s soldiers managed to get the upper hand, and
even captured some of Narvaez’s. They also were able to get a message to
Cortes himself, about Narvaez’s intentions. Unable to achieve victory, Narvaez
and his people retreated to the town of Cempoala. Back in Cempoala, on May 27,
1520, some of Cortes’s men snuck into Narvaez’s camp, and took control of his
artillery and cavalry. Narvaez put up a fight, but was unable to win. During
the fight, Narvaez lost an eye and was taken prisoner. His own soldiers then turned on
him and helped Cortes conquer the Aztecs.
Panfilo
de Narvaez remained in captivity for two years until he finally returned to
Spain a failure. But soon the once shamed Narvaez would get his chance at
redemption. On Christmas day, 1526, Narvaez was appointed adelantado, or governor, of Florida, and given permission to
explore, settle, and govern the beautiful and mysterious land. Unfortunately
for his men, Narvaez was very stubborn and not very wise. That would lead to
their decimation.
With
a fleet of five ships carrying six-hundred people, Narvaez set sail for Florida
on June 17, 1527. Weakened by some desertion, Narvaez finally arrived off the
coast of Florida, around present-day Tampa Bay on April 14, 1528, now with 400
men, including a young man by the name of Juan Ortiz. After setting foot on
land Narvaez foolishly sent the ships that carried his food, supplies, and
would-be settlers, about 100 soldiers, including Juan Ortiz, as well as some of
the soldier’s wives, to sail north and meet back up with them at a vaguely
determined harbor (thought to be present-day Apalachee Bay). Second in command,
as well as the treasurer and provost, Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca advised
against this, but to no avail. Cabeza de Vaca wrote an incredible narrative of
his travels through Florida, which included the first European description of
the peninsula. It is a remarkable tale of survival. Even
though Narvaez’s fleet did find a harbor fitting the description, and they waited and searched for over a year for the governor and his men, those wives never saw
their husbands again.
Panfilo
de Narvaez, the man who proceeded over the Massacre of Caonao, quickly proved
to his men just how brutal he could be to the native peoples of Florida. When a
group of Tocobaga natives approached gesturing angrily, Narvaez had the men
surrounded and captured. One of the men was Chief Hirrihigua. Narvaez showed
his brutality by cutting off the nose of Chief Hirrihigua, while his distraught
mother cried out loud. To silence her, Narvaez had her fed alive to his war
dogs. The chief developed a fierce hatred of Spaniards and wanted his revenge.
As
his supply ships sailed away, essentially sealing the expedition’s fate,
Narvaez began the first ever interior exploration of Florida by Europeans. When
Narvaez spotted some natives wearing gold he asked them where they found it.
Using hand signs and gestures, they communicated that there was a province to
the north called “Apalachen.” This convinced the Spaniards that the area was
rich of gold and food. Eleven years later, Hernando de Soto would be compelled
to march northward by the same tale.[9]
Three-hundred men, forty of them on horseback, marched northward towards the
panhandle of Florida, hoping to meet his ships at a harbor in the vicinity
(Apalachee Bay). After being tailed by curious natives for a while, “the
Governor (Narvaez) placed a few horsemen in ambush near the trail, who they
(the Indians) passed, surprised them and took three or four Indians as guides
thereafter. These led us into a country difficult to traverse and strange to
look at, for it had very great forests, the trees being wonderfully tall and so
many of them fallen that they obstructed our way so that we had to make long
detours and with great trouble.”[10]
After fifty-six days of marching, the Narvaez expedition arrived in the
Apalachee region on June 25, 1528.
The Spaniards were so happy to reach Apalachee
that, “we gave many thanks to God for being so near it, believing what we had
been told about the country to be true (gold and food), and that now our
sufferings would come to an end after the long and weary march over bad trails.
We had also suffered greatly from hunger, for, although we found corn
occasionally, most of the time we marched seven or eight leagues (24.5 miles or
28 miles) without any.”[11]
Once they reached Apalachee, the Spaniards saw a village that contained,
according to de Vaca, “forty small and low houses…of straw, and they are
surrounded by dense timber, tall trees, and numerous water pools.”[12]
This “village of forty huts” was so small and unimpressive that Narvaez did not
even bother to enter it himself, but instead sent de Vaca and Alonso de Solis,
along with their troops, to secure the town. The Spaniards only found women and
children there and took them prisoner. They found no gold or silver, however,
they did manage to discover “plenty of ripe maize ready to be gathered and much
dry corn already housed.”[13]
While exploring the small village, the Apalachee men suddenly appeared and
attacked the Spaniards. The Apalachee only managed to kill a horse before
retreating, unable to rescue their families. Believing they were in the
principle village of Apalachee, which they were not, the Spaniards used the
unoccupied straw huts for their own shelter.
Two
weeks later, the Apalachee warriors returned and begged for the release of
their families, which surprisingly Narvaez agreed to. What is not surprising
however, is that “the Governor (Narvaez) kept with him one of their caciques
(chiefs), at which they became so angry as to attack us the following day.”[14]
While the Spanish were occupying their village, the Apalachee again returned
and loosened a hail of fire arrows in their direction. The Apalachee managed to
burn down their own homes that the Spaniards had commandeered before fleeing
back into the wilderness. The next day, the Spaniards were attacked again, but
from the other side of the village, suggesting that perhaps this was a
different group of Apalachee warriors coming to aid their people. Again, after the
attack the warriors fled. One-hundred years later Apalachee warriors were
described as “painted all over with red ochre and with their heads full of
multi-colored feathers.” Those who attacked the Narvaez expedition most likely
looked very similar to this.[15]
They would not attack the Spanish again head on, instead they would use
guerilla warfare. The Spaniards stayed in this small village for twenty-five
days, during which time they were attacked whenever they ventured out from the
village.
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| Apalachee warrior by artist Theodore Morris |
On
July 19, 1528, the first day of marching towards what would later be known as
the Wakulla River, after sloshing through watery trails, the Spaniards set up
camp without seeing a single Apalachee warrior, but they themselves were
unknowingly being watched. On the second day, the army came to a large swamp,
and begun to wade through it. Once the water level reached their chests the
hidden Apalachee warriors rained down on them a barrage of arrows which stuck
in many of the men and their horses. After they finally made it through the abyss
that was the swamp, the Spaniards found a large group of warriors. Narvaez
ordered a fierce charge at them, which sent them fleeing. Unfortunately for the
Spaniards, the Apalachee managed to rescue their Indian guides. The Spaniards,
no longer with guides who knew the way, continued on to what they hoped was the
trail to Aute. The path remained wet and after about a mile of marching it once
again disappeared into a swamp. The exhausted, sick, and starved Spaniards were
not excited to see it. After cursing their luck, they entered the swamp. They
crossed through the wetland, worried about another attack the entire time, but
it did not come. Relieved that they reached the other side unharmed, they set
up camp for the night.
After
nearly two weeks of marching through the Florida wilderness, into swamps,
ponds, and lakes, and being felled by Apalachee arrows, the expedition reached present-day
Wakulla Springs and the Wakulla River. There they discovered that Aute was not
a single town, but a collection of villages alongside the Wakulla River, about
a mile south of Wakulla Springs. The residents there knew of the approaching
Spaniards, probably because someone from the “village with forty huts” traveled
to Aute and warned them. When the Spanish were only a few miles from Aute, the
villagers attacked them. While the fighting was going on, the women of Aute
gathered what they could and torched their huts and crops rather than let the
Spanish use them. When the Spaniards finally reached Aute after limping through
swamps, the town they found was a smoldering ruin. After the third day of staying
in the burned up village, a desperately sick Narvaez ordered Cabeza de Vaca to
search for the coast, hopefully rendezvousing with their ships and finding a
way out of the nightmare they were living. “After the Governor entreated me to
go in search of the sea”, wrote de Vaca, “as the Indians said it was so nearby,
and we had, on this march, already suspected its proximity from a great river
to which we had given the name of the Rio de la Magdalena (River of Mary
Magdalene), I left on the following day in search of it.”[17]
The Rio de la Magdalena was the name that the first Europeans to explore the
area gave the present-day Wakulla River.
Cabeza
de Vaca set off for the coast the next day with captains Dorantes and Castillo,
as well as fifty soldiers. They followed the Wakulla River to its confluence
with the St. Marks River, then down the marshy wetlands of the St. Marks until
they reached salt water late in the afternoon of July 31, 1528. No ships were
found. De Vaca wrote, “We marched until sunset, reaching an inlet or arm of the
sea, where we found plenty of oysters on which the people feasted, and we gave
many thanks to God for bringing us there.”[18] Although
the men were able to sit around and eat vast amounts of shellfish, the trip to
find the coast that day was a failure. The next day, de Vaca decided to send a
sortie of twenty men further down river to find and explore the coast. The men returned
to de Vaca by nightfall the next day explaining that the coast was still a
great distance away. With the sea further away than anybody figured, De Vaca
considered the fact that he was ill-prepared to find the coast, and returned to
Narvaez at Aute along the Wakulla River.
Upon
returning to Aute, de Vaca and the others discovered that the Apalachee had
perpetrated a night raid on the camping Spaniards. Like most attacks, the raid
was lighting fast with a few moments of chaos followed by a quick retreat back
into the wilderness.[19]
Instead of staying in Aute, which they really had no reason to, Narvaez decided
that everybody would march the next day to the point where de Vaca had just
returned. There was nothing left for them at Aute, and they left the next day.
The journey to the confluence of the St. Marks and Wakulla Rivers was a trying
one for the Spaniards. De Vaca wrote that the “men were mostly sick and too
much out of condition to be of any use whatever…Any one can imagine what might
be experienced in a land so strange and so utterly without resources of any
kind, either for stay or an escape.”[20]
There
was a conspiracy among Narvaez’s men. The rich and proud hidalgos who still had
a healthy warhorse, secretly planned to abandon the sick and try and save
themselves. Narvaez was ill and unable to command or put down a mutiny. Cabeza
de Vaca stepped in and publicly humiliated the conspirators telling them they
would be turning their backs on the King. They agreed to stay. Arriving at the
point where de Vaca had camped out just recently, Narvaez did not seem to be
rattled by this near mutiny, instead he called all his men together to forge a
plan of what to do next, because the “Governor of Florida” had not the
slightest idea. De Vaca wrote, “we had no tools, no iron, no smithery, no
oakum, no pitch, and no tackling…neither was there anybody to instruct us in
shipbuilding, and above all, there was nothing to eat while the work was going
on.”[21]
At
the confluence of the Wakulla and St. Marks rivers, de Vaca does not say who,
but somebody spoke up and said that he could construct barges to get out of
Florida. What the men did next is very impressive. The marooned Spaniards began
the construction of five barges in order to escape Florida, by floating along
the Gulf Coast all the way to Mexico, which was much further away than they
realized. Slaughtering one of their horses every three days for meat, they made
the flayed and tanned leg hides of the horses into fresh water storage bags.
They used deerskin and hollowed out logs to create a bellows and forge and
melted down their spurs, swords, and iron tips from their crossbows to make
nails, axes, and saws. Out of the horse’s tails and manes, they made rope. To
make pitch for caulking the pine planks for the boats, they used long leaf pine
and mixed it with palmetto oakum. The men then made quilt-like sails out of the
shirts off their backs, and carved large oars out of cypress logs.
After
two weeks of construction, on September 22, 242 of the original 300 men who had
survived the journey thus far, boarded the five, 30-foot-long barges, and
headed downriver for the Gulf of Mexico, which was roughly six miles away.
Before they disembarked, Narvaez named the area the Bay of Horses, in honor of
their beloved horses they were forced to slaughter for survival. In November of
1528, after passing the coasts of present-day Florida, Alabama, and Louisiana,
the barges capsized in a violent storm, in which only 80 out of 242 men
survived to reach present-day Galveston, Texas. The red bearded, one-eyed
Panfilo de Narvaez was not among them. He had a demise worthy of his brutality.
Once
ashore in present-day Texas, the survivors were captured by the local natives,
and were enslaved. By the next spring, the eighty survivors had turned into
fifteen, and then then the fifteen became four. Eventually those four men
escaped captivity, making it to Mexico City on June 24, 1536. When he finally
returned to Spain, Cabeza de Vaca wrote a narrative of his journey. It would be
over a decade until another attempt to explore and colonize Florida went underway,
not including the small expedition sent to find Narvaez and his men.
Juan
Ortiz was one of the one hundred men left behind on Narvaez ship as it was
instructed to sail north and reunite with the expedition. After searching for
Narvaez and his men for a year with no avail, the ships returned to Cuba. In
1529, Narvaez’s wife, worried about her husband, sent a ship of 30 men,
including Juan Ortiz, back to Florida to continue searching for Narvaez. When
they arrived at present-day Tampa Bay, the men spotted what they though was a
stick with a note tied to it laying on the beach. When Ortiz and three other
soldiers rowed to the shore to investigate and retrieve the note they were
ambushed by a large force of native Tocobaga and taken prisoner. The Spaniards
were taken to Chief Hirrihigua, who was still seeking revenge for the loss of
his nose and the brutal death of his mother at the hands of Panfilo de Narvaez.
Three out of the four were executed via an arrow firing squad. The young Juan
Ortiz was enslaved.
After
spending some time as a slave, Chief Hirrihigua sentenced Ortiz to be cooked
alive. He was tied to a large grill and placed over a pile of hot coals. His
painful, agonizing screams echoed through the area. Several of the chief’s
female relatives could no longer stand the screams, and pleaded for the young
boy’s life. One of the girls was the chief’s daughter, known as Princess
Hirrihigua. He listened to her and his morality took over. The chief had the 18-year-old
Juan Ortiz untied and released, but he had burns that scarred him for life.
Eventually Ortiz began living in a different village, with Chief Mococo, who
was an enemy of Hirrihigua. For nearly a decade, Ortiz lived with the native
Floridians and assimilated into one, even forgetting his own native language.
Sources
Taylor,
R.A. Florida: An Illustrated History.
New York: Hippocrene Books, Inc
Gannon. First European Contacts. In M. Gannon, The
New History of Florida (pp. 16-39)
Hann, John
H. Apalachee: The Land Between Two Rivers,
Cabeza de
Vaca, The Journey of Alvar Nunez Cabeza
de Vaca. Translated by Fanny Bandelier, 1905
Paul
Schneider, Brutal Journey: The Epic Story
of the First Crossing of North America,
[3]
Ibid. p.16
[4]
Ibid. p.17
[5]
Ibid. p.17
[6]
Ibid. p.19
[7] Ibid. p.20
[8]
Ibid. p.21
[9]
Hann, John H. Apalachee: The Land Between
Two Rivers, p.5
[10]
Cabeza de Vaca, The Journey of Alvar
Nunez Cabeza de Vaca. Translated by Fanny Bandelier, 1905, p.23
[11]
Ibid, p.24
[12]
Ibid, p.26
[13]
Ibid, p.25
[14] Ibid., p.28
[15]
Paul Schneider, Brutal Journey: The Epic
Story of the First Crossing of North America, p.147
[16]
De Vaca, p.32
[17] Ibid., p.33
[18]
Ibid, p.34
[19]
Schneider, p.162
[20]
De Vaca, p.35
[21]
Ibid, p.37
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