European
Contact and Settlement
Part
Two
Hernando de Soto
Around 1496, or
1498, Hernando de Soto was born in Extremadura, Spain. Like Juan Ponce de Leon,
and other conquistadors, Hernando de Soto came to the Spanish West Indies in
search of military fame and wealth. De Soto came with Pedro Arias Davila, the
first Spanish governor of Panama, in 1516 at the age of 18 or 20. Here, de Soto
is given his first military command. During his conquest of Central America,
like other conquistadors, de Soto used cruel tactics and arranged the extortion
of native villages by capturing their chiefs and holding them for ransom. De
Soto became well known for this practice. He gained fame among his men for
being a very brave, loyal, and an excellent soldier. De Soto looked up to men like
Juan Ponce de Leon and craved his kind of fame and status.
In Leon,
Nicaragua, Hernando de Soto was appointed a regidor,
or council member. He led an expedition up the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula
in 1530 searching for a passage to the Pacific Ocean, which he discovered did
not exist. After that failure, de Soto left Nicaragua and joined Francisco
Pizzaro’s conquest of Peru in 1532, becoming his second in command. De Soto
captured Chief Atahualpa of Peru, and held him hostage. Atahualpa’s people
filled an entire room full of gold and other treasures in hopes of securing
Atahualpa’s release. The Spanish began to hear rumors about a new Incan army
coming towards Cajamarca, located in the northern highlands
of Peru. De Soto, with an army of 200 was sent to investigate.
While de Soto
was away, Chief Atahualpa was killed by the Spaniards. When de Soto returned having
never discovered the rumored Incan army, Francisco Pizzaro decided he wanted to
conquer the Incan capital of Cuzco. In 1533, his army marched towards the
capital. When they got close, Hernando de Soto and about forty soldiers went in
advance of the main army. They managed to take the city before the rest of the
army arrived. The Spaniards began searching through the town, stealing whatever
valuables they could. This made Hernando de Soto a very rich man.
By 1534 Hernando
de Soto had grown in fame, wealth, and power and was serving as Lieutenant
Governor of the newly conquered city of Cuzco. In 1535, de Soto decided it was
time to return to Spain, so he packed up all his wealth and belongings and
returned to his homeland. He arrived in Spain in 1536, a very rich man. He was
given privileges and honors, such as the right to conquer Florida, and the
governorship of Cuba. Cabeza de Vaca, one of the four survivors of the doomed
Narvaez expedition, had just returned to Spain from his horrible journey and de
Soto was fascinated by his stories. The new governor of Cuba expected to
conquer, and colonize Florida within four years.
Hernando de Soto
rounded up 620 volunteers for his expedition to Florida, and they set sail for
Havana, Cuba. The expedition sailed for Florida from Havana on May 18, 1539 on
nine ships carrying 600 soldiers, twelve priests, two women, several slaves,
223 horses, mules, war hounds, and a herd of hogs. The priests were there
because de Soto intended on converting the natives to Catholicism. Learning
from Cabeza de Vaca’s recount of the Narvaez expedition and the mistakes Narvaez
made that doomed his men, de Soto came better prepared. It is widely believed
that Hernando de Soto’s point of landing in Florida was near the present-day
Tampa Bay area. The fleet landed on May 30, 1539 and de Soto named the bay Espiritu
Santo, or Holy Spirit. Soon after the Spaniards landed, a patrol of soldiers discovered
a small group of natives. To the Spaniard’s astonishment, one of them was a
white man.
Juan Ortiz had
been living with the natives since he was captured in 1529 while helping to search
for Narvaez and his doomed expedition. After being spared from becoming cooked
alive, he was adopted by the natives, and overtime could barely speak Spanish
anymore. In 1539, when the de Soto expedition arrived in Florida, Chief Mococo
told Ortiz that he may return to his people. Ortiz, accompanied by a few of his
friends, set out to find his fellow Spaniards. Suddenly, they were attacked by a
group Spanish soldiers. Ortiz managed to remember some Spanish and shouted out
in his native tongue. The startled Spaniards halted their attack, and took the
young Ortiz to see de Soto.
After
living with the Timucuan people for over a decade, Juan Ortiz knew the language
well, and after conversing in his native tongue for the first time in a decade,
it all began to come back to him. Ortiz then served de Soto as an interpreter
on their journey through the Florida wilderness. The explorers stayed
relatively close to the coast line for over a month, until July 15, 1539, when
de Soto decided to march into the interior. Again, learning from Narvaez’s
mistakes, de Soto told his ships to stay anchored at Espiritu Santo, and await
word from a messenger as to where to go next. De Soto was seeking gold, but he
was not finding any. When asked about the shiny metal, many natives pointed
north and said something that sounded like “Apalache.” They were most likely
referring to the Appalachian Mountains where there actually was gold. Because of
this Hernando de Soto decided to head north.
The
Apalachee territory was the land between the Aucilla River and the Apalachicola
River, and after hearing reports of the gold he would find there de Soto set
his sights towards that land. As de Soto’s force moved toward Apalachee, other
native peoples close to the area warned de Soto that the fierce Apalachee
“would shoot them with arrows, quarter, burn, and destroy them.”[1]
Because the Narvaez expedition had been there a decade before, the Apalachee
were aware of the Spanish, and were hostile towards them. Hernando de Soto is
not known for his kindness towards the native peoples he encountered, in fact,
he went against his King’s orders to treat the natives well and convert them to
Catholicism. Instead, de Soto enslaved, mutilated, and executed many natives.
After Hernando
de Soto’s army crossed the Aucilla River they were in Apalachee territory. They
continued inland until they came to a great village that they found abandoned. The
Apalachee had left the town in anticipation of the Spaniards arrival. The town
was called Anhaica (ann-hi-ka), and was the Apalachee capitol located in
present-day Tallahassee not far from the capitol. Anhaica had numerous feed
stores with an abundance of food and many empty dwellings. The winter of
1539-1540 was closing in so de Soto decided Anhaica would be his winter
encampment. The army spent around six months in Anhaica, and it is believed
that the first Christmas in the present-day United States was celebrated there.
 |
| First Christmas |
Pedro Menendez de Aviles
After a failed
attempt to set up a mission, and Tristan de Luna’s failed colony of Puerto de
Santa Maria, near present-day Pensacola Bay, the French began to try to
colonize Spanish Florida. In 1562, French Protestant Huguenot Admiral Gaspard
de Coligny, directed Jean Ribault to lead an expedition to the “new world” and
establish a French Huguenot colony. With a fleet of around 150 potential colonists,
Ribault left France for Florida on February 18, 1562. The fleet landed at the
mouth of the St. Johns River, present-day Jacksonville, on May 1, 1562. Jean
Ribault named the river May, after the month of their landing. Ribault then
erected a stone column, naming the territory for France. This was a bold action,
considering that by 1562 the Spanish had claim to Florida for over fifty years.
Ribault
sailed north from there, and eventually established a colony on present-day
Parris Island, South Carolina, called Charlesfort, in the honor of the French
King, Charles IX. Jean Ribault soon decided to return to France for fresh
supplies and left 27 men stationed at Charlesfort. Upon arriving back in France
in July of 1562, Ribault found himself in the middle of the French War of
Religion that started between the Catholics and the Protestant Huguenots. Soon,
Ribault was arrested, and locked up in the Tower of London.
The
French religious war was over by 1563, and Admiral Coligny had time to
concentrate on Florida again. While Ribault was imprisoned in England, Rene
Goulaine de Laudonnière was sent as his replacement to Charlesfort, which had
fallen into desolation. Laudonnière decided to establish a new colony on the
banks of the St. Johns River, present-day Jacksonville. They named the new
colony Fort Caroline on June 22, 1564. The colony sustained itself for the next
year, but then began to fall into desolation as well. The English slave trader
John Hawkins arrived at Fort Caroline and offered to take the French colonists
back to France, but Laudonnière refused.
In
1565, the Spanish were fed up with the French encroaching on their territory. The
Spanish king wanted Fort Caroline destroyed as well as the protestant French “heretics.”
The crown approached Pedro Menéndez de Aviles, commander of the Spanish
Treasure Fleet, and ordered him to organize an expedition to Florida with the
authority to settle and govern it, but first he had to rid Florida of the
French. Where Juan Ponce de Leon, Panfilo de Narvaez, Hernando de Soto, and Tristan
de Luna failed, Pedro Menéndez de Aviles succeeded. The new governor of Florida
was in a race to beat Jean Ribault to Fort Caroline, who had organized a fleet
of 800 settlers on five ships. The two fleets met each other off the coast of Florida,
and had an indecisive skirmish.
Menendez ordered
his ships to head southward where they disembarked on August 28, 1565, the
feast day of St. Augustine of Hippo. There, they built a presidio, which is a fortified base established to protect the
settlers from hostile natives, pirates, and colonists from enemy nations, such
as France and England. They named the settlement San Augustin, present-day St. Augustine, and built up earthworks to
further protect themselves. An attack from the French at Fort Caroline seemed
imminent and on September 10, 1565 Jean Ribault took his fleet south with the
majority of his men towards St. Augustine to pursue Menendez. Hearing of
Ribault’s movements, Menendez sent soldiers on foot forty miles north to Fort
Caroline during a terrible hurricane. The storm tossed Ribault’s fleet around,
and the French wrecked south of St. Augustine near present-day Daytona Beach.
The surviving crew, including Jean Ribault, wandered north to present-day
Matanzas Inlet, about fourteen miles south of the Spanish at St. Augustine.
Back at Fort
Caroline, the Spanish attached during the hurricane and easily defeated the
small garrison of French soldiers left behind. There were about twenty soldiers
with a hundred colonists inside the fortification and the Spanish slaughtered
nearly all of them, only sparring around sixty women and children. The Catholic
Spaniards hung the dead bodies of the protestant French in trees with a sign
reading “Hanged, not as Frenchmen, but as heretics”. Menendez decided to rename
Fort Caroline, and called it San Mateo. There Menendez left a detachment of
men, and headed back to St. Augustine. Soon after his return to St. Augustine,
Menendez was informed that the French had shipwrecked and were only fourteen
miles south of them. Before Governor Menendez could really work on building a
permanent settlement, he must first destroy the French presence in Florida.
The marooned
French sailors were soon tracked down by the Spanish, and rounded up. Jean
Ribault thought he was going to be treated humanely, so he surrendered without
a fight. He was dead wrong. By order of the King of Spain, the Spaniards gave
the protestant French a chance accept Catholicism. Those who did not convert to
Catholicism were taken behind a sand dune and hacked to death with a sword.
Only a handful of the French were converted, and around 350 men, including Jean
Ribault himself were massacred. The location of this event still bears the name
“Matanzas”, Spanish for “massacre.” As horrific as it was, still, Governor
Menendez carried out his order to dispel the French from Florida, and with the
entire coast back under Spanish control, he turned his attention the King’s
other orders, which were to build a permanent colony and establish a mission system
for the natives. The Governor invited Jesuit priests to St. Augustine to start
ministering to the locals. Menendez anticipated St. Augustine, and Florida
altogether, to prove lucrative to himself and the King.[2]
Sources used:
The New History of Florida (pp. 40-61). Gainesville: University Press of Florida.
Lyon, E. (1996). Settlement and Survival. In M. Gannon,
Hann, J. H. (1988). Apalachee: The Land Between the Rivers. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.
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