The French were under the misguided impression that the Timucua were growing plenty of food and so the colonists could simply trade to meet their own needs. Rather than plant, they set about building their new fort. It was a deadly misunderstanding; the Timucuan chiefdoms grew only what they needed and there was not enough to feed their villages as well as the French.25 It soon was too late to grow any more crops, and the food supply among the French began to dwindle, while tempers frayed, leading to a mutiny by the end of 1564. As Laudonnière tried to rein in angry settlers, a reprieve appeared on the horizon: the English slave trader and explorer John Hawkins called at the St. Johns River in August 1564, allowing them a chance to obtain provisions.26
By this point, Ribault had been released from prison in England, and he left Dieppe for Florida in May 1565.27 Following close behind in June was Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, a Spaniard from the mountainous Asturias, on Spain’s northern coast. Like many men from this region, he sought his fortune at sea, where, in his case, he established his reputation fighting French corsairs in the Bay of Biscay. Menéndez later commanded fleets to the Indies, entering the lucrative trade between the colonies and Spain.28 He profited, but his successes were not consistent. A hurricane in 1563 cost him more than his fortune when a vessel sank and his son was also lost in the storm, possibly shipwrecked somewhere near Florida. Later that year, the king summoned Menéndez to Spain, concerned about reports of French activity in Florida. While in Spain, Menéndez had a dispute with some merchants and found himself under house arrest in 1564 until the claims were settled.29 Eager to clear his name, Menéndez negotiated a contract with the crown to place a colony in Florida, and he left Spain. He had organized an expedition of nineteen ships, with some fifteen hundred soldiers and settlers. His plan was for some of the fleet to meet in the Canary Islands, with a few of the vessels following later.30 Menéndez had a troubled start, however, as some of the ships never arrived in the Canaries, and a hurricane destroyed most of the rest. One of his caravels was blown so far off course it was later captured by French corsairs. In the end, he managed to limp into San Juan, Puerto Rico, in his flagship, the San Pelayo.31
Despite the setbacks, Menéndez regrouped and managed to arrive somewhere near Cape Canaveral just after Ribault returned to the St. Johns River, in late August 1565. When Menéndez discovered the whereabouts of the French fleet, a brief skirmish broke out between the Spanish and French ships, the latter managing to block the entrance to the mouth of the river. Menéndez decided to head south to an inlet he had spotted earlier. Once he and his men reached shore, they claimed Florida—again—for the king, and named this stopping point St. Augustine, as they had first sighted land on August 28, the feast day of that saint.32 A sandbar lay across the inlet, and while this meant the flagship had to be anchored farther out, the harbor would help protect them from attack.33 As Menéndez and his men were setting up camp, Ribault sent four ships and most of his men at Fort Caroline to attack the Spanish. This plan was left in tatters after another hurricane struck. Ribault was not able to spot the Spanish ships, and this caused him to sail too far south. The ferocity of the storm left his own ships wrecked just below St. Augustine.34
Menéndez determined that rather than waiting for Ribault to return for a sea battle, the Spaniards should attack Fort Caroline by land. After almost four days of marching through heavy rains, Spanish troops reached it by September 20. They had no trouble capturing the fort, and around 140 of the French were killed, while 45 managed to escape. Another 50 women and children were taken captive.35 After securing the fort, Menéndez returned to St. Augustine to fight Ribault, not realizing what had happened to him until local Indians told him that French castaways had washed up in a nearby inlet, about fifteen miles south of St. Augustine. Menéndez found them, and they surrendered. He ordered his troops to kill them anyway, with the exception of any Catholics in their group. This bloody execution was the genesis of the name given to that site, which it bears to this day: Matanzas (Massacre) Inlet. A few weeks later, more survivors from the shipwreck arrived near the same spot, this time including Ribault, and they, too, met the same fate. One final group washed up that November. Some of them fled, though this time the captives’ lives were spared, and they were put in a small fort under Spanish guard, near Cape Canaveral.36
ONE MAN WHO managed to flee the Fort Caroline attack was Jacques le Moyne de Morgues, a cartographer and engraver who, upon returning to Europe, published an account of his experiences and provided illustrations of the Timucuan people, as well as the flora and fauna of the region. He lost most of his work during his escape but re-created it from memory; it was later reproduced and published by Theodore de Bry, who bought le Moyne’s images and written account from his widow in 1588. Laudonnière also escaped the attack on Fort Caroline, fleeing to the St. Johns River where he and other survivors sailed on two ships to France.37 He ended up in Swansea, Wales, where he began his Notable History of Florida, before returning to France, where it was published in 1586, with le Moyne’s work following in 1591. These two books were translated and read throughout Europe, showing many people for the first time images of Native American life. Laudonnière provided one of the earliest European accounts of the Timucuan people, describing the men as being “olive in colour, large of body, handsome, well proportioned, and without deformities,” and noting their deerskin loincloths and tattoos, which “ornament their bodies, arms, and thighs with handsome designs.”38 Le Moyne’s images reflected Laudonnière’s descriptions. His pictures show fierce, muscular, tattooed men, and women of similar stature, tall and strong, with long hair and bare breasts.
Now the Spanish would try to assert their authority in this part of Florida. They took control of Fort Caroline in 1565 and renamed it San Mateo.39 Later that year, Menéndez began to explore the rest of Florida from St. Augustine, attempting to make alliances with the Native Americans. He erected more forts, including San Antón de Carlos on the west coast in the Calusa territory of Mound Key (south of modern Fort Myers) and outposts in the Tocobaga and Tequesta lands, although none of these fortifications survived past 1569.40
Gonzalo Solís de Merás, Menéndez’s brother-in-law, joined in the adelantado’s exploits in Florida and later wrote about his experiences.41 Solís was with Menéndez when they encountered Calusa people in southwest Florida in 1566. Their party was searching for a rumored group of shipwrecked Spaniards who had been held captive for more than twenty years. They found some of them, and a meeting was arranged between Menéndez and the Calusa chief. At first there was an exchange of gifts and food and then, according to Solís, “the Adelantado told him that the King of Spain, his Lord, sent him for the Christian men and women that he had, and if he did not bring them to him, he would order him killed.”42 The captives were handed over and more gifts exchanged. The chief, for his part, apparently had earlier adopted the name Carlos after his captives told him that Emperor Carlos V was the king of all the Christians. In another display of respect, Carlos tried to give Menéndez his sister to marry. Solís recounted the exchange:
The chief told him that he should go sleep in a room that was there, with his sister, since he had given her to him as a wife, and that if he did not do so, that his Indians would be upset, saying that they were laughing at them and at her, and that he regarded her poorly. And there were more than 4,000 Indian men and women in the town. The Adelantado [Menéndez] showed a little perturbation, and told him through the interpreter that Christians could not sleep with women who weren’t Christian.43
Thrust into a complicated social situation, Menéndez tried to explain Christian practices; the chief said he would accept and even permitted his sister to be baptized. She became known as Doña Antonia.44 This “marriage”—even though Menéndez had a wife in Spain—would seal a sort of brotherhood between the two men, and a long, extravagant feast followed.
Tales of Indian women being “given” to the Spanish abound in reports from conquistadores from across the empir
e, presenting only one side of the story. These women, be they slaves or princesses, often functioned as linguistic and social translators. Few Spanish women had been taken to Florida, and so the men were left to seek relationships with indigenous women, sometimes by force. Many native women were used as domestic servants and concubines, entrapped in servitude and sexual slavery. This was not unique to Florida, and throughout Spanish America, the subsequent offspring of these relationships were known as mestizos. An elaborate casta (caste) system of racial hierarchy took shape, ranking the mixtures of people, with the most “Spanish” being at the top and the most indigenous or African at the bottom. These racialized ideas were connected to an older concept from the Iberian Peninsula—limpieza de sangre, or “purity of blood”—that was concerned with a person’s possible Jewish or Muslim ancestry. Since some of the Spanish who came to the Americas had converted Jewish (converso) or Muslim (morisco) ancestry, these preoccupations crossed the Atlantic as well.45 How deeply ingrained such racial ideas were in Spanish Florida in this period is difficult to ascertain; indigenous communities were too scattered, the Spanish colonists too few, and the records too scant to allow a detailed picture of the extent of mestizaje and the state of emerging casta hierarchies.
Menéndez and Carlos continued to spend time together, with Carlos later asking Menéndez to help him attack the Tocobaga people, who lived to the north of the Calusa. Menéndez declined to involve himself in the conflict, though he did broker a peace between the two groups.46 In his dealings with the Calusa, he met a captive, Hernando de Escalante Fontaneda, who had been shipwrecked in south Florida and who knew of Menéndez’s son; it had transpired that he had not survived. Escalante served as an interpreter for the Spanish and later left for Cuba in 1569.47 He also wrote a Memoria of his experiences, a rare written record of a prolonged period spent with the indigenous people of Florida. Escalante’s work contains a mix of admiration and prejudice, and at times seems to make a negative assessment of the prospects in Florida—a sharp contrast to conquistadores’ letters to the crown extolling the virtues of this corner of empire. He might have been making, in a roundabout way, the case against further settlement in Florida, to spare the Indians any more European incursions, writing:48
As I have stated, they [Ais and Jeaga people] are rich from the sea, and not from the land. From Tocobaga up to Santa Elena, which will be about six hundred leagues of coastline, there is no gold or even less silver naturally from the land, but rather it is what I have said, from the sea. I do not wish to say if there is land to inhabit, since the Indians live in it. It is plentiful for livestock and for agriculture in their vicinity. … In all these provinces that I have declared about, from Tocobaga-chile up to Santa Elena, they are great fisherfolk … they are great archers, and traitors, and I hold it for very certain that they will never be at peace, and even less Christian.49
Yet such inferences were ignored. Menéndez’s efforts had finally allowed the Spanish to entrench themselves on the edge of Florida. Menéndez also discovered that if he hugged the eastern coastline rather than battling the Gulf Stream, a smoother journey could be made to Havana. Before long, the main settlement in Florida was St. Augustine, not Santa Elena, which was another two hundred miles up the coast.50 However, Felipe II wanted a presence in Santa Elena to forestall any future arrivals of the French, and so in April 1566, Menéndez and 150 soldiers went there and established Fort San Felipe close to the old Charlesfort location.51
After the fort was finished, Menéndez returned to St. Augustine, leaving the colony and around a hundred men under the supervision of Esteban de Las Alas. By the summer Santa Elena was in trouble: sixty of the men mutinied when a supply ship from St. Augustine stopped there, commandeering it to Cuba. Another twenty men disappeared into the interior, leaving about twenty-five, who were now forced to rely on the goodwill of Native Americans for survival.52
Not long after the runaways fled, Captain Juan Pardo arrived from Spain in July with supplies and around three hundred men. Las Alas and Pardo worked to improve the fort in time for Menéndez’s return in August 1566. Pleased at the result, Menéndez named Las Alas governor—Menéndez still held this power as the adelantado—and for a brief moment, Santa Elena appeared to have stabilized.53 At the end of 1566, Pardo left on an expedition into the interior, searching for the elusive overland path to link Florida with New Spain, which formed part of Menéndez’s instructions from the crown.54 Menéndez was optimistic enough to believe that he would also find a waterway to the Far East from Florida.55
Pardo headed west into North Carolina and went as far as Tennessee, meeting many Native Americans along the way and setting up two more forts, one of which was Fort San Juan near the Indian village of Joara (sometimes Joada), near modern Morganton, North Carolina. Pardo returned to Santa Elena a few months later, in 1567, and discovered that while he had been away, relations between his men and the local Indians had soured. Despite the tensions, he made plans to leave again later that year.56
Menéndez, for his part, had won the crown’s favor with his success in Florida and wanted to take advantage of the situation by returning to Spain to enjoy his accolades, leaving in May 1567. Pardo set out on his second expedition inland in September, returning to Santa Elena by March 1568. Once again, the colony had been beset by more problems in his absence, not least a lack of food, as well as continued Indian attacks.57
To complicate matters, French corsairs arrived in April 1568, intent on revenge. Reports from the few survivors who returned to France had begun to circulate, revealing the scale of France’s disaster in Florida.58 Dominique de Gourgues, who had earlier been imprisoned among the Spanish, organized a retaliatory expedition from Bordeaux. Aided on their arrival by about four hundred Timucua Indians, they headed to the site of the first large massacre, Fort Caroline (San Mateo), on the St. Johns River.59 Upon learning of their impending arrival, the hundred or so Spanish troops there tried to flee to St. Augustine, leaving Gourgues to destroy the fort before returning to France. Santa Elena, however, was left unharmed.
More colonists arrived in Santa Elena by 1568; at its peak some four hundred people lived there. By 1571, Menéndez secured for Florida a subsidy, known as the situado, to ensure its growth and protection.60 Other parts of the empire, such as Cuba and Puerto Rico, which had little or no mineral wealth remaining but provided strategic importance, also received a share of silver, often delivered at erratic intervals.
Menéndez’s plan was to put soldiers, settlers, and missionaries along the length of Florida, which the Spanish considered to be from the tip of the peninsula up to around the Chesapeake Bay, or the Bahía de Santa María, as it was called.61 That bay was particularly important because it was thought to connect to the fabled Northwest Passage, which would link Spanish America to Asia.62 Menéndez had gone some way toward realizing this vision by the time of his death in 1574, which occurred in Spain while he prepared for another trip to Florida.
While Menéndez had managed to drive off the French and establish rudimentary garrisons during his time in Florida, the territory remained fragile for the Spanish. By 1576, Santa Elena was falling apart. The colony’s leaders turned violent, demanding tribute from the Orista and committing brutal acts, including the killing of two Guale chiefs, prompting an uprising of five hundred Orista and Guale, who attacked Fort San Felipe.63 The Spaniards decided to abandon it and retreated to St. Augustine.64
Assessing indigenous hostility or cooperation in regard to the Spanish and even among themselves is complicated in this period. Written accounts or testimonies from the Spanish about attacks or ambushes often come from judicial proceedings and reflect Spanish beliefs and prejudices.65 While there were also periods of calm around Santa Elena, this had not been the case along the coast near the St. Johns River, where the chiefdoms of Seloy and Saturiwa, both part of the larger community of Timucuan-speakers, were more consistently hostile to the Spanish. There had been skirmishes from the outset, as these chiefdoms tried
to expel the Spanish from St. Augustine, with soldiers retaliating through the late 1560s.66
Efforts to bolster Santa Elena continued when, in 1577, Menéndez’s nephew, Pedro Menéndez Márquez, arrived with orders to rebuild it. Up went Fort San Marcos, with a garrison of fifty men and artillery that included three cannons.67 Menéndez Márquez tried to negotiate peace with the Guale and Orista, and he also discovered there were some French living among them on the coast.68 Clashes with the Native Americans and their French allies took place throughout the 1570s, but settlement also continued. The relationship with the Guale broke down once more, and in 1579 the Spanish burned some of their villages and maize fields. Menéndez Márquez managed to stop aggression from some of the chiefdoms around Santa Elena by 1580, though relations with the Guale and Orista remained troubled.69 Spanish officials, however, had decided to base themselves in St. Augustine, in part because they had finally brokered a peace with the hostile Timucua chiefdoms, as evidenced by records of Indians having been baptized around this time, as well as the establishment of two Indian villages near the town.70
In the end, it was neither Orista nor French attacks that ended Santa Elena, but those of the English. Francis Drake’s assault on St. Augustine in 1586 was an impetus for Menéndez Márquez to bring the Santa Elena settlers to that town to help rebuild it and shore up its defenses, even though Drake had been unable to find Santa Elena and so it was left unharmed. In the face of much protest, the governor forced the settlers to leave in 1587, and the fort was dismantled.
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