Narrative and Critical History of America, Vol. 2 (of 8) / Spanish Explorations and Settlements in America from the Fifteenth to the Seventeenth Century

by Unknown

CHAPTER IV.

ANCIENT FLORIDA.

BY JOHN GILMARY SHEA, LL.D.

THE credit of being the first to explore our Atlantic coast has not yet been positively awarded by critical historians. Ramusio preserves the report of a person whom he does not name, which asserts that Sebastian Cabot claimed for his father and himself, in the summer of 1497, to have run down the whole coast, from Cape Breton to the latitude of Cuba; but the most recent and experienced writer on Cabot treats the claim as unfounded.[792]

The somewhat sceptical scholars of our day have shown little inclination to adopt the theory of Francisco Adolpho de Varnhagen, that Americus Vespucius on his first voyage reached Honduras in 1497, and during the ensuing year ran along the northern shore of the Gulf of Mexico, doubled the Florida cape, and then sailed northward along our Atlantic coast to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, where he built a vessel and sailed to Cadiz.[793]

Although Columbus made his first landfall on one of the Bahamas, and Cuba was soon after occupied, no definite knowledge seems to have been obtained of the great mainland so near them. There is nothing in narrative or map to betray any suspicion of its existence prior to the year 1502, when a map executed in Lisbon at the order of Cantino, an Italian merchant, for Hercules d’Este, shows a mainland north of Cuba, terminating near that island in a peninsula resembling Florida. The tract of land thus shown has names of capes and rivers, but they can be referred to no known exploration. To some this has seemed to be but a confused idea of Cuba as mainland;[794] by others it is regarded as a vague idea of Yucatan. But Harrisse in his Corte-Real, where he reproduces the map, maintains that “between the end of 1500 and the summer of 1502 navigators, whose name and nationality are unknown, but whom we presume to be Spaniards, discovered, explored, and named the part of the shore of the United States which from the vicinity of Pensacola Bay runs along the Gulf of Mexico to the Cape of Florida, and, turning it, runs northward along the Atlantic coast to about the mouth of the Chesapeake or Hudson.”[795]

But leaving these three claims in the realm of conjecture and doubt, we come to a period of more certain knowledge.

The Lucayos of the Bahamas seem to have talked of a great land of Bimini not far from them. The Spaniards repeated the story; and in the edition of Peter Martyr’s Decades published in 1511 is a map on which a large island appears, named “Illa de Beimeni, parte.”[796]

Discovery had taken a more southerly route; no known Spanish vessel had passed through the Bahama channel or skirted the coast. But some ideas must have prevailed, picked up from natives of the islands, or adventurous pilots who had ventured farther than their instructions authorized. Stories of an island north of Hispaniola, with a fountain whose waters conferred perpetual youth, had reached Peter Martyr in Spain, for in the same edition of his Decades he alludes to the legends.

John Ponce de Leon, who had accompanied Columbus on his second voyage, and had since played his part bravely amid the greatest vicissitudes, resolved to explore and conquer Bimini. He had friends at Court, and seems to have been a personal favorite of the King, who expressed a wish for his advancement.[797] The patent he solicited was based on that originally issued to Columbus; but the King laughingly said, that it was one thing to grant boundless power when nothing was expected to come of it, and very different to do so when success was almost certain. Yet on the 23d of February, 1512, a royal grant empowered John Ponce de Leon “to proceed to discover and settle the Island of Bimini.”[798] The patent was subject to the condition that the island had not been already discovered. He was required to make the exploration within three years, liberty being granted to him to touch at any island or mainland not subject to the King of Portugal. If he succeeded in his expedition he was to be governor of Bimini for life, with the title of adelantado.[799]

The veteran immediately purchased a vessel, in order to go to Spain and make preparations for the conquest of Bimini. But the authorities in Porto Rico seized his vessel; and the King, finding his services necessary in controlling the Indians, sent orders to the Council of the Indies to defer the Bimini expedition, and gave Ponce de Leon command of the fort in Porto Rico.[800]

Thus delayed in the royal service, Ponce de Leon was unable to obtain vessels or supplies till the following year. He at last set sail from the port of San German in Porto Rico in March, 1513,[801] with three caravels, taking as pilot Anton de Alaminos, a native of Palos who had as a boy accompanied Columbus, and who was long to associate his own name with explorations of the Gulf of Mexico. They first steered northeast by north, and soon made the Caicos, Yaguna, Amaguayo, and Manigua. After refitting at Guanahani, Ponce de Leon bore northwest; and on Easter Sunday (March 27) discovered the mainland, along which he ran till the 2d of April, when he anchored in 30° 8’ and landed. On the 8th he took possession in the name of the King of Spain, and named the country—which the Lucayos called Cancio—Florida, from Pascua Florida, the Spanish name for Easter Sunday.

The vessels then turned southward, following the coast till the 20th, when Ponce landed near Abayoa, a cluster of Indian huts. On attempting to sail again, he met such violent currents that his vessels could make no headway, and were forced to anchor, except one of the caravels, which was driven out of sight. On landing at this point Ponce found the Indians so hostile that he was obliged to repel their attacks by force. He named a river Rio de la Cruz; and, doubling Cape Corrientes on the 8th of May, sailed on till he reached a chain of islands, to which he gave the name of the Martyrs. On one of these he obtained wood and water, and careened a caravel. The Indians were very thievish, endeavoring to steal the anchors or cut the cables, so as to seize the ships. He next discovered and named the Tortugas. After doubling the cape, he ran up the western shore of Florida to a bay, in 27° 30’, which for centuries afterward bore the name of Juan Ponce. There are indications that before he turned back he may have followed the coast till it trended westward. After discovering Bahama he is said to have despatched one caravel from Guanima under John Perez de Ortubia, with Anton de Alaminos, to search for Bimini, while he himself returned to Porto Rico, which he reached September 21. He was soon followed by Ortubia, who, it is said, had been successful in his search for Bimini.

Although Ponce de Leon had thus explored the Florida coast, and added greatly to the knowledge of the Bahama group, his discoveries are not noted in the editions of Ptolemy which appeared in the next decade, and which retained the names of the Cantino map. The Ribeiro map (1529) gives the Martyrs and Tortugas, and on the mainland Canico,—apparently Cancio, the Lucayan name of Florida. In the so-called Leonardo da Vinci’s Mappemonde, Florida appears as an island in a vast ocean that rolls on to Japan.[802]

Elated with his success, John Ponce de Leon soon after sailed to Spain; and, obtaining an audience of the King,—it is said through the influence of his old master, Pero Nuñez de Guzman, Grand Comendador of Calatrava,—gave the monarch a description of the attractive land which he had discovered. He solicited a new patent for its conquest and settlement; and on the 27th of September, 1514, the King empowered him to go and settle “the Island of Brimini and the Island Florida” which he had discovered under the royal orders. He was to effect this in three years from the delivery of the asiento; but as he had been employed in His Majesty’s service, it was extended so that this term was to date from the day he set sail for his new province. After reducing the Caribs, he was empowered to take of the vessels and men employed in that service whatever he chose in order to conquer and settle Florida. The natives were to be summoned to submit to the Catholic Faith and the authority of Spain, and they were not to be attacked or captured if they submitted. Provision was made as to the revenues of the new province, and orders were sent to the viceroy, Don Diego Columbus, to carry out the royal wishes.[803]

The Carib war was not, however, terminated as promptly as the King and his officers desired. Time passed, and adventurers in unauthorized expeditions to Florida rendered the Indians hostile.[804] It was not till 1521 that Ponce de Leon was able to give serious thought to a new expedition. His early hopes seem to have faded, and with them the energy and impulsiveness of his youth. He had settled his daughters in marriage, and, free from domestic cares, offered himself simply to continue to serve the King as he had done for years. Writing to Charles V. from Porto Rico on the 10th of February, 1521, he says:—

“Among my services I discovered, at my own cost and charge, the Island Florida and others in its district, which are not mentioned as being small and useless; and now I return to that island, if it please God’s will, to settle it, being enabled to carry a number of people with which I shall be able to do so, that the name of Christ may be praised there, and Your Majesty served with the fruit that land produces. And I also intend to explore the coast of said island further, and see whether it is an island, or whether it connects with the land where Diego Velasquez is, or any other; and I shall endeavor to learn all I can. I shall set out to pursue my voyage hence in five or six days.”[805]

PONCE DE LEON.

Fac-simile of an engraving in Herrera, edition of 1728.

As he wrote to the Cardinal of Tortosa, he had expended all his substance in the King’s service; and if he asked favors now it was “not to treasure up or to pass this miserable life, but to serve His Majesty with them and his person and all he had, and settle the land that he had discovered.”[806]

He went prepared to settle, carrying clergymen for the colonists, friars to found Indian missions, and horses, cattle, sheep, and swine. Where precisely he made the Florida coast we do not know; but it is stated that on attempting to erect dwellings for his colonists he was attacked by the natives, who showed great hostility. Ponce himself, while leading his men against his assailants, received so dangerous an arrow wound, that, after losing many of his settlers by sickness and at the hands of the Indians, he abandoned the attempt to plant a colony in Florida, which had so long been the object of his hopes; and taking all on board his vessels, he sailed to Cuba. There he lingered in pain, and died of his wound.[807]

John Ponce de Leon closed his long and gallant career without solving the problem whether Florida was an island or part of the northern continent. Meanwhile others, following in the path he had opened, were contributing to a more definite knowledge. Thus Diego Miruelo, a pilot, sailed from Cuba in 1516 on a trading cruise; and running up the western shore of the Floridian peninsula, discovered a bay which long bore his name on Spanish maps, and was apparently Pensacola. Here he found the Indians friendly, and exchanged his store of glass and steel trinkets for silver and gold. Then, satisfied with his cruise, and without making any attempt to explore the coast, he returned to Cuba.[808]

The next year Francis Hernandez de Cordova[809] sent from Cuba on the 8th of February two ships and a brigantine, carrying one hundred and ten men, with a less humane motive than Miruelo’s; for Oviedo assures us that his object was to capture on the Lucayos, or Bahama Islands, a cargo of Indians to sell as slaves. His object was defeated by storms; and the vessels, driven from their course, reached Yucatan, near Cape Catoche, which he named. The Indians here were as hostile as the elements; and Hernandez, after several sharp engagements with the natives, in which almost every man was wounded, was sailing back, when storms again drove his vessels from their course. Unable to make the Island of Cuba, Alaminos, the pilot of the expedition, ran into a bay on the Florida coast, where he had been with Ponce de Leon on his first expedition. While a party which had landed were procuring water, they were attacked with the utmost fury by the Indians, who, swarming down in crowds, assailed those still in the boats. In this engagement twenty-two of the Indians were killed, six of the Spaniards in the landing party were wounded,—including Bernal Diaz, who records the event in his History,—and four of those in the boats, among the number Anton de Alaminos, the pilot. The only man in the expedition who had come away from Yucatan unwounded, a soldier named Berrio, was acting as sentry on shore, and fell into the hands of the Indians. The commander himself, Hernandez de Cordova, reached Cuba only to die of his wounds.

This ill-starred expedition led to two other projects of settlement and conquest. Diego Velasquez, governor of Cuba, the friend and host of Hernandez, obtained a grant, which was referred to by Ponce de Leon in his final letter to the King, and which resulted in the conquest of Mexico;[810] and Francis de Garay, governor of Jamaica, persuaded by Alaminos to enter upon an exploration of the mainland, obtained permission in due form from the priors of the Order of St. Jerome, then governors of the Indies, and in 1519 despatched four caravels, well equipped, with a good number of men, and directed by good pilots, to discover some strait in the mainland,—then the great object of search.

Alonzo Alvarez de Pineda, the commander of the expedition, reached the coast within the limits of the grant of Ponce de Leon, and endeavored to sail eastward so as to pass beyond and continue the exploration. Unable, from headwinds, to turn the Cape of Florida, he sailed westward as far as the River Pánuco, which owes its name to him. Here he encountered Cortés and his forces, who claimed the country by actual possession.

The voyage lasted eight or nine months, and possession was duly taken for the King at various points on the coast. Sailing eastward again, Garay’s lieutenant discovered a river of very great volume, evidently the Mississippi.[811] Here he found a considerable Indian town, and remained forty days trading with the natives and careening his vessels. He ran up the river, and found it so thickly inhabited that in a space of six leagues he counted no fewer than forty Indian hamlets on the two banks.

According to their report, the land abounded in gold, as the natives wore gold ornaments in their noses and ears and on other parts of the body. The adventurers told, too, of tribes of giants and of pigmies; but declared the natives to have been friendly, and well disposed to receive the Christian Faith.

Wild as these statements of Pineda’s followers were, the voyage settled conclusively the geography of the northern shore of the Gulf, as it proved that there was no strait there by which ships could reach Asia. Florida was no longer to be regarded as an island, but part of a vast continent. The province discovered for Garay received the name of Amichel.

Garay applied for a patent authorizing him to conquer and settle the new territory, and one was issued at Burgos in 1521. By its tenor Christopher de Tapia, who had been appointed governor of the territory discovered by Velasquez, was commissioned to fix limits between Amichel and the discoveries of Velasquez on the west and those of Ponce de Leon on the east. On the map given in Navarrete,[812] Amichel extends apparently from Cape Roxo to Pensacola Bay.

After sending his report and application to the King, and without awaiting any further authority, Garay seems to have deemed it prudent to secure a footing in the territory; and in 1520 sent four caravels under Diego de Camargo to occupy some post near Pánuco. The expedition was ill managed. One of the vessels ran into a settlement established by Cortés and made a formal demand of Cortés himself for a line of demarcation, claiming the country for Garay. Cortés seized some of the men who landed, and learned all Camargo’s plans. That commander, with the rest of his force, attempted to begin a settlement at Pánuco; but the territory afforded no food, and the party were soon in such straits that, unable to wait for two vessels which Garay was sending to their aid, Camargo despatched a caravel to Vera Cruz to beg for supplies.[813]

In 1523 Garay equipped a powerful fleet and force to conquer and settle Amichel. He sailed from Jamaica at the end of June with the famous John de Grijalva, discoverer of Yucatan, as his lieutenant. His force comprised thirteen vessels, bearing one hundred and thirty-six cavalry and eight hundred and forty infantry, with a supply of field-pieces. He reached Rio de las Palmas on the 25th of July, and prepared to begin a settlement; but his troops, alarmed at the unpromising nature of the country, insisted on proceeding southward. Garay yielded, and sailed to Pánuco, where he learned that Cortés had already founded the town of San Esteban del Puerto. Four of his vessels were lost on the coast, and one in the port. He himself, with the rest of his force, surrendered to Cortés. He died in Mexico, while still planning a settlement at Rio de las Palmas; but with his death the province of Amichel passed out of existence.

Thus the discoveries of Ponce de Leon and of Garay, with those of Miruelos, made known, by ten years’ effort, the coast-line from the Rio Grande to the St. John’s in Florida.

The next explorations were intended to ascertain the nature of our Atlantic coast north of the St. John’s.

In 1520 Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon, one of the auditors of the Island of St. Domingo, though possessed of wealth, honors, and domestic felicity, aspired to the glory of discovering some new land, and making it the seat of a prosperous colony. Having secured the necessary license, he despatched a caravel under the command of Francisco Gordillo, with directions to sail northward through the Bahamas, and thence strike the shore of the continent. Gordillo set out on his exploration, and near the Island of Lucayoneque, one of the Lucayuelos, descried another caravel. His pilot, Alonzo Fernandez Sotil, proceeded toward it in a boat, and soon recognized it as a caravel commanded by a kinsman of his, Pedro de Quexos, fitted out in part, though not avowedly, by Juan Ortiz de Matienzo, an auditor associated with Ayllon in the judiciary. This caravel was returning from an unsuccessful cruise among the Bahamas for Caribs,—the object of the expedition being to capture Indians in order to sell them as slaves. On ascertaining the object of Gordillo’s voyage, Quexos proposed that they should continue the exploration together. After a sail of eight or nine days, in which they ran little more than a hundred leagues, they reached the coast of the continent at the mouth of a considerable river, to which they gave the name of St. John the Baptist, from the fact that they touched the coast on the day set apart to honor the Precursor of Christ. The year was 1521, and the point reached was, according to the estimate of the explorers, in latitude 33° 30′.[814]

Boats put off from the caravels and landed some twenty men on the shore; and while the ships endeavored to enter the river, these men were surrounded by Indians, whose good-will they gained by presents.[815]

Some days later, Gordillo formally took possession of the country in the name of Ayllon, and of his associate Diego Caballero, and of the King, as Quexos did also in the name of his employers on Sunday, June 30, 1521. Crosses were cut on the trunks of trees to mark the Spanish occupancy.[816]

Although Ayllon had charged Gordillo to cultivate friendly relations with the Indians of any new land he might discover,[817] Gordillo joined With Quexos in seizing some seventy of the natives, with whom they sailed away, without any attempt to make an exploration of the coast.

On the return of the vessel to Santo Domingo, Ayllon condemned his captain’s act; and the matter was brought before a commission, presided over by Diego Columbus, for the consideration of some important affairs. The Indians were declared free, and it was ordered that they should be restored to their native land at the earliest possible moment. Meanwhile they were to remain in the hands of Ayllon and Matienzo.

The latter made no attempt to pursue the discovery; but Ayllon, adhering to his original purpose, proceeded to Spain with Francisco,—one of the Indians, who told of a giant king and many provinces,[818]—and on the 12th of June, 1523, obtained a royal cédula.[819] Under this he was to send out vessels in 1524, to run eight hundred leagues along the coast, or till he reached lands already discovered; and if he discovered any strait leading to the west, he was to explore it. No one was to settle within the limits explored by him the first year, or within two hundred leagues beyond the extreme points reached by him north and south; the occupancy of the territory was to be effected within four years; and as the conversion of the natives was one of the main objects, their enslavement was forbidden, and Ayllon was required to take out religious men of some Order to instruct them in the doctrines of Christianity. He obtained a second cédula to demand from Matienzo the Indians in his hands in order to restore them to their native country.[820]

On his return to the West Indies, Ayllon was called on the King’s service to Porto Rico; and finding it impossible to pursue his discovery, the time for carrying out the asiento was, by a cédula of March 23, 1524, extended to the year 1525.[821]

To secure his rights under the asiento, he despatched two caravels under Pedro de Quexos to the newly discovered land early in 1525. They regained the good-will of the natives and explored the coast for two hundred and fifty leagues, setting up stone crosses with the name of Charles V. and the date of the act of taking possession. They returned to Santo Domingo in July, 1525, bringing one or two Indians from each province, who might be trained to act as interpreters.[822]

Meanwhile Matienzo began legal proceedings to vacate the asiento granted by the King to Ayllon, on the ground that it was obtained surreptitiously, and in fraud of his own rights as joint discoverer. His witnesses failed to show that his caravel had any license to make a voyage of exploration, or that he took any steps to follow up the discovery made; but the suit embarrassed Ayllon, who was fitting out four vessels to sail in 1526, in order to colonize the territory granted to him. The armada from Spain was greatly delayed; and as he expected by it a store of artillery and muskets, as well as other requisites, he was at great loss. At last, however, he sailed from Puerto de la Plata with three large vessels,—a caravel, a breton, and a brigantine,—early in June, 1526.[823] As missionaries he took the famous Dominican, Antonio de Montesinos, the first to denounce Indian slavery, with Father Antonio de Cervantes and Brother Pedro de Estrada, of the same Order. The ships carried six hundred persons of both sexes, including clergymen and physicians, besides one hundred horses.

They reached the coast, not at the San Juan Bautista, but at another river, at 33° 40´, says Navarrete, to which they gave the name of Jordan.[824] Their first misfortune was the loss of the brigantine; but Ayllon immediately set to work to replace it, and built a small vessel such as was called a gavarra,—the first instance of ship-building on our coast. Francisco, his Indian guide, deserted him; and parties sent to explore the interior brought back such unfavorable accounts that Ayllon resolved to seek a more fertile district. That he sailed northward there can be little doubt; his original asiento required him to run eight hundred leagues along the coast, and he, as well as Gomez, was to seek a strait or estuary leading to the Spice Islands. The Chesapeake was a body of water which it would be imperative on him to explore, as possibly the passage sought. The soil of the country bordering on the bay, superior to that of the sandy region south of it, would seem better suited for purposes of a settlement. He at last reached Guandape, and began the settlement of San Miguel, where the English in the next century founded Jamestown.[825]

Here he found only a few scattered Indian dwellings of the communal system, long buildings, formed of pine posts at the side, and covered with branches, capable of holding, in their length of more than a hundred feet, a vast number of families. Ayllon selected the most favorable spot on the bank, though most of the land was low and swampy. Then the Spaniards began to erect houses for their shelter, the negro slaves—first introduced here—doing the heaviest portion of the toil. Before the colonists were housed, winter came on. Men perished of cold on the caravel “Catalina,” and on one of the other vessels a man’s legs were frozen so that the flesh fell off. Sickness broke out among the colonists, and many died. Ayllon himself had sunk under the pestilential fevers, and expired on St. Luke’s Day, Oct. 18, 1526.

He made his nephew, John Ramirez, then in Porto Rico, his successor as head of the colony, committing the temporary administration to Francis Gomez. Troubles soon began. Gines Doncel and Pedro de Bazan, at the head of some malcontents, seized and confined Gomez and the alcaldes, and began a career of tyranny. The Indians were provoked to hostility, and killed several of the settlers; the negroes, cruelly oppressed, fired the house of Doncel. Then two settlers, Oliveros and Monasterio, demanded the release of the lawful authorities. Swords were drawn; Bazan was wounded and taken, Doncel fled, but was discovered near his blazing house. Gomez and his subordinates, restored to power, tried and convicted Bazan, who was put to death.

Such were the stormy beginnings of Spanish rule in Virginia. It is not to be wondered at that with one consent the colonists soon resolved to abandon San Miguel de Guandape. The body of Ayllon was placed on board a tender, and they set sail; but it was not destined to reach a port and receive the obsequies due his rank. The little craft foundered; and of the five hundred who sailed from Santo Domingo only one hundred and fifty returned to that island.

Contemporaneous with the explorations made by and under Ayllon was an expedition in a single vessel sent out by the Spanish Government in 1524 under Stephen Gomez, a Portuguese navigator who had sailed under Magallanes, but had returned in a somewhat mutinous manner. He took part in a congress of Spanish and Portuguese pilots held at Badajoz to consider the probability of finding a strait or channel north of Florida by which vessels might reach the Moluccas. To test the question practically, Charles V. ordered Gomez to sail to the coast of Bacallaos, or Newfoundland and Labrador, and examine the coast carefully, in order to ascertain whether any such channel existed. Gomez fitted out a caravel at Corunna, in northern Spain, apparently in the autumn of 1524, and sailed across. After examining the Labrador coast, he turned southward and leisurely explored the whole coast from Cape Race to Florida, from which he steered to Santiago de Cuba, and thence to Corunna, entering that port after ten months’ absence. He failed to discover the desired channel, and no account in detail of his voyage is known; but the map of Ribeiro,[826] drawn up in 1529, records his discoveries, and on its coast-line gives names which were undoubtedly bestowed by him, confirming the statement that he sailed southerly. From this map and the descriptions of the coast in Spanish writers soon after, in which descriptions mention is made of his discoveries, we can see that he noted and named in his own fashion what we now know as Massachusetts Bay, Cape Cod, Narragansett Bay, the Connecticut, Hudson, and Delaware rivers.

This voyage completed the exploration of our coast from the Rio Grande to the Bay of Fundy; yet Sebastián Cabot in 1536 declared that it was still uncertain whether a single continent stretched from the Mississippi to Newfoundland.[827]

The success of Cortés filled the Spanish mind with visions of empires in the north rivalling that of Mexico, which but awaited the courage of valiant men to conquer.

Panfilo de Narvaez, after being defeated by Cortés, whom he was sent to supersede,[828] solicited of Charles V. a patent under which he might conquer and colonize the country on the Gulf of Mexico, from Rio de Palmas to Florida. A grant was made, under which he was required to found two or more towns and erect two fortresses. He received the title of adelantado, and was empowered to enslave all Indians who, after being summoned in due form, would not submit to the Spanish King and the Christian Faith. In an official document he styles himself Governor of Florida, Rio de Palmas, and Espiritu Santo,—the Mississippi.[829]

Narvaez collected an armament suited to the project, and sailed from San Lucar de Barrameda, June 17, 1527, in a fleet of five ships carrying six hundred persons, with mechanics and laborers, as well as secular priests, and five Franciscan friars, the superior being Father Juan Xuarez. On the coast of Cuba his fleet was caught by a hurricane, and one vessel perished. After refitting and acquiring other vessels, Narvaez sailed from Cuba in March with four vessels and a brigantine, taking four hundred men and eighty horses, his pilot being Diego Miruelo, of a family which had acquired experience on that coast.

The destination was the Rio de Palmas; but his pilot proved incompetent, and his fleet moved slowly along the southern coast of Cuba, doubled Cape San Antonio, and was standing in for Havana when it was driven by a storm on the Florida coast at a bay which he called Bahia de la Cruz, and which the map of Sebastian Cabot identifies with Apalache Bay.[830] Here Narvaez landed a part of his force (April 15), sending his brigantine to look for a port or the way to Pánuco,—much vaunted by the pilots,—and if unsuccessful to return to Cuba for a vessel that had remained there. He was so misled by his pilots that though he was near or on the Florida peninsula, he supposed himself not far from the rivers Pánuco and Palmas. Under this impression he landed most of his men, and directed his vessels, with about one hundred souls remaining on them, to follow the coast while he marched inland. No steps were taken to insure their meeting at the harbor proposed as a rendezvous, or to enable the brigantine and the other ship to follow the party on land. On the 19th of April Narvaez struck inland in a northward or northeasterly direction; and having learned a little of the country, moved on with three hundred men, forty of them mounted. On the 15th of the following month they reached a river with a strong current, which they crossed some distance from the sea. Cabeza de Vaca, sent at his own urgent request to find a harbor, returned with no encouraging tidings; and the expedition plodded on till, on the 25th of June, they reached Apalache,—an Indian town of which they had heard magnificent accounts. It proved to be a mere hamlet of forty wretched cabins.

The sufferings of Narvaez’ men were great; the country was poverty-stricken; there was no wealthy province to conquer, no fertile lands for settlement. Aute (a harbor) was said to be nine days’ march to the southward; and to this, after nearly a month spent at Apalache, the disheartened Spaniards turned their course, following the Magdalena River. On the 31st of July they reached the coast at a bay which Narvaez styled Bahia de Cavallos; and seeing no signs of his vessels, he set to work to build boats in which to escape from the country. The horses were killed for food; and making forges, the Spaniards wrought their stirrups, spurs, and other iron articles into saws, axes, and nails. Ropes were made of the manes and tails of the horses and such fibres as they could find; their shirts were used for sailcloth. By the 20th of September five boats, each twenty-two cubits long, were completed, and two days afterward the survivors embarked, forty-eight or nine being crowded into each frail structure. Not one of the whole number had any knowledge of navigation or of the coast.

Running between Santa Rosa Island and the mainland, they coasted along for thirty days, landing where possible to obtain food or water, but generally finding the natives fierce and hostile. On the 31st of October they came to a broad river pouring into the Gulf such a volume of water that it freshened the brine so that they were able to drink it; but the current was too much for their clumsy craft. The boat commanded by Narvaez was lost, and never heard of; that containing Father Xuarez and the other friars was driven ashore bottom upward; the three remaining boats were thrown on the coast of western Louisiana or eastern Texas. The crews barely escaped with life, and found themselves at the mercy of cruel and treacherous savages, who lived on or near Malhado Island, and drew a precarious living from shellfish and minor animals, prickly-pears and the like. They were consequently not as far west as the bison range, which reached the coast certainly at Matagorda Bay.[831] Here several of the wretched Spaniards fell victims to the cruelty of the Indians or to disease and starvation, till Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, the treasurer of the expedition, escaping from six years’ captivity among the Mariames, reached the Avavares, farther inland, with two companions, Castillo and Dorantes, and a negro slave. After spending eight months with them, he penetrated to the Arbadaos, where the mesquite is first found, near the Rio Grande; and skirting the San Saba Mountains, came to the bison plains and the hunter nations; then keeping westward through tribes that lived in houses of earth and knew the use of cotton and mined the turquoise, he finally came upon some Spanish explorers on the River Petatlan; and thus on the 1st of April, 1536, with hearts full of joy and gratitude, the four men entered the town of San Miguel in Sinaloa.

The vessels of Narvaez, not finding the alleged port of the pilots, returned to the harbor where they had landed him, and were there joined by the two vessels from Cuba; but though they remained nearly a year, cruising along the coast of the Gulf, they never encountered the slightest trace of the unfortunate Narvaez or his wretched followers. They added nothing apparently to the knowledge of the coast already acquired; for no report is extant, and no map alludes to any discovery by them.

Thus ended an expedition undertaken with rashness and ignorance, and memorable only from the almost marvellous adventures of Cabeza de Vaca and his comrades, and the expeditions by land which were prompted by his narrative.

The wealth of Mexico and Peru had inflamed the imagination of Spanish adventurers; and though no tidings had been received of Narvaez, others were ready to risk all they had, and life itself, in the hope of finding some wealthy province in the heart of the northern continent. The next to try his fortune was one who had played his part in the conquest of Peru.

Hernando de Soto, the son of an esquire of Xerez de Badajoz, was eager to rival Cortés and Pizarro. In 1537 he solicited a grant of the province from Rio de las Palmas to Florida, as ceded to Narvaez, as well as of the province discovered by Ayllon; and the King at Valladolid, on the 20th of April, issued a concession to him, appointing him to the government of the Island of Cuba, and requiring him in person to conquer and occupy Florida within a year, erect fortresses, and carry over at least five hundred men as settlers to hold the country. The division of the gold, pearls, and other valuables of the conquered caciques was regulated, and provision made for the maintenance of the Christian religion and of an hospital in the territory.

The air of mystery assumed by Cabeza de Vaca as to the countries that he had seen, served to inflame the imagination of men in Spain; and Soto found many ready to give their persons and their means to his expedition. Nobles of Castile in rich slashed silk dresses mingled with old warriors in well-tried coats of mail. He sailed from San Lucar in April, 1538, amid the fanfaron of trumpets and the roar of cannon, with six hundred as high-born and well-trained men as ever went forth from Spain to win fame and fortune in the New World. They reached Cuba safely, and Soto was received with all honor. More prudent than Narvaez, Soto twice despatched Juan de Añasco, in a caravel with two pinnaces, to seek a suitable harbor for the fleet, before trusting all the vessels on the coast.[832]

Encouraged by the reports of this reconnoitring, Soto, leaving his wife in Cuba, sailed from Havana in May, 1539, and made a bay on the Florida coast ten leagues west of the Bay of Juan Ponce. To this he gave the name of Espiritu Santo, because he reached it on the Feast of Pentecost, which fell that year on the 25th of May.[833] On the 30th he began to land his army near a town ruled by a chief named Uçita. Soto’s whole force was composed of five hundred and seventy men, and two hundred and twenty-three horses, in five ships, two caravels, and two pinnaces. He took formal possession of the country in the name of the King of Spain on the 3d of June, and prepared to explore and subject the wealthy realms which he supposed to lie before him. Though the chief at his landing-place was friendly, he found that all the surrounding tribes were so hostile that they began to attack those who welcomed him.

Ortiz, a Spaniard belonging to Narvaez’ expedition, who in his long years of captivity had become as naked and as savage as were the Indians, soon joined Soto.[834] He was joyfully received; though his knowledge of the country was limited, his services were of vital necessity, for the Indians secured by Añasco, and on whom Soto relied as guides and interpreters, deserted at the first opportunity.

Soto had been trained in a bad school; he had no respect for the lives or rights of the Indians. As Oviedo, a man of experience among the conquistadores, says: “This governor was very fond of this sport of killing Indians.”[835]

The plan of his march showed his disregard of the rights of the natives. At each place he demanded of the cacique, or head chief, corn for his men and horses, and Indians of both sexes to carry his baggage and do the menial work in his camp. After obtaining these supplies, he compelled the chief to accompany his army till he reached another tribe whose chief he could treat in the same way; but though the first chief was then released, few of the people of the tribe which he ruled, and who had been carried off by Soto, were so fortunate as ever to be allowed to return to their homes.

On the 15th of July Soto, sending back his largest ships to Cuba, moved to the northeast to make his toilsome way amid the lakes and streams and everglades of Florida. Before long his soldiers began to suffer from hunger, and were glad to eat water-cresses, shoots of Indian corn, and palmetto, in order to sustain life; for native villages were few and scattered, and afforded little corn for the plunderers. The natives were met only as foe-men, harassing his march. At Caliquen the Indians, to rescue their chief, whom Soto was carrying to the next town, made a furious onslaught on the Spaniards; but were driven to the swamps, and nearly all killed or taken. Their dauntless spirit was, however, unbroken. The survivors, though chained as slaves, rose on their masters; and seizing any weapon within their reach, fought desperately, one of them endeavoring to throttle Soto himself. Two hundred survived this gallant attempt, only to be slaughtered by the Indian allies of the Spanish commander. Soto fought his way westward step by step so slowly that at the end of three months, Oct. 30, 1539, he had only reached Agile,—a town in the province of Apalache. Añasco, sent out from this point to explore, discovered the port where Narvaez had embarked,—the remains of his forges and the bones of his horses attesting the fact. Soto despatched him to Tampa Bay. Añasco with a party marched the distance in ten days; and sending two caravels to Cuba, brought to Soto in the remaining vessels the detachment left at his landing-place. Before he reached his commander the Indians had burned the town of Anaica Apalache, of which Soto had taken possession.[836]

A good port, that of Pensacola, had been discovered to the westward; but Soto, crediting an Indian tale of the rich realm of Yupaha in the northeast, left his winter quarters March 3, 1540, and advanced in that direction through tribes showing greater civilization. A month later he reached the Altamaha, receiving from the more friendly natives corn and game. This was not sufficient to save the Spaniards from much suffering, and they treated the Indians with their wonted cruelty.[837]

At last Soto, after a march of four hundred and thirty leagues, much of it through uninhabited land, reached the province ruled by the chieftainess of Cofitachiqui. On the 1st of May she went forth to meet the Spanish explorer in a palanquin or litter; and crossing the river in a canopied canoe, she approached Soto, and after presenting him the gifts of shawls and skins brought by her retinue, she took off her necklace of pearls and placed it around the neck of Soto. Yet her courtesy and generosity did not save her from soon being led about on foot as a prisoner. The country around her chief town, which Jones identifies with Silver Bluff, on the Savannah, below Augusta,[838] tempted the followers of Soto, who wished to settle there, as from it Cuba could be readily reached. But the commander would attempt no settlement till he had discovered some rich kingdom that would rival Peru; and chagrined at his failure, refused even to send tidings of his operations to Cuba. At Silver Bluff he came upon traces of an earlier Spanish march. A dirk and a rosary were brought to him, which were supposed, on good grounds, to have come from the expedition of Ayllon.

Poring over the cosmography of Alonzo de Chaves, Soto and the officers of his expedition concluded that a river, crossed on the 26th of May, was the Espiritu Santo, or Mississippi. A seven days’ march, still in the chieftainess’s realm, brought them to Chelaque, the country of the Cherokees, poor in maize; then, over mountain ridges, a northerly march brought them to Xualla, two hundred and fifty leagues from Silver Bluff. At the close of May they were in Guaxule, where the chieftainess regained her freedom. It was a town of three hundred houses, near the mountains, in a well-watered and pleasant land, probably at the site of Coosawattie Old Town. The chief gave Soto maize, and also three hundred dogs for the maintenance of his men.

Marching onward, Soto next came to Canasagua, in all probability on a river even now called the Connasauga, flowing through an attractive land of mulberries, persimmons, and walnuts. Here they found stores of bear oil and walnut oil and honey. Marching down this stream and the Oostanaula, into which it flows, to Chiaha, on an island opposite the mouth of the Etowa, in the district of the pearl-bearing mussel-streams, Soto was received in amity; and the cacique had some of the shellfish taken and pearls extracted in the presence of his guest. The Spaniards encamped under the trees near the town, leaving the inhabitants in quiet possession of their homes. Here, on the spot apparently now occupied by Rome, they rested for a month. A detachment sent to discover a reputed gold-producing province returned with no tidings to encourage the adventurers; and on the 28th of June Soto, with his men and steeds refreshed, resumed his march, having obtained men to bear his baggage, though his demand of thirty women as slaves was refused.[839]

Chisca, to which he sent two men to explore for gold, proved to be in a rugged mountain land; and the buffalo robe which they brought back was more curious than encouraging. Soto therefore left the territory of the Cherokees, and took the direction of Coça, probably on the Coosa river. The cacique of that place, warned doubtless by the rumors which must have spread through all the land of the danger of thwarting the fierce strangers, furnished supplies at several points on the route to his town, and as Soto approached it, came out on a litter attired in a fur robe and plumed headpiece to make a full surrender. The Spaniards occupied the town and took possession of all the Indian stores of corn and beans, the neighboring woods adding persimmons and grapes. This town was one hundred and ninety leagues west of Xualla, and lay on the east bank of the Coosa, between the mouths of the Talladega and Tallasehatchee, as Pickett, the historian of Alabama, determines. Soto held the chief of Coça virtually as a prisoner; but when he demanded porters to bear the baggage of his men, most of the Indians fled. The Spanish commander then seized every Indian he could find, and put him in irons.

After remaining at Coça for twenty-five days, Soto marched to Ullibahali, a strongly palisaded town, situated, as we may conjecture, on Hatchet Creek. This place submitted, giving men as porters and women as slaves. Leaving this town on the 2d of September, he marched to Tallise, in a land teeming with corn, whose people proved equally docile.[840] This submission was perhaps only to gain time, and draw the invaders into a disadvantageous position.

Actahachi, the gigantic chief of Tastaluza, sixty leagues south of Coça, which was Soto’s next station, received him with a pomp such as the Spaniards had not yet witnessed. The cacique was seated on cushions on a raised platform, with his chiefs in a circle around him; an umbrella of buckskin, stained red and white, was held over him. The curveting steeds and the armor of the Spaniards raised no look of curiosity on his stern countenance, and he calmly awaited Soto’s approach. Not till he found himself detained as a prisoner would he promise to furnish the Spaniards with porters and supplies of provisions at Mauila[841] to enable Soto to continue his march. He then sent orders to his vassal, the chief of Mauila, to have them in readiness.

As the Spaniards, accompanied by Actahachi, descended the Alabama, passing by the strong town of Piache, the cacique of Mauila came to meet them with friendly greetings, attended by a number of his subjects playing upon their native musical instruments, and proffering fur robes and service; but the demeanor of the people was so haughty that Luis de Moscoso urged Soto not to enter the town. The adelantado persisted; and riding in with seven or eight of his guard and four horsemen, sat down with the cacique and the chief of Tastaluza, whom, according to custom, he had brought to this place. The latter asked leave to return to his own town; when Soto refused, he rose, pretending a wish to confer with some chiefs, and entered a house where some armed Indians were concealed. He refused to come out when summoned; and a chief who was ordered to carry a message to the cacique, but refused, was cut down by Gallego with a sword. Then the Indians, pouring out from the houses, sent volleys of arrows at Soto and his party. Soto ran toward his men, but fell two or three times; and though he reached his main force, five of his men were killed, and he himself, as well as all the rest, was severely wounded. The chained Indian porters, who bore the baggage and treasures of Soto’s force, had set down their loads just outside the palisade. When the party of Soto had been driven out, the men of Mauila sent all these into the town, took off their fetters, and gave them weapons. Some of the military equipments of the Spaniards fell into the hands of the Indians, and several of Soto’s followers, who had like him entered the town, among them a friar and an ecclesiastic, remained as prisoners.

The Indians, sending off their caciques, and apparently their women, prepared to defend the town; but Soto, arranging his military array into four detachments, surrounded it, and made an assault on the gates, where the natives gathered to withstand them. By feigning flight Soto drew them out; and by a sudden charge routed them, and gaining an entrance for his men, set fire to the houses. This was not effected without loss, as the Spaniards were several times repulsed by the Indians. When they at last fought their way into the town, the Indians endeavored to escape. Finding that impossible, as the gates were held, the men of Mauila fought desperately, and died by the sword, or plunged into the blazing houses to perish there.

The battle of Mauila was one of the bloodiest ever fought on our soil between white and red men in the earlier days. The Adelantado had twenty of his men killed, and one hundred and fifty wounded; of his horses twelve were killed and seventy wounded. The Indian loss was estimated by the Portuguese chronicler of the expedition at twenty-five hundred, and by Rangel at three thousand. At nightfall Biedma tells us that only three Indians remained alive, two of whom were killed fighting; the last hung himself from a tree in the palisade with his bowstring.[842] The Gentleman of Elvas states Soto’s whole loss up to his leaving Mauila to have been one hundred and two by disease, accident, and Indian fighting. Divine worship had been apparently offered in the camp regularly up to this time; but in the flames of Mauila perished all the chalices and vestments of the clergy, as well as the bread-irons and their store of wheat-flour and wine, so that Mass ceased from this time.[843]

Soto here ascertained that Francisco Maldonado was with vessels at the port of Ichuse (or Ochuse) only six days’ march from him, awaiting his orders. He was too proud to return to Cuba with his force reduced in numbers, without their baggage, or any trophy from the lands he had visited. He would not even send any tidings to Cuba, but concealed from his men the knowledge which had been brought to him by Ortiz, the rescued follower of Narvaez.

Stubborn in his pride, Soto, on the 14th of November, marched northward; and traversing the land of Pafallaya (now Clarke, Marengo, and Greene counties), passed the town of Taliepatua and reached Cabusto, identified by Pickett with the site of the modern town of Erie, on the Black Warrior. Here a series of battles with the natives occurred; but Soto fought his way through hostile tribes to the little town of Chicaça, with its two hundred houses clustered on a hill, probably on the western bank of the Yazoo, which he reached in a snow-storm on the 17th of December. The cacique Miculasa received Soto graciously, and the Spanish commander won him by sending part of his force to attack Sacchuma, a hostile town. Having thus propitiated this powerful chief, Soto remained here till March; when, being ready to advance on his expedition in search of some wealthy province, he demanded porters of the cacique. The wily chief amused the invader with promises for several days, and then suddenly attacked the town from four sides, at a very early hour in the morning, dashing into the place and setting fire to the houses. The Spaniards, taken by surprise, were assailed as they came out to put on their armor and mount their horses. Soto and one other alone succeeded in getting into the saddle; but Soto himself, after killing one Indian with his spear, was thrown, his girths giving way.

The Indians drew off with the loss of this one man, having killed eleven Spaniards, many of their horses, and having greatly reduced their herd of swine. In the conflagration of the town, Soto’s force lost most of their remaining clothing, with many of their weapons and saddles. They at once set to work to supply the loss. The woods gave ash to make saddles and lances; forges were set up to temper the swords and make such arms as they could; while the tall grass was woven into mats to serve as blankets or cloaks.

They needed their arms indeed; for on the 15th of March the enemy, in three divisions, advanced to attack the camp. Soto met them with as many squadrons, and routed them with loss.

When Soto at last took up his march on the 25th of April, the sturdy Alibamo, or Alimamu, or Limamu, barred his way with a palisade manned by the painted warriors of the tribe. Soto carried it at the cost of the lives of seven or eight of his men, and twenty-five or six wounded; only to find that the Indians had made the palisade not to protect any stores, but simply to cope with the invaders.[844]

At Quizquiz, or Quizqui, near the banks of the Mississippi, Soto surprised the place and captured all the women; but released them to obtain canoes to cross the river. As the Indians failed to keep their promise, Soto encamped in a plain and spent nearly a month building four large boats, each capable of carrying sixty or seventy men and five or six horses. The opposite shore was held by hostile Indians; and bands of finely formed warriors constantly came down in canoes, as if ready to engage them, but always drawing off.

The Spaniards finally crossed the river at the lowest Chickasaw Bluff, all wondering at the mighty turbid stream, with its fish, strange to their eyes, and the trees, uprooted on the banks far above, that came floating down.[845] Soto marched northward to Little Prairie in quest of Pacaha and Chisca, provinces reported to abound in gold. After planting a cross on St. John’s Day[846] at Casqui, where the bisons’ heads above the entrances to the huts reminded them of Spain, he entered Pacaha June 29, as Oviedo says. These towns were the best they had seen since they left Cofitachiqui. Pacaha furnished them with a booty which they prized highly,—a fine store of skins of animals, and native blankets woven probably of bark. These enabled the men to make clothing, of which many had long been in sore want. The people gradually returned, and the cacique received Soto in friendly guise, giving him his two sisters as wives.

While the army rested here nearly a month, expeditions were sent in various directions. One, marching eight days to the northwest through a land of swamps and ponds, reached the prairies, the land of Caluça, where Indians lived in portable houses of mats, with frames so light that a man could easily carry them.[847]

Despairing of finding his long-sought El Dorado in that direction, Soto marched south and then southwest, in all a hundred and ten leagues, to Quiguate, a town on a branch of the Mississippi. It was the largest they had yet seen. The Indians abandoned it; but one half the houses were sufficient to shelter the whole of Soto’s force.

On the first of September the expedition reached Coligua,—a populous town in a valley among the mountains, near which vast herds of bison roamed. Then crossing the river again,[848] Soto’s jaded and decreasing force marched onward. Cayas, with its salt river and fertile maize-lands, was reached; and then the Spaniards came to Tulla, where the Indians attacked them, fighting from their housetops to the last. The cacique at last yielded, and came weeping with great sobs to make his submission.

Marching southeast, Soto reached Quipana; and crossing the mountains eastward, wintered in the province of Viranque, or Autiamque, or Utianque, on a branch of the Mississippi, apparently the Washita.[849] The sufferings of the Spaniards during a long and severe winter were terrible, and Ortiz, their interpreter, succumbed to his hardships and died. Even the proud spirit of Soto yielded to his disappointments and toil. Two hundred and fifty of his splendid force had left their bones to whiten along the path which he had followed. He determined at last to push to the shores of the Gulf, and there build two brigantines, in order to send to Cuba and to New Spain for aid.

SOTO.

Fac-simile of an engraving in Herrera (1728), iv. 21.

Passing through Ayays and the well-peopled land of Nilco, Soto went with the cacique of Guachoyanque to his well-palisaded town on the banks of the Mississippi, at the mouth of the Red River, arriving there on Sunday, April 17, 1542. Here he fell ill of the fever; difficulties beset him on every side, and he sank under the strain. Appointing Luis de Moscoço as his successor in command, he died on the 21st of May. The Adelantado of Cuba and Florida, who had hoped to gather the wealth of nations, left as his property five Indian slaves, three horses, and a herd of swine. His body, kept for some days in a house, was interred in the town; but as fears were entertained that the Indians might dig up the corpse, it was taken, wrapped in blankets loaded with sand, and sunk in the Mississippi.[850]

AUTOGRAPH OF SOTO.

Muscoço’s first plan was to march westward to Mexico. But after advancing to the province of Xacatin, the survivors of the expedition lost all hope; and returning to the Mississippi, wintered on its banks. There building two large boats, they embarked in them and in canoes. Hostile Indians pursued them, and twelve men were drowned, their canoes being run down by the enemy’s periaguas. The survivors reached the Gulf and coasted along to Pánuco.[851]

The expedition of Soto added very little to the knowledge of the continent, as no steps were taken to note the topography of the country or the language of the various tribes. Diego Maldonado and Gomez Arias, seeking Soto, explored the coast from the vicinity of the Mississippi nearly to Newfoundland; but their reports are unknown.

Notwithstanding the disastrous result of Soto’s expedition, and the conclusive proof it afforded that the country bordering on the Gulf of Mexico contained no rich kingdom and afforded little inducement for settlements, other commanders were ready to undertake the conquest of Florida. Among these was Don Antonio de Mendoza, the viceroy of New Spain, who sought, by offers of rank and honors, to enlist some of the survivors of Soto’s march in a new campaign. In a more mercantile spirit, Julian de Samano and Pedro de Ahumada applied to the Spanish monarch for a patent, promising to make a good use of the privileges granted them, and to treat the Indians well. They hoped to buy furs and pearls, and carry on a trade in them till mines of gold and silver were found. The Court, however, refused to permit the grant.[852]

ANTONIO DE MENDOZA,
Viceroy of New Spain.

Yet as a matter of policy it became necessary for Spain to occupy Florida. This the Court felt; and when Cartier was preparing for his voyage to the northern part of the continent,[853] Spanish spies followed his movements and reported all to their Government. In Spain it was decided that Cartier’s occupation of the frozen land, for which he was equipping his vessels, could not in any way militate against the interests of the Catholic monarch; but it was decided that any settlement attempted in Florida must on some pretext be crushed out.[854] Florida from its position afforded a basis for assailing the fleets which bore from Vera Cruz the treasures of the Indies; and the hurricanes of the tropics had already strewn the Florida coast with the fragments of Spanish wrecks. In 1545 a vessel laden with silver and precious commodities perished on that coast, and two hundred persons reached land, only to fall by the hands of the Indians.[855]

The next Spanish attempt to occupy Florida was not unmixed with romance; and its tragic close invests it with peculiar interest. The Dominicans, led by Father Antonio de Montesinos and Las Casas,—who had by this time become Bishop of Chiapa,—were active in condemning the cruelties of their countrymen to the natives of the New World; and the atrocities perpetrated by Soto in his disastrous march gave new themes for their indignant denunciations.[856]

One Dominican went further. Father Luis Cancer de Barbastro, when the Indians of a province had so steadily defied the Spaniards and prevented their entrance that it was styled “Tierra de Guerra,” succeeded by mild and gentle means in winning the whole Indian population, so that the province obtained the name of “Vera Paz,” or True Peace. In 1546 this energetic man conceived the idea of attempting the peaceful conquest of Florida. Father Gregory de Beteta and other influential members of his Order seconded his views. The next year he went to Spain and laid his project before the Court, where it was favorably received. He returned to Mexico with a royal order that all Floridians held in slavery, carried thither by the survivors of Soto’s expedition, should be confided to Father Cancer to be taken back to their own land. The order proved ineffectual. Father Cancer then sailed from Vera Cruz in 1549 in the “Santa Maria del Enzina,” without arms or soldiers, taking Father Beteta, Father Diego de Tolosa, Father John Garcia, and others to conduct the mission. At Havana he obtained Magdalen, a woman who had been brought from Florida, and who had become a Christian. The vessel then steered for Florida, and reaching the coast, at about 28°, on the eve of Ascension Day, ran northward, but soon sailed back. The missionaries and their interpreter landed, and found some of the Indians fishing, who proved friendly. Father Diego, a mission coadjutor, and a sailor, resolved to remain with the natives, and went off to their cabins. Cancer and his companions awaited their return; but they never appeared again. For some days the Spaniards on the ship endeavored to enter into friendly relations with the Indians, and on Corpus Christi Fathers Cancer and Garcia landed and said Mass on shore. At last a Spaniard named John Muñoz, who had been a prisoner among the Indians, managed to reach the ship; and from him they learned that the missionary and his companions had been killed by the treacherous natives almost immediately after reaching their cabins. He had not witnessed their murder, but declared that he had seen the missionary’s scalp. Magdalen, however, came to the shore and assured the missionaries that their comrade was alive and well.

It had thus become a serious matter what course to pursue. The vessel was too heavy to enter the shallow bays, the provisions were nearly exhausted, water could not be had, and the ship’s people were clamoring to return to Mexico. The missionaries, all except Father Cancer, desired to abandon the projected settlement, but he still believed that by presents and kindness to the Indians he could safely remain. His companions in vain endeavored to dissuade him. On Tuesday, June 25, he was pulled in a boat near the shore. He leaped into the water and waded towards the land. Though urged to return, he persevered. Kneeling for a few minutes on the beach, he advanced till he met the Indians. The sailors in the boat saw one Indian pull off his hat, and another strike him down with a club. One cry escaped his lips. A crowd of Indians streamed down to the shore and with arrows drove off the boat. Lingering for awhile, the vessel sailed back to Vera Cruz, after five lives had thus rashly been sacrificed.[857]

On the arrival of the tidings of this tragic close of Cancer’s mission a congress was convened by Maximilian, King of Bohemia, then regent in Spain; and the advocates of the peace policy in regard to the Indians lost much of the influence which they had obtained in the royal councils.[858]

The wreck of the fleet, with rich cargoes of silver, gold, and other precious commodities, on the northern shore of the Gulf of Mexico in 1553, when several hundred persons perished, and the sufferings of the surviving passengers, among whom were several Dominicans, in their attempt to reach the settlements; and the wreck of Farfan’s fleet on the Atlantic coast near Santa Elena in December, 1554,—showed the necessity of having posts on that dangerous coast of Florida, in order to save life and treasure.[859]

The Council of the Indies advised Philip II. to confide the conquest and settlement of Florida to Don Luis de Velasco, viceroy of New Spain, who was anxious to undertake the task. The Catholic monarch had previously rejected the projects of Zurita and Samano; but the high character of Velasco induced him to confide the task to the viceroy of Mexico. The step was a gain for the humanitarian party; and the King, on giving his approval, directed that Dominican friars should be selected to accompany the colonists, in order to minister to them and convert the Indians. Don Luis de Velasco had directed the government in Mexico since November, 1550, with remarkable prudence and ability. The natives found in him such an earnest, capable, and unwavering protector that he is styled in history the Father of the Indians.

The plans adopted by this excellent governor for the occupation of Florida were in full harmony with the Dominican views. In the treatment of the Indians he anticipated the just and equitable methods which give Calvert, Williams, and Penn so enviable a place in American annals.[860]

The occupation was not to be one of conquest, and all intercourse with the Indians was to be on the basis of natural equity. His first step was prompted by his characteristic prudence.[861] In September, 1558, he despatched Guido de Labazares, with three vessels and a sufficient force, to explore the whole Florida coast, and select the best port he found for the projected settlement. Labazares, on his return after an investigation of several months, reported in favor of Pensacola Bay, which he named Felipina; and he describes its entrance between a long island and a point of land. The country was well wooded, game and fish abounded, and the Indian fields showed that Indian corn and vegetables could be raised successfully.[862] On the return of Labazares in December, preparations were made for the expedition, which was placed under the command of Don Tristan de Luna y Arellano. The force consisted of fifteen hundred soldiers and settlers, under six captains of cavalry and six of infantry, some of whom had been at Coça, and were consequently well acquainted with the country where it was intended to form the settlement. The Dominicans selected were Fathers Pedro de Feria, as vicar-provincial of Florida, Dominic of the Annunciation, Dominic de Salazar, John Maçuelas, Dominic of Saint Dominic, and a lay brother. The object being to settle, provisions for a whole year were prepared, and ammunition to meet all their wants.

The colonists, thus well fitted for their undertaking, sailed from Vera Cruz on the 11th of June, 1559; and by the first of the following month were off the bay in Florida to which Miruelo had given his name. Although Labazares had recommended Pensacola Bay, Tristan de Luna seems to have been induced by his pilots to give the preference to the Bay of Ichuse; and he sailed west in search of it, but passed it, and entered Pensacola Bay. Finding that he had gone too far, Luna sailed back ten leagues east to Ichuse, which must have been Santa Rosa Bay. Here he anchored his fleet, and despatched the factor Luis Daza, with a galleon, to Vera Cruz to announce his safe arrival. He fitted two other vessels to proceed to Spain, awaiting the return of two exploring parties; he then prepared to land his colonists and stores.[863] Meanwhile he sent a detachment of one hundred men under captains Alvaro Nyeto and Gonzalo Sanchez, accompanied by one of the missionaries, to explore the country and ascertain the disposition of the Indians. The exploring parties returned after three weeks, having found only one hamlet, in the midst of an uninhabited country.[864] Before Luna had unloaded his vessels, they were struck, during the night of September 19,[865] by a terrible hurricane, which lasted twenty-four hours, destroying five ships, a galleon and a bark, and carrying one caravel and its cargo into a grove some distance on land. Many of the people perished, and most of the stores intended for the maintenance of the colony were ruined or lost.

The river, entering the Bay of Ichuse, proved to be very difficult of navigation, and it watered a sparsely-peopled country. Another detachment,[866] sent apparently to the northwest, after a forty days’ march through uncultivated country, reached a large river, apparently the Escambia, and followed its banks to Nanipacna, a deserted town of eighty houses. Explorations in various directions found no other signs of Indian occupation. The natives at last returned and became friendly.

Finding his original site unfavorable, Tristan de Luna, after exhausting the relief-supplies sent him, and being himself prostrated by a fever in which he became delirious, left Juan de Jaramillo at the port with fifty men and negro slaves, and proceeded[867] with the rest of his company, nearly a thousand souls, to Nanipacna, some by land, and some ascending the river in their lighter craft. To this town he gave the name of Santa Cruz. The stores of Indian corn, beans, and other vegetables left by the Indians were soon consumed by the Spaniards, who were forced to live on acorns or any herbs they could gather.

The Viceroy, on hearing of their sufferings, sent two vessels to their relief in November, promising more ample aid in the spring. The provisions they obtained saved them from starvation during the winter, but in the spring their condition became as desperate as ever. No attempt seems to have been made to cultivate the Indian fields, or to raise anything for their own support.[868]

In hope of obtaining provisions from Coça, Jaramillo sent his sergeant-major with six captains and two hundred soldiers, accompanied by Father Dominic de Salazar and Dominic of the Annunciation, to that province. On the march the men were forced to eat straps, harnesses, and the leather coverings of their shields; some died of starvation, while others were poisoned by herbs which they ate. A chestnut wood proved a godsend, and a fifty days’ march brought them to Olibahali (Hatchet Creek), where the friendly natives ministered to their wants.[869]

About the beginning of July they reached Coça, on the Coosa River, then a town of thirty houses, near which were seven other towns of the same tribe. Entering into friendly intercourse with these Indians, the Spaniards obtained food for themselves and their jaded horses. After resting here for three months, the Spaniards, to gain the good-will of the Coosas, agreed to aid them in a campaign against the Napochies,—a nation near the Ochechiton,[870] the Espiritu Santo, or Mississippi. These were in all probability the Natchez. The Coosas and their Spanish allies defeated this tribe, and compelled them to pay tribute, as of old, to the Coosas. Their town, saved with difficulty from the flames, gave the Spaniards a supply of corn. On their return to Coça, the sergeant-major sent to report to Tristan de Luna; but his messengers found no Spaniard at Nanipacna, save one hanging from a tree. Tristan de Luna, supposing his men lost, had gone down to Ochuse Bay, leaving directions on a tree, and a buried letter.[871] Father Feria and some others had sailed for Havana, and all were eager to leave the country.[872] Tristan de Luna was reluctant to abandon the projected settlement, and wished to proceed to Coça with all the survivors of his force. His sickness had left him so capricious and severe, that he seemed actually insane. The supplies promised in the spring had not arrived in September, though four ships left Vera Cruz toward the end of June. Parties sent out by land and water found the fields on the Escambia and Mobile[873] forsaken by the Indians, who had laid waste their towns and removed their provisions. In this desperate state George Ceron, the maestro de campo, opposed the Governor’s plan,[874] and a large part of the force rallied around him. When Tristan de Luna issued a proclamation ordering the march, there was an open mutiny, and the Governor condemned the whole of the insurgents to death. Of course he could not attempt to execute so many, but he did hang one who deserted. The mutineers secretly sent word to Coça, and in November the party from that province with the two missionaries arrived at Pensacola Bay.[875] Don Tristan’s detachment was also recalled from the original landing, and the whole force united. The dissensions continued till the missionaries, amid the solemnities of Holy Week, by appealing to the religious feelings of the commander and Ceron, effected a reconciliation.[876]

At this juncture Angel de Villafañe’s fleet entered the harbor of Ichuse. He announced to the people that he was on his way to Santa Elena, which Tristan de Luna had made an ineffectual effort to reach. All who chose were at liberty to accompany him. The desire to evacuate the country where they had suffered so severely was universal. None expressed a wish to remain; and Tristan de Luna, seeing himself utterly abandoned, embarked for Havana with a few servants. Villafañe then took on board all except a detachment of fifty or sixty men who were left at Ichuse under Captain Biedma, with orders to remain five or six months; at the expiration of which time they were to sail away also, in case no instructions came.

Villafañe, with the “San Juan” and three other vessels and about two hundred men, put into Havana; but there many of the men deserted, and several officers refused to proceed.[877]

With Gonzalo Gayon as pilot, Villafañe reached Santa Elena—now Port Royal Sound—May 27, 1561, and took possession in the name of the King of Spain. Finding no soil adapted for cultivation, and no port suitable for planting a settlement, he kept along the coast, doubled Cape Roman, and landing on the 2d of June, went inland till he reached the Santee, where he again took formal possession. On the 8th he was near the Jordan or Pedee; but a storm drove off one of his vessels. With the rest he continued his survey of the coast till he doubled Cape Hatteras. There, on the 14th of June, his caravel well-nigh foundered, and his two smaller vessels undoubtedly perished. He is said to have abandoned the exploration of the coast here, although apparently it was his vessel, with the Dominican Fathers, which about this time visited Axacan, on the Chesapeake, and took off a brother of the chief.[878]

Villafañe then sailed to Santo Domingo, and Florida was abandoned. In fact, on the 23d of September the King declared that no further attempt was to be made to colonize that country, either in the Gulf or at Santa Elena, alleging that there was no ground to fear that the French would set foot in that land or take possession of it; and the royal order cites the opinion of Pedro Menendez against any attempt to form settlements on either coast.[879]

As if to show the fallacy of their judgment and their forecast, the French (and what was worse, from the Spanish point of view, French Calvinists) in the next year, under Ribault, took possession of Port Royal,—the very Santa Elena which Villafañe considered unfitted for colonization. Here they founded Charlesfort and a settlement, entering Port Royal less than three months after the Spanish officers convened in Mexico had united in condemning the country.

Pedro Menendez de Aviles had, as we have seen, been general of the fleet to New Spain in 1560, and on his return received instructions to examine the Atlantic coast north of the very spot where the French thus soon after settled. In 1561 he again commanded the fleet; but on his homeward voyage a terrible storm scattered the vessels near the Bermudas, and one vessel, on which his only son and many of his kinsmen had embarked, disappeared. With the rest of his ships he reached Spain, filled with anxiety, eager only to fit out vessels to seek his son, who, he believed, had been driven on the Florida coast, and was probably a prisoner in the hands of the Indians. At this critical moment, however, charges were brought against him; and he, with his brother, was arrested and detained in prison for two years, unable to bring the case to trial, or to obtain his release on bail.

When Menendez at last succeeded in obtaining an audience of the King, he solicited, in 1564, permission to proceed with two vessels to Bermuda and Florida to seek his son, and then retire to his home, which he had not seen for eighteen years. Philip II. at last consented; but required him to make a thorough coast-survey of Florida, so as to prepare charts that would prevent the wrecks which had arisen from ignorance of the real character of the sea-line. Menendez replied that his Majesty could confer no higher boon upon him for his long and successful services on the seas than to authorize him to conquer and settle Florida.

Nothing could be in greater accordance with the royal views than to commit to the energy of Menendez[880] the task which so many others had undertaken in vain. A patent, or asiento, was issued March 20, 1565, by the provisions of which Menendez was required to sail in May with ten vessels, carrying arms and supplies, and five hundred men, one hundred to be capable of cultivating the soil. He was to take provisions to maintain the whole force for a year, and was to conquer and settle Florida within three years; explore and map the coast, transport settlers, a certain number of whom were to be married; maintain twelve members of religious Orders as missionaries, besides four of the Society of Jesus; and to introduce horses, black cattle, sheep, and swine for the two or three distinct settlements he was required to found at his own expense.[881] The King gave only the use of the galleon “San Pelayo,” and bestowed upon Menendez the title of Adelantado of Florida, a personal grant of twenty-five leagues square, with the title of Marquis, and the office of Governor and Captain-General of Florida.

While Menendez was gathering, among his kindred in Asturias and Biscay, men and means to fulfil his part of the undertaking, the Court of Spain became aware for the first time that the Protestants of France had quietly planted a colony on that very Florida coast. Menendez was immediately summoned in haste to Court; and orders were issued to furnish him in America three vessels fully equipped, and an expeditionary force of two hundred cavalry and four hundred infantry. Menendez urged, on the contrary, that he should be sent on at once with some light vessels to attack the French; or, if that was not feasible, to occupy a neighboring port and fortify it, while awaiting reinforcements. The Government, by successive orders, increased the Florida armament, so that Menendez finally sailed from Cadiz, June 29, with the galleon “San Pelayo” and other vessels to the number of nineteen, carrying more than fifteen hundred persons, including farmers and mechanics of all kinds.

The light in which Spaniards, especially those connected with commerce and colonies, regarded the Protestants of France was simply that of pirates. French cruisers, often making their Protestantism a pretext for their actions, scoured the seas, capturing Spanish and Portuguese vessels, and committing the greatest atrocities. In 1555 Jacques Sorie surprised Havana, plundered it, and gave it to the flames, butchering the prisoners who fell into his hands. In 1559 Megander pillaged Porto Rico, and John de la Roche plundered the ships and settlements near Carthagena.[882]

It seems strange, however, that neither in Spain nor in America was it known that this dreaded and hated community, the Huguenots of France, had actually, in 1562, begun a settlement at the very harbor of Santa Elena where Villafañe had taken possession in the name of the Spanish monarch a year before. Some of the French settlers revolted, and very naturally went off to cruise against the Spaniards, and with success; but the ill-managed colony of Charlesfort on Port Royal Sound had terminated its brief existence without drawing down the vengeance of Spain.

When the tidings of a French occupancy of Florida startled the Spanish Court, a second attempt of the Huguenots at settlement had been made,—this time at the mouth of St. John’s River, where Fort Caroline was a direct menace to the rich Spanish fleets, offering a safe refuge to cruisers, which in the name of a pure gospel could sally out to plunder and to slay. Yet that settlement, thus provoking the fiercest hostility of Spain, was ill-managed. It was, in fact, sinking, like its predecessor, from the unfitness of its members to make the teeming earth yield them its fruits for their maintenance. René Laudonnière, the commandant, after receiving some temporary relief from the English corsair Hawkins,[883] and learning that the Spaniards meditated hostilities, was about to burn his fort and abandon the country, when John Ribault arrived as commandant, with supplies and colonists, as well as orders to maintain the post. His instructions from Coligny clearly intended that he should attack the Spaniards.[884]

The two bitter antagonists, each stimulated by his superiors, were thus racing across the Atlantic, each endeavoring to outstrip the other, so as to be able first to assume the offensive. The struggle was to be a deadly one, for on neither side were there any of the ordinary restraints; it was to be a warfare without mercy.

After leaving the Canaries, Menendez’ fleet was scattered by storms. One vessel put back; the flagship and another were driven in one direction, five vessels in another. These, after encountering another storm, finally reached Porto Rico on the 9th of August, and found the flagship and its tender there.[885]

The other ships from Biscay and Asturias had not arrived; but Menendez, fearing that Ribault might outstrip him, resolved to proceed, though his vessels needed repairs from the injuries sustained in the storm. If he was to crush Fort Caroline, he felt that it must be done before the French post was reinforced; if not, all the force at his disposal would be insufficient to assume the offensive. He made the coast of Florida near Cape Cañaveral on the 25th of August; and soon after, by landing a party, ascertained from the natives that the French post was to the northward. Following the coast in that direction, he discovered, on the 28th, a harbor which seemed to possess advantages, and to which he gave the name of the great Bishop of Hippo, Augustine, who is honored on that day. Sailing on cautiously, he came in sight of the mouth of the St. John’s River about two o’clock in the afternoon of the 4th of September. The ten days he had lost creeping along the coast were fatal to his project, for there lay the four vessels of Ribault, the flagship and its consort flinging to the breeze the colors of France.

Menendez’ officers in council were in favor of running back to Santo Domingo till the whole force was united and ready to assume the offensive; but Menendez inspired them with his own intrepidity, and resolved to attack at once. A tremendous thunderstorm prevented operations till ten at night, when he bore down on the French, and ran his ship, the “Pelayo,” between the two larger vessels of Ribault. To his hail who they were and what they were doing there, the reply was that John Ribault was their captain-general, and that they came to the country by order of the King of France; and the French in return asked what ships they were, and who commanded them. To quote his own words, “I replied to them that I was Peter Menendez, that I came by command of the King of Spain to this coast and land to burn and hang the French Lutherans found in it, and that in the morning I would board his ships to know whether he belonged to that sect; because if he did, I could not avoid executing on them the justice which his Majesty commanded. They replied that this was not right, and that I might go without awaiting the morning.”

FLORIDA.

[This sketch-map of the scene of the operations of the Spanish and the French follows one given by Fairbanks in his History of St. Augustine. Other modern maps, giving the old localities, are found in Parkman, Gaffarel etc.—Ed.]

As Menendez manœuvred to get a favorable position, the French vessels cut their cables and stood out to sea. The Spaniards gave chase, rapidly firing five cannon at Ribault’s flagship,—which Menendez supposed that he injured badly, as boats put off to the other vessels. Finding that the French outsailed him, Menendez put back, intending to land soldiers on an island at the mouth of the river and fortify a position which would command the entrance; but as he reached the St. John’s he saw three French vessels coming out, ready for action.

SITE OF FORT CAROLINE.

[After a map in Fairbanks’s History of St. Augustine; but his view of the site is open to question.—Ed.]

His project was thus defeated; and too wily to be caught at a disadvantage by the returning French vessels, Menendez bore away to the harbor of St. Augustine, which he estimated at eight leagues from the French by sea, and six by land. Here he proceeded to found the oldest city in the present territory of the United States.

ST. AUGUSTINE.

[This view of Pagus Hispanorum, as given in Montanus and Ogilby, represents the town founded by Menendez at a somewhat later period, if it is wholly truthful of any period. The same view was better engraved at Leide by Vander Aa.—Ed.]

Two hundred mail-clad soldiers, commanded by Captain John de San Vicente and Captain Patiño, landed on the 6th of September, 1565. The Indians were friendly, and readily gave the settlers the large house of one of the caciques which stood near the shore of the river. Around this an intrenchment was traced; and a ditch was soon dug, and earthworks thrown up, with such implements as they had at hand, for the vessel bearing their tools had not yet arrived.

SPANISH VESSELS.
(From the Pagus Hispanorum in Montanus.)

The next day three of the smaller vessels ran into the harbor, and from them three hundred more of the soldiers disembarked, as well as those who had come to settle in the country,—men, women, and children. Artillery and munitions for the fort were also landed. The eighth being a holiday in the Catholic Church,—the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin,—was celebrated with due solemnity. Mass was offered for the first time at a spot ever after held in veneration, and where in time arose the primitive shrine of Nuestra Señora de la Leche.

Then the work of debarkation was resumed; one hundred more persons landed; and great guns, precious stores of provisions, and munitions were brought to the new fort.

THE BUILDING OF FORT CAROLINE.

FORT CAROLINE COMPLETED.
(Lemoyne, in De Bry.)

[Two pictures of Fort Caroline accompany the Brevis narratio of Lemoyne,—one the beginning of work upon it, and the other the completed structure, “a more finished fortification than could possibly have been constructed, but to be taken as a correct outline,” as Fairbanks (p. 54) presumes. The engraving of the completed fort is reproduced in Fairbanks’s St. Augustine, Stevens’s Georgia, etc. Another and better view of it, called “Arx Carolina—Charlesfort sur Floride,” was engraved at Leide by Vander Aa, but it is a question if it be truthful. No traces of the fort have ever been recorded by subsequent observers, but Fairbanks places it near a place called St. John’s Bluff, as shown in the accompanying map. Others have placed it on the Bell River (an estuary of the St. Mary’s River), at a place Called Battle Bluff. Cf. Carroll’s Hist. Coll., i. p. xxxvi.—Ed.]

Amid all this bustle and activity the Spaniards were startled by the appearance of two large French vessels[886] in the offing, evidently ready for action. It was no part of Menendez’ plan to engage them, and he waited till, about three in the afternoon, they bore away for the St. John’s. Then he prepared to land in person. As his boat left the vessel with banners unfurled, amid the thunder of cannon and the sounds of warlike music, Mendoza Grajales, the first priest of St. Augustine, bearing a cross, went down at the head of those on shore to meet the adelantado, all chanting the Te Deum. Menendez proceeded at once with his attendants to the cross, which he kissed on bended knee.

Formal possession of the land was then taken in the name of Philip II., King of Spain. The captains of the troops and the officers of the new colony came forward to take the oath to Peter Menendez de Aviles as governor, captain-general, and adelantado of Florida and its coasts under the patents of the Spanish King. Crowds of friendly Indians, with their chieftains, gathered around.

From them the Spanish commander learned that his position was admirably taken, as he could, at a short distance, strike the river on which the French lay, and descend it to assail them. Here then he resolved to make his position as strong as possible, till the rest of his armament arrived. His galleon “San Pelayo,” too large to enter the port, rode without, in danger from the sudden storms that visit the coast, and from the French. Putting on board some French prisoners whom he had captured in a boat, he despatched her and another vessel to Santo Domingo. He organized his force by appointing officers,—a lieutenant and a sergeant-major, and ten captains. The necessity of horses to operate rapidly induced him to send two of his lighter vessels to Havana to seek them there; and by this conveyance he addressed to Philip II. his first letter from Florida.[887]

The masts of his vessels could scarcely have vanished from the eyes of the Spanish force, when the French vessels appeared once more, and nearly captured Menendez himself in the harbor, where he was carrying to the shore, in the smaller vessels that he had retained, some artillery and munitions from the galleons. He escaped, however, though the French were so near that they called on him to surrender. And he ascribed his deliverance rather to prayer than to human skill; for, fierce seaman as he was, he was a man of deep and practical religious feeling, which influenced all his actions.

Menendez’ position was now one of danger. The force at his command was not large, and the French evidently felt strong enough, and were determined to attack him. He had acknowledged his inability to cope with them on the ocean, and could not have felt very sanguine of being able to defend the slight breastworks that had been thrown up at St. Augustine.

Fortune favored him. Ribault, after so earnestly determining to assume the offensive, fatally hesitated. Within two days a tremendous hurricane, which the practised eye of Menendez had anticipated, burst on the coast. The French were, he believed, still hovering near, on the lookout for his larger vessels, and he knew that with such a norther their peril was extreme. It was, moreover, certain that they could not, for a time at least, make the St. John’s, even if they rode out the storm.

This gave him a temporary superiority, and he resolved to seize his opportunity. Summoning his officers to a council of war, he laid before them his plan of marching at once to attack Fort Caroline, from which the French had evidently drawn a part of their force, and probably their most effective men. The officers generally, as well as the two clergymen in the settlement, opposed his project as rash; but Menendez was determined. Five hundred men—three hundred armed with arquebuses, the rest with pikes and targets—were ordered to march, each one carrying rations of biscuit and wine. Menendez, at their head, bore his load like the rest. They marched out of the fort on the 16th of September, guided by two caciques who had been hostile to the French, and by a Frenchman who had been two years in the fort. The route proved one of great difficulty; the rain poured in torrents, swelling the streams and flooding the lowlands, so that the men were most of the time knee-deep in water. Many loitered, and, falling back, made their way to St. Augustine. Others showed a mutinous disposition, and loudly expressed their contempt for their sailor-general.

On the 29th, at the close of the day, he was within a short distance of the French fort, and halted to rest so as to storm it in the morning. At daybreak the Spaniards knelt in prayer; then, bearing twenty scaling-ladders, Menendez advanced, his sturdy Asturians and Biscayans in the van. Day broke as, in a heavy rain, they reached a height from which their French guide told them they could see the fort, washed by the river. Menendez advanced, and saw some houses and the St. John’s; but from his position could not discover the fort. He would have gone farther; but the Maese de Campo and Captain Ochoa pushed on till they reached the houses, and reconnoitred the fort, where not a soul seemed astir. As they returned they were hailed by a French sentinel, who took them for countrymen. Ochoa sprang upon him, striking him on the head with his sheathed sword, while the Maese de Campo stabbed him. He uttered a cry; but was threatened with death, bound, and taken back. The cry had excited Menendez, who, supposing that his officers had been killed, called out: “Santiago! at them! God helps us! Victory! The French are slaughtered! Don Pedro de Valdes, the Maese de Campo, is in the fort, and has taken it!”

The men, supposing that the officers were in advance with part of the force, rushed on till they came up with the returning officers, who, taking in the situation, despatched the sentry and led the men to the attack. Two Frenchmen, who rushed out in their shirts, were cut down. Others outside the fort seeing the danger, gave the alarm; and a man at the principal gate threw it open to ascertain what the trouble was. Valdes, ready to scale the fort, saw the advantage, sprang on the man and cut him down, then rushed into the fort, followed by the fleetest of the Spanish detachment. In a moment two captains had simultaneously planted their colors on the walls, and the trumpets sounded for victory.

The French, taken utterly by surprise, made no defence; about fifty, dashing over the walls of the fort, took to the woods, almost naked, and unarmed, or endeavored in boats and by swimming to reach the vessels in the stream. When Menendez came up with the main body, his men were slaughtering the French as they ran shrieking through the fort, or came forward declaring that they surrendered. The women, and children under the age of fifteen, were, by orders of the commander, spared. Laudonnière, the younger Ribault, Lemoyne, and the carpenter Le Challeux, whose accounts have reached us, were among those who escaped.

Menendez had carried the fort without one of his men being killed or wounded. The number of the French thus unsparingly put to the sword is stated by Menendez himself as one hundred and thirty-two, with ten of the fugitives who were butchered the next day. Mendoza Grajales corroborates this estimate. Fifty were spared, and about as many escaped to the vessels; and some, doubtless, perished in the woods.

The slaughter was too terrible to need depicting in darker colors; but in time it was declared that Menendez hung many, with an insulting label: “I do not this to Frenchmen, but to Heretics.” The Spanish accounts, written with too strong a conviction of the propriety of their course to seek any subterfuge, make no allusion to any such act; and the earliest French accounts are silent in regard to it. The charge first occurs in a statement written with an evident design to rouse public indignation in France, and not, therefore, to be deemed absolutely accurate.

No quarter was given, for the French were regarded as pirates; and as the French cruisers gave none, these, who were considered as of the same class, received none.

The booty acquired was great. A brigantine and a galiot fell into the hands of the Spaniards, with a vessel that had grounded. Another vessel lay near the fort, and Spanish accounts claim to have sunk it with the cannon of the fort, while the French declare they scuttled it. Two other vessels lay at the mouth of the river, watching for the Spaniards, whose attack was expected from the sea, and not from the land side. Besides these vessels and their contents, the Spaniards gained in the fort artillery and small-arms, supplies of flour and bread, horses, asses, sheep, and hogs.[888] Such was the first struggle on our soil between civilized men; it was brief, sanguinary, merciless.

Menendez named the captured fort San Mateo, from its capture on the feast of St. Matthew (September 21). He set up the arms of Spain, and selected a site for a church, which he ordered to be built at once. Then, leaving Gonçalo de Villaroel in command, with a garrison of three hundred men, he prepared to march back to St. Augustine with about one hundred, who composed the rest of the force which had remained with him till he reached Caroline. But of them all he found only thirty-five able or willing to undertake the march; and with these he set out, deeming his presence necessary at St. Augustine. Before long, one of the party pushed on to announce his coming.

The Spaniards there had learned of the disaster which had befallen Ribault’s fleet from a Frenchman who was the sole survivor of one small vessel that had been driven ashore, its crew escaping a watery death only to perish by the hands of the Indians. The vessel was secured and brought to St. Augustine. The same day, September 23, a man was seen running toward the fort, uttering loud shouts. The priest, Mendoza Grajales, ran out to learn the tidings he bore. The soldier threw his arms around him, crying: “Victory! Victory! the French fort is ours!” He was soon recounting to his countrymen the story of the storming of Caroline. Toward nightfall the adelantado himself, with his little party, was seen approaching. Mendoza in surplice, bearing a crucifix, went forth to meet him. Menendez knelt to kiss the cross, and his men imitated his example; then they entered the fort in procession, chanting the Te Deum.[889]

Menendez despatched some light boats with supplies to San Mateo; but the fort there took fire a few days after its capture, and was almost entirely destroyed, with much of the booty. He sent other light craft to Santo Domingo with prisoners, and others still to patrol the coast and seek any signs of the galleon “San Pelayo,” or of the French. Then he turned his whole attention to work on his fort and town, so as to be in readiness to withstand any attack from Ribault if the French commander should return and prove to be in a condition to assail him while his forces were divided. He also cultivated friendly intercourse with the neighboring chiefs whom he found hostile to the French and their allies.

On the 28th, some of the Indians came to report by signs that the French were six leagues distant, that they had lost their ships, and that they had reached the shore by swimming. They had halted at a stream which they could not cross,—evidently Matanzas inlet. Menendez sent out a boat, and followed in another with some of his officers and Mendoza, one of the clergymen. He overtook his party, and they encamped near the inlet, but out of sight. On the opposite side, the light of the camp-fires marked the spot occupied by the French. The next day, seeing Menendez, a sailor swam over, and stated that he had been sent to say that they were survivors of some of Ribault’s vessels which had been wrecked; that many of their people had been drowned, others killed or captured by the Indians; and that the rest, to the number of one hundred and forty, asked permission and aid to reach their fort, some distance up the coast.

FLORIDA, 1591 (Lemoyne, in De Bry).

[This is the only cartographical result of the French occupation. It is also reproduced in Gaffarel’s Floride Française, and in Shipp’s De Soto and Florida. It was literally copied by Hondius in 1607, and not so well in the Mercator-Hondius Atlas of 1633. Lescarbot followed it; but in his 1618 edition altered for the worse the course of the St. John’s River; and so did De Laet. Cf. Kohl, Maps in Hakluyt, p. 48, and Brinton, Floridian Peninsula, p. 80, who says (p. 86) that De Laet was the first to confine the name Florida to the peninsula; but Thevet seems nearly to do so in the map in his Cosmographia, which he based on Ortelius, a part of which is given in fac-simile in Weise’s Discoveries of America, p. 304; and it seems also to be the case in the earlier Mercator gores of 1541. The map accompanying Charlevoix’ narrative will be found in his Nouvelle France, i. 24, and in Shea’s translation of it, i. 133.—Ed.]

Menendez told him that he had captured the fort and put all to the sword. Then, after asking whether they were Catholics or Lutherans, and receiving the reply, the Spaniard sent the sailor to his companions, to say that if they did not give up their arms and surrender, he would put them all to the sword. On this an officer came over to endeavor to secure better terms, or to be allowed to remain till vessels could be obtained to take them to France; but Menendez was inexorable. The officer pleaded that the lives of the French should be spared; but Menendez, according to Mendoza, replied, “that he would not give them such a pledge, but that they should bring their arms and their persons, and that he should do with them according to his will; because if he spared their lives he wished them to be grateful to him for it, and if he put them to death they should not complain that he had broken his word.” Solis de Meras, another clergyman, brother-in-law of Menendez, and in St. Augustine at the time, in his account states that Menendez said, “That if they wished to lay down their colors and their arms, and throw themselves on his mercy, they could do so, that he might do with them what God should give him the grace to do; or that they could do as they chose: for other truce or friendship could not be made with him;” and that he rejected an offer of ransom which they made.

Menendez himself more briefly writes: “I replied that they might surrender me their arms and put themselves under my pleasure, that I might do with them what our Lord might ordain; and from this resolution I do not and will not depart, unless our Lord God inspired me otherwise.” The words held out hopes that were delusive; but the French, hemmed in by the sea and by savages, saw no alternative. They crossed, laid down their arms, and were bound, by order of Menendez,—ostensibly to conduct them to the fort. Sixteen, chiefly Breton sailors, who professed to be Catholics, were spared; the rest, one hundred and eleven in all, were put to death in cold blood,—as ruthlessly as the French, ten years before, had despatched their prisoners amid the smoking ruins of Havana, and, like them, in the name of religion.[890]

Ribault himself, who was advancing by the same fatal route, was ignorant alike of the fall of Caroline and of the slaughter of the survivors of the advanced party; he too hoped to reach Laudonnière. Some days after the cruel treatment of the first band he reached the inlet, whose name to this day is a monument of the bloody work,—Matanzas.

The news of the appearance of this second French party reached Menendez on the 10th of October,—at the same time almost as that of the destruction of Fort San Mateo and its contents by fire, and while writing a despatch to the King, unfolding his plan for colonizing and holding Florida, by means of a series of forts at the Chesapeake, Port Royal, the Martyrs, and the Bay of Juan Ponce de Leon. He marched to the inlet with one hundred and fifty men. The French were on the opposite side, some making a rude raft. Both parties sounded drum and trumpet, and flung their standards to the breeze, drawing up in line of battle. Menendez then ordered his men to sit down and breakfast. Upon this, Ribault raised a white flag, and one of his men was soon swimming across. He returned with an Indian canoe that lay at the shore, and took over La Caille, an officer. Approaching Menendez, the French officer announced that the force was that of John Ribault, viceroy for the French king, three hundred and fifty men in all, who had been wrecked on the coast, and was now endeavoring to reach Fort Caroline. He soon learned how vain was the attempt. The fate of the fort and of its garrison, and the stark bodies of the preceding party, convinced him that those whom he represented must prepare to meet a similar fate. He requested Menendez to send an officer to Ribault to arrange terms of surrender; but the reply was that the French commander was free to cross with a few of his men, if he wished a conference.

When this was reported to him, the unfortunate Ribault made an effort in person to save his men. He was courteously received by Menendez, but, like his lieutenant, saw that the case was hopeless. According to Solis de Meras, Ribault offered a ransom of one hundred and fifty thousand ducats for himself and one part of his men; another part, embracing many wealthy nobles, preferring to treat separately. Menendez declined the offer, expressing his regret at being compelled to forego the money, which he needed. His terms were as enigmatical as before. He declared, so he himself tells us, “that they must lay down their arms and colors and put themselves under my pleasure; that I should do with their persons as I chose, and that there was nothing else to be done or concluded with me.”

Ribault returned to his camp and held a council with his officers. Some were inclined to throw themselves on the mercy of Menendez; but the majority refused to surrender. The next morning Ribault came over with seventy officers and men, who decided to surrender and trust to the mercy of the merciless. The rest had turned southward, preferring to face new perils rather than be butchered.

The French commander gave up the banner of France and that of Coligny, with the colors of his force, his own fine set of armor, and his seal of office. As he and his comrades were bound, he intoned one of the Psalms; and after its concluding words added: “We are of earth, and to earth we must return; twenty years more or less is all but as a tale that is told.” Then he bade Menendez do his will. Two young nobles, and a few men whom Menendez could make useful, he spared; the rest were at once despatched.[891]

The French who declined to surrender retreated unpursued to Cañaveral, where they threw up a log fort and began to build a vessel in order to escape from Florida. Menendez, recalling some of the men who remained at San Mateo, set out against them with one hundred and fifty men, three vessels following the shore with one hundred men to support his force. On the 8th of November apparently, he reached the fort. The French abandoned it and fled; but on promise that their lives should be spared, one hundred and fifty surrendered. Menendez kept his word. He destroyed their fort and vessel; and leaving a detachment of two hundred under Captain Juan Velez de Medrano to build Fort Santa Lucia de Cañaveral in a more favorable spot, he sailed to Havana. Finding some of his vessels there, he cruised in search of corsairs—chiefly French and English—who were said to be in great force off the coast of Santo Domingo, and who had actually captured one of his caravels; he was afraid that young Ribault might have joined them, and that he would attack the Spanish posts in Florida.[892] But encountering a vessel, Menendez learned that the King had sent him reinforcements, which he resolved to await, obtaining supplies from Campechy for his forts, as the Governor of Havana refused to furnish any.

The Spaniards in the three Florida posts were ill-prepared for even a Florida winter, and one hundred died for want of proper clothing and food. Captain San Vicente and other malcontents excited disaffection, so that mutinies broke out, and the insurgents seized vessels and deserted. Fort San Mateo was left with only twenty-one persons in it.

In February, 1566, Menendez explored the Tortugas and the adjacent coast, seeking some trace of the vessel in which his son had been lost. His search was fruitless; but he established friendly relations with the cacique Carlos, and rescued several Spanish prisoners from that cruel chief, who annually sacrificed one of them.

Meanwhile the French fugitives excited the Indians who were friendly to them to attack the Spanish posts; and it was no longer safe for the settlers to stir beyond the works at San Mateo and St. Augustine. Captain Martin de Ochoa, one of the bravest and most faithful officers, was slain at San Mateo; and Captain Diego de Hevia and several others were cut off at St. Augustine. Emboldened by success, the Indians invested the latter fort, and not only sent showers of arrows into it, but by means of blazing arrows set fire to the palmetto thatching of the storehouses. The Spaniards in vain endeavored to extinguish the flames; the building was consumed, with all their munitions, cloth, linen, and even the colors of the adelantado and the troops. This encouraged the Indians, who despatched every Spaniard they could reach.

Menendez reached St. Augustine, March 20, to find it on the brink of ruin. Even his presence and the force at his command could not bring the mutineers to obedience. He was obliged to allow Captain San Vicente and many others to embark in a vessel. Of the men whom at great labor and expense he had brought to Florida, full five hundred deserted. After their departure he restored order; and, proceeding to San Mateo, relieved that place. His next step was to enter into friendly relations with the chief of Guale, and to begin a fort of stockades, earth, and fascines at Port Royal which he called San Felipe. Here he left one hundred and ten men under Stephen de las Alas. From this point the adventurous Captain Pardo, in 1566 and the following year, explored the country, penetrating to the silver region of the Cherokees, and visiting towns reached by De Soto from Cofitachiqui to Tascaluza.[893]

Returning to St. Augustine, Menendez transferred the fort to its present position, to be nearer the ship landing and less exposed to the Indians. All the posts suffered from want of food; and even for the soldiers in the King’s pay the adelantado could obtain no rations from Havana, although he went there in person. He obtained means to purchase the necessary provisions only by pledging his own personal effects.

Before his return there came a fleet of seventeen vessels, bearing fifteen hundred men, with arms, munitions, and supplies, under Sancho de Arciniega. Relief was immediately sent to San Mateo and to Santa Elena, where most of the soldiers had mutinied, and had put Stephen de las Alas in irons, and sailed away. Menendez divided part of his reinforcements among his three posts, and then with light vessels ascended the St. John’s. He endeavored to enter into negotiations with the caciques Otina and Macoya; but those chiefs, fearing that he had come to demand reparation for the attacks on the Spaniards, fled at his approach. He ascended the river till he found the stream narrow, and hostile Indians lining the banks. On his downward voyage Otina, after making conditions, received the adelantado, who came ashore with only a few attendants. The chief was surrounded by three hundred warriors; but showed no hostility, and agreed to become friendly to the Spaniards.

On his return Menendez despatched a captain with thirty soldiers and two Dominican friars to establish a post on Chesapeake Bay; they were accompanied by Don Luis Velasco, brother of the chief of Axacan, who had been taken from that country apparently by Villafañe, and who had been baptized in Mexico. Instead, however, of carrying out his plans, the party persuaded the captain of the vessel to sail to Spain.

Two Jesuit Fathers also came to found missions among the Indians; but one of them, Father Martinez, landing on the coast, was killed by the Indians; and the survivor, Father Rogel, with a lay brother, by the direction of Menendez began to study the language of the chief Carlos, in order to found a mission in his tribe. To facilitate this, Menendez sent Captain Reynoso to establish a post in that part of Florida.[894]

News having arrived that the French were preparing to attack Florida, and their depredations in the Antilles having increased, Menendez sailed to Porto Rico, and cruised about for a time, endeavoring to meet some of the corsairs. But he was unable to come up with any; and after visiting Carlos and Tequeste, where missions were now established, he returned to St. Augustine. His efforts, individually and through his lieutenants, to gain the native chiefs had been to some extent successful; Saturiba was the only cacique who held aloof. He finally agreed to meet Menendez at the mouth of the St. John’s; but, as the Spanish commander soon learned, the cacique had a large force in ambush, with the object of cutting him and his men off when they landed. Finding war necessary, Menendez then sent four detachments, each of seventy men, against Saturiba; but he fled, and the Spaniards returned after skirmishes with small bands, in which they killed thirty Indians.

Leaving his posts well defended and supplied, Menendez sailed to Spain; and landing near Coruña, visited his home at Aviles to see his wife and family, from whom he had been separated twenty years. He then proceeded to Valladolid, where, on the 20th of July, he was received with honor by the King.

During his absence a French attack, such as he had expected, was made on Florida. Fearing this, he had endeavored to obtain forces and supplies for his colony; but was detained, fretting and chafing at the delays and formalities of the Casa de Contratacion in Seville.[895]

An expedition, comprising one small and two large vessels, was fitted out at Bordeaux by Dominic de Gourgues, with a commission to capture slaves at Benin. De Gourgues sailed Aug. 22, 1567, and at Cape Blanco had a skirmish with some negro chiefs, secured the harbor, and sailed off with a cargo of slaves. With these he ran to the Spanish West Indies, and disposed of them at Dominica, Porto Rico, and Santo Domingo, finding Spaniards ready to treat with him. At Puerto de la Plata, in the last island, he met a ready confederate in Zaballos, who was accustomed to trade with the French pirates. Zaballos bought slaves and goods from him, and furnished him a pilot for the Florida coast. Puerto de la Plata had been a refuge for some of the deserters from Florida, and could afford definite information. Here probably the idea of Gourgues’ Florida expedition originated; though, according to the bombastic French account, it was only off the Island of Cuba that De Gourgues revealed his design. He reached the mouth of the St. John’s, where the French narratives place two forts that are utterly unknown in Spanish documents, and which were probably only batteries to cover the entrance. Saluted here as Spanish, the French vessels passed on, and anchored off the mouth of the St. Mary’s,—the Tacatacuru of the Indians. By means of a Frenchman, a refugee among the Indians, Gourgues easily induced Saturiba, smarting under the recent Spanish attack, to join him in a campaign against San Mateo. The first redoubt was quickly taken; and the French, crossing in boats, their allies swimming, captured the second, and then moved on Fort San Mateo itself. The French account makes sixty men issue from each of what it calls forts, each party to be cut off by the French, and then makes all of each party of sixty to fall by the hands of the French and Indians, except fifteen or thereabout kept for an ignominious death.

Gourgues carried off the artillery of the fort and redoubts; but before he could transport the rest of his booty to the vessels, a train left by the Spaniards in the fort was accidentally fired by an Indian who was cooking fish; the magazine blew up, with all in it. Gourgues hanged the prisoners who fell into his hands at San Mateo, and descending the river, hanged thirty more at the mouth, setting up an inscription: “Not as to Spaniards, but as to Traitors, Robbers, and Murderers.” Returning to his vessels, he hoisted sail on the 3d of May, and early in June entered the harbor of La Rochelle. His loss, which is not explained, is said to have been his smallest vessel, five gentlemen and some soldiers killed.[896]

WYTFLIET, 1597.

[Cf. the “Florida et Apalche” in Acosta, German edition, Cologne, 1598 (also in 1605); that of Hieronymus Chaves, given in Ortelius, 1592; and later the maps of the French cartographer Sanson, showing the coast from Texas to Carolina.—Ed.]

When Gourgues made his descent, Menendez was already at sea, having sailed from San Lucar on the 13th of March, with abundant supplies and reinforcements, as well as additional missionaries for the Indians, under Father John Baptist Segura as vice-provincial. After relieving his posts in Florida and placing a hundred and fifty men at San Mateo, he proceeded to Cuba, of which he had been appointed governor. To strengthen his colony, he solicited permission to colonize the Rio Pánuco; but the authorities in Mexico opposed his project, and it failed. The Mississippi, then known as the Espiritu Santo, was supposed to flow from the neighborhood of Santa Elena, and was depended on as a means of communication.[897] The next year the adelantado sent a hundred and ninety-three persons to San Felipe, and eighty to St. Augustine. Father Rogel then began missions among the Indians around Port Royal; Father Sedeño and Brother Baez began similar labors on Guale (now Amelia) Island, the latter soon compiling a grammar and catechism in the language of the Indians. Others attempted to bring the intractable chief Carlos and his tribe within the Christian fold. Rogel drew Indians to his mission at Orista; he put up houses and a church, and endeavored to induce them to cultivate the ground. But their natural fickleness would not submit to control; they soon abandoned the place, and the missionary returned to Fort San Felipe. A school for Indian boys was opened in Havana, and youths from the tribes of the coast were sent there in the hope of making them the nucleus of an Indian civilization. In 1570 Menendez, carrying out his project of occupying Chesapeake Bay, sent Father Segura with several other Jesuits to establish a mission at Axacan, the country of the Indian known as Don Luis Velasco, who accompanied missionaries, promising to do all in his power to secure for them a welcome from his tribe. The vessel evidently ascended the Potomac and landed the mission party, who then crossed to the shores of the Rappahannock. They were received with seeming friendship, and erected a rude chapel; but the Indians soon showed a hostile spirit, and ultimately massacred all the party except an Indian boy. When Menendez returned to Florida from Spain in 1572, he sailed to the Chesapeake, and endeavored to secure Don Luis and his brother; but they fled. He captured eight Indians known to have taken part in the murder of the missionaries, and hanged them at the yard-arm of his vessel.[898]

From this time Menendez gave little personal attention to the affairs of Florida, being elsewhere engaged by the King; and he died at Santander, in Spain, Sept. 17, 1574, when about to take command of an immense fleet which Philip II. was preparing. With his death Florida, where his nephew Pedro Menendez Marquez[899] had acted as governor, languished. Indian hostilities increased, San Felipe was invested, abandoned, and burned, and soon after the Governor himself was slain.[900] St. Augustine was finally burned by Drake.

[CRITICAL ESSAY ON THE SOURCES OF INFORMATION.]

OUR account of the voyages of Ponce de Leon is mainly from the cédulas to him and official correspondence, correcting Herrera,[901] who is supposed by some to have had the explorer’s diary, now lost. Oviedo[902] mentions Bimini[903] as forty leagues from Guanahani. The modern edition[904] of Oviedo is vague and incorrect; and gives Ponce de Leon two caravels, but has no details. Gomara[905] is no less vague. Girava records the discovery, but dates it in 1512.[906] As early as 1519 the statement is found that the Bay of Juan Ponce had been visited by Alaminos, while accompanying Ponce de Leon,[907]—which must refer to this expedition of 1513. The “Traza de las costas” given by Navarrete (and reproduced by Buckingham Smith),[908] with the Garay patent of 1521, would seem to make Apalache Bay the western limit of the discoveries of Ponce de Leon, of whose expedition and of Alaminos’s no report is known. Peter Martyr[909] alludes to it, but only incidentally, when treating of Diego Velasquez. Barcia, in his Ensayo cronológico,[910] writing specially on Florida, seems to have had neither of the patents of Ponce de Leon, and no reports; and he places the discovery in 1512 instead of 1513.[911] Navarrete[912] simply follows Herrera.

In the unfortunate expedition of Cordova Bernal Diaz was an actor, and gives us a witness’s testimony;[913] and it is made the subject of evidence in the suit in 1536 between the Pinzon and Colon families.[914] The general historians treat it in course.[915]

The main authority for the first voyage of Garay is the royal letters patent,[916] the documents which are given by Navarrete[917] and in the Documentos inéditos,[918] as well as the accounts given in Peter Martyr,[919] Gomara,[920] and Herrera.[921]

Of the pioneer expedition which Camargo conducted for Garay to make settlement of Amichel, and of its encounter with Cortés, we have the effect which the first tidings of it produced on the mind of the Conqueror of Mexico in his second letter of Oct. 30, 1520; while in his third letter he made representations of the wrongs done to the Indians by Garay’s people, and of his own determination to protect the chiefs who had submitted to him.[922] For the untoward ending of Garay’s main expedition, Cortés is still a principal dependence in his fourth letter;[923] and the official records of his proceedings against Garay in October, 1523, with a letter of Garay dated November 8, and evidently addressed to Cortés, are to be found in the Documentos inéditos,[924] while Peter Martyr,[925] Oviedo,[926] and Herrera[927] are the chief general authorities. Garay’s renewed effort under his personal leadership is marked out in three several petitions which he made for authority to colonize the new country.[928]

AYLLON’S EXPLORATIONS.

[This sketch follows Dr. Kohl’s copy of a map in a manuscript atlas in the British Museum (no. 9,814), without date; but it seems to be a record of the explorations (1520) of Ayllon, whose name is corrupted on the map. The map bears near the main inscription the figure of a Chinaman and an elephant,—tokens of the current belief in the Asiatic connections of North America. Cf. Brinton’s Floridian Peninsula, p. 82, 99, on the “Traza de costas de Tierra Ferme y de las Tierras Nuevas,” accompanying the royal grant to Garay in 1521, being the chart of Cristóbal de Tobia, given in the third volume of Navarrete’s Coleccion, and sketched on another page of the present volume (ante, p. 218) in a section on “The Early Cartography of the Gulf of Mexico and adjacent Parts,” where some light is thrown on contemporary knowledge of the Florida coast.—Ed.]

Of the preliminary expedition on the Atlantic coast of Gordillo and the subsequent attempt of his chief, Ayllon, to settle in Virginia, there is a fund of testimony in the papers of the suit which Matienzo instituted against Ayllon, and of which the greater part is still unprinted; but a few papers, like the complaint of Matienzo and some testimony taken by Ayllon when about to sail himself, can be found in the Documentos inéditos.[929] As regards the joint explorations of the vessels of Gordillo and Quexos, the testimony of the latter helps us, as well as his act of taking possession, which puts the proceeding in 1521; though some of Ayllon’s witnesses give 1520 as the date. Both parties unite in calling the river which they reached the San Juan Bautista, and the cédula to Ayllon places it in thirty-five degrees. Navarrete in saying they touched at Chicora and Gualdape confounds the first and third voyages; and was clearly ignorant of the three distinct expeditions;[930] and Herrera is wrong in calling the river the Jordan,[931]—named, as he says, after the captain or pilot of one of the vessels,—since no such person was on either vessel, and no such name appears in the testimony: the true Jordan was the Wateree (Guatari).[932] That it was the intention of Ayllon to make the expedition one of slave-catching, would seem to be abundantly disproved by his condemnation of the commander’s act.[933]

Ayllon, according to Spanish writers, after reaching the coast in his own voyage, in 1526, took a northerly course. Herrera[934] says he attempted to colonize north of Cape Trafalgar (Hatteras); and the piloto mayor of Florida, Ecija, who at a later day, in 1609, was sent to find out what the English were doing, says positively that Ayllon had fixed his settlement at Guandape. Since by his office Ecija must have had in his possession the early charts of his people, and must have made the locality a matter of special study, his assertion has far greater weight than that of any historian writing in Spain merely from documents.[935] It is also the opinion of Navarrete[936] that Ayllon’s course must have been north.

Oviedo[937] does not define the region of this settlement more closely than to say that it was under thirty-three degrees, adding that it is not laid down on any map. The Oydores of Santo Domingo, in a letter to the King in 1528,[938] only briefly report the expedition, and refer for particulars to Father Antonio Montesinos.[939]

The authorities for the voyage of Gomez are set forth in another volume.[940]

Upon the expedition of Narvaez, and particularly upon the part taken in it by Cabeza de Vaca, the principal authority is the narrative of the latter published at Zamora in 1542 as La relacion que dio Aluar Nuñez Cabeça de Vaca de lo acaescido en las Indias en la armada donde yua por gouernador Pãphilo de narbaez.[941] It was reprinted at Valladolid in 1555, in an edition usually quoted as La relacion y comentarios[942] del governador Aluar Nuñez Cabeça de Vaca de lo acaescido en las dos jornadas que hizo á los Indios.[943] This edition was reprinted under the title of Navfragios de Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, by Barcia (1749) in his Historiadores primitivos,[944] accompanied by an “exámen apologético de la historia” by Antonio Ardoino, which is a defence of Cabeza de Vaca against the aspersions of Honorius Philoponus,[945] who charges Cabeza de Vaca with claiming to have performed miracles.

AUTOGRAPH OF NARVAEZ
(From Buckingham Smith).

The Relacion, translated into Italian from the first edition, was included by Ramusio in his Collection[946] in 1556. A French version was given by Ternaux in 1837.[947] The earliest English rendering, or rather paraphrase, is that in Purchas;[948] but a more important version was made by the late Buckingham Smith, and printed (100 copies) at the expense of Mr. George W. Riggs, of Washington, in 1851, for private circulation.[949] A second edition was undertaken by Mr. Smith, embodying the results of investigations in Spain, with a revision of the translation and considerable additional annotation; but the completion of the work of carrying it through the press, owing to Mr. Smith’s death,[950] devolved upon others, who found his mass of undigested notes not very intelligible. It appeared in an edition of one hundred copies in 1871.[951] In these successive editions Mr. Smith gave different theories regarding the route pursued by Cabeza de Vaca in his nine years journey.[952]

AUTOGRAPH OF CABEZA DE VACA
(From Buckingham Smith).

The documents[953] which Mr. Smith adds to this new edition convey but little information beyond what can be gathered from Cabeza de Vaca himself. He adds, however, engravings of Father Juan Xuarez and Brother Juan Palos, after portraits preserved in Mexico of the twelve Franciscans who were first sent to that country.[954]

Some additional facts respecting this expedition are derived at second hand from a letter which Cabeza de Vaca and Dorantes wrote after their arrival in Mexico to the Andiencia of Hispaniola, which is not now known, but of which the substance is professedly given by Oviedo.[955]

The Bahia de la Cruz of Narvaez’ landing, made identical with Apalache Bay by Cabot, is likely to have been by him correctly identified, as the point could be fixed by the pilots who returned with the ships to Cuba, and would naturally be recorded on the charts.[956] Smith[957] believed it to be Tampa Bay. The Relacion describes the bay as one whose head could be seen from the mouth; though its author seems in another place to make it seven or eight leagues deep.[958] Narvaez and his party evidently thought they were nearer Panuco, and had no idea they were so near Havana. Had they been at Tampa Bay, or on a coast running north and south, they can scarcely be supposed to have been so egregiously mistaken.[959] If Tampa was his landing place, it is necessary to consider the bay where he subsequently built his boats as Apalache Bay.[960] Charlevoix[961] identifies it with Apalache Bay, and Siguenza y Gongora finds it in Pensacola.[962]

Of the expedition of Soto we have good and on the whole satisfactory records. The Concession made by the Spanish King of the government of Cuba and of the conquest of Florida is preserved to us.[963] There are three contemporary narratives of the progress of the march. The first and best was printed in 1557 at Evora as the Relaçam verdadeira dos trabalhos [=q] ho gouernador dō Fernādo de Souto e certos fidalgos portugueses passarom no descobrimēto da provincia da Frlorida. Agora nouamente feita per hū fidalgo Deluas.[964] It is usually cited in English as the “Narrative of the Gentleman of Elvas,” since Hakluyt first translated it, and reprinted it in 1609 at London as Virginia richly valued by the Description of the Mainland of Florida, her next Neighbor.[965] It appeared again in 1611 as The worthye and famous Historie of the Travailles, Discovery, and Conquest of Terra Florida, and was included in the supplement to the 1809 edition of the Collection of Hakluyt. It was also reprinted from the 1611 edition in 1851 by the Hakluyt Society as Discovery and Conquest of Florida,[966] edited by William B. Rye, and is included in Force’s Tracts (vol. iv.) and in French’s Historical Collections of Louisiana (vol. ii. pp. 111-220). It is abridged by Purchas in his Pilgrimes.[967]

YO EL REY.

[The sign-manual of Charles V. to the Asiento y Capitulacion granted to De Soto, 1537, as given by B. Smith in his Coleccion, p. 146.—Ed.]

Another and briefer original Spanish account is the Relacion del suceso de its jornada que hizo Hernando de Soto of Luys Hernandez de Biedma, which long remained in manuscript in the Archivo General de Indias at Seville,[968] and was first published in a French version by Ternaux in 1841;[969] and from this William B. Rye translated it for the Hakluyt Society.[970] Finally, the original Spanish text, “Relación de la Isla de la Florida,” was published by Buckingham Smith in 1857 in his Coleccion de varios documentos para la historia de la Florida.[971]

In 1866 Mr. Smith published translations of the narratives of the Gentleman of Elvas and of Biedma, in the fifth volume (125 copies) of the Bradford Club Series under the title of Narratives of the Career of Hernando de Soto in the Conquest of Florida, as told by a Knight of Elvas, and in a Relation [presented 1544] by Luys Hernandez de Biedma.

AUTOGRAPH OF BIEDMA.

From the Coleccion, p. 64, of Buckingham Smith.

The third of the original accounts is the Florida del Ynca of Garcilasso de la Vega, published at Lisbon in 1605,[972] which he wrote forty years after Soto’s death, professedly to do his memory justice.[973] The spirit of exaggeration which prevails throughout the volume has deprived it of esteem as an historical authority, though Theodore Irving[974] and others have accepted it. It is based upon conversations with a noble Spaniard who had accompanied Soto as a volunteer, and upon the written but illiterate reports of two common soldiers,—Alonzo de Carmona, of Priego, and Juan Coles, of Zabra.[975] Herrera largely embodied it in his Historia general.

Still another account of the expedition is the official Report which Rodrigo Ranjel, the secretary of Soto, based upon his Diary kept on the march. It was written after reaching Mexico, whence he transmitted it to the Spanish Government. It remained unpublished in that part of Oviedo’s History which was preserved in manuscript till Amador de los Rios issued his edition of Oviedo in 1851. Oviedo seems to have begun to give the text of Ranjel as he found it; but later in the progress of the story he abridges it greatly, and two chapters at least are missing, which must have given the wanderings of Soto from Autiamque, with his death, and the adventures of the survivors under Mosçoso. The original text of Ranjel is not known.

These independent narratives of the Gentlemen of Elvas, Biedma, and Ranjel, as well as those used by Garcilasso de la Vega, agree remarkably, not only in the main narrative as to course and events, but also as to the names of the places.

There is also a letter of Soto, dated July 9, 1539, describing his voyage and landing, which was published by Buckingham Smith in 1854 at Washington,[976] following a transcript (in the Lenox Library) of a document in the Archives at Simancas, and attested by Muñoz. It is addressed to the municipality of Santiago de Cuba, and was first made known in Ternaux’s Recueil des pièces sur la Floride. B. F. French gave the first English version of it in his Historical Collections of Louisiana, part ii. pp. 89-93 (1850).[977]

THE MISSISSIPPI, SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

[This sketch is from a copy in the Kohl Washington Collection, after a manuscript atlas in the Bodleian. It is without date, but seemingly of about the middle of the sixteenth century. The “B. de Miruello” seems to commemorate a pilot of Ponce de Leon’s day. The sketch of the Atlantic coast made by Chaves in 1536 is preserved to us only in the description given by Oviedo, of which an English version will be found in the Historical Magazine, x. 371.—Ed.]

The route of De Soto is, of course, a question for a variety of views.[978] We have in the preceding narrative followed for the track through Georgia a paper read by Colonel Charles C. Jones, Jr., before the Georgia Historical Society, and printed in Savannah in 1880,[979] and for that through Alabama the data given by Pickett in his History of Alabama,[980] whose local knowledge adds weight to his opinion.[981] As to the point of De Soto’s crossing the Mississippi, there is a very general agreement on the lowest Chickasaw Bluff.[982] We are without the means, in any of the original sources, to determine beyond dispute the most northerly point reached by Soto. He had evidently approached, but had learned nothing of, the Missouri River. Almost at the same time that Soto, with the naked, starving remnant of his army, was at Pacaha, another Spanish force under Vasquez de Coronado, well handled and perfectly equipped, must in July and August, 1541, have been encamped so near that an Indian runner in a few days might have carried tidings between them. Coronado actually heard of his countryman, and sent him a letter; but his messenger failed to find Soto’s party.[983] But, strangely enough, the cruel, useless expedition of Soto finds ample space in history, while the well-managed march of Coronado’s careful exploration finds scant mention.[984] No greater contrast exists in our history than that between these two campaigns.

A sufficient indication has been given, in the notes of the preceding narrative, of the sources of information concerning the futile attempts of the Spaniards at colonization on the Atlantic coast up to the time of the occupation of Port Royal by Ribault in 1562. Of the consequent bloody struggle between the Spanish Catholics and the French Huguenots there are original sources on both sides.

On the Spanish part we have the Cartas escritas al rey of Pedro Menendez (Sept. 11, Oct. 15, and Dec. 5, 1565), which are preserved in the Archives at Seville, and have been used by Parkman,[985] and the Memoria del buen suceso i buen viage of the chaplain of the expedition, Francisco Lopez de Mendoza Grajales.[986] Barcia’s Ensayo cronológico is the most comprehensive of the Spanish accounts, and he gives a large part of the Memorial de las jornadas of Solis de Meras, a brother-in-law of Menendez. It has never been printed separately; but Charlevoix used Barcia’s extract, and it is translated from Barcia in French’s Historical Collections of Louisiana and Florida (vol. ii. p. 216). Barcia seems also to have had access to the papers of Menendez,[987] and to have received this Journal of Solis directly from his family.

On the French side, for the first expedition of Ribault in 1562 we have the very scarce text of the Histoire de l’expédition Française en Floride, published in London in 1563, which Hakluyt refers to as being in print “in French and English” when he wrote his Westerne Planting.[988] Sparks[989] could not find that it was ever published in French; nor was Winter Jones aware of the existence of this 1563 edition when he prepared for the Hakluyt Society an issue of Hakluyt’s Divers Voyages (1582), in which that collector had included an English version of it as The True and Last Discoverie of Florida, translated into Englishe by one Thomas Hackit, being the same text which appeared separately in 1563 as the Whole and True Discovery of Terra Florida.[990]

At Paris in 1586 appeared a volume, dedicated to Sir Walter Raleigh, entitled, L’histoire notable de la Floride, ... contenant les trois voyages faits en icelle par certains capitaines et pilotes François descrits par le Capitaine Laudonnière, ... à laquelle a esté adjousté un quatriesme voyage fait par le Capitaine Gourgues, Mise en lumiere par M. Basanier. This was a comprehensive account, or rather compilation, of the four several French expeditions,—1562, 1564, 1565, 1567,—covering the letters of Laudonnière for the first three, and an anonymous account, perhaps by the editor Basanier, of the fourth. Hakluyt, who had induced the French publication, gave the whole an English dress in his Notable History, translated by R. H., printed in London in 1587,[991] and again in his Principall Navigations, vol. iii., the text of which is also to be found in the later edition and in French’s Historical Collections of Louisiana and Florida (1869), i. 165.[992]

ROUTE OF DE SOTO (after Delisle),—WESTERLY PART.

[This map of Delisle, issued originally at Paris, is given in the Amsterdam (1707) edition of Garcilasso de la Vega’s Histoire des Incas et de la conquête de la Floride, vol. ii; cf. Voyages au nord, vol. v., and Delisle’s Atlas nouveau. The map is also reproduced in French’s Historical Collections of Louisiana, and Gravier’s La Salle (1870). Other maps of the route are given by Rye, McCulloch, and Irving; by J. C. Brevoort in Smith’s Narratives of Hernando de Soto, and in Paul Chaix’ Bassin du Mississipi au seizième siècle.

Besides the references already noted, the question of his route has been discussed, to a greater or less extent, in Charlevoix’ Nouvelle France; in Warden’s Chronologie historique de l’Amérique, where the views of the geographer Homann are cited; in Albert Gallatin’s “Synopsis of the Indian Tribes” in the Archæologia Americana, vol. ii.; in Nuttall’s Travels in Arkansas (1819 and 1821); in Williams’s Florida (New York, 1837); in McCulloch’s Antiquarian Researches in America (Baltimore, 1829); in Schoolcraft’s Indian Tribes, vol. iii.; in Paul Chaix’ Bassin du Mississipi au seizième siècle; in J. W. Monette’s Valley of the Mississippi (1846); in Pickett’s Alabama; in Gayarré’s Louisiana; in Martin’s Louisiana; in Historical Magazine, v. 8; in Knickerbocker Magazine, lxiii. 457; in Sharpe’s Magazine, xlii. 265; and in Lambert A. Wilmer’s Life of De Soto (1858). Although Dr. Belknap in his American Biography (1794, vol. i. p. 189), had sought to establish a few points of De Soto’s march, the earliest attempt to track his steps closely was made by Alexander Meek, in a paper published at Tuscaloosa in 1839 in The Southron, and reprinted as “The Pilgrimage of De Soto,” in his Romantic Passages in Southwestern History (Mobile, 1857), p. 213. Irving, in the revised edition of his Conquest of Florida, depended largely upon the assistance of Fairbanks and Smith, and agrees mainly with Meek and Pickett. In his appendix he epitomizes the indications of the route according to Garcilasso and the Portuguese gentleman. Rye collates the statements of McCulloch and Monette regarding the route beyond the Mississippi, and infers that the identifying of the localities is almost impossible. Chaix (Bassin du Mississipi) also traces this part.—Ed.]

ROUTE OF DE SOTO (after Delisle),—EASTERLY PART.

Jacques Lemoyne de Morgues, an artist accompanying Laudonnière, wrote some years later an account, and made maps and drawings, with notes describing them. De Bry made a visit to London in 1587 to see Lemoyne, who was then in Raleigh’s service; but Lemoyne resisted all persuasions to part with his papers.[993] After Lemoyne’s death De Bry bought them off his widow (1588), and published them in 1591, in the second part of his Grands voyages, as Brevis narratio.[994]

One Nicolas le Challeux, or Challus, a carpenter, a man of sixty, who was an eye-witness of the events at Fort Caroline, and who for the experiences of Ribault’s party took the statements of Dieppe sailors and of Christopher le Breton, published a simple narrative at Dieppe in 1566 under the title of Discours de l’histoire de la Floride, which was issued twice,—once with fifty-four, and a second time with sixty-two, pages,[995] and the same year reprinted, with some variations, at Lyons as Histoire mémorable du dernier voyage fait par le Capitaine Iean Ribaut en l’an MDLXV (pp. 56).[996]

It is thought that Thevet in his Cosmographie universelle (1575) may have had access to Laudonnière’s papers; and some details from Thevet are embodied in what is mainly a translation of Le Challeux, the De Gallorum expeditione in Floridam anno MDLXV brevis historia, which was added (p. 427) by Urbain Chauveton, or Calveton, to the Latin edition of Benzoni,—Novæ novi orbis historiæ tres libri, printed at Geneva in 1578 and 1581,[997] and reproduced under different titles in the French versions, published likewise at Geneva in 1579, 1588, and 1589.[998] There is a separate issue of it from the 1579 edition.[999]

It was not long before exaggerated statements were circulated, based upon the representations made in Une requête au roi (Charles IX.) of the widows and orphans of the victims of Menendez, in which the number of the slain is reported at the impossible figure of nine hundred.[1000]

Respecting the expedition of De Gourgues there are no Spanish accounts whatever, Barcia[1001] merely taking in the main the French narrative,—in which, says Parkman, “it must be admitted there is a savor of romance.”[1002] That Gourgues was merely a slaver is evident from this full French account. Garibay notes his attempt to capture at least one Spanish vessel; and he certainly had on reaching Florida two barks, which he must have captured on his way. Basanier and many who follow him suppress entirely the slaver episode in this voyage. All the De Gourgues narratives ignore entirely the existence of St. Augustine, and make the three pretended forts on the St. John to have been of stone; and Prévost, to heighten the picture, invents the story of the flaying of Ribault, of which there is no trace in the earlier French accounts.

There are two French narratives. One of them, La reprinse de la Floride, exists, according to Gaffarel,[1003] in five different manuscript texts.[1004] The other French narrative is the last paper in the compilation of Basanier, already mentioned. Brinton[1005] is inclined to believe that it is not an epitome of the Reprinse, but that it was written by Basanier himself from the floating accounts of his day, or from some unknown relater. Charlevoix mentions a manuscript in the possession of the De Gourgues family; but it is not clear which of these papers it was.

The story of the Huguenot colony passed naturally into the historical records of the seventeenth century;[1006] but it got more special treatment in the next century, when Charlevoix issued his Nouvelle France.[1007] The most considerable treatments of the present century have been by Jared Sparks in his Life of Ribault,[1008] by Francis Parkman in his Pioneers of France in the New World,[1009] and by Paul Gaffarel in his Histoire de la Floride Française.[1010] The story has also necessarily passed into local and general histories of this period in America, and into the accounts of the Huguenots as a sect.[1011]

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