Notwithstanding these indications of a lively energy, a very different story is told by the traveller of Carthagena, François Coreal, who visited the peninsula in 1669. He mentions no settlements but San Augustine and San Matheo,—indeed, expressly states that there were none,[287]—and even these were in a sorry plight enough, (assez degarnies.) Either he must have been misinformed, or the work of conversion proceeded with great and sudden rapidity after his visit, as less than twenty years afterwards, (1687,) when by the attempts of Juan Marquez to remove the natives to the West India Islands, many forsook their homes for distant regions, they left a number of missions deserted, as San Felipe, San Simon, Sapola, Obaldiqui, and others. This marked increase was largely owing to a subsidy of twenty-four Franciscans under Alonzo de Moral in 1676, and the energetic action of the Bishop of Cuba, who spared no pains to facilitate the advent of missionaries to all parts.[288]
In pursuance of the advice of Pablo de Hita, Governor-General, attempts were renewed in 1679 to convert the nations of the southern extremity of the peninsula, and in 1698, there were fourteen Franciscans employed among them. These Indians are described as “idolaters and given to all abominable vices,” and not a few of the missionaries suffered martyrdom in their efforts to reclaim them.[289]
Towards the close of the century, (1696,) the condition of St. Augustine is described by Jonathan Dickinson[290] as follows:—“It is about three-quarters of a mile in length, not regularly built, the houses not very thick, they having large orchards, in which are plenty of oranges, lemmons, pome-citrons, lymes, figgs, and peaches: the houses, most of them, are old buildings, and not half of them inhabited. The number of men that belong to government being about three hundred, and many of them are kept as sentinalls at their lookouts. At the north end of the town stands a large fortification, being a quadrangel with bastions. Each bastion will contain thirteen guns, but there is not passing two-thirds of fifty-two mounted.... The wall of the fortification is about thirty foot high, built of sandstone sawed [coquina rock].... The fort is moated round.”
The colony of Pensacola or Santa Maria de Galve, founded by Andres de Pes in 1693, gradually increasing in importance and maintaining an overland connection with St. Augustine, naturally gave rise to intermediate settlements, for which the fertile, wide-spread savannas of Alachua, the rich hammocks along the Suwannee, and the productive limestone soil of Middle Florida offered unrivalled advantages.
The tractable Apalaches and their neighbors received the missionaries with much favor, and it is said that almost all the former were converted;[291] a statement which we must confine, however, to that small portion of the confederated tribes included under this title, that lived in Middle Florida. When Colonel Moore invaded their country in 1703-4, he found them living in villages, each having its parish church, subsisting principally by agriculture, and protected by a garrison of Spanish soldiers.[292] The open well-cleared character of their country, and the marks of their civilized condition were long recalled in tradition by the later Indians.[293] So strong a hold did Catholicism take upon them that more than a century subsequent, when the nation was reduced to an insignificant family on the Bayou Rapide, they still retained its forms, corrupted by admixture with their ancient heliolatry.[294]
On the Atlantic coast, there were besides St. Augustine the towns of San Matheo, Santa Cruce, San Juan, Santa Maria, and others. The Indians of these missions Dickinson[295] describes as scrupulous in their observance of the Catholic rites, industrious and prosperous in their worldly relations, “having plenty of hogs and fowls, and large crops of corn;” and each hamlet presided over by “Fryars,” who gave regular instruction to the native children in school-houses built for the purpose. All these were north of St. Augustine; to the south the savages were more perverse, and in spite of the earnest labors of many pious priests, some of whom fell martyrs to their zeal, they clung tenaciously to heathendom.
Nothing definite is known regarding the settlements on and near the Gulf, but in all probability they were more extensive than those on the eastern shore, peopling the coast and inland plains with a race of civilized and Christian Indians. Cotemporary geographers speak of “the towns of Achalaque, Ossachile, Hirritiqua, Coluna, and some others of less note,”[296] as founded and governed by Spaniards, while numerous churches and villages are designated on ancient charts, with whose size and history we are totally unacquainted. Many of these doubtless refer to native hamlets, while the Spanish names affixed to others point to settlements made by that nation. How much the Church of Rome had at heart the extension and well-being of this portion of her domain, may be judged from the fact that she herself bore half the expense of the military kept in the province for its protection.[297]
Such was the condition of the Spanish missions of Florida at their most flourishing period. Shortly after the commencement of the eighteenth century, foes from the north destroyed and drove out the colonists, demolishing in a few years all that the life, and the blood, and the toil of so many martyrs during two centuries had availed to construct. About the middle of the century we have a tolerably accurate knowledge of the country through English writers; and then so few and insignificant were the Spanish settlements, that only one occurred between St. Marks and St. Augustine, while, besides the latter, the only post on the Atlantic coast was a wretched “hut” on the south bank of the St. Johns at its mouth.[298]
Undoubtedly it is to the close of the seventeenth century therefore that we must refer those vestiges of an extensive and early inhabitation that occasionally meet our notice in various parts. Sometimes in the depth of forests of apparently primeval growth the traveller has been astonished to find rusting church bells, half buried brass cannon, mouldering walls, and the decaying ruins of once stately edifices. Especially numerous are these in middle Florida, along the old Spanish highway from St. Augustine to Pensacola, on the banks of the St. Johns, and on Amelia island. The Indians informed the younger Bartram[299] that near the Suwannee, a few miles above Manatee Spring, the Spaniards formerly had “a rich, well cultivated, and populous settlement, and a strong fortified post, as they likewise had at the savanna and field of Capola,” east of the Suwannee, between it and the Alachua plains; but that these were far inferior to those on the Apalachian Old Fields “where yet remain vast works and buildings, fortifications, temples, &c.” The elder Bartram[300] speaks of similar remarkable antiquities on the St. Johns, Bernard Romans[301] in various parts of the interior, Williams,[302] Brackenridge,[303] and others[304] in middle Florida, and I may add the numerous Spanish Old Fields which I observed throughout the peninsula, the extensive coquina quarries on Anastasia (St. Estaca, Fish’s) Island, and the deserted plantations on Musquito and Indian river Lagoons, as unequivocal proofs of a much denser population than is usually supposed to have existed in those regions.
The easy conquest these settlements offered to the English and the rapidity with which they melted away were partly owing to the insufficient force kept for their protection. Colonel Daniels, who led the land force of Governor Moore’s army in 1702, and took possession of St. Augustine, apparently met with no noticeable opposition on his march; while we have it on official authority that the year after there were only three hundred and fifty-three soldiers in the whole province of whom forty-five were in Apalache, seven in Timuqua, nineteen in Guale, and the rest in St. Augustine.