The incursion of the English in 1702-1706, and of the Creeks (Alibamons) in 1705, were very destructive to the monastic establishments of the north, and though Juan de Ayala, minister of the interior, devoted himself earnestly to restoring them, his labor was destined to yield small profit. The destruction of Pensacola by Bienville in 1719, the ravages of Colonel Palmer eight years later, the second demolition of the settlements in Apalache, between Tallahassie and St. Marks, by a marauding party of English and Indians in 1736, the inroad of Governor Oglethorpe four years subsequent, and another incursion of the English in 1745—these following in quick succession, it may be readily conceived rendered of no avail the efforts of the Franciscans to re-establish their missions on Floridian soil.
Previous to the cession to England the settlements had become reduced to St. Josephs, Pensacola, and St. Marks on the Gulf, Picolati on the St. Johns, and St. Augustine on the Atlantic. When the English took possession, the latter town numbered nine hundred houses and five thousand seven hundred inhabitants including a garrison of two thousand five hundred men.[305] There was a well-built church here as also at Pensacola, while at St. Marks there were two convents, one of Jesuits the other of Franciscans.[306] At this time but very few of the Indians, who are described as “bigotted idolators worshipping the sun and moon,” and “noted for a bold, subtile, and deceitful people,”[307] seem to have been in the fold of the Catholic Church.
Harassed and worn out as the colony was by long wars, and apparently soon to die a natural death, it is not a matter of wonder that in the tripartite Definitive Treaty of Peace signed at Versailles, February 10th, 1763, Spain was glad to relinquish her right to its soil in consideration of the far superior island of Cuba.[308] Though it was stipulated that all who desired to remain should enjoy their property-rights, and religion, very few availed themselves of the privilege, little loth to forsake a country that had been one continued scene of war and tumult for more than half a century.
With this closes the history of the conversion of the Indians as during the English regime they were lost sight of in other issues, and when the Spanish returned to power such a scene of unquiet turmoil and ceaseless wrangling awaited them as effectually to divert their attention from the moral condition of the aboriginal tribes.
CHAPTER VI.
ANTIQUITIES.
Mounds.—Roads.—Shell Heaps.—Old Fields.
The descriptions left by the elder and younger Bartram of the magnitude and character of the Floridian antiquities, had impressed me with a high opinion of their perfection, and induced large expectations of the light they might throw on the civilization of the aborigines of the peninsula; but a personal examination has convinced me that they differ little from those common in other parts of our country, and are capable of a similar explanation. Chief among them are the mounds. These are not infrequent upon the rich lowlands that border the rivers and lakes; and so invariably did their builders choose this position, that during the long journeys I made in the prairies and flat pine woods east of the St. Johns as well as over the rolling and fertile country between this river and the Gulf, as far south as Manatee, I never saw one otherwise located. An enumeration and description of some of the most noteworthy will suffice to indicate their character and origin.
On Amelia island, some half a mile east of Fernandina new town, there is an open field, containing some thirty acres, in shape an isosceles triangle, clothed with long grass and briary vines, bounded on all sides by dense thickets of myrtle, live-oak, palmetto, yellow pine and cedar. About midway of the base of this triangle, stands a mound thrown up on the extremity of a natural ridge, which causes its height to vary from twenty to five-and-thirty feet on the different sides. It is composed of the common surface sand, obtained from the east side, close to the base, where an excavation is visible. A few live-oaks and pines grow upon it, the largest of which, at the time of my visit (1856), measured seventeen inches in diameter. There is a fine view from the summit, embracing on the west the vast marshes between Amelia island and the mainland, with a part of St. Mary’s sound, across which, northward, lie the woody shores of Cumberland island, projected in dark relief against the glittering surf of the Atlantic, which stretches away in a brilliant white line to the north-east, loosing itself in the broad expanse of ocean that bounds the eastern horizon. Hence, one of its uses was, doubtless, as a look-out or watch-tower; but from excavations, made by myself and others, it proved, like every similar mound I examined, or heard of as examined, in Florida, to be, in construction, a vast tomb. Human bones, stone axes, darts, and household utensils, were disinterred in abundance. Quantities of rudely marked fragments of pottery, and broken oyster, clam, and conch shells, were strewed over the field. I was informed of a second mound, smaller in size, somewhat south of Fernandina light-house; but owing to the brevity of my stay, and the incredible swarms of musquitoes that at that season infested the woods, I did not visit it. I could learn nothing of the two large tumuli on this island, known as the “Ogeechee Mounts,” mentioned by the younger Bartram.[309]
On Fleming’s Island, at the mouth of Black Creek, identified by Sparks with the “extremely beautiful, fertile, and thickly inhabited” Edelano of the French colonists, and on Murphy’s Island, eight miles above Pilatka, are found mounds of moderate size, and various other vestiges of their ancient owners. But far more remarkable than these are the large constructions on the shores and islands at the southern extremity of Lake George, first visited and described as follows, by John Bartram,[310] in 1766: “About noon we landed at Mount Royal, and went to see an Indian tumulus, which was about one hundred yards in diameter, nearly round, and twenty foot high. Found some bones scattered on it. It must be very ancient, as live-oak are growing upon it three foot in diameter; directly south from the tumulus is an avenue, all the surface of which has been taken off and thrown on one side, which makes a bank of about a rood wide and a foot high, more or less, as the unevenness of the ground required, for the avenue is as level as a floor from bank to bank, and continues so for three quarters of a mile, to a pond of water about one hundred yards wide and one hundred and fifty long, north and south,—seemed to be an oblong square, and its banks four foot perpendicular, gradually sloping every way to the water, the depth of which we do not say, but do not imagine it deep, as the grass grows all over it; by its regularity it seems to be artificial; if so, perhaps the sand was carried from thence to raise the tumulus.”
A description of this mound is also given by Wm. Bartram, who visited it both with his father, and fifteen years later.[311] In summing up the antiquities, he saw in Florida, this author says,[312] “from the river St. Juans southerly to the point of the peninsula of Florida are to be seen high pyramidal mounts with spacious and extensive avenues leading from them out of the town to an artificial lake or pond of water. The great mounts, highways, and artificial lakes up St. Juans on the east shore, just at the entrance of the great Lake George; one on the opposite shore, on the bank of the Little lake, another on Dunn’s island, a little below Charlotteville, and one on the large beautiful island just without the Capes of Lake George, in sight of Mount Royal, and a spacious one on the West banks of Musquitoe river near New Smyrna, are the most remarkable of this sort that occurred to me.”