Of the Indians we are presented with the following glimpse: “The Indians are numerous around. We had within a few days a visit from about two hundred of five different nations. I was sorry not to have it in my power of making them any presents. I only supplied them with some rum, with which they seemed satisfied, and went off assuring me of their peaceful intentions and promising to come down soon with some of their principal chiefs.”
The church, which is so hallowing a feature in the sketch of the Island Town, is suggestive of the persevering devotion of the Catholic Faith to the spiritual welfare of her children. In 1559, when de Luna raised his national flag upon the shores of Santa Maria, his spiritual mother raised her cross beside it. With that sacred symbol she followed him in his explorations through the limitless wilderness, beginning and ending each day with her holy rites. She returned with Arriola, and, as he built his fort, her children under her pious promptings built her church. As the drum beat the reveille to call the soldier to the activities of life, the notes of her bell reminded him of her presence to admonish and console him. The engraving presents the next effort of her zeal. Afterwards, when the wing of the hurricane and the wild fury of the waves had swept away her island sanctuary, and left her children houseless on a desolate shore, she followed them to that hamlet which has just been described, where, around a rude altar, sheltered by the frail thatch of the palmetto, they enjoyed her consoling offices. When, in 1763, their national flag fell from the staff and her people went into voluntary exile, her cross went with them as their guide and solace. She returned with Galvez, and never for a day since then has she been without her altar and her priest on these shores to perform her rites for the living and the dead. For many years after the establishment of American rule, that altar and that priest were the only means by which the Protestant mother, more obedient to the Divine word than sectarian prejudice, could obey the sacred mandate: “Suffer the little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not.”
CHAPTER VII.
British West Florida—Pensacola the Capital—Government Established—Johnstone first Governor—British Settlers—First Survey of the Town—Star Fort—Public Buildings—Resignation of Johnstone—His Successor, Monteforte Brown.
The little settlement, mentioned in the last chapter, soon attained an importance in striking contrast with its appearance and condition.
By the treaty of Paris, France had ceded to Great Britain Canada, and that part of Louisiana east of a line beginning at the source of the Mississippi river and running through its centre to the Iberville river, thence through the middle of this river, lakes Maurepas and Pontchartrain, to the Gulf. That acquisition, with Florida, extended the British North American empire from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic Sea, bringing alike the Seminoles and Esquimaux under its dominion.
On the seventh of October, 1763, by a royal proclamation the limits of the governments of East and West Florida were established; the former extending from the Apalachicola river eastward; the latter embracing all the territory lately acquired from France and Spain south of the parallel of 31° from the Mississippi to the Chattahoochee river; and by another exercise of royal authority, in February, 1764, the northern boundary was pushed to 32°, 28´. This line was also the southern boundary of the territory of Illinois, and it brought Mobile and Natchez within the limits of West Florida.
Of that province, so extensive and so rich in natural resources, Pensacola became the established capital; a natural result of the high estimate placed by the British upon the advantages of the harbor. When Lord Bute’s ministry was assailed in the House of Commons for having procured Florida, by the surrender of Cuba, which Great Britain had conquered in the war ended by the treaty of Paris, the acquisition of the Bay of Pensacola figures as a prominent feature in the ministerial defense.
The first step towards the establishment of civil government in West Florida was taken upon the arrival, in February, 1764, at Pensacola, of Commodore George Johnstone of the Royal Navy, who came as the governor of the province; his first official act being a proclamation announcing his presence, powers, jurisdiction, as well as the laws which were to be in force. There came with him the Twenty-first British regiment as a garrison for the post, and also a number of civilians in search of fortune, or new homes; some as parasites, who are never absent where public money is to be distributed, and others attracted by the charms of the distant, under the delusive misrepresentations of which the immigrant is so often the victim.