Spanish Florida

Аннотация. Было проведено актуальное исследование, решившее один из вопросов  в современной науке и образовании. Необходимость исследования была вызвана отсутствием в учебниках Всеобщей Истории в странах СНГ информации о многочисленных народах, населяющих Флориду в «доиспанский» (XVI век) и «досеминолький» (XVIII) периоды. В результате исследований были разработаны карты, показывающие приблизительное расселение индейских племен в XVI веке в пределах территории нынешнего штата Флорида, который был частью огромной территории Испанской Флориды, которая существовала «де-юре» с 1513 года, а фактически не была освоена. В течение XVIII веке почти все народы, жившие во Флориде исчезли большей частью в результате индейских и европейских войн, болезней и других факторов. Однако последние из них исчезли после тотального уничтожения их вторгшимися племенами Криков, Семинолов, Ямаси и других индейских племен, которые в дальнейшем расселились по обезлюдившим  территориям Флориды.

In 2009, St. Augustine’s City Archaeologist investigated property at 325 St. George Street. Analysis of the artifactual assemblage recovered and examination of documentary evidence, suggests the presence of Canary Islanders in St. Augustine during the mid-eighteenth century. Intended to serve as agricultural laborers in the City—a void created by the diminishing native population—Canary Islanders’ presence fulfilled social and economic needs created by the process of Spanish colonialism. The archaeological record, historic documentation, in addition to previous research establish the Canary Islander presence in St. Augustine and exhibit this process as an extension of Spanish colonialism practices.

The research presented in this paper began with the popular romantic notion that the discovery of mainland North America by Ponce de Leon in 1519 was inspired by a motivation to find “The Fountain of Youth”.  Awareness of the unusual hydrological science of Florida, and the particularly grand limestone spring formations, then led to the proposition that there was an interchange of myth and knowledge of these formations from the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean to the early explorers.

1993 Account of the Northern Conquest and Discovery of Hernando de Soto, by Rodrigo Rangel.  In The De Soto Chronicles: The Expedition of Hernando de Soto to North America in 1539-1543, ed. by L.A. Clayton, V.J. Knight, Jr., and E.C. Moore, pp. 247-306.  University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa.

En su 'Relación' (1542, 1555) --también conocida como 'Naufragios'--, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca relata que los indios avavares y mariames le contaron “una cosa muy extraña”: la historia de un brujo pequeño, barbado, misterioso, extranjero y travesti que espantaba a los indios y los sometía a intervenciones médico-mágicas. Este relato constituye—allende su clasificación como ficticio, mítico o etnográfico—una historia de terror sobre la conquista a partir de la cual podemos desleer la Relación. Pese a la diferenciación entre Mala Cosa y Cabeza de Vaca que gran parte de la crítica asume, y que la propia Relación propone, Mala Cosa no es el Otro (brujo, trampista y maléfico) del humanitario “buen conquistador” cristiano, sino la terrorífica figura que devela su extrañeza y encubierta violencia colonial. El relato indígena inicialmente parece emplazar al conquistador y conjurar su malignidad, invitando al forastero temible a hacerse curandero. Por otra parte—dadas las coincidencias recurrentes entre el relato de Mala Cosa y las subsiguientes performances de Cabeza de Vaca y sus compañeros—esta narración parece haber proveído a los cristianos signos y modelos de comportamiento que éstos habrían aplicado repetidamente en sus procedimientos médicos y en sus despliegues de intimidación mágica de los indígenas.

http://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/revista_de_estudios_hispanicos/v048/48.3.jauregui.pdf

A serious study of the missing years of Juan Ponce de Leon after he retired to his home in Caparra, Puerto Rico derived from information gathered from archival resource documents and original documents. Answers the question, what did he do during that time? Who were the Jimenez sisters? Who were Juan Garrido and Juan Gonzalez Ponce de Leon?

Draft version, unpublished. Do not cite without permission of the author. In the aftermath of the Creek War of 1813-1814, many Indian refugees sought asylum in Spanish Florida. Pensacola and the greater panhandle region represented areas of continued conflict during the period 1814-1819, a time many consider to be a buffer between the end of the Creek War and the beginning of the First Seminole War. This paper represents a glimpse of the struggles faced by a new wave of Creek groups as they made their way into the midst of extant Creek and Seminole communities in Florida while being doggedly pursued by American military forces.

Although physically part of North America, peninsular Florida extends southward into the Caribbean. This geographic proximity resulted in a reciprocal relationship with Cuba that long transcended geopolitical borders. Much of the peninsula was also socioeconomically tied to the continent, but the Tampa Bay area was not. Rather, a number of variables delayed its Americanization and southernization until the beginning of the twentieth century.
Initially, the Tampa Bay area was a Caribbean periphery. Its original inhabitants came from the Caribbean and maintained a maritime lifestyle. After the Columbian Exchange and subsequent warfare led to their extinction, southeastern Amerindians moved in and made adaptive shifts, including establishing strong relationships with Hispanics in Cuba and at fishing ranchos along the Gulf coast. Although both the Spanish and the British intruded in local affairs, they were unable to break these ties. With the formation of the United States, the Tampa Bay area soon became a borderland caught between competing cultural hearths—American and Caribbean.
White Americans grew increasingly frustrated over Florida’s status as a refuge for fugitive slaves, who established a community in the Tampa Bay area and began trading with Cuba. Florida’s Amerindians, then known collectively as Seminoles, began harboring these fugitives and incorporating them into their society. In response, the United States took possession of Florida in 1821 and removed the Seminoles from all but the southernmost peninsula. Hispanics, allowed to remain in the Tampa Bay area, maintained and even strengthened its Caribbean connection. White rural Crackers largely filled the void left by the Seminoles, selling cattle to the Cuban market. Southern planters also moved to the area but achieved little economic success. As a result, slavery failed to establish an adequate foothold, and the Bay area remained a diverse cultural frontier for the remainder of the antebellum period.
The Civil War and the subsequent Union naval blockade of Florida temporarily disrupted the Cuban cattle trade, but Bay area residents turned to blockade running to the Caribbean as a means of survival. During Reconstruction, Cuba served as an economic lifeline for the Tampa Bay area, providing an eager market for local lumber, seafood, and cattle.
The Bay area remained largely isolated from the United States until the 1880s, when the “Plant System” connected Tampa to the South via the railroad and the Caribbean via steamships. This transportation network opened the area to development and created economic opportunities that led to a multicultural population boom. Cubans and black Americans moved to the area, finding employment. Whites became a minority, which delayed the implementation of Jim Crow segregation until after the Spanish-American War, when the Tampa Bay area embraced the New South trinity of industrialization, racial segregation, and Lost Cause mythology. The southernized white civic elite then rewrote the area’s history, nearly erasing its multicultural past. Despite their efforts, Tampa’s sizeable and economically influential Hispanic population infused the city with an undeniable Latin character, making it unique within the American South.

The results of archaeological investigations in 2012 at the Hutto/Martin site, 8MR3447, indicate the site represents Mission Santa Lucia de Acuera.  The results also suggest the Hutto/Martin site likely represents the site of the town of Acuera mentioned in accounts of the Hernando de Soto entrada.

The Richardson/UF Village Site, 8AL100, was discovered in 2013 to have a mission church with associated human remains.  The site appears to represent the site of the Potano of the 1539 Hernando de Soto entrada, as well as the site of the 1608 Mission San Buenaventura de Potano.

Since its discovery in 2015, the University of West Florida has conducted archaeological investigations at the site of Santa María de Ochuse, Tristán de Luna y Arellano's 1559-1561 settlement on Pensacola Bay. After nearly four years of fieldwork and lab work, the site has already revealed a substantial and diverse assemblage of artifacts associated with equipment, supplies, and provisions brought both collectively by the army and its companies and subordinate residential and dining units, and by individuals as personal goods. Moreover, the discovery of features such as trash pits and postholes supplement an increasingly detailed understanding of the horizontal distribution of artifacts to provide important clues regarding the layout of the 31-acre settlement and the activities conducted there, supplementing what the documentary record tells us about this site and the people who inhabited it. This paper provides an update of our current understanding of this important mid-sixteenth-century Spanish settlement.

Five towns are recorded in accounts of the Hernando de Soto entrada to have existed in present-day Marion and southern Alachua counties in north central Florida: Uqueten, Ocale, Acuera, Itaraholata, and Potano. Recent archaeological discoveries linking the historic accounts with specific sites in this region suggest the possible location and firm identification of two of these sites – Acuera and Potano – and the potential locations of the other three. The archaeological and historic evidence for these identifications will be summarized and presented.

Sixteenth-century Spanish artifacts are uncommon but widespread finds in the Southeastern United States, and documented assemblages have been variously used by archaeologists either as secondary indicators of the presence of passing Spanish explorers, or also as evidence of direct or indirect Spanish trade. The vast majority of such artifacts are found as grave goods within Native American villages or burial sites, apart from a handful of well-documented Spanish colonial settlements and encampments. Archaeological investigations at the recently-discovered 1559-1561 Tristán de Luna settlement provide a remarkable opportunity to examine a substantial though short-lived residential Spanish assemblage dating to this same era.

A map of the Florida Keys that appears to date to the 1730’s is found in the Archivo General de Indias, Seville. Analysis of the chart reveals much about the wrecked New Spain fleet of 1733, and the geographical knowledge of the island chain in the Spanish Colonial period.

This essay tells the story of Ayubale twice: once by focusing on European actions and desires, and the other by centering the voices and perspectives of Native peoples. Indians are present in both renditions—after all, this was an attack upon an Indian town by a primarily indigenous military force. The first version begins with English efforts to attack St. Augustine, the main Spanish hub in Florida, and ends with the abandonment of San Luís, the largest mission town in Apalachee. Though mostly situated in Indian country, this narrative privileges Spanish-English imperial rivalries over Native geopolitics. José Zúñiga y Cerda, governor of Florida, embodied this perspective. He was well aware that "Hostilities of the pagan Indians, led by the English have succeeded in depopulating the Province of Apalachee."6 He also knew that the attack targeted Native spaces and involved "hostilities of the pagan Indians." Even so, Zúñiga y Cerda could not conceptualize anything other than that Europeans "led" the charge and should frame the course of events. The second version works against Zúñiga y Cerda's narrative by making Indians the active subjects/agents of the actions. By centralizing Native peoples this retelling problematizes the chronology, geography, and actors prioritized by Spanish and English sources. In this version Ayubale is more than a colonial story taking place in Indian country. It is an Indian story that extensively shapes imperial interests in North America.

This article begins by documenting the main reasons the Spanish failed to establish a self-sustaining colony in Florida during the First Spanish Period, 1513–1763. It then documents the steps Great Britain took during its short-lived possession of Florida (1763–1783) to occupy, govern and repopulate the territory with the ultimate goal of transforming it from an unproductive Spanish backwater into a civilized and profitable British colony, centered on the plantation system and black chattel slavery. Ultimately, this article contends, contrary to what some historians have argued, that the British, despite the brevity of their rule, greatly influenced the social, political and economic development of Florida.

Between the late 1760s and the early 1780s, dozens of Creek Indians made the journey to Havana, ferried by Cuban fishing boats along the Gulf Coast of Florida. Creeks and Spanish Cubans traveled into the coastal and marine regions between Havana and the Florida Gulf Coast as it suited them; both took advantage of the space to negotiate and participate in exchanges with one another. For Creeks, the region served as an economic and diplomatic safety valve. In the midst of conflict with Anglo Americans, Creeks hoped that Florida would provide them with new avenues into Atlantic diplomatic and exchange networks. For Cubans, and the Spanish Empire as a whole, an alliance with the Creeks represented a means of reestablishing Spanish influence in Florida and of pushing back against an expansionistic British Empire in the wake of the Seven Years’ War. Though Spaniards and Creeks found the Florida Gulf Coast and its waters eminently useful, neither established full control over this maritime space. Though neither group would have framed it in these terms, Creek-Cuban contacts converted the Gulf of Mexico into a maritime borderland.

According to the manumission document that Zephaniah Kingsley signed on March 4, 1806, he purchased Anna as a slave in Havana. Yet, in his Last Will and Testament, he testified that they were married in Africa. The narrative presented in this article supports the testimony in his Last Will and Testament by explaining that, with manumission only applying to slaves, testifying that Anna was his slave was the only way Zephaniah had to document that she was free.
    The conclusions reached in this article are supported by persuasive evidence, including  Zephaniah's published writings as well as unpublished letters written to James Hamilton from 1801 to 1812 in the James Hamilton papers in the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, Duke University.

Long-term research by the University of West Florida into the 1559-1561 expedition of Tristán de Luna y Arellano to Pensacola Bay has only accelerated following the 2015 discovery of Luna's terrestrial settlement and the 2016 discovery of a third shipwreck from Luna's fleet that wrecked just offshore. In addition to ongoing archaeological investigations in the field and lab, concurrent syntheses and analysis of both previously-known and several newly-discovered documentary sources relating to the expedition have provided important clues regarding Spanish-Native relations both in the Florida panhandle and southern Alabama. This paper presents preliminary analysis and insights from these documentary sources.

An understanding of the worldview of historic and archaeological cultures can be gained from an understanding of the languages spoken by such cultures and the significance of personal and place names within such languages.  The historic Timucuan chiefdom of Acuera had an identity during the mission period which was recognized as distinct from other Timucuan-speaking cultures by the Spanish, by other Timucuan chiefdoms, and by the Acuera themselves.  A comparison and analysis of known names from the region of Acuera and other Timucuan chiefdoms is presented, and conclusions and avenues for future research drawn therefrom.

The recent discovery and archaeological investigation of the 1559-1561 settlement of Tristán de Luna on Pensacola Bay, in concert with ongoing nearby excavations at the second and third Emanuel Point shipwrecks from Luna's colonial fleet, has prompted new opportunities for research into the material culture of Spain's mid-sixteenth-century New World empire. In an effort to develop systemic linkages between the material traces left behind in different archaeological contexts, both terrestrial and maritime, and the amply-documented material culture of the many different types of people and activities that formed part of mid-sixteenth-century Spanish culture, a wide range of documentary sources is being consulted for both qualitative and quantitative data, including estate papers, ship manifests, warehouse accounts, and notarial records from both Spain and the New World. This paper outlines investigative strategies and techniques being employed, and presents preliminary results and promising avenues for ongoing research.

In 1595, a Spanish survey team left Havana to reconnoiter the waters, reefs, and coastlines between Cuba, the Bahamas, and Florida, to gain a better, more-formal understanding of the area. The results of their successful survey were presented in a letter from Juan Maldonado Barnuevo , Governor of Cuba, to King Philip II. That letter is found today in the Archivo General de Indias in Seville. This annotated, English translation of the survey report helps to put the document in context for the modern reader.

The 1559-1561 expedition of Tristán de Luna was the largest and most well-financed Spanish attempt to colonize southeastern North America up to that time. Had it succeeded, New Spain would have expanded to include a settled terrestrial route from the northern Gulf of Mexico to the lower Atlantic coast. While a hurricane left most of the fleet and the colony's food stores on the bottom of Pensacola Bay just five weeks after arrival, the colonists nonetheless struggled to survive over the next two years, supported by multiple maritime relief expeditions as well as a temporary relocation into central Alabama and the dispatch of a military detachment as far north as the Appalachian foothills. Though Luna's Pensacola Bay settlement was ultimately abandoned, the documentary record of the expedition details both its maritime and terrestrial dimensions, and provides an important window into the mid-16th-century Spanish colonial world.

Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca’s experiences as shipwreck survivor, captive and shaman in North America, as Governor of the Río de la Plata Province and as author of two famous books, offers an extraordinary example of the multiple connections that coexisted in the imperial space constructed by the Spanish Monarchy on the Atlantic in the early Modern Age.
This work aims to cast light over how Cabeza de Vaca was able to use his expe-rience and writings in order to promote himself and to present a political project of “pacification” based on his extense knowing of North and South American borderlands, in order to reinforce the power of the Spanish Monarchy over the local elite of conquerors and encomenderos. Between the level of the local and global, the lived and the narrated, Álvar Núñez’s books allow to understand the continental imbrication process of the Iberian Monarchy through one of its agent’s perspective.