Florida (Spanish Colony)
Substate | Defunct
1565 CE to 1763 CE
Related Events
Showing 10 events out of 111 total
Europeans will often be offered fur, food or other items as gifts when they first encounter a tribe.
The Europeans do not understand they are supposed to take on an alliance with the natives, including helping them against their enemies.
Native tribes regularly practice gift giving as part of their social relations.
Because the Europeans (or most of them) do not, they are considered to be rude and crude.
After observing that Europeans want to trade goods for the skins and other items, natives enter into that commercial relationship.
As a consequence, both sides become involved in the conflicts of the other.
The Europeans in New France, Carolina, Virginia, New England, and New Netherland become drawn into the endemic warfare of their trading partners.
The Spanish set up the first settlements in Florida and New Mexico such as Saint Augustine and Santa Fe.
The French establish their own as well along the Mississippi River.
Spanish captain-general Menéndez de Avilés, chosen by Habsburg king Philip II to lead an expedition to drive out the French, colonize Florida, and evangelize the native inhabitants as the king’s adelanto, has meanwhile fitted out an expedition for the purpose at his own expense.
When he was about to sail, orders had come to him from the king to wipe out all Protestant interlopers he might find there, or in whatever corner of the Indies he should find them.
He arrives off the coast of northeastern Florida on August 28, 1565, the feast day of St. Augustine of Hippo.
Eleven days later, he and some six hundred soldiers and settlers come ashore near the site of the Timucuan village of Seloy with banners flying and trumpets sounding.
He hastily fortifies the fledgling little town and establishes a settlement here, five miles (eight kilometers) from the Atlantic Ocean on Matanzas Bay, naming it San Agustín.
The feuding colonists of Fort Caroline are about to abandon the new settlement when Ribault arrives from France in August 1565.
Upon learning of the Spanish colony of St. Augustine just thirty-five miles (sixty kilometers) to the south, Ribault sets out with several ships carrying two hundred sailors and four hundred soldiers to dislodge the Spanish, but he is surprised at sea by a violent storm lasting several days.
Menéndez, taking advantage of the tempest, marches his troops overland and surprises the Fort Caroline garrison at dawn on September 20, which numbers about two hundred to two hundred and fifty people.
The Spaniards attack and kill most of the defenders, except for about fifty women and children who are taken prisoner and twenty-six defenders who manage to escape, including de Laudonnière.
As for the men of Ribault's fleet, several had drowned; ...
...the Spanish pick up about three hundred and fifty survivors, (including Ribault), south on the coast where their ships had been wrecked, only to put them to the sword, sparing about twenty (not including Ribault).
This place is known today by a fort built much later, Fort Matanzas (Fort Massacre).
This massacre ends France's attempts at colonization in Florida.
Martin de Arguelles, the first European born on territory destined to become the United States, is born in St. Augustine in 1566.
Juan Pardo and one hundred and twenty-five Spanish soldiers depart on December 1, 1566, from Santa Elena, La Florida (located on present day Parris Island, Beaufort County, South Carolina) under orders from Governor Pedro Menéndez de Avilés to claim the interior for Spain, pacify native inhabitants, convert native inhabitants to Catholicism while establishing bases among them, and map a route to the Spanish silver-mining settlement at Zacatecas, Mexico.
The Spanish travel northwest to live off of the native inhabitants' food supplies.
The small Spanish force, following the Wateree River northward into North Carolina, stops at Otari (near present day Charlotte, Mecklenburg County, North Carolina) and ...
...Yssa (near present day Denver, Lincoln County, North Carolina).