The Apalachee massacre is a series of brutal raids by English colonists from the Province of Carolina and their Indian allies against a largely pacific population of Apalachee Indians in northern Spanish Florida that takes place during Queen Anne's War in 1704.
Against limited Spanish and Indian resistance, a thriving network of missions is destroyed; most of the population is either killed, captured, flees to larger Spanish and French outposts, or voluntarily joins the English.The only major event of former Carolina Governor James Moore's expedition is the Battle of Ayubale, which marks the only large-scale resistance to the English raids.
Significant numbers of the Apalachee, unhappy with the conditions they live in under the Spanish, simply abandon their towns and join Moore's expedition.
They are resettled near the Savannah and Ocmulgee Rivers, where conditions are only slightly better.Moore's raiding expedition is preceded and followed by other raiding activity that is principally conducted by English-allied Creeks.
The cumulative effect of these raids, conducted between 1702 and 1709, is to depopulate Spanish Florida beyond the immediate confines of St. Augustine and Pensacola.
