Spanish Florida

La Florida
1513–1821
Flag
Location (in light orange) of Spanish La Florida
Status	Province of the Spanish Empire Viceroyalty: New Spain Captaincy General: Cuba 2 territories (from 1763): West Florida, East Florida
Capital	Pensacola and San Agustín
Common languages	Spanish
Religion	Catholic
Demonyms	Hispanic, Spanish
Government	Absolute monarchy
King
• 1516–1556	Charles I
• 1808–1833	Ferdinand VII
Governor
Historical era	Spanish colonization of the Americas
• Ponce de León takes possession of Florida	April 8 1513
• Treaty of Paris	February 10, 1763
• Treaty of Versailles	September 3, 1783
• Treaty of San Lorenzo	October 27, 1795
• American conquest	1817–1818
• Adams–Onís Treaty	October 22 1821
Preceded by Succeeded by Native peoples of the United States West Florida East Florida Florida Territory
Province of the Governorate of Cuba and therefore of the Captaincy General of Santo Domingo, belonging to the Viceroyalty of New Spain, until 1763, and after the British occupation, of the Captaincy General of Cuba from 1784 to 1817 and from 1819 to 1821.

Spanish Florida refers to the Spanish territory of La Florida, which was the first major European settlement in North America in the Age of Discovery. La Florida was part of the Captaincy General of Cuba, the Viceroyalty of New Spain and the Spanish Empire during the Spanish colonization of the Americas. During the first explorations, the territory known as La Florida had no clearly defined borders, and it covered an area much larger than that of the present-day U.S. state of Florida. During much of the 16th century, the name "La Florida" was given to an extensive coastal territory along the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean, lying between the mouth of the Pánuco River and Chesapeake Bay, and covering a large part of what is now the Southeastern United States. Spain's rights over this vast area were based on exploring expeditions during the 16th century. But Spain never exercised real control over La Florida beyond several settlements and forts.

Spanish Florida was established in 1513 when Juan Ponce de León claimed the Florida peninsula for Spain during the first official European expedition to North America. This claim was extended when several explorers (chiefly Pánfilo de Narváez and Hernando de Soto) landed near Tampa Bay in the mid-16th century and wandered north as far as the Appalachians and west as far as the present-day state of Texas, searching without success for gold and other riches. The presidio of San Agustín was founded on the Atlantic coast of Florida in 1565; several missions were established throughout northeastern Florida, Georgia and South Carolina during the 16th and 17th centuries; and Pensacola was founded in northwestern Florida in 1698, strengthening Spanish rights in that part of the territory.

Spanish control of the Florida peninsula was made possible by the collapse of the native cultures of the area during the 17th century. Several Amerindian tribes such as the Timucua, Calusa, Tequesta, Apalachee, Tocobaga and Ais had for centuries been the residents of this territory, and most of them resisted the Spanish incursions. However, the conflicts against the Spanish, the English and the native allies of the latter, and above all the diseases brought from Europe, decimated the indigenous population, which was almost nonexistent by the early 18th century. By the middle of that century, groups of Creek and other Native Americans from the north migrated to Spanish Florida, since they had been driven from their lands by the English colonists. Later these refugees joined with the African Americans who were fleeing slavery in the nearby colonies and with the survivors of the indigenous peoples of Florida, and formed the Seminole culture.

The extent of Spanish Florida began to shrink in the 17th century, and the missions were abandoned as a consequence of the decline in the native population. Between disease, poor management and untimely hurricanes, several attempts to establish new settlements in La Florida ended in failure. With no gold or silver in the area, Spain regarded Florida (and in particular the fortified city of San Agustín) as a "buffer zone" between the more prosperous areas to the south and west and the recent colonies of its European rivals to the north. The establishment of the Province of Carolina by the English in 1639, of New Orleans by the French in 1718, and of the Province of Georgia by Great Britain in 1732 limited the borders of Florida, causing discontent among the Spanish and provoking the War of the Asiento (1739–1748), including the siege of San Agustín (1740) and the invasion of Georgia (1742), both of which were repelled. At the end of the war, the northern border of Spanish Florida was located near the border of the present-day state of Florida.

Great Britain temporarily took control of Florida in 1763 as a result of the Anglo-Spanish War (1761–1763), but at the end of the next Anglo-Spanish War (1779–1783), which ended with the Treaty of Paris (1783), the territory passed back into Spanish hands. After a short border dispute with the nascent United States, the two countries fixed their borders and the Spanish allowed the Americans free navigation of the Mississippi River under the terms of the Treaty of San Lorenzo (1795).

France sold Louisiana to the United States in 1803. The Americans claimed that the transaction included West Florida, but the Spanish insisted that that area did not belong to Louisiana and remained Spanish territory. In 1810 the American and British settlers (who had settled during the British period) rebelled, conquered this territory and created the Republic of West Florida, which in 1812 became part of the Mississippi Territory. In this way the borders of Spanish Florida came to coincide with those of the present-day state of Florida.

In the early years of the 19th century, tensions arose on the border of Spanish Florida with the state of Georgia, as American slave catchers pursued the Black Seminoles of northern Spanish Florida. These tensions increased when the British aided the Seminoles against the Americans in the Anglo-American War of 1812. As a consequence of this war, two years later, in 1816, the Americans invaded northern Spanish Florida, beginning the First Seminole War. Spain sought a peaceful solution, which was the Adams–Onís Treaty of 1819, by which it undertook to cede its rights in 1821 to the United States, which already controlled the territory.

First Spanish establishment (1565–1763)

Juan Ponce de León (Santervás de Campos, Valladolid, Spain) was the first European to reach the present-day U.S., since he was the discoverer of Florida, to which he gave its current name.

Castillo de San Marcos in San Agustín.

Spanish fortifications and missions in Florida before 1700.

When the Spanish conquistador Juan Ponce de León arrived in Florida in 1513, several indigenous tribes lived in the territory. He first sighted the coasts of Florida on March 27, 1513, mistaking it for an island. On April 2 he went ashore. He named the newly discovered land "La Pascua Florida" because the discovery had taken place during Easter Sunday of Holy Week.

In 1521 Ponce de León returned with equipment and settlers to establish a permanent settlement, but he met fierce opposition from the natives, who did not cease their attacks on the Spanish settlers. The oldest records of Florida date from this period. Pánfilo de Narváez explored the western coast of Florida but was shipwrecked as he was preparing to escape toward Mexico. One of his officers, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, survived nine years, carrying out an astonishing feat: he crossed alone and on foot the stretch separating Florida from Mexico, on the first journey across North America.

Once in Mexico, which was then called the Viceroyalty of New Spain, he managed to return to the metropolis, where he wrote a book in which he narrated his adventure through North American lands. Inspired by the example of Cabeza de Vaca, another conquistador, Hernando de Soto, organized a new expedition to the peninsula in 1539. Members of this expedition later published details about the natives of La Florida, such as their way of life and their behavior. In 1559, Tristán de Luna y Arellano succeeded in settling for the first time in Panzacola for two years.

The French began to take an interest in America, which forced the Spanish to speed up their plans for colonizing their most recent discoveries. Jean Ribault led an expedition to Florida in 1562, and in 1564 René Goulaine de Laudonnière founded Fort Caroline, a port for Huguenot settlers, near the place that was called Vacapilatca in the time of Hispanic rule and is today Jacksonville.

In response, the Spanish counterattacked, destroying the French settlement and founding San Agustín a year later. This San Agustín, whose first governor was Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, was the first permanent city in what is today the United States of America. From San Agustín the Spanish began to build Catholic missions throughout the territory.

In 1565 Menéndez de Avilés, allied with the Saturigua natives, attacked what remained of Fort Caroline, killing all the French soldiers (except the Catholics), and renamed the settlement San Mateo. Two years later, Dominique de Gourges recovered the fort, massacring all the Spanish defenders. In 1586 the English pirate Francis Drake razed San Agustín.

Throughout the 17th century, the English colonists of Virginia and the Carolinas gradually pushed southward the Spanish borders, which had initially begun on the Atlantic Ocean coast at 36°N (from approximately the latitude of Cabo Medanoso, now called Cape Hatteras), while the French settlements along the Mississippi River narrowed the Spanish domains from the west.

Around 1595 a series of Franciscan missionaries arrived in Florida, among whom Francisco Pareja stands out; he wrote the first books in Timucua (Timucua), an indigenous language of the area that became extinct after the English attacks.

In 1702 the English Colonel James Moore and his Creek native allies again attacked the Spanish stronghold of San Agustín but were unable to take control of the fort. In 1704 Moore and his soldiers began burning Spanish missions in northern Florida and murdering the natives who showed themselves friendly to the Spanish.

In 1719 the French took the Spanish settlement at Panzacola, although, after the English invasion of the territories now corresponding to Georgia, the Spanish remained strong in Vacapilatca (in Spanish–Maskoki pidgin: Ford of the Cows, called Jacksonville by the Americans after 1820).

It was during this period that the Muscogui or Maskoki natives, protected by and allied with Spain, began to migrate to Florida, where, mixing with Spaniards, other Europeans, other aboriginal peoples (for example the Apalachee) and black Africans, they formed the Seminole ethnic group.

British period (1763–1784)

In 1763 Spain ceded Florida to England in exchange for the port of Havana (Cuba), which had been taken by the British during the Seven Years' War. Most of the Spanish population left the colony along with numerous Indians. The English began an ambitious program to attract settlers to Florida and divided the territory into East and West Florida.

In 1767 the British fixed the northern border of Florida on a line running from the mouth of the Yazoo/Yazu River to that of the Chattahoochee/Chettajuchi River, in a strip that covered the south of the present-day states of Mississippi and Alabama.

Great Britain held the territory during the War of Independence of the United States, but the Spanish, at that time allied with France, which was at war with Great Britain, took advantage of the situation and retook positions in West Florida. At the end of the war, the Treaty of Paris signed between the kingdoms of Spain and Great Britain returned control of Florida to the former, but without specifying the borders.

The Spanish accepted the limits of the British territory, but the Americans, who were on the other side of the border in the former colony of Georgia, insisted on returning them to their original point at the 31st parallel north. The dispute lasted several years and, in 1795, through the Treaty of San Lorenzo, the Spanish ended up recognizing the border at that parallel.

Second Spanish period (1784–1821)

Spanish Florida in 1810.

At the beginning of the 19th century, France signed the Treaty of San Ildefonso (1800) with Spain, acquiring Spanish Louisiana. Napoleon Bonaparte sold the Louisiana Territory to the United States in 1803, and that country claimed that its purchase extended to territories of Florida and Texas. Meanwhile, faced with the need to populate The Floridas, Spain offered generous plots of land to attract settlers, and these began to flow in essentially from the United States.

A decade later, in the context of the independence movements in Hispanic America, Madison and the government of the United States were in favor of: "Supporting a program that sought to incite revolt in the Colony of a friendly nation, with the intention of intervening at the opportune moment for the purpose of acquiring it", in reference to the Spanish colonies in North America.

On July 25, 1810, the American settlers met in a "convention" and proclaimed the republic of West Florida. In September the settlers, armed by the United States, attacked Baton Rouge to the cry of "Hurrah Washington!" and in a brief engagement took the Spanish garrison, and the independence of the Republic of West Florida was declared in Baton Rouge on September 25, 1810, raising a blue flag with a single silver star. The American settlers began to attack native settlements, whose inhabitants took their revenge by making raids into American territory. The United States Army began to cross the border with Spanish Florida to pursue the natives in the Seminole Wars.

In East Florida, the natives under the command of a former British loyalist, William Augustus Bowles, proclaimed the State of Muskogee, which existed from 1799 to 1803, when the Spanish reconquered it.

There were two attempts on Amelia Island, in 1812 and in 1817, the second led by Gregor MacGregor as part of a pincer movement to attack the Spanish Caribbean devised by Juan Bautista Arismendi. The Americans expelled the expeditionaries in December of that same year and continued the campaign sponsored by Andrew Jackson against the Seminoles, known as the First Seminole War; by that year the entire interior of the Florida peninsula was in native hands, the Panhandle in Yankee hands, and Spanish control was limited to the area around San Agustín and Pensacola. At the end of the conflict, after the destruction of the Negro Fort, the United States de facto controlled the most important strongholds of East Florida.

The Adams–Onís Treaty, signed between the United States and Spain on February 22, 1819, put an end to Spanish sovereignty over Florida. Under the terms of the treaty, signed by the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs Luis de Onís and the American Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, the United States acquired Florida from the King of Spain, Ferdinand VII, and in return respected the borders of the United States with the territory of Texas, although the Americans had previously claimed it, saying that Texas had been part of their acquisition of Louisiana, which had supposedly already been sold by France to the U.S. in 1803. The treaty came into force in July 1821; the last Spanish governor, José Coppinger, handed over San Agustín on the 10th, and Colonel José María Callava handed over Pensacola on the 17th.

See also

• French Florida
• Colonial governors of Florida
• The Floridas
• Spanish missions in Florida
• Apalachee Massacre
• New Spain
• Adams–Onís Treaty
• Republic of the Floridas

Reference bibliography

• Bushnell, Amy Turner. (1981). "Chapter 1: The Florida Provinces and Their Treasury." The King's Coffer: Proprietors of the Spanish Florida Treasury 1565-1702. University of Florida Press. Reprinted in David Hurst Thomas. (1991). Spanish Borderlands Sourcebooks 23: The missions of Spanish Florida. Garland Publishing.
• Milanich, Jerald T. (1995) Florida Indians and the Invasion from Europe. University Press of Florida. ISBN 0-8130-1360-7
• Tebeau, Charlton. (1980) A History of Florida. Rev. Ed. University of Miami Press. ISBN 0870243039