The History of Florida (20 page)

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90 · Amy Turner Bushnel

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6

The Missions of Spanish Florida

John H. Hann

Missions in Florida, as in other parts of the Spanish New World, sought

to spread the knowledge and message of Christ to native peoples. Their

goal was to persuade the natives to accept Catholicism and allegiance to the

king of Spain. Establishment of missions assumed special importance in the

Spanish New World under Pope Alexander VI’s grant of exclusive dominion

in the New World to Spain’s monarchs because the grant was justified by the

Crown’s assumption of the obligation of preaching Christ’s teachings to the

natives. The royal contract given to Florida’s founder, Menéndez de Avilés,

proof

clearly included the obligation to bring clergymen to instruct the natives in

the Christian faith.

People may not associate missions with Spanish Florida as readily as they

link them with the early Spanish experience from Texas through California.

But missions played no less a role in Florida than they did elsewhere in the

establishment of Spanish control. During the 138 years of Florida’s mission

era, 1567 to 1705, missions were attempted or established among at least

eleven distinct Indian peoples at about eighty mission centers that served

a far greater number of individual vil ages and hamlets. Almost all of this

was the work of Spanish Franciscans. The missions existing simultaneously

numbered forty-four by the mid-1630s and probably increased by a few more

over the next ten years as new missions appeared among the Apalachee of

the Tal ahassee region. The number may have begun to contract by 1650,

if not before. Twenty thousand Indians had been baptized by 1630, and

more than 50,000 others catechized. Only twenty-seven Franciscans were

then available to staff the thirty-two missions, which served more than two

hundred settlements, sixty of which had churches. Thirty-five Franciscans

served 30,000 Christian Indians by 1635. Contraction had definitely set in

by 1655, when there were about forty missions. The thirty-six that had friars

· 91 ·

92 · John H. Hann

held only 26,000 Christian Indians by then. A 1656 revolt, the turmoil that

followed, and the spread of diseases further hastened the decline.

The relatively successful missions stretched from just south of St. Au-

gustine northward along the coast through Georgia almost to the Savan-

nah River. They reached westward across north Florida to the Apalachicola

and extended into parts of south Georgia west of the Okefenokee Swamp.

They penetrated central Florida along the St. Johns River for an undefined

distance south of Lake George, possibly reached farther south along the

Oklawaha, and probably went farthest south in Marion County to the vi-

cinity of the Cove of the Withlacoochee. Apalachee, Guale of the north

Georgia coast, and various Timucua-speaking groups constituted the ma-

jority of the missionized natives. The Apalachee lived between the Aucil a

and Ochlockonee Rivers. Timucua-speakers occupied all of north Florida

east of Jefferson County, much of the eastern half of Georgia below the Al-

tamaha River, coastal Florida southward to the vicinity of Daytona Beach,

and central Florida southward along the rivers for an undefined distance.

Tama-Yamasee, Chine, Amacano, Pacara, and Chacato, Mayaca-speakers,

and a few Sabacola comprised the remainder. The Tama, from north cen-

tral Georgia, migrated to Apalachee to be missionized. Yamasee, also from

north central Georgia, migrated to Apalachee, to coastal Georgia, and to

proof

Mayaca-speaking territory along the upper St. Johns River. The Sabacola

lived along the Chattahoochee River. The Chine and Chacato migrated to

Apalachee from the Florida Panhandle. The Amacano and Pacara, linguistic

brothers of the Chine, were living with the Chine on Apalachee Bay’s Spring

Creek when the Chine mission was established in 1674.

In general, Florida’s mission experience paralleled that of other frontier

territories of the Iberian New World, but its experience was unique in a

number of ways because of various interrelated factors. First, and foremost,

soldiers rather than settlers remained the core of most of Florida’s Spanish

families, even though historian Eugene Lyon has recently revised our image

of early Spanish Florida as little more than a bleak and often starving gar-

rison town. The relative lack of settlers and the Crown’s close supervision

of developments in Florida spared its natives from some of Spain’s most

exploitative economic institutions. The Crown checked the several attempts

to introduce enslavement of the natives. Tribute was not a regular part of the

formal Spanish regime in Florida. Spaniards introduced tribute to a degree

in an informal sense. In areas where soldiers were introduced some time af-

ter the establishment of missions, natives were expected to contribute some

of the food those soldiers consumed, although there was no uniform policy

The Missions of Spanish Florida · 93

in this matter. Similarly, natives carried soldiers’ bedding from post to post

without pay as a service to the king. The paid labor draft known as the

repartimiento was the sole formalized, economical y exploitative institution

imposed on Florida’s natives in general.

Although economic considerations were a factor motivating establish-

ment of missions in Florida, none is known to have become an economic

enterprise dominated by friars in the way of the typical California mission.

Except for the earliest approaches to coastal natives in the 1560s, missionar-

ies began their work unaccompanied by soldiers and, with few exceptions,

at the invitation of elements among the native leaders rather than by thrust-

ing themselves uninvited upon the indigenous societies. By the last years

of the sixteenth century, leaders from interior provinces, where no Spanish

conquest of the Indians preceded establishment of the mission, began to

render obedience to Spain’s king and to ask for missionaries.

On the other hand, missions were not the major feature in Spain’s initial

approaches to Florida’s natives that they were in the Spanish domination of

Texas and California. The first missionaries were overshadowed by the adel-

antado, Menéndez de Avilés, and his soldiers or by his governor-successors

and their soldiers. With the possible exception of some coastal missions

and a few tribes from distant hinterland frontiers, the practice of bring-

proof

ing natives to mission centers at places chosen by the missionaries was not

employed in Florida as it was in California. Florida Franciscans established

their missions in preexisting vil ages. In contrast to the Franciscans who

established the first missions in New Mexico and Alta or Upper California,

Florida’s Franciscans did not bring large herds of cattle, horses, or sheep to

strengthen their hand in convincing natives to accept their tutelage. There is

no evidence that the Spanish authorities induced Florida’s Indians to adopt

a Spanish-type roster of governor, lieutenant governor, alcalde, or mayor,

and
alguacil,
or peace officer, for their vil ages as was done in New Mexico.