The History of Florida (22 page)

authority did not suffice to assure the priests a friendly reception. Jeering,

jostling, and even threats of bodily harm greeted the friars’ first efforts there.

The first friars venturing into Apalachee between 1608 and 1612 at the invita-

tion of its most prestigious chief were twice forced to leave because of the

y.

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proof

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Names and loca

100 · John H. Hann

unruliness of Indians who did not obey their chiefs wel . In deferring the

effort there, both governor and friars cited a need for soldiers among their

reasons for doing so. Yustaga’s head chief initial y refused friars entry to

work in his territory. Even after admitting two friars, for a time he forbade

any of his subjects to be baptized. In the hinterland, Spaniards resorted to

a degree of compulsion only among the Chacato of the Panhandle, a few

months after the launching of missions there, when opposition to the friars’

presence developed.

Steady and, at times, spectacular shrinking of the population accompa-

nied spread of the missions, resulting largely from the Indians’ exposure to

new diseases brought by outsiders. The magnitude of the population loss is

unknown because demographic information is scant and usual y imprecise.

There are no global estimates for any people in the sixteenth century and

none for the first three-quarters of the seventeenth century, except for the

Apalachee.

The size of Guale’s population in the 1560s or later when they began to

be Christianized is among the least known. The only data recorded are that

more than 1,200 had been baptized by 1597, that Guale were more populous

in 1602 than the coastal and Freshwater Timucua, and that 756 Guale were

confirmed by Cuba’s bishop in 1606. There are no indications of the size of

proof

individual vil ages until 1675.

For coastal and Freshwater Timucua in the 1560s, there are offhand state-

ments about the numbers of warriors whom leaders assembled on several

occasions. Based on those statements, demographer Henry Dobyns sug-

gested a total Saltwater population of 7,500 to 10,000 for that era. In 1602,

friars provided precise figures on the Christian population of each of the

three Saltwater missions of that period (San Pedro 792, San Juan 500, Nom-

bre de Dios 200) and, in the case of San Pedro, figures for its individual

subordinate vil ages. The figures for San Pedro (500) represented the entire

population of Cumberland Island at that time. Six Freshwater vil ages on

the St. Johns and Mayaca held about 200 Christians in 1602, and Mayaca

had about 100 people yet to be baptized. The other Freshwater vil ages on

the St. Johns presumably were still heathen. Most of San Sebastian’s people

perished in a hurricane shortly before 1602. In 1606 a visiting bishop from

Cuba confirmed 1,003 Saltwater Timucua and 315 Freshwater Timucua and

Mayaca. On the south Georgia coastal mainland, the 1,100 people in Ycafui’s

eight vil ages had been catechized by 1602, but the 700 to 800 in Ibi’s five

settlements were still heathen. The scant data for the 1560s suggest that the

The Missions of Spanish Florida · 101

Saltwater and Freshwater Timucua populations had declined drastical y by

1602.

Among the hinterland Timucua in this period, the data are best for Po-

tano. Early in November 1607, two friars reported more than 1,000 adult

baptisms among the Potano over the previous year. The friar who launched

the work in four settlements in the vicinity of Gainesville baptized the 400

people of each of two of the settlements and 200 people in a third. Together

with the children they were a major portion of the more than 4,000 baptized

between mid-1606 and the end of 1607. By then another 1,000-plus were

being catechized. Over the next nine years the number of Christianized na-

tives rose to more than 16,000, but a series of epidemics beginning in 1614

halved that Christian population and undoubtedly took an equal y heavy

toll on the non-Christianized who were in contact with them.

We have the fewest data about the size of Utina’s population in the mis-

sion era and earlier. Hernando de Soto found it to be more populous and

better provisioned than lands such as Potano that he had passed through

earlier. A remark in 1616 that after the first five years of a friar’s work at

Tarihica there were 712 living Christian Indians may provide an indicator

of Utina mission size. If Tarihica’s Christian population lost half its numbers

in the 1614–16 epidemics, it would rank with the largest Apalachee mission

proof

centers of 1675, as did the head chief’s jurisdiction of Ayaocuto with its 1,500

people distributed over five settlements.

Dobyns used a French remark that Yustaga’s head chief of the 1560s could

put 3,000 or 4,000 warriors in battle to estimate a total population of 15,000

or 20,000. The baptism of 13,000 people during the first twelve years of the

friars’ work in Yustaga suggests at least that large a population, as does the

marked preponderance of Yustaga among western Timucua’s surviving

population in 1675.

Global estimates made from 1608 to the 1630s placed Apalachee’s pop-

ulation during those years at 30,000 to 34,000. Other estimates from the

1630s placed it at 15,000 or 16,000. A friar gave a late 1640s figure of 20,000.

The higher estimates are not inconceivable in view of Apalachee’s surviving

population of about 10,000 as late as 1675. At the start of missionization in

the 1630s that population was distributed over more than forty settlements

under the jurisdiction of ten principal chiefs who headed the missions in

existence in 1657. Until the 1650s Apalachee was less affected by epidemics

than were the other mission territories.

By the 1670s an eleventh Apalachee mission had been established, and

102 · John H. Hann

An artistic reconstruction of the Franciscan mission church of San Luis de Talimali at

Tallahassee. Archaeological excavations reveal that the Apalachee churches were con-

structed of plank and thatch. The dimensions of this particular church in the Florida

hinterland, 110 by 50 feet, make it as large as the seventeenth-century parish church in

proof

the capital city of St. Augustine. Artist: John LoCastro; original watercolor, 1993,
After-

noon at Mission San Luis
.

the province was host to six or more other peoples who migrated into the

province. Three missions were established among the immigrant Chine,

Amacano, Pacara, Chacato, and Tama-Yamasee. The sixth group, Tocobaga

from the Tampa Bay region, apparently never showed interest in receiving

a friar. The Chacato migrants were refugees from one of the last efforts to

expand the scope of the missions. In mid-1674, two months after the es-

tablishment of the Chine-Amacano-Pacara mission, friars established two

missions in the Chacato homeland near Marianna, which ended a year later

with the revolt and flight of most of the Chacato. A contemporaneous short-

lived third mission on the Apalachicola River served a small band of Saba-

cola who had migrated downriver from the vicinity of Columbus, Georgia.

Governor Pablo de Hita Salazar gave impetus to the last expansion of

the Florida missions. It began with resurrection of missions at Anacape

near Welatka and Mayaca to serve Yamasee who had moved to the upper

St. Johns River. Friars then moved southward from Mayaca into the lakes

district to establish five short-lived missions among the Mayaca-speaking

The Missions of Spanish Florida · 103

Jororo and the Aypaja by the 1690s. The effort col apsed essential y in 1696–

97 when the Jororo of Atoyquime killed their friar and his Guale assistants.

A renewed approach to the Calusa in September 1697 ended several months

later when Indians stripped the friars of even their clothing and deposited

them on Matecumbe Key, where a Spanish vessel eventual y rescued them.

The fol owing is a listing of the more enduring missions arranged by

province or geographic area. Those marked with a pound sign probably

had died out by 1655. Those marked with an asterisk had ceased to exist by

1675 or had merged with another mission. Population statistics are given for

most of the missions that existed in 1675 and in 1689. The first figure is the

one for 1675.

Coastal Timucua

Nombre de Dios

—

100

San Sebastian#

San Juan del Puerto

30

125

San Pedro Mocama*

San Buenaventura de Guadalquini

40

300

San Lorenzo de Ibiica#

Santiago de Ocone*

St. Johns and Ocklawaha valleys

proof

San Antonio de Anacape*

—

150

San Diego de Laca or Salamototo

40

200

San Salvador de Mayaca*

Santa Lucia de Acuera*

San Luis de Acuera or Avino*

Guale and other north Georgia missions

Santa Catalina de Guale

140

150

Santo Domingo de Asao or Talaje

30

125

San Pedro or San Felipe de Athuluteca

36

200

Santa Clara de Tupiqui*

San Diego de Satuache*

San Joseph de Sapala

50

—

Nra. Sra. de Guadalupe de Tolomato

—

125

Western Timucua

San Francisco de Potano

60

125

Santa Fe

110

180

San Martin de Ayaocuto*

Sta. Cruz de Tarihica

80

100

San Agustin or/and Sta. Catalina de Ahoica

60

200

Sta. Catalina

80

—

San Juan Guacara

80

150

104 · John H. Hann

Sta. Cruz de Cachipile*

San Agustin de Urihica*

San Francisco de Chuaquin*

San Ildefonso de Chamini*

Sta. Maria de los Angeles de Arapaha*

Sta. Isabel de Utinahica#

San Luis de Eloquale (Ocale)#

San Pedro y San Pablo de Potohiriba

300

750

Sta. Elena de Machaba

300

500

San Matheo de Tolapatafi

300

250

San Miguel de Asile

40

150

Chacato

San Carlos de Yatcatani

400

150

San Nicolas de Tolentino

100

350

Apalachee

San Lorenzo de Ivitachuco

1200

1000

San Luis de Talimali

1400

1500

Sta. Maria de Ayubale

800

1200

San Francisco de Oconi

200

400

San Joseph de Ocuia

900

1000

San Juan de Aspalaga

800

250

San Pedro y San Pablo de Patale

500

600

San Antonio de Bacuqua

120

250

proof

San Cosme y San Damian de Cupaica or Escambe

900

2000

San Martin de Tomole

700

650

Sta. Cruz de Capoli or Ychutafun

60

150

Purificacion de Tama or Candelaria

300

400

San Pedro de los Chines

300